How are you dealing with the increased chance of spawning a screamer?

[theFlu]

By offering them delicious sacrifices it seems. Showed up to my home tunnels after a trader trip... the place should be unpathable, and I saw no new damage to the exterior, yet both of my campfires had been eaten. That blueberry pie must've smelled great. Also some other random damage in the place, but lost nothing else.. one beaker the biggest loss (and even that was pointlessly in the campfire.. =/ )

 

 

[GigglingZombie]

i can confirm that screamers and other zombies will attack your home even when you're far away; i'd gone off to do some raiding and came back to half the roof collapsed, loads of debris and 2 dew collectors missing from the roof.   i'd put up some shotgun or smg turrets to babysit my home while i'm away, but of course they're not available early game. i had left forge and a workbench doing stuff before i left, so that attracted them.  of course i could turn those off while away but that defeats the object of using your (limited) in-game time properly. ah well will just have to go with it, though i do think the screamer mechanic was infinitely better in A21. recently in mutiplayer we've been inundated with 2 screamers at once, and sometimes they only murmur and that's enough for them to summon a sea of death. The increased difficulty this brings is still fun, however it's too easy to lose your home and stuff now

Edited August 31 by GigglingZombie (see edit history)

[ElCabong]

I'm starting a new game and being very careful how long I keep the campfire and/or forge on.

Later on I don't worry about it too much

[pApA^LeGBa]

@GigglingZombie We have played quite a while now and are on our 2nd playtrough day 41. We have 5 forges running 24/7, chemstations, campfires  and torches. And no defense what so ever. No turrets,  no spikes, no glitchy blocks like the ramp 0.6,  just a single layer cobblestone wall, not even concrete. Never even once something was damaged while we were away.

 

Chunks you can´t see aren´t loaded. They basically don´t exist if you can´t see them, otherwise even supercomputers couldn´t run this game. There is something else going on.

Edited September 1 by pApA^LeGBa (see edit history)

[theFlu]

On 8/31/2024 at 1:20 PM, GigglingZombie said:

i'd gone off to do some raiding and came back to half the roof collapsed, loads of debris and 2 dew collectors missing from the roof. 

As papa says, that sounds a little sus. Were there damaged blocks around? Stuff you had to repair? If not, that may well have been a collapse from weird SI; perhaps the game not loading the neighboring chunks properly and the added weight of your dew collectors just breaking the roof. Collapses don't damage other blocks, zeds do.

 

The damage I was talking about in my previous post was from zeds, and I only suspect screamers; but since I didn't witness them breaking stuff, I don't know when it happened. I was spending a good amount of time 50 blocks below that position at the time, which keeps the area loaded ofc - I might've just missed them being active up there while I was mining.

 

Now that I've placed my heat sources down there (under at least 60 blocks of rock), haven't seen a screamer since..

[Suxar]

On 8/31/2024 at 1:20 PM, GigglingZombie said:

i can confirm that screamers and other zombies will attack your home even when you're far away;

This can only happen on a dedicated server. And only if there is another player nearby. Also, as long as the screamers don't see or hear the player, they won't break anything.

[GigglingZombie]

i didn't imagine the damage happening; it's possible that when i was off raiding, that i wasn't far enough away for the chunks to not be loaded, can't remember; but as to structural stability, the roof was strong enough to support the dew collectors

[ammonitia]

I have a bunker below my house with a steel door that has a permanent hole in it (I maintain it with steel bars, never repairing it 100%). Once the screamers and hordes show up, I just blast them with the pump shotgun through the hole. I also have blade traps just outside the door that can help. Easy!

[4sheetzngeegles]

Modding. 🤷‍♂️

I have an accelerated volume of zombies that I added already called the "Flood". So I modded the

heat generation to be consistent with the speed that I play the game. I had to adjust the names,

because I realized why TFP would have lowered the Street AI. Get enough outside coming in and it

lowered the volume generated amount inside, because same names,  that's why I have streetwalkers

and poptops outside, so I get both, and if I overdo it with the battles and don't use stealth effectively,

then here comes the screamers.

 

[Syphon583]

On 9/2/2024 at 3:16 AM, GigglingZombie said:

i didn't imagine the damage happening; it's possible that when i was off raiding, that i wasn't far enough away for the chunks to not be loaded, can't remember; but as to structural stability, the roof was strong enough to support the dew collectors

I can't confirm since I don't know the code, but I'm pretty sure crops "gain weight" as they grow, meaning a roof that is strong enough to support empty farm plots does not necessarily mean it is strong enough to support farm plots with fully-grown crops.

 

Obviously you didn't say anything about farm plots, but if you had them up there, that's a possibility. If not, I wonder if dew collectors are treated the same way? Do full collectors weigh more than empty ones?

[GigglingZombie]

just 3 dew collectors, without mods in fact, i don't believe in putting the new mods in them just to get clean water, i just boil the murky water in campfire when needed; (i don't like being lazy in the game, just because it's an apocalypse doesn't mean i can't make time to boil water on a fire!). maybe the collapse was the structural instability issues that surfaced in v1.0, maybe it was nothing to do with screamers after all; solution for now is to put 2 new dew collectors with the surviving collector, back on the roof; - but i removed the remnants of the original destroyed roof and made an entire new roof and supporting walls; no more collapses so far, (i'm using the Poopy Pants Day care POI as my home; with land claim block and bedroll, but boxes and dustbins within the POI/within the land claim boundary, still frequently repopulate with items (another bug i suspect but's ok, more free stuff ) ; but no, no farm plots on the roof in this playthrough; (i often have put loads of farm plots on a roof, usually a reinforced roof), never had any structural collapses in A21. my farm plots are 1-block down into the dirt on ground level outside

Edited September 3 by GigglingZombie (see edit history)

[zztong]

4 hours ago, Syphon583 said:

I can't confirm since I don't know the code, but I'm pretty sure crops "gain weight" as they grow, meaning a roof that is strong enough to support empty farm plots does not necessarily mean it is strong enough to support farm plots with fully-grown crops.

 

I suspect with V1.0 all crops grow to be two blocks tall now, not just corn and yucca. The rest still look like they're one block tall, but when converting POIs from A21 to V1.0 there were issues with blocks placed above the shorter crops. In terms of "weight" the height of blocks might be what the code uses, so it seems quite viable to me that as crops become mature they could add to structural integrity "weight."

[Walterstj]

They are a gigantic pain in the ass. Not so much at the base but they are becoming increasingly frustrating on trader jobs. 3 or 4 shots and I've got a screamer horde on top of a clear to manage. And depending on where you are, what tier job and what POI you are at, it could be a 2-3 screamer horde. Anyone else noticing this or is it just my bad luck?

[Suxar]

9 hours ago, zztong said:

I suspect with V1.0 all crops grow to be two blocks tall now, not just corn and yucca.

The corn is three blocks high.

[zztong]

7 hours ago, Suxar said:

The corn is three blocks high.

 

Oh? I obviously didn't notice. Thanks for the correction.

[zombiehunter]

18 hours ago, Walterstj said:

They are a gigantic pain in the ass. Not so much at the base but they are becoming increasingly frustrating on trader jobs. 3 or 4 shots and I've got a screamer horde on top of a clear to manage. And depending on where you are, what tier job and what POI you are at, it could be a 2-3 screamer horde. Anyone else noticing this or is it just my bad luck?

It's not just your bad luck.  I've had that happen many times.  I understand that TFP tried to make the game more challenging but the new screamer horde mechanic, IMO, is just a cheap way to try to make the game more challenging.  The whole thing is overdone.  For example, in my last playthrough, I was on about day 8 or something like that, running ONLY two dew collectors.  Somehow that spawned THREE screamers.  It's overdone and needs to be scaled back some, IMO.  

[Walterstj]

I had a screamer on day 1. I've got plenty of hours game time and I was super @%$#ed. I had no workstations, etc. And now with tier 5 jobs, you can't get off 4-5 shots without it drawing 2 radiated screamers, which in turn call in 2 more. It's borderline ridiculous. I get the screamers to avoid a big heat signature but this is just dumb

[OneManStanding]

On 9/2/2024 at 12:32 AM, theFlu said:

I was spending a good amount of time 50 blocks below that position at the time, which keeps the area loaded ofc - I might've just missed them being active up there while I was mining.

 

Now that I've placed my heat sources down there (under at least 60 blocks of rock), haven't seen a screamer since..

 

I'm interested in what you're saying here, but I don't quite understand it. Are you saying that if I keep my heat-generating stuff at rock bottom of the map it won't attract screamers for some reason? I don't know what "ofc" means.

[Vaeliorin]

6 minutes ago, OneManStanding said:

 

I'm interested in what you're saying here, but I don't quite understand it. Are you saying that if I keep my heat-generating stuff at rock bottom of the map it won't attract screamers for some reason? I don't know what "ofc" means.

ofc = Of Course.  But yes, as I understand it, at least in past versions (and presumably still in 1.0) if screamers couldn't spawn within a certain range of your heat sources, they simply wouldn't spawn.

 

I imagine if you covered a large enough area with blocks, you could have everything on the surface and still avoid screamers entirely (like you can with horde night, if you really want to.)

Edited September 5 by Vaeliorin (see edit history)

[theFlu]

14 minutes ago, OneManStanding said:

Are you saying that if I keep my heat-generating stuff at rock bottom of the map it won't attract screamers for some reason?

I'm not making a certain claim, but it would fit the spawn mechanics somewhat.

What I gather from random observation, no real testing what-so-ever:

1) You produce heat

2) heat randomly calls in screamers

3) screamer tries to get to the block that caused the last heat tick when spawning and attack that, and possibly other blocks in the area

 

At step  2, when spawning in the screamer, there needs to be a terrain block that is the top-most block of that x-y coordinate available to place the zed there (kinda like it'd crawl out of the ground, probably unintentional thou, just a good way to select where to spawn things in). This will certainly have some optimal range and some max range; no point in spawning them too far, they'd have to tunnel through a few skyscrapers... as long as that max distance doesn't have a top-most terrain available, she can't spawn.

 

Step 3 .. I'm guessing with the attack behavior, but that would explain my lost campfires, and a couple similar events I've seen on the youtubes...

 

And ofc is of course, of course, as Vael above already mentioned.

 

EDIT: so yeh, I'm assuming the min depth to be "safe" is something like 40-50 blocks, from the heat source. But I have no good number; I might give it a test at some point, but not until next week at least...

Edited September 5 by theFlu (see edit history)

[lord_ahriman]

2 hours ago, theFlu said:

I'm not making a certain claim, but it would fit the spawn mechanics somewhat.

What I gather from random observation, no real testing what-so-ever:

1) You produce heat

2) heat randomly calls in screamers

3) screamer tries to get to the block that caused the last heat tick when spawning and attack that, and possibly other blocks in the area

 

At step  2, when spawning in the screamer, there needs to be a terrain block that is the top-most block of that x-y coordinate available to place the zed there (kinda like it'd crawl out of the ground, probably unintentional thou, just a good way to select where to spawn things in). This will certainly have some optimal range and some max range; no point in spawning them too far, they'd have to tunnel through a few skyscrapers... as long as that max distance doesn't have a top-most terrain available, she can't spawn.

 

Step 3 .. I'm guessing with the attack behavior, but that would explain my lost campfires, and a couple similar events I've seen on the youtubes...

 

And ofc is of course, of course, as Vael above already mentioned.

 

EDIT: so yeh, I'm assuming the min depth to be "safe" is something like 40-50 blocks, from the heat source. But I have no good number; I might give it a test at some point, but not until next week at least...

 

Math is a bit more complicated, because you need to factor in feral sense on/off. TFP could have changed it, but last time I played FS off in A21 screamer spawn would fail at bedrock level. A21 and 1.0 FS on you are just safe over 46 meters/blocks, it means only under a large mountain range. For example, mining under a large mountain range is not a big deal: screamers can still spawn, but never get to me.

 

 

[GigglingZombie]

i haven't tried placing heat sources down at the very bedrock level in v1, but i certainly did in A21, and screamers (in A21) most certainly found me; don't know if this has changed in v1 as after that i had no interest in being located down at bedrock again

Edited September 6 by GigglingZombie (see edit history)

[theFlu]

9 hours ago, lord_ahriman said:

feral sense on/off

Does that change the behavior or just the distance they will hear / investigate you? Spawning should still be limited at ~46?

 

5 minutes ago, GigglingZombie said:

i haven't tried placing heat sources down at the very bedrock level, but i certainly did in A21, and screamers (in A21) most certainly found me

 

Hmm.. the topsoil outside my mountain is at altitude +40, standing on bedrock is +3. Being at bedrock wouldn't make me spawn immune there, if lord_ahriman is right about the range.

[Kattla]

Screamers entrance to my base.

Motion sensor to start the bladetrap for 30 secs.  It's a bit unaccessible for repairs, but works like a charm. I remove it on horde nights though.

And yes, i can drive the motorcycle across the bladetrap in that configuration , and zombies see it as a valid path.

Or i just hit the 3 key, and have some fun with them in the streets.

And that is one of the ways i deal with screamers.

[lord_ahriman]

13 hours ago, theFlu said:

Does that change the behavior or just the distance they will hear / investigate you? Spawning should still be limited at ~46?

 

 

Hmm.. the topsoil outside my mountain is at altitude +40, standing on bedrock is +3. Being at bedrock wouldn't make me spawn immune there, if lord_ahriman is right about the range.

 

 

In my experience, it would be distance. That's why I usually mine metallic ores a bit away from mountain range edges. Stone, most of time, it's fine on every kind of terrain.