PC How bad is it for bunker lovers these days? (Haven't played since like Alpha 16)

In general one doesn't have to look further away than the game's own mechanics, to realize that a safe haven would be unequivocally counter-intuitive for this game. This is evident by the game already containing elements that would become obsolete by it, such as any TD elements and building, after that first bunker building effort. In the end what remains is just a "go out and loot" gameloop. Might as well give players relatively cheap indestructible blocks. And it's painfully obvious that this goes against what the game intends to be.

TFP can add it as an option in the same way the sandbox mode in also an option, but there is simply no arguing whether it is counter-intuitive or not for the default state of the game. It's a fact, not an opinion.

That said, underground bunkers are a missed opportunity. An opportunity that could allow the developers to create more variety in the ways the player acts to survive. Digging zombies is more of the same. Perhaps in the future they could add, for example, an actually impactful weather system which can be avoided when underground.

 
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They don't have infinite y-axis sensing. You can get deep enough to be beyond their sensing range but it has to be where the surface is at a high altitude so that the distance is far enough down to bedrock. Hence, I said dig to bedrock under a mountain.
I disagree that digging zombies ruins what differentiates this game from other games. It enhances that aspect. Why have destructible terrain that is completely impervious to the enemy mobs of the game that live in it? The only reason that it would ruin the experience is for PVP play where you don't want zombies giving away your location. But this game isn't primarily designed as a PvP game. In a co-op and single player game you can still build elaborate bunkers and then have to defend them.

If all you want is to build something elaborate and amazing underground and have it be untouched then turn off the zombies and have your building game.
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Like I was saying their Y axis sense is too large it should be maybe 10 blocks MAX, not what 20 or 30 it is now? Of course on horde night the zombies GPS to you, so your still not safe on horde nights which is intended, but you shouldn't need to go all the way to bedrock vs non-bloodmoon zombies. I used to build underground only because everytime I try to build a base the shitty structural intergrity system screws me over and takes my whole base out because I placed ONE block to many somewhere. ONLY the most recent block should fall to tell the player: Hey you need a support here. Not have it cause a cascade that ends up taking the entire thing down. Its honestly my biggest gripe with the game, or one of them, the other is how stupidly op junk turrets are and the devs just seem blind to see it, as they leave the thing that makes it OP intact (the flinch/knockdown when placed and it shoots a zombie).

I do love how a18 lets you get stuff like chem labs and vehicles by just buying them, were no longer forced to go intel anymore like we were in a17. Still kinda forced to go str though as all the mining stuff is there.

 
Why do you feel forced? Because the game is unbearable unless you are max in everything you want to do? You are locked out of no aspect of gameplay just as a natural unperked character. Zombies still die by the bullets shot out of your gun you never perked into. Ores still get harvested with that pickaxe even without strength perks. You can trade with NPCs and get quest rewards without skill point investment. You can build a shelter just as you are at game start. You can explore and find loot that is useful and you can craft a whole bunch of stuff right out of the gate.

Accept that you will be stronger in some areas and weaker in others and there is no forcing. Our character is quite capable of survival on Day One. You can only feel forced if you insist on being the strongest possible in all aspects of your game.

 
Why do you feel forced? Because the game is unbearable unless you are max in everything you want to do? You are locked out of no aspect of gameplay just as a natural unperked character. Zombies still die by the bullets shot out of your gun you never perked into. Ores still get harvested with that pickaxe even without strength perks. You can trade with NPCs and get quest rewards without skill point investment. You can build a shelter just as you are at game start. You can explore and find loot that is useful and you can craft a whole bunch of stuff right out of the gate.
Accept that you will be stronger in some areas and weaker in others and there is no forcing. Our character is quite capable of survival on Day One. You can only feel forced if you insist on being the strongest possible in all aspects of your game.
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The reason people feel 'forced' into speccing into mining and resource-gathering is because the average player is going to consume so many resources over the course of a playthrough that you're actively hurting yourself by not taking them. Time is a currency in this game too, and by not taking those perks you will spend roughly 5 times as much time performing the single most time-consuming task in the game. Sure, you can do it without taking those perks. But why would you ever choose to not take them? The only playstyle that doesn't benefit from them is that of the nomadic scavenger who hides in POIs, doesn't build a base, and loots items to sell to the trader and buy what they can't loot, since that playstyle bypasses the entire crafting aspect of the game altogether. So unless you're playing in that one particular way, those perks might not be forced on you, but they're so efficient and so useful that you'd have to be crazy, or playing a deliberate challenge run, to not take them.

 
I see so many threads about all the excess that people have. Containers are filled with stacks of resources. I really do think the game is viable for building and crafting what you want from a centralized base and not being a nomad without having to go deep in those skills. I guess you could go crazy just thinking about how much wealth you could be bringing in if you had spent those points but I never let such thoughts bring me down. If I have enough of what I need with my current efforts I don't spend the points just so I can get more. Plus I can spend one point for a small increase without having to purchase any strength at all. My focus isn't on efficiency.

 
Why would one disable zombies in a zombie survival themed game.
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I have no idea.

Why does anyone want zeds to be unable to get to you because there is a single block of dirt between you and them?

I also have no idea.

In essence, if you are complaining because zeds can actually provide a threat underground then you are asking for zeds to basically be removed. You are even able to build a totally safe underground base right now and people are STILL complaining. It is nonsensical.

 
Even more so, since you can still do underground farms for all plants, and, of course, there's mushrooms. Forge up a few thousand jars of water, stop once by a lake to fill 'em up, and you could bunker down till just about the end of time.
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Nobody does that, curiosity always kills the cat. Specially now with vehicles, it's only natural to explore POIs around. The bigger the map and more varied POI's, the more people want to explore. As you spend days out, you'll have to battle full moons and adapt and improvise within POIs. Ideally, you want rare items that spawn only on rare POIs to incentivize exploration as much as possible. Such items would give you an advantage over zombies and humans (specially weapons, armors, etc etc... something people would really want). There would be no way around this but exploring (no traders of crafing recipes availible). Problem solved, you have now a very serious incentive to go out of the bunker and explore and you will be faced all kind of adversities. So it's about giving players incentives, not to ruin a certain gameplay or approach to how you plan a base in the game. It's about having options, not forcing someone's else vision in how to play the game.

Also finding out other bases and making alliances or defeating enemies is the best part of the game for anyone that really enjoys an experience that is as close to a real zombie survival apocalypse scenario where zombies are a treat but the real creepy thing is the human aspect becoming twisted as everyone fights for survival, which is why the mix of PvE + PvP is the holy grail in this game, and by not putting enough care in PvP side devs make an huge mistake.

Someone mentioned this is "an horror game". Nothing scared me and my friends more than finding out a group of people were spying on us at night as we left our secret underground base, when we came back they set traps for us and we were running being chased by zombies. We were paranoid they were sniping on us with night vision googles, they were high experience played that were there for months with massive kill counts. So you are no longer safe on your underground base, you are always alert and eventually you decide to abandon and move elsewere. That was pretty brutal. The mix of both zombies and humans is the true nightmare.

 
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the mix of PvE + PvP is the holy grail in this game
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No disrespect, but I'm glad TFP aren't descended from King Arthur and decided to forego that particular quest. There's already plenty of offerings in the "sociopath survival" genre.

 
No disrespect, but I'm glad TFP aren't descended from King Arthur and decided to forego that particular quest. There's already plenty of offerings in the "sociopath survival" genre.
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What do you mean with "sociopath survival" lmao? If you mean other players being mean to you in a zombie survival apocalypse scenario, whoop de doo. That's part of a zombie survival apocalypse scenario. Finding enemies and possible alliances gives the game deeper gameplay dynamics than the two-dimensional "let's just worry about the zombies" aspect.

 
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What do you mean with "sociopath survival" lmao?
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PvP survival games where it's common, even expected, for players to behave like sociopaths. Rust, DayZ, etc.

If you mean other players being mean to you in a zombie survival apocalypse scenario, whoop de doo. That's part of a zombie survival apocalypse scenario.
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But being able to re-enter the world after dying is not a part of any scenario. It's not a matter of "being mean". It's a matter of the lack of serious repercussions in games dis-incentivizing civil behaviour (or incentivizing uncivil behaviour, depending on your perspective). Imagine how differently people would behave in PvP if there were serious, long-term consequences to getting killed.

I guess it boils down to the fact that I neither enjoy acting like a sociopath nor playing games that cater to people who do (which is not to suggest that you are such a person, just that there are enough such persons that I tend to avoid PvP)...

 
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Wait a minute....this is turning into a PVP thread. We haven’t had one of these since forever.

Maybe Poojam will even post if he can navigate the current interface...

 
Wait a minute....this is turning into a PVP thread. We haven’t had one of these since forever.
Maybe Poojam will even post if he can navigate the current interface...
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That's my fault, shutting up now. :redface-new:

 
Nobody does that, curiosity always kills the cat.
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No argument there, I was just responded to the potential for players to endlessly sit in their bases, to demonstrate that despite some assertions to the contrary, digging zomies have not rendered underground bunkers uesless, indeed, with some minor modifications to behaviour, location and/or game options, they remain pretty much just as invulnerable as they ever were.

 
All this opinionated claptrap is just silly, right?

100% safe? Sure! Just carry a stack of wood frames and a bit before horde night start nerd poling to the top of the game. You might get some vultures, I don't know. But no one I know does it, because it's boring.

An interesting idea is, allow the player to set the characters DNA limits!

This will be the maximum level each attribute can have. We all work within our limits IRL, why not make it part of a game?

 
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They don't have infinite y-axis sensing. You can get deep enough to be beyond their sensing range but it has to be where the surface is at a high altitude so that the distance is far enough down to bedrock. Hence, I said dig to bedrock under a mountain.
I disagree that digging zombies ruins what differentiates this game from other games. It enhances that aspect. Why have destructible terrain that is completely impervious to the enemy mobs of the game that live in it? The only reason that it would ruin the experience is for PVP play where you don't want zombies giving away your location. But this game isn't primarily designed as a PvP game. In a co-op and single player game you can still build elaborate bunkers and then have to defend them.

If all you want is to build something elaborate and amazing underground and have it be untouched then turn off the zombies and have your building game.
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Or just have it so zombies cannot dig unless its a bloodmoon night? because other than that its just annoyance for no real reason. Me? i'd prob make a spike pit around my entrance, make sure the spikes are 1 below the rest of the surface otherwise the AI will just path around them, which is yet another issue, zombies shouldn't be smart enough to walk around traps it defeats the purpose of them..

This is also one of the reasons why I said Tfp kinda is fail at balancing things, when they do stuff like that with the traps and such making them mostly pointless unless you force the ai into only going down that path. Like the only way to really make a good base is to exploit the ai in a17/18. You really do not have much of a choice. On the other hand it makes it easier in a way as well, as you can setup a kill box since they'll always come from that direction.

 
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Pretty bad, not only are zombies professional excavators now, but A17 has generally drastically changed the progresison, too. You can't really have a lot of different things going at the same time, because the perk system gatekeeps you from it. You need to either specialize, or grind out the other perks by killing zombies all day. So building a nice bunker will be a lot more tedious than it used to be, e.g. you'll have to branch out and grind like hell if you want to both make concrete and do any farming. So if you were planing to have a self-sufficient underground bunker with its own farm type of deal, you're out of luck. If you were also planning on having a vehicle, oh boy, may god rest your soul.

Broadly speaking, an entire segment of people who used to love the game pre-A17 remains very disillusioned with the game, you may or may not be part of that group.

I feel like this seemingly centuries old "should zombies dig" controversy could be remedied easily by simply making it a gameplay option (like Daylight hours, etc). That way everyone would be happy.

 
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I've done one underground playthrough in A18, started in .0 or .1 .. went just fine. Up to day 98, just ended up bored. Default settings, plus one to difficulty.

My rules weren't strict, I wasn't about to just starve to death if it didn't work, but the idea was to keep digging while doing the absolute minimum in other areas of the game. Ran to the trader on Day 1 and established my base right into the mountain behind his compound. Did a few digging quests for potential recipes and dukes/food for the early days, plus a reason to go hunting. If I needed engines etc, I went and wrenched. I did do some quests later to map out a bit, find shale etc. Sold stacks and stacks of rock (3 stacks every reset from like week two)

I got breached by digging zombies once; during a horde night where I had redone my entrance and ended up blowing a demolisher at a critical spot => no access to me via the intended path, the new spawns started digging in. The "horde handling area" was about 5-10 stone blocks below the surface at that point, so no surprises there. Sure I had to pop out every once in a while to take out some screamers / random zeds, but that was roughly a once a day occurrence - mostly a nice change of pace.

Never really got close to hungry, got my early tools by speccing into them, never really had difficulties, other than my own short-sightedness... :)

How bad is it?

No.

 
how hard would it be to implement a toggle for digging?

Why wouldn't a game company want to appeal to a larger range of players.

 
diggers and their broken pathing (IMHO), stacking a bunchaton of zeds in 1 block, and demos, are why I turned zed block damage down to 25%.

Digging has broken more than a few pathways. They'll dig instead of taking stairs.

they'll bash on the wall, instead of walking 2 blocks and using that opening.

a dozen plus all stacked up trying to break a door.

The demo of course is new, and needs balancing. boom is too big, and when you get a bunch all at once...

I like a large base at bedrock. so now I build UP, and the wandering zeds are easy to deal with.

For horde, 60 dart traps, and I could probably sit there and not fire a shot.

(for 8 zed per player, np. 64 zeds on insane, and still I could, but it gets a bit boring, so I shoot at the ones that make it past the first 3 rows. Day 91 that was. on insane)

Day 98 I'll see how long I can go without shooting at any of them. (circling vultures are an exception)

 
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