Tactical Ex

I tried to contribute to the wiki at one point and realized the same thing. I would like the wiki to be opened up for outside contributions BUT
 
!!!IMPORTANT!!! Require admin approval of changes before the changes go live. !!!IMPORTANT!!!
 
So many good willed individuals will go on here and see a price for the traders that doesn't match the price on their servers and change it little known to them that the server admins changed the prices on their server and what the do-gooder pays for a fuel barrel isn't what the rest of the community pays for a fuel barrel.

Or just drop it and accept that the Epoch Devs said safes are going to be unbreakable.

So the server I regular has an ongoing discussion about KOS problems and how they might be helped.
 
Pretty much everyone agrees, Kill-On-Sight is way too prevalent but there's just not enough reasons to not do it.
 
The problem:
1) You have too much to lose by trying to identify someone you have the drop on.
2) Everyone is effectively anonymous unless they identify themselves or are dead.
 
I had been thinking about these two facts affect gameplay, and how other mechanics could affect this so that KOS was less common. Several times I've killed someone only to learn who they were via the death message and then apologized for my actions. The typical response is 'this is DayZ', it's just a harsh accepted truth.
 
At the same time, we already have 'friendly tagging'. It isn't persistent through logouts, and requires an initial contact of trust. It causes a magic green floating dot on the other player so you know they are friendly. We mostly play on the same servers and given time, you start to identify regular players. Without some sort of forced dialogue, there's not often a way to randomly run into a player and have a net positive outcome. Usually, someone ends up dead. 
 
Why not take this a step farther and allow players to opt-in to displaying their own name if someone is aiming at them?
  The idea is that even though I may have never run into player 'Robot' in-game, from interactions with him in side chat or in forums would allow me to give him the benefit of the doubt. If I had the drop on him and saw that it was him(because he opted into showing his name) then I might say "hello" first or ask if he'd like to be friendly. The risk is still there, as now I've given up both the fact that I have the drop on him AND who I am, but he might reciprocate and we just had a 'good' random interaction in Epoch. He might also turn and shoot me in the face, which is 'DayZ'. The side effect there is I would know it was him and his 'reputation' could be marred. The real world current example is I see him running around with gear, I shoot him and kill him, apologize and if I'm feeling nice, help him get his gear back.   Some scenarios as to why nametags being a choice of the player is preferable: The above interaction, being a net positive. I have the drop on someone, see it is a regular and potentially friendly, ask them and we don't shoot at eachother. I see a player who has name tags turned off, I'm likely to just shoot them as I would today in our current system. I take their gear, or miss and they kill me. I decide to do some banditry. I turn my name tag off. That way, if I get in a firefight with someone, they don't know who I am. If I win- they never know who I was(unless they check the kill board). Someone gets the drop on me, sees my nametag, and shoots me anyway. They either don't care, don't like me, or feel the need. Their gameplay has not been affected. I keep my nametag on, and hope that players see me and decide not to shoot me in the back. I am banking on my reputation on the server as a deterrent to random victimization.    The last part is most important. It's an option that adds more depth to Epoch and helps foster a community on a single server or hive. It doesn't cost anything or force anyone to change their gameplay habits. It is entirely optional, and in my opinion could only improve the quality of play at the small expense of losing a little realism. This realism imo is already lost with red/green dots on player characters. I feel like this could be implemented as an additional field in the character data table. It could be read in on each login and death.   Update: I've been digging into this quite a bit recently and started to poke at the idea of how this could functionally work. Others have graciously linked related name tag scripts which look fairly simple to implement. I've been researching how we can provide both an item interaction and possibly a visual reference for if the 'mask' is on.   My current idea is to utilize balaclava code or create a custom glasses model that is a mask. This way, I don't need to make a clone model for each custom outfit that is wearing a mask. If I can apply it to the player's model head then it just goes on 'over' the player model, just like a real mask. Both Night Vision Goggles and Balaclava/glasses work to accomplish this, but in slightly different ways.    The two hurdles I'm working on right now are: how to dynamically apply the player model change  how to handle the interaction menu to enable/disable the mask. 

As revoplay says, there is a item in game to copy keys. If a player does not then its not the admins fault. On my server i get so many key requests that i am going to start imposing a fine if people want the key back as did not make a copy

Stop running every mod in existence, or stop playing on servers that do. It's not Epoch causing these issues. I play on a server that runs Epoch + 3 mods, is always half full or better, and hardly ever get desync.

Nightmare has a PHP Application --> http://dayzepoch.com/forum/index.php?/topic/338-privatehivetools-php/ Epoch Prices

The best way is to remove the gear menu when outside the vehicle.
 
How to do it is the question.

This is just a precaution. Some of the feedback from the last hive issue, the reason for patch 1.0.2.3, people were concerned that the lights may have been involved. As the lights don't touch the database I don't think this was related but as it's a new addition caution was preferred.
 
Please do enable them and any feedback would be great, I will be here to answer any questions or help with any issues. This version of the lights has been well tested. Large numbers of players is the only area where this hasn't been fully tested. Yet, all of the lighting work, by necessity of the Arma engine, is done on the players PC so increased numbers should not make any difference.
 
For an explanation of the settings see the wiki: http://dayzepoch.com/wiki/index.php?title=Lighting_System I prefer the option With Generator Requirement.. Street lights still work but a running generator is needed to light the nearby houses..
 
I have a fairly major update in the works with further optimisation of the code, general improvements to the lighting system and simplifying of the options. The amount of options currently is to allow for tweaking any problems without the need to patch the whole mod.
 
One new feature is light brightness will be based on distance from the player. This allows buildings at greater distance to be seen, accommodating for the restrictions in the Arma engine. It looks good when you can see a town in the distance after running for an age at nighttime..

Believe me, it is that easy. I built one myself to test the theory. I am sure the developers of this are fully aware that anyone with a limited amount of programming knowledge could put one together using the likes of AutoIt or Autohotkey if they had the intention. Note I am talking specifically about the combo locks - the safes can take hours due to the animation timer between entering keys.

It really is simple to set the macro program up.
 
http://dayzepoch.com/forum/index.php?/topic/1729-combolock-brute-force-fix/
 
There is a fix there, I added in a temporary stun/unconc to the mix. I did add in the combination "medic" animation but you can vault out of it and still access the menu anyway so I went with the stun/unconc instead until there is a better fix in place.

@Survivor King I don't think there is anymore. We are friendly with one of the groups that has the 2rd biggest bandit on the server at -75k and he respawns with just a survivor skin on. My buddy is also a 6k hero and has yet to get a skin. I know you can find bandit skins. So you might have seen someone wearing one of those that they found.
 
 
@Eegore Well for starters a reverse of the issues listed above will go along way. However here are my suggestions spelled out:
-Minor skin change. Maybe a red armband for bandits, and a blue one for heros, added to the survivor skin.
-Postive humanity from bandit kills (scaled to what their humanity level was at).
-ONLY negative humanity for killing, if you are trying to disable or knock someone out you shouldn't lose anything.
-Along with my last one, damage dealt to other players shouldn't effect your humanity unless that player dies.
-If a player hits you, you should be able to shoot back and kill them without any loss if they are a survivor.
-You should start gaining humanity the longer you're alive with no murders. After maybe 3 hours with no murders you should slow start to gain humanity.
 
-Another neat suggestion my squad mate thought of would be suited for preventing camping. If a bandit gets within 50-100 meters of a friendly trader the npc will start to grumble or mutter that can heard 50-100 meters away. This will prevent bandits from camping friendly/hero traders and vise versa.
 
 
 
 
Note: After we engauged bandits last night one of our squad claimed to have gained humanity from his bandit kill, but another member lost humanity. Yet only has a "bandit kill" listed in his debug monitor. So we'll have to do some addtional testing or maybe someone from Epoch dev team can chime in and explain.

I have really come to like the idea of coin purses. This way, it's effectively an ethereal money system with the exception that the purse can be looted off a body. Replace Tin/Copper/Silver with coins flat-out, and exchange 1000 coins for a gold bar.
 
Have vendor transactions attempt to pull the value directly from a coin purse. You could have different sized coin purses as a loot or craftable drop. Make it possible to combine or separate coin purses, or even pay someone directly in a transaction. 

Agreed, I think the system as it is could probably stay so long as the materials that are created can be converted to "Pre-fabs". Much like 4 quarter floors can be placed individually or crafted together to make a full floor, the concept is taken 1 step further to create larger and more complex objects.  I'm thinking something like the materials that could be used to build a floor, ceiling, and 3 walls could be crafted together to create "Room_Unit_1" and is 1 object as opposed to 5. Also, Fencing could be crafted together to create a string of 5 and so on.

we will not be adding any cracking of safes, this was tested very early on and and was there was no "good" way of doing it. Besides you can crack a safe already its just really hard. Your best bet is to catch the owner while opening it.

Another issue i just found is you can exploit the new "bunnyhop" to jump through combolocked cinderwallgates... That sucks really hard. We need a hot fix for that as first place i'd say!

I think this link will help most ...http://dayzepoch.com/wiki/index.php?title=Modular_Building_System  but don't forget the objects here ....http://dayzepoch.com/wiki/index.php?title=Crafting_System can be used in tandem as well. As of 1.0.2.2 the "Metal panel" will have the same armor as the "cinder wall" and the former may be easier to obtain, just an FYI.
 
I would read the entire wiki as well, there are a lot of cool things in there.
 
As for your floating question, YES, you can place objects in the air. I have built myself a tree-house, in fact. Some servers with extra scripts may have this feature broken this so a good way to check is to place a workbench in the air a little ways just before server restart and when you come back see if it has dropped to the ground. If the workbench is still in the air after restart then its a good indicator that the mod is working right. Remember, if you don't maintain your stairs or ladder (providing stock maintenance is not disabled on the server), your air fortress may be out of reach one day!

I am fine with Base 10 and it will make it easier to code, We will re-purpose the copper and silver, You already can make tin and Aluminum from tin cans and empty soda cans. All the bar types will be able to be traded in for gold coins.

Changing the animation is something we are going to do, as well as giving change. I think next patch 1.0.2.3-ish I will add a magazine item for a "coin pouch" that would hold 0-900 coins to replace all other lower bars as currency. All bars lower than 1oz of gold will just be trade-able into coins. This would be used for trades on items lower than 1oz of gold. When making change this item will be consumed and a item will be replaced with the proper change. Over 1oz Gold Bars will still be used and made to stack in 1oz increments (1-10oz). Briefcases will function the same as they always have but will store increments of 1oz (0-100oz). On selling the trade would look for partially filled "coin pouches","Bar Stacks","Briefcases" and append the output.   On buying the trade will look first for the exact Item/change consume that item and return nothing. Otherwise it will give the highest denominations back as change, for example:   Player has a coin pouch with 900 coins, makes a purchase costing 50 coins  Returns: (900 - 50 = 850). Player has a coin pouch with 500 coins, makes a purchase costing 50 coins  Returns: (500 - 50 = 450). Player has 10 x 1oz Gold Bars, makes a purchase costing 50 coins  Returns: (10 - 1 = 9oz + 900 - 50 = 850). Player has 10 x 1oz Gold Bars, makes a purchase costing 1oz bar Returns: (10 - 1 = 9oz). Player has a Briefcase with 100 x 1oz bars, makes a purchase costing 1oz bar Returns: (100 - 1 = 99oz). Player has a Briefcase with 100 x 1oz bars, makes a purchase costing 50 coins  Returns: (100 - 1 = 99oz + 900 - 50 = 850).   (1-900) Coins (900-9000) Bars (9000-90000) Briefcase 

B6 - Surely it would be better to fix all issues with your server pack before trying new stuff anyway?
 
You've already posted that you don't have time to maintain it due to IRL stuff, yet you seem to be looking for more stuff to add ? - I'm confused :P

Another vid.... yeah i've lost my f'kin' mind! :D

Easy fixes that seem compatible with future plans for metal:
 
1.  Just adding change to the vendors would do wonders.
2.  Remove the animations between trades.  

Am pretty sure that the open backpack is buried deep in the arma code.
 
The idea of removing the backpack and storing as a variable on the player is a good one. Better still store it somewhere in the safezone, one of the traders maybe ? Allow the variable to be public and include your player UID, that way if you log or lose connection you may still be able to retrieve your backpack after re-joining, if before a server restart..?

Great news. My plans for a helipad skytower can resume  :D

While you are right about how many you could actually put on a keychain IRL I think a limit in-game would be safer.  I think the limit should be 11 (12 is the size of the tool belt slots right?).  The reason being is players might end up deleting keys if they select "Remove all keys" (I'm guessing there would be an option for that) with less space than that of the (keychain + keys) in the tool belt; the player might end up accidentally deleting keys. I suppose this could be avoided by only allowing the player to remove 1 at a time but I think doing that even 3-5 times is asking too much patience from the player. The devs might come up with a niftier solution though, there are other hurdles with key chains that would have to be overcome too.

the big issue about number 4 lack of deconstruct options for walls floors semiperminant structures ETC is that if they somehow get misplaced or if you want to just get rid of some shack and build something nicer. in all there is no reason you should have to waste multiple magazines shooting at a wall or damage a truck by ramming it just to remove it.
 
 
also speaking of deconstruction we have had reports on our server of people being killed by exploding wooden stairs when they tried to remove it with an axe.. last time i checked wooden objects DONT EXPLODE