A Rational extension to "Fixing Resistance RP for Good"

[Robert]

As promised in my last thread, I said I would shortly release the 2nd part out of many on the goal of fixing "RebelRP" but not just Rebels of course, the entire City and its RP... and Economy, stores, factions, etc. Quite the ambitious goal but one worth trying nonetheless.

Following the same format and style as before, you probably don't think much about Rations. It is one of those things you may find yourself collecting every 2 hours of playtime on the server and not really thinking there is any issue with it. But maybe you don't bother collecting rations at all because why would you? I mean, what purpose is there collecting rations after you are setup because, past a certain point, you no longer need them apart from a paycheck.

Problem Statement
There are quite a few things to get into here.
First is the rations themselves and what they offer
Second is how hunger and thirst work
Third is the Overpowered Water Cache
Finally, you have the money & loyalty problem

Cause #1: Rations and what they offer you
Rather than bore you with a graph, let's take a look into what rations provide:

Standard Ration:

1. 10-15 credits
2. Some paste for food consumption
3. A can of water

Loyalist Ration:

1. 15+ Credits
2. A randomized loyalty food item
3. A can of "specialized" water

Pretty standard for hl2rp, but I must ask you, what is the reason for rations existing?

Your first response to this will be obvious. "Even the Combine need to keep their workforce well looked after in terms of food, water and some credits to live". This is a great idea, but it is also untrue in Willard, specifically for a few reasons.

The first reason is money. Remember my economic thread about how USELESS money is and how broken the loop is? If you do, you know you will be hitting that hard cap of 100 or 200 credits, I believe in no time, where Rations will STOP giving you money. So you already know that saving money becomes the norm very quickly, which kills the economic loop.

Second is the food it gives you. While at the beginning you may find it useful to stay alive, once you save so much you can buy all the food you want or if you are even smarter than that... why would you even bother paying for food at all when you can sit around, craft a plastic bottle, find a water cache and hope to god it has a valve which most do and refill to your heart's content. This gives you leeches as you collect the water. From here, you leave, find a public cooking station, and turn it into a good meal.

Infact, if we want to combine problem three which I am about to mention anyway, then you will know you can filtrate the water too. Oh, wait... you just filled your hunger and thirst meters to max FOR FREE with little effort.

So with that said, the moment you find that which 99% of players do and start saving and hitting the hard cap, rations lose all purpose. Of course, some still get them to trade to newer players who don't know the loophole or to build up a stockpile of infinite food/water at no cost. But apart from that, you don't need them. That isn't the essence of hl2rp at all and it just breaks the economy and harms stores more than anything.

Cause #2: Hunger and Thirst are meaningless
Before I jump onto the bandwagon of the Water Cache that solves world hunger by itself, let's instead take a look at Hunger and Thirst.

So what is the problem with Hunger and thirst? Well, once again, avoiding the use of graphs, we can do this in a simple list of bullet points.

- Starting with Hunger, the further you fall below the minimum, the more skill debuffs you undertake. Generally, around 80% or lower is where your character's skills begin to deteriorate as part of being Hungry. But what else? Lemme answer that for you, nothing actually. You lose skills; when you hit 0, you lose about 25-50% of your skill levels.

- Thirst is the same deal. When you hit 0, you have lost anywhere from 25-50% of your skills

- The problem is that skills are only useful to some players. In fact, did you know that only some players care about their skills enough to care about such detriments, while the rest literally have no need for skills in the first place? Begging the question... "What's the point of eating or drinking?"

Well, you would be correct in asking that because there is none. Unless you are someone in need of your skills, hunger and thirst, have no meaning to you. It can't kill you; it can't slow you down; it can't even make you unconscious due to serious starvation.

Cause #3: Water Cache, the solution to world hunger...
Now, I am sure everyone is aware of the water cache but surprisingly, no one complains about it... I wonder why. Maybe because it is the be-all and end-all of all your problems, and why tell anyone of such an OP glitch in the matrix when you can abuse it to its fullest without consequence?

The water cache is something which is nothing short of broken and is responsible in part for killing food and drink-based stores and why Rations aren't needed. Low and behold your lord and saviour, the water cache for feeding everyone Thy Daily Leech while you filtrate the water and shove your water bottle in just to drink. Ta-da hunger solved and thirst solved in one small swoop.

If I am being honest, this should not exist, and the Leeches should fade into nothing. I believe there should be another way actually to get a leech and that should be an actual role and script for a fisherman job. At least that would create a new role, and stores can buy a supply of leeches directly from a local fisherman and be 100x more interesting than a water cache. On top of that, water bottles should be not only deemed illegal, forcing everyone into oppression to drink Breen's water but also force you to interact with players and, more specifically, stores or vending machines just for your supply of drink.

Food should only come from farming, fishermen, stores or rations and nothing else. Of course, farming and fishing are 2 non-existent features but at least they would be plausible if a new system was put in place and the Water Cache becomes redundant. And if you want a water cache to have a purpose, why not make it a requirement for crafting where your workstation NEEDS to be near one. Why? Because even IRL, we use water to clean our workstations sometimes, some machines even have mini movable pipes to move around and point which can either be pure air or water to remove all the miniature scraps off your workstation and into a tray underneath to keep a clean work area.

Much more efficient and realistic.

Cause #4: Money and Loyalty
Now I have already touched on Money and its uselessness, so I won't bore you with more economics on that and why saving inevitably kills the loop of eco in Willard. Much less how you don't actually use the money to spend but rather to carry until it actually has a reason to be used which is next to never for most.

But I will bring up Loyalty being something of a qualm of mine. Loyalist not only get better food but also better pay. We already talked about how redundant food from rations is, but ignoring that for a moment... why do loyalists deserve such without contributing nothing but loyalty to the Combine. For the most part, loyalists only sit around farming points and do good boy deeds for the Combine while at the same time, capable of sitting around providing nothing of Value to the Combine. While I do have some ideas to mention in my upcoming loyalty rework thread, I will start by saying here that loyalists do not deserve BOTH a pay increase and better food/water.

If anything, they should get one or the other and I aiming towards better food but the same or lower pay even. You may sit there and go "Hold up? Whys that?". Well let me explain, as I mention above Loyalists inherently provide nothing of value to the combine, so why would the Combine give them more shit for no gain? Answer? There is no reason why, it just works that way because of how it was designed without thought.

If we want to fix this, however, we can make it so loyalty rations provide better resources overall, but money is cut and instead the Loyalists use their big pool of funding to essentially pay for their enhanced meals. YOu can even go the route of forcing those of loyalty status to work even harder to show that now they are loyal to the Combine, the must put the effort in to show they respect the fact of the benefits they are given. They should pay higher rent, earn an average amount, give the City more of their time and attention and basically give the Combine a reason to keep them where they sit.

I will go further into what I mean in my loyalty post, but essentially, there should be a balance in loyalty to keep it fair but not overtly easy or beneficial for those wanting to sit around on their ass, contributing nothing.

Short-Term Solution:
There are a few short-term enactments to be done here:

1. Modify the Water Cache to either have a really long cooldown timer or severely limit the capacity of the Cache so only X amount of water and X amount of Leeches can be taken before it runs "dry"
2. Reduce Loyalist wages and pay so they are almost equal to Citizens
3. Turn on "Death on Starvation or Dehydration" to enforce the fact that people need to eat and drink.
   1. Not 100% recommended but it definitely needs to be considered for V3. Just not now unless you want 40+ citizens to drop dead on the street from a toggle switch. XD
4. Maybe the character auto falls over upon becoming too hungry that they can barely stand. This encourages eating without instant death looming over them.
5. Don't be afraid to be a bit harsh

Long-Term Solution:
The long-term solution is pretty harsh. It involves a complete rework of the economy, as I mentioned in the economics post but also a mix-up of how food, water, rations and loyalty all operate. It will certainly be a big task and no easy feat involving tons of work which will be further elaborated on closer to the time of V3 development. Speaking of Development, tons of Dev work will potentially be required.

 

[Coroneljones]

Turning on death for starvation and dehydration by default probably isnt the best idea, atleast unless the decay rate is slowed down even further, since it forces people to keep an eye on the meter at all times and puts a time cap on interactions but someone needs to run off and eat.
But some sort of further debuff would help incentivize a need to feed, outside of skill points.

Maybe instead, having it be a "timer" that only triggers the death effect after several hours of the bar being empty, or instead of outright death, slowly reducing health to an unhealable amount (halfway through the bar?), unless you drink and eat, or a severe speed slowdown that prevents you from running. If people dont care about it for skills, then something to make them less combat/physically effective.

For the water cache, 100 percent, some sort of limit need to exist, even if its just a water cap that refreshes after 24 hours, since their existence is the one thing that lets people just ignore interacting with anyone else, and remain self-sufficient.
But even with water caches limited, the issue still exists on some maps, since you can fill water bottles from any mapped in source of water, even a small ankle-deep puddle of water, from what I`m aware of.

 

[Robert]

Maybe instead, having it be a "timer" that only triggers the death effect after several hours of the bar being empty, or instead of outright death, slowly reducing health to an unhealable amount (halfway through the bar?), unless you drink and eat, or a severe speed slowdown that prevents you from running. If people dont care about it for skills, then something to make them less combat/physically effective.

Well yes, that is something suggested in the past, accepted but never implemented. That sort of touches on that as part of its long term solution.

Since Instant death is not fun at all. Plus pop up messages to inform you that your character is feeling hungry or thirsty helps too. Ontop of the other defects I mentioned regarding being slowed down due to hunger, lower skills, potentially to faint from really low levels, etc.

For the water cache, 100 percent, some sort of limit need to exist, even if its just a water cap that refreshes after 24 hours, since their existence is the one thing that lets people just ignore interacting with anyone else, and remain self-sufficient.
But even with water caches limited, the issue still exists on some maps, since you can fill water bottles from any mapped in source of water, even a small ankle-deep puddle of water, from what I`m aware of.

Hmm, not sure if that works for bottles as it says "You need to be looking at a water cache to refill", so not sure map water works.

 

[Rat King]

some suggestions to making starvation/dehydration impactful without unfair:

• Drastically reduce the rate at which hunger deteriorates.
• 
  
• Allow players to enter AFK and suspend their ration, hunger and thirst timers via command
• 
  
• When either meter hits a critical level where someone would usually start taking damage or dying, instead have some sort of automatic notification to GM's that 'Character Name is starving to death', or simply highlight their name in noclip. GM's could then move to the player and start roleplaying the effects of severe deprivation with them in the form of /it's. That would completely eliminate the risk of unfair damage.
• 
  
• Instead of completely random fainting, make it so that a player that is in terminal starvation may randomly /charfallover while running, forcing them to walk slowly as they can barely stay on their feet. Running is necessary for every single role in hl2rp, which means it directly necessitates the tending of these meters without being cheap or unfair. You wouldn't randomly fallover unless you wanted to take the risk by sprinting while starving.

 

[Lost Coast Chanties]

Hmm, not sure if that works for bottles as it says "You need to be looking at a water cache to refill", so not sure map water works.

It does. You need to be basically in the water itself, but you can fill bottles that way. I know since I distinctly remembering living like a hobo in V4 and not actually knowing what water caches were, instead traveling to the sewers and filling my bottles under the grates.

This gives you leeches as you collect the water. From here, you leave, find a public cooking station, and turn it into a good meal.

Infact, if we want to combine problem three which I am about to mention anyway, then you will know you can filtrate the water too. Oh, wait... you just filled your hunger and thirst meters to max FOR FREE with little effort.

I used water caches a good few times in these hobo days, and I pretty much never got a consistent amount of leeches to actually make food from. But yeah, the fact that you can just get free water without any trouble (Granted, it does require an investment into scissors/cooking pots) makes the "survival" elements more of a side chore.

"Give me a sec, gonna go boil some water, yeah?"

 

[Robert]

It does. You need to be basically in the water itself, but you can fill bottles that way. I know since I distinctly remembering living like a hobo in V4 and not actually knowing what water caches were, instead traveling to the sewers and filling my bottles under the grates.

Guh, well that certainly does make the problem far worse then. First time hearing about that and now I know. Something else for me to edit in.

I used water caches a good few times in these hobo days, and I pretty much never got a consistent amount of leeches to actually make food from. But yeah, the fact that you can just get free water without any trouble (Granted, it does require an investment into scissors/cooking pots) makes the "survival" elements more of a side chore.

Pretty much. Water is free and while leeches are slightly harder to get 100% of the time, you can still get a steady supply of them as per some groups which dedicate people to just leech farm and make bottles for cheap afterwards. Its like once you reach a certain point, food/water becomes irrelevant.

 

[M!NT]

This is a long read so I'm going to summarize what I think we can all agree on here.

1. Water caches shouldn't be infinite (they should deplete and replenish with time)
2. We should turn death from thirst/hunger back on but change it in different ways.
   1. Should continuously deplete health until someone dies from it.
   2. All in all it should take longer for this to happen then it does currently.
3. People should be able to use a command to go into AFK instantly.

My take on this is that I agree with 1 and 2. Generally speaking, it is too easy to survive outside of the city (trivial, in fact). I disagree with 3 to some extent; I feel like it will be exploited. If people want it then it can be added though.

 

[Robert]

This is a long read so I'm going to summarize what I think we can all agree on here.

1. Water caches shouldn't be infinite (they should deplete and replenish with time)
2. We should turn death from thirst/hunger back on but change it in different ways.
   1. Should continuously deplete health until someone dies from it.
   2. All in all it should take longer for this to happen then it does currently.
3. People should be able to use a command to go into AFK instantly.

My take on this is that I agree with 1 and 2. Generally speaking, it is too easy to survive outside of the city (trivial, in fact). I disagree with 3 to some extent; I feel like it will be exploited. If people want it then it can be added though.

Pretty much.

Though different ideas have been present to tackle the problem so to sum up everything in one fell swoop, the solutions come down to the following:

1. Water Cache
   1. It can either be removed entirely as one option stated in my post.
   2. It can be kept and preserved for another purpose, such as becoming important for crafting to be done around it as per the explanation of cleaning up your scraps and stuff from your work area as some machines have provided.
   3. It can be kept but given a cooldown as an alternative to outright removal. You can possibly combine this with the 2nd idea above, which I go into more detail within my post.
   4. Speaking of, stop water from being picked up off the map. If someone wants water, they must use the cache or stores/vending machines.
2. Hunger/Thirst
   1. Death should very much be possible but not instantaneous as this would upset people.
      1. Can be done with a timer
      2. A message can even appear to both players and GM to let them know they are starving or dehydrated.
   2. Some other defects like fainting from running should be possible while hungry like randomly triggering /charfallover due to lack of food or water to power your body.
      1. Fainting is just one example of a few but could even ensure that players suffer other side effects like being inefficient in combat or their rolls taking a deduction.
   3. The hunger meter should be slowed down on top of the new defects.
3. New AFK command to pause all timers and freeze hunger and thirst.
   1. Can be abused but I am sure some solutions can be made to counter some forms of abuse.
4. Loyalty rations I will touch on more in my loyalty rework but they may gain too much for none to little contribution to the Combine.
5. When it comes to long-term solutions:
   1. Fishing? - Leeches no longer come from
   2. Farming?
   3. Fixing Economy as per my Economic Extension Thread
   4. Etc

In the end, lots to be done and I think V3 has given us plenty of time to begin working on it (hopefully)

 

[Kappatalist]

This is a long read so I'm going to summarize what I think we can all agree on here.

1. We should turn death from thirst/hunger back on but change it in different ways.
   1. Should continuously deplete health until someone dies from it.
   2. All in all it should take longer for this to happen then it does currently.

When we tried this, correct me if I'm wrong, but for the time we tried it the server completely died. I think depleting health to a certain point is more than enough to encourage people to eat and drink, it makes it painfully obvious to everyone around you that you're injured (And I'm sure if staff spot people walking around half dead like it's nothing they'll get a talking to) but death is a step too far imo.

Regardless, we could try out one method or another and if it doesn't work switch to another pretty easily, fairly sure when we turned off death from hunger it was just an option in the staff menu.

 

[Robert]

When we tried this, correct me if I'm wrong, but for the time we tried it the server completely died. I think depleting health to a certain point is more than enough to encourage people to eat and drink, it makes it painfully obvious to everyone around you that you're injured (And I'm sure if staff spot people walking around half dead like it's nothing they'll get a talking to) but death is a step too far imo.

Regardless, we could try out one method or another and if it doesn't work switch to another pretty easily, fairly sure when we turned off death from hunger it was just an option in the staff menu.

I think Death can work to entice them as long as its not instant. The only reason it killed the server last time was the biggest complaint we got "Death was instant with no warnings prior"

Because it was this

1. Walk around
2. Not realize thirst and hunger
3. Proceed to hit 0
4. Die in 0.000001 seconds of hitting 0
5. PK'd
6. Admin is then forced to bring you back to life because it was unfair.

Yeah, not a good setup. M!NT's idea along with the suggestions we did get last time which was on the same lines but never dev'd was the fact to add a death timer rather than instant. Something should indicate, "Oh, you're dying slowly", and I think it can be done cleverly in the sense that you lose health incredibly slowly the more you keep your hunger at 0 but of course when you hit 0 HP you then die. That would give the player more than enough time to react to their hunger/thirst since they will see their HP dropping slowly. Like 10 HP every 30 minutes ticking by, aka 3.33 HP every 10 minutes. and they can then run to rations to grab a quick meal, cease their death and heal and then buy more food or farm it.

Think that will work far better.