So I heard the game got a lot easier with the addition of scavenging and recruitment. In this release, the pendulum swings the other way, and combat becomes significantly more dangerous.
Headline features are improved zombie AI and limited ammo on guns. The AI changes include making zombies slow to notice you, but able to hunt you after you slip out of sight. Most notably, however, firing guns will aggro zombies in a wide area around you, who will start to pour in on you. Let me know if it's too much.
Ammo limitations work a bit differently than in LCS. Your squad shares a common ammunition reserve and will freely share ammo with each other. Shotguns reload one shell at a time, and reloading takes an action during combat, but all weapons can be reloaded for free (in terms of time) while moving. When you have two weapons equipped, reloading during combat is prioritized only if the potential damage of the weapon being reloaded is more than four times the damage that would be done by attacking with the other weapon. Reloading is lossless, so non-empty magazines get abstracted back into the ammo pile, but your survivors won't reload guns that use magazines unless they're almost empty. Empty weapons can still be used as clubs, and are more powerful than your bare hands in combat.
Melee weapons are much more valuable this release, and the crossbow also sees its star rise significantly with these two features. The crossbow is both the only ranged weapon that is silent, and the only ranged weapon with reusable ammo. You can usually find its bolts dropped to the floor or stuck in the corpses of fallen zombies. On the minus side, it doesn't share a skill with any of the other weapons, must be reloaded after every shot, and has the least plentiful ammunition. And while its bolts are usually recoverable, they will still sometimes be lost.
These are some pretty substantial changes. Let me know they feel and how they affect the gameplay.
Download:http://www.jonathansfox.com/ZSS/zss_python_3_3_2013.zipChangelog:- Added ammunition
- Added improvised melee attacks with ranged weapons
- Removed defensive benefit from having high dexterity
- Removed the ability to make unarmed attacks when weapons are equipped
- Reduced chance of attacks missing in general
- Reduced availability of scavenging supplies slightly
- Zombies start not noticing player, may take notice when in line of sight
- Zombies wander around aimlessly when not alerted to the player
- Guns are loud and attract zombies
- Zombies that lose sight of the player or hear guns will chase with pathfinding
- Zombies can no longer become incapacitated due to pain
- Armor is now considerably less effective
- Reduced length of some too-long character names
- Fixed crash bug on equipment screen when you had no equipment