theFlu

That REEEE of yours would be towards an "Original Survivor" .. might wanna read on what that means and how it might change the amount of available info when he joined... since you like reading so much. Also, one may dislike a feature whether they knew about it beforehand or not, that counter doesn't even make sense outside the context of "hi, this was my first game"...

Absolutely I did check that too, it's still 1:1 dukes to brass. Maybe you're thinking the cost of a casing, that got tripled at some point to 6 brass per casing?

That sounds a bit off... spinning up a game, brb. So, you get 112 brass from a scrapping brass candlestick (150 smelting), you can buy one for 324. (no skills involved, had a cigar on, 360 for non-buffed (I hope)) Not worth to buy until you have hefty bonuses for trading. The other stuff seems to wary, the worst I saw is: you're better off selling a "short" faucet and smelting the dukes than scrapping it (17 dukes or 12 brass) Casings cost 27 per 10, so 2.7 brass each = clearly worth a buy. EDIT: Oops, that's with a cigar (10%), can't remember them all ...

That day length is pretty key. It seems innocent, but it really changes things, I would always mention day length if I've changed it from default. Long days are great for builders and chill playing, short days make for a lot more hectic cycle. Most people I hear going for shorter days is because "the night is too long and I get bored". While that technically works to speed up the nights, you basically lose more time in a day that way. Any time you spend not being effective is taking twice as large a part of a day. Travel time etc. You have hordes twice as often; they're not as long, sure, but you probably get more overall zeds as you never finish one within half the time. If that's your reason, seriously consider longer days, you'll get more done between. If you go for longer days, also learn to use the nights well, that gives you plenty extra time still. At some point even questing at night isn't that different, half the zeds are ferals and thus running anyways; if you can handle them, you can handle running normies as well. And ignore my tip about selling stone; if you have a box full, then sure, but I thought you were mining for an underground base or something like that - it's not really cost effective to intentionally mine for. If you have an accidental influx of extra stone, then go for it. Bake it into concrete otherwise.

Do you really deserve the bacon if you kill your source of eggs?

No.

Oh, I may have misread your first post, I read it as "I mine too much to have the time to go get ammo" instead of "I'm not getting enough ammo, so I have to mine for it". My bad I'm firmly in the min/maxer camp, so I don't have much advice for someone who won't, sorry

A stack of stones sells for a good amount, you can sell three per reset. Smelt the dukes for casings, mine the gunpowder. That's a lot of ammo. Complement with pipe bombs if needed.

Please do, I have watched kage quite a bit, including couple of his stealth build series, but I haven't seen anything too weird. He also posts way too much for me to find a video that might be the one you're thinking of, I'm not going to land on the one you're thinking about in any case... I'm always happy to be proven wrong, it's just more knowledge for me ...

While the crouch animation doesn't seem to make sense for everything, I kinda consider the mechanic just to be telling your character to "be quiet, hide", to which it responds by lowering the profile.. it's not like the crouch has a proper function other than hiding. Whatever is getting done under the order to hide is done "more quietly". Then again, I'm not convinced that quiet mining should be a thing, steel on stone is going to make a lot of noise if you're breaking the stone. Power vs normal attack makes some difference between "I want to break this one thing now" vs "I'm here to take everything home", but for the most part, power swings just break the flow of mining...

Potential confusions: "Special trigger point aggro": that trigger point is inside your character's nose. The attack volumes have two options: either the zeds get triggered at the border and GPS-aggro to the player, or the non-triggered zeds revert to normal sleepers. Under no circumstance will an attack volume zed enter a search-for-a-spot-mode when triggered by the volume border check. (You'll have to provide some detailed repro-steps to convince me otherwise. I've never seen it.) Something that faatal could fix? Maybe; I don't see how though: - The Attack volumes are intentionally "more perceptive" than normal stealth mechanics. They have to be, otherwise they're no different. - As they're more perceptive, they can't see the player within the normal rules. So they can't rely on the normal rules, the moment they start following the normal rules, they'd lose the player. - So they need a special state to be a threat. That state must remain until the normal rules can be applied. => The first moment the game can "easily" decide that normal rules can apply is the moment where the normal rules give normal aggro. So, given any design where the "heightened rules" only apply momentarily, something must fill the gap. I can't really imagine a way around it, trust me, I'd propose one. If the zeds were to just "go to trigger location", that would make the Attack volumes trivial. Notice you agroed something - take a step back - place a land mine and stealth away. Boom. And not just bbooms of course, having the zeds just gather at where you triggered them would be insanely easy to exploit in all sorts of ways.

Yeh, the balance is quite off; mining metals calls them in constantly, mining any other blocks practically doesn't. When planning to mine for plenty of iron or lead, I'd suggest some suitable countermeasures, for example: Junk Turrets for when near the surface yourself Spikes (or auto turrets if willing to tinker) Walkable path down to your level, with a killzone at the start of your actual mine (for large mines) Dig down to bedrock, ignore the heat The balance could use a little fixing, but even if it improves, the above will still be useful...

Heh, I was thinking if I should ask you about that during our exchange. I chose not to, but it seems I should've. "What is the reason for Attack volumes?". I'd say they're there for jump scares. One might want to say "combat events" due to the ridiculed nature of "jump scare", but that's not nearly as descriptive. They're traps, for Everyone. "Oh @%$#, five zeds coming at me at once!" Usable scripting tool for the POIs. The way it was an FU to stealthers seems mostly a side effect; the detection routines weren't there and it majorly F'd stealthing for a patch. I highly doubt the Pimps saw it as a functioning mechanic FOR counter-stealth to be pushed in; and not pushing it in would've at worst been a matter of seek-and-replace in the sleeper volume xml:s. They pushed it in to enable the trap designs they want to test, zeds coming out of ceilings and walls and what have you. Not as a stealth counter. IMO, of course

Speaking of potential confusion... Unless you're skipping some important bits here, the Automatic Weapons -book series does not cover the SMG. That's covered by the Pistol Petes, obviously.

It's a pretty accurate description. For the muddiness, I'm used to agro referring to "attacking / intending to attack". That makes "agroed to a sound" feel rather odd, it's not going to hit the sound once it gets there I'd use interested/distracted/investigating for sounds.

The default behaviour; before the "now we've made it avoidable"-part. As in, not including stealth checks. Stealth checks change the behaviour somewhat, but the zeds are usually so close to one another and/or your stealth level is way over or under the "check level" to mostly make it an all or nothing event. There's variation, and we do agree on the mechanics for the most part there. It just usually feels quite binary in actual game though. "Lights off, light armor, crouch, spec to stealth" is going to make all the miners happy that the clown-cart rooms stop happening ... that's the automatic part. It's not just about working badly with stealth. Also, something I haven't pointed to in this round (because it's a whole lot more confusion) .. the aggro state that ignores stealth until the zed sees you, that thing deserves a name as well. It's basically horde-night-like GPS-aggro, granted "automatically" by failing (or not even trying) the checks. It's actually different from normal aggro and annoying in just the same ways that the A18-auto-aggro is. So it doesn't even really refer to a different thing, just a rarer one. But I can live with "misleading", as long as you don't start calling it misinformation ...

I see plenty of "you what?!" from JaWoodle, but his experiences can be explained with a horrible aim. I have seen some really weird looking issues on video, but practically never in my actual testing. These are usually somewhat strained streaming systems, but I can't say anything for sure of course. I've shot enough for testing to guess that if there was a constant miss chance above 1%, I'm sure I'd have an intuitive feel for it by now. And anything below that wouldn't be worth the implementation time - for having no impact on the game. But I'm not against hearing an official word about it either ...

I'm not official, but I've specifically tested the weapons aplenty. There is no skill check. The point of aim travels within the area defined by the cross hairs, that seems to be the only official source of "chance" in aiming. The hit boxes are often iffy, zed boxes are pretty good atm, but partially see-thru blocks are sometimes made with bulletproof air. Lag may be an issue, I don't play MP that often and when I do I host.. Slap on a laser and learn to use it, 100% hit rate - or a better understanding of why you missed at least..

You would be correct; but it also carried the same implication as your first note: a word has several meanings. Indeed. They're also not that accurate in general.. "airplane" .. not exactly a plane, and while quite low in density, not exactly air either. Random gaming terms; yeah, horribly inaccurate. I don't want to be making a bug report for the re-naming of the Auto Turrets due to the introduction of The Great Heist 7. You're free to, I'm happy calling them Auto Turrets. Although I tend to abbreviate that to turrets ... I honestly don't see how you landed on that position from what I've said - but I may well have misspoken and it's rather irrelevant. Just feels off. Feel free to reiterate if you think I'm badly off with something, but for now I'm just leaving it as a misunderstanding. I'll revert to using the old lingo of mine for this post: Normal zed (biome spawns) agroes on sight. A normal sleeper agroes on sight. (both may investigate a sound, but agro is different) An attack volume sleeper and all his friends in the same volume agro when you trigger the line. Not the sight of the zeds, most of them can't see you due to line of sight issues. Not their hearing. Just the trigger line. Not investigate, agro. To call it "trap-agro" might be a tad more descriptive, but it got named "auto-agro" before. All that matches for the old and the new. Including the delta in the name accuracy. After that, the only thing that has changed is that the chance to avoid the trap has increased slightly. Most builds will never even see the difference. But as I argued, and you haven't really countered (as far as I understand): Making an automation avoidable, doesn't stop it from being an automation. => If the name was fine before, then it shall remain so. And I'll try to remember to link here the next time you find me confusing...

Sorry to the OP for derailing the thread, we seems to have stuck to the "build cost" for exactly zero posts. But at least I'm doing it in good, green company Anyhoo.. hey; let's consult a dictionary and decide based on that! It's a bit of a derail, so lets just hide it for no-one's convenience: And that, indeed, doesn't happen in the game. Auto-aggro isn't a thing. OK, sorry about that Now, using the new terminology the current A20 attack volumes, when triggered, cause a "circumference triggered, player-aggroed" state. This is indeed highly different from the A18 "circumference triggered, player-aggroed" state of days-gone-by. Wait, they sound exactly the same though? Hmm, the new naming just doesn't seem to cover the difference at all. As the difference is, we can now avoid the circumference-triggering, I guess we'll need to add something .. hmm.. avoidable-when-sufficiently-specced,-lit-and-equipped, circumference triggered, player-aggro? That's getting a little long, but sure, I'll go with that. Sure, I'll go with that too. So, all forms of aggro are now called auto-aggro, and the attack volume triggerees will be referred to being "avoidable-when-sufficiently-specced,-lit-and-equipped, circumference triggered, player-aggro". Wait, I guess that's "avoidable-when-sufficiently-specced,-lit-and-equipped, circumference triggered, player-auto-aggro" then? player-auto-aggro sounds a little confusing, but I'm sure I'll get used to it. Anyone still confused? No? Good. I understand you want to bury the term, sure it is loaded, but the game is still in dev, the mechanics change and old notions get buried over time. The term will revert to normalcy before long. Or do you still hate "crafting" since it used to be done on the tedious grid? But automatic does not mean unavoidable. That's what my "stealthing the automatic door" was trying to highlight. The "no matter"-part was merely a feature of the system, the automation is the automatic triggering of everything. Changing the "no matter what" to "avoidable-when-sufficiently-specced,-lit-and-equipped" doesn't change the fact that everything still triggers in those volumes outside their normal detection routines. The "All" part, well, it's been rather rare that I haven't triggered either "All" or "None", so no, that part hasn't really changed in the game. It's not as punishing to stealth players as it once was, but it still acts exactly the same for everyone not using stealth. It's not even a stealth issue as such - the way it interacts with stealth is its most annoying feature, sure, but I've been giggling at the clown car rooms for a long time just because they look so silly.. a well-coordinated faceplant whenever you walk into a room tends to get amusing... not a good look for your "terrifying" opponents. And for the Hot Dog comparison... I'm not seeing a new feature to be named; I'm seeing the same feature, slightly modified, still in the game - and I'm not even saying it's impossible to make it into a decent feature. I don't see any reason For a rename of the same thing.

In my eyes, the mechanic is still there, just mildly different. It went from - When you enter an attack volume every zed in it knows where you are and will come after you relentlessly. to - When you enter an attack volume every zed in it knows where you are and will come after you relentlessly, unless you're sneaking really, really well at a specific pixel on your path. It's still automatic aggro, just with weird conditions. (I added the second g to satisfy the spell checker, see, I can change.. slowly) An automatic door doesn't stop being an automatic door if you cover yourself in low visibility clothing and wait for a suitable fog. And, I haven't seen anyone suggest a better name for it.. I can start calling it "A20-auto-aggro" if you deem that necessary, but I'm always talking about the current patch so I don't see a point in that. Certainly. I don't pretend to know the design goals, I can only speak of what's in the game right now. I can see it just being a difficult thing to fix. But I also wouldn't think that the devs intend you needing to actually run away for straight 20 secs under relentless pursuit. You're out of dishong by that time ... (Now that's an exaggeration. I don't actually know what exactly the timer change from the perk does, might try to figure that out..) I do agree it's a bit of a mess. If I could choose, I'd replace the A20-auto-aggro-mechanic with giving the zeds in an attack volume much heightened senses, esp hearing. They're just better at spotting you, nothing special required. Would it be easy to balance.. nope. But the current one isn't just a balance issue, it's hard to imagine making it fluid with the rest of the stealth system. Hmm; see above, seems we actually disagree, but I'm fine with that I don't see the sneaky part being a counter-requirement* for either "automatic" or "aggro". * I may have made that up, but it's clearly a word. EDIT: Slooowly

You're not being dense, that's exactly what I was testing; during my earlier post I expected the noise from a gun at close proximity to trigger a normal agro state on an auto-agro zed. I don't know why, it made sense at the time... after testing, well, I proved myself wrong. Why was I suggesting it? You can drop an attack volume zed faster if you reveal yourself to them via the "normal" stealth mechanic, ie, get proper agro. It's a bit finnicky in a normal game, and I figured that a loud gun would actually be an easier solution. It would be, if it worked, but it doesn't..

(A20.6 b9) After a little bit of testing with exactly one test that I'm pretty satisfied with, the sound of guns isn't enough to drop the auto-agro from an attack volume. 0) Seal attack volume zeds behind a vision blocking wall 1) Trigger the zeds with headlight on for the auto-trigger 2) Fire loud rounds from a sniper right next to them 3) They still won't drop the auto-agro state afterwards Conclusion, the noise doesn't matter. This far, only the actual vision based agro is sufficient to break the auto-agro before the 20s timer. Another random note, attack volume zeds, while spawned but player hasn't activated the volume yet, do NOT seem to care about sounds. They seem impossible to wake other than shooting them (lines up nicely with clearing out the hospital roof in previous patches, that may have changed thou). And even then they take just an ApproachSpot - sound seeking stance. It is not an exaggeration; the only time limiting factor is how fast you can get a zed to SEE you. Stealthing after that they may investigate a sound or whatnot, but half the time my test zeds just stop in their tracks and stand there the moment I tap crouch (1 Look, wait <time>). Or take a couple steps and stop. I did test this right now, while I have my world loaded. I'm using walkers for testing, with runners it's of course a lot more iffy to pull off...

Heh, aaactually, now that you mention it. Moving back is absolutely fine for a single zed waking up, and in those cases the silenced pistol works fine. If however, you're not sure how many you woke up, or when even that single one can become a threat (depending on settings etc) you're better off taking the first one out with an M60 and then stealthing - you may make enough noise to have the other zeds "properly" detect you (making them lose the auto-agro-state) and then be able to instantly drop their attention by stealthing. I'm not entirely sure if this works with sound though, I think it should, but I might have to test it. EDIT: tested a bit, does not work with sound alone. Proper post in the near future..

I may have abused the word a little, but I don't think "sufficient" actually sets an upper bound, just the lower one, right?