After playing through a few times, base building has gotten much worse in general, and its all because of the AI and gamestage. This will be a little long, but hear me out. In previous alphas I was a builder/grinder. As I got better at the game (strategy wise), I would increase the difficulty. My experience lead me to find the red Firehouse POI and use as my loot base (all steel walls) until I was far enough along to build my 'house'. Always built a horde base separate. First week, I would wander until I found the big book store, to get as many schematics as I could. This is strategy. And luck. My play style was to outpace the gamestage, to make sure my horde base was strong enough to beat them back.
Not an more.
Sadly, the new AI is easy to fake out. The kill-corridor is super easy to build and just works. They are not smarter. Just more predictable. I could live with this during the rest of the week, but when a hundred zeds are beating down the walls in all four directions, this is the real excitement. I used to experiment heavily with all the different traps. Fence posts, blade traps, dart traps, turrets. I would build defences that required more to be added on as the gamestage got to the point where green cops and wights were everywhere, and had random location and behaviour. Now, most traps and techniques for building are pointless. The kill-corridor and a sea of iron spikes are all you actually need, with a rad-remover AK. I keep reading how people think the game is won by day 30. You obviously havent played a gamestage 5000 horde. Thats end-game.
Not only has the strategy been stale-mated to the point where all the cool traps are useless, but the new level gating also is poorly unbalanced. This keeps you out of touch with the pace of the gamestage tremendously. By the time you get enough equipment to handle regular sleeper zeds, every POI is filled with ferals. By the time you equip to handle those, they are now all radiated. It would not be so bad if the player level was not added to the crafting (only) perks. Then you could chose perking your character strength OR making better equipment/armor/weapons. Right now, you have to be level 70 to make steel tools. Thats rediculous.
And quite frankly, you can loot better tools weapons so easily before you get the chance to make them. This ruins the progression. It used to be fun to finally find that last auger piece, or that rare schematic. It used to be fun to finally make a machette or a steel pickaxe at the highest quality because you earned it. The level gating in previous alphas worked well with the game, now its so out of proportion.
So yeah. Its difficult to be creative to see how to build a base now when the "cheap" way is so effective.
But for giggles, I did build one other base that handled well for gamestage 3000. Build a 8 x 8 tower 5 blocks tall using only 1/4 blocks. You need to arrange them so they 'stick together' at the corners. When your finished, it will appear to be full blocks that are floating in the air. All steel. The zeds could destroy more than half the blocks and it will not fall down. Make an iron bar cage up top, that overhangs slightly. Now shoot away from every direction. 100+ explosive crossbow bolts. The quarter blocks gives you visibility from every direction, and you can shoot through the spaces with the bolts in any direction. It alot of fun.
