A20 Developer Diary Discussions

[Jost Amman]

3 minutes ago, dcsobral said:

Why do you want an all concrete base before you even have a nailgun? Presumably you have the concrete which is not that easy to acquire in large quantities early game, but why concrete? Early game zombies can be handled by cobblestone, and cobblestone has the same SI as concrete. I don't buy this argument at all.

1) I play 120 mins/day

2) I can buy cement mix from the traders

[POCKET951]

16 minutes ago, Roland said:

 

 

I don't know the exact gain in xp for doing a full upgrade path to steel

 

in A19 on 100% exp its 1056 xp from wood to steel  with  concrete giving 240 xp for each version

 

 

Edited September 16, 2021 by POCKET951 (see edit history)

[Jost Amman]

1 minute ago, Roland said:

 

OPTION 3: You do a hybrid of options 1 and 2. Your first layer you place as frames and upgrade but then as you build upward switch to placing blocks. There is no rule that you must build your base using either all upgrades or all placed blocks. And once again, I just don't think you realize how fast it is now to get to concrete by upgrading from the new wood frames. I think emotionally you are still rooted in what you know from experience.

 

I totally agree that rebar -> Concrete would be sleek. In fact, I think it would be too sleek. Nobody would ever do anything else and it would be the no brainer single way to ever build. Might as well get rid of concrete block crafting and the cement mixer because who would do that? That simple upgrade step would be so much better than any other option that there would be no other option. The way it is in A20 there are times when you will choose to upgrade and times you will choose to craft. There are benefits peculiar to each choice.

I mean... I'll have to see it for myself.

If you say it's good enough it probably is... we'll see.

[Roland]

2 minutes ago, POCKET951 said:

in A19 on 100% exp its 1056 xp from wood to steel  with reinforced concrete giving 240 xp for each version

 

 

I can check this tonight and let yo know unless one of our Smurfs does it first.

Edited September 16, 2021 by Roland (see edit history)

[dcsobral]

2 minutes ago, Jost Amman said:

1) I play 120 mins/day

2) I can buy cement mix from the traders

Length of day changes nothing. Your chance of getting a nailgun depends on your gamestage, and the gamestage also controls what sort of zombies you get. Cement mix is the easiest part. You then have to turn it into concrete mix which requires stone and sand in large quantities, and mining stone early game is very time consuming.

[dcsobral]

32 minutes ago, Jugom said:

@Roland what can you say about the horizontal support of the particle block tho?  will it only allow us to build as if wood frames? 

That one I can answer. There's two simple solutions:

1. Put extra supports and take them out once no longer needed.
2. Upgrade the key supporting blocks right away.

Speaking of which, remember when rebar had the SI stats of iron so your whole building could collapse if you started upgrading it from the wrong direction? Ah, happy times. Not. Rebar in a19 is particularly good in this regard but I think that's the first time ever rebar had convenient SI stats.

Edited September 16, 2021 by dcsobral (see edit history)

[mstdv inc]

46 minutes ago, dcsobral said:

Why do you want an all concrete base before you even have a nailgun? Presumably you have the concrete which is not that easy to acquire in large quantities early game, but why concrete? Early game zombies can be handled by cobblestone, and cobblestone has the same SI as concrete. I don't buy this argument at all.

Sure, and you can still do that. And, on top of it, if you think you are not getting enough XP out of it, increase the multiplier.

If I start pumping the Int branch to the first horde, I can get concrete.
Most often, in all my games, I get concrete much earlier than nailgun
You only take into account some general/average development paths.

[mstdv inc]

4 minutes ago, Roland said:

I'm not going to say anything else regarding this as that is something I believe @faatal may want to talk about either here or in his stream. He worked on some things in this area of the game.

Can you tell us which stream @faatal will be on?

[dcsobral]

3 minutes ago, mstdv inc said:

If I start pumping the Int branch to the first horde, I can get concrete.
Most often, in all my games, I get concrete much earlier than nailgun
You only take into account some general/average development paths.

The problem is not getting concrete. If you luck out you can get concrete on day 1. The problem is quantity, which requires cement mix, stone and sand. The first is easily looted, but stone and sand are only gained very slowly until you have good tools and mining skills. To make a whole base out of concrete requires a LOT of stone and sand. Now if we are talking about only 1000 or 2000 concrete on key places then you can quickly upgrade everything with a claw hammer. If we are talking about a 30x30 base with three floors 5m each then we are talking about 33,600 concrete for outer walls and 67,280 concrete for the floors. That's over 100k concrete requiring 100k stone and 100k sand for a small base, and that takes a long time.

 

For the amount of concrete that is practical early game, a claw hammer is fast enough. If you have the resources to make a 100k concrete base and you do not have a nailgun, something is wrong.

5 minutes ago, mstdv inc said:

Can you tell us which stream @faatal will be on?

He said two weeks from yesterday.

[JCrook1028]

22 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

I wasn't talking about that... maybe read again the post I replied to.

Your post was responding to having to break up blocks if you made a mistake as compared to picking up rebar saying that Madmole wouldn't like that so it must not be like that. It IS exactly that. There are no rebar. To build concrete you lay a concrete block and if you place it wrong you have to break it up. Either upgrade to concrete from wood frames if you want to pick them up or lay concrete blocks and break them upon a mistake positioning them. Your choice but those are your two choices.

[Roland]

1 hour ago, Morloc said:

 

I (think) there also used to be a ropey frame for building with stone (flagstone, cobblestone, other??) in like alpha 5-ish?. You'd lay out the frames, and when you "built" them they'd visibly fill with stone...in layers. Like 4-6 layers to complete the block if I remember right. So...if you were building a wall, and put 10 of these in a row, you'd slowly raise the height of the wall as you clicked each frame. Kinda' immersive.

 

 

-Arch Necromancer Morloc

Yes, that was the one I was talking about when I said cobblestone frame. It was pretty cool throwing rocks into it.

[Morloc]

Hmmm...I'd thought there was a cobblestone frame that worked more or less like concrete/rebar too.

 

My memory is likely sour.

 

 

 

-Arch Necromancer Morloc

[JCrook1028]

2 hours ago, MechanicalLens said:

If you are really that concerned, then lay out that entire build out with particle board and then replace each block one by one with a full version of a higher upgrade type once you're finished

The problem comes with the lower SI of the wood frames as compared to the old rebar frames. Metal has more SI. This new system seems to be leading to not being able to lay out high SI use structures with frames at all and requiring the use of final solid blocks.

[dcsobral]

23 minutes ago, JCrook1028 said:

The problem comes with the lower SI of the wood frames as compared to the old rebar frames. Metal has more SI. This new system seems to be leading to not being able to lay out high SI use structures with frames at all and requiring the use of final solid blocks.

Well, you couldn't do that either in alpha 18 or previous alphas either. Rebar was heavier and had more structural integrity than concrete and to get around that you had to go through hoops much more complex than what seems to be coming on alpha 20.

 

And you forgot a third alternative. Put temporary extra support.

Edited September 16, 2021 by dcsobral
typo (see edit history)

[JCrook1028]

2 minutes ago, dcsobral said:

Well, you couldn't do that either in alpha 18 or previous alphas either. Rebar was heavier and had more structural integrity than concrete and to get around that you get to go through hoops much more complex than what seems to be coming on alpha 20.

 

 

Aye, I know. But A19 it was sweet to have strong and efficient rebar frames to work with. My 2cents? I'll miss rebar. ymmv.

[bdubyah]

So, I'm no watching any of the streams as I don't want to see all the new stuff beforehand, but with the new RWG did they show any roads and stuff? Are they improved over the jagged, mini-cliff mess that a19 has? As I've said before, the cities and stuff look great now, but they were already decent before. I'm more curious if the worse parts of RWG have gotten better.

[unholyjoe]

45 minutes ago, Roland said:

Yes, that was the one I was talking about when I said cobblestone frame. It was pretty cool throwing rocks into it.

Blast From the Past for you...

 

 

[crazywildfire]

1 minute ago, bdubyah said:

So, I'm no watching any of the streams as I don't want to see all the new stuff beforehand, but with the new RWG did they show any roads and stuff? Are they improved over the jagged, mini-cliff mess that a19 has? As I've said before, the cities and stuff look great now, but they were already decent before. I'm more curious if the worse parts of RWG have gotten better.

 

RWG not been shown yet. Last night was about POI. From the pics shown it looks better but no videos or details yet 

[Jost Amman]

56 minutes ago, JCrook1028 said:

Your post was responding to having to break up blocks if you made a mistake as compared to picking up rebar saying that Madmole wouldn't like that so it must not be like that. It IS exactly that. There are no rebar. To build concrete you lay a concrete block and if you place it wrong you have to break it up. Either upgrade to concrete from wood frames if you want to pick them up or lay concrete blocks and break them upon a mistake positioning them. Your choice but those are your two choices.

Dude, when I was writing that reply to you, NO ONE had explained how it works right now in A20.

It's easy to know that after Roland's reply, is it?

 

But before we knew that I was saying that even if rebar frames are missing I'd imagined Madmole (or some QA guy) would have found a different way to make it sleek.

Got it?

1 hour ago, dcsobral said:

Length of day changes nothing. Your chance of getting a nailgun depends on your gamestage, and the gamestage also controls what sort of zombies you get. Cement mix is the easiest part. You then have to turn it into concrete mix which requires stone and sand in large quantities, and mining stone early game is very time consuming.

To clarify: I was talking about buying concrete mix from the trader (sorry for the typo).

 

The length of day changes everything, because you have more time to loot buildings (pallets) and/or get money to buy that concrete.

Also, my direct experience in game, is that I seldom find a Nail Gun in the first week or two (depending on luck).

I don't know what to say, maybe you're much luckier or just better players than me, I guess. 

[BFT2020]

1 hour ago, Roland said:

Yes, that was the one I was talking about when I said cobblestone frame. It was pretty cool throwing rocks into it.

Okay that makes a lot more sense.  When you said cobblestone frame existed, I was trying to figure out how a frame made of cobblestones worked

[Roland]

I just wonder if this is the precursor to a full blown Rebar Gate once the build goes public and the wider audience comes to complain. Its been awhile since we've had a big gate on the forum. A19 was so....uncontroversial.

[jorbascrumps]

2 minutes ago, Roland said:

I just wonder if this is the precursor to a full blown Rebar Gate once the build goes public and the wider audience comes to complain. Its been awhile since we've had a big gate on the forum. A19 was so....uncontroversial.

 

Oh gosh, I had forgotten how many #gates we used to have.

[Matt115]

3 hours ago, Roland said:

 

If you upgrade that slider to 300% you will still get a defence and tons of walls and spikes by building and more xp for doing so than if you kept it at 100%. 

 

I don't know the exact gain in xp for doing a full upgrade path to steel but Im thinking it will probably be less than it was in A19 since there are fewer steps. But it isn't like builders have been barely keeping up with friends who go out and quest and kill. Its more like the other way around. Perhaps it is a bit more even now and in my opinion it would  be better to be a bit less. You know? Risk vs reward and all that?

honestly i can't agree - focusing on mining and upgrading change you in dwarve - top stuff , a lot of food but lack of skill in fight because you invest everything in development.

Scavenger should be like orc- a lot of perks in fight but using just junk. so i would ever nerf looting- if you want good stuff you need to make it on. 

Like- you risk a lot but the most probably people lot this place long long ago. Now if you want to have something you must do this.  Like - 1 yo of zombie outbreake you have civilisation level similiar to L4D2 , 2-10 year - food is almost done most of cities is destroyed.  10-50 yo - most of the world is devasted and full of long forgotten ruins when bandits fight each other and zombies  but first settlemenst are  creating(7dtd period), 50-100 - people still use things before outbreak but are rare. bandits are almost wiped out. 100-??  people forget a lot of knowledge - something similiar to horizon zero dawn

[BFT2020]

5 minutes ago, Matt115 said:

honestly i can't agree - focusing on mining and upgrading change you in dwarve - top stuff , a lot of food but lack of skill in fight because you invest everything in development.

Scavenger should be like orc- a lot of perks in fight but using just junk. so i would ever nerf looting- if you want good stuff you need to make it on. 

Like- you risk a lot but the most probably people lot this place long long ago. Now if you want to have something you must do this.  Like - 1 yo of zombie outbreake you have civilisation level similiar to L4D2 , 2-10 year - food is almost done most of cities is destroyed.  10-50 yo - most of the world is devasted and full of long forgotten ruins when bandits fight each other and zombies  but first settlemenst are  creating(7dtd period), 50-100 - people still use things before outbreak but are rare. bandits are almost wiped out. 100-??  people forget a lot of knowledge - something similiar to horizon zero dawn

If you can go INT build and still kick zombie butt, you don't lack the skills just because you invested either in building or mining activities.

[Matt115]

52 minutes ago, BFT2020 said:

If you can go INT build and still kick zombie butt, you don't lack the skills just because you invested either in building or mining activities.

Honestly i mean "developing" build, not INT  build - i mean you put everything to get top chef at least on 3 lvl, max in miner and mother lode, advance engineering and living of the land - diffrent categories but everything connected  with production