PC My stockade base design isn't viable anymore, as of Alpha 20 :(

[warmer]

I am happy they nerfed the hp of poles and partial blocks. I never make a base with floating pieces to screw with the zed AI. If I win because of cheese I feel no sense if accomplishment.

I love that they can now crawl through single blocks. All I want out if the AI is better and more creative attack methods. Building a single ramp with a bridge and blocks every other square to hop over is the standard raid base now and its so cheese and so easy. 

 

[Roland]

All through the life span of Alpha 19, I built, rebuilt, and refined my stockade base design.

Was this not fun and rewarding for you? Sounds like you have a lot of pride in what you accomplished. Don't you think it will be fun to go through that process again for A20?

Some people here are saying only cheese bases work but they said the same thing in A19 and you proved them wrong by refining a base design that didn't feel like cheese tactics to you. Now here they are saying again that you have to cheese the AI. Are you going to let that stand? Won't you prove them wrong again?

The AI is practically the same in A20 as it was in A19, faatal admitted he did nothing beyond letting them crouch and crawl through low spaces and then there was a few fixes in experimental for places he saw them getting stuck. You say that electricity only paralyses for half the time. Are you certain that isn't a bug? Is it mentioned in the patch notes as an intended change? If so, can't  you come up with ways to adapt your design given that new limitation? I'm sure you can once the initial rage wears off.

 

[Whorhay]

Even with default settings getting to lots of electric fences on day 5 or six is pretty easy, and that's without finding the nerd glasses. I do it by focusing on Int at first and only spending a few points in the other attributes until my base is ready. Days 1-4 are spent questing and gathering materials from POI's. Day 5 I start building the base and if I don't have the skills to make the electric fences when I start on that I'll have them before the base is all finished up on Day 6. That leaves me an extra day to do more quests and gather any supplies I'm short on for the first horde. My base is usually a free standing structure built on stilts with an enclosed elevated path for the zombies to come and eat me. I usually have 8 electric fence posts up but it'd work with just 2-3. No "cheese" outside of giving the zombies a single easy path to get to me, and it's not even long and twisty, just 5 blocks long. I keep the path short because shotguns have pretty minimal range and making it longer means it takes longer to kill each zombie, which holds up another zombie from spawning and getting close enough to be killed. For the early hordes the only problem is that the hordes only take a couple in game hours to mop up, so I usually do the logout and back in trick to keep the fighting up until morning so that my base gets a bit of a workout.

That's all basically the same as in A19, when it worked great with a blunderbuss or two. I haven't noticed the fences being less effective than before, you know other than when I've forgotten to turn them on. I do really like that the pipe shotty uses the same ammo as the others, that was always an early game balancing trick trying not to make too much blundy ammo so I'd still have powder to make shells when I got a double barrel.

 

[RossLGould]

That is a massive design. Am I right that you just had a small part finished by day 14 and that was the reason you were killed? Then maybe it was the wrong part to be built first.

Yeah, definitely. The base was designed to be built in stages from week to week. Previously, I would spend a ton of wood on spiking the area between inner wall and outer wall from stem to stern, but in my Alpha 20 iteration, I saw how easily the Zs were ripping through my walls on the night of Day 7 and, since I had enough money to buy a small engine and half the 12 posts I needed to install the fence, and enough character intelligence and materials to build the other half of them, I pushed for that. It... didn't work too well.

Now that a week has gone by, my frustration has subsided and I'm gonna try again with some tweaks. For example, no more poles because TFP nerfed the heck out of them. Maybe I'll go to arrow slits, so I don't lose all visibility. At any rate, I'm not ready to give up on my traditional base.

 

[RossLGould]

Was this not fun and rewarding for you? Sounds like you have a lot of pride in what you accomplished. Don't you think it will be fun to go through that process again for A20?

Some people here are saying only cheese bases work but they said the same thing in A19 and you proved them wrong by refining a base design that didn't feel like cheese tactics to you. Now here they are saying again that you have to cheese the AI. Are you going to let that stand? Won't you prove them wrong again?

The AI is practically the same in A20 as it was in A19, faatal admitted he did nothing beyond letting them crouch and crawl through low spaces and then there was a few fixes in experimental for places he saw them getting stuck. You say that electricity only paralyses for half the time. Are you certain that isn't a bug? Is it mentioned in the patch notes as an intended change? If so, can't  you come up with ways to adapt your design given that new limitation? I'm sure you can once the initial rage wears off.

A very positive post. I appreciate it.

You are right about the thrill of the challenge, but there is something to be said about being able to take an existing concept, and help it evolve to meet new challenges. Making it as efficient and elegant as I can. Right now, I'm contemplating starting over with a blank sheet of paper-- which is not completely off the table, but it's not the most attractive concept to me.

 

[Boidster]

There is no cheese, except possibly if you leverage knowledge that the survivor, observing his environment, could not possibly know. Otherwise, did you survive the attack? Good for you, well played.

A death funnel? OMG that cheese is aged AF...

 

[SheeleMara]

 Curious, built a little 7x7 double wall box fort for the Day 15 Horde (3 Day Variance) with Concrete Outer Walls, 2 Layers of Spikes, 1 Layer of Barbed Wire Fence, and a space between a final outer layer of spikes. Shifted positions when the zombies made it through one section of traps, kept blasting away. Despite Zombies beating on one section of wall for an excessive long time at the end the wall only suffered roughly 50% HP Loss, wonder if the Zombies are able to hit less accurately if they're on Nightmare Speed instead of Default for Horde Night?

 

[Desert Rat]

Oh.

I had exported the finishing product as a POI but, apparently, Alpha 20 doesn't like Alpha 19 POIs.

Do you know if there is any way I can convert it to an Alpha 20 POI-- or will I have to build it all over from scratch?

There is indeed a tool to convert A19 prefabs to A20. It's very simple to use and it works well. I converted a half dozen of my A19 base builds and have successfully placed them into an A20 world.

 

[Fox]

All those who obsess and cry about ppl who make "cheese" builds... there's a good reason why we build them... they work! They have worked since Alpha 1 and no matter what the devs do and no matter how many times they claim cheese builds won't work for long... they always will. You're simply just jealous because nothing you build will ever be as comparable in defense reliability and ease of creation.

As you can see, the tower is raised up by 2 blocks (solid concrete core foundation) so even if they did manage to bust inside, they still can't climb up to get me because zombies are dumb and won't break blocks strategically. 3 rows of optional endgame electric fencing around the base + 1 going up the stairs (all are safe behind concrete, but accessible for annoying maintenance). 10 rows of metal spikes, 5 rows of barbed wire.

With electric fencing, zombies never make it past those at all since the AK ensures it. Without, they make it roughly half way with the AK, or they can nearly make it to the base if I just sit there and do nothing at all during the entire bloodmoon (dogs can maybe make it to the base, but 1 or 2 barely alive dogs reaching the base is laughable). Warrior? (3/5 on server settings) difficulty.

And it doesn't need to be a tower base design either... I've done the upside down pyramid design too which was neat and offered even more rows of spikes under it (though you can't really upgrade the bottom part without risking it collapsing, so build with concrete only), as well as normal pyramid base design which offered less but still worked (I didn't care for it though). Spikes and barbed wire combo are reliable and offer predictable results... electrics are not but they do compliment the spikes and barbed wires very well. Blade traps and turrets... in my opinion, not worth it.

 

[pahbi]

Once I have the materials, this is the horde base I use in A20.  No cheese, no trick blocks and its insanely effective, it has relatively few parts, is super easy to repair, and easily lines zombies up for head shots.

I build mine without the dart traps.

You could probably make this with cobblestone and it would be just fine.

What I'd really like to do is combine this with my crafting base for a total solution.  I really don't like having a separate horde and crating base.

 

[Fox]

Once I have the materials, this is the horde base I use in A20.  No cheese, no trick blocks and its insanely effective, it has relatively few parts, is super easy to repair, and easily lines zombies up for head shots.

I build mine without the dart traps.

You could probably make this with cobblestone and it would be just fine.

What I'd really like to do is combine this with my crafting base for a total solution.  I really don't like having a separate horde and crating base.

And what happens if a demolisher or cop does explode? They are kind of unpredictable after all. Somehow I doubt that outpost would survive a single explosion at all.

Seems like a high risk end-game outpost to me, especially if you make it into your base with all your important stuff inside it.

I imagine that the devs could easily edit some minor code to make that outpost no longer work at all if they wanted to.

It is an interesting / fun design though, I'll give it that.

 

[pahbi]

And what happens if a demolisher or cop does explode? They are kind of unpredictable after all. Somehow I doubt that outpost would survive a single explosion at all.

Seems like a high risk end-game outpost to me, especially if you make it into your base with all your important stuff inside it.

I imagine that the devs could easily edit some minor code to make that outpost no longer work at all if they wanted to.

It is an interesting / fun design though, I'll give it that.

Demolishers are easy peasy.

Watch the video, the very first thing you see is a demolisher walk up the ramp, get decapitated and fall over dead.  You can let the blades kill them, or you can hit them with a few head shots while they are stunned.

I've had zero problems with cops, demolishers or anything else.  Pointing a gun at a demolishers head nearly point blank and blowing it off, is a ton of fun.

Early game, if the base is made of cobblestone, it might be a little susceptible to cops if one ever actually did explode, but once you have concrete walls, its game over for zeds.

 

[Fox]

Demolishers are easy peasy.

Watch the video, the very first thing you see is a demolisher walk up the ramp, get decapitated and fall over dead.  You can let the blades kill them, or you can hit them with a few head shots while they are stunned.

I've had zero problems with cops, demolishers or anything else.  Pointing a gun at a demolishers head nearly point blank and blowing it off, is a ton of fun.

Early game, if the base is made of cobblestone, it might be a little susceptible to cops if one ever actually did explode, but once you have concrete walls, its game over for zeds.

I did watch the video... and the guy even admitted that the outpost has some limitations, like upredictable cop and demolisher behavior that could ruin your day as well as the fact that it's limited to 8 spawn bloodmoons only.

 

[pahbi]

I did watch the video... and the guy even admitted that the outpost has some limitations, like upredictable cop and demolisher behavior that could ruin your day as well as the fact that it's limited to 8 spawn bloodmoons only.

I guess...

I'm only on day 50 at the moment, so maybe later on I'll have to move on to something else.

I don't use the base passively, I play 16 spawn bloodmoons and headshot ~85% of the stuff that pops around the corner.  So far I haven't had the least bit of worry.  The main thing is to keep the fences and fans repaired.

 

[Fox]

Hmm, ok. Maybe he was just being cautious with his claims. I might give it a go someday if I ever decide to use dart traps.

 

[Roland]

if I ever decide to use dart traps.

LMAO...that's me too!!!

I've never once tried them since they were introduced. Keep telling myself I need to and even crafted a couple of them my last game but they just sat in the workbench output and we ended up restarting a new world with 20.2 so....still nope...lol

 

[pahbi]

I skip the dart traps, but maybe dart traps and additional turrets are the key to using the base once the zeds get super tough to kill.

 

[Fox]

LMAO...that's me too!!!

I've never once tried them since they were introduced. Keep telling myself I need to and even crafted a couple of them my last game but they just sat in the workbench output and we ended up restarting a new world with 20.2 so....still nope...lol

Well, for me, I was very disappointed with the turrets, so I figured dart traps sound even weaker and likely consume just as much ammo... so why bother?

 

[theFlu]

Well, for me, I was very disappointed with the turrets, so I figured dart traps sound even weaker and likely consume just as much ammo... so why bother?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you're making ̃̃ 400 block trap fields as your basic setup? In your case, yeah, don't bother. In any case where the zeds manage to gather somewhere or run a line, they're all right. A little on the expensive side in iron, but nothing unmanageable as a miner.

 

[Boidster]

Dart traps are among our favorites for any pathway/funnel base. They are absolute murder in groups and don't trigger the demos. Our last base had 12 traps (3 wide x 2 high on both sides of a hallway) and it was a very rare Z that survived the gantlet. Most of the time we'd be at our "shooting window" looking down at the incoming Zs and just hear the occasional FFT...FFT...FFT of the traps behind us takin' care of bidness. Rarely went through more than 100-200 darts in any one machine. Oh, they were backed up by electric fences through the centerlines of the traps, so the Zs had to patiently wait for a moment as they got their acupuncture.

We even used them in a standard box base (like Fox's, only not quite as big). After crunching through rows of barbed wire and under fire from elevated turrets, Zs encountered four 3-wide pressure-plate "bridges" across a 1-deep moat close to the base wall. So from any direction, the Zs could choose to cross a bridge to attack the base. Except of course the pressure plates activated 6x dart traps facing out. Many Zs died on those bridges. All the traps were accessible from inside the base for easy repairs/restocking. It worked pretty well, but the base just became too time-consuming to maintain.