Survival Theory - 101

[tons0phun]

So during the last school summer term, I ended up staying at my girlfriend's apartment for the month of July, and sat on my butt playing the ever-loving FUCK out of this game for the entire month. There were literally days where I just stayed inside, and played nothing but this game, over the course of 30 days. As an engineering senior, it was a much needed break.

Anyways, here is something I whipped up over a few of my lectures in Ethnic studies. As my mind would go idle in class, which it did frequently, I would ponder over being back at the apartment, playing Rogue Survivor. Mostly, I was thinking of what qualities were most important in dictating survival for the longest period of time.

By my own judgement, I have tried to qualify the minimal number of most critical elements which influence survival, as well as the qualities which dictate them. Those critical elements are: Leadership, Necessities, Factions, and Safehouse. Each one has their own set of qualities of which they are influenced by.



And if you have any questions regarding ideas on the graph, feel free to ask.

For example; "Usability" is a term to generally describe the efficiency with which you, as one leader, can command some number of followers. As every command given takes up one turn, it would mean that for a group of up to 5 people, it would take you a minimum of 5 turns to give each one a command. This can be extremely detrimental to functionality in life and death situations.

Which made me just think of another thing right now: perhaps we can use qualitative analysis of this sort to help suggest improvements in the game.
One that just crossed my mind now, which would be of great improvement, is group-commands for followers.

E.g. Tell ALL followers to drop items, move here, follow me, attack target etc.


Before commenting on any part, I would encourage you to give it a second look and closer inspection, also bearing in mind that this chart could be somewhat particular to my own settings. But try to infer things by the subtle arrangements on the graph. For example, on the "Safehouse" chart, the line for fortifications sits above the line for isolation. This is because, on the basis of having a safehouse with only one or the other, fortifications offer better protection than a safehouse which sits in an isolated location. But too much of either one is a bad thing too; too many fortifications means more time is wasted on moving in and out of the safehouse, and too much isolation means that you are removed from areas where you can scavenge for necessities, which is why both of them go to zero on the scale of functionality.

Otherwise, have at it, and I hope it sparks some amusement and thoughts! ;D
[And maybe some more charts! Ha!]

[nope]

I find that the Undead Population MUCH higher than what you depicted in those charts, i am bad at making charts, but here's what i THINK is a good one, It's the zombie control, or more specifically, Your actions/involvement = Zombie population = Amount of living survivors = Scarcity of Food, weapons, guns, ammunition, you name it = Survivability for you(not just getting assaulted or mauled by zombies, but supplies, too)

considering you played this game for 30 damn days straight, you ought to know a whole lot more than someone who can only allocate about 3 hours to play it per day

(Not forcing you to, just making a suggestion)

Usability of followers is also flawed, with about five survivors tagging along, i find it easier to get myself to leave one behind to guard, and in case that one might get raped in the ass by zombies, i leave another one while still be able to gun down a zombie prince, along with a SMALL horde following, i also allocate different survivors to different tasks, for example, i have this lil' guy called Tony Jones and some Woman named Jane, While Tony has the big guns and lot'sa ammunition, Jane helps to alert him to any hostiles if he drops down asleep, while another one behind, with a cell phone, alerts me to what the heck is going on, while i bring two guys with the highest tough(the Bodybag) and one with the highest strong(more prefably with firearms), well, it's complicated, you see, but since i work in a Office as Management, it's not too complicated for me, and about commanding? seriously? you've got plenty of time, but no time to slowly command your followers? wow

[tons0phun]

Again as I said, your experiences may differ from mine, based on the settings we each play with.
Here are my most notable settings:
District Map Size - 100
Max Civilians - 75
Max Undeads - 200
Day 0 Undeads - 10%
Invasion Daily Increase - 5%
Zombification Chanse - 100%
NPCs can starve to death - ON
Starved Zombification - 0%
Zombie Evolution - OFF
Simulation when sleeping + district - YES/FULL

I can see what you'd mean about how your own involvement cuts down on the zombie population, as it certainly does. I made the focus of a few games being to keep as many policemen fed, and stocked with ammunition as possible, as they would typically recruit the new refugees that came in each day. But over time, it just can't hold up, and there will always be more zombies than people. Not only that, but your influence of support only extends as far as one zone at a time, leaving every other zone in the city to the will of the hoard.

But in fairness if I may admit, my style of play usually involves camping out in a supermarket at the start, for as long as I can hold out.

In the case of usability, I believe you may have mistaken (or assumed) usability to mean how well you benefit from using them for survival.
My intention for "useability" is "how well a group can function in an efficient manner, while remaining entirely in-tact?"

Like, let's say that you had a group of 5 people in your stronghold, and you wanted to take all 5 out for a food-raid...
-You have to independently set conditions (firearms/melee, fight/run, take-all/take-nothing) for each one.
-As you walk along, you also have to wait for each member to catch up with yourself and the group.
-Once you get to the building, everybody has to squeeze in, and you have to make sure each one doesn't pick up useless items.

And trying to do this with 10 people is even more involved.
To which I know you might say, "Well then, don't bring 10 people" And that is my exact point regarding useability: the more people you have, the more of a challenge it becomes to corral them all into doing things properly, and after a point it becomes more of a burden than an aid.

I've got no problem with human resource management either, but because the game is limited in giving orders to the group as a whole, each member brought into the group is more time spent on sorting out orders rather than executing them. Trust me, I do the same kind of skill-meshing as you mentioned, making people follow different skill-archetypes such as "Mule", "Bodyguard", "Shooter", "Sentry" and so on.

New recruits are "Bait" eh?