Kirtonos

I'm about to share an experience that has stuck with me for 20 years and guided me greatly in my growth as a designer. Back in the early days of Everquest, I was friends with this paladin who we called Rainbow Brite (which he then went on to take as his surname) because his armor was literally every color of the rainbow. Helm was bright yellow, pants blue, chest silver, boots green, gloves black, and red legs. Just a complete eyesore. This was long before they had class armor quests or people could reliably break Fear to farm paladin gear. So I asked him one day why he did this to himself. Why he let people poke fun at him for his mish-mashed armor and his reply was priceless.... "I'd wear a tutu and a neon garbage bucket on my head if it gave me 4 more AC." That was the day I learned how much some players value function over fashion.

I totally just read this in Neebs' voice.

In my experience, early game is the only point when armor matters. After you find better weaponry, learn all the new "traps" for POI's where you're going to get ambushed, and are perked up, the chances of taking a hit are highly decreased. Sure there might be the one zed or buzzard that gets a lucky shot in but that's a handful of times over the course of many hours of "endgame" play. Also, given the experiences thus far with food consumption for stamina usage, it certainly gives a bigger edge to padded being the armor of choice for the entire game. It wasn't until I saw the new changes that it made me evaluate to what end I was perking, modding, and suffering through the penalties of heavy armor to come to the realization that I actually don't "need" heavy armor. Again, I used to be pro-heavy armor but I can't deny that the pendulum has swung the other direction.

We don't build horde defense bases anymore. We just take over a POI and put in a murder hole or two for spraying death down on the zeds. Next horde night, find a new POI and let them wreck it.

I've mused about doing this exact same thing for awhile now. All of the changes to zeds, A.I., and such over the last few alphas have really left me with this desire to not keep repeating the same cycle over and over. As such, in my last A18 run, I just abandoned building any sort of horde base. Instead I find a sturdy POI that I can make a few adjustments in a quick amount of time to serve as the horde defense base of the week. We still spray bullets like they are going out of style but we don't have to repair the damage and can be free of burden for the next 7 days till the process repeats. Next 7 days, find a new POI! Granted, there is usually a day devoted to restocking lead, nitrate, and coal so we have 3k+ ammo each to fully expend on a horde night. Brass is an ongoing search as every radiator, brass lamp, and car is wrenched till we have to feed dukes into the forge. Also, I don't build bases anymore. I just take over interesting POI's and bend them to my will over time. They only have a single purpose and that is to be a place to keep my stuff. To be clear, horde nights are still one of the more fun aspects of the game for me as it is a pure shooting gallery (who doesn't love shooting zombies?) so I'm willing to put in the work to have bullets. I'm just not into the MASSIVE amount of base repair and time it currently requires. Also, I don't like cheesy tactics like OP presented, jump bases, or stuff of that nature.

If you are getting hit constantly, you're doing something wrong. I was wearing scrap to begin with this alpha. I would still take it off and deal with the inventory encumbrance penalty for carrying it to move faster than if I was wearing it. Finally, I just said screw it and started wearing padded full time. Requires no investment in points, gives OK protection for those rare occasions when buzzard gets the jump on me, and does not slow me down. I honestly do not get hit enough to warrant the mod cost and perk investment that heavy armor currently requires. Also, up until this alpha, I was the heavy armor/melee person of the group. Now I'm the padded armor/blunderbuss person. Kinda reminds me of the light armor/sprint/jackhammer build from Planetside. I really hope y'all have some sort of data tracking for what perks get picked by players.

To OP's original question before the thread started debating the completeness of a 7 year old game still in Alpha or that it was advertised as having tower defense elements on Kickstarter... The way I balanced Demo's for my group was changing the zombie referenced from army soldier to fat zombie. This kept the HP but removed the damage reduction and armor. I then increased the detonate time by 2s and made it stop counting down on death so that it has parity with the cop. There was also an additional damage reduction mod (if I remember correctly) that I removed as well since it looked like it was double dipping on damage reduction. Everything else remains as is. This keeps it as a fast moving, spike mowing juggernaut with serious block damage capability that you have to deal with quickly. It has plenty of HP to soak bullets but TTK isn't too high especially in a crowd. Weapons required to quickly kill one remains broad instead of being reliant on an M60. The base building tactics of shooting one from behind to avoid triggering it are still there. Oh, and I changed the XP mod to be inline with a cop since it was lower for no good reason for such a threat.