Thoughts on Demolishers

[Noompsie]

I have made hoard days every 10th day for this exact reason. It's incredibly hard to loot or make enough ammo and concrete to repair bases and fight the hoard. We may even move it to once every 14th day. It's just too much in a multiplayer base.

[Orclover]

I have made hoard days every 10th day for this exact reason. It's incredibly hard to loot or make enough ammo and concrete to repair bases and fight the hoard. We may even move it to once every 14th day. It's just too much in a multiplayer base.

 

I wouldnt do that honestly even if it seems to make sense. I think something happens with the game where you double the length of time in the days and/or double the number of days between horde night and when horde night finally rolls around it is actually worse. Like a lot worse. We were using 2 hour days and 14 days between horde nights and every horde night after the first scaled insanely fast. We had demolishers showing up within the first month. In this play through we are on day >49, 1.5 hour days and 7 days between horde nights (which our server admin is not happy about, he wants 1 month hordes). We had last nights horde and the worst we had was glowing cop zeds. I'm at game stage 110ish and my partner was at GS 90. Our combined stage should be around 250ish which should easily trigger demolisher zeds. We camped out on a POI hotel all night taking pot shots, expecting demolishers to just wreck us but they never showed.

We didnt even run completely out of ammo *GASP*.

We did see spitting super vultures (really funpimps, really?), but nothing too horrendous.

 

I'm guessing the length of hours/days between horde night might have something to do with it.

[Laz Man]

As far as i know, it is only possible to open a closed door with electricity, not close it. Perhaps there is a sneaky way to invert a signal, i just don't know that yet. I tried with powerbalancing, but no success.

The only way i think you'll be happy with is just edit the xmls so no demolisher shows up. No fancy building trick or dedicated ammo. Just remove the problem, once and for all(well, all that you play the game with, that is).

Gives you more freedom for hordebase designs too. If i was to actually play for a long time, i'd might just do that too, instead of worrying if i get a demolisher too many.

How to edit it out i do not know well enough. Perhaps some of the xml gurus can help with that.

 

Just connect to motion sensors to each other. Doesnt make sense but it works. Capp has a video on it.

 

[Marinxar]

I love them. It forced me to be creative again, in designing my base. Especially in later stages, there is so much going on, that it becomes near impossible to score clear headshots on all approaching demolishers. So I reworked my defense and base, and now no problem anymore...., but the process and the challenge of doing that, is one of the main things I love about this game. It makes you think and plan.

[Jugginator]

Just connect to motion sensors to each other. Doesnt make sense but it works. Capp has a video on it.

 

 

Huh. Interesting lol. They should work it to where you just need one but hey, i kinda like that method.

[Bashtiks]

Well Im not a fan of demolishers .. I play on mp server and they are pain is the ass ... if I host a bm party in my base and someone by accident triggers demolisher the r.concrete is wrect after 2/3 blows .. they are creating a big mess even if u simply run around outside and shoot their triggers - alot of holes in ground to be patched up after .. :/ If there are more ppl wanting to co up for bm we simply use some prefab building and let zombies tear that building apart instead of or bases .. cops now compered to demolishers feels like ''♥♥♥♥♥ cats''

If you want to kill them effectively you are forced to spec in penetrator perk (in nomad difficulty took me 3-4 fully modded tier6 shotgun headshots with slugs to bring him down with tier 4 penetrator perk .. without it takes alot alot more ammo ..

Another way is simply to reduce ai blood moon dmg to minimum 25% so it feel a bit more real ..

[MrMobius]

I have a base design from A17 that was simple, could be scaled up with game stage, required a fair about of resource investment, and was fun to defend.

 

Day 28 Horde night, three demolishers showed up together around midnight and immediately breached it. What followed was a controlled retreat to our "day" base, which was also torn apart by a couple more demolishers.

 

Day 28.

 

All the base designs I have looked at for dealing with these guys have been cheese ramps.

 

So here's my feedback on Demolishers:

 

They appear too early, and in greater numbers than they should.

They deal waaaay too much block damage. A single Demolisher should not be able to breach an iron bar cage. Tone it down.

Thematically, they are too similar to cops with the exploding mechanic.

All the other zombies make some kind of sense. How exactly did this person get zombified with a demo charge on his chest? My immersion is broken.

 

This, I feel is endemic of FP's ongoing design philosophy regarding base design: i.e. no fun allowed. I get the feeling that this guy was put in to tackle the sheer number of cheeser base designs. But here's the problem: Cheeser base designs still work. The only people being hurt by this are the ones who don't cheese it. FP are actually punishing people for playing the game properly.

 

FP: if you want to put in some big tough zombie that scares us, just make him able to punch through walls faster than the average zombie, and soak up more bullets. The demo charge is just stupid, irritating, and is no fun.

[Orclover]

Tried to do the blade trap filter but either its been patched or something is off in the height because after 3 different horde nights over the last week the demolishers blew up the blade trap "filter" area every single time. Last night they blew it up on the first demolisher even. Blade triggers their detonator every time it seems. I know a lot of you guys have no problems with headshotting demo's every shot but its just not happening on our server with any of us and the repair bill is simply not worth the headache. The amount of concrete needed to repair after horde nights is just astronomical now, totally not worth it. Only takes a handful of them exploding to just lay waste to everything. The amount of damage they are doing to blocks is just silly at this point.

 

The good news is it seems horde night can now be "skipped" with little effort. Twice now after horde night I simply got on my bike and rode off for a while, went 1 town over and horde night was effectively cancelled. If I rode back to where the horde was they would start chasing me again and I could just ride out of their range and I would not see them again. They despawned I imagine or just went into stasis since I was no longer in that area and once I was far enough away I could go about my business as long as I didnt go back there. Not like the old days where they kept spawning all night. So the answer to demolishers it seems is.....DITCH EM. Just leave town and go find something else to do till morning.

 

Not exactly the answer I was looking for, but, ok. Whatever.

[theFlu]

Heh, depends on your setup, I was messing about for a bug report, so I ended up defending a glass bridge for a day 63 horde. Nothing too heavy, nomad on mostly default settings, but also using a marksman rifle with just 5/10 perception + 3/5 penetrator&rifles.

 

Glass bridge was literally one wide line over a drop pit, two layers of glass plate, less than 10 meters long. Easiest demos ever, stopped counting at three. Of course, that's a variation of a cheese ramp, but I had nothing causing a rotation unless I shot them off the bridge. Only things that managed to regulary bother me were the little leap frogs (didn't dare aiming down towards the glass, one miss and it's all over), but the trusty turret and a couple rounds from an M60 were always enough.

 

The back wall had a new hole in it for all the penetrating rounds. Whaddya mean, "misses"?

[Orclover]

Yea @theFlu we did the tower a few times in the last couple weeks while the other horde base POI was down for repairs (A LOT OF DAMAGE from them) and it is by far more effecient if cheesy. I can see why the die hards hate it with a passion. A simple 30 block scaling staircase that they hop up with a drop off at the end and marksmen rifles with AP rounds, hundreds of dead zeds. Which if your lucky is a level at the stage we are at now. But even if they blow up the staircase (and they will eventually) they use it until it is almost completely demolished or they blow up the very start of it. With multiple staircases its a non issue. Cheap and easy to build even. But a veritable fountain of creamy fromage` compared to all the other horde bases. Even the "filter" base we built that keeps getting blown up is less cheesy than a tower staircase or bridge like you are using.

 

But at this point its either cheese or ditching horde night. Just silly.

[Niil945]

Blade triggers their detonator every time it seems.

 

I had my first run in with demolishers recently and I use an int build in my solo game. Each bm night I would end up with my kill zone destroyed but I happened to see what happened that triggered the explosion in the most recent one. The demolishers have so much armor that it takes quite a few hits for the blade traps to kill them. I watched one of them get knocked down by the blade trap and then when it went to stand back up it was taking blade trap hits to the chest area which triggered the detonation. And since the blade traps are so slow at killing them it doesn't finish them before the beeping stops and the explosion goes off.

 

To the thread at large, I'm kinda meh about them. I get that there needs to be a threat to established bases but the demolisher seems very cheesy. The block damage they do is just ridiculous. Additionally this doesn't do anything at all to people using the actual silly strategies of creating pits or falling obstacle courses that zombies just constantly run through due to the AI. I'd much rather they leave out demolishers and just focus on making bandits with good AI as a smart threat as opposed to the catch all massive damage explosions that can be triggered by other zombies or blade traps hitting demos.

[theFlu]

Yeah, I'm starting to rethink my definition of cheese.. The SP seems ok, I can defend a wall pretty fine, but a 2 player co-op seems to get out of hand real fast. Two of us burning ammo and some explosives pretty much as fast as we can with a base designed as a chain of chokes.. the choke points were taken out at around midnight and I spent rest of the night entertaining my half of the horde running around while trying to lighten the stress under my friend's "last stand tower". The amount of green on screen is pretty ridic and we haven't gotten to motorized vehicles or steel yet. It was day 35 I think..

 

Could we have built something "bulkier"? Yeah, sure. Twice as bulky to last 'til 2AM? Yup. Three times for 4AM? Yeah.. Would I have time to do anything else than harvest for and build up the bulk to be destroyed? Not really.

 

And if I do, I'll just run into the two questions "How long a chain of choke points is actually just cheese on its own" and "they'll get through this stuff anyway... so should I design the chokes such that when they fail, we'll essentially have a cheese base at the end..?"

[AtomicUs5000]

Yeah, I'm starting to rethink my definition of cheese.. The SP seems ok, I can defend a wall pretty fine, but a 2 player co-op seems to get out of hand real fast. Two of us burning ammo and some explosives pretty much as fast as we can with a base designed as a chain of chokes.. the choke points were taken out at around midnight and I spent rest of the night entertaining my half of the horde running around while trying to lighten the stress under my friend's "last stand tower". The amount of green on screen is pretty ridic and we haven't gotten to motorized vehicles or steel yet. It was day 35 I think..

 

Could we have built something "bulkier"? Yeah, sure. Twice as bulky to last 'til 2AM? Yup. Three times for 4AM? Yeah.. Would I have time to do anything else than harvest for and build up the bulk to be destroyed? Not really.

 

And if I do, I'll just run into the two questions "How long a chain of choke points is actually just cheese on its own" and "they'll get through this stuff anyway... so should I design the chokes such that when they fail, we'll essentially have a cheese base at the end..?"

 

I've been struggling with the same thoughts. I'm desperately trying not to cheese, but all the efforts end up leading to it eventually anyway. Unless they change the AI a little or maybe provide some more defense options I don't think there's a solution to this.

[Cadamier]

<EPIC SNIP>

Also, its irritating that once they trigger the countdown, nothing stops it, even killing them.

 

This video was taken 11/22/2019. My Day 56 video. Actually its a video of me playing it back. I didn't see the Demolisher in question, but I could hear him so I knew he was a demolisher. I went to investigate where he was and found him. Once I found him my level 4 junk turret opened fire since I was close. You can see the light blink red and hear it beep twice at which point he's apparently dead before his explosives go off.

 

As for the demolishers... I like them and don't like them... As for if they fit... Not quite but that's fine with me. And if we're able to kill them before they explode that's a good thing! As you can see and I quickly found out using explosives against them helps get rid of them.

[Whorhay]

I really don't get the angst against "cheese" base designs. Where is the motivation to make it easy for the zombies? How does that fit with the idea of the game at all? The whole point of the game from where I can see is to throw as many zombies at you as possible, as fast as possible. Your job as the player is to kill them as quickly as possible. Time spent checking multiple directions and angles is time wasted not pulling the trigger on a target. So I force the zombies to come at me from one direction with a straight path leading from their stair pyramid to my position. The path is filled with barbed wire and then electric fence traps when I can get them. A junk turret backing me up is enough to deal with vultures and to help in early game when the zombies can actually break through the 15 blocks of barbed wire. Late game with the electric fences, rarely does anything get even half way.

 

If you aren't building efficiently and forcing the zombies into an area where your damage can all be concentrated you are simply doing it wrong. I think by the time you get to demolishers you have to be improving efficiency enough that you can spare a few extra rounds to put them down. And of course unless you are spending all your time collecting ammo resources that means head shots become nearly mandatory. If you are playing MP then that means you'll get to that point faster and so have to focus players into specific roles. For 2p I would go with a Perception build and an Intelligence build. Build your own vehicles, turrets, and get to traps faster; Perception provides high damage efficiently as well as lucky looter and salvage. For a third player add a Fortitude build for faster farming so that you don't have to waste time worrying about food. I wouldn't bother with a Strength build until you have all of those covered because you can get to 3 Str and 3/5 in the mining skills very cheaply. For fourth player I would probably go Agi for quickly cleaning out Tier V PoI's without turning them into giant ammo expenditures.

[Niil945]

I can't speak for others, however I find certain strategies to be cheesy because it's abusing AI limitations and not simply dealing with zombies tactically. Making perpetual fall obstacle courses where mobs drop, run back up a ramp, drop, rinse repeat ad nauseum is an example of that. Making a bridge or a kill tunnel is trying to be tactical and not something I see as cheesy. The reality is that if zombies tried to chase you and fell into a pit they wouldn't go back to the other side to go up a ramp to get to you. They'd pile up there until they started breaching by sheer numbers exactly like they do right now to an exterior wall. Or like they did in world war z since they were runners.

[debaser71]

Lore-wise demolishers could be rigged up by bandits or other NPCs as zombie bombs. Demolishers don't have to be some beefy guy who just happened to die with a bomb strapped to himself. The bomb could have been placed on a beefy zombie for the purpose of destroying fortified bases.

 

As for killing demolishers; set up your base so that you can shoot the demolishers in the back while they are jumping up steps made with full blocks. Not stairs or wedges but full blocks.

 

The easiest xml edit would be to just reduce the demolisher Explosion.BlockDamage in entityclasses. Other suggestions would require an xpath mod or changing multiple entries.

[Laz Man]

I can't speak for others, however I find certain strategies to be cheesy because it's abusing AI limitations and not simply dealing with zombies tactically. Making perpetual fall obstacle courses where mobs drop, run back up a ramp, drop, rinse repeat ad nauseum is an example of that. Making a bridge or a kill tunnel is trying to be tactical and not something I see as cheesy. The reality is that if zombies tried to chase you and fell into a pit they wouldn't go back to the other side to go up a ramp to get to you. They'd pile up there until they started breaching by sheer numbers exactly like they do right now to an exterior wall. Or like they did in world war z since they were runners.

 

I'm willing to bet faatal will achieve this exact thing....*evil laughter*

[Laz Man]

This video was taken 11/22/2019. My Day 56 video. Actually its a video of me playing it back. I didn't see the Demolisher in question, but I could hear him so I knew he was a demolisher. I went to investigate where he was and found him. Once I found him my level 4 junk turret opened fire since I was close. You can see the light blink red and hear it beep twice at which point he's apparently dead before his explosives go off.

 

As for the demolishers... I like them and don't like them... As for if they fit... Not quite but that's fine with me. And if we're able to kill them before they explode that's a good thing! As you can see and I quickly found out using explosives against them helps get rid of them.

 

Those concrete spikes the demos were getting stuck on, I assume those are modded in? That's one hellava concrete jungle you have going there...😂😂

[RipClaw]

I really don't get the angst against "cheese" base designs. Where is the motivation to make it easy for the zombies? How does that fit with the idea of the game at all? The whole point of the game from where I can see is to throw as many zombies at you as possible, as fast as possible. Your job as the player is to kill them as quickly as possible.

 

The disadvantage of cheese bases is that they often rely on a certain behavior of the AI. A change in the AI and the base no longer works. It happened to me twice in A17 that the AI behavior was changed so I had to modify my bases or build a new one.

[theFlu]

I really don't get the angst against "cheese" base designs. Where is the motivation to make it easy for the zombies?

There's cheese and then there's cheese..

If you make a choke point / bridge you need to defend yourself, that's still giving the zeds a good chance.

If you make a wooden base where the AI literally just runs in circles without even trying to damage it, you've beaten the game. Congrats, find a new game? Or design a new base

 

And no, I don't care if people cheese and by how much, a choke point base isn't even cheese in my book. Intentional AI-loops are, and the actual problem there is that they are boring.

[theFlu]

And if we're able to kill them before they explode that's a good thing!

We are, they just have a ton of health. Plenty of youtube clips with the red lights on on dead demos. JaWoodle's tests and I think Reach Gaming's recent 170 shotgun turrets clip.

 

Just .. keep .. shooting ..

[Niil945]

I'm willing to bet faatal will achieve this exact thing....*evil laughter*

 

I'd love to see a temporary alternative AI response kick in after a drop resulting in them trying to take a direct route to the player for a period of time even if that's trying to scale up walls. Then as they pile up, if there are a certain number of zombies above them, say 3 blocks high, have the bottom block be 'crushed' into a zombie body block killing the zombies in the space. This will result in the blood moon spawner generating more zombies to replace those killed and it closes the gap from the bottom to the top. Afterwards we have zombie meat blocks that we have to get rid of which double as a source of rotten flesh. That kills two birds with one change, exploitation of the AI's response to cheesy fall obstacles and the very limited rotten flesh that should be everywhere in a zombie game.

[RipClaw]

We are, they just have a ton of health. Plenty of youtube clips with the red lights on on dead demos. JaWoodle's tests and I think Reach Gaming's recent 170 shotgun turrets clip.

 

Just .. keep .. shooting ..

 

With the spread of the weapons, the explosion is often triggered accidentally. And you don't have a lot of time to aim.

 

Mr. Reach thinks it's fun to trigger the explosion but there's a difference if you build the base in creative mode or if you do it in survival mode.

[RipClaw]

And no, I don't care if people cheese and by how much, a choke point base isn't even cheese in my book. Intentional AI-loops are, and the actual problem there is that they are boring.

 

Standing on a tower, shooting zombies and throwing grenades is also boring. At least for me. I never understood the hype about weapons and explosions.

 

It's much more fun for me to test the limits of the AI and build bases that kill zombies fully automatically.

 

My current base is a funnel base with dart traps, electric fences and blade traps. The blade traps are placed in a way that they hit the demolisher only on the head and not on the chest. The disadvantage of this base is that I need a lot of iron for the dart traps.