Board Thread:Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time/@comment-11748776-20150411151859/@comment-7234182-20150419042639

Mathdude314 wrote: 1Zulu wrote: Mbartel500 wrote: since the spring update, the homing thistle has been performing badly. It often shoots zombies after killing them, it shoots between zombies, and often does not target the left-most zombie. Before the update, it did none of these things. It was deadly efficient and very accurate. Strange things going on with the plants. Since the update, the Fume Shroom performance went up, and the Homing Thistle performance went down. After paying 109 gems for the HT, I don't like the downgrade.

Every plant does that. I have already explained this multiple times, but here it goes again.

Regular zombies have 10 HP, right? WRONG! Regular zombies have 13.5 HP.

However, they have a "critical point" at 10 HP. What is this critical point business? Well, it's a point after which the zombie's HP drops rapidly to zero, but it is still alive to the game. This means a zombie who's taken 10 shots is still alive for a couple of seconds. Even though it can no longer damage your plants, it will still absorb shots.

This is why zombies who appear dead (lost their head) are still attacked by plants, including Homing Thistle. Plants don't attack dead zombies. Internally, a zombie without its head is not dead yet.

How are you sure it's that way? I think it's really that it has 10 HP (or 9.25, or whatever) and then it can stay "alive" with negative health. It doesn't make sense for it to be coded as defeated with a positive health

The thing I don't get is this: It's called Homing Thistle, right? Well let's say the zombie collapses before the shot hits the zombie. The shot SHOULD go towards the NEXT zombie. But instead it goes off and misses! This is bad for a plant with "Homing" in its name.

That's precisely what I am trying to explain. Its health doesn't go to zero until it goes to zero. And that only happens a couple of seconds after it loses its head (provided no additional shots hit the zombie).

Normally this isn't too important, but if you mistime a Coconut Cannon shot, or PF on PeaPod headless zombies can absorb all the damage.