PC Wandering horde GPS tracking

Khulkhuum

Khulkhuum

New member
I know various people commented in many threads about zombies finding the players, but from my recent hours in "peaceful playthrough" i think i know the cause of that. Is it a bug? Should it be changed? Does TFP know about this? So many questions and so little answers... But i will describe my experiences a bit more thoroughly. WALL OF TEXT, COMMENCE!

My assumptions for the "peaceful playthrough" was to see how you can simply not kill zombies and advance further. It has proven to be a fair challenge, especially with raiding the few POIs that i managed to loot. From one point though it has been quite frustrating, the wandering hordes. You see, whenever the evening came a wandering horde spawned somewhere not too far away and not wanting to issue a fight i got back to my "house on poles" doing productive things as silently as i could.

I have seen each night as the Zs wandered ever closer, until i had to sit through the rest of the night surrounded by walls (once I did let a zombie see me when i peeked and sadly had to kill it, otherwise my whole house would fall down). The last evening though i saw the horde spawn earlier than previous ones. So i jumped out of my house and kited them away, punching the grass, axing the wood chunks and breaking the stones on the way further from the base - to not waste time and do something useful along the way.

Finally at a safe distance i ran to a different direction and back to base. Halfway through though i already seen at the edge of visibility single zombies wandering towards me, although before they dispersed disheartened and stopped following me. When the night came i was in my house on poles, hearing as they get closer from over 200 blocks away. They couldn't see me, they couldn't hear me, but most important they couldn't enter the house, although they tried. How and why, if they didn't run?

THIS is the exact reason you should fight wandering hordes. They won't sense you officially, simply wander towards your position like nothing happened. Or you could always be on the move and they won't be able to catch up, at one point simply dying out. Is it fair? I think IT IS NOT.

 
Im not seeing this at all. As a matter of fact when i leave my base I often find the wandering horde doing just that, milling about in multiple sots like a read horde would. Im not getting these GPS marching hordes at all.

Its rather how I figure a real horde would act. They shamble around the area. Are you making any kind of noise or running straight out into the open.

Im not sure if you are suggesting wandering hordes should never be a thing? They certainly are not as aggressive as they were in 16 and you can easily sneak out from your base away from them if you have 2 exits.

 
They do invariably spawn in the evening for me, and one time, I did as you and led them away.

My "GPS" horde was the one that found me in the basement of the hospital when I had made what I thought was insufficient noise. Indeed, they tracked me through the labyrinth that I had taken--all 15 of them. (I was near the loading dock. If they had come through that door, it would have made sense to me. Alas, I tracked the trail they had taken to get inside, and it made no sense how they 1) heard me and 2) found that path to me.)

*shrug*

 
I had a horde track me through a poi and all the way to the roof. It was both hilarious and a little annoying that the wandering hordes track you into a poi when you in the middle of clearing it.

 
Yep, happens to me all the time. Not with wandering hordes but with single zombies. A zombie will be walking by a hardware or gun store that I'm quietly looting, and somehow by chance will happen to come in the door, and somehow by chance happen to go all the way to the back, and somehow by chance just happen to go into the back room where I am opening boxes.

 
Wandering hordes usually walk by the general area the player is in. I think the homing effect comes from the fact that zombies are detecting player noise better now and one zombie in the area detecting you makes all of them in the area aggro you.

 
Wandering hordes usually walk by the general area the player is in. I think the homing effect comes from the fact that zombies are detecting player noise better now and one zombie in the area detecting you makes all of them in the area aggro you.
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yup. Waaay back, almost 10 alphas ago, 'GPS Zombies' would literally run/walk to your current position, and if they didn't find you, stop at that position and then proceed to rip the place apart because their pathing algorithm went into tantrum mode. The safest thing to do at night was to literally go out into the wilds and keep moving to keep throwing these zombie missiles everywhere but your base. They would tear a hole from one side of a building to another.

The only difference between then and now, aside from the dogs, bears, vultures, and dire wolf assassination squads, is that they respect walls as obstacles to go around now, they will run about 30-40 blocks past your position before spreading out to find you, and they will not 'tantrum' unless they sense you.

 
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The AI is the one thing in A17 that really turns me off. I can deal with the level gating, those are just numbers and can be tweaked accordingly, same with stamina and other quips people have.

But...

Having "GPS" guided zombies that "find" and "hear" you "luckily" every single time... c'mon! (even while crouching quietly on top of some POI)

Having zombies that zig-zag and strafe better than you purposely to skip over traps?

That zombies "know" which is the weakest block and "share" that information making all to hit it and target THAT block?

An upgrade to zombies running around in A16, don't get me wrong.

The problem is that at this point I'm scared they're getting their own skill tree and perks to deal with us players at higher levels. /s

 
The AI is the one thing in A17 that really turns me off. I can deal with the level gating, those are just numbers and can be tweaked accordingly, same with stamina and other quips people have.
But...

Having "GPS" guided zombies that "find" and "hear" you "luckily" every single time... c'mon! (even while crouching quietly on top of some POI)

Having zombies that zig-zag and strafe better than you purposely to skip over traps?

That zombies "know" which is the weakest block and "share" that information making all to hit it and target THAT block?

An upgrade to zombies running around in A16, don't get me wrong.

The problem is that at this point I'm scared they're getting their own skill tree and perks to deal with us players at higher levels. /s
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Agreed. This happened to me on day 1. Day 1 where I couldnt defend myself. wandering hoard spawned in just before night hit, and GPS'd their way into the POI, breaking down doors etc to get to me. I was crouched on top of a gable in a pitch dark room watching a video on my other monitor at the time so zero noise. But their built in GPS found me. Its just so wrong.

 
Having zombies that zig-zag and strafe better than you purposely to skip over traps?
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Yea yea, I know I shouldn't use the "it's experimental" defense. But, Faatal just posted today that he and Gazz were just talking about working on the zombie behavior with spikes. So, yea, it's experimental and they are adjusting as it goes....

 
I get both types of hordes, the horde that seems to know where I am even though I'm making minimal noise and movement, as well as the kind that simply wanders somewhat near me but shambles on by.

 
Funny story:

I was hiding in a house with two doors, down in the cellar and behind another door.

I did 0 sound, had no torches or whatever.

The zombies at night went through the top door, into the cellar, broke in (all with me beeing 1 visible) and started whacking my door I was hiding behind! "GPS" tracking really is an accurate way to describe that :D

 
The problem is (in my opinion) that no matter what you do the WH periodically checks where the player was not too long ago. This is due to the nature of the horde, because their aim is to move towards a vicinity of the player, which i think is ok, but they SHOULD stop GPS'ing after the first check or second.

When i see a horde and lead it away, practically losing them from sight, because the game engine doesn't render them (and most regular zombies stop chasing me halfway through this distance), but 2-3 ingame hours later i have them all aroud my base, i could be really angry about it. There is no way sight or sound checks could go THAT far. On top of that, i DID hear them try to get up to me (have a small ramp to the entrance), but because i take the wooden frames after i enter, the wooden stomping was finished with a thud of falling down, multiple times.

So in short:

1. Wandering Hordes check in regular intervals where the player was (if they don't run they didn't sense you, but still follow) compared to regular zombies which when you lose them only perform the check and then shift into wandering mode (seen that countless times).

2. As they perform the GPS check, it involves all of the algorithms, including finding the best route to find the player. This is why you need to destroy any path after you hide in a dark room. I'm pretty sure they would destroy any blocks you put up (Viktoriusiii points to it being true), so you have to have a gap down which they fall.

3. If you don't trigger the horde in any way (sound or sight) then they stay around until they either die (their timer runs out) or you lead them away.

Don't get me wrong, i like the challenge and sometimes the AI has to cheat in games in order to bring it to the players, but sometimes it can go too far...

 
At the very least they shouldn't spawn at 21:45, at least not in the early days. I've had it happen twice, day 2 and day 4 or 5, and... well, if you're unprepared, it goes south quick.

 
I don't mind their spawning at any time really, you have to be careful and that is all.

What i do mind is most of their numbers walking exactly towards the player. If you have 10 zombie horde you could have 2-4 Zs that could correctly guess the direction you're at and find you, but not every one zombie.

This shows on bigger distances the best, because (comparing here) if you miss shooting your target by an inch from 10 meters that's bad aim, but if you miss shooting your target by an inch from 100 or 200 meters it's just a small error.

 
My WHs in b199 (never saw one in b208 - strange that) always GPS'd to me, but... the first three that did so hit my little "starter square base" and slid right off and into the distance. Even though I had a lit torch inside, they bounced off the building and kept going. After those first three, however, the next two each had one stray attack the door, at which point I went out and killed all of them. Then I moved into a garage POI and each WH after that 1) knew I was in the upper level that I had built in there, even though my stealth-O-meter was at 2 or so, and 2) GPS'd to the building and immediately attacked the building (and trees, and each other...) even before they had locked onto me (I think). So something is randomly off-kilter about their detection, though I suspect it's not quite the same as the initial Start-to-Stop pathing set up at WH spawn.

 
I believe zombies have some random switch that turns them into gpsing hordenight zombies at anytime. I seen some zombies outside the poi I was in, was the remains of a wandering horde, they were actually walking away from the poi where I was crouched on the 2nd floor, they were about 100 blocks away from the poi. So I am sitting there not moving with the stealth meter at 1 for 5 minutes, then all of a sudden, one of the zombies just starts running at the house beelining it right to me as if it was a horde night gpsing zombie. He pretty much found me like a heat seeking missle and ran right up to me before he stoped to start to beat on me.

I have seen this happen on several occasions where zombies seem to have a switch flipped and then they gps right to you no matter where you go or try to hide. Had 5 zombies in one poi follow me no matter where I went, was in a huge poi too, I'd lose them then a few mins later they would catch up to me again like they are gpsing right to me.

I don't know if this is a bug, or something they slipped into the AI for a extra challenge, having zombies randomly decide to gps right to you till you kill them, no matter what day or time it is.

 
I believe zombies have some random switch that turns them into gpsing hordenight zombies at anytime. I seen some zombies outside the poi I was in, was the remains of a wandering horde, they were actually walking away from the poi where I was crouched on the 2nd floor, they were about 100 blocks away from the poi. So I am sitting there not moving with the stealth meter at 1 for 5 minutes, then all of a sudden, one of the zombies just starts running at the house beelining it right to me as if it was a horde night gpsing zombie. He pretty much found me like a heat seeking missle and ran right up to me before he stoped to start to beat on me.
I have seen this happen on several occasions where zombies seem to have a switch flipped and then they gps right to you no matter where you go or try to hide. Had 5 zombies in one poi follow me no matter where I went, was in a huge poi too, I'd lose them then a few mins later they would catch up to me again like they are gpsing right to me.

I don't know if this is a bug, or something they slipped into the AI for a extra challenge, having zombies randomly decide to gps right to you till you kill them, no matter what day or time it is.
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This only confirms my suggestion that the "GPS player tracking" is checked multiple times in various (or even) time intervals. Funny thing though that at my first A17e save (good enough skills to kill off Zs fast) i managed to kill one by one any zombie WH at night before they slumped against my house defenses. So you can kill such a horde stealthily, but you have to know they're coming before they push against the POI/base you're in. Also, such zombies when hit with arrows run close to the position from which they were shot and not finding the player (stealthily moving away before they come) make them stand motionless for a while nearby, so they don't really sense the player, only the shot to which they react. If it were a gun it would draw attention for sure (bigger noise) and more likely gather more Zs, but i think the principle would be the same (need to test that).

Remnants of a wandering horde still means a wandering horde, so it's just a type of zombies (like regular, sleeper and now wandering horde).

 
In my gameplay posts, I always preface by saying I play on MP because... for some reason on A17 there are certain differences for inexplicable reasons. i.e rebar upgrading to regular concrete instead of reinforced.

I'm assuming when I see 15-20+ zombies spawning at once, that's the wandering horde we're talking about. On mp they tend too all move in a certain direction, not necessarily to me. It is more often that I am in the way, than they are wandering towards me.

At times when I'm in my base, I have encountered this mass of zombies just standing around. Not 'wandering'. As far A17 goes, I have not seen a wandering horde actively/remotely tracking or following my position.

Even when I actively engage them, so long as I as use the usual sneaky sneaky conscious of aggro range maneuvers and take em out one by one, they do not aggro as a single entity.

 
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I can't say that every WH goes like i mentioned, but considering that in my peaceful playthrough from the 2nd night i spent every one at the base, listening to growls from the ground. I know that 2nd night and i think 4th night there were single Zs wandering about, but i did encounter WH amassing all around during the rest. The most recent night was more troublesome as the initial WH that i kited and came back died during the night (their time came to a close) and a new WH spawned in. I regularly check the console so i know (as this is mostly testing out various directions i could play in the future). All of this resulted in all of the zombies spread almost in a circle around my base (wonder why).

There could also be a factor of moving around, but not being sensed. On my first save i actively run during the night and only the first couple WH surprised me (as i was underprepared for anything) and a couple later ones were during the day. The last two night WH on that world i don't remember tracking me so well, but then again i didn't put much thought into that and i did engage them fairly quickly.

 
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