Treading Water Exploit Fix via Endurance

[AtomicUs5000]

I've always thought that there should be an endurance meter as well as stamina.
 

• Short rests replenish stamina up to the current max stamina as usual.
• Endurance drains a tiny bit as stamina is used and constantly replenishes, but much more slowly than stamina.
• If your stamina bottoms out, your endurance takes a larger drainage hit.
• The more endurance you have, the faster your stamina returns.
• Exposure to bad weather or radiation, or being injured or diseased slows endurance replenishment.

Additionally:

• Good nutrition and health replenishes endurance at a higher rate.
• Boosts could be adjusted so that things giving you instant stamina, gives a hit to your endurance.
• Perks could affect endurance as well.
• Endurance can play a role in disease tolerance. If you are too worn out, it raises the percent chance of getting some disease when hit by zombies or eating/drinking contaminated things.

 

Then, you make it so that it requires stamina to tread water and swim. If you run out of stamina, you start sinking. Your stamina can go up as you sink for a few seconds, allowing you to surface again, but your endurance will take a big hit and if you don't get out of the water in a reasonable amount of time (maybe a couple game hours), and this happens too much resulting in your endurance being completely drained, you eventually get too tired and drown because you can no longer regain stamina. No more treading water to avoid zombies.

 

There are probably other scenarios that could be made interesting with endurance. The only other thing I can think of at the moment is that too many encounters/missions in a single day without good food could be some new thing to worry about.

 

Importantly:

Nothing should ever have a constant drain on endurance. It is fine to lose endurance when performing exhaustive actions, but in a resting state, endurance should always increase even if just a very tiny amount due to disease/injury/malnutrition otherwise you end up in a situation where you cannot regain stamina at all. The only reason why this does not apply when swimming is because swimming is a constant stamina drain, which in turn can result in endurance not allowing stamina to regain fast enough to avoid drowning.

[hiemfire]

Zombies will be able to swim up to you in the next Alpha so it looks like this "exploit" has been dealt with.

[AtomicUs5000]

19 minutes ago, hiemfire said:

Zombies will be able to swim up to you in the next Alpha so it looks like this "exploit" has been dealt with.

Wow, they are really going there? I must've missed that mentioned. If you have a link to the post/discussion, I would greatly appreciate it.

I am a strong supporter of TFP defining their own version of what a zombie is, but I think that's going too far.

What do you think about that?
I'm not 100% certain, but I don't think there's a single movie, game, or even comic where zombies can swim.
I thought for sure that if they added some kind of water enemy, they would put in some floating, gas-bloated zombies... but even so, I doubt they could coordinate themselves to inch their way towards you in that kind of condition. My second thought was that they might change water areas into shallow swamps with slow movement and zeds covered in mud, which would be awesome in my opinion.
 
EDIT: I found the post: 

That's just really weird. I actually did read this at some point, but I skimmed over it and I took swimming AI to mean for bandits in the future and for some animals... I didn't realize he was talking about zombies. 
This makes me feel uneasy.

Hopefully at least the animation looks like a real struggle, and not like a butterfly stroke or something.

[hiemfire]

More info to consolidate.

There was also an image of a Zombie_Bo swimming up at the player iirc. Currently looking for it. If I find it I'll add it to this post. 

 

Found it!

[Roland]

The animation looks like they are kind of figuring it out or using instinctive motions. They aren't coordinating strokes with kicks or anything and they usually get to the surface for a moment and then sink again and then repeat. It is pretty scary  and weird but it doesn't seem beyond the realm of possibility that they are doing what they are doing when I watch it.

[AtomicUs5000]

53 minutes ago, Roland said:

The animation looks like they are kind of figuring it out or using instinctive motions. They aren't coordinating strokes with kicks or anything and they usually get to the surface for a moment and then sink again and then repeat. It is pretty scary  and weird but it doesn't seem beyond the realm of possibility that they are doing what they are doing when I watch it.

Nice. Sounds interesting. I'll take your word for it and hopefully if it does indeed look believable, I'm excited to finally see this hole in the gameplay filled in.