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I'm so sorry

11 (26.2%)

I'm a bad person

19 (45.2%)

Please forgive me

12 (28.6%)

Total Members Voted: 42

[Cheddarius]

Sigh... this round was supposed to be a parable about the usefulness of engineers and armor. But I see now that in my enthusiasm I made you all so powerful that you can kill armor before the engineers get to them.
Mark my words, some day I'm going to send a wave of doppelgangers against you, and they'll go first, and there will be a reckoning. Oh yes.
I mean, a single doppelganger Survivor could easily kill the lot of you, excepting RAM, in one turn. This will happen some day, if you are not careful.

[Cheddarius]

This post will be the turn. I'll edit it when I'm making the turn, and I'll post again when I'm done.

Heal Self, equip second knife, kill nearby engineers, starting with M7 and working anti-clockwise.

Activate my Snake? SNAKE?!?!? SNAAAAAAAAKE!!!! perk (In case you didn't get that from my first post) to save Allstone, then shoot at zombies while sober, because Roland didn't give me any drugs this time.

Fire at the zombies to my right. Starting with 7K if it's still alive and working my way down. If I can't safely shoot at any of those, I'll fire at the ones to my left starting with I9.

Equip First Aid in norepinephrine hand (epinephrine stays in the other hand)
Move west 3 to G3
Heal Mikhail/Allstone until he's 100%
Move east 1 to H3

Fire at the Virium on A10 until dead.
Fire at the Virium on A11 until dead.
Fire at the Destroyer at H9 until dead.

If all those are dead, fire at the two engineer zombies at E and F 7 until dead.

If all those are dead, fire on any dreadnaughts, until dead.

Move back to F3 with the remaining AP I should have left.

>Shoot zombies in priority of: Destroyers, Virium, Titans, Dreadnoughts, Shaman, Engineers, Walls. Extra AP goes to moving north and west, alternatingly.

I Shoot zombies in priority of: Destroyers, Virium, Titans, Dreadnoughts, Shaman, Engineers, Walls.

[Mephansteras]

Might be wise to rebalance the game rules at some point and start again from scratch. We've got a big problem this time where there are huge power discrepancies, especially for the people who got extra money from making art. Which makes it hard to balance, since we've got people who can mop up just about anything and need really powerful foes to combat, and people who can take out maybe a zombie or two a turn and can't deal with the really nasty stuff.

I know you want to reward people who make art, but making them more powerful has kind of bit you back. Might be better to give people who make art a priority on rerolling characters when their normal ones die, or something.

[Cheddarius]

Would you guys be okay with that? A complete wipe of all characters?

[Paranatural]

Awww, I just got my character!

However I'm now noticing that aside from Pistols Akimbo all the Pistoleer's perks rely on being adjacent to zombies and my only flaw insists that I never be adjacent to zombies..

[Mephansteras]

Doesn't have to be immediately, since people seem to be having fun. But I think it'd be good if we could hammer out a nice set of balanced[/b] rules for when we do start over.

Several things to keep in mind:
  1) Everyone starts equal. Same points, same cash. People who start late can get the benefit of party loot, but no more "You start with 100PP and $1000! You..eh, 10pp and $100". It's just too hard to manage that way.
  2) No class should be obviously better than all the others       
  3) Every class should have an obvious function in the group, and the group should be best off if all functions are covered
      I.e. - A machine gunner class should be good at mowing down lots of normal zombies, but you want a sniper for really hard ones. Pistoleer would be in between. Scavenger gets loot for the group, Medic heals & buffs, Demo should maybe do status effects & decent splash damage, Engineer would make walls and whatnot, etc.
  4) Don't let the enemy go first. It's not fun for people if they die the first round before anything else happens. You can add as many mooks as you want to soak up that first round barrage, but each player only has one guy. It's a game. It should be fun for everyone.
  5) Equipment should all be balanced by cost (even if that's not realistic). It's good to have things to work for (like going from a cheap SMG to a nicer one to an Assault Rifle). In that vein, every class should be able to start with the basic weapon for their class. Machinegunners get a cheap, low-power SMG, snipers get a cheap hunting rifle, etc. As long as getting the upgraded weapons for everyone is roughly the same progression, it's all good. Otherwise, why take pistoleer if your best weapon is vastly inferior to the best weapons everyone else can get?

[Cheddarius]

When I nerfed Snipers/Machinegunners I inadvertently made pistoleers way too powerful. I mean, pistols are supposed to now be about as good as other weapons - but their perks are crazy good. They have double damage, which you never see in other classes, and then Guns Akimbo doubles damage again. You wield two .22 pistols and deal 9 damage a turn, that's just... man.

Meph, those suggestions sound good. After this round, I will have a Fourth Age of Monster Defence.

How can I make people use armor? I don't like the way this game currently is. There should be health, people should actually get hurt and actually be healed. Maybe I made armor too expensive? Maybe I made enemies too weak, so that they get killed before they're able to attack?

What I want is a steady game. Each turn, you guys kill part of the enemy; the rest do some damage; then you heal. And so on.

[Mephansteras]

Well, this is a Zombie survival game. That gives two good options (and you can use both).

1) Hordes of zombies. Enough that we can't possibly kill too many in one round. One way to do this is make zombies soak damage. They're dead, so they don't fall down too quick. What this means is that, except for the Demo's arcing weapons, we can't kill past the first row of each round. Even if the gunner mows down the entire first line, they don't actually fall down until their turn. Now, the Engineer can help with this by building raised platforms for gunners (esp. Snipers) to stand on. The drawback to the platform is that it takes more movement to get down off of the higher it is, so if the group gets overwhelmed it's very easy for the guy in the tower to get surrounded and unable to get away.
  I'd say each level of the platform adds 2AP cost to get down to the ground level of the square and adds +1 rank of zombies that can be shot over.

Also, don't be afraid to stick in really tough zombies that need a sniper to take out (if we have one, anyway). And it's OK if those guys get taken down by the sniper in the tower before they hit anyone. After all, that makes the sniper more useful so he has fun.

Mix in some fast, weak zombies and slower strong ones and everything in between. For example, say we had a row of normal zombies, then a row of fast guys. The first row goes down, the second row sprints out and attacks our front line (here is where pistoleers and melee guys are probably really handy). We take them out, but now the rest of the zombies are that much closer, and so on. Set up the zombie waves so that you take advantage of when they're likely to die

2) Give us situations where there are already buildings and let zombies burst out of walls to surprise us. That gives them essentially a free turn to whack someone before getting taken down.

EDIT:
On the subject of armor: Right now most of it is too expensive. Maybe make more levels, and just go damage reduction. Say, a leather jacket is cheap and absorbs 1 damage from each hit, flak vest is more expensive and absorbs 2, and so on. Helmets...maybe have zombies have a % chance to stun on a hit, and helmets get rid of that chance? That'd make them invaluable (which they would be).

[Paranatural]

When I nerfed Snipers/Machinegunners I inadvertently made pistoleers way too powerful. I mean, pistols are supposed to now be about as good as other weapons - but their perks are crazy good. They have double damage, which you never see in other classes, and then Guns Akimbo doubles damage again. You wield two .22 pistols and deal 9 damage a turn, that's just... man.

Yeah, but once you have those your character growth is pretty limited. Pistols are ranged weapons. Short ranged, sure, but ranged nonetheless and perks for a ranged class that require you to be adjacent to enemies is kinda...not really that great. The only way to go up after those two perks is basically better pistols. Which isn't all bad I guess.

Meph, those suggestions sound good. After this round, I will have a Fourth Age of Monster Defence.

How can I make people use armor? I don't like the way this game currently is. There should be health, people should actually get hurt and actually be healed. Maybe I made armor too expensive? Maybe I made enemies too weak, so that they get killed before they're able to attack?

What I want is a steady game. Each turn, you guys kill part of the enemy; the rest do some damage; then you heal. And so on.

With the armor, here's the deal, from what I can see.

First off, to begin with, killing stuff is more fun than taking damage and healing from it. Sounds kinda obvious but that's gonna be a motivation for people to focus on killing stuff and not so much withstanding the horde.

Second thing is just that: The horde. Typically you are looking at a lot of zombies coming at you. You are squishy. If you don't want to die your first thought isn't 'I should buy some armor that can be chewed off me in 2 rounds by a zombie or two' but 'I should buy a bigger gun that lasts forever that I can kill as many of them before they can get to me'. The whole 'The best defense is a good offense'

Also, you have limited cash. You can either buy a good gun, or armor. How many zombie movies did you see where the people who lived did so by having armor and no weapons? In fact, when was the last time you saw a zombie movie where armor really basically mattered at all? Once you get caught by the horde, you are dead, armor or no. The instinct to kill them is much stronger than the instinct to get armor.

And that's also why Engineers are not very popular. Their stuff is very expensive, and their actions are time consuming. And what do you get for all that expense and time? A wall. Great. So now the zombies have to walk around it to kill you. And you haven't killed any of them. Whoopty doo.

So, Solutions? Maybe make zombies a bit faster and characters a bit less squishy, so that characters getting hit happens more often but the prospect of immediately dying because of it is less strong. Right now it seems like it's kinda unusual for people to be 'worn down'. People have mostly just gone 'pop'. Same with the zombies. So I think the perceived value of armor is less. The perceived value of weapons is huge.

Engineers will be harder. Building walls is nice and all, but if you make it cheaper/less expensive, it will be an overwhelming advantage to the players groups, but the guy sitting there building walls might not have much fun.

If armor was reductive but also damageable and it were more vital, maybe it'd make more sense to be an engineer. Medics for HPs, and Engies for Armor. Also, maybe have a automatic turret for engineers. First level could just shoot ahead dumbly, second level cold distinguish friend and foe, third could have a limited firing arc, fourth could have bigger guns, etc.

[Mephansteras]

And that's also why Engineers are not very popular. Their stuff is very expensive, and their actions are time consuming. And what do you get for all that expense and time? A wall. Great. So now the zombies have to walk around it to kill you. And you haven't killed any of them. Whoopty doo.

That's why I was thinking the engineer being able to build sniper towers would be good. Now your snipers can kill nasty zombies before they reach the group, which is a VERY good thing.

[Cheddarius]

Engineers are supposed to be the healers. The idea is, you have armor. You guys have 3 HP each, usually. You've seen the massacres that have happened - people have been slaughtered because they were taken down so easily. What do you get for having an engineer, for having some good armor? You don't die. Sure, you're squishy. That's the point! You need to be less squishy. And who cares if the armor only lasts for 2 rounds if it gets repaired every round? Even if the zombies hit you some, you can get healed up. I would say that's a good enough reason to buy some armor and for someone to be an engineer.

But evidently it is not. Everyone wants to beat up zombies, even if they'll die doing it - so how can I encourage people to get Engineer?

[wolfchild]

well for one thing, HEALING 1 hp a round kinda sucks, also give em more perks perhaps or diferent flaws, maby add a coupple of subclases, or give em some damage capability at all

[Mephansteras]

I'd say leave the healing to the medics (who also get buffs, and eventually get the perk to let them save someone who died that round).

Let the engineers be the ones upgrading weapons, rather than the shop. After all, the shop is either scavengers selling you excess stuff they've collected or some military/para-military group who probably doesn't do much weapon modification on their own. That's more of an individualist thing to do. So, let the Engineer upgrade one weapon in between each turn (that gives an incentive to have more than one).

In addition, let them have the construction capabilities and let them set traps. It's not like most zombies are smart enough to figure out that stepping between the two giant spikes is a bad idea. That gives them the ability to have fun killing zombies without really taking away from anyone else's role. They do static defenses of several types (walls, towers, traps, etc) and generally make the group stronger. But most of their work is going to be in-between rounds and during the set-up phase. During the actual fight they're probably doing a support role, with minor healing using bandages and taking pot shots on random zombies with whatever weapon they happen to use. They won't be godlike with any weapon, any more than the medic or scavenger is, but they should still be able to do decent damage and feel like they're helping the group out without being at the level of the actual gunners and snipers.

After all, I do ok as a scavenger with my MP5, and I have no real damage-boosting perks. Just my gun. I get money for what I do, so I'm happy. Engineers should be the same way, being happy for the good stuff they do for the group without feeling worthless during the actual fight.

[Org]

Does a wipe means I can get in?
Possibly?

[wolfchild]

the problem with constructions is that you buy them, then you move on and the money is kinda useless now