PC Another "direction of the game thread" and iam concerned...

[Kalen]

Actually, the difficulty level alone doesn't make a difference whether a base can handle a horde or not. The block damage of the zombies is always the same, no matter if you play on the easiest or the hardest difficulty. To my knowledge, the traps also deal the same damage regardless of the difficulty level.
Only the damage that the players deal and receive is different depending on the difficulty level. So if you have a fully automatic base then it doesn't matter on which difficulty level you play.

But the zombies have higher hitpoints (and, I believe, more armor) so the traps take longer to kill the zombies giving the zombies more time to damage your base.

 

[RipClaw]

But the zombies have higher hitpoints (and, I believe, more armor) so the traps take longer to kill the zombies giving the zombies more time to damage your base.

No, they have the same HP. The player only does less damage at higher difficulty levels.

In older alphas you could set these values independently. There was the setting "Damage Given" and "Damage Recieved".

You can see these settings in this video from Games4kickz:

If you want to see the values of the zombies then you can either use the command "le" which shows you all entities or go into debug mode and press 0 on the numpad. Then a debug display will appear above the zombie with the HP among other informations. With * on the numpad you can switch off the AI so that the zombies don't move anymore. Pressing * again reenables the AI and with 0 the debug display will be disabled again.

 

[Kalen]

No, they have the same HP. The player only does less damage at higher difficulty levels.
In older alphas you could set these values independently. There was the setting "Damage Given" and "Damage Recieved".

You can see these settings in this video from Games4kickz:

Huh, I didn't realize that. Thanks for the info.

 

[DeadGerry]

I want to earn that "easy". Pre-A18 I earned the feeling of "easy" through constant base refinement. A lot of experimentation and lot of hard work. I never never, ever seen a base design like ours in any screenshots or videos. Nothing even close. And no I will never make it public, for obvious reasons.

Yes, the reason is obvious; but not what you infer.

Please take my advice and stop responding to me - you said you would - because you either don't understand where I'm coming from, or you can't because you've not faced a ton of Demos. Or by all means tell me how you handle your Demolishers and shut me up. And please, don't relist the 6 half-assed ways from earlier. 4 don't work and 2 are exploits/avoidance.

I have gone into great detail about what I've been trying and the results I've been getting, and have pointed to a youtuber who has demonstrated your premis to be false. Not posting it all again, and not doing yout work for you. What you MEAN to post is 'Can someone please post up an exploit base / tactic because me and my friends are unable to handle the hardest difficulty, but don't want to turn it down for some reason.'

I put plenty effort in. Tons. The reward I am seeking is surviving horde night with minimal expense, and no exploits.

Demolishers are bad design because they remove a lot of the fun tools from the table and reward exploits. Not because they are unbeatable. They are not unbeatable. I already said that numerous times. They are unfun to fight, unfun to design against, they nullify a ton of base designs, almost completely nullify Blade Traps and are going to put a lot of people off the game imo. If you're not exploiting AI of course. They are the reason we are getting so many threads and posts title "base building is dead" etc.

We ALWAYS get those pots following a new alpha; and they are almost always just people who are too set in their ways to adapt to changes or poor players unwilling to turn the difficulty down and learn how to play. You are wrong. Not an opinion. Youtubers successfully using blade traps to kill Demolishers is Proof. Drop your argument because it is demonstrably wrong.

Yes, higher gamestage and difficultiy will require more effort and thought; that's what turning up the difficulty does; so you are either failing to use the traps properly or turning up the difficulty beyond your current ability to play. The fix is in your hands - design a better base - or turn the difficulty down if you aren't able enough.

We come to what I posted earlier

'I like the old build style cos... architecture..not for the glitch.'

Cool - you can still build like that, you'll just have to defend it better.

'I don't want to defend it better.'

You mean you want the glitch back?

'No... I just want the same tactic to work.'

It only worked because of the glitch.

'Is there anything different that still gives me the same effect as the glitch?'

Nope.

'Thats bull!'

Because you want the glitch?

'No!'

Then build something different.

'Okay, but I don't want to build anything that can be broken into or destroyed.'

Everything can be broken into or destroyed, unless you are clever, invest time and effort.

'Is there an easier, cheaper quicker way?'

Like a glitch?

'NO!'

Everything you are saying is contradictory unless we presume you are looking for a glitchy cheap exploit - including your recommendation that I stop replying in the same breath as demanding a response.

 

[Ghostlight]

Not sure why you equate GS with difficulty. A GS 200 horde on scavenger is going to be vastly easier than a GS 200 horde on insane.

True but the presence or otherwise of Demolishers is what matters more than anything else. By a long margin. And you'll get them at 200 regardless of difficulty setting.

And did you really say that if you couldn't build an essentially zombie proof base the game would not be challenging on any difficulty level? Wouldn't that make the exact opposite true?

I meant if I thought I couldn't build an efficient base that did most of the killing, I wouldn't build a base at all. I'd simply bike around all night which would indeed make the game no challenge since it is already no challenge outside horde night. Hope that made more sense.

 

[Ghostlight]

So what you're saying is, that anyone that actually performs combat and considers Insane a bit too easy at times are automatically exploiting the AI? Dude I soloed, with a basic square base with layered walls and no roof, no pits, no anything that exploits the AI. Insane. 16 + spawning. Game stage 400. Horde night every night with the minimal 24-hour time span, max night length. I did just fine.

Video or it never happened. Seriously, how did you kill the horde? If it was via combat, tell me how much ammo you used per horde night. I'm very familiar with the horde strength you describe, so I am curious....

"A18 is too hard now on insane it needs to be easier but it needs to be harder"

I never said too hard. I said no fun at all.

 

[Ghostlight]

From what I've been reading, the only strong bases he coniders are ones that don't cost anything to maintain and lets him stand there and do nothing. *shrug*

Well doing nothing is kinda boring so we typically did *something* just for giggles (and XP). The actual pinnacle of our base design came at the very end of A17. That was the one time we actually did nothing just to prove we had achieved it. We typically fired shots thereafter to keep the XP gain since we wanted high GS after that point to see where we could take it.

 

[Ghostlight]

Its exactly what Jugg is saying.... he doesn't just want a strong base.... he wants a base thats strong and easy/cheap to maintain, while at the same time playing on insane difficulty. I cant speak for TFP, but I'd imagine that those two things are meant to be mutually exclusive.

Managed it in A17. Intend to manage it again. But the journey is not fun (as per the picture) because of the ■■■■ Demolishers nullifying so many fun parts of base building.

And if TFP wanted those things to be mutually exclusive (strong cheap base + Insane), then they'd patch the AI exploit I mentioned. So they obviously don't care. QED.

 

[Jugginator]

Killed the hordes by bullets, flaming/explosive arrows, various grenades, and the perimeter electric fencing + dart traps with spikes on my walls. Look if you don't find challenging fun that's cool. But if you find it not fun lower the difficulty and/or mod out demos. A lot of us actually enjoy trying to defend a base, and rather not be forced to build dirt cheap and weak bases just to have some sort of challenge. And not much ammo was used. I had enough to last over 2 weeks of those settings. Not hard to do unless you just hold the trigger and throw your mouse everywhere.

 

[Ghostlight]

For a group of expert min maxers, its surprising you guys didnt even know demos didnt explode if you kill them fast enough..

That was changed in a patch. That's why I was asking. And if you track down the threads where I asked (this one and another I think), I absolutely said that something must have changed because they were exploding after death for us. In fact if you shot their corpse after they were dead you could still trigger their explosion. The only way to stop it was doing enough damage to completely vaporise the corpse. This is the very reason ankle-height Blade Traps didn't work for us.

The very first time I ever met them I gunned one down with an M60 - I had not read a spoiler so had no idea what it was or what it did - and I was killed by the dead body at my feet, exploding several seconds after it died. I have only just got back to the point where I'm meeting them again, as our last map's trees got screwed by the most recent experiemntal and we had to start again - so no we didn't know that when my complaints applied. And yes it appears they have been nerfed in this regard, as I am finding them a piece of ■■■■ to handle now as I hinted above. It was the fact they were blowing after death and also being set off by random collateral damage after death that was screwing us. This no longer seems to be the case.

 

[Ghostlight]

Yah but your gamestage increases faster, and zombie HP increases, if not more stuff. Either way, Ghost is being silly here lol. Really it sounds like he should play insane until he builds a base, then swap it to whatever is the easiest difficulty and lower the zombie block damage to the lowest. Leave Insane and Demos alone plz.

That's the opposite of what I did. I cant be bothered with Insane bullet sponges on week 1.

 

[Ghostlight]

Killed the hordes by bullets, flaming/explosive arrows, various grenades, and the perimeter electric fencing + dart traps with spikes on my walls.....And not much ammo was used. I had enough to last over 2 weeks of those settings. Not hard to do unless you just hold the trigger and throw your mouse everywhere.

Forgive me if I don't believe you. The firepower you described would do nothing to the Insane hordes we fought at GS 500, assuming "not much ammo was used" as you put it. Spikes for example are absolutely useless in this situation. They are instantly destroyed by one touch from any enemy and do no damage in return. We fired 2000+ AK rounds per player from tier 6 AKs with top drawer mods including Rad Remover - and that was just to handle the normal zeds - which the base was mostly killing to boot. We also needed several hundred AP rounds each just for Demolishers. No way you did this on Insane with "not much ammo used".

Are you going to now claim that all 3 of us missed most of the time? Because I know we didn't - - we were firing at heads from about 4 blocks away (cunning base design, remember?) that's basically point blank. And all of us 5/5 Machine Gunner.

So....if I understand you correctly, the situation you describe is you in a simple square box base firing outwards, throwing grenades and exploding arrows outwards, having dart traps pointing outwards, and surrounded by electric fence. Tell me this....how did you prevent the Demolishers from exploding???? If you had done what you described every single Demolisher that came in would explode. The moment one did....bye bye fence and that's them at your walls. What next? At GS 400 you must have had several dozen of them often coming 5 or 6 at a time from different directions, so...how?

Also. no roof you said, so you managed all this with a dozen Vultures buzzing round your head as well and a dozen irradiated cops spitting constantly at you from long range. Must have been a remarkable fight.

 

[Jugginator]

Look man evidently you're god and everyone else is lying. You prevent demos from blowing up by killing them. You take a gun. You aim it at the demos head. You left click.

You missed where I said perimeter fencing. They were nowhere near where zombies were heading to, and they were in little concrete boxes. Iron spikes dont kill zombies, they slow them from reaching the wall while damaging them.

Either you guys were missing 85% of your shots, or you were using junk guns. Period. I almost feel as if the stronger guns with all the mods, HP/AP ammo are too OP even on insane. But, you're going to respond with normal bs and ignore what I type so this will go no further. I posted pics of that base in the A18 diary somewhere. Not going to bother finding them myself for you lol

 

[Laz Man]

That was changed in a patch. That's why I was asking. And if you track down the threads where I asked (this one and another I think), I absolutely said that something must have changed because they were exploding after death for us. In fact if you shot their corpse after they were dead you could still trigger their explosion. The only way to stop it was doing enough damage to completely vaporise the corpse. This is the very reason ankle-height Blade Traps didn't work for us.
The very first time I ever met them I gunned one down with an M60 - I had not read a spoiler so had no idea what it was or what it did - and I was killed by the dead body at my feet, exploding several seconds after it died. I have only just got back to the point where I'm meeting them again, as our last map's trees got screwed by the most recent experiemntal and we had to start again - so no we didn't know that when my complaints applied. And yes it appears they have been nerfed in this regard, as I am finding them a piece of ■■■■ to handle now as I hinted above. It was the fact they were blowing after death and also being set off by random collateral damage after death that was screwing us. This no longer seems to be the case.

Gotcha. Perhaps now you guys have more strategic options instead of modding them out. I'm sure there will be more balancing passes before things are final. The new tiered int weapons will almost guarantee it.

 

[Kalen]

I meant if I thought I couldn't build an efficient base that did most of the killing, I wouldn't build a base at all. I'd simply bike around all night which would indeed make the game no challenge since it is already no challenge outside horde night. Hope that made more sense.

It does

 

[Kalen]

And if TFP wanted those things to be mutually exclusive (strong cheap base + Insane), then they'd patch the AI exploit I mentioned. So they obviously don't care. QED.

c'mon, you seriously believe they're leaving in AI exploits so people can manage hordes on insane? I mean seriously believe that?

 

[Ghostlight]

There's endless videos of it happening, so why not?

 

[Ghostlight]

Look man evidently you're god and everyone else is lying. You prevent demos from blowing up by killing them. You take a gun. You aim it at the demos head. You left click.

How do you do that solo when they come from all directions in large numbers? And take full magazines to head before they die?

Iron spikes dont kill zombies, they slow them from reaching the wall while damaging them.

One touch from any enemy on Insane and your spike is gone.

Either you guys were missing 85% of your shots, or you were using junk guns

I told you what we were using.

I will draw my own conclusions. What you describe is not enemies on Insane.

 

[Kalen]

There's endless videos of it happening, so why not?

Yeah, ok.... so if you believe they are intentionally leaving in AI exploits, then I guess they should no longer be considered exploits but intended behavior, right?

Its getting harder and harder to take you seriously, man.

 

[Jugginator]

Welp, that confirmed my thought on you guys (Ghost) missing most of your shots. Not even the demo takes anywhere close to a full clip of ammo in the head. I literally 1-tap on horde nights because 1 - 5 bullets blows a head off. And no, one touch from an enemy on Insane will not destroy the spike. Good lord man lol.