Had a good long term game going, getting into the mid-late phase prepping a suite of CBM’s to install, fully equipped and loaded APC deathmobile etc, etc.
Gunned down from offscreen by a chicken walker without warning on a city street - and that was basically that. 30+ hours of play kaput in 2 turns with no survival options at all.
Definitely the most frustrating death I’ve had in a long time. I was playing a survivor with night vision and equipped with low-light goggles and the CW still has much better night vision range - which basically means that unless you are bullet proof, there is no safe way to move at night unless you’re willing to risk an insta kill that you can’t do anything about.
I don’t mind that kind of threat in labs or special camps, but a random city street spawn with that kind of night perception and ranged lethality is not really a fun mechanic, as it basically just means you can’t play at night.
Oh, sure. I have no problems with CW’s being uber…
I do kind of have an issue with them wandering random city streets as a gotcha spoiler that forces you to play only during the day though. I find it frustrating mainly because I can’t think of anything I’d have done to avoid it. There were no Zeds near it, so I couldn’t hear its gunfire in the distance, there were no special features in the area.
Even if I spent every night doing nothing but running from cover point to cover point and peeking every corner of every building, it wouldn’t have helped - so basically it invalidates night play, because the ONLY way to avoid being instagibbed by a walker is to only ever go outdoors when you have maximum daylight vision range.
Chicken Walkers have 35 night vision in the JSONs, which appears to be the best night vision of any robot by a country mile. Most of them have no night vision flags set at all. Maybe open an issue on github and see what the general feeling is towards nerfing that?
Electroreceptors help with detecting any bots without the need for peeking. I don’t know if the CW makes enough heat to be detected but if it does then IR vision helps too, and may be better than night vision in this regard.
It has no WARM flag according to Chezzo’s browser, no robots do, as far as I could check. Which is mighty strange, by their efectively unlimited (fluff-wise I guess just very long) operating time and radioactivity when broken, their power source should be some kind of next-gen RTG. These produce lots of waste heat. Even if it’s something else they should show up at night with half-decent IR.
Yeah. I’m trying to think of some minor tweak which would make them a bit more ‘fair’ as a mid-game threat. Pretty much everything else in the game gives you options for detection, retreat or engagement if you’re careful or well prepared.
CW, not so much. They’re pretty much just a range 35 insta-kill at night unless you’re a full late game god-mode mutant, or decked out in heavy power armor, and they have no warning behaviors unlike most of the other threats in the game. I thought they used to do the laser rangefinder warning, but I didn’t get that at all?
Honestly I don’t get why their detection range is so much better than any other robot, which should be using similar detection arrays. I could see them having a few extra meters, but 35 is outrageously longer than any other night detection range in the game, and far longer than a survivor can achieve unless they have a large array of mods and high perception on a moonlit night.
They should make a fair amount of walking around noise if I’m understanding what they are correctly, that and what they are powered with should make a fair bit of heat too. I suggest Blot_runner’s scenario of having them make enough heat to be detected and if you don’t have IR detection then have the player be warned with a message like “You hear mechanical walking from the north” if the walker gets within daylight’s viewing range.
Should be more than enough to satisfy detection gripes.
So. WARM flag for chicken walkers and some noise to make them heard from beyond their night vision range. I guess code-wise it can be done as an ability akin Mi-Go parroting (or maybe secubots - I remember they produce some whirring when rolling around), triggering once every n turns.
Seems interesting. Gotta see the code, if I can do it, I’ll create a mod to get some feedback. Better than just try to PR it right away, imo.
That’d be great, but it would have to have a short radius at which it automatically engages hostiles otherwise it would be easily overwhelmed by zed and friends before the compliance countdown finishes. I don’t think normal zeds can overcome its armour but I’ve seen brutes and hulks put some dents into them before they were shredded.
That’s nothing. How’s this for a hypothermia death?
One time I sent my wilderness guy out on a two-hour hike to finish clearing out and looting a school. He got there, walked past my handy trap field and around to the northeast corner of the school (last batch of zombies) and began to lead them back.
I noticed they were catching up to me, and I thought for a second I’d forgotten to toggle run mode, but then I looked and I was running, and they were still catching up to me. My speed was terribly slowed!
That’s when I checked the @ screen and saw that I was basically freezing to death, because I’d left my warm cozy fire down in the LMOE shelter and walked RIGHT PAST the pile of winter clothes I kept by the doorway. He was wearing like a pair of boots, underwear, and a backpack with no shirt, out in a snow storm.
I save-scummed that, 'cause I couldn’t stand to let my poor character die just because my brain’s having one of those off days.
Wow, okay, so I didn’t die but I came VERY CLOSE to it. I set my cities to size 16 with 7 spacing, and it had made me completely rethink my strategy. Especially with roaming hordes turned on, and their health dialed a little higher (I slow them down to 80% for head cannon purposes, but up their resiliency)
The sheer amount of zombies, the variety that’s found around every corner. It was staggering.
Got good enough gear and skills to take out a few zombies at a time without any issues. Got cocky. Tried to pick off a larger group one by one. Attracted more than I could fight, while a few of them were faster than me so I couldn’t run either. Emptied my M1911 into the zombie survivor but the rest killed me.
Broke into a lab using a pickaxe and the hydraulic muscles bionic on a Failed Bioweapon. Two robotic cops from PK’s put me into an infinite stunlock and ganked me as I was helplessly stumbling about.
Apparently the large office tower i decided to sleep in was harboring a fire on one of the floors. What followed it’s growth was a comedy of errors on my behalf. I shot up heroin, put in ear plugs and locked myself in the generator room on the roof unbeknownst to it’s presence.
Usually you can very clearly identify a fire in cataclysm, as the building being destroyed makes ear shattering noises. Not, however when you render yourself deaf dumb and blind. When my character finally came to his senses the fire had engulfed the entire perimeter of the room, blocking the window and door 1 space away from me, while also collapsing some roof rubble on top of me for good measure.
I personally blame the sheep back on the farm. Constantly waking me up parading outside my window. I grew too fond of my ear plugs. And while i eventually shot most of them for their transgressions, it truly was the sheep who had the last laugh.