Is group aggro implemented?

Nibelung44 · 2016-12-15T06:42:48.000Z

Hi,

It seems group aggro is not in the game, which would be a real problem, as you can pull from a group zombies one by one until you are done. Group aggro is almost mandatory if you want to have any kind of challenge I guess, but I might be mistaken and perhaps some groups are not ‘grouped’ but others are (like a necromancer surrounded by minions?). Any feedback?

Profugo_Barbatus · 2016-12-15T08:35:45.000Z

I’m not aware of any specific grouping system the game uses. But if a change were to be made to make picking off individual zombies more difficult/dangerous, it could be to make zombies growl or howl or something when they see a hostile. Specifically, just make some sort of loud noise, that would draw attention. It’d draw nearby zombies (and other dangerous things, I guess) towards the zombie that’s spotted something, which would bring them close enough to also threaten the player. Bit of a classic zombie lore solution, but makes enough sense for something intelligent like the blob to do.

Dunno how hard/easy it’d be to make zombies do this though. Mi-Go are kinda similar in that they’ll make sounds, but I dunno if they’ll just always chatter, or only when they see something.

Rot · 2016-12-15T08:48:14.000Z

That would be pretty annoying imo, there are screamer zombies for a reason. Giving all zombies the ability to howl would make the screamer zombie pretty redundant.

The singling out of zombies is a good tactic for breaking apart large clumps of zombies, and I believe that this tactic should be removed just to make the game pointlessly more difficult.

If you want all zombies to swarm you, then do daytime raids.

KliPeH · 2016-12-15T10:02:55.000Z

[quote=“Profugo Barbatus, post:2, topic:13142”]Dunno how hard/easy it’d be to make zombies do this though. Mi-Go are kinda similar in that they’ll make sounds, but I dunno if they’ll just always chatter, or only when they see something.[/quote]I doubt this will be too hard to implement. Both the shrieker and the survivor zombies have a shriek ability (activates every 10 turns) which I presume also works like the passive [SEES] or [HEARS] tags. You could make a variant of that, but instead of emitting 30 sound, make it something like 6-8 - reasonable, considering shattering a window is 12 (and this is a low kind of growl we’re talking about here). Assign that to all zombies and voila.

If this sort of growl ability isn’t implemented, and zombies stay completely silent the way they are now - only footsteps giving their position away, which is completely unfun might I add - you’d be relying on lore to make this change logical; not necessarily bad, but not great either considering not everybody is lore-savvy.

(with all blob being of one mind and the corpses merely being their temporary vessel, from my understanding of it)

Aabbcc · 2016-12-15T10:59:41.000Z

You already make that much sound, say, walking, or hitting the zombie, or the zombie hitting you.

Nibelung44 · 2016-12-15T12:12:59.000Z

Good suggestion, I might add a few shriek at range 20 abilities to a few zombies, semi-bosses I would say…

Coolthulhu · 2016-12-15T13:43:21.000Z

Group aggro would need some sort of group cohesion. Zombie AI is very bare at the moment.
Still, I’d like to have group aggro someday. At least zombies sharing targets with nearby allies.

kevin.granade · 2016-12-15T17:26:51.000Z

KliPeH:

You could make a variant of that, but instead of emitting 30 sound, make it something like 6-8 - reasonable, considering shattering a window is 12 (and this is a low kind of growl we’re talking about here). Assign that to all zombies and voila.

This is precisely what I was planning on doing.