PC Horde Night is DEAD

Starting discussion about horde nights here.I fear that my posts about this will be dismissed in the A18 dev thread, and I would hate for that to happen because this is a game-breaking issue.

You make a base and defend it on horde night. This is an amazing concept for this game. Speaking for myself, I feel that it is the most important concept of this game. Horde nights are the pinnacle moments, the climax of all events. However, this activity is pointless and I see that as a real problem. The problem can be viewed from several different perspectives, but each perspective brings me to the same conclusion.

You don't need to defend a base. You can safely ride around on a vehicle for the duration of horde night. You might say, so what? After all, shouldn't a person decide what they want to do in the game? Of course, they should. However, if you do this for every horde night, where is the challenge in the game? Why have horde night at all then? Wouldn't this get boring rather quickly?
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Having only one "legit way" to deal with horde nights, and it gets boring even faster.

 
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Having only one "legit way" to deal with horde nights, and it gets boring even faster.
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Could you elaborate a little on this? The way I am getting it is you are saying that having a legit way to deal with the horde is more boring than 0 legit ways.

 
I still think there might be something to "Tethering" the player to their LCB. Everyone starts with one. If the Bloodmoon gave off radiation like the Rad zones on BM nights from 11pm - 4am but the LCB offered, say a 50-100 block radius of protection (like an invisible dome), it gives bases a new reason for being made and allows enough room for those who prefer to "string along and Melee" the horde room to do so. They could even place Burn barrels to make their limits.
For Mp servers, one block could protect all players under it's cover.

It doesn't help against Underground Moles, but the Digging zombies are already there for that.

Just an idea.
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Hm, definitely an interesting idea.

 
I'm one of those who virtually never build or maintain a horde base. For the first two or three hordes I usually just make a few basic defensive modifications to some random disposable POI and deal with them as best I can from there. After that it's much more fun for me to fight them up close and personal out in the streets or a stretch of road.

I don't really see a need to make it so that someone couldn't just ride away from the horde in relative safety if they so chose. Don't tell anyone... but I've done it myself a few times. That's neither here nor there though... as I see this is mostly brainstorming ideas, and it could be a good mod for someone who wanted it. I just figured I'd offer up a few thoughts for further consideration from someone who fights outside.

As for defending or being tethered somehow to your LCB. This one could potentially be problematic for a street fighter. True... most of my fights probably don't range outside of a 100 block radius, but it can and does happen occasionally. But more importantly; what would prevent someone from spamming LCBs during the horde? Let's say I wanted to ride/drive all night to avoid it. What would keep me from simply making 20-30 LCBs, putting them in my inventory on horde night and simply stopping occasionally to drop a new one as needed? The only thing I can really think of off the top of my head would be to have some sort of "delayed activization" timer on them. A placed LCB wouldn't be registered as active until after maybe 5 minutes of real time, 30 minutes of game time or whatever.

Radiation rain. This one seems a bit more difficult to overcome. My first thought was that there could be some kind of anti-rad suit you could make and wear in place of a shirt and pants to negate the rain effects. I would give it the temperature ratings of BDU clothes for using in snow or desert biomes. But then it dawned on me... what would prevent someone from making it to avoid the horde?

I'm not a fan of the EMP idea. Mainly because what happens when the horde is done for the night? Let's say someone fought the horde away from home. They finish the horde at 1 or 2am. Do they twiddle their thumbs until 4am waiting to be able to use their vehicle again? Or do they walk home and then go back to get their vehicle later?

Don't get me wrong. Even though none of this is something I'd be interested in for myself, I'm not knocking on or putting them down. I merely wanted to offer up a few things for your consideration.

 
I don't really see a need to make it so that someone couldn't just ride away from the horde in relative safety if they so chose. Don't tell anyone... but I've done it myself a few times. That's neither here nor there though... as I see this is mostly brainstorming ideas, and it could be a good mod for someone who wanted it. I just figured I'd offer up a few thoughts for further consideration from someone who fights outside.
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Thanks. I think that if I mod this, I would still keep driving away to safety a possibility. However, I would want to make it risky. Drive to some other shelter, but don't drive around the horde in a circle for 4+ hours, making a mockery of the game mechanic. The way it is right now, you might as well be driving for your life away from a rock... because there is very little threat.

As for defending or being tethered somehow to your LCB. This one could potentially be problematic for a street fighter. True... most of my fights probably don't range outside of a 100 block radius, but it can and does happen occasionally. But more importantly; what would prevent someone from spamming LCBs during the horde? Let's say I wanted to ride/drive all night to avoid it. What would keep me from simply making 20-30 LCBs, putting them in my inventory on horde night and simply stopping occasionally to drop a new one as needed? The only thing I can really think of off the top of my head would be to have some sort of "delayed activization" timer on them. A placed LCB wouldn't be registered as active until after maybe 5 minutes of real time, 30 minutes of game time or whatever.
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I will probably make it so that it follows the server settings as closely as possible. You can't keep making your claim larger and larger-- the settings provide limits to the number that are active and the radius of the claim. If the server allowed 3 blocks and you placed 3 blocks, your 4th would be a dud. There have been arguments for and against providing some kind of reward for your LCB's and yourself surviving the horde. I would probably try to mod it to appease both sides... make it worthwhile for the sake of survival, but also for the reward. So, it essentially becomes like a quest where you must stay within the radius. I don't want to remove the possibility of fighting outside... but you best protect those blocks too!

Radiation rain. This one seems a bit more difficult to overcome. My first thought was that there could be some kind of anti-rad suit you could make and wear in place of a shirt and pants to negate the rain effects. I would give it the temperature ratings of BDU clothes for using in snow or desert biomes. But then it dawned on me... what would prevent someone from making it to avoid the horde?
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I was thinking about this too. In A16, these thoughts about horde night and vehicles existed in the forum, but people for the most part saw it like if someone was able to craft a minibike to avoid the horde, then they certainly earned the right to do so. Now, it's a little easier, and from what I've heard, in A18 it will be even easier... so this thought about getting away kinda goes away. However, if I mod in ways to protect yourself from the rain, then I would make them difficult to craft so that it can fall under the same concept of earning your right to get away. Though, if you go beyond the radius, you won't be getting the reward part of this.

I'm not a fan of the EMP idea. Mainly because what happens when the horde is done for the night? Let's say someone fought the horde away from home. They finish the horde at 1 or 2am. Do they twiddle their thumbs until 4am waiting to be able to use their vehicle again? Or do they walk home and then go back to get their vehicle later?
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I'm not a huge fan of it myself, but if I were to have something like this, it would probably just be momentary. Like a minute or less. I don't think the people who presented this idea really specified, but this is what I would do.

Don't get me wrong. Even though none of this is something I'd be interested in for myself, I'm not knocking on or putting them down. I merely wanted to offer up a few things for your consideration.
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No worries. I need to hear these things to make a decent mod. TFP needs to hear them too in case there is more they want to do for their horde nights.

For Mp servers, one block could protect all players under it's cover.
It doesn't help against Underground Moles, but the Digging zombies are already there for that.

Just an idea.
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Might have to extend the idea to rain plus a fog/gas that permeates to the underground.

 
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The idea I prefer so far is the horde attacking the base during horde night, whether you're in it or not.

For instance, make player placed blocks (like storage) generate heat on horde night and have zombies with the "scout" behavior enabled.

Then you "could" skip horde night but your base would get damaged.

 
I like that idea as well. But not with the way the AI is right now. They already wreck walls and once they spot a weak block, they are gonna make it in usually. And then what is the priority, player or blocks? If they bust in, kill you, and then immediately start wrecking your storage, that might not be good.

Maybe just use it as a lure to get them to attack a base, but then maybe have it fade. Or maybe have LCBs and beds as the higher priority.

 
The idea I prefer so far is the horde attacking the base during horde night, whether you're in it or not.For instance, make player placed blocks (like storage) generate heat on horde night and have zombies with the "scout" behavior enabled.

Then you "could" skip horde night but your base would get damaged.
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I assume your horde base is also your work base. In my case these two bases are separate.

In A16 I even had several work bases and several horde bases. How does your concept deal with that?

 
The idea I prefer so far is the horde attacking the base during horde night, whether you're in it or not.For instance, make player placed blocks (like storage) generate heat on horde night and have zombies with the "scout" behavior enabled.

Then you "could" skip horde night but your base would get damaged.
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The thing with this idea though is which base would the horde target? Many people have a home/crafting base and a separate base for hordes. Someone's home base has the usual crafting stations, campfires, forges etc. They built a separate horde base to fight from to ensure their main base doesn't get wrecked on horde night. Horde night comes and they're waiting and waiting on the wall of their horde base. No horde shows up. They then go home only to find the place trashed, storage and stations all destroyed and lost.

 
And to have them attack any base where the player is offline, means a bunch of zombies have to potentially spawn way away from where any active players are. Probably not ever gonna work.

 
And to have them attack any base where the player is offline, means a bunch of zombies have to potentially spawn way away from where any active players are. Probably not ever gonna work.
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Pretty unlikely that would work. The system is currently designed so that zombies only appear within a certain radius of the player. Anything else would dramatically increase resource consumption.

 
Pretty unlikely that would work. The system is currently designed so that zombies only appear within a certain radius of the player. Anything else would dramatically increase resource consumption.
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The idea was to not spawn in an actual horde when no player is around. You just code it to pretend like there was one there. There is no reason to waste the resources of spawning in actual zombies and animating them when there's nobody around to see it.

As far as the multi-base situation goes, as long as the player is playing and within one of their LCBs, the horde will go to the player. If the player is not within the radius of one LCB, then both bases are fair game.

Or, as the mod maker, I could just say if you want to use the mod, then you only get one LCB with a large radius. We'll see.

There was one time I was playing A16 and decided to leave base and go on a long trek for the day. When I got back a good chunk of my spikes were destroyed and a corner of my base was heavily damaged. It was pretty shocking, but at the same time I was in awe. For a moment, I thought that the base still generated heat and attracted screamers while I was away. After thinking about it for a moment, I realized that what probably happened was a screamer or wandering horde spawned in right before I left the chunks and just didn't notice. Although it wasn't what I originally thought it was, since then I have always wanted something similar to happen, at least on horde night. I'll do what I can, see where it goes, and if it works out, I'll make it available for others to try. The worst that can happen is nobody likes it but me, but that's all right.

 
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The idea was to not spawn in an actual horde when no player is around. You just code it to pretend like there was one there. There is no reason to waste the resources of spawning in actual zombies and animating them when there's nobody around to see it.
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You don't have to animate them but to realistically simulate the damage you would have to at least roughly recreate a horde. Simply randomly destroying or damaging some blocks would look too artificial.

There was one time I was playing A16 and decided to leave base and go on a long trek for the day. When I got back a good chunk of my spikes were destroyed and a corner of my base was heavily damaged. It was pretty shocking, but at the same time I was in awe. For a moment, I thought that the base still generated heat and attracted screamers while I was away. After thinking about it for a moment, I realized that what probably happened was a screamer or wandering horde spawned in right before I left the chunks and just didn't notice.
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Something like this has happened to me several times in A16. I had auto towers on my base to fight off screamers. Several times when I came back there were numerous corpses lying around.

Although it wasn't what I originally thought it was, since then I have always wanted something similar to happen, at least on horde night. I'll do what I can, see where it goes, and if it works out, I'll make it available for others to try. The worst that can happen is nobody likes it but me, but that's all right.
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As long as this is just a mod, I don't have a problem with it, but with some postings I get the impression that these players would like to see it for the Vanilla game.

I wouldn't like that at all. I think that an incentive is always better accepted than punishing the players or giving them no choice.

 
You don't have to animate them but to realistically simulate the damage you would have to at least roughly recreate a horde. Simply randomly destroying or damaging some blocks would look too artificial.
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I have the advantage that nobody knows the behavior of zombies on horde night when no players are around. It doesn't need to be precisely what would happen if you were there, but still has to make logical sense.

 
Pretty unlikely that would work. The system is currently designed so that zombies only appear within a certain radius of the player. Anything else would dramatically increase resource consumption.
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Not to mention the server would need to spawn such a "pseudo-Horde" at every trigger point on the map that denoted a base (be it an LCB, bed, or whatever block was used as the trigger point), then load an activate each chunk and surrounding chunks corresponding to each of those trigger points, and then process (somehow!) a realistic interpretation of what that Horde would have done in trying to reach that trigger block, and, similarly process (somehow!) what the active and passive base defenses (gun turrets, spikes and the like) would have done to the Horde while the Horde was trying to reach that block.

Yikes!

 
Not to mention the server would need to spawn such a "pseudo-Horde" at every trigger point on the map that denoted a base (be it an LCB, bed, or whatever block was used as the trigger point), then load an activate each chunk and surrounding chunks corresponding to each of those trigger points, and then process (somehow!) a realistic interpretation of what that Horde would have done in trying to reach that trigger block, and, similarly process (somehow!) what the active and passive base defenses (gun turrets, spikes and the like) would have done to the Horde while the Horde was trying to reach that block.
Yikes!
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Excellent points. A single zombie, perhaps a cop, made to target an LCB as if it were a player, while being momentarily indestructible and given extra strength could probably do enough damage to simulate a horde. I suppose it's possible that a base and LCB could survive it, but that's ok. Just looking to provide some inconvenience. Of course, you would not have the server do this for all locations simultaneously. It would be too much. You handle them one at a time. Also, of course, there really shouldn't be too many to take care of. If the entire server is absent except for one player keeping it active, there are bigger issues. That server needs to review the possibility of turning off horde night, because nobody's playing.

 
Excellent points. A single zombie, perhaps a cop, made to target an LCB as if it were a player, while being momentarily indestructible and given extra strength could probably do enough damage to simulate a horde. I suppose it's possible that a base and LCB could survive it, but that's ok. Just looking to provide some inconvenience. Of course, you would not have the server do this for all locations simultaneously. It would be too much. You handle them one at a time. Also, of course, there really shouldn't be too many to take care of. If the entire server is absent except for one player keeping it active, there are bigger issues. That server needs to review the possibility of turning off horde night, because nobody's playing.
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Ayup, and don't get me wrong, I'd love to see the sort of mechanic you're toying around with actually become a reality. It would be the ultimate "kill the logout button as a horde escape mechanic" there is.

It's just the the programming of it would be an absolute nightmare, and would, I suspect (strongly), be either simply not possible, not practical from a time versus reward view, or kill the server dead trying to run, or even, both the last one and one of the first two.

That said, you get it working in a mod, and lemme know, I'll be first in queue to download it for my server... hehe. ;-)

 
Ayup, and don't get me wrong, I'd love to see the sort of mechanic you're toying around with actually become a reality. It would be the ultimate "kill the logout button as a horde escape mechanic" there is.
It's just the the programming of it would be an absolute nightmare, and would, I suspect (strongly), be either simply not possible, not practical from a time versus reward view, or kill the server dead trying to run, or even, both the last one and one of the first two.

That said, you get it working in a mod, and lemme know, I'll be first in queue to download it for my server... hehe. ;-)
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Best I can do is give it a shot. Can't make any promises.

EDIT: 6/20

Some more on the subject, things to keep in mind...

"1. If it could be done in a way that doesn't impact other vehicle uses, and it was really quick to do, I don't think I'd have any objection at all to the Pimps doing it, but I suspect it wouldn't be a "5 minute fix"."[/i]

Definitely not. I think the answer is zombie bears since normal bears could reach 50mph. Zombie bears on horde night could be made faster than the vehicles. Modded, even this would be a lot of work. I wouldn't want bears to just swipe at vehicles. They would need to be able to knock them over.

"2. Don't muck with mah farmz plz! ;-) Rebalancing farm output just to stop coffee being used to avoid a Horde would seem like a parlous use of precious Dev time."

I wasn't really thinking of coffee, but other things. You would still have to use a ton of coffee because the effects aren't very long. It's too bad there aren't any negatives to drinking coffee so much with wellness gone.

"3. The only way I could see to overcome this would be for MP servers to leave a "player body object" behind for a certain time interval after a player logs out, to give the Horde an object to trigger on and try and reach. This would have some pretty beefy implications for PVP as well, so seems like using a sledgehammer on nails to me."

Right... so, I'm leaning more towards[ B]reward[/b]. It wouldn't take much to poll the online players... it does already obviously. I'm also thinking maybe having a radio transmitter block. If you stay on the entire duration and you protect your transmitter, an air drop full of good stuff and ammo arrives immediately after.

The leaving some target behind thing might be a possibility some day, though... even though it seems out of reach at the moment. It depends on how much they plan for bandits, because I read some talk about them doing things even when chunks are out of range. The occlusion added in A18 might be helpful too if it is possible to load a chunk into memory minus all rendering information.

 
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Best I can do is give it a shot. Can't make any promises.
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I'm going to elevate you to Pimp status, and interpret that as meaning "It'll definitely happen, it'll definitely happen in Version 1.0 of my mod, and that'll definitely be out at 2pm on Wednesday 5 June, Australian Eastern Standard Time." ;-)

 
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