Boop

Speakers are never a waste. Take all the sensors and all the speakers and install them in your friend's house when he's away. Next time a zombie appears he'll get a heart attack. Then you can take his stuff because he won't play with you any more.

I think this part is an issue. A lot of the stack versions of things one might want to use a chemistry station for are also locked behind magazines. Perhaps chemistry station should come way earlier in progression but the stack versions of things could be swapped for the things themselves? Would a) make chemistry station stuff available earlier for those who need it and b) would lock effects behind magazines as intended. For instance, gunpowder stacks are unlocked by explosives tech tree. Switch out the gunpowder stack recipe for gunpowder recipe (so gunpowder is locked behind magazines). Do this for all the relevant things that can be made in the chemistry station (most notably gunpowder and gas but there are probably others I am missing). Next, move chemistry station unlock to much lower in workstation tree (say 25 or 30). Boom, now you can get gas earlier if you go workstation + grease monkey, or gunpowder earlier if you go explosives + workstations while still maintaining the spirit of the tech trees.

No need to wonder any more. I made a modlet with your suggestions. Removes scaling from mods and scales damage off quality only (and perks). T0 is squished, and T1+ starts at higher and higher scaling levels (resulting in a lower increase per Q but it makes the jump from Q6 to higher tier Q1 more worthwhile). Mods are also based off tier, with T0 having 0-2 mods based on Q, T1 having 1-3 mods based on Q, and so on. You can fidget with the numbers yourself - I put them all in a very direct format. https://mega.nz/file/UAhUAAob#vl8zaO--tFHn88RcX_m0jMgBCxKmGErYBB6v2rEwbXs

This is on par with a broken condom in how quickly and drastically it changes the remainder of your life.

That doesn't "fix" the problem though, it just makes it less apparent. The current system needs to go. My guess is that it's an old relic that was patchworked in without much thought and put on the "later" pile. Items scale poorly because the mod system is completely out of whack. Adding 10% damage per mod surpasses every other benefit, making #mod slots the only thing that counts. Mods are also allowed to suck because you only use them for that sweet damage boost anyway. The hard solution here is to remove mod increases to damage - no more 10% boost per mod. For the new system: 1 - Quality determines straight up damage, just like it does already. 2 - Even out mod slots. Each tier has 1 more mod slot, and can gain 2 more slots at higher Q. Q1-2 Stone spear has 0 slots, Q3-4 stone spear has 1 slot, Q5-6 has 2 slots. Q1-2 Iron spear has 1 mod slot, Q3-4 iron spear has 2 mod slots, Q5-6 iron spear has 3 mod slots. Q1-2 Steel spear has 2 mod slots, Q3-4 steel spear has 3 mod slots, Q5-6 steel spear has 4 mod slots. A theoretical T4 spear would start at 3 mod slots and end at 5. This will keep a consistent level across tiers and ensure that at the very least, a Q2 iron spear will be a worthwhile upgrade over a Q6 stone spear. 3 - Mods provide an *effect* that is worth using. The best example of this is the scope for a sniper rifle. 2x, 4x, 8x scopes have a distinct use. The scope doesn't need to provide a 10% damage boost as it provides an effect that changes how you play. Using an 8x scope? Perfect hunter rifle or sniper, but good luck trying to shotgun a zombie at 1m distance. All mods should be like this. Equipping your weapon with 4 terrible mods would no longer be useful, but thinking about your use case could lead to some significant advantages in the right scenario. And of course generic mods will still be of generic use. The diffficult part is that all these mods need to be created and pondered so that they fit. This is presumably why TFP added the 10% bonus in the first place; as a temporary placeholder so they wouldn't have to think about making all mods useful. What happens with the scaling with this system? A Q5 stone weapon will be slightly worse than a Q1 iron weapon *unless* you have 2 excellent mods. If you only have 1 then Q1 iron will be slightly better. Scaling will be toned down between Q1 and Q6 as a) the number of mods are lowered and b) mods no longer provide an inherent 10% bonus. The scaling from quality can of course be adjusted to fit whatever numbers are needed on the tiers, and presumably they will be scaled up to account for the 40% extra damage that has been removed from mods. This will also make upgrading quality a worthwhile pursuit in itself. The big challenge is going to be making interesting and valuable mods; which also happens to be an elegant ingress towards making the weapon classes more distinct.

What is it that makes it the most powerful? The turrets? The width of play styles it can create? Also, less importantly, do you believe INT needs a nerf, and if so what do you think should be nerfed? I'm asking because I'm trying my hand at modding, changing attributes and skills and how they interact with stuff, and INT is the most intuitive support tree for that.

Ahh, then I follow. No, I don't think INT needs to be bolstered. I do think it would be neat if INT (all the attributes really) had something to show off your superior intellect as a capstone, like the ability to see the HP bar of zombies, or a modifier for the night vision goggles to show "zombie heat" or something, just to indicate that you have Spock level intelligence. An ancillary bonus that signals your intellectual ascendance. I would also like if there was some interaction with other trees, but that's more a general idea than INT related, and would in many cases require that individual skills be toned down to compensate for increased power. As for the other argument I think that was just a question of whether or not there would be improvements to the baton, which seems unlikely given the robotics tree screenshot.

I forgot about daring adventurer completely, even though it's my favorite to max early. That double reward when clearing the quest tiers is too tasty. I don't know what you are responding to here otherwise. That INT shouldn't have synergies with other trees? That INT shouldn't have a capstone of some sort that gives you some cool thing as a reward for your deep investment?

I lowered the damage numbers a bit (32, 40, 50, for regular, HP, Enhanced) and the weapons fit great. The iron sights + inbuilt silencer are wonderful. Congratulations on a well made mod! Yes, I started with agility now. A harrowing experience, but really fun. I managed to run away from a horde, then hid in the basement corner of an auto shop while 10 angry zombies prowled around in front of me. Scary and tense, but really fun. I managed to outjump them a few times as well though that sometimes failed with unpleasant consequences :/. The night time hordes that spawn in my back are difficult to deal with unless I have some handy terrain nearby and can Batman away. I tried crossbow for the first time. I like it - not a weapon for plowing through hordes but very cost effective and great for lining up slow shots and taking out groups of 2-5 Zs when combined with a melee weapon, especially the fat ones are much easier with a bolt in the head to start. I don't lose much ammo either. Very nice. Not as fond of the bleeding. It's nice for faster zombies in open spaces that I can kite, but in closed PoI areas it feels safer to me and faster to use spear and baton, I don't need to be as aware of my escape routes when I can zap. The part I like about zapping is that I can defend myself even in a corner if I get a stun with repulsor. Loving the crossbow, loving the parkour, and loving the shadow stuff. A much more fun way to experience the tense early game at night. This game is way more fun when you are constantly teetering on the brink. (Also I increased the difficulty, turned on feral sense, lowered loot numbers, and increased night time). What if they are introducing something new entirely for INT? Consider that schematics are going away, and the major draws of INT have been advanced engineering, T5 bartering for solar cells, and grease monkey. If vehicles and crafting/construction schematics are no longer available through skills, INT will need a replacement for those. Perhaps a new line of weapons? Perhaps something to do with mods? There are many possibilities, but there will be *something* no doubt. I think baton will fit better in A21. If they are removing it as a weapon and using it to fill out the robot tree, it will have a better role. Now that I think about it seems more likely that INT will get something else to fill the weapon role if that happens (or INT will become a support attribute entirely with no direct combat skills at all, which would signify a change in the skill setup and probably be even more exciting). That would make for an excellent T3 turret. No meaningful increase in damage or range but uses only half as much ammo. Would also sync well with running double turrets. I don't think INT is intended as a heavy combat tree, but it would be nice if you could feel the investment you made somehow when going into another tree. If there was a skill in INT that could show the deep investment you've made, even if it's mostly flavor, that would go a long way. I'd like to see something to that effect for all the attributes at rank 10, since at rank 10 you do feel that you belong to that attribute "class". Even better if attributes go up to rank 15 instead.

Hi Izayo, It was not an assertion, but a question. I am going to start a new run, and I was wondering if the .45 ACP weapon pack is equivalent in power to the existing vanilla weapons. I would like to add mods, and yours look great, but I also want to maintain the same challenge curve as it is. Would you say that your .45 ACP pack contains weapons superior to the vanilla weapons?

No but it certainly suggests a limit on any buffing as the stun baton is necessarily limited by its tier. Any considerable boost to batons would need to introduce a T3 baton to keep the progression steady. I'd say the skill progression suggested by that screenshot implicates that the stun baton will become more of a turret support weapon than a stand-alone melee weapon. As an aside, I see that you are mentioned in the acknowledgements for the 3/4 Izayo .45 ACP weapon pack. Did you help make those weapons balanced? You seem to enjoy a rough ride, so if you find them appropriate for a difficult playthrough I will install that mod for my next run. I would like to have a few more SMG options and the UMP is a classic. I am curious about the agility oriented playstyle after this thread.

If the screenshots from the A21 diary are correct, it looks like Pipe Baton and Stun Baton will go into the robotics crafting tree together with sledge, turret, and drone. There's no T3 baton present in the screenshot.

It is fun to make your own path. That seems more practical outside of quests though, in case you miss a zombie or three by skipping something. I hammer away regardless to get past ledges and other no-no areas where I definitely did not want to get caught by a horde. It's scary how quickly things can go bad if you get caught in an uncomfortable situation.

Maybe not, but they certainly *appear* superior. They have excellent upfront damage for a low stamina cost, they have the most mods available, and they are the closest to a sledgehammer in terms of room clearing speed. They also work well out of the box. Perhaps bleeding is more of an expert weapon, I didn't get any visual cues on how it was helping me. On a related note, is there a T3 sword? I never found one or a schematic for it as far as I know. That is also more of an expert approach. I didn't know when to plan ahead or when to set up a turret. I just ran into a room, if red dots popped up on the radar I ran out again and slapped down a turret on the entrance doorway. That worked great together with a club. I went the other way, I wanted to be as loud as possible so I could activate all zombies around and get them to walk into my turret zone. As an aside, turrets really benefit from a lot of points into mining, as getting enough iron was my primary concern there. I think I went through around 9000 iron or so every BM with two turrets out. I'm sure they will be. Generally the mechanics I have seen in the game are fantastic. I get the notion that a lot of thought has gone into making interesting systems, especially early to mid game. Mostly what's missing to me is QoL features, such as journal entries on how things work and what different things mean (still don't know what weapon handling does for instance), and small things like being able to craft using resources in nearby containers. I also want to be able to make terrifying sounds in multiplayer so I can scare the crap out of my friends when appropriate. Ahh so the building system is not the intended final design yet? I tried that. My front wall broke down at the same time as my back wall and I got double whammied Wonderful!

Yes, this was my first experience with the game. Yes, that was the impression I got. It makes a lot of sense to avoid critical functions everyone will need. I was thinking useful but not critical effects could be a way to differentiate into "classes" as you put it. STR giving carry capacity or decreased reduction of speed in heavy armor , fortitude giving increased efficiency for food/resilience against weather and exertion, AGI giving increased jump height or movement speed in light armor, perception giving markers for stash items/improved range for weapons/improved chance of finding higher quality/more items in containers, and so on. All of these feel like nice perks to have, but they aren't things I would specifically build towards. I can see the point with the things you listed though; having critical modifiers in the attributes would make them mandatory for a successful build. I didn't try harder difficulties, but I assume they get fiendishly hard and require an optimized build. Unfortunately I only have the single player experience. I felt that strength and intelligence were kinda mandatory. I had no one else to collect schematics or resources (and I did not know how to reliably get schematics) so I focused on that. But following your argument here, I would then suggest instead that attributes go higher, maybe up to 15 points, offfering even better effects and deeper specializations in multiplayer scenarios (and adding new skills that require high attributes). This would enhance the class definitions and create more synergy possibilities between them. That would work well to give a proper class feeling. Yes, that is wonderful news. Does it also apply to the Q6 situation, or will it still be the case that the best item qualities are found randomly rather than crafted? I'm not sure I could ever drop INT; being able to slap down a junk turret is just too valuable when I run around like a headless chicken screeching in fear. That thing takes care of business while I go change my pants, and the double setup is a godsend on BMs too when the damn auto-turrets are trying to steal half of my hard-earned xp. I guess what I want in weapons is a bit more differentiation. For machetes I would like to *see* when something is bleeding, much like I can see when something is shocked or burning. I would like to *see* the range of a melee weapon to understand how they differ. I concede that my experience is limited here, but when I tried to experience all the weapons all I could reliably see was that the club did the most damage, and the secondary attack always knocked zombies down (which was fantastic for my heavy armor tight spaces approach). The machete seemed to not do much at all, and didn't seem to stagger zombies as well either. I am not saying that it's a bad weapon, I'm saying that I couldn't *see* anything good come out of it. Perhaps I needed to skirmish more and slice everyone, but I did not quite grasp the purpose of that as it was easier and more efficient to just bonk stuff on the noggin for me. The baton was pretty fun, and the shock was definitely noticeable, but it happened pretty rarely, and it took between 2x and 3x as many hits to kill something as when I used the club. That playstyle was too slow for me, as my concern was mostly getting swarmed if I didn't kill fast enough. Having put a little more thought into it, perhaps what I am asking for is simply something a bit more visual and clear. I like the effects of burning, shocking, and bleeding, and I would very much like to have a clear visual cue of what is actually going on when I bonk stuff. It might also be worth pointing out that I didn't use a modded weapon until I had done everything I felt I could with the original weapons, as I wanted to complete the intended experience before making my own. I will also add that if you haven't set the ragdoll force on your repulsor to 1500 yet, you haven't experience the best of 7D2D . Combine it with that pitiful dog sound on hit and you will laugh pretty hard. I did try that in the early game but I ran out of pants. Holy moly, I didn't even consider how the agility skills might affect that.

Oh and one thing I forgot. I felt that the gear progression was a bit twitchy. I would have liked to have a slower initial gear progress, staying longer on pipe tier, with iron being a more significant upgrade down the line. As it was, wood/stone and pipe went by very fast, landing in iron, and then staying on iron for a long time until finally hitting steel. This also needs an equivalent armor tiering, as I felt there wasn't much of armor options compared to the many sidegrades of weaponry.

Howdy, I now consider my playthrough of A20 to be "complete", in the sense that I have done everything I wanted. I enjoyed the game a lot (I like survival, I like building, I like changing pants). I played alone for the entire time. All in all, I had a blast with the early game survival and the mid game expansion. The first few blood moons were riveting and terrifying experiences; finding the cool PoI quests (like the secret lab up in the snowy hills) was amazing, and finally getting a crucible for my steel tech was deeply satisfying. I got seriously molested by the first two ferals that lunged at me during my second T1 quest, and I couldn't handle the bigger animals that kept charging me until well into the iron age. I got swarmed by an angry horde in exactly that one spot in lg_factory_02 where you have to walk out on a busted dead end catwalk to get to a duffel bag. I stopped playing after doing most of the T5 quests and realizing that the beautiful and immersive helipad I had built for my gyrocopter was useless since I needed a tarmac strip instead, and that I wouldn't be able to use it for quickly pillaging rooftops in the wasteland areas. At this point I had already survived a week of BM (I set the timer to BM every night) and filled half a solar bank with T5+ cells for my automated defenses. My wooden shack had grown rather organically into a classic fortress with ensconcing towers and imposing buttressed walls, just tall enough that I could gently spear anyone at the gates if I crouched. I had a net of electric fencing going this way and that, and blade turrets along all the walls. The towers were capped by turrets, first SMG turrets and shotguns, then pistol turrets and rifle turrets (I also tried my hand at modding towards the end) as I wanted a use for the boxes upon boxes of extra ammo I had gathered. I wet myself again, this time laughing, when I first modded a spear that could be combined with a stun baton and repulsor to absurdly yeet a poor zombie off into the sunset. I would like to think I created balanced items, but you never know. Either way, I had become the Grand Bowler, yeeting zombies into other zombies in gooey 7-10 splits. Some things stood out to me in this playthrough. The skill system feels poorly structured. Some skills are very weak and fill only a temporary niche in early game (like tracking and lockpicking). I don't see a need to track large creatures as by the time I can kill them my boxes are overflowing with food already. These skills came across as traps more than anything else. I feel like a tree structure for each skill category would make far more sense, such as getting access to robotics only after unlocking advanced engineering T3 for instance, and having a bit more sync between the skills. I also found it odd that every governing attribute (str, int, agi etc) had the same function but for different weapons. It would seem more reasonable to bake those effects into the weapon skills, and have the attribute points instead increase what you would expect them to increase, id est STR increases carry capacity, fortitude reduces stamina drain from running/actions, AGI increases jump height, and so on. In my game, I considered intelligence and strength to be critical skill categories, while perception, agility, and fortitude were completely optional with no critical skills. Unlocking schematics through skills also seems strange, as it kinda reduces the need for scavenging, and some of the schematics they unlock really are critical for progress (crucible for instance). I'm happy that's going away in A21, and I'm hoping it is replaced with something that better aligns with an organic development of the gameplay experience instead of taking away from it. Crafting. In many areas it makes a lot of sense, but in some places it feels downright wonky. The tiered system is terrible. Always being able to build everything in T5 feels wrong (I can build a T5 wooden club and then jump directly to build T5 steel?), and not being able to build T6 is even worse. What is the point of mastering a particular crafting skill if you can just find a better tier anyway? And having an extra mod slot on T6 just adds insult to injury. Either drop the crafting part entirely and just have us scavenge for new items, or make it so that investing in crafting this way actually leads to the best gear. I feel like I've wasted half of my invested points when I craft a T5 anything only to find a T6 version. Building. Building a base is so much fun; the planning, the plotting, the ideas that may or may not work out. However, the current build system is too convoluted. It took me quite a while to figure out how to put things together in a nice way, and even now I keep running into obstacles. In particular, having to plan ahead if I want to give up the ceiling space or the floor space is annoying. There really needs to be decorative and functional items that can be placed inside the 1x1 cube grid. I want to hang a light from the ceiling without having to give up all the space on the floor above. Right now I can't do that unless I skip 99% of the build options available, add an extra unit of height to each level, and build everything using the basic cube. Also, I had to enable cheat mode and use the hammer of God just to get rid of a steel cube that I misplaced. That is not good at all. There has to be an option to undo/recover building blocks, otherwise building becomes such a hassle that it loses part of its appeal. I like to build large and over-designed structures - I'm afraid to use steel because a mistake will take a long time to undo without cheat mode. Finally, when it comes to painting, is it possible to limit the available paints to only those that fit the material? It seems strange that I can paint my steel blocks into wood, and it takes away a little of the immersion. Quests. T1-T3 were great. I liked those. T4 started to feel stressed, partially because of travel, as they were taking so long to finish. For early T5 I had to increase day length to maximum just to have a chance of finishing before night set in. I've gotten used to clearing all zombies and not leaving any stragglers, but I do feel it would be better if only the final room needed to be cleared, or perhaps a cap of 85% of all zombies in the building. I also believe there should be more quest variety than clear/fetch for T5. Killing a travelling horde would be fun, as would a crafting quest (hand in 5x turrets and 10x tuna sandwiches) or effect quest (turn on the local power plant - the street lights will function for a week). Either way, after doing the T5 quests a few times (and gearing up to max) they are no longer difficult to clear at speed, though I do miss a few zombies when I rush. I would like a little more melee weapon variety. Sledgehammer is great, it does what you expect it to do and offers a tactical approach. It also feels good to go bonk and watch zombies take a quick time out. Machetes/clubs/batons all seem to do the same thing with club being wildly superior and also acting like a mini-sledgehammer on top of it. The default spear is not so useful. The availability of ranged weapons seem to make melee weapons redundant in mid to late game, which is a shame. That is all. I think I put in some 80 - 100 hours or so into the game, and I'm looking forward to doing it again when A21 comes out. I'm gonna buy an extra copy for my friend so he can play it with me; he gets stressed easily so I'm going to enjoy listening to his screams when the horde starts to swarm.