[B42]New ways to manage bodyheat/discomfort

[PK_Ultra]

One of the things that really holds back armor in this game is how punishing it is to simply wear them.

I get that the devs dont want us dressed up like a SWAT team everywhere we go. For a game like PZ where the main threat of getting one-shotted by a zombie bite is real, it makes sense.

Theres already a lot of things going on that would make being heavily armored a bad thing, but what I think needs to happen to not completely discourage their use is for the game to make it viable for them to be worn in intense, short bursts outside of just foregoing them all together.

With the changes to combat and muscle fatigue mechanic in place, its impossible to melee a horde to death except at high levels anyways, so it stands to reason that armor doesn't have to be so brutal. If players want to use the old no armor + spear meta, let them, once theyve reached max levels and have the player skill. That can be their reward for gittin gud.

A simple way to work around overheating is that so long as you aren't thirsty, you get a flat bonus to heat generation where you generate it slower. Maybe a "Hydrated" moodle?

This would make negative traits like "High Thirst" a bit more punishing in that you need to drink more water to stay cool. It could also even go as far as reducing the bonus of how slow you generate heat. Maybe even going as far as removing said bonus?

And when you go over certain heat thresholds, you drink water again to slowly bring your bodyheat down. Of course manually drinking water shouldnt offer more heat reduction, only when these thresholds are triggered if nothing else but for balance sake.

A suggestion for managing Discomfort would be "armor training". There can be skill magazines that give you flat reductions to how much discomfort you generate from armor. Maybe even factor in vision reduction. Though that might be a think Aiming should do, where it brings it down by a huge margin, like a trained soldier wearing PPE gear.

Heck, you can even have skill magazines that offer stat bonuses for wearing certain armor pieces to encourage wearing them outside of just simple damage reduction. You guys put so much work in armor, it would be sad if players didnt ever use them.

By tying heat management to a resource like water, and giving ways to slow down discomfort, it makes it much more viable for players to fully gear up for a really intense couple hours of a day of zomboid killing while still encouraging them to not walk around like lv80 Warcraft characters.

There can also be equipment that further reduce heat generation like a cooling vest. Craft one with a construction vest and stuff it full of ice packs. And you can use the melting food mechanic to determine how long they last. In the 90's they tended to be more towards construction workers and hospital workers and were bulky so they could be an alternative to "bulletproof vests". (Bulletproof vests should also have the same base insulation, etc in general. Keeping cool is the real challenge in this game, not keeping warm.)

That leaves the issue of players just forgoing all of these and reverting back to the tried and true strategy of going pantsless/naked and kiting zombies. Or using a cooling vest and nothing else.

imho, that issue is specifically tied to melee builds. Melee builds tend to be in melee range. Melee range tends to be in blood splatter range. Being bloody should cause players to become sick. This gives a reason to wash clothes, and being bloody while having some sort of "naked" moodle makes you sick at a noticeably faster rate. This gets rid of the "No Pants" meta if having no pants triggers some sort of "underdressed" moodle too.
We're "immune" to the zomboid virus but that doesn't mean our bodies dont still have to work to fight it off.

with these suggestions implemented, I think it makes armor more viable throughout the game.