Bugs I've noticed in .3255

Game Talk The Garage
1

-non-zombie aggro to the player is broken. Most non-zombie things either don’t attack me EVER (manhacks), or only attack back or VERY VERY rarely first. Killing ants doesn’t make the other ants come after me, and I can butcher ants surrounded by ants, no problem. Spiders,wasps, and bees are the same (though I haven’t tried a black-widow house/basement in this one, so there’s that). Bears and moose seem to be the only exception, and even they are incredibly tame compared to before. Zombies attack everything, and animals attack other animals and zombies just fine.

-mapping - in a Lab start, the mapping seems to be off a bit. Sometimes it reveals the next square over instead of the one you are in, then you move around enough, and it reveals the one you are in, too. Eventually.

-the new corrosive zombies glow, but the huge boomers don’t. I suspect this is backwards.

Otherwise, I really like it. Keep up the good work!

2

[quote=“deoxy, post:1, topic:9775”]-non-zombie aggro to the player is broken. Most non-zombie things either don’t attack me EVER (manhacks), or only attack back or VERY VERY rarely first. Killing ants doesn’t make the other ants come after me, and I can butcher ants surrounded by ants, no problem. Spiders,wasps, and bees are the same (though I haven’t tried a black-widow house/basement in this one, so there’s that). Bears and moose seem to be the only exception, and even they are incredibly tame compared to before. Zombies attack everything, and animals attack other animals and zombies just fine.

-the new corrosive zombies glow, but the huge boomers don’t. I suspect this is backwards.[/quote]

Non-zombie aggro was broken few days ago, fixed now. The bug affected all monsters that can’t bash.

Huge boomers are supposed not to glow. Notice that their goo on the ground doesn’t glow either and wearing environmental protection on biled body parts protects you from glowing.
Rationale is that the bile only glows in contact with human (mammal? living?) skin. And from gameplay perspective that the huge boomer would simply be far too weak if it couldn’t even rely on surprise.
Corrosive zed shines mostly because of the ranged attack. Trying to figure out where is this damage coming from could be quite annoying.

3

[quote=“Coolthulhu, post:2, topic:9775”][quote=“deoxy, post:1, topic:9775”]-non-zombie aggro to the player is broken. Most non-zombie things either don’t attack me EVER (manhacks), or only attack back or VERY VERY rarely first. Killing ants doesn’t make the other ants come after me, and I can butcher ants surrounded by ants, no problem. Spiders,wasps, and bees are the same (though I haven’t tried a black-widow house/basement in this one, so there’s that). Bears and moose seem to be the only exception, and even they are incredibly tame compared to before. Zombies attack everything, and animals attack other animals and zombies just fine.

-the new corrosive zombies glow, but the huge boomers don’t. I suspect this is backwards.[/quote]

Non-zombie aggro was broken few days ago, fixed now. The bug affected all monsters that can’t bash.

Huge boomers are supposed not to glow. Notice that their goo on the ground doesn’t glow either and wearing environmental protection on biled body parts protects you from glowing.
Rationale is that the bile only glows in contact with human (mammal? living?) skin. And from gameplay perspective that the huge boomer would simply be far too weak if it couldn’t even rely on surprise.
Corrosive zed shines mostly because of the ranged attack. Trying to figure out where is this damage coming from could be quite annoying.[/quote]

First, YAY!

Secondly, the environmental part must not work - glowing = glowing, and nothing I’ve found protects against it - survivor gear, gas mask, rain coat, whatever. They are, hands down, the most dangerous zombie in the game right now, as you can’t tell where they are until they are close enough to glow you, and then EVERYTHING comes at you, even more than during the day, as they can ONLY see you, not any other creatures.

The corrosive zombies are only about as annoying as regular spitters - they can only spit at you if they can see you, same as spitters, and if they can see you (when you’re not glowing), then you can see them. Seriously, they really don’t bother me any more than spitters, just with different flavor (which is very nice, of course).

Huge boomers make FAR more sense to glow since they, you know, GLOW (their description says they are leaking the stuff).

4

Glowing targets random body parts. If you have uncovered hands or head, it can still get through. A full set of survivor gear provides near complete immunity to the glowing effect (chance for glow to get through is well below 1%).
They certainly aren’t the most dangerous zed. Their most dangerous function is summoning the actually dangerous zed: predator. They just require a tiny bit more tactical thinking than the blind, shambling hordes.
They could be rebalanced if needed, but without pretending that they are anywhere near hulks, predators or shocker brutes when it comes to threat level.

Huge boomers shouldn’t appear until the second week of the spring. Also, use towels.

As for corrosive zeds: the glow helps to figure out what you’re attacked by. Currently there is no good way of figuring out what unseen thing is attacking you. With spitters, you obviously see the spit on the ground.
Other than that, yeah - they’re quite weak and could lose that glow and gain more attack power instead.

No, they don’t glow. Bile on the ground doesn’t glow either. Nor does bile on zeds. Currently not even bile on animals glows, but that’s more of a technical limitation here.

As for rebalancing, it could work like this:
Idle huge boomers would stay like they are, but “angry” boomers that smell strong scent or can see a nearby (<=5 tiles) target would glow. This would prevent the player from ever gaining total immunity to them (even with total immunity to glowing bile, standing next to a glower would reveal the player), but also would alert the player of incoming glowing bile.

5

Sure, those are the things that do the actual damage… but only if they are properly mobbed up. Even a single hulk is seldom a problem, unless you’re already in a bad way. And single or even double predators, while more dangerous than regular zombies, aren’t a problem, either. Ouch, take a hit, kill the predator, use a bandage, done.

No, what’s a problem is getting MOBBED by predators, hulks, etc. And huge boomers do that. They are the only cause of death I’ve had recently (ok, except a surprise hulk in a lab that punched me into a concrete wall and waded in after me, but that’s a freak accident).

6

Getting mobbed depends on aggressive playstyle. Take it a bit slower, stick to the walls and it shouldn’t happen. Or if you don’t want to change your playstyle, blacklisting huge boomers could be a good idea.

Huge boomers are supposed to change the playstyle - they give non-predators a chance to actually localize the player in the night. They do what shriekers are supposed to do. Being safe in the middle of the night in a zombie apocalypse should be limited mostly to safe houses, not infested cities.

Though hulk/predator vision range could use a nerf. Hulks have 50, predators have 45/15 (day/night). This means that a glowing survivor will attract hulks before attracting brutes or cannon fodder.

7

[quote=“Coolthulhu, post:6, topic:9775”]Getting mobbed depends on aggressive playstyle. Take it a bit slower, stick to the walls and it shouldn’t happen. Or if you don’t want to change your playstyle, blacklisting huge boomers could be a good idea.

Huge boomers are supposed to change the playstyle - they give non-predators a chance to actually localize the player in the night. They do what shriekers are supposed to do. Being safe in the middle of the night in a zombie apocalypse should be limited mostly to safe houses, not infested cities.

Though hulk/predator vision range could use a nerf. Hulks have 50, predators have 45/15 (day/night). This means that a glowing survivor will attract hulks before attracting brutes or cannon fodder.[/quote]

Ah, that explains the hulks - I thought they just got there faster because they moved faster.

And sticking to the walls really doesn’t help much, unless you never cross a street or go further in to town than the very outmost buildings.

Now, granted, I do play on slightly elevated spawn, so that’s a factor, but the regular spawn dies out WAY too quickly. I was playing on 20x spawn, but the new zombies make that unnecessary, so that’s good - now I’m playing on 5x.

8

I’ve tried with full survivor gear now (mask, helmet, trench coat ,cargo pants, boots, gloves), and now I’ve actually manage to not glow when hit… but still VERY VERY rarely. The vast majority of the time, even with full survivor gear, huge boomer = glow.

I may try it with ANBC suit, just to be sure, but I don’t think it works as you think it does, even if that’s what’s intended.

9

Survivor pants and trenchcoat have 5 environmental protection rather than 10. Those have a much higher chance of letting glow through.