Is B42 migration broken?

[Valchrist]

So my understanding of the migration system from looking at world settings is that every certain amount of time, 12 hours on Apocalypse mode, the zombies in an area will migrate to redistribute the population through that area.

I have cleared out two very populated buildings now. One was the Ekron Community College, and the second was a new secret location which I will leave undisclosed.

In both cases, the moment I cleared a discrete area, like the front parking lot, a whole new very large mob would migrate to fill the area.
Once I cleared those, another wave would walk in and so forth.

I could clear that area 5X over in a 12 hour window, and they will keep streaming out of the building in well-defined waves just to fill up a distant area of the front parking lot.
They will continue doing this until the entire building with a population of ~1000 zombies is basically empty and they're all laying well away from the building out in the parking lot.

Even if I use a quiet weapon like a knife and lure the new wave a long distance away, a new wave will come occupy the spot that they left.

It feels like migration is happening constantly or perhaps ever hour instead of every 12 hours.

Sneaking in to a building like this is made effectively futile, because you can't clear an entry/exit point then stealth in, and you can't just lure them away with sound.
There will always be a new mob to 'migrate' and stand right at the entrance. Even sneaking to a window is not practical, let alone safe, because they will always be evenly distributed all around the outside of the building

[Percavil]

B42 is very unbalanced and has some bugs. You're looking at another 1-2 years before they release the stable build

[saliddry]

never happened to me ...... i play apo setting only changed daytime from 1 to 2 hours
and deactivatedthe zombie respawn seen-unseen the 3 settign to 0 ..... i dont like constant respawning..

they can migrate after peak ...till peak day a few pop up here and there cause peek isnt reached yet ......but thats it ....

and never had an area instantly refill with new zombies... sounds more like an respawn bug than an migration..

[Valchrist]

It's not a respawn issue. I'm 8 months in to this save, and the respawn rates are relatively low and quite fine. I drive back and forth between Ekron and Echo Ridge frequently, and the respawns are very manageable.

I'll explain the situation I'm in now. There is a tall fence that stretches for some time before leading to the door of a building.
There is a mob of 20 in front of that building. I do a fighting retreat and defeat them, and when I get back to the entrance there are more climbing out, which is normal.
But when I beat those 20, another 20 climb out. And then another 20. And another and another, until there are now over 1,000 dead zombies laying in front of the entrance.

It is a large building. However, now even the far side is basically devoid of zombies. There was 1000 zombies crammed in that building. But now there are at most a few dozen.

The ones on the far side of the building didn't see or hear the combat. They just migrated over to fill the gap.
Now, this is supposed to happen, but it is supposed to happen over time.
Instead it is continuous and relentless. You can't even step foot inside of the building until almost every last zombie has 'migrated' to the single entrance, to replace that first batch of zombies.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3408325652

I haven't actually been inside that building yet, and all those zeds definitely weren't in hearing range of melee weapons.
The corpses carry on a long way back, too, from luring them away and fighting on the retreat.

Previously, I cleared out Ekron Community College, and it was the exact same thing. 98% of the zombies piled in to the parking lot, over 1000 zeds, and by the time I was able to get inside there was only a handful inside of the building.

[Alina&Co]

Originally posted by Valchrist:

It's not a respawn issue. I'm 8 months in to this save, and the respawn rates are relatively low and quite fine. I drive back and forth between Ekron and Echo Ridge frequently, and the respawns are very manageable.

I'll explain the situation I'm in now. There is a tall fence that stretches for some time before leading to the door of a building.
There is a mob of 20 in front of that building. I do a fighting retreat and defeat them, and when I get back to the entrance there are more climbing out, which is normal.
But when I beat those 20, another 20 climb out. And then another 20. And another and another, until there are now over 1,000 dead zombies laying in front of the entrance.

It is a large building. However, now even the far side is basically devoid of zombies. There was 1000 zombies crammed in that building. But now there are at most a few dozen.

The ones on the far side of the building didn't see or hear the combat. They just migrated over to fill the gap.
Now, this is supposed to happen, but it is supposed to happen over time.
Instead it is continuous and relentless. You can't even step foot inside of the building until almost every last zombie has 'migrated' to the single entrance, to replace that first batch of zombies.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3408325652

I haven't actually been inside that building yet, and all those zeds definitely weren't in hearing range of melee weapons.
The corpses carry on a long way back, too, from luring them away and fighting on the retreat.

Previously, I cleared out Ekron Community College, and it was the exact same thing. 98% of the zombies piled in to the parking lot, over 1000 zeds, and by the time I was able to get inside there was only a handful inside of the building.

it is not a migration issue, it is a patrolling pattern (new thing in Build 42). there are 2 types of Zeds now: 1st type is our known classical horde up type (clusters of 10-20 crowded next to each other and hardly move without reason); and type 2, new ones, they normally 3-5, walk from one spot to another constantly (can see that if you turn invisibility on and wait near any tall fence in the middle of the town). The second type, in places like a secret military base or a prison etc, normally are blocked by crowded type 1 Zeds. And the moment you move the crowd, Type 2 starts moving and for instance breaking a window and do other noise - this makes another huge horde from inside to move to where you just cleared.

so it is not a hord migration (that happens when you drive and see like 1000 crossing the road, - it is just zeds which are bunched up together trying to disperse to occupy 1 square each instead of 50 per 1 square.

spend like 25 days clearing ground floor of a military base, went through few dozen of wrenches and such, took down 2k zeds, went around the building to see another 10k waiting their turn to climb a window to go through a building to the parking lot, ran out of weapons and retreated.

oh, and it was only a Survival settings of the game, which happens to be same as apocalypses setting just because by default, unless you are in a send box, you get same setting for all standard modes ROFL but hey, unstable is unstable, - right. can imagine someone new selecting Builder mode for relax experience just to find 10k zeds on a main street of the city they spawned at lol.

right now it only takes 3k zeds to clear to get access to Louisville main gates with lots of supplies and 2k just to clear a police station at Muldraugh for 2 shotguns and couple of boxes of ammo (you get more from looting corpses while clearing). and malls - gotta love an empty parking lot until you do a noise and watch a flooding tide of Zeds streaming from all broken doors and windows ROFL

Worst part, Books like level 4-5 aiming, reloading and short blades only drop from event Zeds with big hiking backpacks - so burning is no longer an option. Also, book stores and schools and libraries only give books up to level 3, higher ones are either in houses, mechanical workshops of also from event Zeds. Absolutely makes mall runs a waste of time in build 42.

[アマミヤルミナ]

In MP we were fighting in Rosewood, admin teleported to Ekron and he told us all the zombies are moving to our place.

[Steve10393]

Originally posted by Valchrist:

So my understanding of the migration system from looking at world settings is that every certain amount of time, 12 hours on Apocalypse mode, the zombies in an area will migrate to redistribute the population through that area.

I have cleared out two very populated buildings now. One was the Ekron Community College, and the second was a new secret location which I will leave undisclosed.

In both cases, the moment I cleared a discrete area, like the front parking lot, a whole new very large mob would migrate to fill the area.
Once I cleared those, another wave would walk in and so forth.

I could clear that area 5X over in a 12 hour window, and they will keep streaming out of the building in well-defined waves just to fill up a distant area of the front parking lot.
They will continue doing this until the entire building with a population of ~1000 zombies is basically empty and they're all laying well away from the building out in the parking lot.

Even if I use a quiet weapon like a knife and lure the new wave a long distance away, a new wave will come occupy the spot that they left.

It feels like migration is happening constantly or perhaps ever hour instead of every 12 hours.

Sneaking in to a building like this is made effectively futile, because you can't clear an entry/exit point then stealth in, and you can't just lure them away with sound.
There will always be a new mob to 'migrate' and stand right at the entrance. Even sneaking to a window is not practical, let alone safe, because they will always be evenly distributed all around the outside of the building

I flipped on debug mode and the zombie heat map to watch it and im pretty sure you are correct it's completely ignoring whatever the setting is for the zombie migration time period (default 12 hours) and just doing it constantly. It's like whoever coded it just completely removed the variable from the equation.

[AmazingSully]

Yes, there is a bug with migration. It has been fixed internally, and that fix will go out in the upcoming hotfix.

[tennftbll214]

Originally posted by AmazingSully:

Yes, there is a bug with migration. It has been fixed internally, and that fix will go out in the upcoming hotfix.

Man, this is great to hear. Really. Thanks to you and the devs. This bug in particular was in my opinion the most disruptive. My crew I play with stopped playing altogether due to this bug. I was concerned that it was not getting as much visibility as other bugs, despite most of the other bugs being fixable with debug/admin tools. Is there a tentative timeline on when the next hotfix might be? Regardless, thanks!

[AmazingSully]

Originally posted by tennftbll214:

Is there a tentative timeline on when the next hotfix might be? Regardless, thanks!

No ETAs, but it will be in a hotfix. Hotfixes tend to go out quicker than standard patches, so keep an eye out.

[Skaz]

Originally posted by Steve10393:

I flipped on debug mode and the zombie heat map to watch it and im pretty sure you are correct it's completely ignoring whatever the setting is for the zombie migration time period (default 12 hours) and just doing it constantly. It's like whoever coded it just completely removed the variable from the equation.

Me and a friend turned off migration completely to see if that helped. It didn't, they were still doing it. We also noted that when they are in that migration mode they move at almost normal player walking speed even if they are explicitly set to be Shamblers.