PC AI pathing and base defending

[Zanmato]

Has anyone else had trouble with the new zombie pathing? We find it near impossible to defend a base without resorting to "silly" methods in A17.

- The zombies completely avoid things like spike traps if there is even 1 little opening. They'll take a huge detour around a whole field of spike traps if there is an opening anywhere. This makes 99% of your traps useless because they'll just clear an opening 1 block wide and use that path from then.

- The same thing with walls basically, they'll somehow choose a spot and keep hammering that same spot until they have an opening that is 1 wide to breach your walls. No matter what we seem to do (move around and ♥♥♥♥), they keep hammering that same spot until they breach.

It kinda feels like zombies are "too smart"... Should they really take detours to avoid traps? Or focus walls like that? I bet if we made a maze of spike traps, they would path right through it without even hitting your traps.

TL;DR: I liked it more when zombies just tried to come straight at you, no matter what was between you and them. They'd just throw themselves at your traps to get to you. Anyone else feel the same?

 

[xXBadDreamXx]

heh i raised this concern about 2 years ago when people whined about wanting smart zombies. welp now we have "smart" zombies ,and they're worse than ever.

 

[OzHawkeye]

heh i raised this concern about 2 years ago when people whined about wanting smart zombies. welp now we have "smart" zombies ,and they're worse than ever.

To be fair, what people (I think) were excited about was a "breadcrumb" system, wherein your own regular foot steps would leave a "heat trail" that Zombies could follow. What we have now is Zombies, with full knowledge of the map (even those parts they can't see), performing a complex calculation, taking into account the SI of every block between themselves and you, and working out from that calculation the "path of least resistance" to get to you.

Since every zombie is performing the same calculation on the same data at the same time, it's only natural that they all choose exactly the same path to get to you.

Combine that natural focusing phenomena with the damage bonus zombies get from the presence of other nearby zombies, and you have a conga line of insta-gibbing destruction that can slice through most any passive base defences.

TFP are looking to further fine tune the Zombie AI to introduce a more random like behaviour, so that some will choose the most efficient path to you, and some will just slam away at what ever is in front of them.

Hopefully, when A18 lands and we get bandits, the bandits will inherit the current Zombie AI, and Zombies will get a more random, less omniscient, AI.

 

[xXBadDreamXx]

why should bandits have this knowledge about SI and the inside parts of the base that they cant see? why should only some of the zombies even have this knowledge? just putting it out there....

 

[Zanmato]

To be fair, what people (I think) were excited about was a "breadcrumb" system, wherein your own regular foot steps would leave a "heat trail" that Zombies could follow. What we have now is Zombies, with full knowledge of the map (even those parts they can't see), performing a complex calculation, taking into account the SI of every block between themselves and you, and working out from that calculation the "path of least resistance" to get to you.
Since every zombie is performing the same calculation on the same data at the same time, it's only natural that they all choose exactly the same path to get to you.

This seems accurate... unfortunately... Hopefully it gets reworked in A17...

 

[Royal Deluxe]

why should bandits have this knowledge about SI and the inside parts of the base that they cant see? why should only some of the zombies even have this knowledge? just putting it out there....

Extreme ultra complex topic of AI and human abilitys on one side

The simple question, what can i realize in 2000 Hours of work

The result will never be really satisfying if you dont understand both points above.

 

[OzHawkeye]

why should bandits have this knowledge about SI and the inside parts of the base that they cant see? why should only some of the zombies even have this knowledge? just putting it out there....

Because I suspect it would be just a "bridge too far" to program in some sort of "neural-like map discovery system" for Bandits, that would simulate their need to explore your base first before deciding on its weakest point. The "easier" way would be to give them full knowledge of the map as Zombies currently have, and let them simply calculate the path of least resistance.

That's just a suspicion of mine, I have no direct knowledge on how TFP plans to program Bandits in A18.

 

[FranticDan]

Let's pretend you're playing hide n seek, and it's your turn to hide. Well, you're screwed! The person who is seeking is cheating and knows exactly where you are at times and knows exactly how to get to you no matter how complex how how many dead ends there are.

"I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you"

 

[icharis]

I don't like the zombie AI either, it seems to me beyond the apex of a reasonable AI spectrum. I would suggest that the smartest zombies would be smart enough to walk around your base and look for a weak spot from what they can see from outside and maybe even influence other zombies. Slightly less intelligent zombies shouldn't have the sense to walk around your base and just attack the weakest spot they see from the side they approach from. The least intelligent zombies should just path directly towards you until they hit an obstacle and start attacking it. No zombie should know what is behind the blocks that they can see, other than player location, unless TFP want us to believe that they have mutated to develop x-ray vision.

Also I think that zombie block damage needs to be scaled relative to player block damage. At the bottom end of the scale would be a new player power swinging a bone shiv and at the top of the scale a fully perked player power swinging a bone shiv. Some top tier zombies might be stronger than a fully perked player, maybe two to five times stronger but not 100 times stronger.

 

[Zvex]

TFP are looking to further fine tune the Zombie AI to introduce a more random like behaviour, so that some will choose the most efficient path to you, and some will just slam away at what ever is in front of them.

This will make a trick for both:

1) to make zeds not too smart

2) to break some silly zombie AI exploits, because all zombies have the same behavior pattern right now

Now we finally see how good zombies can be and balancing it out, I guess, is only a matter of time.

 

[Vedui]

Yes and yes.

POI Sleepers benefit tremendously in a positive way (IMHO) from the new Zombie AI. No more swiss cheese buildings (sort off!)...

Wandering zombies are worse now. They will bash everything in their way instead of just walking around. Unless of course it's a trap, then they'll avoid. This leads to funny situations of zombies avoiding wood spikes around your base, but they'll happily bash the base if there're no spikes and they get "blocked". I even saw a few fighting cacti (and losing)

Blood moon horde zombies having the new AI is a huge downside. It breaks so many bases, which together with other mechanics makes base building pointless unless you're taking advantage of the zombie AI somehow to avoid your base being trashed everytime.

I wish the horde AI would revert to A16 type of "track towards player and bash base" with addition of limited dig/hit supports if player is below/above within say 20 blocks. Then we could go back to having the nice cool ai for POI's but have the "horde" type AI for blood moon hordes and actually be able to build a castle as opposed to a fall trap or maze trap.

Personally having more fun with ways to have melee bases using the AI to make it manageable as opposed to having falls/traps killing them .. Melee Base -->

 

[Ghostlight]

What it has done is made horde night less fun. You either exploit it (which is super easy) and your base will take zero damage, or you fight it fair and the zombies target a specific weak spot once it is made, thus rendering the horde night experience incredibly dull.

 

[leaderdog]

Let's pretend you're playing hide n seek, and it's your turn to hide. Well, you're screwed! The person who is seeking is cheating and knows exactly where you are at times and knows exactly how to get to you no matter how complex how how many dead ends there are.
"I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you"

It's Like having Jason chase you from Friday the 13th.

you run like crazy while he's just mildly walking along and no matter what hiding spot you choose the machete goes right through you.

Always thought that was stupid in those shows.

Although, The Cabin in the Woods pretty much explains why it was like that.. now that's a good movie,

but I digress.

Zombies should be stupid, they're suppose to be mindless creatures. They're walking around mines that they should have mindlessly stepped over for goodness sake, why even waste the effort and resources on most of the defense items now.

I used to make massive kill zones and have a blast running around bonking them on the head, shooting them when I got overwhelmed and had spike traps all over for them to get hung up on to give myself time.

Now some might run into the traps, typically they run around them, and the horrible... "accurate" melee system doesn't allow for running around on horde night to bonk them on the head, because they avoid your traps.

I never liked the bread crumb idea, they should be set in motion by sight, sound and maybe smell. But once you've run out of sight, and sound, the smell shouldn't lead them right to you, unless you're carrying raw meat.

I guess we might stink, I don't know how many times you've jumped in the river to wash the stink off you from constantly running around. I imagine you're sweating profusely if you having to stop and catch your breath as often as you do in a17.

but with current ai, that they're are going to rework so let's be patient and see what happens, is just no sense in building anything but a ramp and a platform to stand on because anything more than that and you're just wasting resources...

or being creative, but still, they're only coming in one spot and one spot only.

Multiple iterations of the past ai's should be applied to zombies at random so you need a smart and well defended base. But they should never avoid traps and look for the "weak" spot, that's just, well smart. and zombies aren't supposed to be smart.

 

[WolfyBlah]

Smart zombies are dumb.

Giving zombies the ability to path around traps is bull♥♥♥♥ to be honest, why even bother placing them if the zombies wont walk on them?

Im hapy zombies dig again, once block damage gets turned back down to sane levels zombies that can (finally) attack downwards again are a great AI improvement.

Having zombies with better SI knowladge is good too, they will now attack support pillars consistently instead of only if you where stood near the pillar.

The only problem is the pathing (and the block damage) : it makes placing a bunch of spikes around your base pointless, better to have open space to kite than traps that are more likely to hurt you than the over-smart zombies.

Also not a fan of them jumping so stupidly high, and often, it just dosent look right.

 

[Jamey]

I view the current AI as an iteration towards ideal zombie behavior. It’s a completely new AI and feels too omniscient for zombies, but in some ways (e.g. behavior in POIs) it is better behavior.

Hopefully in 17.something the AI will be less omniscient and feel more zombie like.

 

[pahbi]

I'm sure in the next few patches the pendulum will swing the other way and zombies will get tuned in.

- P

 

[Royal Deluxe]

 

[JCrook1028]

To be fair, what people (I think) were excited about was a "breadcrumb" system, wherein your own regular foot steps would leave a "heat trail" that Zombies could follow. What we have now is Zombies, with full knowledge of the map (even those parts they can't see), performing a complex calculation, taking into account the SI of every block between themselves and you, and working out from that calculation the "path of least resistance" to get to you.
Since every zombie is performing the same calculation on the same data at the same time, it's only natural that they all choose exactly the same path to get to you.

Combine that natural focusing phenomena with the damage bonus zombies get from the presence of other nearby zombies, and you have a conga line of insta-gibbing destruction that can slice through most any passive base defences.

TFP are looking to further fine tune the Zombie AI to introduce a more random like behaviour, so that some will choose the most efficient path to you, and some will just slam away at what ever is in front of them.

Hopefully, when A18 lands and we get bandits, the bandits will inherit the current Zombie AI, and Zombies will get a more random, less omniscient, AI.

That could end up being even worse tho. If the horde for example comes from the west, and your weakest spot is on the east then you magically have to be able to be in two places at one time. On a decent sized base it's impossible to defend.

 

[OzHawkeye]

That could end up being even worse tho. If the horde for example comes from the west, and your weakest spot is on the east then you magically have to be able to be in two places at one time. On a decent sized base it's impossible to defend.

Yes, but by having the horde not concentrating on a single spot (and perhaps toning down their block damage, especially while in a group), the base wouldn't be cut through like a hot knife through butter (hopefully).

 

[Kalarro]

heh i raised this concern about 2 years ago when people whined about wanting smart zombies. welp now we have "smart" zombies ,and they're worse than ever.

We wanted smarter zombies as in making them get stuck in infinite loops less. And avoididing some constructions to make them not know how to reach them.

Not smarter as in:

- Dont act like zombies

- Make real bases not worth bc its a waste of mats when they only attack 1 point

- Make boring path exploiting bases the new real bases.

- Make defending boring bc they follow a conga line instead of surrounding your base

OFC we wanted them smarter. But we needed smarter AI, as in dont get stuck, not enemeis that arent zombies, but have even worse AI when regarding exploiting it.