With zomb hulks I think its a question. Who dies first you or him? I don’t REALLY know how powerful one is but a friend of my wrestles with them for fun (20 strength + hydraulic muscles = equal match no weapons just fists).
I still panic when a Hulk is close, but they’re honestly not too dangerous if you don’t try and melee them unprepared.
-> Easiest way = Unloading a weapon in burst mode from a very short distance turns them into paste, just like it does to pretty much anything else in game. From a distance? They’re nothing really but hitpoints, so the railgun should mutilate it if you can aim it well enough and reload before he reaches you.
-> Kart-Fusub[/sub] works on them insanely well. (G)rab a shopping cart, maneuver it between you and your attacker. They’re forced to climb onto it (like climbing through a window) and you get a free swipe or two at them. Step back, force them to reclimb on the cart at you again, repeat (Its the melee Cata equivalent to stepping backwards and firing ranged in DCSS). I’ve killed a brute this way with a day-1 character with zero skills to see if it was possible/overpowered tactically. A hulk isn’t too much harder as long as he doesn’t do his Kool-Aid Man “Oh Yeah!” rush attack and demolish the cart on you.
-> With layered survivor gear and a good practiced melee character (I think I had around 6 or 7 skill in Dodge, Melee, and my weapon skill) you can go toe-to-toe with one and pretty much walk away. I think I took a couple solid hits, but from full health I never dropped below green in anything even with Glass Jaw.
Hulks are easy in late game. A skilled blades user can take one down with a lit Rising Sun in about four swings, and by that point your dodge skill should be high enough that he won’t land a hit. I’ve killed them in all sorts of different ways though - tanked it inside a molotov’s blast radius, trapped it in a burning building, straight up slaughter, burst fire shotgun slugs, explosive arrows (not as effective as I’d hoped, but got the job done), crossbow, turret, car. It’s not that hard, you just have to be prepared.
I agree that game needs more challenges. Not only enemies, but different trap-like situations, diseases, deadlier poisons, natural hazards etc. Survival is hard thing, especially when apocalypse is around. More to say, game have to keep you from relaxing. When playing ADOM, for example, I’ve died a lot when I imagined that my char is "very skilled and well equipped ", primary due to loss of caution, not to lack of gaming experience.
Maybe creature lairs should be able to reproduce itself representing spreading of fungi, ants etc. In addition, terrain near nests might be altered either (ants destroying buildings for their nests, goo filling buildings making them unhabitable, etc.) .
Maybe creature lairs should be able to reproduce itself representing spreading of fungi, ants etc. In addition, terrain near nests might be altered either (ants destroying buildings for their nests, goo filling buildings making them unhabitable, etc.) .
Dynamically altered map sounds a very cool idea. I’m going to look at Github whether it’s been suggested or not.
I think the most dangerous thing in a apocalypse is the people itself. after 1/2 years(seasons in CDD) the survivals already adapted and learned how to survive and deal with the enemy.( except hordes)
If the npc were fixed and worked in a way to simulate real survivors, camps, bases, the late game would be awesome! Imagine getting strong and scavenging for weapons and ammo just to take a hostile compound of cannibals shooting BULLETS at you, and all that just to take their sweet loot!
fight the dead, fear the living…
[quote=“Zireael, post:25, topic:4801”]
Maybe creature lairs should be able to reproduce itself representing spreading of fungi, ants etc. In addition, terrain near nests might be altered either (ants destroying buildings for their nests, goo filling buildings making them unhabitable, etc.) .
Dynamically altered map sounds a very cool idea. I’m going to look at Github whether it’s been suggested or not.[/quote]
It’s planned, both for spreading after world-gen and the ability of things like fungus or insect colonies to “take over” other terrain; just waiting on some of the more major map rewrites that are needed to implement it well before it goes on the to-do list.
[quote=“Pageman, post:26, topic:4801”]I think the most dangerous thing in a apocalypse is the people itself. after 1/2 years(seasons in CDD) the survivals already adapted and learned how to survive and deal with the enemy.( except hordes)
If the npc were fixed and worked in a way to simulate real survivors, camps, bases, the late game would be awesome! Imagine getting strong and scavenging for weapons and ammo just to take a hostile compound of cannibals shooting BULLETS at you, and all that just to take their sweet loot!
fight the dead, fear the living…[/quote]
I always got the impression that people were being totally wiped out and would be extinct soon after the cataclysm, as the game gets harsher, mutant wildlife levels increase, and every year things get more and more hellish.
That kind of progressive difficulty would be what I would want.
Like by year 3 you better have 100 dodge, plenty of ammo, a big truck, and enough CBMS and mutations to defeat an army.
[quote=“Bonevomit, post:28, topic:4801”][quote=“Pageman, post:26, topic:4801”]I think the most dangerous thing in a apocalypse is the people itself. after 1/2 years(seasons in CDD) the survivals already adapted and learned how to survive and deal with the enemy.( except hordes)
If the npc were fixed and worked in a way to simulate real survivors, camps, bases, the late game would be awesome! Imagine getting strong and scavenging for weapons and ammo just to take a hostile compound of cannibals shooting BULLETS at you, and all that just to take their sweet loot!
fight the dead, fear the living…[/quote]
I always got the impression that people were being totally wiped out and would be extinct soon after the cataclysm, as the game gets harsher, mutant wildlife levels increase, and every year things get more and more hellish.
That kind of progressive difficulty would be what I would want.
Like by year 3 you better have 100 dodge, plenty of ammo, a big truck, and enough CBMS and mutations to defeat an army.[/quote]
Yeah, I think the isolation and loneliness is central to Cataclysm. After a few seasons, I’d imagine that there aren’t many survivors around at all. Think of your characters - mostly, they die in the first season, from any of a hundred ways to die. But the ones who make it past a few seasons become the really powerful ones with ammo stockpiles and CBMs and such. As the game progressed, you’d see fewer survivors, but they’d be better armed and more experienced. You’d only see an increase in survivors/population after a generation passed, but that’s beyond the scope of this game.
And I’m all for a more hellish environment. What kind of game would it be if things just got BETTER over time?
A game about rebuilding, adaptation, hope, and looking forward; what is the point of your struggle if you are the last man on earth, every single thing was meaningless then, humanity is gone. I would rather have survivors gangs besting the odds by forming groups and working; have fortified apartment buildings in the middle of the cities, though as nail m motorcycle riding their Harley through the wastes the remains of the national safe inside their fortified installations, the rare still functioning FEMA campment, military jets speeding by far above your head, frantically running for cover when you realize that that same jet will carpet bomb the neighborhood you are on on its next pass. Those are the things that would make the feel alive, not horrendous abominations that have nothing but the desire to murder (plus there’s no reason for why they could work together, perhaps you are about to get airstrike’d because theres one of those monsters around the next corner). But as general flavor I rather have a world in which humanity is slowly finding the way forward that one in which they a re pushed backwards and backwards until the last man, just because in my mind it makes or a better story.
I have always thought that the loneliness was a fatal flaw in this game actually, its also part as to why the game is so easy once you survive the first two days, unlike a man carrying a gun, melee enemies can only get so dangerous. and there arrives a point in which you can ace your way through mobs of each them. While you will never be able to dodge a bullet or easily fight a van speeding at you at 88 mph.
A game about rebuilding, adaptation, hope, and looking forward; what is the point of your struggle if you are the last man on earth, every single thing was meaningless then, humanity is gone. I would rather have survivors gangs besting the odds by forming groups and working; have fortified apartment buildings in the middle of the cities, though as nail m motorcycle riding their Harley through the wastes the remains of the national safe inside their fortified installations, the rare still functioning FEMA campment, military jets speeding by far above your head, frantically running for cover when you realize that that same jet will carpet bomb the neighborhood you are on on its next pass. Those are the things that would make the feel alive, not horrendous abominations that have nothing but the desire to murder (plus there’s no reason for why they could work together, perhaps you are about to get airstrike’d because theres one of those monsters around the next corner). But as general flavor I rather have a world in which humanity is slowly finding the way forward that one in which they a re pushed backwards and backwards until the last man, just because in my mind it makes or a better story.
I have always thought that the loneliness was a fatal flaw in this game actually, its also part as to why the game is so easy once you survive the first two days, unlike a man carrying a gun, a melee enemies can only get so dangerous. and there arrives a point in which you can ace your way through mobs of each them. While you will never be able to dodge a bullet or easily fight a van speeding at you at 88 mph.[/quote]
That’s a fair point. I was referring more to a game where things just got better on their own, regardless of player actions. Obviously, things do get better, but only because of what you do. The rate of rebuilding/adaptation/hope is up to your character.
The answer to all of this is NPCs.
NPC goals:
Trade with a faction
Enlist in a faction
Become the leader of a faction
Establish your own city/base
Gain an army of NPCs
Fight with other factions
Explore and try to get resources for your faction
Survive a coup
Fail to survive a coup
Start your own faction after being exiled from your first one and create a blood feud to destroy the people and the base you worked so hard to build up
yeah, as has been said, zombies are only part of the game, Cataclysm is about survival, and once your survival is assured, rebuilding. to do that we need NPCs to be fixed, functional, and fully implemented.
[quote=“HunterAlpha1, post:33, topic:4801”]yeah, as has been said, zombies are only part of the game, Cataclysm is about survival, and once your survival is assured, rebuilding. to do that we need NPCs to be fixed, functional, and fully implemented.[/quote] +1 Pretty much this. Once NPC is in the game will be 200% more awesome.