Machine behaviour post April 2020 update

General Discussion
107

Problem with this, now, is that we have a single harvester that acts as area denial. You can’t go anywhere near it, without portals to hell opening up and dumping endless swarms of hunters in your lap, who drop rail fire and gas mortars, while the harvester itself bombards you with constant mortar fire.

It’s manageable, but turns the harvester from a resource collector, into a heavy combat unit.

It’s also not a trap unless you’re specifically a veteran player. New players will learn that the Harvesters are just massive “nope” buttons, and their massive size already suggests that they will be extraordinarily dangerous to begin with. In the past that wasn’t true, now however, they live up to their stature. If anything, they’re more dangerous than tanks now, which seems extremely off.

7 Likes
108

Myself and a few buds started playing about a week ago and we were killing it before the update. Crushed out a 14Hr gaming session cause we were loving the game so much, all of a sudden this update comes out and things go to shit. Even at a decently kitted level 18 the update has ruined/broken the experience for us. Not nearly as fun anymore and it’s destroyed all motivation to play. Made this account strictly to make this comment, thank you.

6 Likes
109

well after playing a few hours since release of the latest update, i have currently killed maybe 15 or so rivals, died about 578 times,and i have absolutely zero healthpacks remaining.
plenty of ammo though, no time to use it, just spawn in and boom dead.

boiled down i find the current issues to be; hunter rockets (apoc), runners damage over time (apoc), and hunter railgunning you through everything (fnix)

while the new damage output of machines is welcomed, and makes for some new interresting gameplay, it only does so in 5% of the time played, remaining 95% i am just being totally assraped by the insane rocket salvo spam from one single hunter. understand this, that even though i have my character clothed with exclusively explosion resistant clothing, one salvi kicks me down from 100 to 10-20 hp, and makes my charcter fall over, and lie on the ground squirming for just enouch time so the hunter can fire 5-6 more salvos at my non-controllable character. being stuck in this kind of death-loop truly sucks, and does not make for fun gameplay. add in some apoc runners dmg over time, and youre just dead.

range of the rocket attacks are just a bit too much, seriously, things killing me from out of sight needs to go. or at least implement some kind of armor system that actually works. or maybe tone down the amount of rockets per salvo, from four to just two?

and make the different difficulty settings cater to all players, easy medium hard, not superhell, ultrasuperhell and megaultrasuperhell. its not fun.

and for rival drops, out of the previousley mentioned rivals, ive only gotten one weapon, a 4 star purple effing kvm89!? havent seen a wepondrop in ages, and the tanks i kill only carries ruby red bicycles, maybe a mag for the kpist. drop rates needs work. and now with the new harverster meta, they simply are not worth attacking. 1x harvester and 3,6 or maybe even 9 hunters to kill, and for what? one healthpack and some .32acp ammo? not worth it.

sorry for long post:D is the electric lmg still in the loot table? been asking this for a while but never get a proper answer

6 Likes
110

Maybe one solution would be to give the harvester a communications module that can be destroyed, which stops the hunter attacks.

1 Like
111

It is not. From what I understand, it was removed after the event.

112

They’re deploying from the tick pod. Which… yeah, this seems like more of a bad joke than a rational design.

3 Likes
113

I thought they were dropping from the sky?

114

Yeah, it looked like that to me too, but someone else pointed out that they were actually coming out of tick deployment balls. Though, taking out the tick pod might not stop them.

115

There must be a way to disable the Harv’s ability to spawn in those Hunter Pods. We’ve always been able to disable their other weapons and Tick Pod, seems strange that it wouldn’t apply here :thinking:

2 Likes
116

Harvester deploys some form of signal/lure next to it on the ground. From afar, it looks like flashlight is shined on the ground. 1-2 seconds pass and big pods rain down from the sky. Once landed it takes about 1 second before hunter pops out from the pod.

In this topic is short clip of raining down pods: Hunters now dropping into hotspots

And in my reply, under spoiler tag, is the pod itself: Machine behaviour post April 2020 update

I don’t know if shooting the pod would destroy it and prevent hunter from spawning it. But that much i know that you can not damage and kill tick pods when tick hasn’t emerged from it yet.

117

This isn’t totally about the amount of hunters deployed being overpowered. It is and there is already a thread which addresses that although I might touch on it. I really like the idea of the harvesters being able to deploy Hunters. It brings a whole new element into the game and really makes it more interesting. However; the first time I saw it, I thought it was a glitch. It just didn’t look right visually. From my memory it looked they were being spawned like ticks and about the same size, and then rapidly grew to full size. I could be wrong, going by memory, but it definitely did not fit the more realistic existing art style of gen zero. So much so that it made me think something had gone wrong with the game.

For a harvester to deploy hunters, they would need to come out of an appropriately sized container(s). Frankly, I just don’t see enough room on one to carry much more than 2 or 3 containers. I also think that is about right as far as game balance goes. Once those 2 or 3 are deployed, that’s it. They don’t magically respawn in the containers. The different classes could have different amounts of containers from 1 to 3?

This should solve the OP problem and the immersion breaking visual at the same time.

1 Like
118

Same discussion topics merged.

//Mod

119

From what i can see, before i’m straight executed, The pods looks like hexagons, and it looks like the hunter is folded up. The pods are dropped from above, like maybe from some sort of automated aircraft, or maybe even from orbit…

Also, there IS a difference between class and drop… Prototype harvesters only spawn one prototype hunter, while all the rest are spawning 3 of whatever class the harvester is. That, by itself, is big, in terms of combat.

120

That is interesting, I really need to see it again. I’m pretty sure though that the apocalypse class harvester I was dealing with dropped at least 6 hunters at once. So maybe they’re not actually popping out of the harvester like I thought? Its hard to tell in the “fog of war”.

121

While it is true that a large portion of the game, namely the farmlands region, is open fields, I believe that it is intended that players go around the open spaces by lurking at the edge of the forest, at least if one wants to take the safest route. You still have the option to travel as the crow flies, but it’s more dangerous. I believe that this is an intentional trade off.

122

they are dropping from the sky, tested it out just now, shot of the tick pod, but the harv just made the calloing sound, and 3 red marks appeared on the ground around it. then the hunters arrived in their oversized tick-pods

123

apoc class harvester? never seen one, ever… pics or didnt happen :wink:

124

well that just sucks… big hairy cheezy camel b*lls:(

125

I could be wrong, aren’t all the machines on the DLC that class? EDIT: Just went back and checked. Not all of the machines on the island are apoc class, so it may not have been, but whatever it was dropped at least six.

126

They’re definitely not coming out of the harvester. The harvester drops a beacon, and then the hunters drop on that location. I haven’t encountered apocs yet, so you might be right about the 6. I’ve encountered prototype, military, and fnix. as far as i can tell, prototype definitely only spawn one, and military and fnix are spawning at least 3.