It’s been a while since I jumped into the game for an actual serious run. I’ve been running an unarmed character since it’s one of my favorites. First thing I noticed was the damage has been knocked down, second thing I noticed is that stims aren’t nearly as effective anymore (sad but realistic), and the third is that my shopping mall start was filled with ALOT of zombos.
So, after about an hour or so of shelf-jumping and panicked slaughter of… the counter says almost 200 zombies (Jeeeeze have you guys turned up the spawn rate by the way, it took me until try three to survive), I finally get things stable.
Here’s my issue, rooms seem to re-fill with the zombos on the latest experimental build. Granted, I am well aware you need to pumble those corpses nice and thoroughly with some smashing, but are there just -SO- many zombies in the mall they are naturally wandering about, or do I need to grab a knife and start quartering so they stay dead?
I’m rather hardcore with my characters and I’m slowly being worn down by the undead tides.
The need-to-know info is that I’ve not touched any of the spawn rules off of default, aside from NPCs since I like the random murder-hobo factor, and that I double-made sure I smash all the corpses to keep them dead.
I’m looking for confirmation that the zombies stay dead when you pulp them still since being jumped by 30 zombies on a floor that I thought I already cleared was… disconcerting. Especially when my ‘safe’ room had the door broken down when I was trying to sleep in my cardboard box! I mean, how dare they!
1st if all, have you deactivated the z-levels?, if you havent updated in a long time, there was an update that turned them on by default until you changed it back to off, and there have been a lot of commenting regarding that if you have z-levels on they could aim at you from different floors like home missiles (although it was toned down recently) there was a time they even ignored stairs and jumped out of windows to reach you.
Now if you have them off. i cant think of anything else being honest, i always play the default survivor at the evacuee center, so couldnt say left from right if there where any changes on the mall sceneario.
But yeah, as long as you pulp them or butcher them, they stay down.
They aren’t attacking me from different floors. Rooms filled with dozens of corpses seem to be getting refilled with a dozen-odd zombies within the Mall Start.
I cleared every single zombo within sight on the inside of the building, but a day later there was another 20-odd in the courtyard that nearly got me good. The leg’s at [/—] after that fight, and everything else is pretty bad-off as well.
I’m trying to confirm if the Zombies wander much more frequently than, say,
C or Stable D, if there is some feature included in the latest experimental that spawns new Zombies, or I need to do more than smashing them on the floor to keep them dead.
There are way too many corpses for me to confirm if they are getting up or wandering in and I simply do not have the insanity necessary to try and butcher almost 200 corpses in the dark (That’s a lot of flashlight battery or hauling corpses).
I’m fine with whatever is actually the case if anyone has something more definitive, but I just want to know what is needed since it’s hard to keep track of things in Experimental.
If I have to quarter corpses now, sure.
If I have to be careful since the zombies wander through buildings randomly now, exciting.
If I screwed up this save by not catching there’s a new mechanic that undid Static spawn on Zombies, that’s part of life.
(I know animals spawn in the world after start, not an issue)
Based on first-hand experience I’ve made with a version from about a month back, they stay dead after beeing smashed up.
But they do seem to wander a lot more. And, as already mentioned by @Ragno, they use stairs a lot more often than before (and still jump over ledges if they really want to get down from the roofs). I had, I kid you not, almost 100 Zombies pathing through a house, down the stairs into the basement, down another stairway and into a secret lab (where they - yes, all of them - get beaten up by a cyborg), because of a mi-go blaring down there.
I also cleared out a large area (about 2 overmap tiles in all directions) around “my” house and still got some stray zombies stuck in my traps.
At some point, I’ve lost two of my Zlaves and never found them again (about a season ingame ago). They probably drowned in a nearby river… who knows.
Long story short: Based on a game session from a month ago, smashing still works and the static setting is respected, Zombies just wander more.
My experience shows that zombies’ spawn rate does not matter if wander spawns are enabled. An example: if zombies’ spawn is set to 0.01 and wander spawns are disabled, small cities (towns) consist of a few zombies. Literally. If zombies’ spawn is set to 0.01 and wander spawns are enabled, there are MANY zombies even in a small city due to the horde. I do not know if a shopping mall spawns a horde but it may be the source of your problems. This is the reason why I usually start playing without wander spawns. I enable them after ±20 days. You can do this via save - > name of your world - > worldoptions.json
I have the Wander Spawns turned off because it’s a somewhat outdated system. I’d love to have hordes that use the statically spawned zombies running around, but fairy-poofed Zombos just don’t do it for me. It’s not much for the realism factor if you have little spawn points going around in the code-layer of the game world dropping zombies out of the Ether.
Wander Spawn is off by default, and I confirmed that it was off during world gen. It is almost certainly tied to the marked [Solution] for this question thread, that being that mobs are far, far better at not only pathing, but also simply wandering about in the world.
I tracked some mobs after the [Solution] post, and noticed that the packs of Zombos and other mobs have a rather noteworthy pathing arc, ie, they wander around in a large area. That likely means the Zombies were, as the [Solution] post suggested, jumping off of the upper levels down below because they couldn’t understand they shouldn’t walk off ledges.
This, therein, caused the zombies to re-populate the lower floors from the upper floors since they’d naturally path around and re-fill rooms by their AI code.