Talk:Suggestions/14th-Jan-2007
Frenzied Throw
| Timestamp: | Preasure 11:08, 14 January 2007 (UTC) |
| Type: | Zombie skill |
| Scope: | Zombies |
| Description: | Currently, when zombies break into a building, they either select a target and work them down as much as possible, or infect as many of the people as possible. This is quite time consuming, and the zombie often has to use at least 2 AP per person to grab on with Tangling Grasp first. Zombies cannot affect man of the humans in the building, allowing them to stay alive simply through meatshielding. Frenzied Throw would allow a zombie to pick up a piece of rubble and throw it into the crush of survivors. The object would hit depending on how many survivors there are in the building – number of survivors/2 x 3. So in a building with 50 people, the object would have a 75% change of hitting a survivor. This is the maximum, if the building contains more than 50 people it remains at 75%. Who it hits is totally random, but a player can be hit more than once. Because of the erratic nature of the object’s flight, once hit it has a 25% chance of causing 2 damage, 50% chance of causing 3 damage, and 25% chance of causing 4 damage. The zombie gains a flat rate of 2XP per hit. So throwing objects causes slightly more damage per AP than claws, but gains less XP because of the potentially high hitrate. In addition, the object may be dirty and contaminated – there is a 25% chance to cause infection in the hit character. A subskill, Unsanitary Conditions, would increase this to 50% as the zombie learns to seek out the dirtiest and nastiest projectiles.
The benefit of these skills comes not from the hitrate, but from the ability to damage all the survivors in a safehouse. Once numbers drop below 33 survivors, it becomes more effective for a maxed zombie to hit with claws, but the ability to cause damage to most of the people inside the building means that healing will be much harder. Currently, an aftermath of a zombie attack might present 4 or 5 targets that have been injured and need healing. In a 50 person building, over 35 people could now be injured from the thrown weapons, any number of them infected. While this skill will not be any use to zombies finding small safehouses or lone survivors, it will mean that when a zombie gets their big break and busts open a mall or PD, they will be able to do much more damage, maybe not killing as many people, or earning as much XP, but making life much harder for the survivors to get back on their feet. |
Discussion
- Too complicated. --Funt Solo
12:00, 14 January 2007 (UTC) - Funt is completely right. Remember, new skills and attacks need to be easily understood by casual players and newbies. If you want to add throwing rubble as a new zombie attack, that's cool, but pegging the attack rate to the number of survivors present raises all sorts of problems. For example, what about a room with 50 zombies and one survivor? I think you are trying to represent an unaimed throw, so why should it only hit survivors? Why wouldn't rubble occasionally hit a fellow zombie, the generator or even a dead body? Also, if the target is randomly selected does that mean that every time a zombie uses this attack, they might hit a different person?--Nosimplehiway 18:18, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
- Excellent points. I'll think about hitting other items, certainly. As for random hitting, yes that's the idea. It allows zombies to cause damage to lots of people in the room, not kill. The idea is that they increase the number of people who need healing and stretch the survivors further. It just adds the infection, or otherwise why not just attack survivors individually? --Preasure 19:49, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
It isn't that it is complicated, it's that the author doesn't understand how zombies work. Why does he think it takes 2 AP to hit with Tangling Grasp? Hit with Claw, Tangling Grasp is AUTOMATIC. Beyond that, why would a zombie use this when they can just actively select ANYONE at the location and attack them? The author seems to be under the impression that zombies attacking survivors works the same as survivors attacking zombies, in that, you can only hit the character at the top of the stack. The author needs to ACTUALLY play a zombie BEFORE making a zombie-related suggestion....--Pesatyel 23:11, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
- The authour has currently been playing a zombie for several months. I've been playing UD for over a year and know perfectly well how zombies work, thank you. The 2AP reference comes from hitting with claw and grabbing on and then biting, in order to increase the bite hit percentage, as Swiers said. --Preasure 19:49, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
- Well if you intend to post this, make sure you say as much because *I* din't read it that way.--Pesatyel 20:07, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
Actually, the suggestion makes perfect sense to me. The 2AP reference is because many zombies who are working to infect multiple survivors will first make a claw attack (to establish a grasp) and then a bite attack (for infection). That's a lame tactic (two bite attakcs gives better results if infection is the goal) but people use it. And no, he's not assuming that zombies "attack the top survivor in the stack"- he's proposing a skill that gives improved chance to hit / damge at the cost of not choosing who you attack. I REALLY like that basic idea, though it may encourage zerg meat shielding, a tactic I'm sure I've seen already. The mechanics and naming here seem off, but the basic idea is sound. I'd just see this as a "attack of opportunity"- you grab the nearest survivor (selected at random from those present) and make your attack. The more survivors present, the bigger the bonus you get, because there's more opportunities to attack. I'd keep it simple- just have "bite closest survivor" and "claw closest survivor" buttons, and give a bonus to hit when using those buttons, but have the target of the attack be chosen at random. Unfortuantley, this would only really be useful in large sieges when MANY zombies get in (so that spreading attacks around is not a tactical mistake) in which case zombies already win. So despite liking the basic idea, I wouldn't give it a keep vote; its a zombie skill that wouldn't actually help zombies in any real sense. --Swiers 04:11, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
- I didn't read into it anything about using Infection Bite, but whatever. The main problem is that this idea is counter productive. Sure it has a higher hit chance, but that's really all it has going for it. RANDOMLY hitting people is pointless (unless there were some kind of "injured" penalty.--Pesatyel 05:12, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
- Pesatyel, there is the infection chance. But I see what you mean. Swiers, you've given me some good food for thought. I'll have another think. --Preasure 19:49, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
