DayZ Event – Get to da Choppa!

OK so first of all I apologise that this has taken a little longer to get around to than I first thought, but I’ve been a little tied up over the past few weeks with PS2 and various other wee things, so I had to put this off a bit. Maybe we’ll just call this one of many birthday events though, which we’ll throw during the year if can think up a few more as we go along 🙂

So anyway, the idea here is to get a bunch of us onto DayZ and TS for a good old fashioned XDC session and, as you may have guessed from the thread title, the event itself is paying tribute to XDC’s renowned ability to fly/crash choppers 🙂

Now how this plays out exactly will depend largely on how many people we get, but I’m hoping we can get at least 8 of us from XDC, and then pull in a bunch of friends as well on top of that (Hussars and Rats maybe). The event structure may need some tweaking, but here’s what I’m thinking atm:

I rent a server on which we can play the DayZ Mod (donations welcome, but I’ve already priced it and it should be ok for me to cover this), and this gives us full access to admin and control the whitelist of a mod server. Incidentally the prices I looked at last night for this were for quaterly leases so we’ll have the server to muck about on or even run other events after this as well. Anyway, with admin of the server we can setup a fresh map where nobody has anything other than basic starting gear, and we can tweak the vehicle spawns to our specifications.

Get to da choppa!

The event itself will revolve around a Chooper (and we’ll use a Hind for this), which will be placed in a predetermined location, and it will be missing all or some of it’s parts (tbc depending on the numbers we get for this). The goal will be to fly that chopper and crash it into another predetermined location (tbc but this will be further than 10 metres away from the take off point Chris ;)). The winner will be the person whose body is found in the wreckage of the chopper at the crash site.

It does not matter how much of the chopper you actually repaired, the winner is the person found in the crash.

For the event every man is starting for himself, but how you cooperate or otherwise with people you run into, is up to you. PVP is allowed and is actively encouraged 🙂

Other vehicles will be present on the map.
-Cars, trucks, bikes, boats etc will be normally distributed around the map, with no admin interference. If, when setting this all up, the admin map gives too much information relating to the location of vehicles, I will share the locations.

Now the crucial part. First the Hind will be sufficiently broken so that it will require multiple trips/people to rep it – one car full of parts won’t cut it, so each trip to the Chopper you’ll have to consider the risk of ambush as well as how much you’re setting up the next visitor to the site for a potential win. Also, because the Hind is broken at the start of play, it will automatically have an empty fuel tank, and the game mechanics will prevent it being fueled until it’s been fully repaired. It’s location will be far enough away from the crash site to require significant refueling, which will require the person who completes repairs to throw a few fuel cans in, potentially under fire. The logical solution would be to refuel it enough to move to safer spot, and this is allowed, but if you are starting up the chopper you must declare it as you do it.

This is basically the same as saying “last card” in certain card games, and the purpose is to give other people a chance to intercept the chopper before it reaches the crash site. In addition, given that this is XDC, there is a good chance the chopper will crash enroute to the “official” crash site, and telling people the chopper’s starting up will allow people the option to hedge their bets and find themselves a good spot around the contingency site. If the chopper is crashed but not wrecked (i.e. in a ball of flame) you must declare it’s new location (as best you can – but the chopper has a map and gps on board so this should be easy) and what it needs to rep it again.

The contingency site:

This will be the hospital at Cherno, or the power station at Electro (tbc, and will depend on how easy it is to use the admin options), so if the Hind is destroyed enroute to the crash site, we’ll start a 20 minute timer, after which a fully operational Hind will be spawned at the contingency site (may require a server restart). Whoever can get this chopper to the crash site wins, as before.

Determining the winner:

There is of course a chance that more than one body will turn up in the wreckage of the burning chopper. I do not know at this point, but will test whether the body of someone shot in a chopper, stays in the chopper all the way to a crash site and, if so, whether or not examination of the body tells you the cause of death at the crash site, but we’ll work around this if necessary. There are other ways to be killed in the crash though, but your body must be within 20 metres of the crash spot to count. If more than one person is found in the crash, we’ll have a fireaxe duel to choose a winner (and I’ll setup an arena prior to the game for this).

A final word:

The idea here is just to have a relaxed DayZ session which will likely take some time to complete. People can come and go as they please but we have full control over everything so it can be put on hold/paused should enough people need a break. It may be over quickly, it may not, and the whole structure above is open for discussion so feel free to suggest improvements/alternatives.

I would also like to schedule this on a weekend before the end of November, but this weekend may be too short notice (let me know if not), and the 21st-23rd is a double XP PS2 weekend, so realistically we’re probably looking at the 29th or 30th for this. You don’t need to be free for the whole thing, but let me know when suits best from those options and we’ll plan around that.

So how will you play this? Will you hunt military gear until you are confident you can ambush industrial spawns and kill your way to victory? Will you setup a camp near the chopper to store loot until you can rep it all at once? Will you fix up a vehicle and rush around the map looting as many industrial locations as you can, but giving away your position while you do this? Will you camp the chopper but risk missing the crucial shot or losing a battle between others trying to do the same? Will you team up with others and risk a last minute betrayal, or losing the fireaxe contest? Can you even fly a chopper? How many times will Max say ‘ave it?

What do you think?