Zombies seem smarter?

[The_Great_Sephiroth]

I haven't played in a while but have been playing a lot recently. I am seeing something odd though. While zeds will still run through barbed wire and blade traps, they seem to take out electric fence posts every single time. I have eight blocks between them and still, they run for the posts, usually the first or second one, and take it down to 49hp and then they start storming the other defenses. Is this normal? If they are smart enough to take out the one post that powers the rest, how about upping them to 5,000 durability? I have literally seen four or five zeds crouched around a post attacking it. I can't kill them all before the entire defense is down.

 

Also, is it just me or do we get WAY more 7.62mm ammo than anything else? I have one column of 9mm, almost one column of .44, and almost one column of shotgun shells, but I have four columns of 7.62mm ammo. Seems odd. All of this ammo was looted.

[RipClaw]

I have not yet been able to observe this behavior. However, I usually protect my electric fences by placing them behind a wall. Maybe they attack the fence posts because they are the weakest blocks.

[The_Great_Sephiroth]

I get that, but my fence lines a pit. It's literally 8 blocks of nothing but the wire, then the post, repeat all the way around. They flock to the post when they could easily run through the wire to get down to where I am waiting in the pit.

[stample]

They randomly attack any blocks if they can't find a clear path to you.  Is the pit you're in a drop-off that they don't want to jump off of?

[Riamus]

I haven't really noticed with electric fences but it does seem they attack defenses more often than they used to.  Before, they rarely went after guns and focused on reaching me.  Now, they seem to target guns they can reach before worrying about me.  At least some of them do.  It isn't a big deal; I just get more creative on placement.  But it does seem different.

[theFlu]

28 minutes ago, stample said:

They randomly attack any blocks if they can't find a clear path to you.  Is the pit you're in a drop-off that they don't want to jump off of?

This, they're likely in destroy area mode, hitting whatever block is at face height nearby. And your "it's nothing but the fences and the pit" seems to indicate that there's nothing else to hit. I do find it funny that they leave them alone below 50 hp, but there could be some "save the trap" mechanic tied to the fence, who knows.

 

Give them a path they Think they can follow, or give them something else at face height to beat on.

[The_Great_Sephiroth]

The pit is five stories deep. I'm at the bottom. They fall onto barbed wire, crawl through five rows of it, hit electric fences dug one block down (this gets crawlers and such) that are under blade traps mounted upside-down at neck-height (stun them so they can't move while being decapitated), then auto-turrets, then me. It worked REALLY well in A19. Now they seem to run to the posts and hammer on them.

[RipClaw]

32 minutes ago, The_Great_Sephiroth said:

It worked REALLY well in A19. Now they seem to run to the posts and hammer on them.

There is a difference in the behavior of the zombies compared to A19. A small portion of the zombies randomly go into area destruction mode. In addition, they also go into area destruction mode when other zombies are blocking the path.
 

[theFlu]

Even then, they shouldn't really be hitting anything at leg height. The 49 hp is the cutoff point where an Electric Fence stops stunning zombies, so it sounds like you're just "consuming" all of the post. I think they take more damage now than they did before, but I'm not sure when the change was (or if there actually was one..).

 

Are you Sure they're beating on the fences, and not for instance on the blade traps as it sounds like those are at face height?

[The_Great_Sephiroth]

I am referring to the rows above the pit. Imagine a flat area. Put electric fence-posts up in a square. Horde night comes. They go right for the first fence-post in the loop almost every time, rendering the entire thing useless.

[theFlu]

13 hours ago, The_Great_Sephiroth said:

I am referring to the rows above the pit.

Ok, so, from your earlier post, this is the part that doesn't actually work:

21 hours ago, The_Great_Sephiroth said:

They fall onto barbed wire

Instead, they stay on top bashing your fences?

 

I haven't seen anything that would suggest that zeds are attacking traps in particular, esp not smartly in order of importance. Zeds do not like to take jumps where they take damage from landing, that's a new feature; they'll go and dig the sides of a pit instead, or attack random stuff. If all you have on top to attack is fences, those are the random stuff.

 

Then again, A21! Almost time to see what else has broken in the designs ..

[stample]

Yep, sounds like your pit is too deep and most don't want to run off it and go into destroy mode.  I fixed this by thinking more like an Ant Lion. instead of a sheer drop, do a vertical wedge slope until the last 2 blocks.  Then, run electric fences across the gap, rather than the edge, so they fall through them.  Protect them with the overhanging lip of the steep ramp, and low enough that you can reach up to repair them.

[4sheetzngeegles]

As of alpha 17 i first noticed, pathing changes. Madmole posted something similar to there will
be nowhere to hide. Watching the ai make steps in blocks and destroy the rest was exciting and
a bit scary to be truthful. So I looked at the ai commands and weighted values. They are more
detailed than before, extended what if parameters added. It's like a combination

fuzzy logic/neural net hybrid now.

 

But that opens up more options, so thumbs up.

[The_Great_Sephiroth]

That will make it less fun. Zombies aren't supposed to be smart. They're supposed to be very powerful, very dumb killing machines. If they play like the bots in UT2004 then give me an ASMD shock rifle.

 

Don't get me wrong, I don't want a "sit back and watch them die" setup, but I don't want them so smart I can't survive a horde night either. I love the traps we have. I love using them. That's what makes the game fun for me. Designing a base protected by crazy, Looney-Tunes style traps that cut off heads and shock the enemies.

[Riamus]

1 minute ago, The_Great_Sephiroth said:

That will make it less fun. Zombies aren't supposed to be smart. They're supposed to be very powerful, very dumb killing machines. If they play like the bots in UT2004 then give me an ASMD shock rifle.

 

Don't get me wrong, I don't want a "sit back and watch them die" setup, but I don't want them so smart I can't survive a horde night either. I love the traps we have. I love using them. That's what makes the game fun for me. Designing a base protected by crazy, Looney-Tunes style traps that cut off heads and shock the enemies.

It isn't that bad, really.  If you take into account that defenses should have some protection, they are easy enough to set up.  The zombies rarely attack my blade traps even when they are out in the middle of a kill zone.  Turrets are really the only things I see them trying to attack and placement of those isn't difficult to avoid damage.  Only the electric fences can be challenging to place safely but the wires go through anything, so it isn't that hard to set them up so they are less likely to be damaged beyond what happens when they hit a zombie.  It may not look as nice but it works well enough.  I'm fine with the destruction mode since zombies will use as it keeps everyone from walking a perfect line to you.