Good zombie balance settings?

[Canniballistic]

I find its hard to get server settings for an SP game that give you a fairly consistent zombie presence while also not going too nuts and spawning hordes constantly right behind you in a closed room you just passed through.

ATM Im thinking of trying to up either the multiplier or probability while drastically lowering the max in world setting, because at least in my head I figure the max in world settings give you a nice upper limit and then allows you to adjust the lower limit with the other two settings.

The only problem is thats on the assumption that pawns despawn... which IDK if they do, because if they dont then they will be wandering in the previous town I passed through just wasting the zombie cap while I walk around with nothing to kill me.

Has anyone got some golden pawn spawning settings or insight into the max in world settings?

Golden settings in my case is constant threat with enough breathing room to loot, as I turn up the loot settings so that the game becomes much more action oriented, kind of like playing STALKER Anomaly or something.

[The Collector]

I was looking at the settings too but to go in and out of the game takes too long for me to do with my PC specs... I would like to know about this too, I do not want to. I want a setting where there is enough puppets to kill but don't want them to respawn too close or too fast while being afk or sorting the storage.

The idea of wandering puppets sounds much better than having a puppet spawn in and just idle in one place until it see/hear you. I can just imagine camping out on a rooftop while observing the distance as puppets come and go and not kill the same puppet on a spawn point each time.

[Drax]

I'm very interested in that question too. Last week I spent a number of hours to find the good settings on the interweb, and the most common answer I found was "try it for yourself", because the truth is the settings we have are few and not enough, and too vague.

Only thing i'm about sure is if you don't want surprise in your back spawning reduce all these to 0:
ExteriorPawnSpawningCheckTimeInSeconds=0
InteriorPawnSpawningCheckTimeInSeconds=0
WildPawnSpawningCheckTimeInSeconds=0
These if >0, delays the actual spawning once you are someplace. I think it's mostly to alleviate server's charge because if the player only pass through a spawning zone and is gone before the delay pass, then the spawning will not occur since the player is gone.
But the side effect is that you arrive in a village, it looks empty, you start to loot a house, and when you exit blam you fumble on a half dozen Z out of nowhere (literally!).

So if you don't want that kind of surprise zero all these 3.

Now for the rest, how to get constant Puppets everywhere? I guess you would have to have a very large "MaxAllowedZombiesInWorld=512".
It's understood as a sort of pool from which all spawning point take their puppets, up to the Max. If there's no room left, no more spawning. As some despawn, some room for more is made. Since it's an integer number, you can go wild at least up to 2 billion (lol), but I would start around 2048. The default value 512 is to preserve servers performance, so, consider the impact it can (will) have on your game performance. IAs are power hungry.

Then you can change the spawning % and multiplier. I recommend this website that has the best explanations I've found: https://re-actor.net/scum-single-player-config-guide/

If you find good settings, share them please!

[Linea]

To my understanding:

MaxAllowedZombiesInWorld=64
is the number than can be active (or on cooldown) at the same time. When you reach the next town the ones in the previous town will be unspawned already and wont affect the number. On multiplayer it is split out over all active locations if players are in different towns or POIs.

MaxAllowedExteriorPawnsInWorld=64
MaxAllowedInteriorPawnsInWorld=64
Are only to limit one or the other if set to the same as the World value it wont have an effect.

The Max number work against the cooldown setting:
ExteriorSpawnerGroupCooldownTime=1800.0
InteriorSpawnerGroupCooldownTime=900.0
If you kill 64 Exterior puppets in say 1000 seconds it will take 800 seconds befor any new will start spawning in again. This applies also to the next town for example.

ExteriorPawnAmountModifier=2.0
InteriorPawnAmountModifier=2.0
WildPawnAmountModifier=2.0
This are the numbers that determine the density of puppets you will met, how many can spawn at a place and its spawners.

ExteriorPawnSpawningProbability=50.0
InteriorPawnSpawningProbability=30.0
This determines the factor of randomness, if its lower you will encounter more varied numbers of puppets and they are more spread out in a town. If its higher they will spawn faster and closer but still limited to the max number.

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Personally i prefer to only up these settings to 2x or 4x
ExteriorPawnAmountModifier=2.0
InteriorPawnAmountModifier=2.0
WildPawnAmountModifier=2.0

Also lowering the loot chance for containers so i simply skip them and look for items that spawn in the open as for wasting less time opening empty containers and get a challange out of the singleplayer mode.

[Canniballistic]

Nothing really seems to work...

If you have a high cooldown and you even just drive past an area, I guess the zombies despawn and then the cooldown doesnt reset when you leave the area, but it really should because why do you care about the cooldown of an area youre not in anymore, nothing will spawn there anyway.

So if you have a high cooldown you need a decent check in timer, but then that means they dont spawn until youre in the middle of a POI and youre instantly surrounded.

Compounding that issue is it seems like the radius you activate spawners is massive, because with the global limit set very low, at 30, theres nothing around, even with 95% and 75% spawn probability.

Im going to try a low probability, high multiplier, low cooldown for external zombies and a high probability, normal multi, and a high cooldown for internal zombies, and just crank up the global limits to something ridiculous.

Maybe then I can have a constant sense of roaming zombies without it feeling like every time you kill one, another just respawns, or have to deal with zombies spawning behind me in a bunker.

Everything about the zombies from their animations to the way they spawn needs to be completely overhauled. Its easily the absolute worst part of the game.