Reclaiming a City - Is it Possible?

Game Talk The Bunker
1

My goal: Clear out an entire city, wall it off, fill it with turrets and NPC survivors. That is my dream, however, I need a little help and advice on how to do this.

I understand how Static spawn works regarding zombies, I enjoy being able to clear out an area then not have to worry about zombies appearing out of thin air. My issue is, a long time ago when I did attempt this project, certain hostile animals still seemed to spawn within the town after having cleared it out.

From what I can gather hostile animals, such as Zombears or Wolves, do not fall under the Static Spawn system, but are generated over time. This is to keep hunting a viable option, but is there some way to prevent them from spawning in a certain area?

I mean I don’t want to make it so nothing ever spawns in the game for good, just make it so things down spawn inside my own little “safe zone”, aka a completely walled off chunk of a city.

To one day have a fully fortified city, filled with turrets and NPC’s, surrounded by mines, then have a wandering horde come try take the city over… Does that not sound glorious?

Anyway, any help would be greatly appreciated!

2

Not it is not possible.

Either you have wander spawn enabled, so zombies can spawn in your safe area, or have it off, so nothing will spawn at all.

3

A town where every walkable tile is pit.

4

with enought sentry guns random zombified animals would just turn into street junk what needs to be cleared, for sentry guns i suggest making solar powered pseudo cars with automatic laser turrerts on them

5

Well… solar powered or they are all connected to a generator of some kind via jumper/heavy duty cables.

6

Try a small town, just one of those on an road intersection with 4-10 buildings, it should be small enough that nothing spawn inside while you are around. Try and keep the noise down too, that’s the main attractant for wander spawns.

7

If you can’t do laser turrets I think pneumatic or bolter turrets will do well.

8

Unfortunately the game engine isn’t up to this, we would have to somehow pin every “claimed” map area into memory and periodically run the game code over the whole area periodically, which would require a lot of code changes, require a lot of processing time in the game, consume a lot of memory and be extremely difficult to debug.

As long as the area is not under attack it would be fine, but if a horde attacked while the player was elsewhere it might make your game slow to a crawl.

9

thing is, why WOULD a horde attack while the player is away? i would think making a “no spawn zone” would be easier then doing all that. so if a horde is on top of it nothing happens since spawn is disabled, instead when the player is close enough the zombies in that wander group would spawn in the nearest “unclaimed” zone. if you set up your walls right that would make all zombies spawn outside your areas and would attempt to beat the walls down.

this would attach to the “faction” system in a way, as in, to claim an area you need to assign NPCs to guard that area, 2 NPCs on patrol/guard duty can maintain a 2x2 tiles of non spawn area. BUT to prevent someone from getting a million NPCs to guard a massive area, you need support infrastructure in place to ALLOW them to guard the area. so an area that can be guarded needs like “5x5 tiles roof area with 6 beds, 20 farm plots, a farmer, a crafter, and a doctor”. sort of like a private version of the NPC run farm. so once you have the support infrastructure you can have the guards protect the contained assets. this set up also means that while it is “safe” when the player isn’t there, when they approach the outer walls could have a swarm of zombies you have to fight through to get inside their own base if you don’t make sure to keep hordes away from it.

10

I don’t understand all the technical stuff, so if that’s what Kevin says oh well, can’t be helped!

I suppose I’ll just reclaim a large tower, there shouldn’t be anything constantly spawning inside those with Static Spawn on, right? Or should I just give up on my dream of having a little community and return to a life of just hiding in a basement?

In any case, thank you for your help! I’m full of questions, thinking of a new dream to have for the game, so I’ll be sure to post a new thread soon asking a new question if I can’t find the answers myself!

11

A horde would attack a NPC stronghold for the same reason they’d attack the player, because they’re alive. A no spawn zone as you suggest would just be the first step, it doesn’t make sense for the zombies to wait for the player to show up before attacking.

12

well, with a wall you can say that the zombies are just wandering around the fort and not actually attacking it because they can’t SEE any humans. and without a wall, all the zombies spawning at once when you get near would kill your NPCs faster then if it ran calculations while you are away. a few dozen zombies just swarming can kill easily anything besides your survivor, and if the guards die then the area loses it’s no spawn protection.

13

Tarburst. Do you want Preston Garvey? Because this is how you get Preston Garvey.

14

I don’t know what these guys are on about, as I’ve cleared many cities of hostiles many times. It’s very simple, use a bow and or a melee weapon for silent kills, and make sure while you are slaughtering zombies they don’t start making noise, as it attracts more. If you clear the town of all enemies, no more will come, wander spawns or no.

I’ve cleared a large city, and then made a camp in an intersection, blocking access with cars, trucks, and busses, and then left sentries (once I’ve grilled them for useful skills) at the entrances. No more zombies ever showed up there, or at least I couldn’t notice them thanks to my sentries. Last time I did this was in an experimental version 8-9 months ago, so things may have changed since of course.

15

[quote=“Ruttiger, post:14, topic:14074”]I don’t know what these guys are on about, as I’ve cleared many cities of hostiles many times. It’s very simple, use a bow and or a melee weapon for silent kills, and make sure while you are slaughtering zombies they don’t start making noise, as it attracts more. If you clear the town of all enemies, no more will come, wander spawns or no.

I’ve cleared a large city, and then made a camp in an intersection, blocking access with cars, trucks, and busses, and then left sentries (once I’ve grilled them for useful skills) at the entrances. No more zombies ever showed up there, or at least I couldn’t notice them thanks to my sentries. Last time I did this was in an experimental version 8-9 months ago, so things may have changed since of course.[/quote]
I think he means doing it with wander spawns on.

16

Well it wasn’t even the Wander Spawns that I was having issues with. My issue was having a city cleared of zombies, walling it off so nothing could wander in, yet certain enemies would still ‘spawn’ inside the city walls anyway. The main culprits being, animals and their zombie counterparts, not the human zombies.

To give a more accurate description, I want you to picture that there is a city, fully walled off. Imagine it’s surrounded by the post-apocalyptic version of the Great Wall of China, but filled to the brim with all sorts of defences so not even a fly could sneak its way in, because if it tried it would be full of both laser holes and lead bullets.

Now imagine you’re in the centre of that little city, with no zombies currently inside it, because you’ve found them all one by one and smashed their skulls in, burnt and butchered their corpses so they’re not going to pop up again. Because the map is being played with Static Spawns on, you know that there is no way any zombies will get in to your new city home, which they won’t.

You’re making your way down town, walking fast, no faces pass as your home bound, then suddenly out of nowhere, you’re under attack by a pack of Grim Howlers that were lurking near your home! How did they get in to the city? The city was cleared out! Maybe you just missed them whilst clearing out the city?

No, the answer is that certain enemies don’t follow the static spawn rule, they’ll spawn when they like, where they like, without caring that it makes no sense for them to be there.

I mean sure you could just set up turrets everywhere inside the city to kill any enemies that do spawn within the walls, though you’ll have a hard time sleeping with gunshots randomly going off whenever something spawns close by, or happens to somehow get close to a turret and blow it up. Though my own issue, a minor one as it is just because I’m awkward, is trying to clear up the messes it all leaves behind. You’ll find that surrounding you home has been littered with blood and corpses each morning you wake up, such a pain to deal with!

In regards to Wander Spawns turned on, I don’t know if they’d magically phase through the wall or not if you’re too far away from the city, but as Kevin earlier it would require a lot of script magic and slow the game to a crawl if a horde were to attack whilst you were gone, so this dream is basically busted. Living in a tower/Basement seems to be the way to go.

17

Who said it had to be a tower or basement? you can have a house but depending on what its made of you made want a couple dozen spike traps and or auto turrets(vehicle kind obviously much larger selection of armament)

18

[quote=“Ruttiger, post:14, topic:14074”]I don’t know what these guys are on about, as I’ve cleared many cities of hostiles many times. It’s very simple, use a bow and or a melee weapon for silent kills, and make sure while you are slaughtering zombies they don’t start making noise, as it attracts more. If you clear the town of all enemies, no more will come, wander spawns or no.

I’ve cleared a large city, and then made a camp in an intersection, blocking access with cars, trucks, and busses, and then left sentries (once I’ve grilled them for useful skills) at the entrances. No more zombies ever showed up there, or at least I couldn’t notice them thanks to my sentries. Last time I did this was in an experimental version 8-9 months ago, so things may have changed since of course.[/quote]

If you have wonder spawns, there is a chance of them wandering in any time you are in the area, and when they are Zs on the map, they ignore terrain, so they can “respawn” (when that chunk gets loaded) inside any kind of security (walls, sentries, etc), due to having passed them on the overmap where no such checks/interactions happen.

Now, if you thoroughly clear a VERY large area, that should become exceedingly rare, but over time, as you come and go, a few strays will eventually move in (unless you keep patrolling and clearing them out at a distance).

19

ah, yeah, a “no hostile things EVER spawn after world gen” setting would fix that, maybe even just a mod? this would mean there are grim howlers and zombears in the woods when you first pass by that area of woods, but after you kill them you wont get more.