Zombie number limits and damage received

[Khulkhuum]

Hi All. I have finally decided to "pimp my own 7DTD" with what i think is doable by changing the XMLs. My assumptions are as follows (for the first phase, i have other ideas to implement):

- Decreasing zombie HP, alongside XP gained

- Increasing weapon damage, but also changing so similar objects would do similar damage

- Increasing the number of Zs to spawn in various situations

This will make zombies way easier to kill sure, but you will be overwhelmed by numbers. As far as i went into changing the files, i stumbled upon two things that pickled my mind and may prove to be tough to work around.

1. I started wondering what's the limit of active zombies. I saw in numerous threads discussions about consequences of having too many active Zs, but i wonder how far can i go until the enemies start freezing in place or something.

2. Checking damage of various weapons ingame i noticed that different difficulties recalculate the damage you pose to Zs. Noticed that on Nomad you dish out the exact number that is in the stats (even looking at a weapon ingame, for example bone shiv 16), on Scavenger you hit twice as hard (32 damage) and on insane you hit half as hard (8 damage). Has it always been like this and can i change this somewhere? Wouldn't want to eliminate the damage shift, but perhaps alter it a bit.

Thanks in advance.

 

[BeardedProtagonist]

just a thought, but aren't those items all tweakable out of the box through difficulty settings?

- Decreasing zombie HP, alongside XP gained

A function of general difficulty?

- Increasing weapon damage, but also changing so similar objects would do similar damage

Again a function of general difficulty?

- Increasing the number of Zs to spawn in various situations

Well there is a slider for BM horde sizes, not every situation, but the most applicable one I would guess.

 

[Blackrook]

I think zombie numbers inside buildings will be limited by the sleeper boxes in the prefabs.

Roaming hoards/blood moon numbers can be altered in xml files:

gamestages.xml for roaming hoards

and I think there is a setting in either the game setting or server settings for the number of Z'd per person on a server for hoard nights.

I did a prefab with a room jam packed of zombies that dropped down from above, 6 sleeper boxes each spawning 9-10 z'eds.

It created a beautiful waterfall of zombies. 60 z'd chasing us through the building waking up more sleepers as we ran.

I was thinking for the hitpoints/damage thing, you would be better just changing one of the perks - Boom head shot for instance,

to give an insta kill for headshots, at the moment, I think max level is 15% or 20% chance. Maybe up this to 80% chance at max level.

But there are other perks for the gun damage increases as well you could increase as well.

 

[Khulkhuum]

I am aiming at a situation where you don't fight 5-10 zombie wandering hordes, but rather 25-40. Taking this into account, i don't want to fight them for an hour just to get another team lining up. I have seen somewhere that even increasing the BM horde count there are limits to the number of active Zs. Because when i get better tools and weapons along better skills, i'm expecting to plow through regular Zs and need a bit focus on ferals and rads (as they have more HP).

Changed the HP of zombies and damage of weapons and so far it looks okay (maybe a bit OP), but i am asking from the performance standpoint. Surely i could pick up lowest difficulty, but that would mean i do 200% damage or the highest and i do 50% damage. That is a big difference. Still maybe it's ok?

Checked my setup spawning single and group of zombies using Insane difficulty. Pretty fun to be honest and the BM was quite interesting. It still requires a few tweaks (most likely gonna lower a bit weapon damage), but i wouldn't want to have the game be too easy on lower difficulties, yet similar to the current on higher (where you constantly hit the same zombies over and over).

On the other hand, the BM horde was on GS over 200 (not too much) and i had the best weapons with best mods... Planning on a regular playthrough with the changes to see how early and mid game works.