PC Alpha 19 Dev Diary

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Laz Man said:
Sounds like working as intended. 😂

Higher Difficulty is Difficult...check

More then 1 option to survive...check
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Yeah, I'm not complaining about it, just explaining why many people end up resorting to cheesing the AI, it's just super costly not to, and is usually still quite dangerous and challenging even if you do make an efficient base.

Higher difficulties in games *should* require min maxing and actually putting thought into your design, so I don't have an issue with it requiring a pretty efficient base. I do think the zombies are a bit too smart though, like avoiding fall damage is pretty weird. That's basically a staple of zombie movies, tricking zombie hordes into falling off cliffs and stuff, and the way zombies will psychically know there's a trap lined tunnel and instead just dig down from above and decide to go through your roof instead is a bit too Einstein Zombie level.

Ideally, the solution would be to have different special zombies that can make paths for the other zombies. Like a Zombie Miner or something that specifically makes tunnels to different areas in an underground base and the other zombies could follow those tunnels, or spider zombies leaving a web ladder so others can follow them onto roofs or something

 
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I mean, that's basically the case now though.

"Zombie cop over there, someone get it"

"GET THE DEMO ZOMBIE BEFORE IT GETS CLOSE"

"Someone get that stupid vulture, it keeps kicking me in the back of the head"

The rest of the fodder are just secondary targets you shoot between identifying the big threats

 
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MechanicalLens said:
Yep, it's why I never use Fortbites, or Megacrush, or Grandpa's Moonshine, or Coffee or Blackstrap Coffee, at least in A18... Incredibly situational buffs that I can do fine without, and even if I was bothered to use them, I'd forget they existed 90% of the time anyway. 😛 I think the implementation of candy is fine, I'll probably just never use them is all.

Now what would be nice is if you could dump some Megacrush into the engine of your vehicle and for a few minutes it could travel hundreds of kilometres per hour. 😛
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Nonsense!  Drink the petrol and run there!  🙂
 

https://i.redd.it/cbota0ofpfl01.jpg
 
 
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MechanicalLens said:
That might also turn horde nights into an annoying game of whack-a-mole. Identify x type of zombie, and take them down. That's fine by itself, but imagine if half the zombies had some special ability that made you concentrate your fire on them. That might work out, or it might not. (Doing this would also once again draw in the realism crowd. :P)
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What if there was a special zombie that was immune to bullets? Then it would not longer be whack-a-mole.

 
Khalagar said:
It's because it's EXTREMELY expensive to have a horde base that isn't just a cheesy maze trying to exploit the AI.  You'll end up eventually in a spiral death loop where you spend 6 days out of 7 trying to rebuild your castle to 80% of what it was last horde night, and recraft 40% of the ammo you used, then the next horde hits and sends you back to zero again.

It will wear you down really, really fast with a conventional castle past like day 42, if you even make it that far before you start noticing you are losing resources every blood moon and aren't able to actually recoop them all in the following week.

You'll often see new players post their concrete box castle with 40 bajillion spikes outside it, and shed a tear for their innocence. In reality, zombies will just tear through a single 1 block path of spikes and ignore the other 39 bajillion spikes almost entirely, then run right up and all cluster together and beat the ever loving feces out of a single section of the wall and break it down in 20 seconds and then flood into the base.

And that's the cheap option. If they actually spread out and attack the whole base, they will do thousands and thousands of cement worth of damage, and then even with maxed out mining perks and auger it will take you 5+ days of solid cement crafting to even rebuild and repair what you had.  And then you'll realize you used 4,000+ bullets in a single night and depleted your entire stockpile

It's not even a zero sum game, it's a straight up losing game. You'll eventually run out of nearby iron nodes so you have to go further and further for steel replenishment, and will spend more and more and more of your time mining stone for cement and won't have time for trying to mine lead, nitrate, and coal for bullets, let alone trying to figure out how you are going to replace the 4,000+ bullets you spent per horde night without any brass

Well, it also depending on what settings you play on. If you are playing on nomad with the default zombies per player you will probably make it way longer before you start noticing the resource drain increasing.

I play on the second highest difficulty with 32 zombies per player, and at that difficulty it's just not feasible to have a noob style "PoI converted into a fortress" and actually keep it standing long term without basically giving up entirely on ever being able to do quests or do *anything* else but try to rebuild the base and restock materials after the last horde smashed them.

Your 3 options are basically

1. Build a maze or base that exploits the AI so you can kill them without them attacking your expensive concrete and undoing 10 minutes worth of work in 20 seconds

2. Get on a motorcycle and just drive away and not fight

3. Have a mobile fight on the road

I prefer option 3 personally. Drive out to an open section of the road, throw down two junk turrets (because their ammo is actually affordable to use en masse), fight in melee and use pipe bombs or the rare m60 burst to try and thin out the incoming horde. Pack up the turrets and throw out a Pocket Motorcycle™ when you start getting overwhelmed and move 100 yards down the road and repeat.
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Straight up truth. 

 
My main complaint is with zombie behaviors that are unintended and not with how players choose to defend. 
 

If zombies are supposed to attack steep slope blocks but aren’t then I want that fixed. 
If zombies are supposed to leap a gap from a ledge but are just falling off that ledge then that should be fixed. 
If zombies are remaining stuck in a loop when it is intended that they will stop and go into destruction mode then I want that fixed. 
If zombies are supposed to be able to travel across the narrow edge of a wedge block but they are always falling then I want that fixed. 
 

Once the zombies are all behaving the way the devs say they should be behaving, I guarantee that people will stil find easy ways to defend and that is perfectly fine. The game supports these choices. The developers are not in a battle against player metas. They simply are working to get the enemies to behave correctly and this process will cause certain defenses to not be 100% any longer. 

 
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Roland said:
My main complaint is with zombie behaviors that are unintended and not with how players choose to defend. 
 

If zombies are supposed to attack steep slope blocks but aren’t then I want that fixed. 
If zombies are supposed to leap a gap from a ledge but are just falling off that ledge then that should be fixed. 
If zombies are remaining stuck in a loop when it is intended that they will stop and go into destruction mode then I want that fixed. 
If zombies are supposed to be able to travel across the narrow edge of a wedge block but they are always falling then I want that fixed. 
 

Once the zombies are all behaving the way the devs say they should be behaving, I guarantee that people will stil find easy ways to defend and that is perfectly fine. The game supports these choices. The developers are not in a battle against player metas. They simply are working to get the enemies to behave correctly and this process will cause certain defenses to not be 100% any longer. 
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One thing i kinda miss was the screwup with the breadcrumb system which when zombies saw you they would follow you till you killed them, it made for a very interesting mechanic

 
MechanicalLens said:
They removed that feature? (The breadcrumb system.) Huh.
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if memory serves it was not able to work as intended so it was removed, i kind of liked having zombies follow me across the map once they saw me, kinda added a new level of difficulty, imagine waking up the shotgun massiah factory, saying @%$*#! this and driving home, only to find all those zombies coming straight to your door

 
The breadcrumb system is still in. Zombies following forever was a glitch that was removed. That was not the breadcrumb system being removed. 
 

the breadcrumb system is best noticed at night or when you are inside a POI and zombies are outside. It is what draws those zombies towards you as you make noise. 
 

During the day, when outside, zombies usually just see you before the breadcrumb system kicks in to draw them closer to your position. 
 

The glitch before was probably an error with the “forget” timer. You could probably change some easy numbers to make it so they never forget and always continue to move toward you. I remember collecting half a dozen snakes traveling through the desert. 5 minutes after getting to my base they would show up and start attacking. :)

 
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