around day 2-3 or so we got the forge, threw a bunch of dirt i nthere and frantically ran back and forth with stacks of 100 or so raw iron to smelt down xD. Then we just started to mine the boulders around, and then dug a small mining pit the get stone from. I focused on crafting things, food etc... While the other two focused on being combat monstersHow many days did it take you to get to iron spikes? Aren't those gated behind getting a forge?
Yes! you understood what i try to achieve with this Base ON Point- Very Good!!.Actually it is not a stiltbase. It's more readily understandable from the googledoc document. >Sniplet<
While the idea is fine, i don't think you can have the dps to defend this solo(the horde will be through these chokepoints in no time), so this would have to be a multiplayer base. And even then, it would only work for smaller hordes.
Im glad that something like that worked. From where did you shoot? I see no angle from top floor to shoot the zombies beating on the columns that are destroyed.I started my base build partway into day 3 and it took most of the rest of the week to get it all done, minus some little side missions for the trader and looting a couple nearby POIs. I was on nomad with 90 minutes days but I always afked at night and I had a forge in a nearby POI but I didn't get level 20 until day 8 so I mostly used the stone axe. I've used the same base for multiple hordes with only relatively minor upgrades and it's worked quite well. The picture I added shows the damage after the first horde with a gamestage of around 40 using only a hunting rifle and a bow with stone arrows on my part.
What is a mote? A pit?Dig a mote around the base
But that's absolutly not a fun defense system.Zombie hordes will try to walk over the ramps to rach you, fail to jump and fall down. They will now run out of the mote up your ramp and fall over and over again
ExactlyIt proves though that base defending in A17 isn't harder per se necessarily, just more boring. Because you need to find ways to work around the zombie behaviour instead of actually defending against them.
Oh indeed it's not. But VERY effective. And a very viable base building strategy, which was the point of the post.What is a mote? A pit?
But that's absolutly not a fun defense system.
Exactly
That's exactly whan I want.Lets try to define the goal of the horde defense mechanism: A horde base should preferably be best if it uses similar defenses to a castle in the middle ages. I think this is the ideal we want....
Keyword: Zombies.Lets try to define the goal of the horde defense mechanism: A horde base should preferably be best if it uses similar defenses to a castle in the middle ages. I think this is the ideal we want.
Some important rules to achieve that would be:
1) thicker walls generally means better walls.
2) if you have weaknesses, the enemy will try to attack there
3) a castle will have access ways, but they will be designed so that attackers have a hard time using them
4) defenders always have the better position
5) but all defenses can be broken if the attacker has numerical superiority and the defender makes mistakes or does nothing
Look at how the new AI has made 2 a reality and 3 a successful design principle.
Now Fataal said (I'm rephrasing here) that he is working on further reducing exploitable AI behaviour as far as time permits. But it should be clear that the enemy attacking weaknesses of the castle is expected behaviour.
Fataal also said that as a polishing step he will randomize zombie behaviour, so that some will attack not the weakest point but the next-weakest or even fairly strong points. This is consistent with the low intelligence of the zombies but also in a way good tactical behaviour to make the defender have to watch and defend all sides of the castle. It will also mean that even walls that are not meant to lure the attacker to attack them have to withstand those attacks for a while.
That this polishing can't happen now in A17 is easily explained by the fact that randomized zombies makes finding AI bugs at all possible, because with randomisation we alpha-testers would never know if a zombie is doing something he shouldn't do because of a bug or is just a zombie with a randomized behaviour.
Also because we have a game where you start weak and ill-equipped and work up to be great, your first castle will not be great, it will be weak, but only weak enemies will attack, so thats ok.
So
A) A17 will definitely not be the last step on the journey, an important ingredient is missing (randomization) that is missing deliberately
B) your first castle will be small and out of cobblestone or even wood, concrete is an upgrade for later (if you don't like that at all, there are multiple ways around that, creative mode alone has multiple ways around that). If this isn't true and you can build with concrete from the start, even low level zombies would need the massive block damage to go through concrete. Which would make cobblestone walls of any thickness useless.
C) once all stuff is in, i.e. balancing, reduction of exploits, randomization, zombies could have reduced block damage and could still be effective. Cobblestone will be effective again at low levels. Castles that exploit specific zombie behaviour by not being castle-like might fail because of randomized behaviour of zombies.
I'm using a similar design but then tried a bit of pathing to only have one side to defend. Putting up walls on 3 sides of the base and then putting walls 6 out from the base to only let the pathing work them to one side. Down fall of it was multiplayer had attack paths that bust the outer walls since not everyone can stand in the middle of the one side. Finding this in many designs I'm seeing in multi-player.I started my base build partway into day 3 and it took most of the rest of the week to get it all done, minus some little side missions for the trader and looting a couple nearby POIs. I was on nomad with 90 minutes days but I always afked at night and I had a forge in a nearby POI but I didn't get level 20 until day 8 so I mostly used the stone axe. I've used the same base for multiple hordes with only relatively minor upgrades and it's worked quite well. The picture I added shows the damage after the first horde with a gamestage of around 40 using only a hunting rifle and a bow with stone arrows on my part.
And at the same time enemies need to have decent AI. There has been a huge improvement towards that goal. As you said, they do need to be more erratic and I am sure more improvements will be done on that front, with more zombie profiles, for example with some zombies that keep hitting foundations even if you move to the next pylon, some others not using the 1st most optimal path to you etc.Keyword: Zombies.
Not occupying french army or zergs or conga line dancers... well you get the idea. Zombies. Siege-behavior should be erratic, not co-dependant or focused.
That's exactly whan I want.But while you try to theorize the points saying they are accomplishing that, the real outcome is that mazes of weak materials are better than castles with thick walls. And exploiting the new AI is even more useful now than in previous builds.
You are both critizising the non-randomized behaviour of the Z's (for example mazes of weak materials don't work if some zombies hit on the weak materials). That's why I tried to explain that for the moment predictable behaviour is necessary for the efficient development of the AI and can't be fixed at the moment.Keyword: Zombies.
Not occupying french army or zergs or conga line dancers... well you get the idea. Zombies. Siege-behavior should be erratic, not co-dependant or focused.