Infestation Feedback
Ways to make infestations have a more meaningful presence on the map rather than be an annoyance or a chore to deal with:
1) Infestations create an ultra-heavy red zone around them that extends twice as far as an outpost's safe zone, so rolling up to kill infestations is more dangerous, especially if they're clustered. Red zones should be more dynamic, not static, if possible.
2) Infestations will attack allied enclaves who will then call for help and trigger a 'freak in the house' style mission. If you don't respond within 10 minutes, the enclave is lost. More than one enclave at a time can be attacked.
3) Infestations should make more of an effort to inhabit buildings in the direction of your base to begin attacking it.
4) Upon reaching 10 infestations, the infestation closest to your base will start producing Assault Swarms which are plague hordes but with 2 of every freak in their ranks and a mix of armored and plague zombies.
If any juggernauts make it past the base gates, one of your facilities will break down, creating a real consequence to being sieged.
5) To give players more ability to make a decision about whether to kill an infestation as soon as it appears due to how far away it is, the plague heart that will generate the infestation horde should pulsate on the map before it appears in warning, if the player has discovered it.
6) A badly infested map prevents traders from spawning, even giving a text message like "I was going to stop by your town to trade, but it's just too dangerous there."
7) Too many infestations not only reduces community morale, but also reduces the goods enclaves have to trade as they get more fearful and can't go out to scavenge as often.
Rewards for clearing infestations:
1) Destroying infestations should significantly decrease the red zone around them, if they're in a place that normally has a denser zombie population. On Lethal Zone, it takes an absurd amount of kills to lessen the zombie population in a red zone to the point it's basically a pointless mechanic. Killing an infestation should reward the player by reducing the threat of freak spawns in the surrounding area, making for safer scavenging.
2) Upon clearing the infestations from a map once they've gotten out of control (more than 5) a cooldown is added to any new infestations to give the player a break from dealing with them.
3) Keeping the map free of infestations drastically increases the selection of goods other enclaves have to trade with. Basically, because your community is keeping the streets safer, they can scavenge more stuff as well.
4) A map that's free of infestations has a higher chance of spawning traders