Zombie AI

[Poro]

I've seen a few threads around social media (Facebook, Reddit, Discord, etc) where some people bemoan the Zombie's AI, how they're super smart, auger hands, and so on, and how that "leads" players to cheese the AI with fancy bases to exploit the pathing.

However what if we had certain zombies keep the current AI, and some the old "dumb" AI? Say all zombies except the Bikers, Soliders, Ferals, Demolition and Cop zombies get the "dumb" AI and those exceptions get the smart one? How I think this would shake things up is this: Imagine a base made for the Bloom Moon Horde, designed for a killing corridor where zombies path to it for efficient killing. This works for a while, except the "dumb" zombies attack other parts of the base, eventually creating a new weak point where even the smart zombies path to. Now that killing corridor is useless. This should lead to more varied base types, and curb some of the "cheese" bases.

Thanks for coming to my TedTalk

[doughphunghus]

I think it would be cool (since there are so few types/variations of zed ) id they beefed up the AI a bit to allow for each zed to have a unique “personality”. Similar to the screamer, demo, cop, and crawler (each has its own unique thing), they could make them all be unique in some small way.  They kinda do this now with the “walk type” and that’s a good example but they all attack/approach similar. Maybe one zed prefers general destruction, one likes to run and then crawl randomly, maybe one type always beelines to you in your base and another likes to get as far from you as possible and attacks there. They don’t all need special powers (jump, vomit) they just need “unique ways to go after you” so a basic kill corridor is not guaranteed to work great. 

 

then modders can just “put it all back” if you want a simpler challenge, or ramp it up by having more AI tasks to play with. I heard bandits may be able to use doors (or seek them out) encouraging you to lock your doors (probably) but it would also be cool if they could activate switches and workstations (burns fuel, and generates heat for screamers) if you can’t turn it off because you’re fighting. It would be neat IMhO if zeds/:bandits of a certain kind would apecifically target your battery bank/generator/storage/lights etc and not just you, making it hard to keep everything protected.