Boidster

Wait, so just plain defenses are cheese to you? Good heavens.

It still upgrades from concrete -> steel.

Firstly: Secondly, it ain't even good at what its technically-correct name implies!

OP wants: Electric cookers (stoves I guess?) Electric forges (and other Tier 2 workstations) Coffee makers Drink chillers Cornmeal grinders Neon lights (and more lights in general) More zombies in the streets Higher resource consumption and/or balance (lost vegetables but gained meat?) Tier 3 stun baton Get rid of/change the spear's alternate (thrown) attack More spear mods Redo the entire armor/weapon/vehicle mod system More mod stat effects - crit chance, haste, armor penetration, etc.

This is an awesome story of using the modding hooks TFP provided to turn TFP's art into art that you like better. You're doing it exactly right, and exactly as planned! Good on ya.

A complete bug report in the proper forum would be helpful. This sort of thing was a problem a couple alphas ago; sucks if it's come back for A20.

Stop spamming the forum with your pet issue. You have a long thread already dedicated to this. Repeating "I hate the stealth mechanic" in multiple new threads isn't going to persuade people, least of all TFP. Yes. Enough. You made your point.

Count me among the players who wanted infections to be more of a threat. Getting scratched by an infected should be something to avoid at all costs, IMO, and it should be a Serious Funking Problem when it happens especially early game. If you're going to be a melee spec early game, then go find the honey/antibiotics before getting into too many scraps. Always carry a jar or a pill with you so you can knock the infection down before it becomes a problem. This was surprising to me, so I checked the XML to see how it's changed. This is the Pop-N-Pills shelf loot group: <lootgroup name="groupPopnpillsShelves" count="all"> <item group="groupMedicalCommon" count ="1"/> <item group="groupMedicalUncommon" loot_prob_template="low" force_prob="true"/> <item group="groupMedicalRare" loot_prob_template="veryLow" force_prob="true"/> </lootgroup> And here's the "common" group which will be pulled from...commonly: <lootgroup name="groupMedicalCommon" count="1"> <item name="foodHoney" loot_prob_template="low"/> <item name="medicalBandage"/> <item name="medicalAloeCream"/> <item name="medicalSplint" loot_prob_template="low"/> </lootgroup> I'm not entirely sure if A20's probability calcs are the same as A19, but if they are that would mean that honey has about an 8% chance of showing up on the shelf. Of course herbal and regular antibiotics also have a chance (a much lower chance) to show up as well. The crates in the back offer chances also. If you loot a full-size Pop-N-Pills and come up empty, you got thrashed by RNG. I bet you got a lot of bandages though! Seems like honey should be moved to the Shamway stores, and only have the pills in P-n-P.

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...

Oh my god those types are the worst.

I think we both could be correct (and obviously we assume that faatal is correct). What I meant was only that for the purposes of determining whether a sleeper in an Attack volume wakes up, LOS doesn't seem to matter. The last image was kind of a joke, but it illustrates the point. The sleeper was encased in a light-proof tomb of wood and yet it still detected me. Note that sound-based detection wouldn't explain it since in the circumstance where I encased myself in a dark box, but all other things equal, the sleeper wasn't able to detect me (i.e. it couldn't hear me shuffling around in my dark shelter). That led to my suggestion that - in cases where you're being quiet enough - it's only the amount of light falling on the player that determines detection, not LOS. As for the zombie targeting the player, I didn't really test that. Your test (trying to sneak away and hide) would be a good one. I could also change zombie speed to Run when aggroed so I could easily tell whether they were just investigating or really locked on. I will say that in the test where I just built a tall wall which blocked LOS (but I and the zombie were both in daylight), the zombie immediately walked around the wall to get to me. It couldn't see me, it couldn't hear me, but it woke up knowing where I was. Kind of odd, but wouldn't really bother me too much in an actual game.

Yes you can. I built a box with just one opening (sort of a tunnel; I was experimenting with how stealth value changed with how far the "open to air" block was). Mr. Sleeper is right behind the wall where the cursor is pointing. Note that my stealth only got down to 12 (3 levels in FtS). The volume boundary is in green; I've crossed over it to stand on the wood blocks - normally he wakes up at this point. He didn't wake up so I destroyed most of the blocks and then just snuck right up to him in broad daylight. For my next test, I built just a wall offering some shade and blocking line-of-sight to the sleeper. He was not fooled this time. Kind of a bummer that LoS isn't part of the check for a volume trigger. Seems to only based on how much light is hitting you even if the Zs can't see you or the light. This doesn't work either:

And I'm back. I did two tests. In both cases, I had 3 levels in From the Shadows, but I wuz naked. 1. Place torches in the volume before entering, then enter the volume. Result: wakey wakey! 2. Enter volume, place torch, exit volume, re-enter volume. Result: be vewwy vewwy qwiet...I'm hunting zowmbies. (I took this screenshot while I was walking, so the stealth value is 14) "Pics or it didn't happen" (This is behind the counter; I have snuck in through the Cafe door, destroying one trash pile right where I'm standing. Level 1, 0XP, no perks, naked.) Yarp, and not just for this discussion. Super useful for POI designers. (I fully expect it to be in the XML comments, and we will get RTFM! in response. Well deserved.) Especially passive vs active - I can't see a real difference yet, except for use in e.g. that Army camp, where there was one big container "active" volume, with little "passive" volumes inside it. Maybe it prevents all of the interior volumes from waking up at the same time.

Setting aside the inherent contradiction between "auto wakeup" and "after an RNG roll"...yes and? Isn't this how every game since ever has handled this mechanic? "Roll your sneak skill" says the DM. The enemy has a chance to detect you. Your stealth (or lack) affects how likely that chance is to succeed. You can make a valid argument that the current balance regarding the chance to detect you leans too strongly in the zombies' favor. And that argument might not require 40 lines of text. This is not true. I playtested the Cafe area of the bookstore POI - which is an "active" area - and naked, level 1 me was able to sneak right up to sleeping zombies. In daytime. You seem to have taken a position that is unassailable by evidence. Well in the POI editor the setting is called "Sleeper Volume Trigger", so it sort of implies that the behavior - passive, active, attack - is determined at trigger time i.e. when you first cross into the volume* but I guess not while you're sneaking around. *Another test I need to do - place the torches, exit the volume, then re-enter. BRB

I was able to sneak up to that same rooftop zombie with 3 levels in From The Shadows. Sneak level standing still was 4 (naked), when moving it would go as high as 12. Interestingly - and sure to create a lively discussion - after I was successfully in the volume I was able to hold and place torches without waking him up. My stealth value went up to 20 while moving in this situation.

There are no POIs where all sleeper volumes are Passive. There are 157 (32.8%) of POIs where ALL volumes are "Active", i.e. NONE are "Attack". I thought your original complaint was about un-stealthable auto-attack sleepers. Note that based on my playtest of the Army camp described above, even zombies in "passive" volumes will wake up if you make noise. I don't think passive means what I used to think it means. That is, it doesn't mean "zombies in this volume won't wake up or pay any attention to you regardless of what you do." And in any case, we now know that even "attack" volumes can be stealthed. As Roland said, it would be good to know the threshold. I'll look into it if I get a moment.

What if some of the sleepers were, in fact, Screamers? Better scan the room and kill that one first, or she's going to invite extra guests to the party.

Aaand done. Roland is right, as USUAL. Here's the rooftop "Attack" volume at night. My sneak value is 1. Kinda dark so I helpfully indicated the sleeping zombie. And here I am right up in his grill, about to give him a taste of the Dev Auto-kill Gun: (Prior to this, in the day time even with max stealth, He'd wake up as soon as I dropped off the ledge onto the roof.) The supply plane helpfully dropped a crate...onto my nearly empty void...

Okay I'll give it a try. I just did another test on store_book_02's rooftop "Attack" volume, with max stealth perks + military stealth boots and the zombie woke up as soon as I crossed the line. But it was daylight. I'll go mess with sidereal motion and try again.

I should reiterate that I don't have any knowledge of the changes for A20. It's entirely possible that all of the XML structure is still there for "Attack" volumes, but that the actual mechanism of sneaking & sleepers just ignores that now. My playtesting seemed to show it behaved mostly like it did in A19, but it was only against a couple of POIs and a couple of volumes. In short, "Active" volume = naked level 1 me could sneak around a bit. "Attack" = as soon as I cross the threshold the zombies attack. Absolutely could still be a failed check, and that the check is simply much harder for "Attack" volumes. Someone would need to test with max sneak perk to get evidence. It's ridiculously easy to load a POI and playtest it; I encourage others to try it out and report back. I should note that individual sleepers within a volume have their own sight angle, sight distance, and hearing, but in the few I checked they were all set to -1, -1, and 100% respectively.

I was playtesting in the editor. Naked level 1 character, zero perks. Not in God mode. Categorically untrue. I even provided concrete numbers and POI examples. Hyperbole only undercuts your argument.

Here is a little context. This is store_book_02 as seen in the POI editor. The blue areas are Sleeper Volumes (you can see the little sleeping zombies in them). The roof has three different volumes, and the rear loading dock has a single volume. There are various volumes inside the building. This is a look at the first volume you'll encounter if you go in the Crack-A-Cafe door. The Sleeper Volume Trigger option can be "Passive", "Active", or "Attack". These settings correspond to SleeperVolumeFlag settings (in XML) of 1, 0, and 2 respectively. For this POI it looks like this: <property name="SleeperVolumeFlags" value="0,0,2,0,0,2,2,2,1,1,2,2,2,2" /> That reads "Active,Active,Attack,Active,Active,Attack,Attack,Attack,Passive,Passive,Attack,Attack,Attack" You can see the glowing X-ray shapes of the sleeper positions behind the counter. This is the same view for one of the rooftop volumes. This one is set to Attack ("2"). If you playtest this POI, you can sneak right up to the "Active" sleepers in the Cafe area, but as soon as you cross the border of the rooftop area set to "Attack", the Z's wake up and shamble towards you. I checked out army_camp_01, which has this set of flags: <property name="SleeperVolumeFlags" value="0,1,1,1,1,1" /> "Active,Passive,Passive,Passive,Passive,Passive," It looks like this. The big green volume encompassing the entire camp is the Active volume; the buildings and huts are Passive. I playtested this POI and couldn't discern any difference between Active and Passive. I could sneak around in any of the volumes, but if I made noise the zombies would wake up and come after me. There's more going on here, but I don't have time at the moment to dig deeper. Edit to add: one idea might be that Passive volumes are used in POI designs like above so you can have one big area (the whole camp) spawn in zombies and activate them if you make noise while also having smaller volumes within the bigger one which remain quiet/sleeping in spite of the hubub going on outside. Without this idea, the POI designer would have to use elite Tetris skills to craft a bunch of volumes for the outside areas which cover everything but don't intersect the huts. The volumes marked "Attack" do seem to have clear behavior - as soon as you cross the boundary, all of the sleepers wake up and attack. Which is the root of OP's complaint I think. Nope. See this post later in this thread for a brutal takedown of this idea. Turns out that with high enough stealth (low enough visibility number) you can still sneak around even in "Attack" volumes.

Pretty much, yes. OOPS, nope! I misunderstood the same way you did. Active = 0, Passive = 1, Aggressive = 2 So there are no POIs where all volumes are "passive". More details on this active/passive stuff in a later post. A minor quibble <pushes glasses up nose> technically the numbers correspond to "sleeper volumes" which might span several rooms, or only cover a small portion of a room. Some POIs have (or did in A19 anyhow) volumes which span floors of the building. And for clarity I'd note that the descriptions of passive/active/aggressive that you gave are in effect after the player crosses the boundary of the volume. Prior to that they are all "sleepers" (motionless in their starting position).

Hmm. A19 daytime spawns were max=1 and respawn every 2.9 game days: <biome name="pine_forest"> <spawn maxcount="1" respawndelay="2.9" time="Day" entitygroup="ZombiesAll" /> A20 is exactly the same outside of commercial, industrial, or downtown zones. In those zones there are 3x the spawns and they respawn at almost 10x the rate. <biome name="pine_forest"> <spawn maxcount="1" respawndelay="2.9" time="Day" entitygroup="ZombiesAll" notags="commercial,industrial,downtown" /> <spawn maxcount="2" respawndelay="0.3" time="Day" entitygroup="ZombiesAll" tags="commercial,industrial" notags="downtown" /> <spawn maxcount="3" respawndelay="0.3" time="Day" entitygroup="ZombiesForestDowntown" tags="downtown" />

EDITED TO CORRECT Passive/Active/Aggressive NUMBER MAPPINGS. There are no POIs where all volumes are "passive". With the caveat that I know nothing about the A20 update to how aggro is determined now, I checked the the SleeperVolumeFlags for A20 POIs and found as follows: Examination of 479 POIs with Sleeper Volumes POIs with All Volumes Active (flag="0") 157 (32.8%) POIs with All Volumes Passive (flag="1") 0 POIs with All Volumes Aggressive (flag="2") 75 (15.7%) POIs with Mix of Active & Aggressive 247 (51.6%) Examples of all-Active POIs: abandoned_house_01 abandoned_house_06 barn_02 cabin_11 farm_10 Examples of all-Aggressive POIs: apartments_01 downtown_building_01, 02, & 03 farm_02 house_modern_16 through 22 rural_church_01 is an All-Aggressive POI. <property name="SleeperVolumeFlags" value="2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2" /> store_book_02 is a mixed POI. <property name="SleeperVolumeFlags" value="0,0,2,0,0,2,2,2,1,1,2,2,2,2" /> utility_refinery_01 is a mixed POI. <property name="SleeperVolumeFlags" value="2,0,0,2,0,1,1,0,0,2,2,2,2,0" /> This assumes, of course, that this particular property is still being used in the same way. I didn't go into the POI editor to play with sleeper volumes.