PC A17 Pointless base building
- Thread starter skylerkae
- Start date
Haven't tested but starting to think zombies are more attracted to player based blocks?
Converted 2 poi wood barns and both of them are still standing in the 3rd week even with spitting cops and vultures and this is on insane. I stand in the middle of the barn on a raised platform only an outside ramp with a 3 gap to come in. Zombies do break walls and supports but they never tear the whole place down as they are crambling in the middle of the barn to try to get to me.
With the spikes not dismembering zombies anymore I've totally HAD to rely on building or more accurate refurbishing poi's. A16 u just needed a few of spikes, made them into crawlers and only had to deal with cops dogs and spiders, I even cooked bacon and eggs in the middle of the street on horde nights it was so easy.
Now though when doing easy tasks I'm constantly thinking how to outsmart the next game stage increase, it's great.
Converted 2 poi wood barns and both of them are still standing in the 3rd week even with spitting cops and vultures and this is on insane. I stand in the middle of the barn on a raised platform only an outside ramp with a 3 gap to come in. Zombies do break walls and supports but they never tear the whole place down as they are crambling in the middle of the barn to try to get to me.
With the spikes not dismembering zombies anymore I've totally HAD to rely on building or more accurate refurbishing poi's. A16 u just needed a few of spikes, made them into crawlers and only had to deal with cops dogs and spiders, I even cooked bacon and eggs in the middle of the street on horde nights it was so easy.
Now though when doing easy tasks I'm constantly thinking how to outsmart the next game stage increase, it's great.
Here is the problem. For many alpha's people have been cheesing the blood moon and that has made many of you simply rubbish at building a good blood moon base. I believe the devs never intended for you to sit in your base sipping a cup of coffee watching the hours tick away while Z's ran over your spikes and died.....or couldn't even get to you because you knocked out some stairs or were sitting on bedrock and that's the behaviour they have been trying to eliminate.
I build the typical blood moon base you have seen on these forums hundreds of times, 5x5 platform, raised 6 high on 4 pillars with truss frame to shoot through. Amazingly on my 21 day horde they knocked out 2 pillars (cobblestone) without a collapse despite me going nuts on any weapons I had.
Some of us have been actively defending against the blood moon for many alphas, being careful with ammo early game so we had heaps for the event. We don't have a problem with the blood moon.
For those of you that have been cheesing blood moon and wasting ammo early game, you are going to struggle until you relearn to play this game without the cheese. You will be a better player for it.
I build the typical blood moon base you have seen on these forums hundreds of times, 5x5 platform, raised 6 high on 4 pillars with truss frame to shoot through. Amazingly on my 21 day horde they knocked out 2 pillars (cobblestone) without a collapse despite me going nuts on any weapons I had.
Some of us have been actively defending against the blood moon for many alphas, being careful with ammo early game so we had heaps for the event. We don't have a problem with the blood moon.
For those of you that have been cheesing blood moon and wasting ammo early game, you are going to struggle until you relearn to play this game without the cheese. You will be a better player for it.
I'm starting to understand the AI's pathing preference:
1 - Is a direct path available without jumping up or down on anything. Take it.
2 - Is the target below me. Destroy floor / jump down.
3 - Is the target pathable if I ignore doors? Destroy and path through door.
4 - Can I step over something? Jump it.
5 - Can I pyramid to a pathable route? Jump on zombie.
6 - Is there no path, RAGE.
Interesting quirk: Zombies will pyramid at the exterior wall or rage if there's a 1 block 'jump' behind the door they can't avoid.
The best bait for zombies is an open path. That's why I started testing spike pitfall traps with loose floorboards covering them. They fall in and are either killed or controlled for a much longer period of time than most other scenarios, with only a few stragglers at worst.
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I first tried playing on lower difficulties (I like to play Dead Is Dead).
I had many starter bases overrun by zombies piling up over my defenses on DAY ONE!
I've managed some games past day 14, but it was a tough night on 14.
At times the Z's have become so focussed on a part of my building that when I've fallen through a damaged part they've actually ignored me, and I've been able to run around behind them, collecting arrows, and laying some frames to get myself back up out of their reach (if they'd turned around I'd have been mince).
I do wonder if they are targetting a 'heat point' within the building, rather than the player now.
Anyway, I've now concluded the only feasible option for Dead Is Dead play is to select Zombies Never Run. Now when a horde hits I can just go out regardless of day or night and just club them all to death without them even touching my building. The building could be made out of paper for all it matters now.
It also eliminates the danger of being late getting back to base after a 2.5km run to a distant quest. If night falls, just keep walking and clubbing.
Now the only real danger I face is being overrun by masses in a confined space (ie a quest that drops a bundle of Z's onto me)
So essentially, the undefensible hordes have eliminated the intended game play. Here's hoping some eventual balancing will get the game back into a credible base build/defense state, where base destruction isn't a guaranteed outcome.
I had many starter bases overrun by zombies piling up over my defenses on DAY ONE!
I've managed some games past day 14, but it was a tough night on 14.
At times the Z's have become so focussed on a part of my building that when I've fallen through a damaged part they've actually ignored me, and I've been able to run around behind them, collecting arrows, and laying some frames to get myself back up out of their reach (if they'd turned around I'd have been mince).
I do wonder if they are targetting a 'heat point' within the building, rather than the player now.
Anyway, I've now concluded the only feasible option for Dead Is Dead play is to select Zombies Never Run. Now when a horde hits I can just go out regardless of day or night and just club them all to death without them even touching my building. The building could be made out of paper for all it matters now.
It also eliminates the danger of being late getting back to base after a 2.5km run to a distant quest. If night falls, just keep walking and clubbing.
Now the only real danger I face is being overrun by masses in a confined space (ie a quest that drops a bundle of Z's onto me)
So essentially, the undefensible hordes have eliminated the intended game play. Here's hoping some eventual balancing will get the game back into a credible base build/defense state, where base destruction isn't a guaranteed outcome.
I've made a small test in creative. Race: who first will destroy full reinforced concrete block, normal Hawaiian zombie or me with auger in hands. He won, when he finished 6000hp reinforced concrete block I was still on 1500/6000. Feral or radiated Hawaiians deals about two times more dmg to blocks. Maybe some zeds have small augers in their hands(or pickaxes instead fingers), so small that we do not see them. Multiply this by 8 zeds on horde night... (I know that hawaiian and cops are the strongest zeds)
Wamplet
New member
Believe it or not, on Day 7, i had a Screamer walk up to my base at 20:00, a wandering horde came about 50 meters alongside the base at 21:00 and then the horde came at 22:00. The screamer died on the spikes before screaming and i just let the horde walk past the base and they stopped about 150 meters away from the base and i just had to deal with the regular horde. i went and killed the wandering horde after i was done with the 7 day one.
vonstorm
New member
What Im reading from all this then, is that if we want to take advantage of all the new blocks and build a "nice" base, it should be a secondary base. For horde night we need to build a formatted base to take advantage of the quirks of the AI (blocks to another building etc..).
I love what they have done, but as another poster stated its going to be hard for the devs to compromise between the builders and the hardcore survivalists.
Back when I modded Neverwinter nights servers you could tweak the AI of mobs, you had ranged, casters, healers etc. I found that adding random spawns to generics made for some great encounters. To transpose this idea, if on the horde night instead of doing a quarterback checkdown which is predictable after time, if the devs could add a random element to behaviour it could mitigate the problem. For example, if each zombie had a different AI checkdown chosen at random. We could have the current one, plus one that says destroy every block within x radius of player, one that attacks nearest door, Pyramiding, etc. The randomness would make every attack different, some wildly unsuccessful, some more potent depending on base style. Instead of a checkdown, each zombie gets a part of the code and changes it every 60 seconds or so.
Because if bandits are coming, zombies working in unison with auger hands are going to be hard to beat. Even a rocket launcher will not do that much damage, and bandits are supposed to be intelligent and work together - Zombies arent.
Just an idea.
I love what they have done, but as another poster stated its going to be hard for the devs to compromise between the builders and the hardcore survivalists.
Back when I modded Neverwinter nights servers you could tweak the AI of mobs, you had ranged, casters, healers etc. I found that adding random spawns to generics made for some great encounters. To transpose this idea, if on the horde night instead of doing a quarterback checkdown which is predictable after time, if the devs could add a random element to behaviour it could mitigate the problem. For example, if each zombie had a different AI checkdown chosen at random. We could have the current one, plus one that says destroy every block within x radius of player, one that attacks nearest door, Pyramiding, etc. The randomness would make every attack different, some wildly unsuccessful, some more potent depending on base style. Instead of a checkdown, each zombie gets a part of the code and changes it every 60 seconds or so.
Because if bandits are coming, zombies working in unison with auger hands are going to be hard to beat. Even a rocket launcher will not do that much damage, and bandits are supposed to be intelligent and work together - Zombies arent.
Just an idea.
Hryllingur
New member
Nope ... just build your nice base. As i do too. Just build it that Zombies can access a tunnel or a small path to you. So you can kill them one by one ... like this:
View attachment 25678
Red Eagle LXIX
Community Moderator
Don't build to fight harder, build smarter.
Passive Base Challenge
Currently includes a design achievable by Day 7 and a design that will have Zeds killing themselves.
Passive Base Challenge
Currently includes a design achievable by Day 7 and a design that will have Zeds killing themselves.
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Wamplet
New member
On Day 10 or 11 and that is what i am planning to do. I got my wood defensive base set up, but am going to build a more fortified flagstone storage tower close enough to it for my main items. I have about 3 or 4 days to get it set up. Hopefully i can get it done in 1 day for the base and 1 day to move the critical loot. I could also just build a new main defensive tower, but i'm not sure if i will have enough time. don't have the resources for it right now.
I was trying to look for ore below some rocks and a horde came by. I think i was digging less than 2 or 3 minutes (about 10 blocks down), I made a small wooden square with a door and they were pounding all around as i scrambled to make my way back up and out. Fortunately, they weren't at the door and around the rest of the small walled structure, so i was able to get out.
PrivateRiem
New member
This is the base we built. It survived pretty much all the blood moons thrown at it, and the last blood moon went incredibly well.
There's a dart trap right under the vault door, with a motion detector right next to it.
It's possible to repair the door from above as well. Inside is the "kill box" as I call it, and zombies are incapable of going up the hatch door and inside, instead trying to blow up the walls (From the outside).
If the vault door is still there, they'll attack it. If it's gone, and there is no available target in the killbox, they'll attack the walls.
The ramps on the side stop spiders, and the metal bars inside stop zombies from piling on each other to climb.
Walls are 3 blocks thick, and 3 blocks high. Thin metal railings protect the holes above the hallway.
https://steamcommunity.com/id/runningdagger/screenshots
There's a dart trap right under the vault door, with a motion detector right next to it.
It's possible to repair the door from above as well. Inside is the "kill box" as I call it, and zombies are incapable of going up the hatch door and inside, instead trying to blow up the walls (From the outside).
If the vault door is still there, they'll attack it. If it's gone, and there is no available target in the killbox, they'll attack the walls.
The ramps on the side stop spiders, and the metal bars inside stop zombies from piling on each other to climb.
Walls are 3 blocks thick, and 3 blocks high. Thin metal railings protect the holes above the hallway.
https://steamcommunity.com/id/runningdagger/screenshots
lord_ahriman
Member
Disclaimer: sorry bad english, isn't my first language.
My first horde night (solo, normal difficulty, 16 zombies) was the same: initial pressure and then by midnight it was over. I'm not a good player, but what I learned in A16 still helpful: built a two floor cage 5x5 with 10 rows of wood spikes and an extra row of barbed wire fence (which was useless because they jump it). Patch notes gave me an idea because horde will always come from easiest path, so (I'm playing Navezgane) I built the horde defence between a hill, which by any means is hard to go through, but not a clear path, and a bookstore (my bedroll is on top of it to avoid spawn inside the building). So in theory, they "only" had 2 clear paths in order to reach my cage. They still reached my walls, but it's sealed so zombies first ran around of it and then start to attack. No "zombie luck": spikes are super weak, but with ten rolls it killed a good amount of zombies and I think very few got my walls (I'm not sure exact numbers, but no more than 12 zombies) and not attacking the same spot was easy to kill with headshots. I'm about to take on the second horde in the same base, but now I have 8 rows of iron spikes, 2 rows of wood spikes and 1 row of barbed wire fence. I don't think it will be enough because it seems gamestage is scaling too fast from what I've seen so far.
Overall, I think game needs a little bit balance specially for solo players. I disagree to Roland: I should not need to tone down settings just because I'm solo. If that's the case it's pretty clear game needs adjustment. From a builder first solo player persperctive:
1) Gamestage should be a little less harsh for solo players
2) Bonus when attacking blocks should be toned down (except digging, it's perfect because hidding underground is BS, imo)
3) More hit points for spikes and a steel spike type because it would give us a much stronger passive defense, but not at a point I can relax, drink my coffee and watch tv until horde night is over
4) We still need a better way to get more bones (adding gore blocks to roads is a good idea, but nowhere near enough), otherwise crafting paper (looting is not doable since 30 days respawn is good enough), duct tape and glue (there are tons of recipes which requires both and looting a fairly amount weekly isn't possible) aren't an option anymore. For example: to take on late big hordes on A16 I always needed 100 ~ 150 exploding bolts and 2 ~ 2.5K shotgun shells; in A17 it's virtually impossible to craft that in a 7 days span
5) For the love of Gods: do not touch POI's (except those annoying weird spawns right behind you)
vonstorm
New member
I understand the concept, just wish walls meant something instead of having to build AI "cheese" labyrinths.
I like having to be proactive defending the base - Now if only the zombies were not so predictable (see last post).
What if some zombies just started smashing away at the maze, while some followed the path. Which ones do you deal with first?
That is improved AI for zombies - not just better pathing and messing with damage modifiers.