ekroemer
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Posts posted by ekroemer
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In the changelog I read:
[CHANGED] Base building items now have a 10% chance * (DE-constuction count) to break tools
Do I understand that correctly: after each construction stage you have a 90% chance that your tool is still intact?
That means that after the typical 5 stages you only have a chance of 0.9^5 = 59% to finish with an intact toolbox. That alone seems pretty low.
It gets much worse if construction is canceled once the tools break and you have to begin anew.
41% is the chance of losing one or more toolboxes, the probability of losing multiple is quite high.
I hope that you'll reconsider this design change or at least will allow construction to finish even if the toolbox breaks so you'll lose at most 1 toolbox per each finished item.
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Hi there,
we seem to have to accept that toolbelt items count as weapons when placed into a container.
Specifically when talking about safes this is a major disadvantage: every key (I like to store duplicates made with the keymaker set there, too), every GPS/Rangefinder, even a box of matches occupies one of the few weapon slots.
I assume the problem will become more prominent with the next update: a 10% chance per construction step to break tools equals to a less than 60% chance that your tools will be intact after the 5 construction steps needed for bulding a shed etc.
That means that you'll have to hoard toolboxes in your base (where else would you build) and those take up weapon slots, too.
So I'd suggest that in order to overcome the unrealistic ToolbeltItem=Weapon link the Weapon capacity of safes should be increased drastically, even if this is unrealistic, too.
I don't see much of a downside here, as there is no advantage to putting dozens of weapons into the safe.
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On the server I play on I see the values at least in the inventory screen, even if I don't remember if the cargo check menu is still there. Anyway, afaik the values are
Outhouse: 1 / 4 / 1
Wood Shack: 0 / 100 / 0
Nice Wooden Shed: 20 / 200 / 10
Storage Shed: 40 / 400 / 20
Regarding the 'vanishing' items of the nice wodden shed I assume they drop to the ground just like with the wood shack, but you cannot access them because they are under the floor boards (wood shack is built on bare earth). So the SW mechanics would be the same but the result different - not that this helps ;-)
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You're correct that this could be exploited, but as it is now, what happens all to often is that while most of the players play the game as it is meant to be (yes, competively), some very few destroy what others have worked hard for without any risk to themselves simply by logging in when noone else is awake and wreaking havok.
That's basically the same discussion as 'why invest effort in building a base when a single player can destroy/remove the work of many others within minutes'.
Your pro-deletion points are valid, but only partially:
- all non-owned vehicles and those destroyed in battle (not locked) would be removed -> less database load
- the few owned/locked vehicles left won't make a big difference to the new players, they won't effect spawns, noticably
- you'll still have to be careful about how much to risk your ride in battle because then they aren't locked.
So, basically the database command I asked for would give an admin the chance to redress harm done outside of normal game parameters - just as he could ban dupers or give back gear to players who lost to someone nuke-hacking.
I feel there is a difference between a hard played game and one completely without rules/codes. There simply is no possibility to guard your gear as you could do in RL and as long as the game mechanics themselves don't enforce RL-logic there should be a method to 'cheat back'.
As for the method to do so, I don't know enough about the database structure to make more fitting suggestions.
The code example you gave indicated that there is an entry Damage that is set to 1 for a destroyed (exploded) vehicle.
I don't know what setting the damage to a value between 0 and 1 will to to the individual vehicle components.
I'd surely be happy to re-create the vehicle in a state that is just barely repairable (if 'all parts 100% destroyed' means 'vehicle explodes' then it could be feasible to set the body to only 95% damaged). But I imagine the database command to effect individual vehicle parts will be very complex.
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Hi Nox,
thank you for sharing, may I ask something?
Would something like
UPDATE object_data SET Damage = 0.95 WHERE Damage = 1;
restore destroyed vehicles to a repairable status?
What I'd like to do would be
- delete all destroyed vehicles that are not player-owned while
- restoring the destroyed player-owned vehicles
What I really, ideally want to do is to restore (player owned) vehicles that were locked when destroyed into the status they were before someone killed them while the owner was logged out.
Do you see a way to do this?
Thanks in advance!
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As long as server owners can adjust the prices as needed. On the one I play 200oz of gold is easy to come by, on others its almost impossible.
I agree with Eegore, here, there are huge differences between servers in terms of loot/vehicles you are able to assemble.
As a single player on some it's extremely difficult to get even the 12*10oz for a safe. For a clan on the other hand gold per capita can be farmed much more easily.
I'm afraid one of the reasons default prices are going up is that now there are more established players then in the mod's early time, thus giving the impression that gold is easy to come by. But as in RL, the more money you already have, the the easier it is to make even more.
I don't see a general solution for this. It will be up to an active admin to cater to all sorts of players, for example by steering the number of vehicles available per type.
Some thoughts:
- Any player, even solo should be eventually able to afford a high end vehicle, this should not be the privilege of the strongest clan on the server which it ultimately would be if price is the only steering mechanism.
- The loss of a high end vehicle is nothing to a clan but a catastrophe to a solo player.
- The high end military vehicles are the only ones that give halfway decent protection and as such it would not be too bad if there were many of them.
- But they also have great offensive capability and given that their ammo is refilled at every server restart you get the situation that a handful of GPKs/Armored SUVs can consistently shoot down anything that drives or flys -> map dominance.
- I think, I'm fine with the change in the 50cal rifles. They are basically cheap vehicle-denial weapons and as such overpowered.
On prices:
- I do not think the inflation of prices is the answer to a gameplay-balancing problem, it would only temporarily inconvenience the clans and put off solo players for good.
- It may be that the prices before were not quite balanced, the price of some rifle being not much less than the one for a good vehicle.
- But a general increase (10-fold or more!) only shifts the problem into a higher price range, it will take a lot of fine-tuning to get decent relative values of goods.
Basically I think you want to keep the game balanced (between players) while simultanously ensuring that low/mid end gear still has it's place (we don't want to re-enact Kursk with Armored SUV's, do we?).
My suggestion would be the following:
- A revised handling of vehicle ammo: no automatic refill, only manual (the owner is forced to actually farm again) or reammo-trucks (and those the admin can take out of the spawn/trader lists). This instantly ends the vehicle dominance because the farming driver can be ambushed like every pedestrian. This way a high end vehicle still is something you strive for but it does not give you the kind of power as before.
- A safeguard for locked vehicles (make them indestructible or introduce a lockable indestructible garage), so when the solo-ist buys his hard-earned vehicle it is protected against destruction while he's logged out (the singlemost important reason for frustration in the game is the destruction of hard-earned high value goods by kiddies who don't even run a risk when they log in while everyone else is asleep).
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I'd also be interested in an answer to GucciMane's question - I had naively assumed that vehicle ammo would be a resource handled just like vehicle fuel.
If there really is no way to disable re-ammo on server restart I'd very much like to see a solution to this problem in an upcoming Epoch update.
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Hi there,
is there a way to protect locked vehicles against complete destruction?
Background of the question:
I'm playing on a very nice server with an active and friendly admin who tries to simultaneously satisfy players of all persuasions - bandits/survivors, clan/solo.
One of the things that alienates many players is that vehicles that you lock before logout are destroyed when you come online again the next day.
Let's not start a 'That's DayZ' discussion here - imo on a populated server there is no safe place to hide the car, so it's not the victim's fault and there is no skill involved on the bandit's side, either (heli radar finds any vehicle). This progresses to the point where it makes no sense anymore to save money for a car and all revert to plain DayZ PvP on foot - ruining one of the great attractions of Epoch.Up to now this was not an issue on our server becaus the admin had a repair script he ran daily to repair/refuel all damaged vehicles and restore destroyed ones instead of deleting them from the database.
But now we have a similar problem as GucciMane describes in http://dayzepoch.com/forum/index.php?/topic/481-vehicle-ammo/ and judging from the missing answers in that thread there seems to be no method to make vehicle ammo something you'd have to work for.
So our admin decided to cease his repair actions so vehicle based action would again be something the player had to put at least some effort into.
While I completely endorse the primary effect, the secondary is that now the way is open again for vandalism.So I come back to my question:
- Can you prevent locked cars from being blown up? It's ok when they are damaged but they should be repairable without need of admin action (I've heard that landed helis do _not_ blow up completely when shot at?)
- Another approach could be a database script that picks all destroyed owned vehicles and restores them into a repairable state. As I don't know MySQL, could someone post a database command that would do just this?
What are other options? Some servers have base shields but that would not benefit non-clan players. Any other ideas?
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I would really hate this automatic approach. That would mean that my buildings are gone when I return from a business trip or family vacation.
Tuning the timer parameter upwards won't do much good, either - some vacations are 4 weeks long and too high a setting will clutter the server too severely.
Any solution is fine with me as long as there is a dependable minimum of buildings that are not touched at all. Anyway, the server administrator would be able to selectively remove the player bound tags just as well as he could with owned vehicles.
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Regarding the durability of buildings, what about a quota system?
It looks like we have to find a balance between some constraints:
- Automatic removal of built items is extremely annoying for a player who is on vacation for some time, the same holds for a decay system.
- Having your buildings destroyed by the numerous amount of people who thrive on destruction only, is frustrating, too.
- Making every built item undestructible and of unlimited lifetime will clutter the map.
- Maintaining a large base is typically done by a whole clan, not a single player. Here some effort of maintenance may be in order.
As a casual/single player I like to build a few things, e.g. sheds for storage or perhaps at some time a garage to protect the car I have spent days to accumulate money for from wanton destruction.
So, is it possible to give each player (UID bound, so persistent after death) the option to tag a limited number (let's say 5) of items he built and these items will be indestructible and neither decay nor be despawned. The tag should be removable (by the player only) so one could protect another building instead.
I realize that this system is somewhat artificial but as we can read in these forums there are people who make their fun exclusively from destroying other people's property and while I accept that this is a competetive game I'd like to have other options than adopt that very play style. And face it: fun for all of us depends on a mix of play styles - to many raiders destroying to many things will drive away the 'prey' and whom will the bandits harass then? And no raiders at all would make the game boring in no time.
Also remember that some of us have to work your their living, have a family and thus have not that much free time while others can afford to gamble for hours after school, so please try to do justice to both types.
The key point here imo is to allow any player to have a minimum of safety from loss. Safes do this for items. Vehicles and buildings are not protected against destruction atm. One indestructible lockable garage could at least protect a vehicle while the player is logged out.
The only gameplay related drawback of my suggestion (whether it can be implemented I don't know) would be that players could place indestructible items (other than safes ;-) to block other's bases. This could be overcome if the plot pole itself could be tagged as indestructible.
Naturally one can modify this idea, perhaps by introducing a price for such a tag.
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line of sight means you would not see it if you cannot see the persons wrist. It will be no more visible than the gun the person is holding in their hand.
Yes, but.
To shoot someone
- the gun's muzzle must not be hidden behind concealment (afaik even bushes are blocking fire?)
- the shooter's eye needs to have LOS, at least with ADS
So to me it seems impossible to have shooter's head and gun muzzle in LOS of the victim but the wrist not.
Given that a colored dot is much more visible than a gun, especially a camouflaged one, I think my concern is still valid.
Even more trouble at night if the dot is glowing like the 'tag as friendly' markers.
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Hi folks,
the patch notes say
- [ADDED] Epoch aura, bandits will now have a red orb attached to wrist can only be seen if you have line of sight.
- [ADDED] Epoch aura, heros will now have a blue orb attached to wrist can only be seen if you have line of sight.
Basically line of sight is line of fire, so does this mean that whenever player A is hiding and has a clear line of fire to player B, player B can see the orb no matter how well concealed player A is?
I'm mostly bandit's victim but imo this comic-esque feature has the potential to ruin gameplay as much as the recruit-level cursor that shows range and type of object.
At least I'd hope you'll make this feature optional to be set server side.
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Hi there,
[ First let me say that I'm enjoying Epoch very much, thank you! ]
I'm sure this issue has come up before but I can't find any topics using the search, so sorry if I'm beating dead horses.
When you place toolbelt items in a safe they occupy a weapon slot.
I find this very unfortunate because imo the single one use of buying wholesale GPS/NVG would be to store these in your safe for re-equipping after death.
Same goes for matches&toolboxes (awkward when you are at a trading post, got 2*10oz gold for a sold vehicle and cannot buy anything because you cannot smelt the gold because you cannot buy a toolbox
;-).
Are there plans regarding this issue?
Concern: breaking of tools during construction
in General Discussion.
Posted
I should have noticed the capital DE in "10% chance * (DE-constuction count)" :-(, sorry.