PC Long-term resource problems

Try producing enough ammo for 3 players at gamestage 600 horde night on Insane and get back to me.



No I am saying these resources are the ones you will have zero of while you are swimming in excess of every other resource. Seems like the balance is off. You will literally have more than you could ever use of everything except lead, bones and brass. Do the devs want certain resources to be scarcer? Maybe. I am simply informing them of the scarcest, just in case they don't.

We also do this. One guy (the Int spec person) goes to the Trader every 3 days very diligently. It's nowhere near enough.
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You just listed some major flaws in A17:

1) Mining was nerfed big time: in A16 100 boulders would give you ~ 3.5k lead (+ nitrate, + coal); in A17 you get ~ 900

2) Not enough bones, no glue, no paper, no shotgun shells. That's why dart trap is essential and I can't see bases like I had in A16 with 16 shotgun turrets, which is a shame

3) Traders don't sell enough ammo, bullets tips and casings, especially for mp games

I like A17, but improvements are slowly being surpassed by those flaws that makes a long gameplay almost impossible.

 
2) Not enough bones, no glue, no paper, no shotgun shells. That's why dart trap is essential and I can't see bases like I had in A16 with 16 shotgun turrets, which is a shame
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Wow. 16 shotgun turrets. That was certainly pretty loud when they fired. And the lag should have been noticeable, too.

I like A17, but improvements are slowly being surpassed by those flaws that makes a long gameplay almost impossible.
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What stands in the way of a long-term game most of all are the constant changes to the AI. I have to send the zombies through my test course each time to see how the zombies' behaviour has changed and how I have to adapt my base.

 
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A paper mill gives you about 2500-3000 paper. With my old A16 base that would have been just enough for 2 weeks.
I've found ways around the problem but players like Ghostlight want to do a classic base defense and I see no reason why they should be restricted in this aspect.
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3k for two weeks...? There are plenty of other defenses as well. And restricted? Because he can't craft infinite slugs? What am I missing here?

It does matter because you keep stressing that you agree with the reasons. But if there were no reasons then you can't agree with anything.
Yes it is a fact that there isn't enough bones but if that's just an unintended side effect then it should be pointed out to the developers.
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Let me put it this way: It doesn't matter in the sense that even if there were no reasons, which I would be able to agree with, and even if it was just an unintended effect, I still believe it affected the game positively, for other many "non-official" reasons, if you will.

 
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Try producing enough ammo for 3 players at gamestage 600 horde night on Insane and get back to me.
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Lets be honest, how many turrets you use and how many other kind of traps that need no lead ?

 
3k for two weeks...? There are plenty of other defenses as well. And restricted? Because he can't craft infinite slugs? What am I missing here?
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Yes, there are other ways to defend oneself. For example, you can exploit of the pathfinding of the zombies. I use this tactics and this allows me to use dart traps to defend myself against the horde but some decide actively against it but they need other defense mechanisms such as the shotgun turrets.

lord_ahriman reported that in A16 he had 16 shotgun turrets in his base. I had only used 8 shotgun turrets in my base and they alone used between 1000 and 1500 rounds of ammo per week. We're not talking about a base for a baby horde of 8 zombies at the same time on gamestage 50. We're talking about an endgame horde with about 1000 zombies in total, consisting mostly of radioactive feral zombies.

I was at the end of A16 already far beyond the range which is still defined in the gamestages.xml. So I always got a max gamestage horde with 32 zombies at the same time and this every week.

Ghostlight wrote about a gamestage 600 horde on the highest difficulty. The zombies are bullet sponges on this difficulty. And if you also count the ammo consumption during the week if you clean level 5 POIs then it's clear why resources are scarce here.

Let me put it this way: It doesn't matter in the sense that even if there were no reasons, which I would be able to agree with, and even if it was just an unintended effect, I still believe it affected the game positively, for other many "non-official" reasons, if you will.
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And I think it's negatively affecting the game. After all, several players have reported that it affects them and that's understandable. I also seen multiple streams where the players complained about it.

It doesn't seem to matter to you because you're obviously only looking at the survival aspect of the game but you don't care about the base building and the tower defense aspect of the game.

 
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Lets be honest, how many turrets you use and how many other kind of traps that need no lead ?
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I know from Ghostlight that he decided not to exploit the zombies' pathfinding. This of course requires something different than the dart traps I use in my base design.

Something like an dart turret would help here but it doesn't exist in vanilla.

 
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Yes, there are other ways to defend oneself. For example, you can exploit of the pathfinding of the zombies. I use this tactics and this allows me to use dart traps to defend myself against the horde but some decide actively against it but they need other defense mechanisms such as the shotgun turrets.
lord_ahriman reported that in A16 he had 16 of them in his base. I had only used 8 in my base and they alone used between 1000 and 1500 rounds of ammo per week. We're not talking about a base for a baby horde of 8 zombies at the same time on gamestage 50. We're talking about an endgame horde consisting mostly of radioactive feralen zombies.

I was at the end of A16 already far beyond the range which is still defined in the gamestages.xml. So I always got a max gamestage horde with 32 zombies at the same time and this every week.

Ghostlight wrote about a gamestage 600 horde on the highest difficulty. The zombies are bullet sponges on this difficulty. And if you also count the ammo consumption during the week if you clean level 5 POIs then it's clear why resources are scarce here.

And I think it's negatively affecting the game. After all, several players have reported that it affects them and that's understandable. I also seen multiple streams where the players complained about it.

It doesn't seem to matter to you because you're obviously only looking at the survival aspect of the game but you don't care about the base building and the tower defense aspect of the game.
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Exploiting the enemies' pathfinding, to chip away at them with various defenses, is a characteristic of, more or less, every TD ever. I think that if someone wants to outright kill them with a ton of turrets before they destroy a wall or two, it's more than fair for this method to be very expensive. Should the item economy change for that method to become perfectly viable, so that the former method becomes obsolete and everyone ending-up spamming shotgun turrets?

But in the end, I can't blame you for wanting to produce infinite bullets. You are right about the end-game bullet sponge horde madness - even on lower difficulties. But imo, that is a problematic way to increase GS challenge, that warrants its own solution. Having an non-existent item economy with virtually infinitely available resources in order to counter the bullet sponge hordes or ignore how the current AI behaves, seems like creating another problem on top of existing problems, instead of actually solving them.

 
How should paper be unlimited in the game ? Because of the paper mill ? Once you have dismantled the rolls, the paper is gone. And you can't control that you get a quest in a paper mill to reset the building.
I did a lot of quests and none of them were in a paper mill.

The reason bones have become so scarce is because zombies don't leave corpses. The only official reason I've heard so far is that it was made for performance reasons.

Unless you are aware of statements from developers that bones should be scarce, everything you mention as reasons is based on assumptions and speculations only.
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Dude...when the zombies drop lootbags those lootbags contain paper money in the hundreds .. I have so much excess paper in A17 I'm seriously starting to rethink the entire shotgun turret potential for insanely big bases.

The gunpowder is an entirely different issue though.

 
I am on day 11 and am having no issue with either bones nor lead. I have come across several gore blocks in POI's and along the road for bones and i actually just made 100 glues form bones that i found. Breaking the boulders has given more than plenty lead for now.

 
I know from Ghostlight that he decided not to exploit the zombies' pathfinding. This of course requires something different than the dart traps I use in my base design.
Something like an dart turret would help here but it doesn't exist in vanilla.
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Ok, have some people forgotten what "insane" means? It means a challenge that the developer considers nearly impossible to do. We are so used to an unbalanced game where 30% of all experienced players get bored if they play ANYTHING except "insane" and even get bored when they play it.

When you play "insane" it should only be possible to win if you are in the top 5% of players and use EVERYTHING at your disposal. Now zombies running endlessly in a circle of steps IS considered an exploit by TFP and is rightfully ignored by someone wanting a challenge.

But a base with only one or a few entrances made into gauntlets of death with dart traps and other stuff is (to my knowledge) officially part of the tower defense and working as intended. Ignore at your own peril, you are outside the balance TFP probably wants to achieve. Mod the game if you want an "insane" shooting gallery instead of tower defense.

 
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How should paper be unlimited in the game ? Because of the paper mill ? Once you have dismantled the rolls, the paper is gone. And you can't control that you get a quest in a paper mill to reset the building.
I did a lot of quests and none of them were in a paper mill.

The reason bones have become so scarce is because zombies don't leave corpses. The only official reason I've heard so far is that it was made for performance reasons.

Unless you are aware of statements from developers that bones should be scarce, everything you mention as reasons is based on assumptions and speculations only.
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Performance, I have heard all across the board, is much poorer in 17 than it was in 16. If they thought removing zombie loot and harvesting would improve performance they went in the opposite direction somehow. I think it was their thought on fixing the item duping glitch, but you can still item dupe, performance took a huge hit, and still no harvesting zombies.

 
Lets be honest, how many turrets you use and how many other kind of traps that need no lead ?
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4 Auto Turrets. But we only fill them to 1000 shots each and stagger them. So I'd guesstimate 10k 9mm bullets (or equivalent) needed each horde night. And about 500 Shotguns per day if we are questing.

And yes we refuse to exploit the AI, otherwise we wouldn't have a shortage of anything.

 
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Funny.. our issue isn't lead, but is nitrate. We can't seem to find it mining much at all, and out get too little from boulders.

Where do you guys find most of it?

 
I only mine Boulders. Coal, Nitrate and Lead are gathered in roughly equal measures from boulders. However Lead is consumed twice as fast as the other two when making bullets.

Are you using Nitrate for other things like Pipe Bombs? Hard to see how you'd have more Lead than Nitrate tbh.

 
Funny.. our issue isn't lead, but is nitrate. We can't seem to find it mining much at all, and out get too little from boulders.
Where do you guys find most of it?
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Boulders took a massive nerf from A16. Your best bet to get nitrate/coal/lead is from underground mining. Nitrate, you can get in all biomes, but a lot more in snow.

 
I have noticed the lead is the most wanted resource in a17, but am fine with that. I get enough to get by.

What I do besides mining blocks is mining traders for lead. Every 3 days you should be hitting up traders. In particular, buy all bullet tips and buckshot.

In addition, do not break down lead items in the field/backpack. Only smelt lead items in a forge, you get more lead returned.

Also, for mining...

Tis best to try and build a mine on the border of 2 biomes. Or even better is a confluence of 3 biomes. I currently have a mine that borders snow, forest and burnt forest. Nitrate, coal and lead all from a single mine(with long branches!).

 
I have noticed the lead is the most wanted resource in a17, but am fine with that. I get enough to get by.
What I do besides mining blocks is mining traders for lead. Every 3 days you should be hitting up traders. In particular, buy all bullet tips and buckshot.

In addition, do not break down lead items in the field/backpack. Only smelt lead items in a forge, you get more lead returned.

Also, for mining...

Tis best to try and build a mine on the border of 2 biomes. Or even better is a confluence of 3 biomes. I currently have a mine that borders snow, forest and burnt forest. Nitrate, coal and lead all from a single mine(with long branches!).
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Yup!

Yup!

Interesting! Probably should put that into practice. But there are car batteries that can add to the supply.

Border mines are okay, just not fun to have them borrowing down to you when your using an auger and die.

One thing I noticed with our group is that some will spray and pray whenever they can... Little mind for how 'hard' it is to keep the bullet supply up. Which is why I've moved off on my own. So basically trying not to constantly spray and pray would help with supply.

 
Try producing enough ammo for 3 players at gamestage 600 horde night on Insane and get back to me.



No I am saying these resources are the ones you will have zero of while you are swimming in excess of every other resource. Seems like the balance is off. You will literally have more than you could ever use of everything except lead, bones and brass. Do the devs want certain resources to be scarcer? Maybe. I am simply informing them of the scarcest, just in case they don't.

We also do this. One guy (the Int spec person) goes to the Trader every 3 days very diligently. It's nowhere near enough.
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I promise I'm not trolling here, but maybe you should alter your playstyles to accommodate the lack of ammo? Maybe only have one person getting the bullets and another a spec up melee very good? Or maybe pipe bombs? I'm only saying this because this one thing is what makes 7D2D great to me. How adaptive you have to be to get the job done. Anyways. Good post OP.

 
I have noticed the lead is the most wanted resource in a17, but am fine with that. I get enough to get by.
What I do besides mining blocks is mining traders for lead. Every 3 days you should be hitting up traders. In particular, buy all bullet tips and buckshot.

In addition, do not break down lead items in the field/backpack. Only smelt lead items in a forge, you get more lead returned.

Also, for mining...

Tis best to try and build a mine on the border of 2 biomes. Or even better is a confluence of 3 biomes. I currently have a mine that borders snow, forest and burnt forest. Nitrate, coal and lead all from a single mine(with long branches!).
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This is the best strategy in the game but I dislike how forced it is for long term survival. Have a base near a desert , snow and burned biome and you're set for an insane amount of time. The desert provides the gas/repair kits ,the snow provides nitrate and the burned biome the coal. The most important thing is having a base near at least a snow and burned biome because that's the biomes you want to be when you're making bullets.

 
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