Invasions! (Defend the castle)

[Angus the Beast]

75 hours in and loving every minute.

Something that would be cool though (as a game feature or as a mod):

Invasions

I came to VS from Rebirth of the Night (Minecraft mod), which is very similar in a lot of ways - building, survival, etc.

In that mod, you'd get invaded by hordes of zombies and other monsters every 10ish days. This was super fun - designing a base that would survive, the actual battles, and then the repair afterward where you'd add some upgrades, redesigns, etc.

The attackers could break blocks, making you design your base like an actual fortress. Moats, walls with ramparts, murder holes, weapon stashes, airlocks, gatehouses, etc.

Different type of stones were stronger against the attackers, so there's incentive to gather different types of rocks and prefer them for different building materials.

VS has the temporal storms, but the counter seems to be running like a madman or sitting inside a cheesy structure and stabbing for too long.

What do you think?

[ArgentLuna]

Getting swarmed by laser guided snipers who break your stuff no thanks. If I want to play 7days to die I will play the actual game 7 days to die.

[Dr B]

If anything invaded my homestead and had the capability to break blocks and destroy my work, I'd immediately go find the settings to turn it off or find a mod to disable it.

[ifoz]

I think this is a cool idea but VS is in my opinion not the right game for it, or it would have to be a separate game mode.
As someone who loves to build, I would hate it if every ten days creatures would spawn that could break blocks.

[Thorfinn]

@ifoz, how about if the invaders were not just able to break blocks with a single hit, but were more like grizzly bears -- able to outrun the seraph and one-shot him? Oh, and to make it a real challenge, make them invisible and let them fly. Ooh, or teleport!

It is an interesting idea, but there are a lot of things I think would need to change. Do blocks just drop, so you have to go around and pick stuff up before it all despawns? Are they destroyed? If a trunk is broken, what happens to the trunk? What happens to all the stuff that was in it? What happens to chiseled blocks? What happens when the block-destroyer takes out the one block that is holding back a gravity-block landslide, and is now at ground zero?

I agree that this might not be the ideal game to convert into a tower defense.

[Bulteer]

Maybe the attackers could temporally disable any player-placed blocks to pass through them, simulating destruction, but have them reset after the event ends so that your base is not permanently damaged?

[Thorfinn]

Good start. Needs to be a bit more than that, or a 2 or 3 wide moat in native soil would be all you would ever need. 

[Angus the Beast]

The way it worked approximately in RotN (which worked really well with VS/minecraft mechanics) was:

The monsters' mining level determines how fast they can break through different blocks. When they break a block or a chest, the block or item drops. You can pick it up, although this wasn't always easy to do right away if the whole horde was pouring through the gap, might have to wait.

The monsters' mining level increased with subsequent invasions, and the types of monsters also changed. Some invasions would have flying monsters so you'd have to build a roof, etc. Idk if I loved that part, but it was there.

So, during the first invasion, they'd quickly break through dirt walls. With decent preparation, you'd survive - a stack of blocks to build impromptu defenses, etc.

If you had the same dirt walls months later, they'd probably one-hit through them.

But by that point, you're using things like masonry bricks, etc. which are much stronger. You've also had time to make cooler defenses.

And there was a whole tech tree of traps, like spikes, barbed wire, etc that could do some passive damage while you were out defending your kingdom. Nice sink for good metal too.

So my defending tactics were:

1. Put your storage in a safe place - maybe high up in a tower or a bunker with thick, high-tier brick walls. (This also has the benefit of limiting your hoard to how well you'd developed your material-producing infrastructure and technology).

2. Have multiple lines of defense, much like a real-life castle. Often a deep, wide water moat followed by triple-thick or more walls with battlements and murder holes up top to pour hell down anything stuck in the moat.

It took a bit of time to make, but a base set back into a lake with some well-designed currents and a drawbridge with pistons often meant you could pretty much just sit inside and ignore the invasion. Worst case scenario, you dive out the back into a boat and the monsters follow you away from the base.

Sand or collapsing blocks as a filler in the middle of triple-thick or more walls could help slow them down or crush them, giving you time to react and/or rebuild during the fight.

Get creative with some lava moats or dispenser.

Inside that, maybe another ring of walls or compartmentalized, defensible sectors of your base/town in case there's a breakthrough and you have to retreat. That kind of forced me to divide my base (I usually built them like little towns) into districts - some safer, some more dangerous - which felt and looked cool for immersion.

I used to make my gatehouses with a lava dispenser wired up to a nuke button; that's fun when there's a dozen zombies trying to smash through the gate.

This would pair really well with the medieval expansion mod. Drawbridges would be awesome.

3. A strong keep, I usually put mine in the center, where your valuables or decorative buildings go. I don't think I ever had a problem losing my stuff there, except one time monsters tunneled dozens of blocks up from some undiscovered cavern underground into the courtyard.

Some water dispensers wired up through redstone to the big red button in my keep's panic room washed them back into the hole, but they did smash my garden.

4. A chest with plenty of building materials; depending on how strong my materials were or if I had weak points in the design, there'd be a couple of minutes of inspecting damage and replacing blocks after an invasion. Often this was a convenient time to redesign something or make an addition to the base.

I'm guessing other people would just build a bunker and sit the invasion out in there, a bit like a less cheesy version of the current temporal storm kill rooms.

Definitely see how many people wouldn't want a feature like this; I think it'd be more appropriate as a mod. I might try to code it, since after the first in-game year VS gets a little boring.

The one part that I don't think would work great is when the invasions hit while you're out exploring far away from home. Then it's basically back to sprinting for you life like with temporal storms.

Not an issue if there's a fairly predictable timer, e.g. every 9-11 days. Then you plan your play cycle around invasion -> repair -> prepare -> multi-day exploration adventure - get back home 9 days later and prepare for battle -> repeat.

Edited February 3 by Angus the Beast

[Thorfinn]

While it is not a biggie for me, if you look at the pictures of others' builds, I think most people play VS over other voxel games because of the chisel. You have already seen that as a survival game, it's pretty much a cake walk, and as a combat game, well, it leaves something to be desired. There are mods that help some, but at the very least, targeting needs a pretty serious revision before tower defense would be anything other than frustrating. 

But the point I'm getting at is that few people share your building design choices. Most prefer some intricately carved decorations on their builds, which are extremely time consuming. Then to have to collect all the fallen blocks in the middle of the siege so they don't despawn and they have to painstakingly chisel them again. And then try to figure out where they all go. And maybe finish this all up just in time for the next wave. As someone said above, first thing he'd do is figure out how to disable that setting.

I'm more like you in terms of building style, though I do tend to build with local woods and stones so it looks like it belongs there. I tried chiseling a time or two and decided it wasn't for me. So, yeah, I'd give your mod a whirl, but you really need to do something about the combat mechanics, too.

 

[Dra6o0n]

Rather than breaking blocks, perhaps they dig through or under it which leaves the block in a temporary state that it can be repaired to it's default state.

Also when they decide to break a block, only 1 hole in a radius of 30 blocks is allowed to be made, so they all patiently wait and then funnel in when the hole is made.

This way, they are much smarter about how to 'raid' your base, they'd want to make the hole at the shortest distance, and wait patiently so they have the biggest number advantage.

A way they can do this is 'constructing' their own burrow from the ground next to a wall, and then slowly build a exit burrow on the other side. This way nothing is broken, they just 'burrowed' by creating a sort of mini teleporting structure that you can destroy.

The thicker the walls to their destination the longer it takes for the burrow to appear on the other side, maybe 30 seconds to 1 minute per block thickness?

So if they have to burrow under a 1 block voxel, they count the ground, then the ground under the wall block, then the ground behind the wall block.

This means it takes up to 3 minutes for the burrow to be created, and once created, they use it as a shortcut, by spending 1 second per block distance to 'crawl' through that burrow, this means they 'crawl underground' at the entrance, then wait a few seconds, they reappear at the exit, and only 1 mob can do this at a time.

 

If you are in a small hut you can hear the burrow being made, and see the ground shifting as the burrow is getting created, you can highlight it with your aim and 'attack' it to destroy it but they'll keep trying to burrow.

Make it so some materials are impossible to burrow through, and you can lay traps under your floors to really hurt them when they try to burrow under it.

Edited February 21 by Dra6o0n

[Sooner535]

Just as an add, +1 for the idea of invasions and breaking blocks. Would be the one thing I want this game to have, and sandwiches.... Why no sandwich?

 

Anyways, yes. But do agree: this needs to be an option. A simple toggle for entities being able to destroy blocks would fix the issue. And to top it all off they can even add a entity block breaking strength next to the entity strength setting. That way people can have it but have it to where enemies take forever to break blocks, people can disable the feature altogether, people can have super human enemies that break stuff, etc. Everyone is happy . Always give the player more options, turns out better.