☂️ Gameplay: World progression

[olanti-p]

The world is mostly static, there's little feel of progression. All changes from players' point of view come down to 3 things:

• seasons change, crops grow
• food with short shelf life disappears from houses
• monsters evolve

And that's about it. There are, of course, some hidden mechanics like rust and radiation that also affect the world, but those are barely noticable and have no impact on gameplay.

Meanwhile, with how widespread and otherworldly the cataclysm was, there could (or should) be more changes in the world as the years pass in game.

For example:

• [ ] Nothing changes on the world map. Some monster factions are extremely powerful and have serious terraforming capabilities (mycus, triffids), yet they are relevant only as long as the player stays nearby and keeps the monsters in reality bubble. There are also natural phenomena that are able to transform the landscape and could be implemwnted with the engine, like earthquakes or forest fires.
• [ ] There are no climate changes. Not that the weather is a big part of the gameplay right now, but having weird weather like acid rains or portal storms, or unexpected/permanent temperature changes like the nuclear winter could contribute to the overall feel of the world going fubar.
• [ ] Nothing changes on the local scale. One of the common examples in the community is having towns be overtaken by vegetation and roads developing cracks, but it could also be slow deterioration of vehicles left outside or building interiors. Normally it would take a long time for the natural deterioration, but there are many monsters that would (and already do, to a degree) expedite the process.
• [ ] Nothing changes with regards to resource acquisition. Gasoline and diesel are readily available years into the game, despite having shelf life as short as a few months (it varies, depending on fuel type in question). All important tools and preserved food don't decrease in abundance despite being potentially looted by NPC actors. Farming and solars also serve as infinite sources of power, food and water with no drawbacks, letting the player survive indefinitely.
• [ ] NPCs don't progress over time. As individuals, they often come off as "having just escaped the cataclysm" and stay that way indefinitely, but when it comes to global scale, from day zero they already have reorganised, establishing multiple factions with paper currency and caravan routes, as well as bandit gangs. There is a bit of quest-driven progression in refugee center and the Tacoma ranch, but as is common in games NPCs won't move a muscle without player involvement.

[Unrepentant-Atheist]

YOU BETTER NOT MAKE MYCUS TAKE OVER THE WHOLE GODDAMN WORLD! They're a pain in the ass to keep at bay once they start spreading.

[olanti-p]

Mycus has been nerfed into the ground, they don't spread as much as they used to. But even before the nerfs, "keeping them at bay" has always been trivial - just walk 4 overmap tiles away.

Obviously having a pure mycus world wouldn't be fun (unless as a special game mode?), so one of the ideas brought up by @Coolthulhu during early days of BN that'd both let the mycus spread but also limit its spread, is to introduce overmap level faction territory control mechanics. The mycus can't spread indefinitely if it's boxed in by triffids, robots with flamethrowers, organized refugee militia armed with fungicide sprayers and a mycus-resistant zombie horde, latest innovation by the blob.

Another simple solution, but less elegant one, is to just impose an arbitrary limit on how far the mycus tower may spread its influence and find a lore friendly explanation for it (e.g. the towers act as transmitters for the hivemind and with distance the mycelium and mobs lose cohesion, so once you destroy the tower the surrounding mycus dies off, and it can't arbitrarily create more towers because it is resource and/or time intensive).

[Vollch]

Only problem with mucus is that damage it causes to world is irreversible. There was a suggestion somewhere that killing queen could also destroy the creep spread from that colony. And it looks like a perfect solution to me... but we don't really have a mechanism to store original state of converted terrains\furniture at the moment. Maybe it'll be possible without a lot of overhead after converting furniture to GO and related refactoring.

[RoyalFox2140]

My suggestion was to treat the Mycus as starcraft 2 zerg with creep colonies and hive clusters that if destroyed shrink them down to nothing. Either destroy creep tumors to slow spread or destroy the hive and it all disappears. Actually doing these things would be the tactical depth and decision making a player has to do.