itch.io

Okay I took a paper and a half of notes on stuff that mechanics could move out on and polish that is needed (I'll find a discussion or make one for the polish and bugs half) I'll seperate the survival, base/building, and progress mechanic suggestions and do sub-catgories for them (which may overlap). (also please excuse some of my spelling, I'm not an english major) (also spoilers for people still playing) (I have also not made a car or wagon)

Survival Mechanics

• Overworld (World Map?)
  • A tiredness mechanic would work well for a "random encounter/effect" sort of deal for travel, kinda like how the thirst is, but should happenway slower for a more realistic effect (as in you don't get tired 3 times before sundown). Pehaps also going down after exploring a tile (without resting) 
    • if you go for effects - losing an item or a half of how much you have (like losing 50 stone if you had 100), having half health your next stop (you don't die if you are on 1 health), and losing durability on an item. If I were you, I wouldn't make you go slower; it would only make a downwards spiral, leading you to lose more water and get more tired (also it would be more annoying than getting a message saying "you tripped and fell on your axe but your dense head broke it, instead the other way around) (and if you were going back to your base, you may die from dehydration if you get slowed)
    • if you go for random encounters - I wouldn't know how you would do this without it seeming like you clicked explore. However, you could make a smaller map area where you have to kill some skellys and move on, but it would still take longer going to your base and you may not get any effects from it if you easily kill the skellys
  • A food quality mechanic to your lunchbox would probably add more depth and strategy to camping by fully healing you for less, and encourage cooking. You could still fully heal at a camp, but you would have to eat more low quailty food instead of a few high quailty food.
    • To make this more viable you probably would need to nerf the regular lunchbox a bit (I think this is fine, I only used it after getting shot by a bunch of skellys when I spawned on a "explore" tile) and make it to where you could choose to bring better quailty food.
      • The player upgrade station, the veggie pot, or a station you are working on could be a good canidiate to have the menu for choosing the meals in the lunchbox
    • I don't think you really have to add a debuff if it is out or make it go down overtime, it feels fine how it is now (maybe just less of a heal)
  • The thirst mechanic right now seems okay, maybe getting all or just half of your thirst back if you visit Steven's Ranch or Anchor Rage would be a good idea to make it seem less of a timer for a trip and more of a thing you should plan a trip around.
    • Quests could make some areas give you more water, like Steven "the young" convince his older bro to give you more water the more skellys you kill.
  • Navigation - the map is a bit barren right now, the weather showing is nice but it doesn't add much to it with these two things it doesn't matter when or how you travel, you just do a straight line.
    • Hilly or Rubble areas could slow you down but give you more stone and metal if you explore it; so, you could go around or go to (also would help seperate areas/make "invisible" boundarys for where the towns and raid camps could spawn by surrounding half of the perimeter of where it could spawn)
    • Raid Wagons/Raid Llamas could circle around a pregenerated path that you can spot if you are 1, 2, or 3 tiles close, this would make traveling more exciting.
    • Weather could effect how bars go down or how fast you go, maybe rain could make llamas slower or the food bar even go down (if you want) and dust storms could make thirst happen quicker and not being able to spot Raid Llamas or having to more on a tile more than just touching it. 
• "Explore Tiles"
  • Personaly I feel they are pretty good on the survival mechanic side, the reason you would explore them is to get more resources without trading; or for water for thirst, which was already covered in this, the only thing to add to these would be more structures that could spawn and more enemies to the game (suggestion I will post with the polish and bug stuff)
• In Your Base  
  
  •   Most of it is fine how it is, and you want to keep the survival and base stuff apart, so really there isn't much to talk about other than:
  • Raids, raids can be improved by adding more enemies to the game (more in other post) but also with more specific variation and more specific scaling
    • Basically if you stockpile a lot of food, you'll be more likely to get roaches; if you stockpile a lot of sticks and stones, you'll be more likely to get skellys (because they use weapons made from them); if you stockpile a lot of goods and scrap, then raiders. These seem to be good bases for the enemies (and this may happen already, and my small brain just not notice it, even with devmode/debug)
    • A bigger raid being able to happen if a raid doesn't happen a the countdown for so many times, and you have more than enough people for two guards
      • Could just be a raid coming from two directions, or a raid with skellys and roaches
    • Weather kinda having an effect on the raids, like the game would check for a raid at the 0-1000 range on the countdown if a dust storm is happening (just making it more likely to occur at a dust storm instead of every dust storm) or the same thing happening when raining
• Combat (or me asking for guarding/blocking)
  • being able to guard an attack for a third of your stamina (or however much those little lines indicate) would bring a bunch more depth to the combat system (which may be hard to code for some of the AI, or not... I'm ain't a programmer). 
    • If you add that knockout effect to the boxing gloves, blocking with "rightclick" could make it to where it won't happen to if a skelly with boxing gloves punches you. (this could also go for bleeding)
    • Player Upgrades could make blocking last a bit longer so you wouldn't waste a third of stamina if you block/guard early.

This is really all the mechanics for survival without getting nitpicky/asking for polish; I'm prolly going to touch back on these for the next two catagories

Building/Base Mechanics

Most of these will boil down to adding more buildings instead of "hit the G button to the beat to make a wall" but there is some stuff worth considering.

• Guard Management
  • Having little flags or markers (like on a digging site or a little golf hole flag) that you could make (square, triangle, semicircle) and dye from the shop in Anchor Rage could make little paths for guards to follow (or better described as points/objects to go to after reaching the last point/object).
    • This could be behind a workstation 
  • A intercom or speaker that requires energy to work
    • could be the workstation for the flags, also could act like the bell but only for guards, or dictate how they fight (ranged, close, hit and run)
    • Would give another reason to start making energy other than automation
  • Guards seem to get weapons you have never made or don't have in in a display case
    • May be intended, but it's weird when you are using a bow but they have guns (not including Duke 'the sniper')
    • May also just be me having a small brain and not realizing they are using only their fists.
• Trading Management (getting into the polish zone with this one)
  • Weather 
    • Rain could make selling water cost zero or make it act as if you where selling none; rain could also slow down business and make traders take shelter in the toliets without giving you "dirt"
    • Dust Storms could make water cost one more for selling and make it higher in demand; dust storms could make traders take shelter in toliets like rain (if you were to do this)
  • Raids
    • Traders still appear when a raid is counting down, and don't act scared when monsters appear, it's kinda weird to have trading and commerce while a roach is K.O.ing a dude.
    • I haven't got killed by a raid (yet) but if not implemented, I think monsters and raiders should be able to take goods you put into stalls that haven't been sold
      • Monsters could take or target specfic items like roaches taking vegatables, water, and meat; but skellys taking wood, stone, and metal.
  • Lighting and making traders see your stalls
    • Building light sources around your stalls could make trading happen in the night, along with making paths around them - of course you would have to make trading NOT happen in the night, but if you do you should probably allow it to happen if the stalls are in light.
    • (This is in the polish zone and "Rewrite how AI pathfinds to stay on my paths that I made and how they see" zone)
• Slaves Worker Management
  
  • You don't get to choose if non-guards should fight or not, which leads to they punching roaches before the one with the gun gets there
    • Could be toggable in a workstation (like the one suggested for the guards)
  • They all have tools even if you never made them or have spare (basically the same as guards having guns while you have a bow, but with axes and brooms)
• Outposts? or Walls? (delaying raids)
  • I haven't made a wagon, so I could just be dumb down here and you can do this and more (I don't know if it destroys the town you've made)
    • Maybe make a job for an "outposter" that can build a wall or tower to delay or chop down the number of raids.
      • You could place these north, south, east, and west one tile of your build to stop a raid if it said it was coming from that direction (maybe by checking if you have a post that direction after it chooses what direction, so it actually "blocks" the incoming raid, which would make you feel nice of putting it there)
      • This could open a can of worms by making you have to make another job for keeping the posts up and working, like a "trader" that takes 30 food, water, and materials (like wood if you made the outpost wood) to keep them up and running.
      • All of this you may not even be in your vision for this game, so take it with a grain of salt

Basically the base building mechanics are just better management of guards and workers, along with a subconscious longing for a nerf to the trading system (it could be overpowered with a right exploit) and more base defense option on the world map.

Now on to the last and not least main catagory -

Progress Mechanics (or uses for XP)

• Player Upgrade Station
  • You have two main options:
    • Spend XP while you upgrade along with the other costs (self explanatory)
    • Spend XP to raise the cap of what you can upgrade to
      • This make it to where if you have the scrap and supplys you can go up to a certain extent, (level five perhaps?) until you have to "upgrade" the station by using XP, which you would probably have if you been using the upgrades given to you
      • It could raise the cap of all of the options or just that one, really it's your choice (your the "one-who-codes" after all)
• Bargaining (?)
  • If you want to make the shops delve deeper into the mechanics of buying stuff, you could have the option of bargaining with the shop owner by interacting with them
    • This could be a spin of a wheel if they lower the price for a bit or raise it cause your acting rude; a sure-fire "yes kind stranger demanding a lower price on my gems"; or a mix of the two (like if they raise the prices, if you spend XP again they will definitly make the prices normal)
• Unlocking Weapons and Armor (maybe tools?)
  • Getting to make guns and grenades is cool, but it can be weird if you haven't made anything else yet (itcan happen if you use the power of trading all your goods for plastic and metal)
  • Getting to make Flame boots and Rocket boots without making a regular boot or looking at it is weird (but the flame boots are nice)
  • Tools could be an option for this, but it may be weird to limit early game so much (maybe have a joke tool, like a bucket that scoops up water from multiple rain barrels with the flavor text saying something along the lines of "you finally learned that a bucket should only have one hole"
• Upgrading Weapons/Armor/Tools
  • This could add more durability to your weapons/armor/tools
    • If you do this, you may want to make the durability less from the start and make the XP to upgrade low
  • Really durability is all I got right now, I've been typing this for hours
• Cooking (?)
  • I don't know how cooking is going to work, so this will probably get scrapped; however, making more XP give you better quality (or a chance for higher quality if you want it like a chance to get junk or get 5-star steak)
• Overworld/World Map Changes you could add(not XP)
  • Paths/Roads/Highways
    • After completing quests (like killing skellys for steven the young) or a more specfic quest (like kill skellys inbetween the tiles of your house and Steven's Ranch to make a path that speeds up travel between the locations
      • Maybe allowing them to be upgraded to a road and to a highway that allows you to go even faster
    • These could attract the Raid Wagons/Raid Llamas after a while (if you were to add those in)
• Lore & Brooms (Not XP)
  • This is the last and most important suggestion (only because I said so)
  • Brooms could and should have more uses in the progress of expanding the worlds lore, and dusting off signs
    • You could add "glints" which can only be swept up by the broom, otherwise the object would be crumpled, torned, or shattered
    • Signs in random generated structures could have a chance to be covered in sand (leading to you killing those chickens first and only then uncovering the sign saying "please don't eat my chickens")
      • Basically to use to set up jokes
    • Broom should be able to dust of E.D.I.E., I was very sad when I couldn't even after putting wooden floors under him, and even sadder when it just dissappeared when I came back to my base once.
      • This is getting into polish and bugs, which I will do in a different post somewhere else; however, this was a really important one because it was the one that made me sad.

This took four hours to write.

hope your devoloping of the game is going good,(and your (or yalls? you have studios but I don't know if there is one person working on this great game) health in these trying times) I'm going to take a break from sitting down and typing until tommorrow when I write the different post about bugs and what could have polish/details that need more attention to.