Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead

Games
101

Hospitals have a ton of zombies in them nowadays. The only suggestion i can make if you plan to raid one is to make sure to stay out of reality bubble range until your ready to make the attempt. If you linger in the area of the hospital you give the zombies time to demolish the interior walls (causing roof collapses). Once you are ready for the attempt, circle the hospital in a vehicle while blowing the horn or firing guns to draw as many zombies outside as possible. Then either lead them away and circle back or kill them if necessary. Either way the goal is to get as many of the larger zombies out of the hospital as quickly as possible to minimize collapses.

I think you are starting to see why veteran players tend to go with mobile bases. If things don’t work out in an area we can just drive all of our stuff to a completely new area instead of being tied down to a certain spot. It makes frustrations like your hospital situation a little easier to handle.

102

Thanks. I drove right up to the hospital and started my assault immediately. I’d say about 50 or so came out to meet me but there were still probably another 25 or 30 inside once I killed the ones outside. Maybe that hulk was the problem.

My “mobile base” right now is a small, very fast car with a lift on the front of it. I’d love to have something bigger but before I attempt it, there are some problems I’m not sure how to resolve. Hopefully you’ll know the answers.

  1. Any time I drive over even the smallest bush off-road, I get tons of damage to my car that has to be repaired. I’ve been very careful since to drive it only on pavement and dodge any debris in the road, no matter how small. That has eliminated damages. Is it possible to build a vehicle that can drive off-road? I’d need one to circle that hospital, for example. Would a heavy frame and large tires prevent that kind of off-road damage from constantly happening?

  2. Very (very) often I’m driving along and there are multiple vehicles blocking the road. Because my car is small, I can squeeze though usually. What do you do when you have a large mobile base in those situations? How do you get by? Especially when it’s in the middle of a city.

103

  1. Installing a vehicle welding rig is the key. Once you have one installed (preferably with solar panels/arrays and a few storage batteries) you can quickly repair any damage the vehicle takes using the vehicle power supply. Heavy frames and armor on the front end also help of course.

  2. Ummm…i NEVER drive my vehicles into a city if i can help it. That’s a really good way to get killed. About the only time i do that is when i am driving a new vehicle OUT of a city or if the terrain (forests/rivers/bridge) forces me to. Even then i will scout out the shortest route i can manage before attempting it. If it’s vehicles on a bridge blocking the way you can either get one running and move it, disassemble enough of one to get by, or RAM it out of the way (vehicle welding rig heavily suggested if using this method).

104

Well, of course I don’t drive though a city until I’ve killed all the zombies there first. I drive up to the outskirts and park and then start killing my way though the city. Once it’s purged of zombies then I go back to my car, drive through the city and on to the next one.

105

Heh, ahh…the good old days of clearing a city. i miss those happy times.

106

So, if you’re not clearing cities so you can drive though them to get to the next city, how do you do it? Do you just drive around the city? Cross-country, though the forest, rivers, swamps and everything?

107

I go off-road driving quite often, both to go around cities and to find body sites (soldier and scientist being the most important). Once you get used to dodging bushes/rocks you can usually do it quickly and safely even in small vehicles. there are so many variables to the situation though (binoculars/telescope to extend your map vision, type of vehicle, can you weld it back together, gas/power factors, terrain blockages, etc) it’s hard to give a ‘one-size-fits-all’ suggestion.

108

I went to the FEMA Camp this evening and it turned out to be surprisingly easy to clear. I killed a bunch of soldiers (including 2 with flamethrowers) and scientists and got 2 scientist IDs and 2 military IDs. Also got some nice CBMs from the scientists.

There were two labs nearby so I headed over to the nearest one and on the way found an RV that’s in pretty good shape and it looks like I could fix it up pretty easily. Right near it is a SUV with a minireactor and electric motor. I’m wondering if I should try to plop those into the RV. The RV has a regular frame so I also wonder if it’s possible to replace that with a heavy duty one instead without tearing it apart completely. If not, should I just use the parts from both vehicles to create a custom heavy duty RV? If I do build/repair it there, is there any way to tow my original small vehicle behind or would would I just need to abandon it there?

The lab is interesting because on the 3rd level it looks like there is a lab train station there that goes to this big underground complex via an underground subway system. I’m intrigued and must explore that.

It also has an autodoc and even some anesthesia to add to what I’d already found elsewhere. Jackpot. I’ve killed lots of scientists and another bio-operator there and gotten some even better CBMS so time to become the bionic man.

109

The more I play this game the more convinced I am that this is the best/deepest roguelike out there. It really is a rabbit hole that you can end up going very deep down once you start.

I been worked on my first mobile base all weekend. I found an RV that wasn’t in terrible shape so I used that as my starting platform and made many modifications.

It had a V6 gas engine originally but I found a V8 engine on a police car and replaced it with that. I also found a badly damaged mini-reactor in a SUV and installed that and repaired it. I then found a large electric motor and installed that as a second engine. I have it set to just run off of the gas engine and if I run out of gas the backup electric engine can take over and get me around. That way I’ll never be stuck out of gas.

I added a second gas tank (why not) and it originally came with a 60L tank installed with clean water in it already so that was a bonus.

I installed solar panels and 4 storage batteries for extra juice in running everything and to make sure I always have a way to recharge no matter what.

I found an armored Humvee with a grenade launcher and a turret so I ripped those out and installed them for defense. I also pulled some heavy frames and composite armor off of it and added those to the front as a hardened ram bar in case I have to ram any zombies. The rest is still regular frames and no armor since I didn’t want to make it supper heavy and kill my gas mileage.

The Humvee also had 33 inch armored wheels so I added all 4 of those to the rear of my vehicle and put 4 of the original 24 inch wheels on the front. I kept 2 of those for spares since I figure if I hit stuff the front tires will take the worst of it and need replacing.

It came with a mini-fridge and range so I just added the chemistry station and food buddy. I don’t really need a welding station since I have an integrated toolset CBM that has that included. Maybe I need to add a forge though, I’m not sure.

It came with a bed originally but I removed it. I ripped out the front seat and replaced it with a reclining seat so I can sleep there instead. It works great.

I have a lift on the back and it works great to get heavy stuff off other vehicles but you can’t use it to install heavy stuff in YOUR vehicle, which sucks. Then I found that I could construct a folding telescopic crane that solves all my problems. It’s basically like building folding shopping cart except you put the lift on the frame and casters instead of a basket. Once you’re done with it you can just fold it up and stick it in a storage box. It works great and I’ll probably remove the boom crane from my vehicle now as it’s not needed anymore.

I added a bunch of storage but I can, and most certainly will, add more whenever I need to.

Anyway, this is what it looks like so far:

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110

Oh those poor wing mirrors. If you don’t like replacing those every 5 minutes you can pop them off and re-install them in the front corner of the vehicle (where the headlight graphic is). this turns them into ‘inline’ mirrors instead. It cuts down on the rear view angle slightly but vastly improves their life span. A chemistry station with a pot in storage nearby provides the exact same benefits of the RV Kitchen unit so no need to have both. I tend to go solar on these types of vehicles for the free energy. if you decide to go that route keep an eye out for bubble cars that can provide upgraded solar panels and enhanced electric motors.

111

Thanks for the tip on the mirrors, I’ll try that now. I’ll also get rid of the RV kitchen. I’m still trying to figure a lot of this stuff out.

Do you have a storage battery installed as your main vehicle battery instead of a regular car or truck battery? If that’s possible to do it would help a lot.

I have indeed gone solar in that I have 6 solar panels on the top to provide extra power. I haven’t found any of those upgraded panels yet but I’m looking.

I currently have a large electric motor installed but I do have 2 of the enhanced electric motors in storage that i found on a sports car. Looking at the wiki info, it looked like the enhanced motors are slightly more powerful but are half as durable and suck up considerably more energy so I went with the reliability/economy over slightly more power. Is there another reason I should consider switching to an enhanced one instead?

I’ve been wrestling today with getting a good view behind my vehicle when driving. I installed a security camera on the back and that works great except at night. So I stuck a 3rd headlight back there and 2 more floodlights. Now I can see great at night but it sucks battery power like crazy when they’re on. It drains the battery down pretty fast even when the engine and alternator are running.

What happens when your main engine’s battery runs out of power, does it then start using your extra storage batteries for power? I sure hope so or I’ll have a problem.

Edit: I just replaced the original car battery with a storage battery i pulled off a tank so that appears to work fine.

112

Yeah, it makes no difference what battery is installed. They all work the same just with different capacities and mounting options. They always drain/charge from top to bottom on the list and the first one must reach 100% before the next starts charging. Solar can get pretty fancy with upgraded/reinforced/quantum/array options available. try not to place any on the outside edges of the roof if possible. You can also repair batteries but they must be removed from the vehicle first, then re-installed.

113

Thanks! I had a few solar panels on the edge so I moved them.

I had been wondering about not being able to repair batteries so that explains it.

I feel like my mobile base is in pretty good shape now so I hit the road. I’m exploring my 3rd lab now and it’s an ice lab. The second lab I explored had 6 levels with an autodoc and some anesthesia on every level but the last. It also had a ton of scientists and bio-operators so needless to say I have a lot of nice bionics installed now. One of them is the internal temp control cbm which is saving my ass in the ice lab. The third ice lab level is -37 degrees with at least one more level down. Brrrr.

So far it doesn’t have many scientists but what it does have is giant burrowing moles, which I hadn’t seen before. It also has a ton of living quarters that have a LOT of food lying around. The most I’ve seen anywhere in the game. My kitchen in my base-mobile is well stocked up now for a long time.

114

Be careful in area’s with the moles. They knock down walls which can give turrets unexpected sight lines which can ruin your day pretty quick.

Ice lab’s temperature drops roughly -30 degrees per level so you can kinda figure your clothing needs ahead of time. If you don’t plan to fight much or can at least control when it happens you might consider layering up. You can wear two copies of any particular item (two thermal electric suits, two winter jackets, two flannel shirts, etc). Just be aware of your movement rate and hit penalties when doing that.

115

I wasn’t finding much in there and the temps were a pain so I decided to leave that ice lab for now. I did find a military map in there that opened up a massive road network on my map when I read it and that includes military bunkers. One’s fairly close by so that’s my next target.

I found a vehicle with a spiked ram on the front so I decided to add that to my vehicle of death. Unfortunately, every time I placed the second piece the game would crash. It had been crashing a lot on other stuff too so I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade to the latest game version. After that, the ram pieces installed smoothly. Hopefully, the temperature issues have been sorted out by now.

I found a tank that had multiple mini-reactors and a M2 Browning HMG so I added a second minireactor and the new turret to my death machine. It’s sporting a grenade launcher and two machine gun turrets now.

I finally found some tailoring books and my tailoring level is high enough now to craft survival gear so I crafted some of the light variety. I also finished up my on-board electric forge by making a crucible, anvil and tongs for it. I think I have all the appliances I need now.

116

After I updated the game to the latest version yesterday I decided to craft a few Power Storage MK II CBMs. I had the recipe memorized but it didn’t show up in my crafting menu. I checked the 2 books I had that the recipe was in and it was gone from both. So was the regular Power Storage CBM recipe. What the hell?

As a quick test I used debug to give myself all the recipes in the game and confirmed that those two recipes are gone from the game completely. Again, what the hell?

I’ve searched but cannot find any patch notes discussing this change or the reasoning behind it. Vorm, do you know where they keep this information or why the change was made? This change makes gaining storage capacity for your CBMs extremely tedious and grindy unless they did something else to balance it out. It was bad enough when they added the autodoc and anesthesia requirements but this is over the top.

Edit: So I just found this on the official forum:


kevin.granade Leader
12d

Disassembly not being possible is unintended, but crafting new CBMs from them is now not supported.

No explanation. No reasoning or discussion behind it. What an asshat.

117

Lots of intentional changes to CBM’s to slow down their installation recently. I do agree that it was WAY to easy to become a cyber-god previously but feel they may be overdoing the adjustments a bit. Feel free to make your opinion known on the Github page (that’s the best place).

Also realize, you can play the game any way you want. If you don’t like not being able to craft Mk II versions just Debug in some and throw away the components needed to make them. You can make up your own rules/themes and use Debug to make it happen. I do this fairly often to setup my ‘theme’ live-stream series with special conditions.

118

Yeah, after I calmed down a bit I took a look at the .json files for recipes and saw that it would be easy to mod those two recipes right back in with a text editor. So I did. It now works like it used to for the current game version, no debug needed.

Let me know if you (or anyone else) would like them back in as well. I’d be glad to share how I did it.

I agree about playing the game the way you want and that gives you joy. Since it’s a pure sandbox, that’s really the only way to do it if you want to have any fun.

Given that, the rash of game changes they’re making lately that seem to be aimed at taking away choices and ease of play and making people resort to debug, mods, etc. to enjoy the game, has me scratching my head a bit. There seems to be a core of volunteer devs that are very industrious and enthusiastic but I wish they’d slow down a bit and think carefully about some of this stuff before rushing it into the game. I actually think the pace of development is way too fast for a game that’s been out this long.

119

Vorm, I have a basic question that I hope you can answer. I built a charcoal kiln to make some charcoal. It’s the metal kiln version. I chopped a few wood logs and have been trying to figure out how to use the kiln. I can’t find any way to load it and activate it. I tried putting it on the ground and dropping the logs on it and then starting a fire in that square, but all that does is burn the log for a minute and i end up with a burned log. I tried to (e)xamine the kiln to start it but there’s no options beyond the normal one to pick it up.

So how do you use this thing? It’s driving me crazy.

120

Yeah, that one is dumb and i don’t recommend using it. Much better to put together the charcoal kiln from the construction menu instead. To use the metal one: Craft it, then craft again but pick “filled charcoal kiln”. then activate that item to ‘light’ it. drop it on the ground and wait 5 hours. then you can 'a’ctivate it again and it becomes a ‘finished charcoal kiln’, finally pick it up and 'd’isassemble it to get your whopping 40 charcoal. It’s really stupid, don’t use it. If you load up a stone charcoal kiln with logs you can get 2600 coal in 6 hours just by dropping the logs on that space then 'e’xamining it to light it. super easy and you get lots of coal.