Ideas

[hnappinn]

Just some ideas that popped into my head while I was playing. If you're suggesting we share our ideas here, fine. I'll give it a try.

1. Daily quests to encourage regular player login. Completing them could reward players with a persistent meta-currency that carries over between rounds. This currency could at least be used for cosmetic upgrades, such as unique skins, or fun utility items like boomboxes and musical instruments.
As for the daily tasks, they could features classic objectives, such as:

• Successfully evacuating a set number of times, or escaping with a specific amount of credits/money.
• Killing a specific number of zombies.
• Healing a certain number of broken bones, IB.
• Reviving a set number of players.
• Fixing or starting a specific number of generators.
• Surviving a certain amount of damage.
• And so on, I think you get the point

2. More obstacles to slow down enemies, such as Tanglefoot Wire and Razorwire.

• Tanglefoot Wire - it’s hard to break, hard to see, but quickly loses effectiveness depending on the number of bodies on the same tile. It deals little damage, but mobs get stuck in it very easily.
• Razorwire - enemies cannot pass through it without breaking it. However, breaking it deals significant damage.

3. Add the ability to stabilize lungs and heart without a peri. For example, occlusive dressings and decompression needles. How can this be implemented so that it doesn’t take up unnecessary space and remains balanced? For instance, through the procedure, a trauma kit, and then a decompression needle. This would grant a “stabilized” status like "splinted" on the med hud or something like that, but that could be lost due to chest trauma again.
Realizing that a decompression needle might not be available everywhere, you’d have to look for a medical vending machine or something like that. Here’s an idea for the future: make an improvised decompression needle out of a syringe and a trauma kit. Use on syringe wire cutters/knife, then use trauma kit/duct tape. Or just made of metal.

4. A way to control internal bleeding. For example wound tamponade, to temporarily stop internal bleeding using a bandage or a trauma kit on grab Intent. This would take up your time and keep your hands busy just as much as applying a splint or more. Requires an open wound or an incision made with a scalpel or knife

 

[Torun]

-I like the concept behind the ideas, not as much the suggested details of it. This is fine, common, and a part of discussing ideas, so thank you for sharing that regardless of anything. It's a nice prompt to get me thinking.
1. I agree in principle that little objectives would be nice, but not as daily quests and certainly not for any unlockables, no matter how NON-P2W they are. Someone on Discord suggested these objectives should be more immediate, with a slight reward or advantage given within the round and nothing else. I'm leaning more in that direction as having to unlock anything in a game with the background that it has will not end well for anyone. As for daily anything, as a 9-to-5 person, I'd just miss out on most of it. I don't have the energy to play more than one round of Gruntz on a weekday, if even that.

2. Yes to barbed wire. No to the more specific suggestions of it. Tanglefoot would not do much against zombies due to crowding by hordes and nothing against xenos due to their comparatively high HP, really high speed, and sufficient intelligence to slash any barbed wire they come across (they already sabotage power and douse flares). They don't need to be balanced this intricately in this game, let's keep it simple. Xenos will probably just trash them anyway, knowing Rocket's propensity for making enemies smarter.

3 and 4: Space Stationesque Medical System Mechanics are a world of their own when it comes to alterations and balancing. The SSesque system is currently on the side of OP, where medicine made in bulk at the start of the round, properly distributed, can make people immortal. Yet, in spite of this type of game existing for decades and having been forked and worked over by dozens of teams, medicine has only changed in minutae. I was right at home in Gruntz with my Baystation experience, which was otherwise diametrically different from /tg/ station, and players from that fork are just as familiar here.

Where am I going with this? The more complex a medical system, the finer the edge on which it must be balanced. Those with Neurotrauma experience will know what I am referring to. SSesque medical system rebalances have been attempted, but rarely turned out well. New tools need only be truly introduced when a new ailment is added or a specific ailment is distinguished from its catch-all equivalent (such as the decompression needle only really having a point if pneumothorax is separated from other lung damage). And the more we do that, the steeper the slippery slope.

Medical tools are broadly available and trivial to obtain in Preparation. I sustained a fellow player through multiple firefights as a Rifleman, using stuff people left lying around. I even found a dialysis machine at random when someone was in a hard OD. We don't need even more items with specific uses, especially when their application is complicated enough that doing it properly is just another 10 seconds tops and the only difference is which item do you happen to have. An example would be wound tamponade, which requires an open incision, but if you just use FixOVein, you can outright fix IB and forget tamponade. You could point out the torso, but if you don't have access through the ribcage, you're not tamponading either, are you.

As much as I enjoy the First Aid side of medicine and have also enjoyed it in places like Neurotrauma, the truth is, doing proper medicine is already easy enough where there's no point expanding First Aid. We don't need to make tool-based medicine more complicated to feel meaningful, just make drugs less OP.

 

[hnappinn]

-I like the concept behind the ideas, not as much the suggested details of it. This is fine, common, and a part of discussing ideas, so thank you for sharing that regardless of anything. It's a nice prompt to get me thinking.
1. I agree in principle that little objectives would be nice, but not as daily quests and certainly not for any unlockables, no matter how NON-P2W they are. Someone on Discord suggested these objectives should be more immediate, with a slight reward or advantage given within the round and nothing else. I'm leaning more in that direction as having to unlock anything in a game with the background that it has will not end well for anyone. As for daily anything, as a 9-to-5 person, I'd just miss out on most of it. I don't have the energy to play more than one round of Gruntz on a weekday, if even that.

2. Yes to barbed wire. No to the more specific suggestions of it. Tanglefoot would not do much against zombies due to crowding by hordes and nothing against xenos due to their comparatively high HP, really high speed, and sufficient intelligence to slash any barbed wire they come across (they already sabotage power and douse flares). They don't need to be balanced this intricately in this game, let's keep it simple. Xenos will probably just trash them anyway, knowing Rocket's propensity for making enemies smarter.

3 and 4: Space Stationesque Medical System Mechanics are a world of their own when it comes to alterations and balancing. The SSesque system is currently on the side of OP, where medicine made in bulk at the start of the round, properly distributed, can make people immortal. Yet, in spite of this type of game existing for decades and having been forked and worked over by dozens of teams, medicine has only changed in minutae. I was right at home in Gruntz with my Baystation experience, which was otherwise diametrically different from /tg/ station, and players from that fork are just as familiar here.

Where am I going with this? The more complex a medical system, the finer the edge on which it must be balanced. Those with Neurotrauma experience will know what I am referring to. SSesque medical system rebalances have been attempted, but rarely turned out well. New tools need only be truly introduced when a new ailment is added or a specific ailment is distinguished from its catch-all equivalent (such as the decompression needle only really having a point if pneumothorax is separated from other lung damage). And the more we do that, the steeper the slippery slope.

Medical tools are broadly available and trivial to obtain in Preparation. I sustained a fellow player through multiple firefights as a Rifleman, using stuff people left lying around. I even found a dialysis machine at random when someone was in a hard OD. We don't need even more items with specific uses, especially when their application is complicated enough that doing it properly is just another 10 seconds tops and the only difference is which item do you happen to have. An example would be wound tamponade, which requires an open incision, but if you just use FixOVein, you can outright fix IB and forget tamponade. You could point out the torso, but if you don't have access through the ribcage, you're not tamponading either, are you.

As much as I enjoy the First Aid side of medicine and have also enjoyed it in places like Neurotrauma, the truth is, doing proper medicine is already easy enough where there's no point expanding First Aid. We don't need to make tool-based medicine more complicated to feel meaningful, just make drugs less OP.

1. I’m not suggesting to give items that grant an in-game advantage. Just cosmetic rewards for active players to keep the server lively without breaking the competitive balance.

2. I don't know if you've ever seen tanglefoot wire in real life, but it’s incredibly hard to spot until you're right on top of it. Even then, an untrained eye would easily mistake it for regular debris or smooth wire, only realizing it's barbed once they're already tangled up. And that’s humans we're talking about, let alone Xenos. You can't just snip it away either; even with wire cutters, it's a nightmare to clear. In real combat, breaching it takes 45–60 minutes with tools, plenty of time for a drone to kill you a hundred times over. Without cutters, you're stuck for hours. Usually, the only quick way over is throwing down plywood, or even a dead body.

(The left photo is what it looks like. The right photo is a typical scenario: a soldier accidentally drove over it, thinking it was grass, debris, or fiber optic cable, and his car got stuck.) This small piece of wire is capable of stopping even the most modern and powerful APCs and tanks


4-3. The point isn't so much about complexity or realism, but rather to make things interesting and without yet another boring magic pill. Without taking up more inventory space. Most people don't carry a surgical kit, but they do have bandages or a Trauma Kit. Instead of carrying a magic pill, you simply use the same bandage and pack the wound for 100 ticks on another / 300 self, like a splint.

And managing to administer peri on self on time without a medical scanner on hand is quite difficult. Because you still have to fight back or go somewhere. If everyone is stupidly busy treating, who will defend the barricades? Why the lungs and heart? Because they are usually the ones that cause loss of consciousness and death and are easily damaged. Medics can't cure it with just one pill, like they cure brain/eyes. This method is a game convention rather than realism.