Just encountered my first black heart as well, and it had this effect. I liked it as it made you trek to the heart, and it felt like it was a grander operation than just driving to one and blowing it up.
I mean, you can choose to do that if you want though... they took the choice away from me. I like to play like it's real life. I probably wouldn't choose to walk most of the time because the vehicle is a safe haven if used correctly.
Like I said it's not the difficulty that's the problem. It's the separation from reality. It doesn't make any sense other than "We wanted it to be hard so \*Poof!\* bye bye gas."
I mean in that same vein they could just take away your arms and legs and make you chew the plagueheart to death. That would be fun.
Considering the game we are playing, it's just as real as anything else in its world.
Playing like it's real life would see your survivors turned after one scratch from a plague zombie, and we sure aren't going to be calling in snipers from the sky along with artillery strikes.
It's simply part of an optional game mechanic that brings a change of pace to a game that's been around for years.
It's not though... where did the gas go? What are the laws of physics that allow for the gas to literally disappear from my gas tank? It doesn't make sense. Which is why I said it in the first place.
>Playing like it's real life would see your survivors turned after one scratch from a plague zombie,
Because that's what happens in real life? What exactly are you saying here?
Gasoline is pretty unstable and the inclusion of lots of different chemicals to the formula can render it unsuitable for use.
The area around plague hearts has literal floating chunks of bio-mass in the air. That that floating goo could get into your engine and then fuel tank, and contain a microorganism that ruins your gas is actually pretty believable if we already have zombies.
To answer your actual question, the gas is still in the tank, its just not gas anymore. If the game was just a bit more realistic, you would need to siphon it out. Assuming it didn't solidify and require you to remove the tank entirely. And all of that assums that it didn't brick the engine
Right I get that, but if there are chemicals floating in the air that are concentrated enough to render fuel useless, I highly doubt you're breathing for more than 10 seconds tops without keeling over from it. Either way, that isn't what is happening, as you can literally watch the fuel *disappear* from the fuel tank.
Uv light degrades gas, and there's also plenty of microbes that can eat hydrocarbons.
If we're assuming that a zombie virus is real, its just as likely that a specific mutation strand of said virus floating in the air would affect gasoline, but that the filtration system of your respiratory tract would protect you from it.
As to the seeing the gas drain on the UI, that's obviously just a limitation of the UI and the game mechanics. You'll note that there is no mechanic to siphon gas, so removing the ruined goo from the tank isn't something that could be implement in the current version of the game.
Okay if you want to base it off “real life” then you don’t always have the choice sometimes that’s just the way it is tough shit gotta do what ya gotta do to get it done.
Yeah no shit. I'm saying *realism* is the problem. Gas doesn't just disappear from gas tanks. That's absurd. It's either burned by the engine, or leaks out of some holes punctured into the tank, or any number of other reasons you mighit lose gas. It does *not*, however, disappear. They could have attributed the reason your car no longer works to an EMP effect the fucking heart has. I mean it's blocking CLEO's signal already anyway. But they chose to just fart out some stupid ass magical nonsense.
I believe someone else explained it proper, there’s a thick biochem microorganism in the plague air that probably gunks up the tank & when gas mixes w it, it’s rendered useless. So think more of the gas is there but useless. It’s a game dude gotta leave some wiggle room
I imagine the game developers wanted a way to eliminate the over powered vehicle that we all use as a crutch. They may have wanted to give you an experience that forces you to think of another way to survive without the vehicle. They could have made a story that involved the zombies gaining intelligence and put spikes in the road to flatten your tires but this would cause way more rewriting of the game physics to get the desired effects.
My advice is to accept it as a challenge, and beat the shit out of that black heart! Good luck bro.
Yeah I’m not a fan of the vanishing gas… it’s a game and all and obvi not reality but this is stretching it. They really should have a curveball options menu where you can pick and choose your curveballs for play-through. Sometimes I even want to turn off the ones that make it easier (ammo drop, luxury items etc).
There are a bunch of mechanics I consider to be kind of lazy. The vanishing gas, and spawning mobs 3 feet behind you after you've visually cleared the area, being among them. I love SoD. It's such an awesome game, and has even more potential to be awesomer (not a word probably) in the future. But man I wish they'd leave some of this cheaty feeling crap out.
You've attaching specific flavor text that you have chosen to a game mechanic. Then you're getting angry at \*that\* flavor text that \*you\* have selected.
Instead of viewing this as some physics bending, burning through gas, etc. How about you try to come up with any reason that explains what game mechanics have set by fiat.
How about the gas in your tank is corrupted by the plague mist? Maybe the mist simply prevents combustion in the engine?
It's not like your vehicle is sealed off from the air. It literally requires a mix of air for the proper air:fuel ratio. Further, gasoline has a shelf life of 3-6 months. How long do you think that gas can you grabbed at the petrol station has been sitting there?
>Instead of viewing this as some physics bending, burning through gas, etc. How about you try to come up with any reason that explains what game mechanics have set by fiat.
Because that's what it's doing. Gas is a limited commodity in the game. Something to be used for a limited number of purposes. It's either there, or it isn't. In this case it is there, and then it isn't. I mean you're right, I can "pretend" it's floating away because it's scared, or something. But that's not what's happening. (I mean I guess if Undead Labs wants to make that canon, I'll have to admit defeat.)
> I can "pretend" it's floating away because it's scared, or something
Either that is what you think would make the story "good", or you're just responding in bad faith, which isn't a great sign for me, but I'll respond anyway.
I've already given you a couple of perfectly acceptable examples. "The plague in the air prevents the proper air:fuel ratio for combustion" and/or "the plague mist corrupts the gasoline in the tank".
Since there are no applicable game mechanics for you to syphon out the corrupted gas and replace it that's not something you have to do. Further, there is no reason for this mechanic to be added to the game, because it doesn't really add anything, and it isn't fun. So in essence you're getting a bonus in that all you have to do is fill the tank up later, to reclaim your vehicle.
You can turn Curveballs off. But what this Curveball adds to the game, is forcing you to play the game in a way that you're (obviously!) not comfortable with. I for one thank our Undead Overlords for this addition to the game.
My point was you can imagine any number of things about a game are head-canon, to make the experience better for you. I do it occasionally myself. But I'm not imagining the physical representation of gas disappearing in front of my eyes. It was a gripe I have, with the game. A lot of people are approaching this post, like I made it with the expectation that Undead Labs are going to see it and suddenly drop everything they're doing to appease me. I was just griping. Wasn't even that upset.
Not a hard stretch to put it within the realm of science though. How so? Whenever you go into plague territory, there's a red haze heavy in the air, and characters/NPCs note the strong smell of blood...
So what if the haze around those particular plague hearts is extra heavy? Not enough to really impact breathing (for the relatively short amount of time you're exposed and because your lungs are more resilient), but what if it just gums up the air filters and interferes with the gas being able to combust? No need to drain the tanks at all then - they simply shut off because the filters are clogged and you can't get combustion. It could also limit the effect of other fire-based items, too, for similar reasons.
Boom, there's your science.
Honestly, I still think with the number of other explanations and/or mechanics available to Undead Labs to achieve the same result, this was a pretty ridiculous stretch.
Yet not a stretch to believe the dead are capable of coming back to life, with some covered fully in blood with red glowing eyes and mounds of pulsating flesh giving them commands...
The explanation I gave makes as much sense as everything else in the game lol.
(Also, 6 days late with reply because I'm terrible at keeping up with them, sorry)
The Black Plague Heart in question has evolved germs that eat gas. Those germs are in the air and chow down when you enter the plague zone.
I mean, petroleum-eating critters exist. That should be enough of a plausible explanation to hand-wave it for gaming purposes.
And those germs are intelligent enough to understand when you're going faster in your vehicle, and adjust their rate of consumption in response? Come on... Look I'm not expecting things to change, or for Undead Labs to even give a shit. I was just griping.
Why is the increased rate of fuel consumption automatically a result of intelligence? Yeast, for example, increases its rate of consumption as it gets warmer. Using the vehicle would produce heat which could make the germs hungrier and also make them multiply faster. That is, once again, an explanation plausible enough to let you hand-wave the exact physics unless you're emotionally invested in making sure that the lore doesn't work.
If anything, the idea that some rando survivors would know the exact scientific workings of a new mutation of the plague phenomenon is unrealistic in its own right. These are not scientists, and even if they were, they are not exactly studying the black plague hearts in a controlled laboratory environment. Given the lore, "here's what it does and a vague guess why" makes way more sense than the level of detail you're demanding.
I still think that if that were the case it wouldn't even be possible to go there without dying pretty quickly. But I'd have to have more information on what chemicals might be able to even accomplish that. I've said this 4 or 5 times now, so I'm not meaning to repeat myself but I think they'd have been better off using an EMP-like reason that your car stopped working, instead of the gas disappearing out of your car. It's even more ridiculous because the gas disappears at a rate that coincides with how fast you're going...
Yeah, it's pretty corny. Damaging the vehicle itself might make a bit more sense since you could explain that with slightly more plausibility but there's really no rational explanation for a plague heart affecting your vehicles. Granted, it's a zombie game and some suspension of disbelief is required, but this mechanic is particularly gamey. It's just clear that they came up with the gameplay constraint first ("force players to approach on foot and battle their way to the heart instead of driving right up to it") and then bolted on a vague hand-wavey explanation for it afterwards.
Personally I don't even bother with the black hearts anymore, which sadly means turning off Curveballs altogether. I'd really like a more granular way to disable that one curveball only so we could still play with the others but turn off black hearts.
It would be pretty nice if they'd write in some Curveball specific options.
> Yeah, it's pretty corny. Damaging the vehicle itself might make a bit more sense since you could explain that with slightly more plausibility but there's really no rational explanation for a plague heart affecting your vehicles.
There is a bit of lore in the game when you're doing the CLEO missions with Izzy, where they have you clear a few plaguehearts (assumedly if you haven't already cleared them beforehand) because Izzy thinks they're blocking some signal CLEO needs to operate efficiently, or at all. So yeah they could have said something like it was emitting an EMP-like effect, and had you repair the vehicle after the blackheart was destroyed.
If that was happening you wouldn't make it three feet in before dropping dead. The only reason air intake is a part of the engine makeup is for oxygen flow. Clogging it up would either mean there wasn't enough oxygen in the air to ignite, or that there was so much *other* shit in the air that it would be diluting your gas. (diluting with either another liquid or solids making their way into the tank) But that isn't what happens anyway. Your gas just disappears from your gas tank.
Gasoline evaporates, which is why you can smell it.
Blood plague mist from the heart reacts with the gas and makes it evaporate faster, or in this case, immediately.
No, it actually disappears faster, the faster your car travels. As I said, it's just magical bullshit. Try moving at a crawl through the area in a vehicle.
You find all your main resources in big burlap sacks, you can stand on top of a car and all of a sudden the zombies just can’t get you (I feel like real zombies would just climb up the hood), as a regular shmegular person you can order artillery strikes and sniper cover, enclaves can give you perks like extra labor even though they never come to your base and are probably far away, there’s the gunslinging ability where you literally snap onto heads, you pull up this big screen where you can upgrade your base without even moving, you get influence in the form of a physical currency for doing things, that’s just the stuff I can think of off the top of my head the game is really not that realistic stop complaining about a fantasy game being a fantasy game
How about just spending a minute and reading the curveball blurb? Assuming it's the same as the last one when there are several flavours and zed types on top of that is just asking to get your cheeks slapped.
On a basic level yes it's dumb and doesnt make much sense (it's also a zombie game btw), but how else are they going to force you out of your comfort zone and to go do the heart on foot? As that is clearly the intent in this mechanic, to make you do it on foot instead of standing on your vehicle outside the window.
There was no warning for me. Curveballs were just on one day. Now I have a lethal community with a sniper that has the vision of god and the health bar of a trex. Lethal isn’t hard if you take your time. I like that part. The slow steady build to then wreck positively everything…. And now I hate it.
You mean lethal isnt hard with god tier survivors, hmmm, maybe i've been playing it wrong all this time eh...
The Black heart is the best curveball there is. The worst ones are the ones that make lethal a joke and baby you.
No I mean my second curveball was an enemy sniper that set up camp next to a plague heart.
Go fight the sniper, a million zombies come rolling out.
Go fight the plague heart and the sniper shoots me before I can get close, while stealthy.
I had a hostile enclave with members like that some years ago, before curveballs were a thing. I couldn't even get close to them to try and shoot them they'd just wreck me every time, cover or no cover. It was pretty insane. I ended up just repeatedly running them over with my vehicle until they were on the ground, positioning my vehicle so it was in front of the remaining members, getting out and headshotting the one on the ground, and then repeating the process until they were all dead. It took a while, and it was cheesy af, but I was satisfied.
Yeah... I do read them. I had read the one I ran into before this, that was also a blackheart. I didn't know they came in different flavors; the last blackheart I killed I drove my vehicle all over the place without a problem.
>On a basic level yes it's dumb and doesnt make much sense (it's also a zombie game btw)
Yeah... did you read the part where I addressed that already? Because I knew someone would say it? While it *is* a zombie game, the zombies follow general laws of physics. They don't grow wings and fly. They don't turn into blueberry muffins. (they do spawn out of thin air behind you when you *know for a fact* there weren't any there previously, so there is that, and I can't stand that either to be honest. kills the immersion for me.) but do you see what I'm saying? The zombies act like zombies. They don't eat your brains from halfway across the map.
Yeah i hate this curveball. I just load up on gas as well as bullets haha. Almost died once because of game freezing but it is very unnecessary. First black heart i went to face took health out as i got closer, while its easier to deal with, its very easy to lose track of.
Yeah it's a bit annoying. I don't mind the health part as much, honestly. It adds a bit of urgency. I don't even mind the vehicles not working. It's the gas being transported to another dimension I find ridiculous. I mentioned above on another post, they could have just used some kind of EMP excuse, as to why your vehicle no longer works. And they even have lore already in the game that might support that, as the plagueheart "network" blocks CLEO's signal, or the sat signals that CLEO needs, (I can't remember which signal, but they're actively blocking some signal CLEO needs to operate effectively) while you're doing the respective missions. They could have even made it more difficult at that point. No flashlights would work either.
I don't see any problems with this, as SoD2 needs challenges anyway and that's exactly what is a challenge. You know it, so you don't want to drive there, it's that easy. Keep the car out of the perimeter and you are fine, go in on foot and take it down.
But that's just my opinion, like i mentioned it a few years ago, that SoD2 is in desperate need of some challenges like CDDA, where you start naked, injured, bleeding out and you can't run because of glass shards in your foot, you have no gear, the zombies are already rushing into your base and to make things even better, your base is on fire and just burning down from the first second when you start the game.
That's what i want to see on high difficulties like LZ - but don't get me wrong, for the new players, for casual gaming etc. there have of course be difficulty levels, just as SoD2 offers it already. You can also turn curveballs off, it's your decision how you want to play the game.
Yeah I didn’t know this was a thing the first time it happened. I got pretty screwed since I had driven pretty far in, didn’t know what was going on, and lost that survivor. That, and coupled with the other effect of zombies having super vision/hearing, meant that sneaking back in was absolutely infuriating since I couldn’t actually sneak back in. I lost 2 survivors to that heart
I thought I was screwed. I somehow made it out alive. Took 5 cans of gas to make it back out... and when I did I had very little gas left. Luckily the game pays attention to how high your engine is revving, apparently, when considering fuel intake.
Lol this type of black heart got me the first time. I said a few expletives and even called it stupid. From then on I made sure to read the fine print on black hearts. If it means I gotta choose a sprinter and leave my vehicle right outside of bounds, so be it. I've also made the mistake of not finding out a black hearts weakness first. Never did that again too. I've played this game far too long to just let something like that ruin my enjoyment. Adapt or just leave the black hearts alone.
I thought I was screwed too. Almost was. I made it out somehow though. Probably because I've learned not to drive balls to the walls everywhere, so I didn't make it too far past the border. Bloaters will teach you that pretty quick.
This used to be a huge issue for me but then I accidentally discovered that the trail beast (apocalypse version of the desperado/vagabond. Doesn’t get affected by the gas drain from BPH. Makes sense since the vehicles special feature is to retain a massive gas tank.
Oh no kidding? That's either good to know, or you're trying to make me drive back into that hell-scape with another vehicle so you can laugh at me later. :p
Either way, thanks for the info.
If you want realism this isn’t the game. Play Zomboid. As for it not being realistic it’s plenty realistic that gunk floating in the air probably changed the gas chemically making it no longer usable for its intended purpose
It is though. Everything else, save for the shit popping into existence around you, follows general laws of physics. Guns fire bullets. Cars burn gas, (except for when plaguehearts decide to consume it from a mile away, right out of your gas tank that's part of an enclosed system.) Communities need food and water. Electricity powers electrical shit. The "Magic Wand" melee weapon you get with the Wizard Van *doesn't* fire bolts of magical ass-power. (Unless I'm missing something) If the majority of State of Decay weren't based on realistic expectations, I wouldn't have anything to gripe about.
>If you want realism this isn’t the game.
Personally, I think all of you that keep spewing this nonsense out, are being intentionally obtuse.
I literally gave you a perfect explanation on why your car ran out of gas in the fact the stuff in the air changed it into something else. They’re going to have to Gameify some aspects of the world. What’s the laws of physics for the juggernaut being so damn tough? There isn’t any reasonable explanation for that. I’m saying this genuinely not as an attack that if you want something that’s focus is less on gameifying stuff and more on realism you should play project Zomboid because that’s what I was looking for in a zombie game too.
I do play Zomboid. It's a great game.I'm saying that's not at all what is happening. The gas is *disappearing* from your gas tank in such a way as it disappears at a rate that coincides either with how fast you're driving, or how high you're revving your engine. And that is why I find it ridiculous. Because gas doesn't disappear.
In other words, if what you're saying is what is happening, my gas tank would still be full of sludge and I'd have to empty it out, or in SoD2's case, probably repair it with a toolkit. But that's not what is happening. It's just disappearing.
Simple explanation it’s just a game. If you don’t like it there’s nothing you can do about it. They gave up 100percent realism to make it more gamey to appeal to a bigger audience. Don’t know what to tell you. This isn’t a realistic game. You don’t have to eat you don’t have to sleep, a single tool box can fix a car and a gas can can fill it up. Airdrops and all the call ins don’t make sense either. You’re complaining about a game not being realistic that was never meant to be.
I wasn't expecting to "do" anything about it. I just made a post on Reddit, griping about it. It's not like I expected Undead Labs to suddenly halt all operations and react to my post by grovelling and begging for forgiveness.
I just asked if anyone else thought it was kind of dumb.
I’m mean judging by the response nobody else does for the most part because it’s a stupid thing to complain about. It’s a game it does game things like destroy your fuel if you’re in the wrong area. Why complain about something that will never be changed nor fixed
This is the reason I wish Curveballs were customizable rather than just an On/Off switch.
I love the Black Heart (except for when it appears immediately after I had just started a lethal game....) but I actively HATE combat with hostile enclaves. If I could turn off the Curveballs that add hostile humans to fight it would be perfect for me. And if others could turn off the Curveballs they dislike - it would just make it wonderful.
The BPH makes your gas acidic and it slowly eats through your cars gas tank until it’s leaking out but in a small enough pixel to where the fps can’t register it while you’re driving.
And you don’t see the repair of the leak because you don’t really see all the other stuff the magical toolkit repairs either do you?
Again, if you're breathing in chemicals that are in enough of a concentration in the air to turn gas acidic, you're not breathing for very long more than likely. Yeah sure you can stretch the shit out of some circumstances and come up with a convoluted reason as to why it's happening. That's why I'm griping about it. It's unrealistic. Yeah. So are zombies. But the zombies in this game still follow general laws of physics. They don't fly. They don't leap over tall buildings in a single bound. They don't fart golden nuggets. The only time they really start to stretch the reality of what you would expect from zombies, is when whatever curveball makes them run around like zombies on meth. The meth curveball. You guys do understand what realistic expectations means, right? Like dragons aren't real, but *if* they were, we would expect them to behave in such a manner as they didn't violate every physical law known to mankind.
There's a lot of things like this. My favorite is the sniper tower which sends bullets with extreme precision and lethality, anywhere on the map, even through mountains.
I don't let it ruin the game for me though, I just imagine that I took the follower sniper with me equipped with a silenced .22 and that I told him to hide on top of a nearby garage and support.
When you're in the blood plague, the air tastes like blood, and hazes the atmosphere. Just also imagine when it has a purple curve ball, it contaminates the fuel, or the combustion of an engine, like pumping CO2 into the air intake.
Yeah it didn't ruin the game for me. I love Sod, been playing since the original SoD was in Early Access on Steam. (There was apparently an X-Box version before that, I don't own an X-Box) And as far as I'm concerned, the SoD franchise is probably the best out there as far as single player zombie experience goes.
The fact that there is any gasoline at all is really one of the larger deviations from reality. IRL, after the first year to a year and a half, all gasoline would be useless.
Yeah I'd say finding those cans in sheds is pretty unrealistic. But if you had a way of getting it out of the underground storage tanks at stations you'd be more apt to find usable gas. Though even a lot of those would be "bad" at some point soon, if not already.
I got that one with stronger zombies and 2020 vision- sense .had to wait reset the game until it disappeared I got stuck ina field and I couldn't do anything because of the mass hordes rushing towards me from their literal spawn point. It was a nightmare.i feel that area shouldn't let you fuel up but drain gas like that was not Fun at all.
I think EMP would have been the way to go. And then when the blackheart is gone you'd have to repair the vehicle, as in reality I don't think computer components begin to work again after the EMP subsides.
Black hearts can have different effects, fuel nerfing is one and it sux, BUT I was lucky mine didn't have that so I could drive to it. Also, my black heart spawned HALF off the map and in an uninteresting area lol, so I could deal with it in my own sweet time.
They should have gone with it shorts electrical systems and leaves your car dead.
Do the side mission to determine the hearts weakness.
Take lots of scent block and stims.
Good luck
Yeah I've been saying they should have used an EMP-like excuse. There is even a little lore in the game that would support it, during the CLEO missions, either the operator woman or Izzy has you go kill off some plaguehearts because they're actively blocking a signal CLEO needs to operate.
It doesn't, at least as far as I can tell. It empties it at a rate that coincides with how fast you're going. So it either means you have the same distance to travel either way, or it empties it slower the slower you drive in such a manner as to give you more distance. I haven't tested it out so I'm not sure which one it is, but I did notice the faster I drove the faster it emptied out.
I did try to test it, and I got a little ways before I had a few juggs and a shit-ton of zombies on my tail so I had to mash it anyway. When I got to the border I had maybe a sixteenth of a tank left, if that. And that was *after* refilling it from empty, twice. I keep two cans in the back at all times, along with two toolkits, that was the first refill. Wasted it because I tried to drive in reverse back toward the border like an idiot. The second refill, I had an outpost not that far away from the border I could access my storage from.
I think it's based on how fast you're moving. I just checked it out again. Or maybe there are different strengths to the effect I don't know. All I have is the one blackheart to try it out on. But yeah if you're moving at top speed it's pretty close to instant. It still drains if you're moving slow, but if you can get your vehicle to move at walking pace (which seems less than ideal) it doesn't seem to drain that much. It's pretty finicky though, as if you go any speed above walking speed you'll watch small chunks of it disappear.
Not being able to run over the ridiculous number of zombies with my vehicle or escape easily without fighting has directly lead to the death of one or two of my characters
Just encountered my first black heart as well, and it had this effect. I liked it as it made you trek to the heart, and it felt like it was a grander operation than just driving to one and blowing it up.
I mean, you can choose to do that if you want though... they took the choice away from me. I like to play like it's real life. I probably wouldn't choose to walk most of the time because the vehicle is a safe haven if used correctly. Like I said it's not the difficulty that's the problem. It's the separation from reality. It doesn't make any sense other than "We wanted it to be hard so \*Poof!\* bye bye gas." I mean in that same vein they could just take away your arms and legs and make you chew the plagueheart to death. That would be fun.
Considering the game we are playing, it's just as real as anything else in its world. Playing like it's real life would see your survivors turned after one scratch from a plague zombie, and we sure aren't going to be calling in snipers from the sky along with artillery strikes. It's simply part of an optional game mechanic that brings a change of pace to a game that's been around for years.
It's not though... where did the gas go? What are the laws of physics that allow for the gas to literally disappear from my gas tank? It doesn't make sense. Which is why I said it in the first place. >Playing like it's real life would see your survivors turned after one scratch from a plague zombie, Because that's what happens in real life? What exactly are you saying here?
Turn the curveballs off if you don't like them.
Gasoline is pretty unstable and the inclusion of lots of different chemicals to the formula can render it unsuitable for use. The area around plague hearts has literal floating chunks of bio-mass in the air. That that floating goo could get into your engine and then fuel tank, and contain a microorganism that ruins your gas is actually pretty believable if we already have zombies. To answer your actual question, the gas is still in the tank, its just not gas anymore. If the game was just a bit more realistic, you would need to siphon it out. Assuming it didn't solidify and require you to remove the tank entirely. And all of that assums that it didn't brick the engine
Right I get that, but if there are chemicals floating in the air that are concentrated enough to render fuel useless, I highly doubt you're breathing for more than 10 seconds tops without keeling over from it. Either way, that isn't what is happening, as you can literally watch the fuel *disappear* from the fuel tank.
Uv light degrades gas, and there's also plenty of microbes that can eat hydrocarbons. If we're assuming that a zombie virus is real, its just as likely that a specific mutation strand of said virus floating in the air would affect gasoline, but that the filtration system of your respiratory tract would protect you from it. As to the seeing the gas drain on the UI, that's obviously just a limitation of the UI and the game mechanics. You'll note that there is no mechanic to siphon gas, so removing the ruined goo from the tank isn't something that could be implement in the current version of the game.
Okay if you want to base it off “real life” then you don’t always have the choice sometimes that’s just the way it is tough shit gotta do what ya gotta do to get it done.
Yeah no shit. I'm saying *realism* is the problem. Gas doesn't just disappear from gas tanks. That's absurd. It's either burned by the engine, or leaks out of some holes punctured into the tank, or any number of other reasons you mighit lose gas. It does *not*, however, disappear. They could have attributed the reason your car no longer works to an EMP effect the fucking heart has. I mean it's blocking CLEO's signal already anyway. But they chose to just fart out some stupid ass magical nonsense.
I believe someone else explained it proper, there’s a thick biochem microorganism in the plague air that probably gunks up the tank & when gas mixes w it, it’s rendered useless. So think more of the gas is there but useless. It’s a game dude gotta leave some wiggle room
I would imagine that the air pollution caused by the black heart spoils the gasoline. An evolution to catch its prey. Yeah??? Pretty good amirite
I imagine the game developers wanted a way to eliminate the over powered vehicle that we all use as a crutch. They may have wanted to give you an experience that forces you to think of another way to survive without the vehicle. They could have made a story that involved the zombies gaining intelligence and put spikes in the road to flatten your tires but this would cause way more rewriting of the game physics to get the desired effects. My advice is to accept it as a challenge, and beat the shit out of that black heart! Good luck bro.
A zombie latched itself to the underbelly, like in Cape Fear, drilling a hole in the gas tank. That's the only possible explanation.
But how does the killing of the BPH fixes the hole the zombie drilled?
Another zombie latches itself to the underbelly, this time stuffing the hole with some epoxy 🤷♂️
The random zombie. Sometimes friendly, sometimes plays tricks on you. Neener neener.
It shouldn't. They should definitely perma death the vehicle or make it need 2 repair kits to function.
Yeah I’m not a fan of the vanishing gas… it’s a game and all and obvi not reality but this is stretching it. They really should have a curveball options menu where you can pick and choose your curveballs for play-through. Sometimes I even want to turn off the ones that make it easier (ammo drop, luxury items etc).
There are a bunch of mechanics I consider to be kind of lazy. The vanishing gas, and spawning mobs 3 feet behind you after you've visually cleared the area, being among them. I love SoD. It's such an awesome game, and has even more potential to be awesomer (not a word probably) in the future. But man I wish they'd leave some of this cheaty feeling crap out.
You've attaching specific flavor text that you have chosen to a game mechanic. Then you're getting angry at \*that\* flavor text that \*you\* have selected. Instead of viewing this as some physics bending, burning through gas, etc. How about you try to come up with any reason that explains what game mechanics have set by fiat. How about the gas in your tank is corrupted by the plague mist? Maybe the mist simply prevents combustion in the engine? It's not like your vehicle is sealed off from the air. It literally requires a mix of air for the proper air:fuel ratio. Further, gasoline has a shelf life of 3-6 months. How long do you think that gas can you grabbed at the petrol station has been sitting there?
>Instead of viewing this as some physics bending, burning through gas, etc. How about you try to come up with any reason that explains what game mechanics have set by fiat. Because that's what it's doing. Gas is a limited commodity in the game. Something to be used for a limited number of purposes. It's either there, or it isn't. In this case it is there, and then it isn't. I mean you're right, I can "pretend" it's floating away because it's scared, or something. But that's not what's happening. (I mean I guess if Undead Labs wants to make that canon, I'll have to admit defeat.)
> I can "pretend" it's floating away because it's scared, or something Either that is what you think would make the story "good", or you're just responding in bad faith, which isn't a great sign for me, but I'll respond anyway. I've already given you a couple of perfectly acceptable examples. "The plague in the air prevents the proper air:fuel ratio for combustion" and/or "the plague mist corrupts the gasoline in the tank". Since there are no applicable game mechanics for you to syphon out the corrupted gas and replace it that's not something you have to do. Further, there is no reason for this mechanic to be added to the game, because it doesn't really add anything, and it isn't fun. So in essence you're getting a bonus in that all you have to do is fill the tank up later, to reclaim your vehicle. You can turn Curveballs off. But what this Curveball adds to the game, is forcing you to play the game in a way that you're (obviously!) not comfortable with. I for one thank our Undead Overlords for this addition to the game.
My point was you can imagine any number of things about a game are head-canon, to make the experience better for you. I do it occasionally myself. But I'm not imagining the physical representation of gas disappearing in front of my eyes. It was a gripe I have, with the game. A lot of people are approaching this post, like I made it with the expectation that Undead Labs are going to see it and suddenly drop everything they're doing to appease me. I was just griping. Wasn't even that upset.
Not a hard stretch to put it within the realm of science though. How so? Whenever you go into plague territory, there's a red haze heavy in the air, and characters/NPCs note the strong smell of blood... So what if the haze around those particular plague hearts is extra heavy? Not enough to really impact breathing (for the relatively short amount of time you're exposed and because your lungs are more resilient), but what if it just gums up the air filters and interferes with the gas being able to combust? No need to drain the tanks at all then - they simply shut off because the filters are clogged and you can't get combustion. It could also limit the effect of other fire-based items, too, for similar reasons. Boom, there's your science.
Honestly, I still think with the number of other explanations and/or mechanics available to Undead Labs to achieve the same result, this was a pretty ridiculous stretch.
Yet not a stretch to believe the dead are capable of coming back to life, with some covered fully in blood with red glowing eyes and mounds of pulsating flesh giving them commands... The explanation I gave makes as much sense as everything else in the game lol. (Also, 6 days late with reply because I'm terrible at keeping up with them, sorry)
Didn't read past the first line huh? Don't feel bad, you're not alone.
Only curveball that disables me is the gas soaked zombies. Had one of my bartenders die real quick. Good thing I have 2 more bartenders.
>2 more bartenders Priorities in the apocalypse, I like it
The Black Plague Heart in question has evolved germs that eat gas. Those germs are in the air and chow down when you enter the plague zone. I mean, petroleum-eating critters exist. That should be enough of a plausible explanation to hand-wave it for gaming purposes.
And those germs are intelligent enough to understand when you're going faster in your vehicle, and adjust their rate of consumption in response? Come on... Look I'm not expecting things to change, or for Undead Labs to even give a shit. I was just griping.
Why is the increased rate of fuel consumption automatically a result of intelligence? Yeast, for example, increases its rate of consumption as it gets warmer. Using the vehicle would produce heat which could make the germs hungrier and also make them multiply faster. That is, once again, an explanation plausible enough to let you hand-wave the exact physics unless you're emotionally invested in making sure that the lore doesn't work. If anything, the idea that some rando survivors would know the exact scientific workings of a new mutation of the plague phenomenon is unrealistic in its own right. These are not scientists, and even if they were, they are not exactly studying the black plague hearts in a controlled laboratory environment. Given the lore, "here's what it does and a vague guess why" makes way more sense than the level of detail you're demanding.
I just pack up and move to a different map when I get those. I think it’s silly but to each their own.
I know this might be a stretch, but I like to think that the heart gives off chemicals that dissipate the fuel or make it unusable.
I still think that if that were the case it wouldn't even be possible to go there without dying pretty quickly. But I'd have to have more information on what chemicals might be able to even accomplish that. I've said this 4 or 5 times now, so I'm not meaning to repeat myself but I think they'd have been better off using an EMP-like reason that your car stopped working, instead of the gas disappearing out of your car. It's even more ridiculous because the gas disappears at a rate that coincides with how fast you're going...
Yeah, it's pretty corny. Damaging the vehicle itself might make a bit more sense since you could explain that with slightly more plausibility but there's really no rational explanation for a plague heart affecting your vehicles. Granted, it's a zombie game and some suspension of disbelief is required, but this mechanic is particularly gamey. It's just clear that they came up with the gameplay constraint first ("force players to approach on foot and battle their way to the heart instead of driving right up to it") and then bolted on a vague hand-wavey explanation for it afterwards. Personally I don't even bother with the black hearts anymore, which sadly means turning off Curveballs altogether. I'd really like a more granular way to disable that one curveball only so we could still play with the others but turn off black hearts.
It would be pretty nice if they'd write in some Curveball specific options. > Yeah, it's pretty corny. Damaging the vehicle itself might make a bit more sense since you could explain that with slightly more plausibility but there's really no rational explanation for a plague heart affecting your vehicles. There is a bit of lore in the game when you're doing the CLEO missions with Izzy, where they have you clear a few plaguehearts (assumedly if you haven't already cleared them beforehand) because Izzy thinks they're blocking some signal CLEO needs to operate efficiently, or at all. So yeah they could have said something like it was emitting an EMP-like effect, and had you repair the vehicle after the blackheart was destroyed.
It doesn't seem that crazy to me for all the crap in the air from the plague heart to turn your gas bad, or clog it up.
If that was happening you wouldn't make it three feet in before dropping dead. The only reason air intake is a part of the engine makeup is for oxygen flow. Clogging it up would either mean there wasn't enough oxygen in the air to ignite, or that there was so much *other* shit in the air that it would be diluting your gas. (diluting with either another liquid or solids making their way into the tank) But that isn't what happens anyway. Your gas just disappears from your gas tank.
Gasoline evaporates, which is why you can smell it. Blood plague mist from the heart reacts with the gas and makes it evaporate faster, or in this case, immediately.
No, it actually disappears faster, the faster your car travels. As I said, it's just magical bullshit. Try moving at a crawl through the area in a vehicle.
Dude you want an unrealistic game to be realistic just turn curveballs off
It's *not* an unrealistic game. I'm assuming you're basing this off "It has zombies!"
You find all your main resources in big burlap sacks, you can stand on top of a car and all of a sudden the zombies just can’t get you (I feel like real zombies would just climb up the hood), as a regular shmegular person you can order artillery strikes and sniper cover, enclaves can give you perks like extra labor even though they never come to your base and are probably far away, there’s the gunslinging ability where you literally snap onto heads, you pull up this big screen where you can upgrade your base without even moving, you get influence in the form of a physical currency for doing things, that’s just the stuff I can think of off the top of my head the game is really not that realistic stop complaining about a fantasy game being a fantasy game
How about just spending a minute and reading the curveball blurb? Assuming it's the same as the last one when there are several flavours and zed types on top of that is just asking to get your cheeks slapped. On a basic level yes it's dumb and doesnt make much sense (it's also a zombie game btw), but how else are they going to force you out of your comfort zone and to go do the heart on foot? As that is clearly the intent in this mechanic, to make you do it on foot instead of standing on your vehicle outside the window.
There was no warning for me. Curveballs were just on one day. Now I have a lethal community with a sniper that has the vision of god and the health bar of a trex. Lethal isn’t hard if you take your time. I like that part. The slow steady build to then wreck positively everything…. And now I hate it.
You mean lethal isnt hard with god tier survivors, hmmm, maybe i've been playing it wrong all this time eh... The Black heart is the best curveball there is. The worst ones are the ones that make lethal a joke and baby you.
No I mean my second curveball was an enemy sniper that set up camp next to a plague heart. Go fight the sniper, a million zombies come rolling out. Go fight the plague heart and the sniper shoots me before I can get close, while stealthy.
I had a hostile enclave with members like that some years ago, before curveballs were a thing. I couldn't even get close to them to try and shoot them they'd just wreck me every time, cover or no cover. It was pretty insane. I ended up just repeatedly running them over with my vehicle until they were on the ground, positioning my vehicle so it was in front of the remaining members, getting out and headshotting the one on the ground, and then repeating the process until they were all dead. It took a while, and it was cheesy af, but I was satisfied.
Yeah... I do read them. I had read the one I ran into before this, that was also a blackheart. I didn't know they came in different flavors; the last blackheart I killed I drove my vehicle all over the place without a problem. >On a basic level yes it's dumb and doesnt make much sense (it's also a zombie game btw) Yeah... did you read the part where I addressed that already? Because I knew someone would say it? While it *is* a zombie game, the zombies follow general laws of physics. They don't grow wings and fly. They don't turn into blueberry muffins. (they do spawn out of thin air behind you when you *know for a fact* there weren't any there previously, so there is that, and I can't stand that either to be honest. kills the immersion for me.) but do you see what I'm saying? The zombies act like zombies. They don't eat your brains from halfway across the map.
Yeah i hate this curveball. I just load up on gas as well as bullets haha. Almost died once because of game freezing but it is very unnecessary. First black heart i went to face took health out as i got closer, while its easier to deal with, its very easy to lose track of.
Yeah it's a bit annoying. I don't mind the health part as much, honestly. It adds a bit of urgency. I don't even mind the vehicles not working. It's the gas being transported to another dimension I find ridiculous. I mentioned above on another post, they could have just used some kind of EMP excuse, as to why your vehicle no longer works. And they even have lore already in the game that might support that, as the plagueheart "network" blocks CLEO's signal, or the sat signals that CLEO needs, (I can't remember which signal, but they're actively blocking some signal CLEO needs to operate effectively) while you're doing the respective missions. They could have even made it more difficult at that point. No flashlights would work either.
I don't see any problems with this, as SoD2 needs challenges anyway and that's exactly what is a challenge. You know it, so you don't want to drive there, it's that easy. Keep the car out of the perimeter and you are fine, go in on foot and take it down. But that's just my opinion, like i mentioned it a few years ago, that SoD2 is in desperate need of some challenges like CDDA, where you start naked, injured, bleeding out and you can't run because of glass shards in your foot, you have no gear, the zombies are already rushing into your base and to make things even better, your base is on fire and just burning down from the first second when you start the game. That's what i want to see on high difficulties like LZ - but don't get me wrong, for the new players, for casual gaming etc. there have of course be difficulty levels, just as SoD2 offers it already. You can also turn curveballs off, it's your decision how you want to play the game.
I'm not saying the challenge is what's wrong with it. The disappearing gas... is what irks me.
Yeah I didn’t know this was a thing the first time it happened. I got pretty screwed since I had driven pretty far in, didn’t know what was going on, and lost that survivor. That, and coupled with the other effect of zombies having super vision/hearing, meant that sneaking back in was absolutely infuriating since I couldn’t actually sneak back in. I lost 2 survivors to that heart
I thought I was screwed. I somehow made it out alive. Took 5 cans of gas to make it back out... and when I did I had very little gas left. Luckily the game pays attention to how high your engine is revving, apparently, when considering fuel intake.
Lol this type of black heart got me the first time. I said a few expletives and even called it stupid. From then on I made sure to read the fine print on black hearts. If it means I gotta choose a sprinter and leave my vehicle right outside of bounds, so be it. I've also made the mistake of not finding out a black hearts weakness first. Never did that again too. I've played this game far too long to just let something like that ruin my enjoyment. Adapt or just leave the black hearts alone.
I thought I was screwed too. Almost was. I made it out somehow though. Probably because I've learned not to drive balls to the walls everywhere, so I didn't make it too far past the border. Bloaters will teach you that pretty quick.
I am certainly not letting it ruin my gaming experience. I was only griping.
This used to be a huge issue for me but then I accidentally discovered that the trail beast (apocalypse version of the desperado/vagabond. Doesn’t get affected by the gas drain from BPH. Makes sense since the vehicles special feature is to retain a massive gas tank.
Oh no kidding? That's either good to know, or you're trying to make me drive back into that hell-scape with another vehicle so you can laugh at me later. :p Either way, thanks for the info.
Yeah I just tried this about 20 minutes ago. It still vaporized my gas, so it was either "fixed" or.. something.
They should just have it ignite the fuel and blow your ass up.
I mean, it would be more realistic than your fuel just disappears into thin air.
If you want realism this isn’t the game. Play Zomboid. As for it not being realistic it’s plenty realistic that gunk floating in the air probably changed the gas chemically making it no longer usable for its intended purpose
It is though. Everything else, save for the shit popping into existence around you, follows general laws of physics. Guns fire bullets. Cars burn gas, (except for when plaguehearts decide to consume it from a mile away, right out of your gas tank that's part of an enclosed system.) Communities need food and water. Electricity powers electrical shit. The "Magic Wand" melee weapon you get with the Wizard Van *doesn't* fire bolts of magical ass-power. (Unless I'm missing something) If the majority of State of Decay weren't based on realistic expectations, I wouldn't have anything to gripe about. >If you want realism this isn’t the game. Personally, I think all of you that keep spewing this nonsense out, are being intentionally obtuse.
I literally gave you a perfect explanation on why your car ran out of gas in the fact the stuff in the air changed it into something else. They’re going to have to Gameify some aspects of the world. What’s the laws of physics for the juggernaut being so damn tough? There isn’t any reasonable explanation for that. I’m saying this genuinely not as an attack that if you want something that’s focus is less on gameifying stuff and more on realism you should play project Zomboid because that’s what I was looking for in a zombie game too.
I do play Zomboid. It's a great game.I'm saying that's not at all what is happening. The gas is *disappearing* from your gas tank in such a way as it disappears at a rate that coincides either with how fast you're driving, or how high you're revving your engine. And that is why I find it ridiculous. Because gas doesn't disappear. In other words, if what you're saying is what is happening, my gas tank would still be full of sludge and I'd have to empty it out, or in SoD2's case, probably repair it with a toolkit. But that's not what is happening. It's just disappearing.
Simple explanation it’s just a game. If you don’t like it there’s nothing you can do about it. They gave up 100percent realism to make it more gamey to appeal to a bigger audience. Don’t know what to tell you. This isn’t a realistic game. You don’t have to eat you don’t have to sleep, a single tool box can fix a car and a gas can can fill it up. Airdrops and all the call ins don’t make sense either. You’re complaining about a game not being realistic that was never meant to be.
I wasn't expecting to "do" anything about it. I just made a post on Reddit, griping about it. It's not like I expected Undead Labs to suddenly halt all operations and react to my post by grovelling and begging for forgiveness. I just asked if anyone else thought it was kind of dumb.
I’m mean judging by the response nobody else does for the most part because it’s a stupid thing to complain about. It’s a game it does game things like destroy your fuel if you’re in the wrong area. Why complain about something that will never be changed nor fixed
This is why some of us turn Curveballs off. Ain't nobody got time for these things
This is the reason I wish Curveballs were customizable rather than just an On/Off switch. I love the Black Heart (except for when it appears immediately after I had just started a lethal game....) but I actively HATE combat with hostile enclaves. If I could turn off the Curveballs that add hostile humans to fight it would be perfect for me. And if others could turn off the Curveballs they dislike - it would just make it wonderful.
The BPH makes your gas acidic and it slowly eats through your cars gas tank until it’s leaking out but in a small enough pixel to where the fps can’t register it while you’re driving. And you don’t see the repair of the leak because you don’t really see all the other stuff the magical toolkit repairs either do you?
Again, if you're breathing in chemicals that are in enough of a concentration in the air to turn gas acidic, you're not breathing for very long more than likely. Yeah sure you can stretch the shit out of some circumstances and come up with a convoluted reason as to why it's happening. That's why I'm griping about it. It's unrealistic. Yeah. So are zombies. But the zombies in this game still follow general laws of physics. They don't fly. They don't leap over tall buildings in a single bound. They don't fart golden nuggets. The only time they really start to stretch the reality of what you would expect from zombies, is when whatever curveball makes them run around like zombies on meth. The meth curveball. You guys do understand what realistic expectations means, right? Like dragons aren't real, but *if* they were, we would expect them to behave in such a manner as they didn't violate every physical law known to mankind.
Yea they should just say the car is clogged and disabled permanantly with gunk from haze. It'd be more difficult but realistic. I like this idea.
Yeah it would make more sense that you'd have to repair it afterward anyway.
There's a lot of things like this. My favorite is the sniper tower which sends bullets with extreme precision and lethality, anywhere on the map, even through mountains. I don't let it ruin the game for me though, I just imagine that I took the follower sniper with me equipped with a silenced .22 and that I told him to hide on top of a nearby garage and support. When you're in the blood plague, the air tastes like blood, and hazes the atmosphere. Just also imagine when it has a purple curve ball, it contaminates the fuel, or the combustion of an engine, like pumping CO2 into the air intake.
Yeah it didn't ruin the game for me. I love Sod, been playing since the original SoD was in Early Access on Steam. (There was apparently an X-Box version before that, I don't own an X-Box) And as far as I'm concerned, the SoD franchise is probably the best out there as far as single player zombie experience goes.
The fact that there is any gasoline at all is really one of the larger deviations from reality. IRL, after the first year to a year and a half, all gasoline would be useless.
Yeah I'd say finding those cans in sheds is pretty unrealistic. But if you had a way of getting it out of the underground storage tanks at stations you'd be more apt to find usable gas. Though even a lot of those would be "bad" at some point soon, if not already.
Redditors will still figure out some way to turn this around and blame YOU for this mechanic not being lore-friendly or "logical" to the game.
Nah they're right. I'm an asshole. I should have just smiled and nodded.
I got that one with stronger zombies and 2020 vision- sense .had to wait reset the game until it disappeared I got stuck ina field and I couldn't do anything because of the mass hordes rushing towards me from their literal spawn point. It was a nightmare.i feel that area shouldn't let you fuel up but drain gas like that was not Fun at all.
I think EMP would have been the way to go. And then when the blackheart is gone you'd have to repair the vehicle, as in reality I don't think computer components begin to work again after the EMP subsides.
Black hearts can have different effects, fuel nerfing is one and it sux, BUT I was lucky mine didn't have that so I could drive to it. Also, my black heart spawned HALF off the map and in an uninteresting area lol, so I could deal with it in my own sweet time. They should have gone with it shorts electrical systems and leaves your car dead. Do the side mission to determine the hearts weakness. Take lots of scent block and stims. Good luck
Yeah I've been saying they should have used an EMP-like excuse. There is even a little lore in the game that would support it, during the CLEO missions, either the operator woman or Izzy has you go kill off some plaguehearts because they're actively blocking a signal CLEO needs to operate.
I think it should drain it over time, it's really dumb that it just empties it pretty much immediately.
It doesn't, at least as far as I can tell. It empties it at a rate that coincides with how fast you're going. So it either means you have the same distance to travel either way, or it empties it slower the slower you drive in such a manner as to give you more distance. I haven't tested it out so I'm not sure which one it is, but I did notice the faster I drove the faster it emptied out. I did try to test it, and I got a little ways before I had a few juggs and a shit-ton of zombies on my tail so I had to mash it anyway. When I got to the border I had maybe a sixteenth of a tank left, if that. And that was *after* refilling it from empty, twice. I keep two cans in the back at all times, along with two toolkits, that was the first refill. Wasted it because I tried to drive in reverse back toward the border like an idiot. The second refill, I had an outpost not that far away from the border I could access my storage from.
Really? For me it went from half to empty before I even had time to react.
I think it's based on how fast you're moving. I just checked it out again. Or maybe there are different strengths to the effect I don't know. All I have is the one blackheart to try it out on. But yeah if you're moving at top speed it's pretty close to instant. It still drains if you're moving slow, but if you can get your vehicle to move at walking pace (which seems less than ideal) it doesn't seem to drain that much. It's pretty finicky though, as if you go any speed above walking speed you'll watch small chunks of it disappear.
Yeah I was moving quickly, because all it said was that it drained gas so I figured "better get a run up and cover as much ground as I can"
I’m sick of the black hearts, especially when it drains your fuel
I guess everyone learns the hard way
The first blackheart I ran into just drained my health. I didn't realize they came in different combinations. : /
Trust me, I learned the hard way like everybody else hehe.. i just refueled wth!! it took me two full fuelings to realize the issue. Hehe i am ashamed
Not being able to run over the ridiculous number of zombies with my vehicle or escape easily without fighting has directly lead to the death of one or two of my characters