devtrackers.gg
about 2 years
ago -
Crater Creator
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Direct link
A strategy to withstand the horde through brute force, i.e. the HP of your walls and traps > the damage from the zombies, is in my view one of the toughest to pull off in the long term.
The progression curve on Blood Moon zombies is actually pretty forgiving, which means it could work fine for the first few weeks. But it’s likely to come closer and closer to the failure point, which typically looks like zombies breaching one or two blocks, and after that the rest of your walls and spikes don’t matter. All the zombies will pile in through the breach/weakest point. This is why making a larger base quickly reaches a point of diminishing returns. The attacker only needs to get it right once.*
So I’d encourage more finesse. When zombies stack up they do more damage than the sum of their hits. Solution: think of ways to space zombies out so they don’t stack up as much. They prefer to go around obstacles when possible, so you can funnel them.
Moreover, if I were to rely on the raw strength of my walls, I would want an onion base, where if one layer is breached, there’s another layer to which I can fall back. You can make it more maze-like, so they at least have ground to cover from the first breach to the next. Slowing down their advance is critical to me, so I have enough time to dispatch enough of them before they break something important. You can even build stronger and weaker areas on purpose, so you can predict where the failure points will be. Again, just going for ‘strong enough’ on all sides gets pretty difficult long term.
Also consider where you want to be over the course of the night. Most likely you want to be A) at a safe distance and B) with a clear shot at the zombies with your weapons of choice. But you want options too. If you’re not careful, you can paint yourself into a corner with no means of escape if things go wrong.
The funny thing is, so much of this thought process for base design - mazes and funnels and so on - derives from first principles, that most of the opposing force is on foot with a melee attack while you can build and shoot. It doesn’t hinge upon the minutiae of, for instance, this one shape the zombies have trouble handling. But each player has to decide for themselves what is gamey, cheesy, and/or ‘manipulating the AI.’
*Lately I’ve been pondering some self-healing base ideas to counteract this. Like, when the zombies breach a wall they trigger a small cave-in from above that seals the breach up with rubble. What happens after the breach is a critical stage.
The progression curve on Blood Moon zombies is actually pretty forgiving, which means it could work fine for the first few weeks. But it’s likely to come closer and closer to the failure point, which typically looks like zombies breaching one or two blocks, and after that the rest of your walls and spikes don’t matter. All the zombies will pile in through the breach/weakest point. This is why making a larger base quickly reaches a point of diminishing returns. The attacker only needs to get it right once.*
So I’d encourage more finesse. When zombies stack up they do more damage than the sum of their hits. Solution: think of ways to space zombies out so they don’t stack up as much. They prefer to go around obstacles when possible, so you can funnel them.
Moreover, if I were to rely on the raw strength of my walls, I would want an onion base, where if one layer is breached, there’s another layer to which I can fall back. You can make it more maze-like, so they at least have ground to cover from the first breach to the next. Slowing down their advance is critical to me, so I have enough time to dispatch enough of them before they break something important. You can even build stronger and weaker areas on purpose, so you can predict where the failure points will be. Again, just going for ‘strong enough’ on all sides gets pretty difficult long term.
Also consider where you want to be over the course of the night. Most likely you want to be A) at a safe distance and B) with a clear shot at the zombies with your weapons of choice. But you want options too. If you’re not careful, you can paint yourself into a corner with no means of escape if things go wrong.
The funny thing is, so much of this thought process for base design - mazes and funnels and so on - derives from first principles, that most of the opposing force is on foot with a melee attack while you can build and shoot. It doesn’t hinge upon the minutiae of, for instance, this one shape the zombies have trouble handling. But each player has to decide for themselves what is gamey, cheesy, and/or ‘manipulating the AI.’
*Lately I’ve been pondering some self-healing base ideas to counteract this. Like, when the zombies breach a wall they trigger a small cave-in from above that seals the breach up with rubble. What happens after the breach is a critical stage.