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madmole

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Can we get any kind of information on the direction junk drones are going these days? I know that they're not making the A19 release (maybe an A19 patch, probably not till A20) but I'm just curious where they're going. I'm unsure if they're still even designed to be the next tier up from junk turrets (or if they ever were? I'd gotten that impression but I don't know that it's ever explicitly stated) or if they're kind of their own more utility-oriented thing at this point since I've heard it mentioned that they could instead be used for stuff like building. I'm really just curious about junk drones and what other 'junk tech' will be available through the tiers.

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5 minutes ago, Darinth said:

Can we get any kind of information on the direction junk drones are going these days? I know that they're not making the A19 release (maybe an A19 patch, probably not till A20) but I'm just curious where they're going. I'm unsure if they're still even designed to be the next tier up from junk turrets (or if they ever were? I'd gotten that impression but I don't know that it's ever explicitly stated) or if they're kind of their own more utility-oriented thing at this point since I've heard it mentioned that they could instead be used for stuff like building. I'm really just curious about junk drones and what other 'junk tech' will be available through the tiers.

It'll be ready when it's done.

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48 minutes ago, Darinth said:

I know that people having difficulty doing T5 clears is a real thing... multiples of my players also have this difficulty... but I just don't understand it. I don't know if there are more T5 clear POIs available, but as of A18 the only ones that I've seen are the shamway factory, shotgun messiah factory, and 6 floor apartment... and not once have I ever had an issue where a POI was unable to be cleared. Never even personally had an issue with finding a zed spawn volume. But I've gone in to help people on multiple occasions now... I follow the path through the POI and properly check every place and I've always found the zombies on my first run through the building.

The easiest way to show players the right path through a T5 quest building is to strip them of all frames and tools. :)

 

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22 minutes ago, Darinth said:

I know that people having difficulty doing T5 clears is a real thing... multiples of my players also have this difficulty... but I just don't understand it. I don't know if there are more T5 clear POIs available, but as of A18 the only ones that I've seen are the shamway factory, shotgun messiah factory, and 6 floor apartment... and not once have I ever had an issue where a POI was unable to be cleared. Never even personally had an issue with finding a zed spawn volume. But I've gone in to help people on multiple occasions now... I follow the path through the POI and properly check every place and I've always found the zombies on my first run through the building

Oswald the Zombie is the worst. He's a mischievous one alright, always with a twinkle in his eye and a goofy-looking smile. The moment you get to the top of the factory, he respawns as a sleeper down at the bottom. If you return to the ground floor, he teleports back up to the top, usually fast asleep next to a open package of cookies and a tipped over mug. If two players attempt to jinx him by splitting up, he'll just teleport below bedrock, and then you'll never be able to finish the quest. He's a mischievous one, Mr. Oswald.

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5 hours ago, FileMachete said:

Little feedback on zombie Sleeper Spawns popping in when they shouldn't.

 

Was clearing a house, coming down some stairs, across the room there was one of the zombie closets (single block wide).

I crouched, shot a crossbow bolt to break the door (it did), nothing inside.

Came down last couple steps, turned to look left and right real quick, looking forward there's a zombie stepping out of the closet.

Not 'coming my way', I saw her step down out of the closet that had been empty when I shot the door.

 

I'm running vid qual at lowest, so could well be an edge case due to this.

The sleeper hadn't been spawned in yet. When you got to the bottom of the stairs it spawned in.

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1 minute ago, hiemfire said:

The sleeper hadn't been spawned in yet. When you got to the bottom of the stairs it spawned in.

This is one of the major downsides to the sleeper volumes, and something I hope they address as time goes on. Depending on circumstances, the 1st floor room of the 6 story apartment that you get dropped into from the breaking floor on the 2nd floor can actually be completely empty with you looking down into it... and then spawn a dozen zombies directly in front of your face as soon as you drop down into it. Hopefully we'll get something in the future so that any time where you get Line of Sight to where zed should be, it will go ahead and spawn it, along with potentially the rest of it's volume. Actually legitimately looking into a room that is empty and so not going into it I suspect may be one of the culprits for people having difficulty with clears. It's not been the problem on any of the clears that I've gone to when someone was having issues, but I can easily imagine looking into rooms and not seeing zombies because they're not physically there being a problem.

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10 hours ago, Aldranon said:

The random attacks on your fort was like that not too long ago. 

Eventually, repairing would take the better part of a day and it stopped being fun.

 

Now, I can make a Heat/Horde base all in one, with perimeter walls out to the limits of the LCB.

I can fight a horde without spending all my ammo or spending all day repairing!

 

BM nights are fun, even when you get several Demolishers.  You have to shoot carefully and place your sledge turrets on their left, so they tend to not explode them.  Still two have exploded, one right under me, I'm like "Wha-, wha- ... WOW!"  😄

I've never understood it when people say it takes a day or two to fix their base. I'm usually done by 8am. The longest it ever took was until noon or so and that was a fancy base that had stuff for looks and not purely functional. R concrete and steel just don't break that often. All you do is run around with the nailgun clicking, and very few block replacements for me, but I'm killing a lot. Most of the damage is self inflicted from my grenades I drop that damage a lot of blocks a tiny amount.

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1 minute ago, madmole said:

I've never understood it when people say it takes a day or two to fix their base. I'm usually done by 8am. The longest it ever took was until noon or so and that was a fancy base that had stuff for looks and not purely functional. R concrete and steel just don't break that often. All you do is run around with the nailgun clicking, and very few block replacements for me, but I'm killing a lot. Most of the damage is self inflicted from my grenades I drop that damage a lot of blocks a tiny amount.

Probably the same people who favor dynamite over grenades on horde night. ;)

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7 hours ago, Jugginator said:

Any way/chance we can get the music selector to back off on Homeday/Homenight a bit? I like keeping the music on low because the ambiance it provides is great, but one step into the radius of the bedroll and it's instant, never-ending Homeday/night until you leave or a horde shows up lol.

 

Btw doing a run in the wastelands. @madmole you were not lying about it's practically a biome of hordenight, sheesh lol. Day 2 at night hiding in some rubble throwing rocks hoping the 18-pack of ferals (including 2 wights and a cop) wouldn't see me (8 actually ran right past me at one point in front of me chasing a rock I threw). Been a while since I held my breath and my heart raced a bit in the game :) Horde night lasted until 2:45am on my day 7 too lol -- more of all of this in the wastelands plz.

You can just back off the % of music allowed per day in general for now.


I'm glad you had some nail biting times, hopefully many more to come. It isn't even game staged yet, so once we get the game stage modifier, radiation the wasteland should be a serious challenge.

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1 hour ago, Pegasus said:
2 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

Yeah, I guess this would only work for SP.

Remember ... SP is really only MP with only one player. There is no single player mode any more.  

Except in MP you simply can't have one person skip time or pause the game while the others are waiting... so, what the heck are you talking about here??

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3 minutes ago, madmole said:

I've never understood it when people say it takes a day or two to fix their base. I'm usually done by 8am. The longest it ever took was until noon or so and that was a fancy base that had stuff for looks and not purely functional. R concrete and steel just don't break that often. All you do is run around with the nailgun clicking, and very few block replacements for me, but I'm killing a lot. Most of the damage is self inflicted from my grenades I drop that damage a lot of blocks a tiny amount.

They built three stories on top of a few pillars.

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6 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

I just read someone from the Steam forum talking about different kind of death penalties.

One idea that I think is great is having some time pass after you die.

 

Imagine if after death you simply skip one full day: it would be a serious handicap toward getting ready for the next blood moon.

Maybe in case it's exactly the day just before BM this could skip you directly a few hours before it (e.g.: to 19:00).

 

That would be a nasty penalty to get, more than anything TFP have come up with until now... 😈

 

Edit : FYI the context was about people dying to skip the injuries penalty.

We're not doing new features that only work in single player. Delete all on death and you'll have a more interesting challenge replacing your gear, and that lost day will be nothing in comparison.

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Just now, madmole said:

I've never understood it when people say it takes a day or two to fix their base. I'm usually done by 8am. The longest it ever took was until noon or so and that was a fancy base that had stuff for looks and not purely functional. R concrete and steel just don't break that often. All you do is run around with the nailgun clicking, and very few block replacements for me, but I'm killing a lot. Most of the damage is self inflicted from my grenades I drop that damage a lot of blocks a tiny amount.

To fix it properly in an OCD way can take several days if the base is big. Your base can take 1 full day to fix properly. The most difficult thing to repair are the blocks that are out of sight inside the wall, as you have to aim just against the corner to be able to even notice. At least we can repair them.

 

It would be awesome to have a way to autorepair the base lategame. 

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5 hours ago, FileMachete said:

Little feedback on zombie Sleeper Spawns popping in when they shouldn't.

 

Was clearing a house, coming down some stairs, across the room there was one of the zombie closets (single block wide).

I crouched, shot a crossbow bolt to break the door (it did), nothing inside.

Came down last couple steps, turned to look left and right real quick, looking forward there's a zombie stepping out of the closet.

Not 'coming my way', I saw her step down out of the closet that had been empty when I shot the door.

 

I'm running vid qual at lowest, so could well be an edge case due to this.

Zombies move around. He snuck in there to take a nap.

52 minutes ago, MechanicalLens said:

Has the gamestages/lootstages between tiers been increased? I'm currently at level 45 and only now am I finding T6 pistols and such. (I've been looting a ton and I've been seldom coming across weapons, so maybe that was changed as well?) Anyway, I swear that in previous builds I would have on quality level 2 or 3 pump shotguns by this point, but maybe I'm incorrect about that.

Pistols are tier 1 weapons, magnums tier 2, desert vulture tier 3, so finding a purple pistol at that point seems reasonable.

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6 minutes ago, Jost Amman said:

Except in MP you simply can't have one person skip time or pause the game while the others are waiting... so, what the heck are you talking about here??

Don't look at me ... I was only pointing out that there is no SP any more, it's all multiplayer, so making some game mechanic single player only isn't possible.

 

I think the whole idea is ridiculous ... but it's not my circus, not my monkeys.

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4 minutes ago, madmole said:

Zombies move around. He snuck in there to take a nap.

Pistols are tier 1 weapons, magnums tier 2, desert vulture tier 3, so finding a purple pistol at that point seems reasonable.

Gotta keep looting then. *Shrug* :)

 

By the way, you might want to look into the spawn rates of wooden bows, crossbows, and maybe hunting rifles. I'm not the only one who has been seldom, if ever, seeing them in loot. (Unless the former two are considered tier 2 loot.)

*That would be iron crossbows

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12 minutes ago, Blake_ said:

To fix it properly in an OCD way can take several days if the base is big. Your base can take 1 full day to fix properly. The most difficult thing to repair are the blocks that are out of sight inside the wall, as you have to aim just against the corner to be able to even notice. At least we can repair them.

 

It would be awesome to have a way to autorepair the base lategame. 

I'd have to see the base before and after horde night shots, and know what your settings are on before I could ever believe what you are saying. Maybe if its some dumb ramp cheese trap base design that is a house of cards or something, but not a proper normal "tower defense" base.

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Think about a base that's even a simple square tower with walls that are two layers thick.  If it gets damaged by an AoE type of thing like vulture or cop spit, the outside corner is easy to fix, but the inside corner that you can't see because it's covered up by other blocks is not so easy.

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1 minute ago, TheRani said:

Think about a base that's even a simple square tower with walls that are two layers thick.  If it gets damaged by an AoE type of thing like vulture or cop spit, the outside corner is easy to fix, but the inside corner that you can't see because it's covered up by other blocks is not so easy.

Not sure about walls, but concerning floors, you can simply use arrow slits placed flat against the ground as the floor layer. You'll be able to repair said arrow slits and the block beneath them. As I've brought up before, you could also use this design to create some hidden wiring and lighting.

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Part of the fun is seeing the base after the attack and fixing it up and trying to make improvements so its not as bad next time.   If you don't want your base to get damaged turn down the zombie block damage.. reduce their counts... or make hordes less frequent.

 

 

This all goes back to people wanting everything easy but yet feel like they are accomplishing something.

 

TFP, you guys were on to something when making the default difficulty a stage lower.   Now, take it all the way.   Make all the easiest possible settings default, including 7 day horde = off.... so then people can get the sense of "I'm awesome at this at this game and I need to turn up the difficulty"  instead of "OMG these hordes make me need to repair my base!"  At that point.. its on them!

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20 minutes ago, madmole said:

I'd have to see the base before and after horde night shots, and know what your settings are on before I could ever believe what you are saying. Maybe if its some dumb ramp cheese trap base design that is a house of cards or something, but not a proper normal "tower defense" base.

I think one of the problems are some players are OCD and every single block must be repaired to mint condition in order for them to be satisfied.  If they can't reach a block because it took damage through another block, they can't sleep at night until they burrow through and repair it... 🤣

 

My brother's friend upgraded one of his base blocks to steel  by accident and he literally could not rest until he upgraded everything else around it to match......

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Just now, Laz Man said:

I think one of the problems are some players are OCD and every single block must be repaired to mint condition in order for them to be satisfied.  If they can't reach a block because it took damage through another block, they can't sleep at night until they burrow through and repair it... 🤣

 

True. 😛 If a steel block is missing even 1 HP, it must be repaired! 😜

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13 minutes ago, SnowDog1942 said:

Part of the fun is seeing the base after the attack and fixing it up and trying to make improvements so its not as bad next time.   If you don't want your base to get damaged turn down the zombie block damage.. reduce their counts... or make hordes less frequent.

 

 

This all goes back to people wanting everything easy but yet feel like they are accomplishing something.

 

TFP, you guys were on to something when making the default difficulty a stage lower.   Now, take it all the way.   Make all the easiest possible settings default, including 7 day horde = off.... so then people can get the sense of "I'm awesome at this at this game and I need to turn up the difficulty"  instead of "OMG these hordes make me need to repair my base!"  At that point.. its on them!

I'm all for it, but this is a dangerous notion very few games decide on.
They fear if players don't have an option to go easier than default, and they die, they become discouraged and quit playing sooner.
Then again, it might justify having an achievement for dying 500 times. It's been how many years?... I have less than 60.

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From playing on a new game with loot abundance down to 50%, im realizing that 100% loot gives too much loot, like yes 200 is overdoing it and mainly selected for fun im sure, but playing with 50 feels more apocalyptic, when stable drops i might do 75% just to see how it feels, never played with less than 100 before and its definitly changing how i want to prioritize my skill sets.

 

When it comes to the crafting arguement i don't think i have crafted armor in a very long time, i usually find it everywhere so i never take the perk, even though it doesn help with mobility, same with guns, i think what i mostly craft is bows early on and that is it, never an incentive to craft at all.

 

All in all im noticing that by lowering my loot is putting an increased need to craft in there, and traders are going to be a definite thing to venture to in order to help.

 

When it comes to repairing my horde base, i generally do it either at night, or i spend the whole day of the next horde day repairing it lol.

 

Thats why i suggested the random crafting tiers, it would help with wanting to craft more because you might get lucky early, might never get lucky at all, be more of a luck factor.

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