Hi everyone! I have a big update for you this time that's giving you something that has been asked for for years. Introducing...the BARRICADE update!
For a long time I've wanted civilians to try and create some kind of base when they realise they are in a zombie apocalypse, and this update is the start of that. There are a lot of AI changes and I'll try to break them down in this post.
In the above screenshot you can see there is a purple aura on the ground, this is seen in the Civilian view on the top right and it means that enough armed citizens are in a location for them to designate that building a Stronghold. They will fortify it with barricades that take extra hits from zombies to be destroyed. With a full set of barricades a door or window will take 8 hits instead of the usual 3. Each tile now also counts for many more barricades than it used to so there is ample amount to barricade with.
Civilians can still pass through barricaded doors as I felt like there would be too many problems with civilians being trapped outside and breaking in if I did otherwise. The civilians will move around the building until the whole building has been barricaded.
Once the building is secure the armed citizens will begin to patrol to try and deal with any zombies that invade or turn inside the building. Survivors that are outside strongholds will see them and enter to try and stay safe. This does however also bring in some infected...
Police stations will also be considered Strongholds and civilians will seek refuge there.
Unarmed civilians will move up to the roof if there is one in order to hide from the danger below. This has mixed results as infected civilians will occasionally get in. I've been debating if this is something I want to change and I'd appreciate your thoughts!
If too many people die or too many zombies are in the building the stronghold will flip back and the survivors will evacuate the building, if they can. If an infected made it up to the roof a lot of them have a good chance of getting out, but if they have been overrun from the bottom floor their days may be numbered. I'd like to try and add more for civilians to try and deal with this in future updates.
That's it for now, I will probably add more updates to this system based on your feedback and by playing and tweaking the system. Let me know what you think and thanks for playing as always!