PC It has come to this:

Z

Zourin

Refugee
Just in case this test actually works, I'd like to officially dub, what could be the latest defensive trend in 7DTD, "Hedgehogging".

A17.0_2018-11-22_23-52-39.jpg

Progressively removing the ability for players to use simple solutions may add difficulty, but runs the risk of a search for more unexpected or exploitive measures. Often times, these can be found in the smallest of mechanisms, inflated to excessive/unnatural proportions, because they are the only details that are relevant to a solution.

Since 'defense' is not an option, I decided to flip the notion of 'ablative armor' around and build what can be best described as "ablative offense". Just keep packing them spikes on thick, and maybe you have a chance of bringing down a horde to something manageable.

Remember, red tips point outwards.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Just in case this test actually works, I'd like to officially dub, what could be the latest defensive trend in 7DTD, "Hedgehogging".
View attachment 25537

Progressively removing the ability for players to use simple solutions may add difficulty, but runs the risk of a search for more unexpected or exploitive measures. Often times, these can be found in the smallest of mechanisms, inflated to excessive/unnatural proportions, because they are the only details that are relevant to a solution.

Since 'defense' is not an option, I decided to flip the notion of 'ablative armor' around and build what can be best described as "ablative offense". Just keep packing them spikes on thick, and maybe you have a chance of bringing down a horde to something manageable.

Remember, red tips point outwards.
Click to expand...
Even the vernacular of your post is making me smile!

Made my day with this one!

How well does it work?

 
Hands off my vernacular. I'm saving it for marriage, or for throwing at zombies when the spikes fail.

The results vary. it's not enough for a high level horde, but it's 'adequate' for a 'low score' horde. The problem, as always, is the need for a 360 defense against what is inevitably a focused assault.

On the other hand.. I took some time off, boosted some xp, took a whole pile of defense skills, slapped on some armor and a sledge hammer, and found out that you CAN one-on-one an irradiated feral. The trouble with an armor build is the bleed. Nothing stops bleed procs on you. With steel armor and pain threshold you can wade in and fight, but ultimately the bleed will get you.

 
Thing is, while most of you were knocking out stairs and living on bedrock for the last 10 alpha builds, some of us were actually fighting the horde so we have honed our defence building skills. I think you are wasting a lot of resources here for a design that doesn't convince me so I believe "hedgehogging" will become a footnote in the history books of 7D2D base design sooner rather than later. Good luck all the same.

 
While testing in creative, feral and radiated spiders would just jump over this - I was surprised seeing them flying in the air.

And with your design its also open for the aerial attack from vultures.

They also chew through all kind of blocks very fast. On day 7 horde i got cops, spiders vultures... so whole new game. They climb, they jump and hit while jumping too ( all those hits deals a ton of damage to the blocks as well ).

So far from my testing best blade trap designs proved to be best, but as everything else in this A17 nothing lasts as long as it did in A16. This is whole new game and the best approaches are yet to be found.

 
The whole idea of "Block durability doesn't matter if every block does massive damage and is destroyed anyway" has some promise. If I can find a way to include barbed wire in the deal, it would probably do well to thin an initial onrush. Workers melt. Spiders melt, Fattys thrash and melt. Cop-a-kazi's will blast a neat little whole in such a narrow set-up really fast (I advanced my gamestage about 60 levels), so active defense is still required. As just a basic concept, it worked pretty well. Just craptons of horizontal spikes.

Nothing beats a proper powered defense system with turrets, blades, fencing, and barbed wire. The problem is surviving long enough to actually do any of it. It's like "Sure, there's a way I can spend every day of the week on a beach, I only need to retire rich." We're missing some pretty important steps in-between right now.

The hordes are definitely operating on a much higher gamestage advancement rate than they should. There's a high rate of Worker zombies and Cops being thrown in the mix, and that nullifies any kind of HP barrier you can put between you and them. Perimeter breaching is FAST in A17, if you only have a single layer.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
I don't think that trying to hold them off will work very well. Maybe the good old TD "labyrinth" is better - using walls not to stop them but direct them - as long as they have a clear path so that they don't attack any walls. When I have the time I will try a "tower-like" building that will allow them to have a clear path to me by climbing a spiral staircase while getting shot and going through traps/turrets.

 
Thing is, while most of you were knocking out stairs and living on bedrock for the last 10 alpha builds, some of us were actually fighting the horde so we have honed our defence building skills. I think you are wasting a lot of resources here for a design that doesn't convince me so I believe "hedgehogging" will become a footnote in the history books of 7D2D base design sooner rather than later. Good luck all the same.
Click to expand...
Remember that our superior ways of defense was based on now removed log spike trap, we'll have to improvise as well.

However I do believe a trench filled with spikes with our good old bunker design will do the trick and for late game I have some ideas on using dart traps now that we have a functional zombie pathing.

 
Thanks for posting this. The spikes facing sideways did a nice job in my low effort, low materials early horde defense concept.

They do an excellent job at distracting the Zs from attacking supports if the spikes are attached to said supports.

pHwKts9.jpg


Pillars are 4x flagstone pole put together as one and upgraded to cobble.

Then hedgehog'ed with spikes and one layer of barbed wire flat on the road for good measure.

I overshot with building 5 of them. 2 are more than enough, but I wanted to have multiple platforms to jump to if one got torn down.

None got torn down on night 7 with 2 cops being the most dangerous part of it. Dispatched the cops with an smg. The rest went down with ~70-80 iron arrows used (can prolly be less if you can aim :D ), or died trying to destroy spikes. As you can see one tower lost all spikes, the other about half. The supporting pillars were untouched or had minor dings.

Default settings and just about to hit level 30 before horde night started. Zero deaths. Forgot to check game stage before, think it was something around 50.

Will replace frames with iron bars til next horde, so cops can't puke me off my platform so easily, let's see how long this can stand as horde "base". :]

Edit: Thinking about those spiders.. Didn't see them in the horde night, but met some in wandering hordes, spooky stuff indeed. Thinking also about vultures. The platforms will be turned into full cages, just leaving an opening to jump between them. I'll also raise them a few blocks up, I think.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top