My stockade base design isn't viable anymore, as of Alpha 20 :(

[Boidster]

There is no cheese, except possibly if you leverage knowledge that the survivor, observing his environment, could not possibly know. Otherwise, did you survive the attack? Good for you, well played.

 

A death funnel? OMG that cheese is aged AF...

[SheeleMara]

 Curious, built a little 7x7 double wall box fort for the Day 15 Horde (3 Day Variance) with Concrete Outer Walls, 2 Layers of Spikes, 1 Layer of Barbed Wire Fence, and a space between a final outer layer of spikes. Shifted positions when the zombies made it through one section of traps, kept blasting away. Despite Zombies beating on one section of wall for an excessive long time at the end the wall only suffered roughly 50% HP Loss, wonder if the Zombies are able to hit less accurately if they're on Nightmare Speed instead of Default for Horde Night?

[Desert Rat]

On 12/16/2021 at 9:20 PM, RossLGould said:

Oh.

I had exported the finishing product as a POI but, apparently, Alpha 20 doesn't like Alpha 19 POIs.

Do you know if there is any way I can convert it to an Alpha 20 POI-- or will I have to build it all over from scratch?

There is indeed a tool to convert A19 prefabs to A20. It's very simple to use and it works well. I converted a half dozen of my A19 base builds and have successfully placed them into an A20 world.

[Fox]

All those who obsess and cry about ppl who make "cheese" builds... there's a good reason why we build them... they work! They have worked since Alpha 1 and no matter what the devs do and no matter how many times they claim cheese builds won't work for long... they always will. You're simply just jealous because nothing you build will ever be as comparable in defense reliability and ease of creation.

 

As you can see, the tower is raised up by 2 blocks (solid concrete core foundation) so even if they did manage to bust inside, they still can't climb up to get me because zombies are dumb and won't break blocks strategically. 3 rows of optional endgame electric fencing around the base + 1 going up the stairs (all are safe behind concrete, but accessible for annoying maintenance). 10 rows of metal spikes, 5 rows of barbed wire.

 

With electric fencing, zombies never make it past those at all since the AK ensures it. Without, they make it roughly half way with the AK, or they can nearly make it to the base if I just sit there and do nothing at all during the entire bloodmoon (dogs can maybe make it to the base, but 1 or 2 barely alive dogs reaching the base is laughable). Warrior? (3/5 on server settings) difficulty.

 

And it doesn't need to be a tower base design either... I've done the upside down pyramid design too which was neat and offered even more rows of spikes under it (though you can't really upgrade the bottom part without risking it collapsing, so build with concrete only), as well as normal pyramid base design which offered less but still worked (I didn't care for it though). Spikes and barbed wire combo are reliable and offer predictable results... electrics are not but they do compliment the spikes and barbed wires very well. Blade traps and turrets... in my opinion, not worth it.

 

 

Edited February 18, 2022 by Fox (see edit history)

[pahbi]

Once I have the materials, this is the horde base I use in A20.  No cheese, no trick blocks and its insanely effective, it has relatively few parts, is super easy to repair, and easily lines zombies up for head shots.

 

I build mine without the dart traps.

 

You could probably make this with cobblestone and it would be just fine.

 

What I'd really like to do is combine this with my crafting base for a total solution.  I really don't like having a separate horde and crating base.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 18, 2022 by pahbi (see edit history)

[Fox]

1 hour ago, pahbi said:

Once I have the materials, this is the horde base I use in A20.  No cheese, no trick blocks and its insanely effective, it has relatively few parts, is super easy to repair, and easily lines zombies up for head shots.

 

I build mine without the dart traps.

 

You could probably make this with cobblestone and it would be just fine.

 

What I'd really like to do is combine this with my crafting base for a total solution.  I really don't like having a separate horde and crating base.

 

 

 

 

And what happens if a demolisher or cop does explode? They are kind of unpredictable after all. Somehow I doubt that outpost would survive a single explosion at all.

 

Seems like a high risk end-game outpost to me, especially if you make it into your base with all your important stuff inside it.

 

I imagine that the devs could easily edit some minor code to make that outpost no longer work at all if they wanted to.

 

It is an interesting / fun design though, I'll give it that.

Edited February 18, 2022 by Fox (see edit history)

[pahbi]

1 hour ago, Fox said:

And what happens if a demolisher or cop does explode? They are kind of unpredictable after all. Somehow I doubt that outpost would survive a single explosion at all.

 

Seems like a high risk end-game outpost to me, especially if you make it into your base with all your important stuff inside it.

 

I imagine that the devs could easily edit some minor code to make that outpost no longer work at all if they wanted to.

 

It is an interesting / fun design though, I'll give it that.

 

Demolishers are easy peasy.

 

Watch the video, the very first thing you see is a demolisher walk up the ramp, get decapitated and fall over dead.  You can let the blades kill them, or you can hit them with a few head shots while they are stunned.

 

I've had zero problems with cops, demolishers or anything else.  Pointing a gun at a demolishers head nearly point blank and blowing it off, is a ton of fun.

 

Early game, if the base is made of cobblestone, it might be a little susceptible to cops if one ever actually did explode, but once you have concrete walls, its game over for zeds.

 

Edited February 18, 2022 by pahbi (see edit history)

[Fox]

21 minutes ago, pahbi said:

 

Demolishers are easy peasy.

 

Watch the video, the very first thing you see is a demolisher walk up the ramp, get decapitated and fall over dead.  You can let the blades kill them, or you can hit them with a few head shots while they are stunned.

 

I've had zero problems with cops, demolishers or anything else.  Pointing a gun at a demolishers head nearly point blank and blowing it off, is a ton of fun.

 

Early game, if the base is made of cobblestone, it might be a little susceptible to cops if one ever actually did explode, but once you have concrete walls, its game over for zeds.

 

I did watch the video... and the guy even admitted that the outpost has some limitations, like upredictable cop and demolisher behavior that could ruin your day as well as the fact that it's limited to 8 spawn bloodmoons only.

Edited February 18, 2022 by Fox (see edit history)

[pahbi]

19 hours ago, Fox said:

I did watch the video... and the guy even admitted that the outpost has some limitations, like upredictable cop and demolisher behavior that could ruin your day as well as the fact that it's limited to 8 spawn bloodmoons only.

 

I guess...

 

I'm only on day 50 at the moment, so maybe later on I'll have to move on to something else.

 

I don't use the base passively, I play 16 spawn bloodmoons and headshot ~85% of the stuff that pops around the corner.  So far I haven't had the least bit of worry.  The main thing is to keep the fences and fans repaired.

 

 

Edited February 19, 2022 by pahbi (see edit history)

[Fox]

Hmm, ok. Maybe he was just being cautious with his claims. I might give it a go someday if I ever decide to use dart traps.

[Roland]

2 hours ago, Fox said:

if I ever decide to use dart traps.

 

LMAO...that's me too!!!

 

I've never once tried them since they were introduced. Keep telling myself I need to and even crafted a couple of them my last game but they just sat in the workbench output and we ended up restarting a new world with 20.2 so....still nope...lol

Edited February 19, 2022 by Roland (see edit history)

[pahbi]

I skip the dart traps, but maybe dart traps and additional turrets are the key to using the base once the zeds get super tough to kill.

 

 

[Fox]

43 minutes ago, Roland said:

 

LMAO...that's me too!!!

 

I've never once tried them since they were introduced. Keep telling myself I need to and even crafted a couple of them my last game but they just sat in the workbench output and we ended up restarting a new world with 20.2 so....still nope...lol

Well, for me, I was very disappointed with the turrets, so I figured dart traps sound even weaker and likely consume just as much ammo... so why bother?

[theFlu]

7 hours ago, Fox said:

Well, for me, I was very disappointed with the turrets, so I figured dart traps sound even weaker and likely consume just as much ammo... so why bother?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you're making ̃̃ 400 block trap fields as your basic setup? In your case, yeah, don't bother. In any case where the zeds manage to gather somewhere or run a line, they're all right. A little on the expensive side in iron, but nothing unmanageable as a miner.

[Boidster]

Dart traps are among our favorites for any pathway/funnel base. They are absolute murder in groups and don't trigger the demos. Our last base had 12 traps (3 wide x 2 high on both sides of a hallway) and it was a very rare Z that survived the gantlet. Most of the time we'd be at our "shooting window" looking down at the incoming Zs and just hear the occasional FFT...FFT...FFT of the traps behind us takin' care of bidness. Rarely went through more than 100-200 darts in any one machine. Oh, they were backed up by electric fences through the centerlines of the traps, so the Zs had to patiently wait for a moment as they got their acupuncture.

 

We even used them in a standard box base (like Fox's, only not quite as big). After crunching through rows of barbed wire and under fire from elevated turrets, Zs encountered four 3-wide pressure-plate "bridges" across a 1-deep moat close to the base wall. So from any direction, the Zs could choose to cross a bridge to attack the base. Except of course the pressure plates activated 6x dart traps facing out. Many Zs died on those bridges. All the traps were accessible from inside the base for easy repairs/restocking. It worked pretty well, but the base just became too time-consuming to maintain.

[Roland]

3 hours ago, Boidster said:

Many Zs died on those bridges

[pahbi]

On 2/19/2022 at 6:58 PM, Boidster said:

Dart traps are among our favorites for any pathway/funnel base. They are absolute murder in groups and don't trigger the demos. Our last base had 12 traps (3 wide x 2 high on both sides of a hallway) and it was a very rare Z that survived the gantlet. Most of the time we'd be at our "shooting window" looking down at the incoming Zs and just hear the occasional FFT...FFT...FFT of the traps behind us takin' care of bidness. Rarely went through more than 100-200 darts in any one machine. Oh, they were backed up by electric fences through the centerlines of the traps, so the Zs had to patiently wait for a moment as they got their acupuncture.

 

We even used them in a standard box base (like Fox's, only not quite as big). After crunching through rows of barbed wire and under fire from elevated turrets, Zs encountered four 3-wide pressure-plate "bridges" across a 1-deep moat close to the base wall. So from any direction, the Zs could choose to cross a bridge to attack the base. Except of course the pressure plates activated 6x dart traps facing out. Many Zs died on those bridges. All the traps were accessible from inside the base for easy repairs/restocking. It worked pretty well, but the base just became too time-consuming to maintain.

 

Maybe I could funnel the zombies into a path and use electric fence to slow them down, and dart traps to kill them.

 

Darts are way cheaper and easier to make than bullets for turrets.

 

I integrated the base from the earlier video into my crafting base.  So far its holding up pretty good, I do 16 zombie hordes every 3 nights, when demolishers come around I just throw out a molotov and let the fans kill them.

 

As long as I keep everything repaired, I think this will last a while.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 21, 2022 by pahbi (see edit history)

[pahbi]

So a demolisher finally exploded, it took out both fan blades, and damaged a bunch of concrete, but the electric fences survived.

 

As expected the zombies started going straight for the weakened blocks, but I repaired them and the zombies got back on track.

 

The fences and a single turret kept enemies at bay long enough for me to run inside, get 2 new blade traps, put them in place and wire them back in and I was back in business.

 

Pretty fun actually...

 

 

[BFT2020]

On 2/19/2022 at 6:58 PM, Boidster said:

Dart traps are among our favorites for any pathway/funnel base. They are absolute murder in groups and don't trigger the demos. Our last base had 12 traps (3 wide x 2 high on both sides of a hallway) and it was a very rare Z that survived the gantlet. Most of the time we'd be at our "shooting window" looking down at the incoming Zs and just hear the occasional FFT...FFT...FFT of the traps behind us takin' care of bidness. Rarely went through more than 100-200 darts in any one machine. Oh, they were backed up by electric fences through the centerlines of the traps, so the Zs had to patiently wait for a moment as they got their acupuncture.

 

We even used them in a standard box base (like Fox's, only not quite as big). After crunching through rows of barbed wire and under fire from elevated turrets, Zs encountered four 3-wide pressure-plate "bridges" across a 1-deep moat close to the base wall. So from any direction, the Zs could choose to cross a bridge to attack the base. Except of course the pressure plates activated 6x dart traps facing out. Many Zs died on those bridges. All the traps were accessible from inside the base for easy repairs/restocking. It worked pretty well, but the base just became too time-consuming to maintain.

 

The only downside I found on using so many dart traps was constantly keeping them filled between bloodmoons.  The last base I had with a dart trap setup like you are describing, I think I had 2-3 forges setup just to mass produce darts.  Typically had to spend 1-2 days mining iron ore and gathering clay for them.

 

Weird thing though, never found it tedious doing that.....

[Roland]

1 hour ago, BFT2020 said:

Weird thing though, never found it tedious doing that.....

 

yeah but there's the new sound now....

[pahbi]

1 hour ago, BFT2020 said:

 

The only downside I found on using so many dart traps was constantly keeping them filled between bloodmoons.  The last base I had with a dart trap setup like you are describing, I think I had 2-3 forges setup just to mass produce darts.  Typically had to spend 1-2 days mining iron ore and gathering clay for them.

 

Weird thing though, never found it tedious doing that.....

 

I tried the dart traps, they do ok, but I get enough loot from blood moons to keep 2 shotgun turrets fully stocked, so I replaced the dart traps with shotguns.

 

I'm gonna give this melee base a try to, it looks fun.