Zombie Cure Lab

[naednek]

So I saw this in a post from PCGAMER on facebook and it looked interesting. It's a hybrid game like those tower games meets theme hospital type game. It's a sandbox game, where you instead of killing zombies, you are curing them and incorporating them in your work force. You build buildings to support your lab, collect materials to build and at night based on the size of your lab, zombies will be coming to you door. Here you freeze them and during the day you take them to your cure lab to turn them back to humans.

It's a pretty interesting concept and as an extra benefit, you can you run a tool in the background that uses your cpu power (you can set how much) to send that processing to research team who's researching cures for various diseases\cancers.

It's early release and currently it's 20% off.


JZtemple, this is right up your ally

[jztemple2]

JZtemple, this is right up your ally

You people know me so well

Now on my wishlist and Feedly feed.

[jztemple2]

So this is some weird version of the OO Effect. Instead of buying a game because other people had bought it and were talking it up, I ended up buying it because someone else who didn't own the game thought I should buy it . So thanks to naednek for the recommendation

I've put in six hours on the game so far and I'm pretty happy with it. According to the devs they worked on it for three years before releasing into Early Access. There is solid gameplay and it is quite an interesting situation. As you can read from the descriptions on the Steam page, it is a cross between a builder and a tower defense game, but that doesn't really do it justice. I've done the tutorial and have continued on with this first camp. Right now I'm in a resources death spiral but I'm not at all unhappy about it, I've learned a lot.

So the gist of the game is that your employer M.O.O.S.E. Labs is trying to combat a zombie outbreak by capturing zombies and treating them so they become humbies, something in-between a zombie and a human. The humbies go through several stages of treatment before they become human and there is a whole research tree to unlock all the needed science upgrades to do this. And everything else in the camp has upgrades too, like the kitchen, the defense items, the tools you actually use to capture zombies, etc. And just to make it more interesting, you are limited to only 20 scientists, so you need to actually employ these humbies at their various stages of treatment to work for you in a number of tasks. However, you are also motivated to send the humbies back to M.O.O.S.E. Labs where they will contribute to the research to cure the outbreak. So there's the challenge.

And there's more! The zombies come each night to attack your camp, but at first your simple wooden palisade stops them. However, the more humbies you employ and the larger your camp gets, the more zombies that attack each night and the more destructive they become, so you have to upgrade your defenses to deal with that.

Part of the main thrust of the game is while M.O.O.S.E. Labs can fly you out some resources by helicopter, for most of them you'll need to go outside the camp palisade and harvest/gather the resources you need, whether it's carrots to eat, metal from abandoned cars, etc. And putting your workers outside the palisade puts them at risk if you don't get them back inside before the zombies show up...

I've had a lot of questions as I play as a lot of things aren't obvious, but Discord has been a real help here as early playtesters have been fielding questions since EA release. It says a lot by how dedicated they have been to answer the same questions over and over again. The devs have a roadmap for what's going into the game but there's a lot of game there right now. I'm very pleased with the purchase.

[jztemple2]

By the way, here's an image of the development team:

[naednek]

So this is some weird version of the OO Effect. Instead of buying a game because other people had bought it and were talking it up, I ended up buying it because someone else who didn't own the game thought I should buy it . So thanks to naednek for the recommendation

I've put in six hours on the game so far and I'm pretty happy with it. According to the devs they worked on it for three years before releasing into Early Access. There is solid gameplay and it is quite an interesting situation. As you can read from the descriptions on the Steam page, it is a cross between a builder and a tower defense game, but that doesn't really do it justice. I've done the tutorial and have continued on with this first camp. Right now I'm in a resources death spiral but I'm not at all unhappy about it, I've learned a lot.

So the gist of the game is that your employer M.O.O.S.E. Labs is trying to combat a zombie outbreak by capturing zombies and treating them so they become humbies, something in-between a zombie and a human. The humbies go through several stages of treatment before they become human and there is a whole research tree to unlock all the needed science upgrades to do this. And everything else in the camp has upgrades too, like the kitchen, the defense items, the tools you actually use to capture zombies, etc. And just to make it more interesting, you are limited to only 20 scientists, so you need to actually employ these humbies at their various stages of treatment to work for you in a number of tasks. However, you are also motivated to send the humbies back to M.O.O.S.E. Labs where they will contribute to the research to cure the outbreak. So there's the challenge.

And there's more! The zombies come each night to attack your camp, but at first your simple wooden palisade stops them. However, the more humbies you employ and the larger your camp gets, the more zombies that attack each night and the more destructive they become, so you have to upgrade your defenses to deal with that.

Part of the main thrust of the game is while M.O.O.S.E. Labs can fly you out some resources by helicopter, for most of them you'll need to go outside the camp palisade and harvest/gather the resources you need, whether it's carrots to eat, metal from abandoned cars, etc. And putting your workers outside the palisade puts them at risk if you don't get them back inside before the zombies show up...

I've had a lot of questions as I play as a lot of things aren't obvious, but Discord has been a real help here as early playtesters have been fielding questions since EA release. It says a lot by how dedicated they have been to answer the same questions over and over again. The devs have a roadmap for what's going into the game but there's a lot of game there right now. I'm very pleased with the purchase.

Oh I bought it when I told ya about it I had already played about an hour before starting this thread

[naednek]

What I'm having a hard time figuring out is how do I make humbies level 2. I have the upgraded treatment machine and have a worker or 3 assigned, but nothing happens. I happened to make one, but I didn't see it happen. I have the necessary ingredients too.

[jztemple2]

Oh I bought it when I told ya about it I had already played about an hour before starting this thread

Well, again thanks for the recommendation.

So after six hours this is what my tutorial camp looks like:

[jztemple2]

What I'm having a hard time figuring out is how do I make humbies level 2. I have the upgraded treatment machine and have a worker or 3 assigned, but nothing happens. I happened to make one, but I didn't see it happen. I have the necessary ingredients too.

Oh, I can answer this one because I saw it mentioned on their Discord chat. You need to have the machine, the ingredients for the machine and the people assigned, but also you need a humbie level 1 that has accumulated enough XP for the transition. If you look at the bottom right of the image I posted you'll see the magnifying glass looking at a person. Click that and you'll find a sortable list of all personnel. Use the filter buttons at the top to select the level 1 humbies and over on the right side will be their current XP as a bar filling up to what's needed before they will be taken to the treatment machine.

[jztemple2]

Here's a look at that screen I mentioned in the post above:

[jztemple2]

I'm at the ten and a half hour mark now. I lost my first run through on the tutorial when I got into a resource death spiral that was a good reminder about how the game works. When you have something that was broken due to a zombie or a raging humbie, the repair requires some percentage of the original material that was used to make the object. In my case I had several broken objects that needed metal to repair them but I had none. Because of this I was unable to equip my guards so I could never get rid of the raging humbies. Lesson learned there

So now I'm in a second run through of the tutorial and it is going much better. I did have a crisis where I didn't plan my electricity usage well enough and so my snowball guns had no power, which resulted in a few zombies getting through. I beefed up my power sources, expanded my battery and added more guards. I'm making my own metal and chemicals to supplement what I find on the ground too.

I also learned something else from the playtester Chris who's been posting on Discord. The level 1 humbies need raw meat provided on a fill table, which holds five servings. That I knew. What I didn't know was that the moment a raw meat portion is placed on the fill table, it is reserved for one of level 1 humbies, if there isn't one already reserved. So if you have, say, ten humbies and ten raw meat portions and you create an eleventh level 1 humbie, that new humbie can't just go grab a raw meat that's sitting on the fill table. So the lesson is always have more fill table spaces (five per table) than you have level 1 humbies. If you do that you won't have issues with hunger, as long as you produce enough raw meat. And of course it is better to get them upgraded ASAP to level 2 humbies.

[jztemple2]

I've got seventeen hours in now. I went back and replayed the tutorial so I could implement the lessons I learned. I got all the way to building the last of the four levels of treatment machines so I could capture a zombie and progressively return them to human. I also unlocked most of the research tree. Ultimately what made me stop was that I had run out of ore on the map, which means I can't make metal, which means I can't make a lot of things. There wasn't a big "You Have Won!" moment, but that's OK, I know I did everything that was needed to reach the end of the research tree and reliably rehabilitate zombies. At look at my complex, unfortunate the limits on the zoom out means I can't get a snapshot of the whole complex without switching to vertical mode which shows the whole map.



This game has a definite Prison Architect feel to it in the way you build things. It also is like other games (the names of which escape me now) where you collect resources to build things which allow you to research more complex things which allows your to build those, all the while needing to produce all sorts of goods to feed your people and your machines.

It is nicely balanced in the gameplay. For instance, you are making microchips which need metal and chemicals. Oops, now you have enough metal but not enough chemicals, so you build a chemical plant. Oops, you now don't have enough metal, so you want to build another metal plant. Oops, you've run out of room inside your complex palisade, so you need to expand that. And oops, you also ran out of power last night because you didn't expand your power generation to allow for the new metal plant. And so on and so forth. It's good mental exercise and a challenge, but the different types of resources is limited (look at the bottom of the screen shot) so you aren't dealing with dozens of different goods.

The premise is clever as well. Early on in your game you can handle the zombie attacks, but as you expand your base and get more people it prompts more vigorous zombie attacks. So you have to upgrade your defenses but that means you need to build more objects that support those new defenses, which in turn prompts even more vigorous zombie attacks. The process works very well.

I'll probably take a break before I start another mission. I've done the tutorial map, after than we have maps labeled Very Easy, Easy, Normal, Difficult and Sandbox. So there are five other maps which based upon my experience with the first one ought to take at very least a half dozen hours each, so that's thirty more hours of gameplay, so probably right now there's about forty hours of content in the game. Now the next maps will be somewhat repetitive in some respects, but from what I've read there are enough differences to require a different approach to each. So definitely the game is a good investment.

[naednek]

sorry I've been sick and staying still seems to only keep me from feeling like i need to ralph. Catching up now I did see your post on how to get to humbies level 2. It hasn't happened yet, had to start over yet again.

[jztemple2]

sorry I've been sick and staying still seems to only keep me from feeling like i need to ralph. Catching up now I did see your post on how to get to humbies level 2. It hasn't happened yet, had to start over yet again.

No need to apologize! Hope you are feeling better

I started a new playthrough on the Very Easy map, but fell into the same spiral I did on my first tutorial playthrough, not producing enough raw meat and having enough feed tables for my level 1 humbies. And not enough weight equipment for them either. Since I've reached twenty hours overall in the game I've decided to take a break and maybe see if there is some new content drop before the holidays.

That Very Easy map is quite large compared to the tutorial map and the resources more spread out. There are nights when no zombies show up and then nights when a real crowd is there. I started to mimic what I had seen posted by another player, having my rooms all linked by corridors, but early in the game you need all the square footage you can get within your palisade so I ended up destroying the corridors . As always, watching the amounts of your resources is really important. I've submitted a suggestion to add custom limit pop-ups, so when a resource drops below a level you've set you get notified.

[jztemple2]

In case someone is interested, ZCL has a beta available with some bugfixes and changes.

As you may have noticed, there is now a beta branch for Zombie Cure Lab!

Before an update goes online on the "main branch", it will be tested on this branch. You are welcome to play on the beta branch and test new content before the official release. We are looking forward to your feedback!

If you don't know how to switch branches in Steam at all, do the following:
• Right click on the game in your library, and click Properties.
• Select the Betas tab, and select the branch you want to switch to. Then click OK.
The best news: The first beta update is already available!
Please feel free to test it out and let us know if it works.

Patch Notes (0.15.11 -> 0.15.12)
--------------------------------
Bugfixes
- fixed some broken savegames
- Resource-Objects in unfinished rooms which are deleted are not deleted with the room anymore
- prevent merging with rooms that are about to be deleted
- prevent upgrade of blueprints as this would lead to follow up bugs
- several null-checks to prevent broken game states or log spams

Improvements
- Characters do not abort their job to fulfill a need if they are currently carrying something
- HUD fixes for (Ultra) Wide Screen resolutions as well as narrow screens
- You can pan the camera with the arrow keys now
- When there is a problem with a savegame file, there will appear a prompt to automatically send us the file
- The Progress of World Map Events is now also visible for players who don't have Docking Hero activated

NOTE: The patch is officially not released yet. You can test it out anyway by changing your branch to "beta" in Properties -> Betas. Enjoy!

[jztemple2]

Played some more of ZCL on the Very Easy Map. This time I really kept a close eye on the needs of my humbies and was able to get to Tier II without drama.

Meanwhile, I've been collecting tips and info from the Discord channel, mostly posted by Chris who was a playtester. I've put in spoiler tags to keep from filling up the page but there isn't anything really in the sense of a spoiler in it. A lot of the info is in the game but obscure and some things are just plain hard to understand until someone explains it to you UPDATE: I've created a Steam Guide which contains this information, see the link in the next post.

Spoiler:

Bingo, you're exactly correct on both points!
The Resource Camp has 2 tasks that your workers can be assigned to: "Harvest" which will harvest any resources you allow in the radius of the camp, and "Pickup" which will pickup any resources from the ground (previously harvested or dropped from deconstruction, etc) that happen to lie within the radius of the Resource Camp AND are toggled on the allowed list of that camp. The caveat being that Resource Camp workers DON'T get any form of hauling bonus, because they have to just load things in to their arms.

The Hauling Post has a BUNCH of different tasks that you can assign the workers to, but the key difference between the Resource Camp is that Hauling Post grants a carry-capacity bonus (because the workers use wheelbarrows), it has a MUCH larger radius, and there's no filter-restriction on what the workers can pick up.
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One of the changes introduced during the invite-only playtest period was turning the Resource Camps in to drop-off points that are connected back to the Main Storage resource count. So any pickup-job-enabled worker can drop off resources at the nearest Resource Camp & they get added to the totals at the bottom of the screen (and can immediately be withdrawn from the Main Storage by a worker that needs to use them)
------------------------------------------
Q: Is there a quick way to update walls/fences on mass?
Yes: Build Menu -> Select the desired Tier of Building Room/Fence/Gate/Production Machine/etc, then click the "up arrow" icon at the bottom of the menu to enter upgrade-painting-mode. Then click & drag across everything you want upgraded to that new form.
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Q: I have a bunch of broken items, fences, walls, furnaces, etc. I also have a Guards Armory II broken but I want that fixed first. How do I get it to the top of the fix queue? Also, Does it need certain resources to be fixed? Maybe that's the issue?
A: It does require resources. Those repair packs are constructed using a fraction of the resources used to originally create the broken item. So if your grill is broken, you'll need metal in inventory before a repair pack can be created
and why it's important to make sure you have a healthy stockpile of stone before upgrading all your fences/gates to Tier2
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Q:OK, so I've gone into a death spiral on resources on the tutorial map and I think it's time to give up. However, I really enjoyed the experience. What do folks think, do the tutorial map again and see if I can get all the way through, or start that camp labeled "very easy"?
A:Really depends where you start, i was going great until i ran out of ice packs. Just know the more you expand the more zombies will attack the next round. Took me several attempts to get through the tutorial but did it on the 3rd/4th try.
Then did the sandbox which sounds great in theory until you get hammered with 47 Large zombies LOL.... Trying the very easy and yes it's very easy to start with but got to a point where my humbies kept revolting even tho there needs were there they just weren't using them and then i ran out of ice packs so the next zombie wave = insta death
A:Tutorial map is 1/2 the size of any other map, but with a denser allocation of resources. Further, there's only 1 zombie-tunnel, it's at the bottom of the map, and there doesn't seem to be as much variability in the zombie waves. Other maps have 1-4 tunnels (based on difficulty), with the initial tunnel on the right side of the map. Zombie waves have a bit more variability, with Strong waves, Weak waves, Elite waves, and some nights no wave.
------------------------------------------
Q:Question, when I have a humbie go on a rampage and he gets iced, who is supposed to pick him up and bring him to the calming center? I've had two of them sitting in their ice cubes and no one seems to want to go get them.
A:They are moved by a Hauling Station
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Q:I feel like I am doing something wrong. I have 7 level 3 humbies but it is taking ages to level them up? Is it just a let them work and wait job or am I missing something? I have all the max level learning stations and a variety of things for them to do.
A:Every time a Humbie 3 uses a learning station he gains like 1 XP and he maybe needs like 8. He probably trains like every 10 min, but the learn need will only deplenish when he works. So it could take like four in-game days for them to be ready for next treatment.
So if you set him up as a guard or a defender at an tower but he just idles there waiting for the night, it takes ages until his learn need will trigger.
------------------------------------------
Q:"So if you set him up as a guard or a defender at an tower but he just idles there waiting for the night, it takes ages until his learn need will trigger". So it is better to put him in a job that requires activity like a furnace or a hauling station?
A:Yes only when working so workers really drain need. When they idle they only drain hunger and sleep at a 20% base
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Q: I've got two big science rooms which were separated by a fence. I removed the fence and built a three square wide corridor. Now I'd like to add the area of the corridor into the smaller of the two rooms, but I keep running into problems. What's the proper way to accomplish this?
A:1) Click the Corridor.
2) Change the room type to "Science Room"
3) Use the merge tool (from the bottom of the Build menu) to merge the rooms together. Note that you want to start your click-and-drag on one of the side walls, and to make sure that your drag-selection is at least 3 tiles "deep"
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Main storage workers can only perform 2 job-tasks: Build things, or Repair things. They don't perform any delivery functions.
------------------------------------------
Q:So for those objects like the Research Desk, etc, you turn off their option to get their own resources and deliver their output and instead let the Hauling Post do it?
A:Yup! That way the operator never needs to stop working just to fetch resources, and as a bonus more resources get delivered in a single trip due to the Hauling Post workers' wheelbarrow. (Not really an issue on Tier 1 buildings, but single-trip-hauling-capacity starts to become a major issue with Tier 2 & Tier 3 buildings). I typically place (or at least leave space for) 3 Hauling Posts immediately to the left of my Main Storage. Early on, I'll leave all the jobs enabled for those Hauling Posts, but as the game progresses and I start to fill my base with production buildings, I start to disable the "Pickup" and "Zombie Hauling" tasks from more and more of the workers.
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Q:Alright, here's a more philosophical question. For any Resource Camps and Hauling Posts I have outside of the palisade, I set the workers to day shift only. Now I know I'm losing out on an hour or so of work in the evenings before the zombies show up, but I figure it's not worth the hassle of trying to turn on the alarm just before the zombies show up. Do other people do it this way? Or do other folks just have workers on both shifts and try to make sure they hit the alarm in time?
A:Day-shift-only is my approach unless/until I wall off the tunnels (or funnel them all together).
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It's an interesting building (the Stone Crusher, a reward building); creates chemicals without the heavy electricity use of the normal extractor, but instead consumes stone (the normal extractor just pulls them from the ground & has no input other than electricity).
------------------------------------------

[jztemple2]

First, another patch has been released for the beta version. I'm running that version so I'll give it a look.

Patch Notes (0.15.12 -> 0.15.14) - 16.12.2022

Spoiler:

Patch Notes (0.15.12 -> 0.15.14) - 16.12.2022
----------------------

Balancing:
- Zombies can take way more hits now, health range times ten to make room for more towers and new damage balancing. Goal is that players need to build more towers early on and it gets a bit harder to freeze lots of Zombies or complete waves.
- Humbie Level 1 and Level 2 can now use defenses, Level 1 humbie dealing only 75% damage
- Threat value more mission duration and lab size dependent, especially in normal and hard mission. Will be way harder to reach day 50, 60 and beyond. Worker population have a fix threat gain value per worker. Every 10 days threat levels spike even more.
- Easy and very easy mission threat grows way slower to give room for slower play style.
- You can play the sandbox mission now to have a relaxed ZCL experience where the zombie damage does not really grow much and the threat value neither.
- FASTER GAME SPEEDS, can be set up to 3x instead of previously 2x
- Workers move ~30% faster, goal was to change game pacing especially for the early phase, overall you should be able to progress quicker.
- Missing production buildings like grill and meat growers now also have the storage tags, their input and output storage will be accounted for by nearby producers. In other words, produced meat would directly go to the grill and not the main storage first.
- Science room machines moved to science tech-tree category
- Added a T1 fridge that produces ice packs very slowly for electricity as an alternate ice pack production to play around with.
- Bellow Breezer produces little more ice packs per hour
- Feeding pile 1 and 2 have more capacity for meat, stacks may look a bit nicer now. (Please report if this creates savegame problems)
- Default auto repair threshold increased from 70% to 90%, important for new players that do not now of this feature, you can change this value however you like.
- Repair cost even further reduced from 25% to 15% that players with large destruction have a better chance to recover.
- Sleeping Pod T3 a bit better, minor value tweaks
- Treatment training requirement for humbie levels unified to three. Humbie Level 3 only needs to train three times instead of five, greatly reduced the time until he is ready for treatment.

Ui/ Feature:
- Nicer storage amount ui in info boxes, sliders for refill/ take out thresholds more visible
- Improved look of resource icons
- Easier savegame deletion in save screen
- Worked on final CrowdIn integration (see localization channels)

Bugs:
- Queued need jobs fix where workers sometimes would not abort jobs for needs (Mainly wood cutting)
- Humbies at feeding piles would cancel before finish eating leading too satisfiying less then 30% and making it difficult to produce enough meat for humbies especially when there is already none and their needs are vey low.
- Worldmap even reward sunflowers bug fixed, can now be researched after unlocked

Sound:
- Fixed sound bugs, many tweaks and new sound effects

Known Issues:
- Game speed tooltip still shows slower speeds, but it is actually 3x speed on highest now believe me!
- Grilled meat on feeding piles looks bigger then raw meat on other feeding piles (What really matters)

Also, I've posted a Steam Guide "Tips and Advice for Zombie Cure Lab (work in progress)" which is exactly what it says it is

[naednek]

I'll have to test, but I switched to the latest beta and things were alot better with the changes, but after a while, i'm getting really bad frame rates. And what's weird on my non beta experience I've had more things going on without any performance issues.

[jztemple2]

I'll have to test, but I switched to the latest beta and things were alot better with the changes, but after a while, i'm getting really bad frame rates. And what's weird on my non beta experience I've had more things going on without any performance issues.

I've had the frame issues before and after switching to the beta, it's a known issue. I see it when I open up the Worker Overview screen and start sorting. I also see it when looking around the map at places where a lot of resources have been harvested but not picked up. They are hoping to get a handle on it soon.

[jztemple2]

A battle royale at the front gate!

[jztemple2]

Looking for something really challenging? This was posted this morning by the devs over on their Discord announcements channel:

Hey @everyone! We are proud to present you our experimental branch. There we are testing different new game concepts for Zombie Cure Lab apart from the main game. As the name says, these are still in an experimental state and therefore not yet fully developed.

If you want to help us develop Zombie Cure Lab further, feel free to play the first nights of the experimental branch and leave feedback in
│experimental .

Experimental features in experimental-1.0:

Zombie Lanes (Visualization button in the left corner)
:ZCL_AngryZombie: Boss Zombie Wave
New tower types: Speed Boost and Attack Boost
Attack Novae: Freeze Nova and Repair Nova (At main storage)
All production buildings are automated, no workers needed
"Skip to next night!" Button (Bottom right corner)

Please note that there is only rudimentary balancing in this branch. It is about testing the experimental features. Also you will probably encounter bugs

You can find instructions how to get to the experimental branch in the channel
│experimental

[naednek]

I've paused until the frame rate issue is resolved. So if you find out please share!

[jztemple2]

I've paused until the frame rate issue is resolved. So if you find out please share!

What are your PC specs? I'm posting info on Discord so they can get a handle on the frame rate problems.

[naednek]

I've paused until the frame rate issue is resolved. So if you find out please share!

What are your PC specs? I'm posting info on Discord so they can get a handle on the frame rate problems.

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8700K CPU @ 3.70GHz 3.70 GHz
Installed RAM 48.0 GB
Nvidia 3080
Windows 11

I do see I need to update my driver so I'll try that first. I didn't do any troubleshooting. I just know it was fine before the 2nd patch.

[jztemple2]

I do see I need to update my driver so I'll try that first. I didn't do any troubleshooting. I just know it was fine before the 2nd patch.

Your specs are certainly good enough. I'm running Win10 but no one has identified Win11 as being an issue.

Are you running the beta or vanilla? If you haven't tried the beta give it a go. You'll have to start a new game to see the effects. The latest beta is 0.15.14 released on the 16th while the latest vanilla is 0.15.12, also released on the 16th.

UPDATE: By the way, my rig is Intel i9-10850K 10-Core, 32GB RAM, GeForce RTX 3080 10GB, 1TB SSD, Win10 Home.

[naednek]

I do see I need to update my driver so I'll try that first. I didn't do any troubleshooting. I just know it was fine before the 2nd patch.

Your specs are certainly good enough. I'm running Win10 but no one has identified Win11 as being an issue.

Are you running the beta or vanilla? If you haven't tried the beta give it a go. You'll have to start a new game to see the effects. The latest beta is 0.15.14 released on the 16th while the latest vanilla is 0.15.12, also released on the 16th.

UPDATE: By the way, my rig is Intel i9-10850K 10-Core, 32GB RAM, GeForce RTX 3080 10GB, 1TB SSD, Win10 Home.

I'm running the beta and that's when the problems started (after the 2nd beta patch)

[jztemple2]

I do see I need to update my driver so I'll try that first. I didn't do any troubleshooting. I just know it was fine before the 2nd patch.

Your specs are certainly good enough. I'm running Win10 but no one has identified Win11 as being an issue.

Are you running the beta or vanilla? If you haven't tried the beta give it a go. You'll have to start a new game to see the effects. The latest beta is 0.15.14 released on the 16th while the latest vanilla is 0.15.12, also released on the 16th.

UPDATE: By the way, my rig is Intel i9-10850K 10-Core, 32GB RAM, GeForce RTX 3080 10GB, 1TB SSD, Win10 Home.

I'm running the beta and that's when the problems started (after the 2nd beta patch)

Be sure to report it with the in-game bug reporter in case you haven't done it already. The devs have been very responsive and might be able to figure out the issue.

[jztemple2]

A very quick pan through my fully researched camp.

[jztemple2]

I'm running the beta and that's when the problems started (after the 2nd beta patch)

Today's hotfix is supposed to address the performance issue. It is in the hot fix version (see below).

Something from the devs, explaining the different versions you can download:

We have several steam beta branches besides the default one. I would like to explain you which branch contains what:

hotfix:
Here you can find upcoming bugfixes and balancing adjustments. A hotfix is usually only one or two days in this beta branch before it is published. Only if you (or we) find some bugs caused by the hotfix, the hotfix is fixed with another hotfix instead of being released.

beta:
Here you can find new features. These are meant to be officially released in a bigger update. You can already test them out and give us feedback and report problems. (you will find an early Christmas present there tomorrow) [tomorrow meaning Thursday December 22nd]

experimental:
Here are new features we would like to test out and get your feedback. The features here are usually functional but not much polished. We might or might not include these features in a future version of the game. (right now you can try out some features that focus on "tower defense" aspects of the game)

To switch to one of the branches, do the following in steam:
Right-click Zombie Cure Lab in your Steam Library.
Select "Properties" and then go to "Betas" tab.
Select the branch you want to switch to from the drop-down.
Start the game (after the game has updated).

And patch notes for today's update, going from 0.15.14 -> 0.15.18. Right now this update is only in the hotfix version, will be rolled over to the standard version if it checks out OK.

Patch Notes (0.15.14 -> 0.15.18)
----------------------
Balancing:
- T2 to T4 towers deal more damage, upgrades more valuable regarding damage. AOE towers, especially Blizzard contraption boosted, freeze trap slightly rebalanced. Should be a bit easier to tackle zombie waves with 30k hp+ depending on your play style and mission selection.
- Wreckage Only reward mission that can be unlocked via the worldmap was rebalanced completely, should be a fun twist how to play ZCL. No trees and food, just car wrecks to start with, from the start low health, but max damage Zombies.
- Threat level was increasing at constant pace similar for each worker type, added that after 40 workers for each type, threat increases quicker. This is a temporary solution to slow down population increase for high population, brining in stronger Zombie waves if greedy with workers.
- Newly balanced sandbox mission got own waves that have no large zombie waves attacking. If you want a relaxed ZCL experience, the sandbox mission is your place to be.

Bugs:
- Grilled meat on pile looked to big, fixed
- Fixed a bug where time was stuck and not progressing
- Performance bug fixed (Stuck Zombies causing very low performance)

[jztemple2]

Updates from the devs. Note that there are three versions, the old "previous version" which is 0.15.12, the "hotfix" which is 0.15.20 and the "beta" which is 0.16.1. Who's on first? I don't know

Patch Notes (0.15.20) [hotfix branch]
--------------------
Balancing:
- All towers buffed by roughly ~50% damage to make it easier to freeze Zombies again, requires little less towers to deal with zombies waves
- All missions have more weak zombie waves, those have more zombies but lower health to make easy to freeze rounds and gain workers quickly if well prepared
- All mission threat gain by mission duration, reduced by ~20%, the spikes with 50 days + even more reduced
- Humbie Level 1s do not cause other workers to flee anymore, this helps greatly to deal with constant outbreaks, because now your workers do not constantly abort important jobs like repairing caused by fleeing
- Zombie day behavior, less attacks on objects before rethinking what they do, making them more reactive to opened gates and they should leave quicker

Patch Notes 0.15.20
- Hard mission typo fixed that lead to 200 zombies spawning after a few nights, now more like 20 appear
NOTE: This patches are published to the hotfix branch and will later be made public to all players
—

Patch Notes 0.16.1 [Beta Branch]
--------------------
Features:
- Stone Quarry and Mine added. You can place it on pre-defined rockwalls at the map border. They are very big buildings that cost a lot and give you constant iron ore and stone output respectively.
- Power Poles T1 to T4 upgrades have been added, you can finally build high-tech power poles with a high cable range and electricity distribution area.
- Cooling chamber room type added. You can now build frozen zombie storages in this room type that keep frozen zombies frozen for longer. Each frozen zombie storage upgrade has a stronger freezing value that keeps stronger zombies frozen. You need haulers that put the frozen zombies there. Be aware that they might still melt and wrack havoc inside your base!
- Air Conditioners can be build as well and only require electricity to freeze surrounding targets wich is meant to be combined with the frozen zombie storages and keep your zombies frozen even longer.

[TheMix]

Third base!

[WYBaugh]

Third base!

Score

[naednek]

looks like the patch fixed it.

Back at it!

[jztemple2]

looks like the patch fixed it.

Back at it!

Glad to hear it. I've got in forty hours on the game so far. With the devs off for the holidays I thought I might fire up the beta version and try the next map up from Very Easy with the new changes.

UPDATE: It is the Easy map, so maybe I'll get through to the first human OK. The beta features the quarry and the mine so theoretically I can keep playing until the zombies overwhelm me.

[jztemple2]

[jztemple2]

Major Update 1

The Major Update 1 is online! Look forward to a new mutated tank boss zombie, main storage novas to quickly help you get out of dicey situations and upgraded resource camp tools. Enjoy playing!

- Boss zombie attacks, can you survive his mighty splash damage?
- Resource tracking and statistics screen, analyze how much your workers eat and your machines produce!
- Rename your workers and buildings (Small pencil icon top right when something is selected)
- Main Storage nova ability, charge mighty novas that freeze lots of zombies at once, repair most of your base or make your workers temporarly happy. Upgrades with each tech tier.
- Input settings, setup your hotkeys!
- Cooling chamber, store your frozen Zombies.
- Infinite iron ore and stone at tier 4 with mine and quarry.
- Resource camp upgrades cool new tools that make resource gathering faster.
- Predecessor zombies, if your workers get eaten, you can see that the new zombies were your workers!

Detailed patch notes are in the article.