Grenadier Zombies

Not in yet. It will have “merged” and not “open” when it is in. Or “closed” if some other fix does the same thing but better.

They should probably drop an armed explosive of the right kind on death instead of exploding, so if you’re fast enough you can run up to one, kill it, and throw the bomb away.

Yeah they are kinda bad, even a pistol is not a guarantee that the monster wont scre you over.

I mean I started a police officer to see if they truly were that dangerous, the hacks werent that problematic, one shotted pretty much every single one. The problem is killing the zombie itself, at a safe distance, pistols are too inacurate and weak to damage it effectively (it has soldier zombie armor apparently), so in the end you are pretty much forced to kill it from up close distance unless you have a rifle or hundreds of rounds.

It threw a several flashbangs when I killed it, and by the time I regained vision I was surrounded by a block’s worth of feral zombies and dogs, and then I died. Mind you I had enough brains to kill all the zombies close to the grenadier by before starting shoot, the battle just took long enough for the ferals and dogs to catch up from the unseen streets nearby.

I dont think this things should really spawn that commonly in cities if at all, can’t really fight them unless you have rifles or insane armor.

I think mininuke-on-death is a bit OTT in my opinion, since the only way to avoid it is to slowly draw out all their ammunition until they chuck the mininuke-hack, shoot that down, then kill the elite grenadier.
Having the death activate the timers on the explosives rather than detonate them instantly seems like a reasonable compromise, especially if there’s a big “It looks like it dropped a mininuke!” message should that be selected.

I’m pretty sure you can’t survive a mini-nuke in any armor except maybe the highest power armor type. I haven’t checked on that but I’m very sure it’s nay guaranteed fatal.

Actually, the whole concept is pretty dumb, in my opinion. Zombies are too brain-dead to use GUNS, but this one can somehow use advanced explosives? Uh, sure.

The only other thing that comes close is the scientist zombie, and it’s still quite a bit simpler, really, and still sometimes kills itself with its acid.

Seriously, if they can’t use firearms, the can’t use explosives, and if the rational is that they can’t manage to reload the guns that they actually do use, then either they’re too dumb to use explosives or they’d have blown themselves up long ago, OR they’d have at least wasted all their explosives like gun-wielding zombies have wasted their ammo.

An upgrade to the bloated zombie (that blows itself up) isn’t a bad idea, but one that intelligently… well, much of anything, really, is a problem. The master, maybe the necromancer… get those first, they make a LOT more sense.

The concept for it is it yanks a random pull-tab or similar on its uniform, which releases a bomb bot, not exactly rocket surgery. Having said that I think it would fit better all around if it were a robot, or possibly a cyborg.

+1

By the way, could zombies and robots be allied without wrecking the lore? I mean, military bots not targeting the military zeds and zeds not considering them a threat. Scientist zeds don’t attack own manhacks either and it makes sense that zeds would not go for robots, trees moving on the wind and similar “not alive enough” stuff, at least the stuff that doesn’t attack them.
This would help with placement of zombies like this one - military/zed areas could overlap without one side eradicating the other.

Big post, lots of future implementation notes. Most important parts are probably the NOTE at the end of the first half and the first paragraph of the second for you tl;dr’ers out there.

Honestly? I want to put both of these in the game, as well as Master zombies making all the zombies near them smarter in their pathfinding. (Probably with a small nerf to the upgrade special in return). The fact that the total extent of strategy required to deal with every single damn zombie in the game boils down to “lure them on to a bush/pit/window frame, hit them once, then run around and lure them onto another one, repeating till they are dead”. Is one of the handful of things that really bug me about Cataclysm. Heck, that strategy is a functional way to win against 90% of the enemies you will encounter in the whole game, requiring only tiny tweaks here and there. (Shocker zombie? Use a non-conducting weapon. Hulk? Use bigger pits and your ability to run. Fungaloids? Wear full body coverage while you do it.)

Right now literally the only common enemies that require a different strategy than that one line are the robots, and that’s something I’d like to see spread out to the other factions (which was the reason I made them a zombie and not a robot). Higher level monsters should force you to adapt your strategy in fighting them, and provide a challenge to those characters that are farther in the game. How about sniping that master/necro out of the group before you attempt to deal with it lest they lead those shockers into a flanking maneuver? Maybe a fungaloid creature that can’t spread the fungus itself, but gains power based on how much of the nearby terrain is fungalized, requiring you to burn it out? Or a pair of triffids, one long range heavy-hitter and an attack-less tank that actively tries to stop you from reaching its long ranged partner, forcing you to either power through the tank or out snipe the hitter? There’s tons of combinations that could be done, all of which would fit the lore, and all of which get blocked the instant that we stop any faction but robots from using tactics greater than “run at the enemy blindly”.

Note: I’m not saying that they don’t need any nerfs, they probably do (and lord knows I’ll be taking a few more balance runs at them myself). What I’m saying is the fact that they actually add some strategical variety to the game should not be the reason for that; and the fact that they appear difficult simply because people are too stubborn to change their tactics from the monotony most other enemies in the game use is not a valid reason for nerfing in my opinion.

[hr]

[quote=“Coolthulhu, post:28, topic:9483”]By the way, could zombies and robots be allied without wrecking the lore? I mean, military bots not targeting the military zeds and zeds not considering them a threat. Scientist zeds don’t attack own manhacks either and it makes sense that zeds would not go for robots, trees moving on the wind and similar “not alive enough” stuff, at least the stuff that doesn’t attack them.
This would help with placement of zombies like this one - military/zed areas could overlap without one side eradicating the other.[/quote]
Per the current lore while zeds might not be actively hostile with robots, robots should be fairly actively hostile with nearby zeds in most cases. In an ideal case you’d probably have robots targeting all zombies except for those that matched their particular faction (i.e., military robots wouldn’t target military zeds, science robots science zeds, copbots would still target cop zeds because we state that as part of the problem but riotbots shouldn’t, and so on). Zombies should mostly ignore robots unless the robots are actively attacking them or making loud noises.

So you might have a military zombie standing next to a bunch of military drones and everything will be peachy. But if a normal zombie happens to walk by the military drone should target it with extreme prejudice (even though it is ignoring the drone) and then the noise from the explosions could cause other zombies to attack the drone. The actual military zombies could then go either way, either just ignoring everything or joining in with the other zombies to take down the drone (despite the fact that the drone won’t be hostile to them). The end result of the fight should either be that the zombies eventually damage/destroy the drones, and then wander off (possibly with the horde being joined by the military zeds), or the drones should wipe out any nearby zombies except the military ones, at which point they would go motionless (not attacking back at the military zombies) until eventually the military zombies lose interest.

Alternatively you might have a situation like a bunch of riotbots and copbots run into a military outpost. At the beginning the riotbots should probably recognize the military zombies to be figures of authority, so they would just ignore them. Similarly the military zeds and robots will ignore the riotbots and copbots. However the copbots have a programming error that makes them want to take out all humanoids, zombie or living, so they would attack the military zombies. At that point the military robots, recognizing danger to their personnel, would attack the copbots. The military zombies, distracted by the noise, and being attacked by the copbots would then attack either the military robots or the copbots. Should any attack the copbots, the rioters would label them as “rioting people” instead of figures of authority and try to peacefully cuff them. The military drones don’t recognize this cuffing as an attack since it’s not a harmful attempt, and ignore the riotbots completely. The situation quickly devolves into a bunch of one-way grudge matches, where the copbots are trying to kill everything not a robot, the riotbots are trying to peacefully detain anything humanoid that attacks the copbots, the military drones are attacking anything that is trying to hurt the military zombies, and the military zombies are attacking anything that makes too much noise. The end result could really go any way, depending on how many of each side there is an how much ammo the military drones have. You might end up with a bunch of dead copbots and riotbots, or a bunch of cuffed military zeds. Or maybe the copbots successfully slaughter the military zeds and the military drones run out of ammo so the copbots just wander away, leaving a military outpost with ammo-less drones and a bunch of dead military zeds.

It’s kinda beyond the reach of our current faction system, but it’s what I’d eventually like to see in the game, and I feel it captures a lot of the chaos that went down during the Cataclysm.

That doesn’t cover targeting, resulting in bots that got for the nearest threat, or some such. Also, by that logic, any soldier zombie carrying a grenade should be blowing up at the first sign of combat (considering how soldiers carry such devices ready to use).

Seriously, that’s zombies for you. Sure, the other factions may need some help (fungaloids need to be dumb, too, I think, but being outnumbered in the open needs to be more dangerous, even for skilled characters, and then they’ll be fine, since they spawn SO BLOODY MUCH STUFF), but this is what zombies do… it’s why, really, once you’ve gotten away from the initial “nearly everyone is dead” event, zombies get kinda humorous. That’s OK, it’s what they do.

Now, masters and necros getting some half-decent AI could fix that, late game, or some kind of “master master” that controls large hordes and directs them to do something the player would want to stop could all be great late-game material…

Either way, the fix for this is probably something more along the lines of large numbers being inherently more dangerous (even to high skill characters) and/or more reasonable skill-gain speed and/or time pressure of some kind (lack of food, scheduled nuke-cleanse of the area, whatever).

[quote=“i2amroy, post:29, topic:9483”](big long text here…)

It’s kinda beyond the reach of our current faction system, but it’s what I’d eventually like to see in the game, and I feel it captures a lot of the chaos that went down during the Cataclysm.[/quote]

That does sound really great - hope it can be accomplished at some point.

[quote=“i2amroy, post:29, topic:9483”]The fact that the total extent of strategy required to deal with every single damn zombie in the game boils down to “lure them on to a bush/pit/window frame, hit them once, then run around and lure them onto another one, repeating till they are dead”. Is one of the handful of things that really bug me about Cataclysm.

Note: I’m not saying that they don’t need any nerfs, they probably do (and lord knows I’ll be taking a few more balance runs at them myself). What I’m saying is the fact that they actually add some strategical variety to the game should not be the reason for that; and the fact that they appear difficult simply because people are too stubborn to change their tactics from the monotony most other enemies in the game use is not a valid reason for nerfing in my opinion.[/quote]

I agree with the idea of new zeds requiring different tactics, however those should not depend too many of:

[ol][li]Singling out the zed (it will obviously be helpful, but shouldn’t be necessary for a character of the level that should expect to see this monster)[/li]
[li]The zed being both too dangerous to approach and too dangerous to keep alive[/li]
[li]Player counting moves (this is rather tedious even with just things like hulks)[/li]
[li]Player having to wear very heavy armor[/li]
[li]Player losing lots of turns to special abilities[/li]
[li]Player having no choice but to engage the zed[/li]
[li]Wrecking equipment[/li]
[li]Requirement of highly specific gear/abilities[/li]
[li]The requirement for the player to cheese the monster at night[/li]
[li]Zed appearing without warning and instantly attacking[/li][/ol]

For a low-level character, the grenadier certainly fits the 3 first points. Add the “rare gear” point if we’re talking “too low to kill a hulk” level, because guns aren’t guaranteed at this point.
The idea is OK, but only when we consider it to be a high level monster, not a mid level one (like the hulk is). If hulks had immunity to status effects and an immunity increased movement costs (shrubs, pits etc.), then maybe (only maybe) they would be as dangerous as a non-elite grenadier.

Compare zombie predator (the other new zombie): unescapable (140 speed + leap per 5 turns), great nightvision (15 tiles) so it can jump in and get the first hit, can drain some moves (comparable to a single shock cloud attack), but won’t spawn until the first monster upgrade and won’t get common until the second.

So you might have a military zombie standing next to a bunch of military drones and everything will be peachy. But if a normal zombie happens to walk by the military drone should target it with extreme prejudice (even though it is ignoring the drone) and then the noise from the explosions could cause other zombies to attack the drone. The actual military zombies could then go either way, either just ignoring everything or joining in with the other zombies to take down the drone (despite the fact that the drone won't be hostile to them).

I plan to expand the faction system to cover per-faction hostility/fear. Once it’s done, situations like this could happen.

I’ve got a small nerf PR up. As well as merging Coolthulu’s spawngroup change. As I note in my PR, with a different strategy and the few tiny tweaks there, I was able to 1v3 3 elite grenadiers at the same time, or fairly easily take on groups of other zombies with a grenadier.

The PR will also make explosions be able to damage items, so be aware of that (though it does mean that you don’t need to worry as much about zombies killed with explosions reviving).

For those of you who don’t want to to read that big wall of text, the key was positioning + running. Don’t try to fight the hacks, just run in (oftentimes blind due to the flashbangs) circles, homing in on the last place you saw the grenadier/elite grenadier. Once you find them hit them once or twice, then take off running again before the hacks chasing you can explode. Several times I was even able to pull off the “return to sender” ploy, where I got a grenadier to blow themselves up for me. With grenadiers + other zombies the strategy was virtually identical, but I had to take out the other zombies first, often by virtue of getting the grenadier to blow them up, before homing in on the grenadier to finish him.

I would really like to see some supermonsters in this game, but like I said somewhere else, I’d like to see them as singular entities that have their own map icons the way hordes and NPC survivors do. Then at least you can go “Something really bad is passing through town today, I had better lay low for a while” rather than “Hey what’s that coming around the corner HOLY SH–”

It’s the difference between evacuating ahead of a hurricane versus stepping on a landmine.

I personally think that grenadiers are good addition to the game, but they are surely mid-high stuff. They should neither spawn out of military facility vicinity until later on. The fact that even normal grenadier needs knowledge how it works or decent gear to defeat it (right now only 1 person knows and that is i2amroy) says that this is not a low - medium level zombie. From everyone else’s opinion you need rifle to kill grenadier or at the very least pistol to shoot all the hacks and then try to kite the grenadier (We do not know the mechanics!).

I personally think that because we just had stamina and running implemented, we are not quite accustomed to that system and might not even know how to run! I learned running key couple days age while I think stamina came like 2 weeks ago? So many huge game changing updates in so little time that we are hacing hard time getting accustomed.

I’d love to see zombies become a lot smarter near necromancers and masters. Perhaps even get some special abilities like being able to throw and wield things? Would make masters and necromancers more dynamic and actually dangerous.

One think that I’m not liking about grenadiers is that they explode on death. I really REALLY would like to have confirmation if veterans explode as a mini nuke and irradiate the area if they haven’t used the mininuke hack? If they do, then that is pretty much worst mechanic in C:DDA in my book. Base that I had wasted SO much time to built is pretty much irradiated wasteland now (as I told before I got veteran spawn on me with no special zombies and wander spawns on).

Yeah, the current nerf PR I’ve got up will change the explode on death once I get it to stop crashing (and the “only spawn in military locations” change is already in). Grenadiers and elites will drop active explosive items (i.e., primed grenades, etc.) instead of just exploding.

And the way it will do it (and currently does it right now, just with instant explosions), is to pick 3 random pieces of ammo they have left (so that could be 3 flash bangs, 2 grenades and a flashbang, 1 mininuke 2 grenades and a tear gas canister, etc.) and drops/explodes them on its corpse.

It is completely illogical that having high speed does not help you to run away any more successfully. Especially since they adjust to only barely hit you. It might look cinematic the first time, but only the first time.

It would look better if they just didn’t home in on the player and targeted the square where the player stood when they were launched. This at least can be rationalized by saying the drones aren’t designed to home in on a human-sized target. After all, demolitionists blow up fortifications and maybe tanks, not infantry.

High speed will help you; but only if you are actually faster than .5*the grenade hack speed (which by default are speed 250, so 125 speed and up). The fact that they adjust to compensate for your speed is because in most cases the grenade hack is going to be faster than you are.

As for the reasoning, this is a world of humanoid-sized (or smaller) hunter killer drones. These bombs are designed to home in and take out anything ranging from a stationary wall to a fast moving skitterbot. If I was programming them like I would if they were real military devices, they’d just fly right at you and detonate instantly (as well as on taking any serious damage), no countdown or anything similar. Modern missiles are already to the point where they can perform almost 90 degree turns in their attempts to stop you from evading the explosion; it’s not that big of a leap to imagine a small, self-maneuvering grenade with similar programming (and in fact there are already a handful of military developers working on similar designs around the globe). Currently the only real things stopping us from using them in our current military is our lack of a good IFF system on the personnel level making a high risk you’d accidentally take out a friendly or a civilian, and the fact that such designs would still be a little too expensive for a 1-use only type of drone.

I mean, I’d be willing to bet there have been plenty of opportunities where ground troops have wished they had the ability to get a grenade to reliably fly around the cover they are currently behind, across the street, and through the window the insurgent is currently shooting at them from; or to have a grenade that will go right through the tiny gun window on that bunker and then detonate instantly in the middle of the space 100% of the time regardless of the soldier, and without giving any real chance to stop it. A small grenade drone could definitely fit the bill for something that you could give to soldiers to solve that need.

And speed wise? A realistic design would probably still be lobbed/launched in the proper direction by a soldier in most cases, meaning you’d be looking at speeds of around 10-15 m/s, or 6000 - 9000 in in-game terms. That’s 60-90x faster than the average player in-game. Even a stopped-start realistic design could still probably hit 11+ m/s pretty quickly due to the lightness and power of the overall design; which means that unless you are secretly Usain Bolt you aren’t going to be outrunning one of them.

Trust me, from a realism point of view the fact that the hacks move slowly and run scaled timers in an attempt to cinematicly miss the player is a blessing, since the real designs in development right now that the hacks are being based on would do no such thing.

From a realism point of view, munitions like this wouldn’t be workable by a braindead zombie. Put them on some kind of turret (milspec heavy turret, or some such).

Or, if they were, they’d be used up on non-player targets long before the player was around (except in the most specific of circumstances).

Again, if zombies are too dumb to use guns properly, they are too dumb for this.

Could make them cyborgs and explain their ability to use the manhacks as some ai targetting routine still working in the background.

As has been pointed out before, literally all the zombie has to do is pull a single tab to launch it and the drone does all the rest. In the world of the future your weapons do your fighting for you, you just need to turn them on and feed them the IFF data (which the grenadier zed’s military stuff is assumed to still doing automatically, though we should probably eventually have an actual IFF item that once you “registered” to yourself you could use to give a 100% chance of success on setting up/launching military robots such as hacks or turrets). The other zombies don’t read as hostiles to the current zombie pulling the tab’s IFF reader, so the drone doesn’t target them, and realistically I wouldn’t think it would be too far fetched to have the grenade automatically deactivate and return if no available targets are found; you could save a fair bit of money in your military that way. The grenadier literally requires only a single piece of technology, one that identifies enemies/allies, and every other bit of AI processing power is housed in the hack itself.

And once again, this is not some crazy pipe dream. We are literally working on creating small robot drones that do this right now for our current militaries (though the current designs are mostly focused on drone-mounted guns rather than kamikaze drones). A notable example came up just a year or so back, where someone was working on a small drone for only a couple hundred bucks that when fed target location data would automatically fly to the desired location and fire on enemy targets there; it was to be used to allow soldiers to counter snipers without having to leave their current cover. And not a single bit of cyborg super-processing AI’s needed, this is all with small, soldier-carryable current technology.

Ideally I’d like to eventually have it so that the drones will indeed be used on other (non-military aligned) targets that the military zed deems “hostile”; right now it’s just being held back by a coding thing involving getting the current enemy the grenadier is angry at, not by it not wanting to be implemented.