31st May 2007 - Game Changes

[generatorkiller]

- Some RP'er crap about clothing that we can ignore.

- With barricades now such a familiar sight across the city, survivors (and zombies with memories of life) are finding them easier to pull down from the inside

This is potentially useful and interesting.

I'd like to propose a dedicated harmanz group that finds themselves crowbars and concentrates on debarricading buildings in order to soften up a target for a zombie assault.

Hell, if being a survivor is now the most effective method of taking over NT's, we may want to shift the focus of the group into a bunch of human debarricaders/ PK'ers that revert back to zombie form in order to squat buildings after they're done slaughtering everyone inside and dispersing the Mrh? cows.

I'm gonna practice a little bit with my fully-equipped human character in spicer hills... see how effective this really is.

EDIT: Hardly a decent sample size to go by, but I managed to make 5 out of 13 successful debarricading attempts (using 13 AP) with a crowbar from the inside. I'll keep practicing and get some more data.

[Donny Waters]

Yeah... it'll be interesting to see some more data, but 5 hits out of 13 attempts sounds pretty promising. This game change could potentially be very beneficial to the undead. I'm also wondering how much easier it is for zeds to destroy the barricades from the inside.

The change could dissuade survivors from combat reviving zombies if, while they're human, they have a better chance of tearing down barricades from inside a building. It could also help with frustrating situations where a sizable amount of zeds break into a building, but survivors rebarricade behind them and almost instantly stop the attack.

[Dr'Brainz]

Necrotech Junkies could easily hammer on the cads of buildings that we are trying to take among other things...
We will have to test it out more, if it is a worth-while strat then thats what we will do when we get CRed.

- If you get CRed, get inside the building where sieging, change your profile so you don't get shot, don't kill anything inside, wait for X:00 tactic attack times then de-barricade with a crowbar, if you don't have a crowbar an axe will do.

[Trent Rott]

I thought the crowbar thing was debunked a while ago. Last I heard, you were better off using an axe. If it's true that you can also de-barricade with a knife (I have not tested this, but the wiki claims it works), then that might be way to go. You should be able to exploit it the way you do with generators.

That's the best trick I've learned in a great while, by the way, so thanks again for the idea. I use it all the time now.

Maybe something has changed since the initial testing. Or maybe the testing was done primarily by zombies holding crowbars. Or maybe it was that there was a crowbar bonus, but it still wasn't as effective as zombie claws.

I've had a chance to attack barricades from the inside as a zombie and while my data sample is very small, I must say that the bonus must not be all that amazing. Every little bit helps over the long run, but don't expect to plow through the cades just because you're inside.

[Trent Rott]

OK, just did some reading on the wiki. If the crowbar has any benefit at all, it is rumored to be twice as accurate as other melee weapons for de-barricading. Since its accuracy is half that of the axe, it looks like a wash (at least for those with all axe skills).

If these numbers are correct, however, (and assuming things have not changed with the new rule) the knife would be superior.

[generatorkiller]

Well, just did some more testing and only got 1 succesful attempt out of 15 with the crowbar.

Thanks for dispelling that misconception, I'll switch to the knife in future

You should be able to exploit it the way you do with generators.

Seriously? The game doesn't leave a message when you dismantle barricade levels? It's not something I've thought about, really.

If that's the case, then this game just got a whole lot more interesting for me

Edit - yep, even with the new messages in place, it is still possible to reduce a building to "loosely" while not alerting other survivors to what you're doing.

This is gonna be fun...

I'm going to keep testing, while continuing to corrupt the general OA/ spicer hills area. Generator killing still wastes the most AP, but I'll keep testing this, and might move into a tactic of "enter building, reduce 'cades to loosely, post co-ordinates and survivor numbers on the shoutbox so the zombies can close in for the kill.

Current knife data (with both knife skills, 50% hit rate): 7 successful attempts out of 35

Current crowbar data (20% rate, but rumoured to have a bonus vs. barricades): 6 successful attempts out of 28

Insufficient data

[setite]

wow. you guys read my mind about NTJ. if we could get ten folkes together with some good axe skills and free running we could open up the doors to a place like bascombe ten times a day (minus the number of junkies who got shot while they were sleeping). once some more info has been collected about this, and if 5 out of 13 holds up, we'll shift our focus off of PKing and more into generator/barracade duty.

[setite]

out of 35 ap i got 9 hits with the fire axe at 40% accuracy

[Trent Rott]

generatorkiller said:

Thanks for dispelling that misconception, I'll switch to the knife in future

I'm not positive my assumptions are correct, but they do seem logical, based on the data we have.

As for the knife trick, I was actually thanking you specifically for pointing out the knife's accuracy and that knives harm generators. I guess it was obvious, but I'd never made the connection before, and it's proved very useful so far. I don't mind publically destroying gens, since I'm usually only alive for a short time before jumping out a window.

I've updated the Zombie Fashion section of the wiki accordingly. Better to spend AP and XP on maxing out the knife than the axe. If you search for a knife in a school, you also get spray cans as a nice side effect.

[armareum]

I agree with Trent Rott's analysis, from reading the Wiki.

The Knife, when used with Hand to Hand Combat and Knife Combat, has an accuracy of 50%. When attacking barricades this is halved to 25%.

The Crowbar, when used with Hand to Hand Combat, has an accuracy of 20%. The crowbar does not suffer a reduction when used to attack barricades.

This makes the knife the most efficient weapon for attacking barricades (as well as obviously being better for GKing and RKing).