PC Thoughts on Demolishers

stample

stample

New member
I've gone through a couple horde nights with demolishers now, and they're pretty rough on bases. I like the challenge, but it doesn't feel right.

Why/how do demolishers trigger their explosives when they're close to death? I'm not saying TFP's idea of zombies is wrong, maybe they're smart, but it doesn't seem consistent with anything else they've done with zombies to date. Excepting the pathing AI, they're pretty typical mindless zombies. They don't use tools or weapons, they're like animals, running on instinct.

Also, its irritating that once they trigger the countdown, nothing stops it, even killing them. With cops, at least you could focus fire and prevent the explosion. With these guys, you either need to get a head decap, or stun lock them while putting tons of shots into them to kill them before they can trigger it. With a group of 6 of us, we were only able to kill 2 of about 20 without them detonating. Granted we had about 50 zombies at any time and couldn't focus fire together very well, but still.

I'd like to propose a change. Remove their ability to trigger it themselves. Instead, make the explosives trigger (immediately, no countdown) when ~200 pts of damage occurs to their body hitbox, or maybe like a 15% chance any time the body is hit. This will let you detonate them safely with a couple good shots if you see them from a distance, but force you to be more careful about how you attack them once they get up to your base. Melee would be especially dangerous because if you miss the head and hit the body, no chance to get out of range.

I think they should also detonate immediately if they take fire or electrical damage. No using stun batons in melee with them! This'll also let you use electric fences to keep them out with the downside that it'll blow a hole in the ground, allowing subsequent zombies to circumvent your fence by walking under it.

Also, on a related note, one of my co-players pointed out that the only way to see explosion resistance on a block is to have it in your inventory (or check the xml). Since you can't craft steel blocks, only upgrade to them, there's no way for the player to see how much resistance a steel block has, which seems like a big oversight. Shouldn't have to resort to creative, or checking the game files, to find the stats on an item.

 
Demolishers need someone ELSE to hit the button, its why you gotta shoot em when they approach your base, lest another zed smack em in the right spot and KABOOM...hole in your wall/floor/general head area

 
Also, its irritating that once they trigger the countdown, nothing stops it, even killing them. With cops, at least you could focus fire and prevent the explosion. With these guys, you either need to get a head decap, or stun lock them while putting tons of shots into them to kill them before they can trigger it. With a group of 6 of us, we were only able to kill 2 of about 20 without them detonating. Granted we had about 50 zombies at any time and couldn't focus fire together very well, but still.
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I don't like this at all.

 
Demolishers need someone ELSE to hit the button, its why you gotta shoot em when they approach your base, lest another zed smack em in the right spot and KABOOM...hole in your wall/floor/general head area
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I fought a lone demolisher and he blew after I killed him. No other zombies were around at the time. I died.

 
I fought a lone demolisher and he blew after I killed him. No other zombies were around at the time. I died.
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He has explosives on him that are triggered by hitting the lit box. You can see it, and hear it when it's triggered. He also starts running. Him dying isn't going to stop that. A lot of games have enemies where there is some spot you want to hit to take them out. With this guy, he has a spot you must not hit... unless of course you want to do it on purpose to take out a group of zombies.

You can even trigger the box after he is dead. Once it is triggered no matter what, expect an explosion in a couple seconds.

EDIT: At some point they fixed the issue of being able to trigger the box even after the demolisher is dead.

Pointing this out in case someone reads what I wrote. It's old news.

 
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So they already work like that? Interesting, I didn't feel like that at all when I was fighting them. I'll pay closer attention.

 
I don't like them at all. It feels like the devs are actively working to make base-building non-viable in the long term, and to encourage players to either ride around on a minibike for horde nights (as many players do) or to just defend random POIs that they don't care about.

Zombies in this game already had the ability to dig through reinforced steel bunkers with their bare hands in minutes; I don't feel they needed additional destructive power. For a game that's to some non-trivial degree about building a cool, zombie-defensible house with voxels, anything that makes the player rather just go ride around in circles during horde nights to avoid losing their house seems less than fun to me.

 
At what level did you start to see the demolishers? I think they should be a late game feature, personally.

 
I don't like them at all. It feels like the devs are actively working to make base-building non-viable in the long term, and to encourage players to either ride around on a minibike for horde nights (as many players do) or to just defend random POIs that they don't care about.
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I think the developers don't care much about base building and that's even worse. The shape selector is handy but there are only a few new shapes, no really new traps and not much has changed since A16 in base building. Some traps are even removed from the game like the flat barbed wire and the log spikes. The only new trap is a upgraded version of the wood spikes.

I feel like they only have guns on their minds. AP ammunition, HP ammunition, grenades and weapons with real world designation instead of generic type designation. This looks more and more like a zombie loot shooter and less like a game where base building is important.

I recently took a look at what a gamestage 250 horde looks like with the demolisher and the changed AI.

I built a basic killtower in creative mode. Just a few concrete blocks stacked on top of each other and upgraded to steel, a few iron bars placed outside and finally I put iron spikes around the tower. There is no simpler design. Even someone without any experience would be able to build something like this. But if you have the right weapons and enough ammo then this simple design works. For me that shows the base design doesn't matter in the current game. Only weapons matter. It would have done any POI with sturdy walls.

The irony is that much more complex and sophisticated base designs are much more susceptible.

I did a few tests with the demolisher. Dart traps at head height don't trigger the explosion but are weak due to the armor. Blade traps do more damage, but at head level they can trigger the explosion and are immediately destroyed. Accordingly you have to place the blade traps directly on the ground. Turrets will definitely trigger the explosion and therefore have to be placed behind the zombies.

My conclusion so far is that traps are ineffective against demolishers. The most effective is a fully modified Q6 M60 with AP ammunition.

 
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At what level did you start to see the demolishers? I think they should be a late game feature, personally.
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Gamestage 109, 3rd horde, day 21...we saw at least 3

We had our usual temporary base, a 10 x 10 cube of re-enforced concrete with 3 rows of Iron spikes all round. We always build this as a stop gap to building the main base. First time it's ever been breached. It wasn't the Demolishers per se, just the sheer size of the Horde that overwhelmed us. And the breach was right at the end, so no real harm done. That said, these guys are going to put a lot of people off the game imo. They are horrible to deal with and their explosion is massive.

Will be interesting to see if our usual main base design will stop these guys. It's top secret though as I fear if I talk about it, the devs will deliberately add something to the game to trump the design (as they typically do for other common designs).

 
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At what level did you start to see the demolishers? I think they should be a late game feature, personally.
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The first demolishers can be seen at gamestage 153.

I did some math. On a single player game with default settings, zero deaths and if you assume that you get 1.5 levels per day then you reach gamestage 153 on day 51. That means at the day 56 horde you will probably see the first demolisher.

 
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Gamestage 109, 3rd horde, day 21
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On multiplayer games the group gamestage is the one that matters. So the demolisher comes much earlier than on a singleplayer game.

 
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I believe that was the group gamestage, though I might be wrong. How do u see group gamestage? I just typed 'gamestage' as usual.

 
I believe that was the group gamestage, though I might be wrong. How do u see group gamestage? I just typed 'gamestage' as usual.
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As far as I know this can only be calculated. The command gamestage shows only the personal gamestage.

The gamestages.xml contains the formula with which the group gamestage can be calculated.

This is how the gamestage of a party is calculated:

The gamestage of all (up to) 6 players is calculated.

The players are sorted by gamestage and only the 5 highest numbers go into the calculation.

The highest GS number is multiplied by "startingWeight".

This then loops down the list and "startingWeight" is reduced by "diminishingReturns" every time.

Example:

Players with GS 120, 30, 60, 91, 5, 80.

startingWeight= 1.7, diminishingReturns=0.22

So we get

120 * 1.70 = 204

91 * 1.48 = 134

80 * 1.26 = 100

60 * 1.04 = 62

30 * 0.82 = 24

5 (is ignored)

... or a total party GS of 524

An interesting fact is that the max GS of a part or player is now KNOWN because the player level (which caps daysAlive) and diff modifier are known and the party weight factors are known.

With default values you get up to 600 for a single lvl 150 (max) player on max difficulty and for a full party of max level players up to 1800.
 
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The irony is that much more complex and sophisticated base designs are much more susceptible.

I did a few tests with the demolisher. Dart traps at head height don't trigger the explosion but are weak due to the armor. Blade traps do more damage, but at head level they can trigger the explosion and are immediately destroyed. Accordingly you have to place the blade traps directly on the ground. Turrets will definitely trigger the explosion and therefore have to be placed behind the zombies.

My conclusion so far is that traps are ineffective against demolishers. The most effective is a fully modified Q6 M60 with AP ammunition.
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My own experiments with the demolisher and turrets placed behind them did result in some of them, more then 50% having their trigger turned on. It could be that i have the turrets too high, not sure.

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My thoughts on the demolisher are a bit mixed. To some degree, i don't mind them adding a stronger lategame zombie. But a tank (lots of hp and heavy armor) that just destroy spikes, and have a fairly high chance to also ruin traps. Still better then untouchable aliens that shoot lasers with their eyes, but not by much.

 
Encountered my first demolishers last night, and it was absolutely thrilling to me. I was so happy to encounter a new zombie, one that felt equally as powerful as me (I use a sledge hammer). I told my group to focus on everything else, and I went toe to toe with the demolisher on foot. Did it work out very well? Not really. I dont think my sledge ever once got the finishing kill, but it definitely knocked them down enough to keep them away from our horde base. Afterwards, we decided that from now on a sniper would trigger his explosive long before he reaches our base.

 
Encountered my first demolishers last night, and it was absolutely thrilling to me. I was so happy to encounter a new zombie, one that felt equally as powerful as me (I use a sledge hammer). I told my group to focus on everything else, and I went toe to toe with the demolisher on foot. Did it work out very well? Not really. I dont think my sledge ever once got the finishing kill, but it definitely knocked them down enough to keep them away from our horde base. Afterwards, we decided that from now on a sniper would trigger his explosive long before he reaches our base.
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You can make them blow up before they reach your base? That seems pretty easy then making them not as bad as I first thought. I thought the only way to deal with them was to headshot them to death before they reach your base.

 
Encountered my first demolishers last night, and it was absolutely thrilling to me. I was so happy to encounter a new zombie, one that felt equally as powerful as me (I use a sledge hammer). I told my group to focus on everything else, and I went toe to toe with the demolisher on foot. Did it work out very well? Not really. I dont think my sledge ever once got the finishing kill, but it definitely knocked them down enough to keep them away from our horde base. Afterwards, we decided that from now on a sniper would trigger his explosive long before he reaches our base.
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just saw mine too "granted it was low quality" but he was fun to fight

side note: is it me or dose he look like a super mutant!

 
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