Building Degradation

[Tolwrath]

So after hearing about the upcoming plan to set people with specific jobs I got this idea. Buildings should have their condition slowly degrade up to a certain percentage of its health. This could be either a separate 'Condition' stat which governs the quality output of it or things inside it (like a soldier in bed wouldn't rest as well with leaks in the ceiling). And/or a temporary building health loss. I'm not sure if there should be a cap to building health loss, as some buildings IRL do actually collapse after going too long without maintenance, but that might be too damaging to a player's efforts.

I know it's also been said that there will be more biomes in the final game. Perhaps degredation rates could change depending on where you build, and what materials you build with. Giving you an actual reason to not want to build directly on top of a swamp.

The purpose of this would be to give your builders a viable way to increase their skill without having to build entirely new buildings. It could also open up the option for some "repair quests" from npc's. However, to prevent building degradation from being too much of a problem, there should be things you can do to prevent/reduce it. Like maybe some research for longer lasting repairs, or some weathering you can apply to halt degradation for a week or so.

And of course, degradation could be crucial to finding weak points in an opponents defenses. Just wait for a wall or gate to go a little too long without upkeep, and strike. It could also be a key factor in sabotage, giving a way to disable something without having to destroy it.

[Scotterius]

I dont like the idea of gradual damage.It seems like needless micromanagement, and there will be plenty of new things to do than worrying about how long the paint has been on your building. I think I would enjoy events that shattered the landscape though. Things like a tornado, huricane, meteor strikes or a volcano (that might be a wee to much) would be interesting. Or Fire. Fire used as a weapon would be awesome.

[Tolwrath]

I didn't intend for it to be micromanagement, but rather something for people with the Builder job to automatically do when not constructing new buildings.

[wolfwood296]

naaah. I would like this but were talking about a game that's played in 24 hour days. they degration would have to be extremely slow since rust doesn't show up immediately. I think that damage from battle is realistic since its immediate but when you talk about weather and stuff going up against buildings then you go up against what kid of material and research.

I think it will be put in but not until a lot of other stuff is in

[marches58]

True, the game is played in 24-hour days, but more can happen in this game's 24 hours than in a real 24 hours, so I think rust/minor upkeep could happen. For instance, you can get beat within an inch of your life, bandaged and put in bed and fully recovered, blood and limbs and all, all within a workday. A small shack with 4 beds can be built in a few hours. It's a lot like the Sims in some ways. Is it realistic? Maybe not. Is it fun/challenging?

I think over the course of a few in-game days, some minor structural upkeep is alright. It won't be micromanaging if you have someone assigned as engineer. The engineer could automatically maintain a building once it gets down to 90%. I say "building", but I mean anything that was built. Maybe interior items deteriorate (much) more slowly than exterior ones, if at all.

Once a building gets below 80%, it will require some building materials to enact the necessary repairs, giving folks incentive to keep up on maintenance. Maybe rate of deterioration gets worse as condition gets worse.

Buildings will collapse or turn into ruins or vanish if abandoned for long enough. This will keep the landscape cleaned up some; I'm not a game developer, but maybe this will make it easier on memory usage or something. In my game, I have 3 bases, one of which I haven't seen in ages (an in-game month). Why haven't bandits done something with it? That's another post, though.

[PnzrNorm]

Reviving this topic since it was the first to pop up in my search for "Building Degradation"

This only came back to me recently, in a dream, but I recall from multiple texts I read in the past about Chris mentioning that weather will play a HUGE factor in both the aspects of survival as well as the amount of degradation that buildings will endure.

Now for my own original thought that's relevant to this topic as well as the OP's post:
What if the building degradation system could be as simple as buildings encountering a very minor "bleeding" which can be dependent on whether the structure is inside or outside as well as weather conditions (some exterior buildings can be built inside for this exact reason *cough* generators)?

As a pretext to mentioning my 2nd aspect to this, note the fact that each building has a "Condition" value that is equal to how many Building Materials it requires to construct the structure, as far as I've noticed in 0.59.1.
Now, in addition to the "building bleeding", I'll call it, imagine if so long as the building was regularly maintained by an Engineer or manual means, it could be repaired without using any further Building Materials, but if the building degraded to, let's just pick an arbitrary number, 75% or lower, then it should cost Building Materials to "repair" rather than "upkeep" the structure.

So all in all, the miniscule "building bleeding" (making another arbitrary number of 15 in-game days to degrade 50% of building's max condition during daily sandstorms so as to avoid micromanagement yet also remain realistic; that's 7.5 in-game days to degrade 25% so as to require Building Materials to repair), and the requirement of Building Materials should the structure drop to below a certain Condition threshold would be enough building degradation for me.
I am also in favor of buildings being able to "bleed" to 0 Condition and collapse into ruins. This could open up new opportunities for quests (NPC trapped in rubble that needs to be cleared), mining stone (mine rubble or intentionally destroyed buildings for an investment return), or even whole new looks to ghost towns/locales.

[Tolwrath]

I hadn't read that bit from Chris before. What about only having buildings degrade when under adverse conditions such as extreme temperatures and inclement weather?

[Hatsune_Neko]

I hadn't read that bit from Chris before. What about only having buildings degrade when under adverse conditions such as extreme temperatures and inclement weather?

i thought that was the plan?

[PnzrNorm]

I hadn't read that bit from Chris before. What about only having buildings degrade when under adverse conditions such as extreme temperatures and inclement weather?

i thought that was the plan?

It would make sense that buildings should degrade under normal weather conditions as well. Ever had a group of 15 or so people show up at your bar and leave the place spotless?
I'm pitching that degradation should happen regardless of weather conditions to represent basic upkeep of the building, although obviously it would be more noticeable in severe weather.

[Hatsune_Neko]

when there is no severe weather the effect should be nearly not there.
but like in a sand storm there would be very visible damage

would go on but there is a topic on this already.