How do Hound attacks work now?

[TheTraditionalGentleman]

I have some guesses, but I'm not quite sure. Say my friend and I are on opposite ends of the map. We hear the barking, and each get ready to face the dogs.

Will half of them go after me and half after him, will they all go for one of us, will they always go after me, or what will happen? I thought it would be half and half, but then they all came after me. So how does it work?

[ThePrimordial]

I believe if someone is a certain amount of days new to the server, they will not target them. I do know that the hound count is calculated based on how many players are on the server, with the aggro is split to a certain amount per person, assuming they aren't new or just joined.

[verm1ll1on]

Players that have been in a server for fewer than 7 days while a hound attack is occurring, shall not be targeted.

I read somewhere (from a dev) that the hound attacks are easier if the players are together. Not sure if they come in lesser numbers or is it because like 3 players can quickly kill them as they come.

I believe you have to deal with more hounds if you are alone than if you where with other people

[BreadDestroyer]

I believe that the developers had said that as more players are closer together, the less hounds appear. I'm guessing they implemented the hound attack like this is because as there are more players near each other, more hounds would be afraid, therefore the number of hounds would decrease.

[rezecib]

If all players are separated, they work just like single-player, going off of each player's individual age instead of world age.

Any pair of players that are within 5 tiles of each other are grouped together. So you could have a chain of players separated by a little under 5 tiles between each, and that would all be one group. For each group, it first adds all the hounds they'd get individually, then reduces it by a factor based on the number of players in the group:

num_hounds = round_down(num_hounds ^ (1 / (0.95 + 0.05 * num_players)))

So, as an example, if there was a group of 4, and each player was supposed to get 6 hounds, it would be:

num_hounds = round_down((4*6) ^ (1 / (0.95 + 0.05 * 4)))
num_hounds = round_down(  24  ^ (1 / (1.15)))
num_hounds = round_down(15.8556...)
num_hounds = 15

 

[TheTraditionalGentleman]

Okay. That makes sense. Thanks a bunch!

[Bahlsen]

I felt that something was different with hounds but really couldn't say for sure so thanks for making the math. There's still one thing I'd like to know : I'm pretty sure you can escape a wave by going in the caves (contrary to the solo), but does this mean that "my" hounds will attack someone else ? I wouldn't want my escape to have such a repercussion.

 

Also, I try to figure the reasons behind these choices : 

No hound until day 7 : seems pretty obvious, would be unfair to attack a defenseless player, even if 7 days seems generous.

Escaping with caves : it would be too chaotic to stumble across another player's hounds everytime time someone gets out of the caves.

Less hounds when grouped : because cooperation has to be rewarded, but maybe there's also another reasoning like it would be unfair for a day 7 player to face all the hounds generated by a day 50 player.

[rezecib]

3 hours ago, Bahlsen said:

I'm pretty sure you can escape a wave by going in the caves (contrary to the solo), but does this mean that "my" hounds will attack someone else ?

Hmm, if you were in a group prior to jumping in the caves, then it will send them after others in the group (it sends each one after a random player in the group anyway), but if you were on your own I think it'd just delete that wave. I don't see any code that's separating moving between shards from leaving/joining the server. Vito might fix it if he reads this though...