Thank you Ter13 for the recommendation and insight.

I remember coming across Cataclysm: DDA a year or two ago and hearing nothing but great reviews. I'm going to give it a try today. Thanks again!

As for what I'd suggest, I'd look at actions based on a couple of different categories:

1) Fatigue (mental exhaustion)
2) Caloric cost (physical exhaustion)
3) Active Time (time the player is involved in the process)
4) Inactive Time (time the process takes independent of action)
5) Noise Level

If you look at tasks with these five components, you can actually make some really good decisions that will increase player fun while also increasing the hostility of the world.

First, let's look at mental exhaustion. Players that spend too long mentally exhausted find themselves easily distracted and have a harder time succeeding at tasks. They are more likely to make trivial mistakes and to fall ill. They are more prone to not seeing traps and enemies sneaking up on them. They are also less able to sustain physical activity for long periods of time. Maintaining mental exhaustion can be done through getting enough sleep/rest, enjoying highly satisfying food, sitting near a fire, listening to an MP3 player, unwinding with some alcohol, cigarettes, meth or heroin (these have consequences), popping some xanax, or just having a good conversation with a fellow survivor.

Next, let's look at physical exhaustion. Food is important to being able to do work. If you are weak from hunger, work is harder. Physical activity is increasingly difficult and your strength suffers. You get sick easily, and you aren't able to swing a weapon as well to defend yourself. More than food, GOOD FOOD is important. A diet of twinkies is going to give you a lot of sugar and fat, but if you don't get protein and vitamins you don't get the right kind of nutrients to rebuild damage done to your body and really give you the fuel you need to do work. Caloric density is also important. A diet of celery is going to be filling and satisfying, but it's not going to give you good energy for work. Meanwhile, peanut butter is high in protein and fat, and really lightweight. It's great for instant on-demand work energy production.

Time costs are next. Active time deprives the player of doing something else while something is done. Chopping down a tree is all active time. From start to finish, the job only gets done as long as the player is actively doing the job. This naturally limits what players can do to survive simply by making players prioritize their time.

Inactive time, on the other hand deprives the player of space. For instance, planting a seed is a small task. Watering a seed is a small task, but beyond that, you have to let crops grow simply by leaving them alone. In order to produce enough food to survive, you need to plant lots of seeds and then put your energy into preserving the food so that you can keep eating months after the harvest. Inactive time can also be used to ensure that players use more resources if they want to expand their operation. Making dried meat, for instance requires a smoker. The player would have to wait 8-24 in-game hours to smoke a few pounds of meat before smoking more unless they build a second smoker. Unfortunately, the smoker requires a lot of resources and all that smoke could very well attract other survivors or Zs.

Noise: Noise is important for zombie survival games. Noise should attract Zs. The more noise a task makes, the riskier it should be for the player to do. In other words, tasks that involve a lot of noise are risky for players who can't easily defend themselves, so it actually creates an added hostility to tasks that are necessary for survival. This also has the added benefit of allowing you to ensure that players who industrialize too fast and thus make survival really ridiculously easy face new challenges by way of attracting a sea of Zs to their compound.

fuck ter you make me want to make a zombie roguelike