issue with zombies digging under my downtown base

[aleida]

I live in the snow biome in one of the small clock towers. I live upstairs in the tiny attic wile im building some raid base structures in the garden. I havent walled off the outer walls or the clocktower. They have a free pathing to me at all times (besides horde night). During the nights I have feral sense on and im visited by 10-20 zombies every night who find their way up to me in the attic. So far so good. I havent dug or build underground besides a small fall pit in the garden for horde nights.

 

I noticed one zombie had broken a floortile and was chilling in the hole. So i went to investigate. I found huge tunnels below my base, below the streets all the way to near poi's. The zombies are spawning in nearby poi's and try to find their way to me by breaking concrete walls in the basement and digging their way to me. Its a tunnel warzone below my base now. 

 

Ive pached it up by going into godmode and fortifying the basements of the poi's around me that have tunnels to my base with 3 layers of  concrete walls and filling up the tunnels with concrete as well. So for now it shouldnt be an issue in my gameplay. 

 

But this seems like an unintended part of the digging mechanic, thats why im posting this. Surely its not the purpose of the game for the zombies to dig a huge cave below me when they can reach me day and night. 

 

[meganoth]

Do you mean the digging down mechanic? Has nothing to do with this as the zombies start in the underground and dig horizontal tunnels to you. And breaking walls was in their genes since alpha 1 I would guess.

 

The change in alpha 20 is that towns have a sewer system now and buildings are closer to each other. The result is that POIs have still big advantages saving you material and build time, but they now come with a big downside or potential danger too. I don't speak for the developers but I think this is a better balance than before, whether intended or not.

 

You did the right counter-measure, though I would have played it out and closed them without god-mode.

 

A word of warning. At the moment there is a bug with SI so that blocks are often not recalculated if blocks underneath them are filled in. You may have filled the holes but SI is probably still incorrect for your base. You should use the debug-mode(?) command to recalculate stability once. The bug itself will probably be fixed in A20.1

 

Edited January 14, 2022 by meganoth (see edit history)

[Boidster]

2 hours ago, meganoth said:

Do you mean the digging down mechanic? Has nothing to do with this as the zombies start in the underground and dig horizontal tunnels to you. And breaking walls was in their genes since alpha 1 I would guess.

 

Sounded to me like the question was, "why don't they just exit their POI and walk across the street?" I assume the pathing cost to get out of their POI was more expensive than [break through basement wall] + [dig 30m horizontally]. If this is an intended mechanic, wow it's pretty devious. *shakes tiny fist at TFP* Now we gotta dig a moat around POIs and fill it in with concrete to slow down the zombie worms!

 

"Honey! There's zombies in the basement again, did you put out traps?"  

[meganoth]

34 minutes ago, Boidster said:

 

Sounded to me like the question was, "why don't they just exit their POI and walk across the street?" I assume the pathing cost to get out of their POI was more expensive than [break through basement wall] + [dig 30m horizontally]. If this is an intended mechanic, wow it's pretty devious. *shakes tiny fist at TFP* Now we gotta dig a moat around POIs and fill it in with concrete to slow down the zombie worms!

 

"Honey! There's zombies in the basement again, did you put out traps?"  

 

Ok, if that is the question:

 

Lots of POIs have cellars without a direct unobstructed path to the outside (for example if you drop down from the ceiling somewhere to get inside, or simply because of unlocked but closed doors. 

 

Also length of path adds to the pathing cost and there is a maximum length of path that is calculated

 

[BarryTGash]

I swear zombies have a vindictive mode. That's why

 

I've been face to face with several individual zombies that, instead of lunging for me, turn around and start wailing on my wall. Dude! What the hell - I'm right in front of you! Come and hit me - I heal cheaply. That wall requires concrete/steel!

[Roland]

6 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

Ok, if that is the question:

 

Lots of POIs have cellars without a direct unobstructed path to the outside (for example if you drop down from the ceiling somewhere to get inside, or simply because of unlocked but closed doors. 

 

Also length of path adds to the pathing cost and there is a maximum length of path that is calculated

 

 

But wouldn't those basements effectively be empty until the exploring player drew close enough to activate their sleeper volumes? Why would conscious zombies be spawning in basements of nearby POIs while the guy is up in the top of the clock tower? He shouldn't be close enough to trigger a basement sleeper volume and wilderness spawns are on the streets. How are these tunnelers trapped at the basement level spawning?

Edited January 15, 2022 by Roland (see edit history)

[meganoth]

Do wilderness spawns (or screamer spawns or wandering hordes) necessarily spawn on the streets?

[Ghostlight]

You should always live in a simple box base on very very flat ground (no hills) and not very near any POIs (I like at least 100m away from nearest POI). And do not make any mines near it either (found that out the hard way). This way you will never have tunnelling weirdness from the zombies. They will come at you over the flat surface every time. You can make you horde-killer base anywhere else.

Edited January 15, 2022 by Ghostlight (see edit history)

[meganoth]

No thanks, I like to live dangerously.

 

Once we had our base in a high tower from compopack and our miner thought it was a good idea do dig below it. Suddenly a part of our horde base was collapsing with filled boxes and all. Ah, good times 🤪

 

Really, events like this can spice up a world if you already played lots and lots of samey worlds.

 

Naturally it is very different for people playing insane dead-is-dead or with loot frequency really low for example. If I played such a game (with much lower margin of error) I would act differently.

 

[Sjustus548]

We've had some strange issues with zombie pathfinding in this build.  While we are finding a good place to build our base we are staying on the roof of this building close to the trader.  The zombies love to go inside and beat on the walls.  This makes sense when we are on the roof because they can't get to us up there.  The weird part is when we are on the street outside of the building fighting zombies and one will look at use, walk into the building, and start beating on the wall.  I don't know if they can now sense we have stuff up there now or maybe there is some residual heat from the two campfires and one forge we have up there, they are off unless we are up there.  This is a constant thing and we aren't sure why they keep doing it.  It's gotten so bad that I'm about to put shotgun turrets in there just to kill the zombies that keep going in there.  There have been times where we will be on the side of the building where we keep the motorcycles, a zombie will walk around the front corner of the building, see us, then turn around to go inside of the building to start beating on the walls.  I feel like they are vindictive toddlers sometimes where they want me to know they are doing something that I specifically told them not to lol.

[hiemfire]

7 hours ago, meganoth said:

Really, events like this can spice up a world if you already played lots and lots of samey worlds.

 

If spice is what you're after with base building there is a trailer above a gully on the east edge of the wasteland in Navezgane iirc (just over the hill east of the abandoned settlement south of Gravestown). Wandering hordes pop up in the gully and dig their way to their destination since it is 3 sheer cliff faces near the trailer and a terrain ramp up leading north away from the trailer. It's where I built my first zombie fountain thanks to their undermining of my base, though apparently that wouldn't work in A20. Something is up with ladders that have air blocks above them stopping zombie pathing the ladders.

Edited January 15, 2022 by hiemfire (see edit history)

[Boidster]

7 hours ago, meganoth said:

Once we had our base in a high tower from compopack and our miner thought it was a good idea do dig below it. Suddenly a part of our horde base was collapsing with filled boxes and all.

 

Well, it's always unfortunate when you have to kick a friend out of your gamer group...

 

53 minutes ago, Sjustus548 said:

There have been times where we will be on the side of the building where we keep the motorcycles, a zombie will walk around the front corner of the building, see us, then turn around to go inside of the building to start beating on the walls.

 

They're just extras filming an episode of Property Zombies. Doing demo on that ugly mid-century wainscoting in the foyer.