PC Open Letter to TFP's...

[Roland]

Yep, usually by people tho, not zombies...

By enemies. Do you think the tears will be less when bandits breach their bases instead of zombies? The point is that their place of safety gets breached. If Rick et al were STILL safe on Herschall’s farm would that be in any way as interesting?

I have no doubt of two things:

1) People who care more about experimenting than complaining will adapt and the feeling that building a legit base being impossible will subside as it has every major update. And threads declaring base building dead will be replaced with threads sharing legit base designs and links to YouTube for base tours and horde night demos. 
 

2) When bandits are implemented there will again be an open letter to TFP criticizing them for making base building impossible without exploits....

 

[Laz Man]

By enemies. Do you think the tears will be less when bandits breach their bases instead of zombies? The point is that their place of safety gets breached. If Rick et al were STILL safe on Herschall’s farm would that be in any way as interesting?

I have no doubt of two things:

1) People who care more about experimenting than complaining will adapt and the feeling that building a legit base being impossible will subside as it has every major update. And threads declaring base building dead will be replaced with threads sharing legit base designs and links to YouTube for base tours and horde night demos. 
 

2) When bandits are implemented there will again be an open letter to TFP criticizing them for making base building impossible without exploits....

It doesnt help that some people think the devs should get it right on the first iteration and then knee jerk that the sky is falling asking for removal of said features...

...innovation takes many iterations to get right...

 

[Demandred1957]

21 hours ago, Laz Man said:

Yeah...after killing them straight up for 90% of the horde. Maybe watch the vid, before ya make uninformed comments.

 

[Demandred1957]

By enemies. Do you think the tears will be less when bandits breach their bases instead of zombies? The point is that their place of safety gets breached. If Rick et al were STILL safe on Herschall’s farm would that be in any way as interesting?

I have no doubt of two things:

1) People who care more about experimenting than complaining will adapt and the feeling that building a legit base being impossible will subside as it has every major update. And threads declaring base building dead will be replaced with threads sharing legit base designs and links to YouTube for base tours and horde night demos. 
 

2) When bandits are implemented there will again be an open letter to TFP criticizing them for making base building impossible without exploits....

Depends on how unbalanced they make the bandits.. Got a feeling its going to be very...

 

[Roland]

Depends on how unbalanced they make the bandits.. Got a feeling its going to be very...

You only have a feeling?

 It’s a 100% certainty, man. You really need to lower your expectations for what early access to an indev project entails. 
 

 

[Ralathar44]

You only have a feeling?

 It’s a 100% certainty, man. You really need to lower your expectations for what early access to an indev project entails.

If they implement ranged bandits with actual guns in this game people will lose their minds unless the bandits do like zero damage.

 

[meganoth]

In my current SP game I used an old house as horde base for day 7 and 14. Difficulty one above default. I included a few pictures of the house to make sure you understand that this is one of the most ramshackle buildings in the game. For day 7 I just removed the stairs inside the building and upgraded a few wood blocks to better wood. I upgraded a few blocks to cobblestone. For day 14 I upgraded some more blocks to cobblestone, like you see in this picture taken much later. And I added lots of wood bars for shooting down, even inside. To the right you see a small podest, my main entrance to the upper floor by jumping over the gap.

I had zero problems with both hordes. In the picture you can see that much of the original wall is still completely intact, I didn't have the impressions I needed the cobblestone at all.



Next picture is the front lawn. The round pillars were actually repairs after day 14 which were ultimately wasted because I used a different horde base for day 21. Inside in the background you can see the back wall, also original and unharmed. The holes in the lawn are NOT from zombies, this is really a derelict building with broken floortiles everwhere



Next is the staircase. From here I could actually melee the nice guys visiting me and throw molotows for more party athmosphere. The bar was just to be extra careful against jumping zombies. In the back wall I added an emergency ladder so I could get up again if I fell down inside the building



Now sure, this is only SP. Would multiplayer be different? Not really, here is a picture of the wooden horde base used for our 4 player MP. It is a picture I made 2 weeks ago for a different reason, so sadly it is by night and only half the base can be seen, but the left half isn't any different. For the horde we just removed the roof and used wood bars to have a shooting gallery into the big room that occupies the whole middle section of the building. If you ever played PREGEN1, I'm standing on the building directly in front of our first trader.

Again the horde night was quite unspectacular.



Now granted, this was all only on a relatively low difficulty level (one higher than default). If you play on higher levels and with 16 zombies, you might have to invest a bit more effort even in the first days.

 

[Roland]

If you play on higher levels and with 16 zombies

This is another key to success. If you are getting overwhelmed too easily, instead of choosing exploits simply lower the number of zombies alive per player or decrease block damage until you find a setting that makes your base building viable. Then as you wish to challenge yourself increase block damage and/or zombie numbers. 

 

[Laz Man]

This is another key to success. If you are getting overwhelmed too easily, instead of choosing exploits simply lower the number of zombies alive per player or decrease block damage until you find a setting that makes your base building viable. Then as you wish to challenge yourself increase block damage and/or zombie numbers. 

There lies part of the problem.  Some people get used to the way things are in a particular alpha/iteration and when they no longer "win" on a specific game difficulty...<insert new/changed game feature> is automatically OP or "unfair" because there is no way they need to adjust/adapt...

...I still remember all the tears when demolishers were first introduced...people were modding them out even before trying to figure out a solution on their own...

Edit: I love mods but sometimes they are an easy cop out to a difficult challenge...

 

[Solomon]

You said your fallback is on the left tower further down. This could work but you need a ceiling where you can shoot or even melee through. Not that easy to achieve, you normally want the height advantage. And if the zombies break into the tower on ground level they shouldn't be able to go up the tower, while you should have an emergency exit on first floor.

sry but even after a brk I can't really follow your sketch. A couple screen shots would likely be enough to build a mental picture.

Okay that picture is really damm bad, i gone ingame and made some pics flying around in dm for this thread. Some things to mention, zombies cannot reach up from the ground levels, i made sure of that and my brother seems to spiked up one of the fallback rooms so i gotta clean that up :/

The strategy would be that both of us sit first on the the right side (the one with the single turret currently) and when they badly damage the door we jump on the ladder and switch to the left side, when that falls we get up on the back ramp and shoot from there. If everything falls we either go downstairs or jump onto the rock on the left and leave the area runnin.

I still have 213 of these bunker doors left to place it around and we plan some sort of maze design around the tower for the next days if this design doesnt work out. Most probably we need to put those wires on the marked point at the ramp too.

 

[RipClaw]

...I still remember all the tears when demolishers were first introduced...people were modding them out even before trying to figure out a solution on their own...

So I'm curious what solution you came up with. 

My solution was to upgrade all the critical parts of the base to steel and to use as many dart traps as possible because those were the only traps in A18 that didn't trigger the explosion. All other traps had the problem that they always had the risk of triggering the explosion. This is a reliable way but extremely resource intensive.

I also know the trick with the half blocks on the floor and the blade trap at 3 blocks height but there is a glitch in the game where zombies hover 1m above the ground after being knocked down. Due to the change that the blade traps can no longer trigger the explosion, you now have the possibility to use them in A19.

Some said it would be safe to place SMG turrets so that they only shoot the zombies from behind. However, I have often seen demolishers make a ragdoll movement where they lie flat on the ground and there is a danger that the SMG turret will hit the button.
 

 

[NBornkilla]

Ok, didn't see the video before, and was looking at what the title screen shows you when you fire up the game.. *shrugs*

Yeah...after killing them straight up for 90% of the horde. Maybe watch the vid, before ya make uninformed comments.

lol funny  guy  guess what I did that in alpha 16  dide horde and went outside on foot  killing the rest  and what's your point ? that you can't do that anymore  and you have to fight ? last time I  heard the title of the game is 7 days to die not 7 day to survive .

 

[RipClaw]

lol funny  guy  guess what I did that in alpha 16  dide horde and went outside on foot  killing the rest  and what's your point ? that you can't do that anymore  and you have to fight ? last time I  heard the title of the game is 7 days to die not 7 day to survive .

But the game is not called "7 Days to fight the horde" either. So if you go strictly by the title you are not allowed to fight the horde but have to let the horde kill you. By the way, the title originally referred to the infection that created the zombies. The bloodmoon horde was added to the game later.

 

[meganoth]

Okay that picture is really damm bad, i gone ingame and made some pics flying around in dm for this thread. Some things to mention, zombies cannot reach up from the ground levels, i made sure of that and my brother seems to spiked up one of the fallback rooms so i gotta clean that up

The strategy would be that both of us sit first on the the right side (the one with the single turret currently) and when they badly damage the door we jump on the ladder and switch to the left side, when that falls we get up on the back ramp and shoot from there. If everything falls we either go downstairs or jump onto the rock on the left and leave the area runnin.

I still have 213 of these bunker doors left to place it around and we plan some sort of maze design around the tower for the next days if this design doesnt work out. Most probably we need to put those wires on the marked point at the ramp too.

Nice base with lots of fallback positions. The only problem: Zombies can climb ladders. So if they succeed in breaching 3 blast doors (which I find highly unlikely if you repair from time to time) they would have access to all further positions. One possible remedy is to not build the lowest two rungs of the ladder and jump on the ladder if you need to use it. This won't work with the ladder down, you need to use a hatch or invent some other way to prevent the zombies from just going down the ladder.

The same problem is with the long ladder on the side from the bottom up.

To jump on a ladder with the lowest rungs missing you need to step a bit back before jumping, by the way. Or like Laz Man explained, add two plates flat on the wall where the lowest rungs would sit and you can jump easily on the ladders.

The zombie pathfinding is also limited to a number of blocks, I heard 40 somewhere but could be totally wrong. So possibly zombies attacking from the back might not find the way up, but you'll find out soon if this is the case.

 

[Laz Man]

So I'm curious what solution you came up with. 

My solution was to upgrade all the critical parts of the base to steel and to use as many dart traps as possible because those were the only traps in A18 that didn't trigger the explosion. All other traps had the problem that they always had the risk of triggering the explosion. This is a reliable way but extremely resource intensive.

I also know the trick with the half blocks on the floor and the blade trap at 3 blocks height but there is a glitch in the game where zombies hover 1m above the ground after being knocked down. Due to the change that the blade traps can no longer trigger the explosion, you now have the possibility to use them in A19.

Some said it would be safe to place SMG turrets so that they only shoot the zombies from behind. However, I have often seen demolishers make a ragdoll movement where they lie flat on the ground and there is a danger that the SMG turret will hit the button.
 

Electrical fences and AP ammo mostly for concentrated fire when they show up.

 

[RipClaw]

Electrical fences and AP ammo mostly for concentrated fire when they show up.

I've tried that. Works in 4 out of 5 cases but the fifth one explodes because I accidentally hit the button.

So for me this is not a solution that works reliably. The only solution that proved to be reliable for me were the dart traps but you need a lot of them.

 

[katarynna]

I've tried that. Works in 4 out of 5 cases but the fifth one explodes because I accidentally hit the button.

So for me this is not a solution that works reliably. The only solution that proved to be reliable for me were the dart traps but you need a lot of them.

You can now also try out blade traps, since they no longer prime the demos. Having more options is a good thing.

 

[Laz Man]

I've tried that. Works in 4 out of 5 cases but the fifth one explodes because I accidentally hit the button.

So for me this is not a solution that works reliably. The only solution that proved to be reliable for me were the dart traps but you need a lot of them.

I use some dart traps too but dont rely on them for the bulk of my base DPS. 1 demo explosion wont wreck a fully upgraded base either so that's fine by my standards.

 

[RipClaw]

You can now also try out blade traps, since they no longer prime the demos. Having more options is a good thing.

I will integrate them into my next base design. I will probably use 8 dart traps to thin out the horde first and add then 2 or 3 blade traps to do the rest.
 

I use some dart traps too but dont rely on them for the bulk of my base DPS. 1 demo explosion wont wreck a fully upgraded base either so that's fine by my standards.

In general, one or two explosions are no problem if you upgrade everything to steel. My goal is a base where I just stand in the corner with a bag of popcorn and enjoy the show  

 

[FileMachete]

@meganoth Solomon and his friend are playing on 18.4 per pics. Not a MP player so no idea but wasn't there a change on how MP handles Gamestage in a19?

@Solomon , thanks for the pics, excellent choice of a POI to take over for a horde base.

And there are some solid design elements/solutions in what you've built.

Certainly looks to me like you're learning and adapting, kudos!

Only real concern is what meganoth mentioned, the ladders.

There's a pic in the spoiler of my earlier post with an example of how I use ladders that keeps the zeds from climbing them, and also makes it easier for the player to climb up.

In case you & your buddy find yourselves inclined to do more horde vs. base experiments; you can use the 'debug mode' (enable via the console with " dm " ) then enter the Escape screen and there you can adjust the Day/Time.

Wouldn't recommend doing this on your main save game.

But it's useful if you want to start a new game, use the Creative Menu to give yourselves roughly what you'd have had by Day X, build a test base then advance the Day/Time to the horde night you're after.

----

In general, one or two explosions are no problem if you upgrade everything to steel. My goal is a base where I just stand in the corner with a bag of popcorn and enjoy the show  

heh. My goal is to stop building bases where I only wind up shooting zeds because I'm bored. My fault, old pc, can't handle high max alives. But I may try really dropping resolution down to like 640x480 (lol) to see how many alive it might handle.

Hey, don't judge, I started gaming before the first Id Doom was available, so pixels rather than pictures ain't anything new :biggrin1: