"Reinforced cement doesn't downgrade to cement"

[Krougal]

It does indeed feel like where in A16 people complained zombies destroyed walls quickly, in A17 they destroyed them... a lot quicker. With the (10% per each zombie?) damage bonus the zombie horde gets, they seem to just tear through blocks like there's no tomorrow.

 

I did a quick test, lvl 50 (which is still fairly mid level, can barely make the motorcycle), day 7 horde, and there were wights. They do base 250 hp against blocks per hit. Not even counting the extra damage for being in a horde. That's not a lot of hits to destroy even a concrete block, and while rconcrete or steel fares a bit better, that's just 1 wight And since they all seem to home in on the "easiest path" there's more in one spot too.

 

An issue in A16 was heavy hitting zombies, and not enough (quantity) of zombies. But you could bump up the quantity. Now they're so deadly bumping them up just means you get a rubble around you faster, as there's no way you can actively handle 12-16 zombies at a time and prevent them from bashing your "castle" down

 

I like the horde bonus. I like having some heavy hitting zombies. But I'm not sure making base walls weaker is the way to go. Just the horde bonus alone makes it a lot harder to defend against.

 

/V -

 

Yeah, I gave your latest A16 base

a try out in A17, (but in r-crete not steel). I think it's current survivability is more due to the 8 shotgun turrets firing pretty much non-stop. Although it did get breached eventually, but then I'm not sure if it was cause of the turrets themselves (I got friendly fire on and they were wasting me even lol) It didn't do "horrible" but certainly not the awesome meatgrinder it was in A16. I didn't get a chance to try it without the turrets, screamer horde spam made the game laggy AF. Looking forward to your A17 designs.

[Krougal]

So Rcon doens't downgrade to Concrete anymore and we also can't upgrade to stainless steel.

 

Some big changes in A17 that's for sure.

 

Gonna have to adapt to a whole new bag of TFP tricks.

 

It's a little worrisome but time will tell what it all means in the big zombie picture.

 

Yeah, that sucks. I hardly ever went to steel legit except in small critical areas but I kinda relied on reinforced dropping back to regular.

 

I don't understand removing the polished steel either, I always thought it was pretty damn unreasonable with the cost and rarity (not to mention the time and trouble already getting steel walls) that you needed 10 and in fact I had modded it to 1 per.

[Jugginator]

It does indeed feel like where in A16 people complained zombies destroyed walls quickly, in A17 they destroyed them... a lot quicker. With the (10% per each zombie?) damage bonus the zombie horde gets, they seem to just tear through blocks like there's no tomorrow.

 

I did a quick test, lvl 50 (which is still fairly mid level, can barely make the motorcycle), day 7 horde, and there were wights. They do base 250 hp against blocks per hit. Not even counting the extra damage for being in a horde. That's not a lot of hits to destroy even a concrete block, and while rconcrete or steel fares a bit better, that's just 1 wight And since they all seem to home in on the "easiest path" there's more in one spot too.

 

An issue in A16 was heavy hitting zombies and not enough (quantity) of zombies. But you could bump up the quantity. Now they're so deadly bumping them up just means you get a rubble around you faster, as there's no way you can actively handle 12-16 zombies at a time and prevent them from bashing your "castle" down

 

I like the horde bonus. I like having some heavy hitting zombies. But I'm not sure making base walls weaker is the way to go. Just the horde bonus alone makes it a lot harder to defend against.

 

 

I had the complete different complaint in 16. If the AI managed to figure out to attack my walls rather than spin in circles, it would take forever to get past the initial walls. I would refuse to upgrade past iron walls even past day 40 because anything else was just boring. The difference then and more-so now is using traps. If you're just putting walls up and nothing else, then yes you're not going about it right and your base will fail.

 

Case in point, I built a small square out of iron walls with an open top, spikes on the walls and 1 layer deep around the base, an iron wall with spikes on the wall/1layer deep, then a cobblestone wall with the spikes and spread out in the perimeter I had spikes/barbed wire scattered about. Iron and wood bars on top of it all so I could walk over it. Survived day 14 and 21 hordes so far, only losing 2 blocks total. No gimmicks, no pitfalls, just walls/spikes, and some barbed wire. Then used the aerial advantage to combat them. Most of my spikes are still there after two horde nights, they didn't knock out enough for me to warrant accidentally walking over barbed wire to replace them by the second horde.

[Kam R.]

Can you explain the patch note though?

 

Does this mean that reinforced concrete does, or does not, downgrade to regular concrete? Or is it just straight up breaking?

 

Was the first thing I thoroughly tested out when I read said patch note. See my first reply in this thread, it outlines all materials and their up/downgrade paths. To answer the question again: R-Concrete will break and NOT downgrade to concrete. If you want a 2-stage block on high tier materials you have to go for steel now.

[Vedui]

Yeah, I gave your latest A16 base

a try out in A17, (but in r-crete not steel). I think it's current survivability is more due to the 8 shotgun turrets firing pretty much non-stop. Although it did get breached eventually, but then I'm not sure if it was cause of the turrets themselves (I got friendly fire on and they were wasting me even lol) It didn't do "horrible" but certainly not the awesome meatgrinder it was in A16. I didn't get a chance to try it without the turrets, screamer horde spam made the game laggy AF. Looking forward to your A17 designs.

 

Yeah there are a few things which I found affects it, such as the incremental horde bonus to damage the zeds have (which can tear through walls) ... and the lowering of HP for the blocks.

 

I haven't gone through and retested/redesigned dart/blade/fence traps for A17, but it would be awesome if you could upgrade them ... right now they're still too weak, higher level dart and blade traps don't do enough, lower level they're still great.

 

Will be playing around with new base designs and once A17 is stable, can put some more videos out on base building

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

I had the complete different complaint in 16. If the AI managed to figure out to attack my walls rather than spin in circles, it would take forever to get past the initial walls. I would refuse to upgrade past iron walls even past day 40 because anything else was just boring. The difference then and more-so now is using traps. If you're just putting walls up and nothing else, then yes you're not going about it right and your base will fail.

 

Case in point, I built a small square out of iron walls with an open top, spikes on the walls and 1 layer deep around the base, an iron wall with spikes on the wall/1layer deep, then a cobblestone wall with the spikes and spread out in the perimeter I had spikes/barbed wire scattered about. Iron and wood bars on top of it all so I could walk over it. Survived day 14 and 21 hordes so far, only losing 2 blocks total. No gimmicks, no pitfalls, just walls/spikes, and some barbed wire. Then used the aerial advantage to combat them. Most of my spikes are still there after two horde nights, they didn't knock out enough for me to warrant accidentally walking over barbed wire to replace them by the second horde.

 

I always found that until day 35-42, it was less of a challenge. D7-21 works pretty ok just cobblestone and spikes in A16, but once you start going up and seeing radiated, spikes are much less effective as they can't kill them, and cop explosions start taking out big swaths of them. A couple of utility workers, bikers, cops, wights bashing your walls and they better be steel or they simply will break through much faster than you can kill them. This even more so if you bump up to 12 concurrent, or god forbid 16, as manually 1 person has a huge issue keeping up and they spend much more time breaking down walls. Unless of course you use lotsa traps, which help

[madmole]

This is the new situation with block hit points and upgrade/downgrade paths as of A17 b208:

 

Wood Frame (50 hp) <-> Wood Block (225 hp) <->RWood Block (225 hp) <-> RWood metal reinforced (300 hp) | 850 hp total (50 hp increase)

Scrap iron frame (100 hp) <-> Iron block (1000 hp) <-> RIron Block (1000 hp) | 2100 hp total (unchanged)

Flagstone (500 hp) -> Cobblestone (1500 hp) (unchanged)

Bricks (1200 hp) (unchanged)

 

RIron/Cobble/Bricks ->Concrete Block (2500 hp)/Rebar frame ->RConcrete Block (5000 hp) <-> Steel Block (7000 hp) | 12000 hp total (7000 hp decrease)

 

Stainless Steel blocks can not be achieved by players anymore (Steel polish is removed) and have changed to have 10000 hp, can be repaired with regular forged steel and downgrade to Rconcrete, totalling to 15k hp.

 

I'm not really sure, I assume the nerf of top materials is to make them less OP in comparison to lower tier materials.

I don't agree with removing the downgrade from Rconcrete to concrete as well.

The 20% increase of the wood upgrade path seems insignificant at first sight.

I wonder what's the balancing goal of this and how much zombie damage will be tweaked.

Would love to hear a bit of an explanation from the devs here as I/we can only make assumptions and don't have "the greater picture" in mind.

Its annoying to be breaking through something with supposedly 10k hitpoints then suddenly another block spawns that has 5k, etc. Why not just have one block with reasonable hit points? Cracks show on damaged blocks and someday we'll get that a bit more immersive or be able to swap to damaged models properly based on total hit points rather than the klunky system there is in place now where its a completely different block. The main issue is the hit point bar magically filling up again which is confusing to new players and just adds a lot of block overhead for us to manage.

[LordoftheMoo]

Its annoying to be breaking through something with supposedly 10k hitpoints then suddenly another block spawns that has 5k, etc. Why not just have one block with reasonable hit points? Cracks show on damaged blocks and someday we'll get that a bit more immersive or be able to swap to damaged models properly based on total hit points rather than the klunky system there is in place now where its a completely different block. The main issue is the hit point bar magically filling up again which is confusing to new players and just adds a lot of block overhead for us to manage.

 

So then would you say that it would be ideal for every block to fail after their HP ran out, and that perhaps each block should have the HP adjusted to "some max" based on the former downgrade process? I'm not against that idea, but just trying to see if that's what your thinking is as it sounds like it. That might make things more interesting but then blocks would need to be buffed up to their former "grand total" HP or thereabouts.

[Gazz]

In some cases it makes more sense than in others.

The iron plating on "metal reinforced wood" falling off is kinda reasonable.

A destroyed concrete block turning into a shiny new concrete block? No. Just no.

 

This is not a complete redesign. Only one bad looking edge case removed. And stainless steel has always been a goofy edge case material.

[Kamuchi]

In some cases it makes more sense than in others.

The iron plating on "metal reinforced wood" falling off is kinda reasonable.

A destroyed concrete block turning into a shiny new concrete block? No. Just no.

 

This is not a complete redesign. Only one bad looking edge case removed. And stainless steel has always been a goofy edge case material.

Right, and shiny new blocks appearing for the other ones isn't?

 

Contradict much?

[Feycat]

Was the first thing I thoroughly tested out when I read said patch note. See my first reply in this thread, it outlines all materials and their up/downgrade paths. To answer the question again: R-Concrete will break and NOT downgrade to concrete. If you want a 2-stage block on high tier materials you have to go for steel now.

 

Well that's bulls*it. So concrete is basically pointless now.

 

I love 90% of A17 but the whole "don't bother to build anything haha" punitive game philosophy really sucks.

[Krougal]

Its annoying to be breaking through something with supposedly 10k hitpoints then suddenly another block spawns that has 5k, etc. Why not just have one block with reasonable hit points? Cracks show on damaged blocks and someday we'll get that a bit more immersive or be able to swap to damaged models properly based on total hit points rather than the klunky system there is in place now where its a completely different block. The main issue is the hit point bar magically filling up again which is confusing to new players and just adds a lot of block overhead for us to manage.

 

Annoying? To who zombies? Are you a....SMH...the plot thickens...that's why Joel doesn't want us to have impenatrable bases; he's one of THEM!

 

In some cases it makes more sense than in others.

The iron plating on "metal reinforced wood" falling off is kinda reasonable.

A destroyed concrete block turning into a shiny new concrete block? No. Just no.

 

This is not a complete redesign. Only one bad looking edge case removed. And stainless steel has always been a goofy edge case material.

 

Totally agree with you guys, but then we should get the same total HP we used to get and/or zeds should do less block DPS.

I know you guys like your tower defense more serious than I do so not an argument I'm gonna win, but maybe consider some tweaking.

I was encouraged at first when I read the patch notes but an extra 50hp on wood blocks combined with the concrete nerf makes me feel trolled.

 

I'd really love to see it as a tuning option decoupled from the general difficulty (like zombies run setting) - I'm generally happy with my zeds, I don't want less spawning in general, and it's less about wanting an indestructible base than I do not want to spend all my time digging and making concrete and repairing my base. I want a reasonable base, and I am willing to put a reasonable amount of effort into building and maintaining it, but I prefer to spend my time adventuring.

 

This would probably make the builder crowd happy too.

[LordoftheMoo]

In some cases it makes more sense than in others.

The iron plating on "metal reinforced wood" falling off is kinda reasonable.

A destroyed concrete block turning into a shiny new concrete block? No. Just no.

 

This is not a complete redesign. Only one bad looking edge case removed. And stainless steel has always been a goofy edge case material.

 

Yeah, that logic makes sense. But I'm hoping that we'll see RCon see a buff in its HP so it's at least close to what it used to be aggregated? And yeah, I never even used stainless, it didn't seem worth it given that we rarely took on BM hordes at base anyways. Steel was more than enough to handle even feral screamer hordes for a short time.

[Kam R.]

Its annoying to be breaking through something with supposedly 10k hitpoints then suddenly another block spawns that has 5k, etc. Why not just have one block with reasonable hit points? Cracks show on damaged blocks and someday we'll get that a bit more immersive or be able to swap to damaged models properly based on total hit points rather than the klunky system there is in place now where its a completely different block. The main issue is the hit point bar magically filling up again which is confusing to new players and just adds a lot of block overhead for us to manage.

 

In some cases it makes more sense than in others.

The iron plating on "metal reinforced wood" falling off is kinda reasonable.

A destroyed concrete block turning into a shiny new concrete block? No. Just no.

 

This is not a complete redesign. Only one bad looking edge case removed. And stainless steel has always been a goofy edge case material.

 

Thx for the responses!

 

That does make sense, actually.

 

Regarding scrap iron plating falling off (or being torn off rather):

 

Could we maybe get the forged iron tier as plating in there? Always wondered why it's not.

My suggestion would be giving cobblestone a one-time and BRICKS a two-time upgrade capability with plating made from forged iron. Taking current block hp values, I'd say a forged iron plating upgrade should add 550hp. It would fit well and make the mid-tier building blocks, especially BRICKS, more attractive!

[sadpickle]

With voxels blocks losing value like the Dow Jones, I can start to imagine that TFP want to do a Non-voxel game after 2019.

Get people into the thinking that voxel games are history (that or send them back to Minecraft).

 

The world wonders.

 

If they drop the voxels that would be the end for me. Or at least until I couldn't play A16 anymore.

[Gazz]

Totally agree with you guys, but then we should get the same total HP we used to get and/or zeds should do less block DPS.

Why is that so?

What's your balancing goal that is driving that decision?

[Rockspider]

Why is that so?

What's your balancing goal that is driving that decision?

 

I believe players want to be able to build bases again, where you actually have a chance to defend them! Not a 2 minute wonder where it is torn down in the blink of an eye there by making it pointless exercise.

 

This game has become the ex tower defence to the kill zombies find a trader game.

[Vedui]

Why is that so?

What's your balancing goal that is driving that decision?

 

I would say two things.

 

1) the zombie ai, all zeds seem to prefer pathing to the same weakened block, avoiding other spikes etc. Whereas in A16 zeds were a lot more spread out, so individual blocks while taking damage, didn't have a whole horde beating on them (unless you designed it that way).

 

2) the horde damage bonus.

 

It feels like when zombies come rushing as a horde, they go to the same location, and they bash and with the added damage go through blocks like butter.

 

A few solutions:

 

1) Don't let all zombies path to the same location Maybe not so easy to change, but it would help to spread them out, not everyone pathing exactly the same.

 

2) Increasing block HP.

 

3) Reducing block damage.

 

(4) I like the horde damage bonus tho! But maybe reducing the block damage means keeping the horde bonus brings it up to normal, rather than hot knife through butter

 

/V -

[stasis78]

There are easy ways to mod this. Not sure why vanilla needs to be like every other previous alpha.

 

Once 7 days ships I know that there will be dozens of dedicated servers will any mod you want for the game. So for now, it’s just simple xml edits

 

Thank you TFP for continuing to support easy mods!!

 

Once v1 ships I have always been planning out a huge base like those you see in a15/16 but that is actually long lived for years. It’s going to require mods to the game. Things change but with xml we can do anything we want. The base game is amazing. Block dmg is a simple thing to adjust. SMH

[Krougal]

Why is that so?

What's your balancing goal that is driving that decision?

 

Why? I agree that it made little sense when the block downgraded that it magicaly became the last tier block, but considering I felt blocks had too little damage resistance to begin with we should get the same not less.

[Gazz]

If feral zombies get balanced so that they can deal with A16-style 19000 HP blocks, what happens if even one of them shows up before you have concrete?

 

This isn't about one block but overall balance.

[Krougal]

If feral zombies get balanced so that they can deal with A16-style 19000 HP blocks, what happens if even one of them shows up before you have concrete?

 

This isn't about one block but overall balance.

 

Well if the plan was to lower zed block damage then yes, I've got no problem with block HP being lower. I don't seem to recall you guys mentioning that being the plan though.

[Aerial]

If feral zombies get balanced so that they can deal with A16-style 19000 HP blocks, what happens if even one of them shows up before you have concrete?

 

This isn't about one block but overall balance.

 

This runs counter to the philosophy TFP said they wanted when they implemented the upgrade/downgrade paths in the first place, which was to remove having to break out weaker material blocks in order to replace them with stronger and instead allow upgrading the blocks in place all the way from weakest to strongest.

 

I agree there's a logic disconnect with contrete --> Rconcrete, but TFP needs to pick a consistent behavior for the blocks. Either you can upgrade through all the various stages from wood to concrete to steel and downgrade along the same path, or they re-separate the base block materials and make them incompatible, i.e. wood can't be turned into cobblestone or concrete or steel, etc.

[Krougal]

This runs counter to the philosophy TFP said they wanted when they implemented the upgrade/downgrade paths in the first place, which was to remove having to break out weaker material blocks in order to replace them with stronger and instead allow upgrading the blocks in place all the way from weakest to strongest.

 

I agree there's a logic disconnect with contrete --> Rconcrete, but TFP needs to pick a consistent behavior for the blocks. Either you can upgrade through all the various stages from wood to concrete to steel and downgrade along the same path, or they re-separate the base block materials and make them incompatible, i.e. wood can't be turned into cobblestone or concrete or steel, etc.

 

I don't see them as mutually exclusive. Just because you can upgrade it doesn't mean you have to be able to downgrade it.

As a gameplay mechanic being able to upgrade in place is a huge QOL improvement. Having it downgrade is...well that's a huge QOL improvemnet too I guess, since it gave the block more survivability, and of course it's something we got accustomed to.

 

It still boggles my mind that if I slap down a rebar frame and fill it with concrete, that I don't get reinforced concrete (especially considering the game lets me make the same concrete block without rebar), since rebar is short for reinforcing bar. Realism always needs to take a backseat to gameplay.

[Kam R.]

It still boggles my mind that if I slap down a rebar frame and fill it with concrete, that I don't get reinforced concrete (...)

 

Second time I see someone say this. Seems to be a MP thing. In SP it works as it always did.

https://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?97695-Some-clarification-with-wet-concrete-block-vs-rebar

[Krougal]

Second time I see someone say this. Seems to be a MP thing. In SP it works as it always did.

https://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?97695-Some-clarification-with-wet-concrete-block-vs-rebar

 

Hmmm. Come to think of it, it was in MP. Normally I'd make the wet blocks cause I never have enough iron at that stage, but I happened to be replacing a few blocks after horde night, and the trader wasn't open yet to use his mixer to make blocks (nice compromise btw) but I did save some rebar I had looted.