PC How are you dealing with the increased chance of spawning a screamer?

Same as before. A moat 1 deep and 3 wide filled with spikes and the wall of my base  with no windows on the ground floor so they can´t see you. If you want to be really cautious you can dig a a tunnel entrance that leads outside their spawn radius so they can´t catch you when entering or leaving your base.

Don´t mind them when not in my base.

@Roland I am here. World is still empty. We need the slider for spawn percentage back. Screamers do not solve that problem. The towns and cities are still empty af when you go trough them.

A screamer horde is not the same as a more populated world. Not even close.

 
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I'm still not clear on the new rules. Someone said screamers now have a chance to spawn at only 25% heat, so I'm not sure what that boils down to in what you can have running at once.

I had my forge, chem station and workbench all going -- a long tense nothing. Put on two campfires and just as I'm heading out I see two feral screamers come sprinting out of the woods towards my base. I left a single campfire going and returned to find a screamer beating on my iron door like an aggressive salesman -- "YOU ARE TAKING LIFE INSURANCE WITHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT!" Fired off ONE magazine of Ak47 ammo to kill some radioactives and summoned an instant screamer.

Definitely more unpredictable.

At the moment, I've further fortified my ordinary every-day base and I'm thinking of doing more horde-night-style defences for it. As far as I understand it, even giving something a funny look has a good chance of summoning a screamer. Just better be prepared.

 
I love the new screamer mechanic, I had to abandon a T4 quest because they overwhelmed me.  It adds more risk to the game overall.

 
pApA^LeGBa said:
Same as before. A moat 1 deep and 3 wide filled with spikes and the wall of my base  with no windows on the ground floor so they can´t see you. If you want to be really cautious you can dig a a tunnel entrance that leads outside their spawn radius so they can´t catch you when entering or leaving your base.

Don´t mind them when not in my base.

@Roland I am here. World is still empty. We need the slider for spawn percentage back. Screamers do not solve that problem. The towns and cities are still empty af when you go trough them.

A screamer horde is not the same as a more populated world. Not even close.
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drawbridge over the spikes works.  3 or 4 deep for the spikes.  (watched a radiated scream dance LENGHTWISE along the spikes...  I shot her. 1 bullet, less repairs

Screamer mechanic seems out of whack. Getting 2 at once?  What is this, The Shining?

 
I generally add a small horde tower to my main base. I go heavy into intellect so I can build a Sledge turret. Sledge turret plus high tower equals Screamer getting bonked off the narrow walk to my fight position, rinse and repeat until she is dead. I just keep being busy doing what I'm doing in the base, while sledge handles said screamer.. 

 
Crying in a corner while my spikes do the work Jesus I didn't expect this many Screamers

All I want to do is eat some damn food And all I hear is screeching Make it stop

 
pApA^LeGBa said:
@Roland I am here. World is still empty. We need the slider for spawn percentage back. Screamers do not solve that problem. The towns and cities are still empty af when you go trough them.
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You misunderstand me. I'm not trying to convince anyone that they can act as a replacement. I'm just surprised that people complain about any mechanism that brings more zombies into the game. If people get fatigued fighting zombies that are brought in by a few rounds of screamers what makes them think they would enjoy any game that has environmental zombies standing and wandering around everywhere? You would arrive at a location and get swarmed by dozens and dozens of zombies every single time-- just like you get swarmed intermittently by screamer hordes.

I agree with a slider for such things, btw. I already do slide it now by changing values in the xml.

 
Roland said:
I'm just surprised that people complain about any mechanism that brings more zombies into the game.
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I just bought a new phone and went about installing all the crap I want on it right away. Every step of the way, the phone was trying to teach me some fancy new features. Popups, popups everywhere. I half-read half of them, and straight up dismissed the other half, because I was Doing something Important. (I was actually on a bit of time crunch at the time). After I had gotten my things sorted, I went and searched the webs for description of the features I could remember it was trying to teach me. I was actually interested in them, just "Not Right Now, ffs!!".

There's a time and place for things. When you're actually trying to get stuff done at base, screamers are an annoyance. They're understandable, and IMO a good mechanic, but it's quite easy to see that they can feel real annoying when they're over eager. It's a matter of just the right amount. And that will vary person to person.

A bit like your traveling example... "arrive at a location and be swarmed by Dozens and Dozens .." Dozens, plural, so "at least 24" D and D = 2xD = 48 ...

I don't think many who think "I saw 3 zeds across my 1km journey, that's too low for the world" wants to have 50 zeds within 30m of every POI entrance - close enough to be able to join the ruckus. But 50 zeds spotted across the 1km journey might be a nice touch. A good amount not to make the world feel dull, but not a horde night every step. Of course not, why would we have horde nights then ... :)

 
Roland said:
You misunderstand me. I'm not trying to convince anyone that they can act as a replacement. I'm just surprised that people complain about any mechanism that brings more zombies into the game. If people get fatigued fighting zombies that are brought in by a few rounds of screamers what makes them think they would enjoy any game that has environmental zombies standing and wandering around everywhere? You would arrive at a location and get swarmed by dozens and dozens of zombies every single time-- just like you get swarmed intermittently by screamer hordes.

I agree with a slider for such things, btw. I already do slide it now by changing values in the xml.
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I doubt those are the same people tbh. I didn´t check their post history though...

 
I have to go with the "it's a fantastic mechanic" line of thinking; yes it can get too much sometimes but this is a zombie apocalypse after all; it is taking time getting used to have them attacking your home when you're not there, as you can potentially return to big piles of rubble and all your stuff gone; however i just have to invest more time into making home more resilient and stronger ; definitely makes the initial 7 days much more tricky and they seem to be able to summon hordes simply by murmering instead of full-on screams but all in all i love the screamers. 

In regards to 'towns and cities are still empty of zombies' it does sometimes feel like there's a reduction if the environmental zombies in v1.0 and even though there seemed (to me) to be more environmental zombies in Alpha 21, even if Alpha 21 i added KhaineGB's Wandering Horde Frequency mod;  i've used this is quite a few A21 playthroughs now and a few times in v1.0 and just noticed he has a v1.0-specific version of the mod, i'm still using the A21 mod in v1.0 so i will check out the new version tonight

 
pahbi said:
Make your base on a tall building, and make a long winding set of stairs that path into your crafting area.  Line the stairs with wood spikes.  Then make a non spike shortcut for you to enter the base that zombies can't path through.

Early game to mid game, screamers will path up the stairs with spikes and usually die before they reach the top.
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I usually use a drawbridge at the entrance.

 
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I feel like I must be doing something wrong, because I haven't had a single screamer except a POI.

I had 17 campfires lit for a good ten minutes trying to kite zeds over them to try and light them on fire and they never caught flame. Neither did a screamer show up and my heat would have been climbing super fast with 17 campfires lit.

 
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warmer said:
I feel like I must be doing something wrong, because I haven't had a single screamer except a POI.

I had 17 campfires lit for a good ten minutes trying to kite zeds over them to try and light them on fire and they never caught flame. Neither did a screamer show up and my heat would have been climbing super fast with 17 campfires lit.
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Screamers spawn more often but not as consistently. The chance of a screamer spawning is 20% as opposed to the 70% previously. On the other hand, a screamer can spawn already at 25% heat.

Yesterday, for example, I had 3 screamers spawn just because of the heat generated by my 4 dew collectors. On other days I can run my full production and nothing happens.

 
IMHO, I like that is back to more like it used to be. A21 was extremely boring with getting hardly any screamers. 

I do see more often that I am getting two scouts in the initial trigger than one, but they aren't any harder to deal with than they were previously. 

 
pApA^LeGBa said:
Same as before. A moat 1 deep and 3 wide filled with spikes and the wall of my base  with no windows on the ground floor so they can´t see you. If you want to be really cautious you can dig a a tunnel entrance that leads outside their spawn radius so they can´t catch you when entering or leaving your base.

Don´t mind them when not in my base.

@Roland I am here. World is still empty. We need the slider for spawn percentage back. Screamers do not solve that problem. The towns and cities are still empty af when you go trough them.

A screamer horde is not the same as a more populated world. Not even close.
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Yeah, this.

In the old days when you had to clear a town BEFORE you started clearing POIs, when they weren't POIs but merely buildings the world felt populated.

The screamers still don't do it. Even the wandering hordes don't really do it since they are so hit or miss.

My first 1.0 screamer experience at a radio station (t2 power/clear quest) that I was wrenching the consoles and most everything else. My only weapon for clearing was a wooden club, so the heat had to be all from salvaging. I heard the screamers outside, 2 of them hugging the wall. 1 was @%$#ing off somewhere nearby. So horde started coming, it was night still, but I was done anyway and not far from base. I rode home hoping they would give chase, but they seemed locked on the spot they were called in. Even though it was only a couple chunks away, it was far enough for them to de-spawn. 

Now of course I am getting them at home frequently. Doesn't bother me since my craft base is still a horde base. Their behavior is odd though. They don't scream a lot of the time, even though they obviously triggered. I've also gotten stealth kills and yet still have them scream and trigger. The feedback is not very good when it is inconsistent like this.

I still don't understand why they don't spawn in singles or spread out so that the people who don't want to deal with the hordes at least have a decent chance of neutralizing them. I mean when I'm at home sure, it's free xp and it breaks up the monotony and loneliness. On a mission, they are an unneeded distraction, especially since you need to finish a mission once you start it.

Oh, and my base heat gen is nothing extreme. Right now I've got 2 campfires, 1 forge, 1 workbench, 1 dew collector, 3 torches. Forge tends to run fulltime, campfires and workbench not so much.

 
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My most recent experience with screamers has been mining all the iron I need to make steel for a range of high quality stuff. I mine an amount in the ~2000 range and then leave the area to cool. Returned to the spot a little later -- and there were TWO tell-tale single-square horizontal pits dug on either side of my mine hole. Clearly screamers had spawned, come to the heat source, dug down and then despawned.

It's a little ... disconcerting.

 
So, I did a bit of experimenting. TLDR, Screamers don't need to see or hear you to scream and call in more zombies.

First experiment I put my character in a sealed room, all concrete blocks, no doors or windows. No discoverable path. I had 6 campfires going (with 6 you hit 25+ every event cycle). Two screamers spawned. One spawned inside a vehicle and eventually blew herself up trying to beat her way out. The other never left wander mode and after some time despawned.

Second experiment, I added an entry tunnel with 3 steel doors. When 2 screamers spawned they saw that as a path and went to investigate. My character wasn't moving (in debug with detached camera) so no noise, and no line of sight and yet there was a scream and more zombies spawned in. They all came and banged on the doors. After some time they all gave up and changed to wander mode. My character made some noise by opening and closing the innermost door, and a screamer summoned 2 more screamers. Again, they all banged on the doors for a while but eventually gave up and went back to wander mode.

So, the summary is screamers don't need line of sight to scream and summon her minions. Perhaps they don't give up so quickly if they see you though. Maybe another experiment.

 
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