Zombies Spawning Within Land Claimed Areas

[willrune]

I'm currently playing on 2 different servers.

Server A)
I've used 4 land claim blocks to take over Grover High in the wasteland and went through the effort to make there was no gaps or overlap between the land claim zones. Zombies are still spawning.

Occasionally loot containers are respawning loot in a land claimed area. I've gone as far as surrounding the perimeter with a wall, which reduced some of it, but I'm still seeing zombies spawn in front of me with in the land claim area, it is especially Noticeable with the increased spawn rate at night.

Early in 1.0 I had taken over a Bear's den in the pin forest (same map), and it respawned zombies. Logging into a zombie bear mauling was not great! I haven't had the entire POI reset on my lately, but I have heavily modified it by this point, so spawn points may no longer exist. Loot still occasionally respawns in it. This POI also has my bed roll in it.
 

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Server B)
I've taken over a fire station in the city in the wasteland and haven't had any issues (maybe because there isn't terrain inside the area I care about?), but a friend who has taken over a ranger station has reported zombies spawning within the land claim area, specifically mentioning annoyance with zombie vultures.

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Is this intended behavior or a bug?

If it is intended behavior, I suspect I could mitigate it by covering terrain blocks with building blocks or sheets or something, but at that point I may as well have built in the wilderness.

As of this alpha release, I have not created a base in the wilderness, but I haven't heard any reports of similar things happening with bases that are not land claimed POIs.

I found the list of known issues for A21, but none for the current state of 1.0. Either way a search for the term "land claim" didn't result in anything similar in the list that I could fine, so I am reporting it here.

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I'm having fun, been having fun since Alpha 16? or was it 15. Either way, I'm looking forward to what is coming next.

 

[SylenThunder]

Server A)
I've used 4 land claim blocks to take over Grover High in the wasteland and went through the effort to make there was no gaps or overlap between the land claim zones. Zombies are still spawning.

Occasionally loot containers are respawning loot in a land claimed area. I've gone as far as surrounding the perimeter with a wall, which reduced some of it, but I'm still seeing zombies spawn in front of me with in the land claim area, it is especially Noticeable with the increased spawn rate at night.

Early in 1.0 I had taken over a Bear's den in the pin forest (same map), and it respawned zombies. Logging into a zombie bear mauling was not great! I haven't had the entire POI reset on my lately, but I have heavily modified it by this point, so spawn points may no longer exist. Loot still occasionally respawns in it. This POI also has my bed roll in it.

Loot respawning is activity based, and has nothing at all to do with your claim block.

LCB will only block POI zombie respawn if you fully cleared the zones before placing it.  For something that large, I don't think you will ever be able to prevent zeds from respawning. It's probably only ever going to work if the single LCB covers all of the zones.

Server B)
I've taken over a fire station in the city in the wasteland and haven't had any issues (maybe because there isn't terrain inside the area I care about?), but a friend who has taken over a ranger station has reported zombies spawning within the land claim area, specifically mentioning annoyance with zombie vultures.

Wasteland is instant respawn at night. Vultures are a common biome spawn, and would not be prevented by a claim block. Other zeds are likely similarly biome spawns. This is the most difficult biome.

 

[willrune]

Thank you Sylen,

That gives me something I can try. Its a long shot, but I'll let you know how it goes.

I don't remember the radius on the land claim block on the other server, but I don't remember a ranger station being that large. I'll let my friends on server B know and ask them to perform a full sweep of the POI, making sure to kill any vultures in the air, and waiting for the day before destroying the old land claim and placing a new one.

 

[Jugginator]

Thank you Sylen,

That gives me something I can try. Its a long shot, but I'll let you know how it goes.

I don't remember the radius on the land claim block on the other server, but I don't remember a ranger station being that large. I'll let my friends on server B know and ask them to perform a full sweep of the POI, making sure to kill any vultures in the air, and waiting for the day before destroying the old land claim and placing a new one.

Let me know how it goes. I can setup a test soon with that POI and see.

If you look at your log file (the hosts/server), you can tell if it's a biome spawn or a POI sleeper respawn (it'll say sleepers). Actually, if you do see some, I'd be curious to see some info on those lines. 

I do know I spent a good half an hour trying to figure out why a couple sleepers respawned in one of the smaller ranger stations with a lcb and bedroll down, and it turned out I missed a sleeper in a corner that didn't spawn during the quest, after killing it and doing a sweep, it didn't happen again.

I hope one day we can improve upon this, but we'd also need to do it in a way that can't be exploited (e.g. plopping a land claim down after starting a quest to block sleepers from spawning)

 

[Riamus]

I hope one day we can improve upon this, but we'd also need to do it in a way that can't be exploited (e.g. plopping a land claim down after starting a quest to block sleepers from spawning)

For that, you could just not allow starting a quest if an LCB is present.  That already prevents getting offered a quest.  Just add a check before starting a quest and prevent it from starting.  "Cannot start quest while an LCB is present."

 

[Jugginator]

For that, you could just not allow starting a quest if an LCB is present.  That already prevents getting offered a quest.  Just add a check before starting a quest and prevent it from starting.  "Cannot start quest while an LCB is present."

The quest system already prevents that from happening, but all of the sleepers don't spawn in at once, they need to be activated by the player one way or another, so I meant after the quest has been started ^^

I mainly meant it needs to make sure a player can't just go to a POI (not on a quest) and prevent any sleeper spawns by plopping a land claim down and get free loot

 

[Riamus]

The quest system already prevents that from happening, but all of the sleepers don't spawn in at once, they need to be activated by the player one way or another, so I meant after the quest has been started ^^

Ahh.  I see what you mean.  Yeah, there would need to be a check when placing an LCB.  If a quest is active at that location, don't allow placing an LCB.  If not, allow placing it.

 

[Jugginator]

Ahh.  I see what you mean.  Yeah, there would need to be a check when placing an LCB.  If a quest is active at that location, don't allow placing an LCB.  If not, allow placing it.

Yeah it would also need to ignore the land claim when the player goes into it too, to prevent the lcb from preventing sleepers being blocked from spawning to prevent free loot. Which.... leads to the issue where if you miss a sleeper volume you get respawns lol. Be a good thing to thunk on a bit.

 

[willrune]

I did a fresh sweep of the POI and found there was one room full of zombies. I cleared it and placed down fresh land claims. The perimeter wall kept wanderers out while I replaced the LCBs.

The LCB size on the server, I think is 25? some of the boundaries only go through a half block, but they line up exactly with each other. There may be 1 or 2 blocks in either dimension along the outside that aren't covered by the LCB, that might be doing it.

I haven't seen and POI zombies respawn, but I haven't been able to put enough time in on that server since all this that would cause a respawn anyway.

I can confirm that non-sleepers/non-POI zombies are spawning out side the building but inside the POI (the parking lot and the landscape within the POI space, but not inside the building). It is really easy to see this happen at night.

Hypothetical brain storming: 
Maybe a new  kind of claim block can be created. POIClaim. It only works inside of POI boundaries that have been cleared, has some way of communicating why it can't be placed, similar to how color is used for structural integrity. There would be multiple tiers of it with different crafting requirements so you can't just claim a giant POI day one.

Another possibility is to have mods on the LCB that change its behavior, and different tiers of POI claim could be one such mod. Using this mod would prevent the LCB from working outside of a POI, but it would take up the POI area exactly and take the guess work from it.

At the end of the day, I want to be able to claim a place and feel safe in it. If it won't work as expected, it should provide feedback on why.

I imagine you could "open" the land claim the same way you could a vehicle, a generator, batter bank, or electrical turret. In addition to any mods, dyes, or paints paints it supports, it could have an interface showing the following information.

- Workbench Pick up: OK
- PVP Block Defense: OK
- Sleeper Spawn Protection: OK

- World Spawn Protection: OK

Maybe the above would require a mod, and that mod needs X amount of (game time OR real time) to "discover" the information (and prevent it from being abused? I don't know how you could, but people are creative.)

Maybe another mod would be a sensor/screen/hub that works with cameras to detect:

- Owner Detected
- Friends Detected
- Party Detected
- Strangers Detected
- Zombies Detected
- Animals Detected

At that point, electrical systems would need to support multi-input, which I don't think there is a precedence for. Power so far tends to be single in/ multi out.

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In any case, I've started working on a plan B base in the wilderness. I might still try to build a blood moon base in the school, but if I can't be sure I won't login to surprise zombies, I won't be building an every day base there. 

 

[Jugginator]

I can confirm that non-sleepers/non-POI zombies are spawning out side the building but inside the POI (the parking lot and the landscape within the POI space, but not inside the building). It is really easy to see this happen at night.

Hypothetical brain storming: 
Maybe a new  kind of claim block can be created. POIClaim. It only works inside of POI boundaries that have been cleared, has some way of communicating why it can't be placed, similar to how color is used for structural integrity. There would be multiple tiers of it with different crafting requirements so you can't just claim a giant POI day one.

Thanks for checking that out. I'll have a play with it too tomorrow, you do raise a good point.

And that is an awesome idea. Not saying I'll make it so, but it would be kinda cool to have a quest tied to that, like "You want to claim this POI? Complete this clear quest" and once completed, it wipes all sleeper spawns while the claim is active. Be neat IMO.

Biome spawned zombies spawning on terrain... that may be a whole can of worms. We COULD prevent it from happening, but most of the world inside towns/cities ARE considered POI's (most of what you see are tiles and parts, including the roads). So... it could wind up making bloodmoons almost impossible to have spawns unless you're in the wilderness. 

 

[willrune]

Biome spawned zombies spawning on terrain... that may be a whole can of worms. We COULD prevent it from happening, but most of the world inside towns/cities ARE considered POI's (most of what you see are tiles and parts, including the roads). So... it could wind up making bloodmoons almost impossible to have spawns unless you're in the wilderness. 

This lack of zombie devastation was not my intention!

I would say "but only prevent it for terrain blocks within that POI that has been claimed", but I don't know how difficult that would be to pull off, and even if you could, how do you balance it?

On a larger server, if multiple neighboring POIs were claimed, that would severely limit places that zombies can spawn. In some cases POIs are right next to each other, in others, there is only a single block of space between them and their neighboring POI/tile/feature.

I don't remember if it is still a thing, but it used to be if you dug deep enough, or built high enough (really far from any surface a zombie could spawn at) then zombies couldn't spawn and you effectively turned off bloodmoon for the night. Not being careful about this could reintroduce something like that and make for a boring bloodmoon.

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I was thinking of it being tied just to the LCB, but the LCB and a clear quest? That makes sense to me. I like it.

Would this quest have the same difficulty as the clear quest normally has for that POI? Would it be +1 like/as infestations? +2 for some new mechanic? (You have X time to clear the POI before a mini-bloodmoon of sorts hits it. They can target the LCB you place down and you have to defend it. If that is too overwhelming, maybe its a 2 stage quest. First a clear which enables a second marker that starts the defend only if the LCB is placed.)

Huh, maybe when bandits are implemented it isn't a zombie horde you are defending against, but bandits who are eager to take advantage of your hard work of clearing the place.

Don't mind me, my imagination is going wild with little regard for being reasonable.

 

[OndeTv]

Well, i guess there's always the roads between the POIs. Although the roads are technically prefabs too, they arent POIs themselves as far as i know. So even with very tight tight POI claiming, i'm betting there would be "plenty" of space left to spawn zeds during a bloodmoon. The trouble may be that working together you could funnel zeds by spawn restriction. But i guess this is true with LCBs regardless of POIs or open terrain. (?)

It has been a while since i played multiplayer, but (for some reason) i always place an LCB in my SP worlds anyway for good measure. I do not remember seeing any spawns within the LCB area.

I i guess if you are 8 people on a server, you could place down an LCB grid of

XXX

XOX

XXX

which would force zeds to spawn on the perimeter chunks or in the middle?

Do excuse me if i am missing something about multiple LCBs btw. Like i said it has been a while since i played multiplayer, but i am still assuming you can only place 1 per player?

 

[Riamus]

Well, i guess there's always the roads between the POIs. Although the roads are technically prefabs too, they arent POIs themselves as far as i know. So even with very tight tight POI claiming, i'm betting there would be "plenty" of space left to spawn zeds during a bloodmoon. The trouble may be that working together you could funnel zeds by spawn restriction. But i guess this is true with LCBs regardless of POIs or open terrain. (?)

It has been a while since i played multiplayer, but (for some reason) i always place an LCB in my SP worlds anyway for good measure. I do not remember seeing any spawns within the LCB area.

I i guess if you are 8 people on a server, you could place down an LCB grid of

XXX

XOX

XXX

which would force zeds to spawn on the perimeter chunks or in the middle?

Do excuse me if i am missing something about multiple LCBs btw. Like i said it has been a while since i played multiplayer, but i am still assuming you can only place 1 per player?

Just to point out, some POI are very large... Up to 150x150 in towns.  That would make horde night spawns very easy to avoid.

As far as LCBs, you can place 3 by default, and that can be changed.

 

[OndeTv]

3 LCBs per player by default, i see. Yeah, that certainly changes things then. In that case, disregard my comment. It seems a lot has happened since i last played on a server