What's the maximum gamestage possible?

[ErrorNull]

I'd like to tweak/customize some of the spawners that are defined in the gamestages.xml file. Since the gamestage stats of the player (or group of players) directly determines what types of zombies are spawned from each spawner, I'm hoping to confirm the maximum gamestage value that a player (or player group) can achieve. This way, i'm not needlessly defining zombie spawns for gamestage of 5,000, 10,000, 50,000, etc.

From what I understand so far..

The max experience level a player can achieve is level 300. This can give a player a gamestage of 300.

But, the gamestage value also increases based on how many days a player survives without dying. Since this survival 'bonus' is capped by the player's exp level, this means the max added bonus to gamestage is another 300. So the highest total gamestage value a level 300 player can achieve is 600. Right?

On top of that, the game puts all nearby players together and totals their individual gamestage values. I also read that the game only does this for up to six players. Any additional players in the group past 6 will not increase the group's total gamestage value. ?

So if there were six 300 level players (who all survived at least 300 days without dying) in the group, their total gamestage would be 6 players x 600 gamestage each = 3,600 total gamestage.

Let me know if anything i mentioned so far is way off. i do know there are some nuances where each player's gamestage within the group is weighted differently based on their gamestage 'rank' within the group, but all I need really is a rough ballpark number.

If i'm on the right track, then this means there's really no point in defining a spawner with thresholds higher than gamestage of 3,600. Is that right?

Case in point, many of the zombie spawners defined in gaestages.xml only go up to gamestage 800  .. like HospitalHorde,  LabWorkerHorde, ZombieSoldierHorde, etc.

But then i also see spawners like SleeperGSList and ScoutGSList that goes past gamestage 5,700. Seems unnecessary.. or am I missing something?

Thanks for any clarification.

 

[xyth]

Per the games documentation: `There is no cap on gamestage. If you feel like defining a stage="5000" - go nuts.`

 

[ErrorNull]

Per the games documentation: `There is no cap on gamestage. If you feel like defining a stage="5000" - go nuts.`

thanks Xyth. i saw that too.

btw your your custom zombies, animals and mech mods or awesome. my current modding project is drawing inspiration from them.

i know that the game engine will not prevent the modder from defining something for gamestage = 999,999 ... for example. 

what i'm wondering is.. what is the maximum gamestage possible that the player can achieve in game?

if i define gamestage thresholds that are too high (like 999,999) the player will never hit that condition and it's unused code. the player will miss out from ever encountering the higher level zombie configurations reserved for those later gamestages.

if i define gamestage thresholds that are too low (like 99) then as the player surpasses this number, there are no more zombie spawn variations in the code to progressively challenge the player as their gamestage continues to progress even higher.

just an optimization problem.

 

[xyth]

You have answered your own question, its just a math problem.  Per that same documentation:

This is how the gamestage of a PARTY is calculated:
The gamestage of all (up to) 6 players is calculated.
The players are sorted by gamestage.

The highest GS number is multiplied by "startingWeight".
This then loops down the list and "startingWeight" is multiplied by "diminishingReturns" every time.

Example:
Players with GS 120, 30, 60, 91, 5, 80.
startingWeight= 1.7, diminishingReturns=0.5

So we get
120 * 1.70 = 204
 91 *  .85 =  77
 80 *  .42 =  34
 60 *  .21 =  13
 30 *  .82 =  24
  5 *  .11 =   1
... or a total party GS of 353

So substitute 300 for each of the upto 6 players and that is your max number AFAIK.  If you chnaged the starting weight and/or the diminishing returns, you would get a different max value.

 

[meganoth]

There is also the difficulty bonus of 1.2, so I would assume highest gamestage for a single player is 600*1.2 = 720

Looking further down in gamestages.xml it seems the actual startingWeight for groups seems to have been changed to 1.

Seems the highest possible gamestage at the moment would be 1417.5

 

[ErrorNull]

You have answered your own question, its just a math problem.  Per that same documentation:

This is how the gamestage of a PARTY is calculated:
The gamestage of all (up to) 6 players is calculated.
The players are sorted by gamestage.

The highest GS number is multiplied by "startingWeight".
This then loops down the list and "startingWeight" is multiplied by "diminishingReturns" every time.

Example:
Players with GS 120, 30, 60, 91, 5, 80.
startingWeight= 1.7, diminishingReturns=0.5

So we get
120 * 1.70 = 204
 91 *  .85 =  77
 80 *  .42 =  34
 60 *  .21 =  13
 30 *  .82 =  24
  5 *  .11 =   1
... or a total party GS of 353

So substitute 300 for each of the upto 6 players and that is your max number AFAIK.  If you chnaged the starting weight and/or the diminishing returns, you would get a different max value.

yes you're right. but my main concern is, are we substituting 300 for each though? or 600 for each?

documentation also shows, that the player gamestage value increases based on how many days a player survives without dying. Since this survival 'bonus' is capped by the player's exp level, this means the max added bonus to player's gamestage is another 300. So the highest total gamestage value a level 300 player can achieve is 600. copy/pasting the figures for the documentation would then result in the following:

600 * 1.70 = 1020
600 *  .85 =  510
600 *  .42 =  252
600 *  .21 =  126
600 *  .82(?) =  492
600 *  .11 =   66
... or a total party GS of 2,466.

?? I suspect there is an error in the documentation where it shows 0.82. If maintaining a constant 0.5 diminishing return, this number should be half of 0.21 the prior weighted value, which then equals 0.11, then the last line should be 0.05 and not 0.11.

@meganoth ok. i didn't pay close enough attention to the actual config values defined in gamestages.xml. you're right, it actually sets the startingWeight at 1.0 (instead of 1.7) while maintaining the 50% diminishing returns. also taking into account the 1.2 difficulty bonus... i see how you arrived at total party gamestage of 1418.

1.2 * 600 * 1.0 = 720
1.2 * 600 *  .5 = 360
1.2 * 600 *  .25 = 180
1.2 * 600 *  .13 = 90
1.2 * 600 *  .06 = 45
1.2 * 600 *  .03 = 23
>> Total party GS of 1,418

So in that case, defining gaemstage thresholds anything higher than say 1,500 within the zombie spawners is unnecessary. And even if i were super generous and went by the rougher ballpark that @xyth and i touched upon earlier, anything above even 2,500 or 3,000 is will certainly not be executed.

Obviously I can just change the startingWeight value to whatever i want, which will alter all our calculations completely, but at least now i have a better idea of what to shoot for. thank folks. much appreciate it.