Thanks again for all your work.
Are there any major updates/balancing planned for Necropolis in 1.03? I'm debating whether to jump into another Necropolis run or hold off for a bit.
Necropolis will be affected by it yes, I am currently working on:
- Heat rebalance
Heat generated now will last exactly 1 ingame day, this means that any heat a player makes will stick around for a while and making noises on the same spot increases your chances of getting a screamer. The amount of heat the sources such as the campfire, forge, chem station and bones has been adjusted to fit this and this is all balanced for a 60 minute day. Heat objects such as animal bones and torches generate heat now in such a way that they are never able to call any screamer solely by themselves, they balance out at a certain value, torches etc only add a tiny heat signature, but place a huge amount and you will notice it. The animal bones add a lot more heat pressure, but leaving one behind now will no longer call a constant screamer horde. The amount of screamers per wave has also been scaled, the first days in Gnamod there is even a chance no screamer is called, but the amount of them still rises over time.
- Buff rework
I have gone over every buff in the game and adjusted them to scale with game time (except for buffs with timers under 10 seconds). I have also added some new buffs and adjusted what some of the buffs do. This started as a small rebalance but many of these changes can severely impact the game.
New Buffs:
- 3 Types of Watercold: Getting wet will continually lower your core temperature (not adjust a value). Stay wet for to long in a cold biome and you will notice it.
- Natural Healing Buff: If you have your belly filled over 25% this buff becomes active and heals you at a slow pace. It gets removed by bleeding or when you start to starve (it will return again if you get filled over 25%).
Notable changes:
- Campfire buff now continually increases your core temperature (not adjust a value). This means sitting longer at a campfire has a better effect and sitting at it to long with warm clothes on can overheat you. But you can use the campfire better now to combat excessive cold or dry off.
- Any buff that sets you on fire will also increase your core temperature, if you want to heat up fast you can now set yourself on fire
- First Aid Kit now no longer has a flat +50 healing effect, instead it applies two buffs: the buff that First Aid Bandage applies (which stack) and a fast one that heals you 50 HP over 5 seconds.
- Being fully submerged buffs (drowning, cannotBreath) now also continually lower your core temperature, this offsets a bug where being submerged will negate the effect of the biome temperature (as this comes from the air blocks). Being in and underwater is now a lot more dangerous.
Other notable about these changes is that game time scales with the setting of Day Length. This means buffs will last longer on 90 minute days and shorter on 60 minute days. This means that being infected always takes 7 ingame days to kill you if you start at stage 1 etc, but being cured by pills will also last 1.5 ingame days. This means longer days you suffer longer but also heal more from aid buffs. It also affects heat dissipation, the balance is around 60 minutes, on 120 minutes the heat dissipates twice as slow but still generates at the same rate (this is not scalable) so you will see more screamers. But you also get more time to prepare for a blood moon
Go on 30 minute days and you can have twice as much heat sources before you see visitors, so shorter days will benefit from this.
I have also fixed certain animals getting completely stuck in water (some animals apparently have no swim animations and thus get halted to completely stop). This means that they will instead now run around at the bottom of the water (which is still weird, but at least it prevents the extremely easy way of avoiding bears with even a single block of water).
I also have found a way to make the center of the RWG map always appear as a fairly flat plane, this means that the center city wasteland will mostly always come with a few big cities and look much better.
Other plans:
Rebalance Horde Mode: Tweaking the amount of zombies that come and making the two modes a bit more differently (SP will be balanced at 60 min days for up to 2 players, and MP will be balanced for 60 min days from 3+ players). This will also come with blood moons having at least 1 wave of bosses, but progressively more of them in the wave or more waves. This should make them stand out a bit more as you are guaranteed to see a lot more puking and exploding zombies.
Future plans:
For post 1.03 my plans will depend on how fast A17 is coming, I want to further investigate RWG and make improvements there (which hopefully will still work in A17) and have some ideas of some fun modes that may get added. But most likely I will focus on rounding the mod out as it is and make sure all documentation is in order as well, which I still failed to do.
