Advice for Higher Level Blood Moons - Base/Defense? Alpha 19 (b180)

[Tohskrad]

On 10/16/2020 at 5:26 AM, Liesel Weppen said:

I wonder how OP is doing the bloodmoons? Do you even fight the zombies or just hope the base does for you?

Yes, we actively fight the zombies, but are having a lot of issues with this latest patch with all the extra acid going around. (We are playing with slightly higher than normal difficulties)  We've actually started making some kill bases (processor/galaxy brain/underground)  and turned one of our existing ones into a compact version with 4 blades, 3 people shooting/repairing and autoturrets.   (Which hasn't worked yet, as usually a cop explodes and takes out all the blade traps at once. Not to mention all the acid being thrown around in 19.1).     

 

Our previous method was a tower that would require half to run through a building to try and jump onto our platform and half pummeling the legs/foundation.  This worked oddly well until the 19.1, then it just got destroyed by precision guided acid from birds/cops and they took it down (it was heavily fortified with 3+ layers of reinforced concrete ) in one night despite being fully repaired previously.

 

So far our method to survive has been to find a structure, stay there until it gets destroyed (usually before 1 AM) while defending and then just run away/fight on foot.  (Sometimes we can still get by with dashing/sprinting on a motorcycle on the last few hour(s), but that tends to spawn 50+ acid spitting birds and any lag results in death or a very difficult daytime cleanup.)   Either way, the horde has become one of the only challenging, yet most gimicky, parts of the game despite being in full steel/lvl6 weapons with regular/armor piercing ammo.   Thankfully one of our team is a fan of run/gun, but the others (including myself) are not.   

[Fox]

2 hours ago, Tohskrad said:

Yes, we actively fight the zombies, but are having a lot of issues with this latest patch with all the extra acid going around. (We are playing with slightly higher than normal difficulties)  We've actually started making some kill bases (processor/galaxy brain/underground)  and turned one of our existing ones into a compact version with 4 blades, 3 people shooting/repairing and autoturrets.   (Which hasn't worked yet, as usually a cop explodes and takes out all the blade traps at once. Not to mention all the acid being thrown around in 19.1).     

 

Our previous method was a tower that would require half to run through a building to try and jump onto our platform and half pummeling the legs/foundation.  This worked oddly well until the 19.1, then it just got destroyed by precision guided acid from birds/cops and they took it down (it was heavily fortified with 3+ layers of reinforced concrete ) in one night despite being fully repaired previously.

 

So far our method to survive has been to find a structure, stay there until it gets destroyed (usually before 1 AM) while defending and then just run away/fight on foot.  (Sometimes we can still get by with dashing/sprinting on a motorcycle on the last few hour(s), but that tends to spawn 50+ acid spitting birds and any lag results in death or a very difficult daytime cleanup.)   Either way, the horde has become one of the only challenging, yet most gimicky, parts of the game despite being in full steel/lvl6 weapons with regular/armor piercing ammo.   Thankfully one of our team is a fan of run/gun, but the others (including myself) are not.   

And that's why you don't rely on blade traps. Blade traps and turrets can be taken out so quickly that I feel like they should only ever be used as an extra, not a primary. Electric fencing is sort of an exception if you can protect them from ever being damaged at all, like boxing the poles in. Spikes are the best in my opinion because demolishers can only do so little damage to them leaving all the other rows of spikes in tact. They are admittedly a nuisance to maintain after blood moons, but at least they work reliably and get the job done every time. Barbed wires are also great for holding them back long enough to set them off... making them do their explosive area damage on the outer edge of the spikes, minimizing the damage.

 

Also, if you can hide yourself from being seen by the birds, you'll receive a lot less acid to the base as they'll only occasionally melee attack the base in random spots doing only nuisance damage (unless they can get inside, through the windows or whatever). The only acid you would then need to worry about are the cops.

 

I think the other problem you're having is that multiple players are in 1 spot. The way the blood moon works is that each player gets their own amount of zombies to go after them. So if you have 3 players defending 1 base, then you have 3x the zombies attacking the base at the same time. You have to factor things like that in when fortifying the base. So 3 players means 3x the defenses needed to hold them back.

Edited October 18, 2020 by Fox (see edit history)

[Vampirenostra]

19 hours ago, Fox said:

And that's why you don't rely on blade traps. Blade traps and turrets can be taken out so quickly that I feel like they should only ever be used as an extra, not a primary. Electric fencing is sort of an exception if you can protect them from ever being damaged at all, like boxing the poles in. Spikes are the best in my opinion because demolishers can only do so little damage to them leaving all the other rows of spikes in tact. They are admittedly a nuisance to maintain after blood moons, but at least they work reliably and get the job done every time. Barbed wires are also great for holding them back long enough to set them off... making them do their explosive area damage on the outer edge of the spikes, minimizing the damage.

 

Also, if you can hide yourself from being seen by the birds, you'll receive a lot less acid to the base as they'll only occasionally melee attack the base in random spots doing only nuisance damage (unless they can get inside, through the windows or whatever). The only acid you would then need to worry about are the cops.

 

I think the other problem you're having is that multiple players are in 1 spot. The way the blood moon works is that each player gets their own amount of zombies to go after them. So if you have 3 players defending 1 base, then you have 3x the zombies attacking the base at the same time. You have to factor things like that in when fortifying the base. So 3 players means 3x the defenses needed to hold them back.

And x3 lags of course)))

[IDNeon]

On 10/15/2020 at 3:49 PM, Rod064 said:

It is NOT cheating.

If vehicles got flat tires and you had to change a tire while being chased THEN it wouldn't be *CHEESING*.

But for now, it's just a way of avoiding the game's content. Which is on you. No different than not making your horde base your industrial base for the same purpose of avoiding some aspects of the game such as base destruction.

[IDNeon]

I'm way too minimalist for these base designs, I have a "better" solution.

I currently have a pillbox design (see my other thread about Insane horde nights)...but the problem is the 360 degrees which is super inefficient and high maintenance.

I'm going to stretch one wall into many walls, so it'll be a wall, 3 blocks of empty space, and then a repeat of the defensive wall design....repeating itself in a kind of hallway.

The other 3 sides will be very thick with strongest blocks, to minimize any desire of zombies to go through that way.

 

This way if one wall fails, I can hop the other wall and fight from there with refreshed defenses.

Since my pillbox design hasn't failed yet (minus demos), the only real reason for repeating walls is to bail out when a demolisher destroys one section.

Edited October 28, 2020 by IDNeon (see edit history)

[Psychodabble]

I'm sure nobody tried my design, otherwise it'd be all the rage by now. Easy enough to build on day 1 or 2 and will last the whole game.

[IDNeon]

10 minutes ago, Psychodabble said:

I'm sure nobody tried my design, otherwise it'd be all the rage by now. Easy enough to build on day 1 or 2 and will last the whole game.

Which one is that? (begins to look through thread for post)

 

My design is ready day one Insane, with horde every day.

I found it, it does look good, but how does the horde focus where you want them to be focused?

[Psychodabble]

26 minutes ago, IDNeon said:

Which one is that? (begins to look through thread for post)

 

My design is ready day one Insane, with horde every day.

I found it, it does look good, but how does the horde focus where you want them to be focused?

Simple pathfinding. It would be technically possible for them to jump into your room if they destroy the hatch, so they all focus on trying to do that. You just murder them before they succeed.

[IDNeon]

24 minutes ago, Psychodabble said:

Simple pathfinding. It would be technically possible for them to jump into your room if they destroy the hatch, so they all focus on trying to do that. You just murder them before they succeed.

I want to do something similar but with a really lowtek solution. But using melee weapons means instead of a single room I'm going to try creating a hall with a few of my patented campfire-defensive walls.

I am curious about pathing in this scenario because that means the path needs to focus them to the defensive wall, and the other 3 walls needs to discourage zombies from attacking there. I don't know what to expect since I've always done a 360 pill-box style defensive wall instead of a hallway style.

[Danidas]

Zombies will always target the shortest valid path to you with the least block hp in the way. So if one way will require doing 15,000 block damage and another will only need 1000 the zombies will pick the lower number every time they can. The same occurs if your walls are all the same with no gaps but you forgot to repair one of the blocks so its hp is lower then the zombies will target that block as it is the path of least resistance for them. Lastly the zombies are aware of support loads and are able to zero in on support pillars or structures to bring you down to them if they cannot find a valid path to you.

 

 

[IDNeon]

2 minutes ago, Danidas said:

So if one way will require doing 15,000 block damage and another will only need 1000 the zombies will pick the lower number every time they can.

This makes sense but what if for instance your base straddles one or two chunks? Like if it were 18 blocks long it could be in 3 chunks?

Then zombies spawning a chunk or two on the D-side of the fort might not path to the weaker A-side?

Or is their radius of pathing long enough to care?

[Vampirenostra]

13 minutes ago, IDNeon said:

This makes sense but what if for instance your base straddles one or two chunks? Like if it were 18 blocks long it could be in 3 chunks?

Then zombies spawning a chunk or two on the D-side of the fort might not path to the weaker A-side?

Or is their radius of pathing long enough to care?

Guess their calculation is far enough and is not chunk based I would assume something like 30 blocks radius from the target (you). Or probably even more as there were some designs with way looong bridges 20+ blocks and zeds still were running all the way to the ramp up and through the bridge. For my humbliness the best designs yet are some pretty snail shell like designs where you male em run though loooong corridor filled with traps with a single door in the end, one of the reasons I usually keep the doors open is with a sledge in the doorway, they just go for the door and I let blades/spikes and rest do some fine dmg to them and just one hit them if they survive. Negative is demos again... They are a matter of dices in the base defence... So I always put blades high enough so they do not trigger demos, but chop heads instead and electric fences slow them down right under the blades.

[Psychodabble]

3 hours ago, Vampirenostra said:

Guess their calculation is far enough and is not chunk based I would assume something like 30 blocks radius from the target (you). Or probably even more as there were some designs with way looong bridges 20+ blocks and zeds still were running all the way to the ramp up and through the bridge. For my humbliness the best designs yet are some pretty snail shell like designs where you male em run though loooong corridor filled with traps with a single door in the end, one of the reasons I usually keep the doors open is with a sledge in the doorway, they just go for the door and I let blades/spikes and rest do some fine dmg to them and just one hit them if they survive. Negative is demos again... They are a matter of dices in the base defence... So I always put blades high enough so they do not trigger demos, but chop heads instead and electric fences slow them down right under the blades.

My base design has no problem with Demos...flip the switch and watch them dance or just bash them in the face.

[katarynna]

3 hours ago, Vampirenostra said:

So I always put blades high enough so they do not trigger demos, but chop heads instead and electric fences slow them down right under the blades.

Blade traps no longer trigger demos as of a19, regardless of where you place them.

[Vampirenostra]

18 hours ago, katarynna said:

Blade traps no longer trigger demos as of a19, regardless of where you place them.

that is great, but they can still smack em if you place em low enough

[Fox]

37 minutes ago, Vampirenostra said:

that is great, but they can still smack em if you place em low enough

I noticed that I can shoot them anywhere on their body except for the chest and not trigger them, so I imagine it'd be like that with blade traps and any projectile traps too. I'd need to see more evidence to prove this wrong.

Edited October 29, 2020 by Fox (see edit history)

[Vampirenostra]

4 minutes ago, Fox said:

I noticed that I can shoot them anywhere on their body except for the chest and not trigger them, so I imagine it'd be like that with blade traps and any projectile traps too. I'd need to see more evidence to prove this wrong.

meant zeds can destroy traps on the way. that is the reason I put them 1 block above their heads so blades can hit their heads, but zeds can't hit the blades, just a vertical mounting.

[Danidas]

9 minutes ago, Fox said:

I noticed that I can shoot them anywhere on their body except for the chest and not trigger them, so I imagine it'd be like that with blade traps and any projectile traps too. I'd need to see more evidence to prove this wrong.

Blade, Dart, Electric fence, and Spikes will not set off a Demo no matter what. However SMG Turret, Shotgun Turret, Junk Turret, Sledge Turret, Thrown objects(Grenades, Molotovs, Pipebombs, Rocks, Snowballs), and Player Melee or Ranged attacks will if they hit the Demo in the left chest region where the blinking trigger is located. So if your using Turrets it is always best to position them to ensure that they are always attacking the back right of zombies and never the front left to minimize any risk of setting off Demos.

[Fox]

25 minutes ago, Danidas said:

Blade, Dart, Electric fence, and Spikes will not set off a Demo no matter what. However SMG Turret, Shotgun Turret, Junk Turret, Sledge Turret, Thrown objects(Grenades, Molotovs, Pipebombs, Rocks, Snowballs), and Player Melee or Ranged attacks will if they hit the Demo in the left chest region where the blinking trigger is located. So if your using Turrets it is always best to position them to ensure that they are always attacking the back right of zombies and never the front left to minimize any risk of setting off Demos.

I wonder if they intended for it to stay like that or if they plan to change it.

[Danidas]

10 minutes ago, Fox said:

I wonder if they intended for it to stay like that or if they plan to change it.

Considering that Blade Traps used to set them off and were specially changed complete with a mention in the patch notes I doubt it. Other then maybe Dart Traps getting nerfed to set them off in the future as they are by far the most effective trap when used right. As they excel when used in a corridor or other tight spaces where you can ensure that all darts hit the mark with trip wires or pressure plates to trigger them only when needed.

 

Edit - Forgot to mention that Blade, Dart, Spikes, and Electric Fences are not effected by Game Difficulty while all the other traps and player damage output are reduced the higher your Difficulty is set to. So at Insane a gun/turret that does 45 damage will only do 25% normal damage aka 11.25 but a Dart Trap that does 45 will still do the same 45.

 

Edited October 29, 2020 by Danidas (see edit history)

[IDNeon]

K but does burning a demolisher set them off?

[Danidas]

17 minutes ago, IDNeon said:

K but does burning a demolisher set them off?

Nope but if you toss the bottle onto the button it will.

[IDNeon]

11 minutes ago, Danidas said:

Nope but if you toss the bottle onto the button it will.

Hah that'd be hilarious bad luck.

I was worried my base design would trigger demolishers, but now it doesn't seem that it will. It's a very lowtek design though I intend to increase the size strength of the blocks as Game Stage increases.

[Duke56Nukem]

Good stuff, Hunter – thanks.  My son and I created something similar with a mountaintop base.  We built a base of all rebar reinforced concrete, with steel at least two blocks high.  Then we shaved the mountainside down at least 4 blocks, leaving only one approach into the base accessible from two directions. 

 

Along the two routes around the mountain to that one access point we placed iron spikes and just prior to a blood moon sprinkle them liberally with tin landmines.  Then near where they intersect we have electrically-powered SMG and shotguns in small hardened bunkers surrounded by metal bars.

 

My son constructed a winding single-block wide ramp rising from 20-some blocks below up to the 2nd level of our base.  It’s start aims directly at our base, providing a long line of Zeds climbing straight towards our guns, then the do a U-turn and climb further – again in a line.  A final U-turn brings them back to approaching in a line.  A firing position where the ramp enters the base’s surrounding iron bars has two sledges, one on either side, to ensure any Zeds who make it that far get a long 15+ drop to the path below, where they get to start over.

 

Finally, the entrance to the base is a small room about 8x8 blocks, entirely clad in steel.  A short ladder leads to one steel vault door, a short single-block wide corridor and a 2nd steel vault door into the base itself.  Atop this 8x8 steel-clad room is our gyrocopter landing pad with two metal hatches opening into the room below.  If the Zeds manage to get past all the SMG and shotgun turrets, they’ll bunch up in this room and we simply stand on the gyrocopter pad and drop molotovs and grenades down on them.

 

So far, no Zed has made it even as far as the final two shotgun turrets outside the opening to this room.  And we’re past night 350 now.

[Scyris]

This is the horde base I use in darkness falls, and let me tell you the blood moons in vanilla are a complete joke compared to darknessfalls, you have radiated and zombie bears on the very first blood moon, they also do not stop coming till 4am hits, compared to vanilla where u can have them all dead and no more spawn not even 2 game time hours after horde night starts. My vanilla horde nights start at 22:00 and usually by the time the day switches i've killed everything, DF like i said keeps spawning till 4am. Anywhere here is the base, should work fine for single player in vanilla to, only diff is in DF u can upgrade bars to steel and beyond, but you can get around this in vanilla by just using more. Yes this is a screenshot from Darkness Falls, but as I said the blood moons are much harder in DF than vanilla, and this base works in DF just fine. Eventually u upgrade it all to stainless steel. The block hp of the bunker is higher than the block hp they need to go thru the bars, they only usually attack the top one. So they go for the catwalk instead of the bunker as it reads as a shorter path to the zombies, you have electric fence poles to slow them, and you can stick a blade trap on the + thing as well as by the base of the stairs on the inside where its flat to kill a ton of zombies.

 

Edited March 29, 2021 by Scyris (see edit history)