Alternative to Wedge tip trick for Alpha 19

[Tahaan]

I know that TFP does not want us to have AFK bases and I have no quarrel with that - each to his own.  I personally would not want to miss out on the XP from horde night, so I play a Toe-to-toe run-and-gun style, and take the horde on in an arena in stead of a base.

 

I still think having a relatively safe HOME base, as opposed to a horde base, is part of the fun of the game.  My home base doesn't even have a door, just a pair of shotgun auto-turrets at each entrance.  This takes care of screamers and wandering hordes when they are attracted to my forges or stumble on my base.

 

Whatever the case may be, a lot of people use Wedge tips in A18 to provide "some safety" - just to be able to get a break during non-horde nights.  Those people will all need a new trick to build something that has at least some resistance to the horde.  Many others use a tower with a loop-back, turning the horde into an XP farm.  I'm even OK with that - for people still need to work to craft bullets and traps and repair the damage.  As I said each to his or her own.

So here is the question:  What is the new wedge tip trick?

[Roland]

AKA: faatal’s next ticket....

[Tahaan]

Sorry I need to ask - what is AKA ?

Edit: Also known as???

Oh I get it.  Whatever base design ideas we have will be "fixed" by fataal until there is no point in building anything ever.  Ja I hope not.

[RipClaw]

That remains to be seen. Tricks and strategies will usually be found by trial and error.

 

In my opinion, the most effective early game base design that works without tricks is the hatch base. You can use it as a pure melee base or in combination with firearms.

The only disadvantage is that it only works with few zombies at a time. I wouldn't recommend more than 12 zombies at once.
 

[pApA^LeGBa]

Imo they can´t fully avoid cheesy bases without greatly reducing the building options. There will always be a way that is somehow OP. Wich is imho good. That way the game can appeal to a way bigger playerbase. 

 

Also just running on foot is an easy way too. Just keep moving. If you have megacrush and the right mods and perks you can even kill a lot of them. I just hope the new system that is designed to make just driving away impossible doesn´t effect doing the horde on foot. It´s so much fun running trough a city and fighting them.

[Roland]

2 hours ago, Tahaan said:

Sorry I need to ask - what is AKA ?

Edit: Also known as???

Oh I get it.  Whatever base design ideas we have will be "fixed" by fataal until there is no point in building anything ever.  Ja I hope not.

 

Well it depends on why the tip or trick works. If it is based on malfunctioning zombie behavior then that is a really stupid foundation to be building on because the devs are going to fix the bug and then your trick will crumble.

 

I can guarantee you that fataal loses no sleep over what players are or are not doing. All he cares about is well-written code and well-functioning AI. Zombies are supposed to be able to walk up slopes and bash blocks in front of them. The Wedge tip trick was based on a malfunction of those basic zombie abilities. Zombies are supposed to be able to walk over blocks that are 1m high. Therefore, basing your strategy on arrow slit blocks being non-navigable isn't going to last forever because it is a glitch.

 

You are just plain wrong if you think that faatal is in an arms race with players. He is fixing the game, period.

 

If you want a lasting strategy then find one that works based off of how the zombies are intended to behave. For example, placing spikes so the tope of them is flush with the ground is a sound strategy. It is based on how zombies behave and not on how they are not behaving properly.

1 hour ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

There will always be a way that is somehow OP. Wich is imho good. That way the game can appeal to a way bigger playerbase. 

Who are you and what have you done to the real pApA?

1 hour ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

Also just running on foot is an easy way too. Just keep moving. If you have megacrush and the right mods and perks you can even kill a lot of them. I just hope the new system that is designed to make just driving away impossible doesn´t effect doing the horde on foot. It´s so much fun running trough a city and fighting them.

The new system is based on vulture aversion to vehicles so if you are hoofing it you should be fine.

[Tahaan]

8 minutes ago, Roland said:

You are just plain wrong if you think that faatal is in an arms race with players. He is fixing the game, period.

I am sorry if it did not come across that way but my answer was meant tongue in cheek in response to what I assume you meant with the AKA comment.

[Roland]

It didn't, but I'm not upset either. My first response was tongue-in-cheek as well. My second was more serious because I want people to know that the developers do not have a goal to end all strategies simply for the sake of initiating new metas every update.

 

If I was a bit intense then be smug about successfully triggering me.

[Tahaan]

Actually I cant be smug about that.  I've seen the kind of negativity that you guys need to bat way too often.

[JCrook1028]

3 hours ago, Tahaan said:

Oh I get it.  Whatever base design ideas we have will be "fixed" by fataal until there is no point in building anything ever.  Ja I hope not.

If you think never building again is what it means then no, you absolutely do not get it.

[Tahaan]

3 minutes ago, JCrook1028 said:

If you think never building again is what it means then no, you absolutely do not get it.

See my other post, I don't think that at all.

I am probably not the most creative base builder, which is probably why I run-and-gun the horde.  

If I had to build a base I would make walls surrounding walls surrounding walls, each wall two thick so that I can go back in there and repair and upgrade the inner walls, and after each horde add more rings, increasing the "amount of blocks they need to beat through to get to me.  Above all of these walls ... a grid to shoot down through.

This doesn't seem to use less ammo than just running and gunning it.... so I forgo the build and just run and gun!  

 

That is not to say that I don't want to build something clever.... but I all my tricks are learned from Youtube and forum posts.

[Crater Creator]

On 6/15/2020 at 8:59 AM, Tahaan said:

Oh I get it.  Whatever base design ideas we have will be "fixed" by fataal until there is no point in building anything ever.  Ja I hope not.

It sounds like you're thinking of base design as a list of things you can try, and each one either works or doesn't work.  If things were binary like that, base design would be very boring.  In reality, just putting four walls between you and the zombies neither works nor doesn't work.  It provides some safety.  If the game is balanced well, then those walls provide a degree of safety commensurate with the amount of effort to put them up, and balanced versus other non-building strategies like duking it out with melee weapons.

 

A builder that puts in more effort with a more sophisticated design should get more safety for their efforts.  But (under default rules) no builder should achieve infinite safety, because that breaks the game.  There's a reason you can't set zombie block damage to 0%, and blocks in weird shapes/rotations/combinations that allow you to effectively achieve 0% block damage are equally game breaking.

 

On 6/15/2020 at 9:46 AM, pApA^LeGBa said:

Imo they can´t fully avoid cheesy bases without greatly reducing the building options. There will always be a way that is somehow OP. Wich is imho good. That way the game can appeal to a way bigger playerbase. 

I disagree with your use of the term.  Something can be powerful, and that can be balanced.  But overpowered is bad, because to be overpowered means it's too much, by definition.  Overpowered and balanced cannot coexist.

[canadianbluebeer]

You can take balanced, and make it overpowered. 

 

Dart traps are my example. They don't do too much damage, but put 15 rows of them (stacked 2 high on each side of a corridor, with electric fences)

and that becomes overpowered.

 

Mind you, you have to WORK to make that, and feeding those things is not exactly trivial.

 

(and if you screw up and break one of the traps, it's a pita to fix)

 

Someone will always come up with a way to stop the zeds in their tracks on horde night, without using cheese.

Enough ACTIVE defenses, along with the player, and yes, you can be perfectly safe.

 

As long as we have to work hard to make it, the IMHO, it's fine.

 

[diegodgo87]

Mr. and Ms. Reach made an underground corridor with hatches on the floor, no loop, no falling zombies, the hatches are there just to stop the Zed's in front of you then you can shoot at them or melee smack them. works pretty well.

They even put many hatches in case the first one is destroyed, but the first one hold up the entire horde, and even when there was zombies for two, just Ms. Reach was in the game fighting high level zed's.

I love that design i'm only concern about there is no exit from that place in case of overrun, I don't know if it works with an exit in the back of the corridor.

 

At 27 minutes

[Tahaan]

10 minutes ago, diegodgo87 said:

Mr. and Ms. Reach made an underground corridor with hatches on the floor, no loop, no falling zombies, the hatches are there just to stop the Zed's in front of you then you can shoot at them or melee smack them. works pretty well.

They even put many hatches in case the first one is destroyed, but the first one hold up the entire horde, and even when there was zombies for two, just Ms. Reach was in the game fighting high level zed's.

I love that design i'm only concern about there is no exit from that place in case of overrun, I don't know if it works with an exit in the back of the corridor.

 

At 27 minutes

This is the exact type of design that needs to be replaced for Alpha 19, since wedge tips no longer offer any benefit to the player.

[FileMachete]

@Tahaan, I just used this basic design for the third, fourth & fifth horde nights in current playthrough.

Buried it so there's no wedge blocks. Just a thick flat roof.

 

I tweaked it a bit to add in four horizontal e-fence lines and two upward firing dart traps in front of the first hatch.

Only entrance/exit is through the corridor, so you have to turn off the generator to exit or get zapped & darted up the bum, heh.

 

I dug mine out so the roof is flush with the ground. Double layer of blocks for roof & the corridor is only a ~dozen blocks long.

Zeds seem happy to path to the entrance rather than try to dig straight down to me.

Only real issue is that I didn't have a way to deal with Vultures above. So I added a Shotgun Turret above last BM and that seemed to take care of those dirty birds; had a couple carcasses to skin when the night ended.

 

If you wanted to add a backdoor it shouldn't be a problem. I'd have the surface hatch further away than the max distance you can be between the corridor opening and the far back end of it, and make sure to have at least as many (maybe plus 1 to be extra safe?) doors in that exit corridor as you'll have hatches up between you and zeds when fighting. And of same strength.

 

Other bit you could add would be to make the exit path a U shape vertically.

So from the fighting level you'd drop down into the exit corridor.

Make that vertical 4+ blocks, and have the ladder up into killing floor not go to the ground of the exit corridor; leave a two-high gap. You can jump up to grap ladder but (currently) zeds won't see that as a valid path up to you.

 

[Jarod_Silverstar]

For my crafting/storage base I will go with 4 to 6 pillars 4 blocks high and put a platform on them. Spikes underneath and ramp leading up but stopping 2-3blocks away from the side of the base. I leave the gap to keep the zombies from pathing that way and either jump it or place wood frames as a temp bridge.

 

The horde base is similar but the ramp wraps around the base and actually connects to it, so there is a path for zombies to follow. The path is all square blocks in a sawtooth pattern to make the zombies jump up and down along the route. Top the whole thing with barbed wire and it slows most of the zombies down enough to give you time to shoot them from the side.

Hint - for the demoloshers the hit box for the bomb is on the right side of the chest, so if you setup your path so the zombies are going couter-clockwise there is less chance of making them explode.

[FileMachete]

2 hours ago, Jarod_Silverstar said:

Hint - for the demoloshers the hit box for the bomb is on the right side of the chest, so if you setup your path so the zombies are going couter-clockwise there is less chance of making them explode.

That's an excellent tip Jarod, thanks!

[Crater Creator]

11 hours ago, canadianbluebeer said:

You can take balanced, and make it overpowered. 

 

Dart traps are my example. They don't do too much damage, but put 15 rows of them (stacked 2 high on each side of a corridor, with electric fences)

and that becomes overpowered.

 

Mind you, you have to WORK to make that, and feeding those things is not exactly trivial.

 

(and if you screw up and break one of the traps, it's a pita to fix)

 

Someone will always come up with a way to stop the zeds in their tracks on horde night, without using cheese.

Enough ACTIVE defenses, along with the player, and yes, you can be perfectly safe.

 

As long as we have to work hard to make it, the IMHO, it's fine.

 

You can build dart traps in quantities that are excessive or overkill for your particular difficulty, gamestage, BM zombie count, etc. But that doesn’t mean that dart traps themselves are overpowered. To me, something is only “OP” if a nerf would be required to bring it into balance.  OP is a problem with the numbers in the game files, whether players use one or a million of them (though they’ll gravitate towards the latter since it’s only natural to seek an advantage).

 

Personally, I think brute force is among the least cheesy, let’s say most earnest forms of defense.  So assuming the cost of crafting and feeding those dart traps is balanced, I’m all for being able to make killing corridors loaded with ‘em.  But I wouldn’t consider that OP, and I wouldn’t consider it infinite safety either, since it requires at least a steady supply of ammo.

 

[blugold1]

You don’t actually need to use wedge tips.  You can use a ramp in 4 corners, in place of the wedge tips.  
 

I know I’ve shared this design before, but it utilizes ramp blocks, in combination with the pyramid block, to get the same effect.  You don’t have to “Bury the Zombies Alive” but you can replace the ramp and pyramid in whatever base design you use.

 

https://youtu.be/s_u4ve6Iok8

 

[blugold1]

On 6/19/2020 at 6:40 AM, canadianbluebeer said:

You can take balanced, and make it overpowered. 

 

Dart traps are my example. They don't do too much damage, but put 15 rows of them (stacked 2 high on each side of a corridor, with electric fences)

and that becomes overpowered.

 

Mind you, you have to WORK to make that, and feeding those things is not exactly trivial.

 

(and if you screw up and break one of the traps, it's a pita to fix)

 

Someone will always come up with a way to stop the zeds in their tracks on horde night, without using cheese.

Enough ACTIVE defenses, along with the player, and yes, you can be perfectly safe.

 

As long as we have to work hard to make it, the IMHO, it's fine.

 

You can make a much stronger base than this, using a lot less dart traps.   I use only 8 dart traps and it shreds everything in vanilla.  

Blood Moon:

 

if you want to know how to build this, here you go:  

 

 

 

[Feycat]

I'm sad about the loss of the wedge tips. We used those to build an active defense base it was a lot of fun.

 

Ah well, that goes on the heap along with the column fight cage I guess.

[Matt 1977]

I cant wait for gold as the game will remain as is and not mucked with because someone feels the need to cry about others doing something, that "they" deem exploitive and devs change the game. 

[Laz Man]

47 minutes ago, Matt 1977 said:

I cant wait for gold as the game will remain as is and not mucked with because someone feels the need to cry about others doing something, that "they" deem exploitive and devs change the game. 

As Roland mentioned, the devs will continue to fix exploits in the AI's behavior when something is broken, not because its a good player strategy.  Its a safe bet that any strategy that gives the player immunity to the AI with little to no effort is probably not working as intended.

 

The wedge tip strategy/exploit forces the zombies into an infinite loop of walking/jumping.  I personally have used the strategy on some of our horde base builds and seen it first hand.

[Matt 1977]

13 minutes ago, Laz Man said:

As Roland mentioned, the devs will continue to fix exploits in the AI's behavior when something is broken, not because its a good player strategy.  Its a safe bet that any strategy that gives the player immunity to the AI with little to no effort is probably not working as intended.

 

The wedge tip strategy/exploit forces the zombies into an infinite loop of walking/jumping.  I personally have used the strategy on some of our horde base builds and seen it first hand.

If they can walk up the slope im fine with that. Tip walls are a bit on the nose. But if the z's can walk across the top of the tip and not slide im crying out "male cows excrement" as they were all circus performers. And now they stumble out of cupboards but can walk a wire .....