How does zombie spawning in Die2Nite work?
What determines the number of zombies that will be in a zone in the world beyond?
Does killing a zombie while you are in the World Beyond mean that zone will have fewer zombies the next day as well? Does it basically go through and add a random number of zombies to each zone, and all the ones currently there remain?
Also, does killing a zombie in the World Beyond have any impact on the size of the nightly attack, either on that day or on subsequent days? Is there any correlation between the size of the nightly attack and the number of zombies in zones in the World Beyond? Sorry, that's a lot of questions, but I'm sure someone can answer them all.
Here's how it appears to work
- Start by spawning zombies at buildings (day 1)
- For every night, for every tile:
- For every neighboring tile with zombies, there's a chance of one more zombie spawning
- For every two zombies killed in this tile, there's a chance of another one dying by despair.
- If the total number of zombies drops below 2 × map side × day number, spawn more zombies. (A 12×12 map has side 12.)
We're testing a spreadsheet (live link) that puts these rules in practice in Itching Plantation of Shadows. Time will tell.
In the forums of the German version there is a post by an administrator that states that the amount of zombies you kill during the day does not reduce the number of zombies in the nightly attack. I would assume that it works the same in the English version.