Settling a Debate on Infestations

[Daedalusapollo]

Ok so, I'm going to be outright in this, I don't code, I don't Script, and I don't know the complexities of such a topic.

 

BUT

 

This isn't my doing, I was chosen as a proper third party (ironically the party which brought up the idea in the first place) to ask out into this specialized forum for the answer to this debate.

 

For the last few days, a couple of friends, and I have been spitballing some ideas, we recently made friends with some people who can code and script. The Topic of dynamic infestations came about when we came into settlements ideas. My thought was having a single entity style of infestations (you select ghouls, mirelurks, supermutes,raiders, or miscelanious) wherein they'd spread from settlement to settlement while you go away, doing damage.

 

we came up with this topic when we ran into the "how to make settlements interesting" field, while we loved to make forge settlements to produce all that we needed, we never found a good need to use them.

 

So the idea came to the front, one side said it was impossible, the other said it's possible.

 

the side which said it's not possible have mentioned nothing other than "limitations" in their reasons for it being impossible. but those who say it is possible cited something even I could understand.

 

Basically it'd follow as such, the player would either set the intiial infestation point themselves, or have it randomized, once it is done, and the game has started, an in game time is saved, and from that point, a theoretical path is directed at the nearest other settlement, whenever you travel and affect time, or just let time pass, the theoretical path is extended towards the next settlement, if you affect time via sleep, or waiting, the game updates you automatically and updates the map with what settlement has been infected if the time has gone by enough. but if you don't affect time in such a manner, it will update you upon loading the area.

 

the idea is, with every in game hour, the line gets further and futher, and orders an attack on that settlement, but will be affected based on the defenses and settlers.

 

that's a very rough and short explanation as to what they told me, but I'm here to ask, is such a thing possible?

[Athanasa]

Select location. Do some calculations based on distance from location (1/distance for percentage, plus later modifiers) to affect trigger chances.

 

As time goes on, add modifiers to increase the chance of the event triggering.

 

Within the settlement (unless you're there to fight) there's some further calculations done involving settlement defense rating and settler count to determine the outcome of attacks.

 

The awkward bit would be everything else. Possible but time consuming - picking spawn locations so ghouls don't drop from orbit, quests to clear the infestations, picking infestation 'source' locations.

[tartarsauce2]

distance, time lapsed, chance of attack based on defense of settlement
if you're doing "strength of or weakness" of attacks based on performance during the thing, then you could add a modifier in there too, but you'd have to figure out some tracking points system to determine how strong the thing is throughout the commonwealth

if you pull this off, this'll be another great step in my dream of MFGA, another module capability, not just a step but a leap

Edited September 24, 2016 by tartarsauce2

[Mavkiel]

 

 

that's a very rough and short explanation as to what they told me, but I'm here to ask, is such a thing possible?

 

It's very much possible. Heck in skyrim there is a zombie mod that does just this. It selects an outbreak location, then spreads from there. If the player ignores the outbreak, its basically 28 days later, end of the world type scenario. See in particular the starting scenarios of 'hive', and 'patient zero'.

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/5604/?