Bosses

[BeigeSand]

A zombear that a group of crazed survivors have been splicing new tissue onto. It is the size of a barn and breathes explosions.

[KA101]

Game-y if handled inappropriately, true. DDA does not place Draygon in one room and the Space Jump conveniently behind xem. A nasty encounter in a place where it might make sense for one to be, though?

Not really impossible. We have a few critters that nobody ever encounters, but I suspect they could merit LAW rockets. Spawn a tribot or tankbot and see how far you get.

I suppose they could be a hard counter to a Deathmobile, but yeah, we don’t really need that sort of thing.

Different bosses test different things.

has an Idea

[Weyrling]

I think that once portals are actually traversable that bosses make sense in a certain way.

Imagine you spend a few weeks preparing to take on a triffid heart, and when you eventually destroy it a portal emerges, you step through to encounter a foreign world…
Giant worms bursting from beneath the ground to devour you, creeping vines sneaking up to strangle you, hordes of triffids closing in from every direction, colossal groves of poisonous thorns that slowly shred away your armor, but take ages to chop through, the land full of acidic swamps, the air so humid that nothing burns for long, rains coming periodically in terribly powerful thunderstorms…
What kind of monster(s) would rule this terrible land? The endless hordes of triffids? Some sort of giant territorial herbivore? A hivemind? A Beholder with Flaming Eyes?..

There’s tons of potential to add new dynamics, challenges, and threats once portals are involved. I imagine setting up a base in the World of Triffids would be incredibly hard, but if you’re an herbivore you ‘would’ have practically infinite food coming right to your frying pan, trying to kill you and disintegrate your belongings in the meantime.

[i2amroy]

Being able to take the fight to one of the many triffid worlds (they have been spreading through the planes for a while, after all) is definitely planned but it most likely wouldn’t be a “beat the triffid heart to unlock it” type of thing. Rather it would be something you would find surrounded by several triffid hearts, or possible access through lab overrun with them.

Generally I think bosses are kinda cool, but they should only be in places that make sense. Fighting a giant military robot because you activated it while in a military base and it designated you as hostile is cool. Randomly fighting that same robot in the middle of a city “because we want a boss there” is not. Similarly being able to salvage weapons/superalloy off said robot is something that I’m completely for, but having the robot randomly drop a mininuke launcher +5 “because it’s a boss” is not.

That said I’d also probably vote against the “demons of hell” flavored stuff. While denizens may share some aspects with demons of religion/mythology, denizens =/= religious demons, and this isn’t Doom.

[StopSignal]

That said I’d also probably vote against the “demons of hell” flavored stuff. While denizens may share some aspects with demons of religion/mythology, denizens =/= religious demons, and this isn’t Doom.

Yeah, they were just examples, and i need to say that i am a huge fan of Doom, so ignore the references.

Anyone has any ideas for any Boss-Type monsters?
We need them.
Really.

[Aluminumfoil]

I’m looking through the code at the moment to see if I can put something together, boss/miniboss-wise… but I’m nobody’s idea of a skilled programmer and I haven’t looked at C code in years, so don’t expect immediate results.

My current notions tend more to test-critters than true bosses, but the architecture will be the same if I can make it work: clear (text-based) tells before randomly triggered special attacks differentiated primarily by range. I would love to borrow the Boomer special where it paints a directional tell on the ground and then does a special along it, but that’s not a priority.

If I can get that working I’ll see if I can do combo-based specials.

Combos and tells may be too video-game-y for some people, but whatever, I’m not trying to please everybody, I’m just experimenting.

As far as idea-spam, that’s easy enough. Spamming away:

Eldritch horror. A tell- and combo-based PBAoE and line-attack or AoE spamming nether creature that (fluff-wise) tracks you down for murdering too many of its zombie pals. Actually, it just spawns after a certain number of days. Can punch down walls. Rarely drops Petrified Eyes and Artifacts. Also spawns near Portals.

Homing Grenade. Not a boss at all, this is actually an aggressive, fast-moving, perceptive, fast-moving monster that explodes in a small radius when it’s close or killed. Has a random “special attack” that makes it explode prematurely, so that you can potentially evade it, trap it in a car, or so on, and wait it out. Drops nothing.

Eldritch Blast. A reskinned Homing Grenade, works exactly the same way.

Spore Blast. A reskinned Homing Grenade, works exactly the same way.

Murdertron. Heavily-armored, slow-moving, Homing Grenade-spamming robot. Roams military facilities. Drops super-alloy and quantum solar panels.

Fungal Spire Mk2. Exactly the same as the existing fungal spire, only now it spams numerous Spore Blasts at you any time you open a hole in the Fungal Wall to allow the monster room to spawn.

Deep One. Firey nether creature, uses flamethrower attack and eldritch blast with tells. Lives exclusively in mines. Drops nothing, mines already have rewards.

Zombot. A last-ditch creation of mad science, it’s a zombie hulk controlled by a military robot (or vice versa, it’s impossible to tell). Lots of tells and combos, spawns in science labs, good at punching down walls. Drops plutonium and superalloy.

Anomaly. Radiation-spewing, slow-moving pile of goo-animated rubble. Spawns in craters. Not very dangerous, but virtually indestructible. Occasionally spawns Portals. Drops rocks and rebar (very exciting).

[StopSignal]

Let me imagine one of your monsters…

Murdertron: "Enemy spotted at East, initiating deleting procedure"
The murdertron spawns homing grenades!
Player destroys homing grenades at a distance using his rifle
The murdertron prepares its cannons!
me rapidly hides
3…
2…
1…
Ratatatatata x4
player leaves hiding spot, launches missile
Critical! You blast the murdertron for 200 damage
Murdetron: "Damage critical, initiating exterminate procedure"
The murdertron spawns homing grenades!
The murdertron prepares its cannons!
3…
2…
1…
You died.

That sounds good.
I don’t know if this even helped you. :I

[Straume21]

Okay, my ideas aren’t purely for for boss-type enemies, but stay with me.

I have had the idea earlier of a type of zombie (or just random creature) that is very weak but almost unreasonably fast, possesses night vision, and is damaged by light in any form. Perhaps they could live in the sewers by day and come out to wreak havoc on your night raids, or seek out campers in forests near the city. Furthermore, this could make venturing into caves, basements, dark houses, ect. more dangerous than it is now.

Another idea I had was the possibility of a small and weak enemy creature that can assemble into a larger creature by joining with its brethren. It would probably be some sort of animal or denizen, and it would need to spawn in a specific set of areas probably, but could add a type of boss-dynamic that isn’t possessed by triffid groves and strange temples.

Another idea I have really wanted added to the game is a multi-tile mobile monster, perhaps occupying 4-9 tiles, and functioning in a way that you would need to damage all or most of the tiles before it could even be killed.

I definitely want there to be more expansion with creatures such as blank bodies (perhaps dark bodies, their hostile counterparts?) and the like. While the thrall of wildlife and general zombie types is a necessary aspect of the game, I think that expanding the types of creatures would be beneficial.

In my opinion we don’t necessarily need stronger enemies, but perhaps faster, smarter, or more specific types of creatures in the world that would require more finesse and planning to kill.

Finally, I have been thinking recently about the possibility of there being a rare type of enemy that is invulnerable to all but one type of damage, such as fire or acid, forcing the player to either acquire the means to defeat them, or retreat indefinitely.

[Binky]

I’m not a fan of bosses in the usual sense, especially as random ‘specials’ that you encounter as that feels way to diablo/RPG style. I’m also not a fan of them behind a sort of ‘magic door’/secret area which requires a long quest/items/whatever as that seems equally gamey. However what I’ve always wanted is late game ‘events’ which are random ways the game changes and that could involve ‘bosses’.

One of these could be something like a super AI or Triffid mega-heart which eventually spawns (or other boss type thing) - these could be random or influenced by your actions (not killing enough triffids causes a mega-heart or something). It’d be a late game issue you’d need to prepare for, but which wouldn’t necessarily be just a random boss or a quest boss. Having it alive could generate some interesting side effects (more triffids for instance) but it’d not be necessary to kill it there and then.

[kevin.granade]

Some extra tough monsters that fit in the game are something we could use, and it’s surprisingly hard to come up with interesting new ones that actually make sense. One that makes a lot of sense to me is the ultra-mega-jabberwock, just a huge pile of zombie parts fused together flailing away at you, though it’s so big it’s lost the speed that makes regular jabberwocks so dangerous. What it has instead is persistence and toughness.

Actually, remember phalanx from Demons/Dark souls?

kevingranade withdraws from society…

[Inquisitor_Dust]

Actually, remember phalanx from Demons/Dark souls?

Please god no

[Blackopsman9999]

What about a tankbot?

[Dec]

If there could be a world filed with triffids, I would FUCKING HATE THE MI-GO/YUGG WORLD.

[AerialK7]

though it’s so big it’s lost the speed that makes regular jabberwocks so dangerous. What it has instead is persistence and toughness.

Ehh…But sometimes when things lose their speed intimidation just completely drops off. If you can just Shoot at it, take a few steps back, reload, shoot, take a few steps back, repeat…I guess if it was accompanied with faster things youd have to worry about itd be very dangerous. Thats my opinion anyways

[RAM]

A unique spawn would add an ending condition to the game, so completely against that. But if there was a chance of one at the bottom of every lab or something then that could work. And you could have computers with emergency communications trying to report and get assistance with dealing with the boss, or recording its construction. Being able to access only the most recent message of a conversation, or a last message to home next to a corpse or zombie, would significantly reduce the exposition quotient of any clues about it. And if science corpses dropped clues about the location of labs with(or without) bosses, and military corpses did similarly for military facilities, and gang corpses could drop locations for drug labs complete with super-smokers…

…
Portal lord: Some nether-entities learn to manipulate portals. While next to a portal, which is a state that they will attempt to maintain, the portal will be much more likely to produce nether-entities and the portal lord will take much less damage due to the portal drawing away hazardous conditions. And maybe the portal lord could choose to travel to a different portal when it was sufficiently injured.

Super-smoker: Tougher, larger cloud, spawns in cramped drug labs, cloud is poisonous and produces random drug effects, can, somewhat randomly, throw syringes, with a chance of causing poison and drug effects, in the player’s general vicinity.

Unstable Conglomeration: A zombie that absorbs other zombies. Can attract zombies and destroy them to gain their health and a proportion of their physical stats. Has, effectively, only one bodypart. Can sacrifice a fixed amount of health to throw an animate limb at an enemy. These limbs could range anywhere from a slow-moving leg that lacks the leverage to kick with much force, to an armed arm, to a zombear head that latches onto a bodypart and keeps biting until it is killed…

Noneuclidean robot: Nethers managed to coopt a robot. You cannot tell what sort of robot it is, cannot tell whether or not you have hit it, cannot tell if it is damaged, and, probably simulated with teleporting, cannot even be confident about where it is. It would probably be a normal robot with a chance of ignoring attacks against it, the ability to teleport to a location near to either itself or the player, a negative effect on moral and positive effect on confusion just from being visible, and possibly some nether effects imparted to its melee attack to make teleporting next to the player more interesting.

[StopSignal]

Unstable Conglomeration: A zombie that absorbs other zombies. Can attract zombies and destroy them to gain their health and a proportion of their physical stats. Has, effectively, only one bodypart. Can sacrifice a fixed amount of health to throw an animate limb at an enemy. These limbs could range anywhere from a slow-moving leg that lacks the leverage to kick with much force, to an armed arm, to a zombear head that latches onto a bodypart and keeps biting until it is killed…

[Shadowchaser]

Just to throw my hat into the ring on this one:

As long as these unique beasties aren’t something a well-prepared survivor who ISN’T looking for trouble would instantly lose weeks or months of work to, I’d like them.

The idea of having a horror somewhere on the map creating spawn of doom I like. The idea of that horror punching down the base I’ve spent the last several realtime days building and tinkering with and playing with and perfecting to my liking, I like that a lot less.

I don’t mind that say, an occasional zombie horde might show up. That’s something you can deal with, a mitigatable threat if you practice noise discipline, set up defenses, etc.

If you’re just sort of hanging out in your base, resting up or reading books or otherwise preparing for your next big outing, having Dagon’s slightly younger little brother, Pfargthe, The Thousand Eyes Of Darkness, a swirling mass of eyeball tentacles and entropic destruction, suddenly break down your walls and rearrange your internal organs into a nice pretty pattern on the ground out of literally nowhere would be really frustrating.

Basically, I’d never want these things “dynamically” spawned. Give them a chance to appear in a given city, maybe, or location on the map, and then use the fact that they exist to modify OTHER spawns nearby (Say some sort of super Zombie Master making it so that there are more special zombies around, or Floating Eyes having a chance to spawn if Pfargthe is in town, or some sort of weird thing like crawling hands or whatever if there’s some sort of superblob, I dunno), but make it so that if you don’t set up your shelter NEARBY, they shouldn’t come homing in on you like a PCeeking Missile. (Which, due to the way the world only exists when you’re nearby, is basically how it would feel).

[infectedmochi]

Agree, some sort of “final stage” or “lair” for those bosses would be nice. Possible location include at the bottom of a randomly chosen lab, or the final stage in temple.

[RAM]

[quote=“RAM, post:20, topic:5895”]Unstable Conglomeration: A zombie that absorbs other zombies. Can attract zombies and destroy them to gain their health and a proportion of their physical stats. Has, effectively, only one bodypart. Can sacrifice a fixed amount of health to throw an animate limb at an enemy. These limbs could range anywhere from a slow-moving leg that lacks the leverage to kick with much force, to an armed arm, to a zombear head that latches onto a bodypart and keeps biting until it is killed…

Your post appears to be much less informative then mine, all I can really do in response to that is rephrase the whole thing and hope that it is more coherent for you…
Ummm, a zombie, with some ability to attract surrounding zombies to itself, and if it makes contact with another zombie, then the other zombie vanishes and the special zombie grows stronger.
Damaging an arm or a leg or getting a headshot wouldn’t really matter, because it has spares, many of them.
It has a ranged attack, where it throws a part of itself at a target, which would weaken it. Which would spawn a partial-zombie-creature adjacent to the target. If this attack hits, then it deals damage, probably according to the weight of the thrown object, and may have secondary effects, such as a head being able to clamp its jaws onto a victim, thereby allowing it to follow the victim even if the part was less mobile than the victim.
The victim would have to choose between attacking the thrown parts and risk being hit by more and the main zombie getting closer, or attacking the main zombie and risk having half-a-dozen zombear heads clamped onto their body, gnawing away furiously, by the time the main zombie had been killed. I am not sure how well the lore would deal with individual animated limbs, but they would not need to remain viable for very long relative to a normal zombie…

[kevin.granade]

[quote=“Shadowchaser, post:22, topic:5895”]As long as these unique beasties aren’t something a well-prepared survivor who ISN’T looking for trouble would instantly lose weeks or months of work to, I’d like them.

The idea of having a horror somewhere on the map creating spawn of doom I like. The idea of that horror punching down the base I’ve spent the last several realtime days building and tinkering with and playing with and perfecting to my liking, I like that a lot less.

If you’re just sort of hanging out in your base, resting up or reading books or otherwise preparing for your next big outing, having Dagon’s slightly younger little brother, Pfargthe, The Thousand Eyes Of Darkness, a swirling mass of eyeball tentacles and entropic destruction, suddenly break down your walls and rearrange your internal organs into a nice pretty pattern on the ground out of literally nowhere would be really frustrating.[/quote]
i totally agree, random wandering threats should be a challenge, but the uber tough stuff should require you to be looking for trouble to run into it. either that or at least provide a lot of advance notice, skirmishes if you will.