Mod Mechanics
Skial's Zombie Escape Mod Overview
Humans
Have access to weapons modified from base-game TF2
Different classes with unique playstyles, strengths, and weaknesses
HP and Speed are modified from base-game TF2
Many mechanics have been modified or disabled (e.g. ÜberCharge and explosive-jumping)
Round is won when the Human team has "escaped" the map, survived long enough, or completed all objectives. Round is lost when all humans become infected, die or they fail one of the map's conditions.
Zombies
Have tremendously increased HP
Have a near-instant respawn
Have access to weapons modified from base-game TF2
Can usually infect humans in one-shot
Different classes with unique playstyles, strengths, and weaknesses
HP and Speed are modified from base-game TF2
Some mechanics have been modified
Have unique abilities called
MutationsEnzymes
Round is not lost when all zombies are dead
Round is won when all the humans have died. Round is not lost when all zombies die unless during map-specific sections.
Class Change
As a Human, you can only change classes for a few seconds before the round starts. If the duration is too short or non-existent, you may need to preemptively change classes before the end of the current round.
As a Zombie, you will have to have either just joined, left Spectator, or died. To maneuver around this, you can set an in TF2 to force death on class change, allowing you to swap classes throughout the round. This won't affect you as a human thus preventing you from changing classes during the round.
Round Start (Autobalance)
Everyone will start on the Human team until the warmup timer ends.
The auto-infect system will pick humans to become zombies until 15% of the amount of players on the server are Zombies.
A 32 player server will have [27] Humans and [5] Zombies.
A 64 player server will have [51] Humans and [10] Zombies.
Spectatorswill be placed at the front of the queue, meaning that the more recently you joined as BLU; or if you AFKed long enough to be moved into spectator your priority for zombie will increase.
Why am I Zombie Twice sometimes? After being picked as a mother-zombie, you will be placed at the back of the queue and will not have to worry about auto-infection for some time, until your queue rolls along to a high enough priority.
Per every 24 hours you will have ONE auto-infect 'immunity' upon joining, preventing you from becoming a zombie for the current/or next starting round.
If you've expended this immunity and late-join into an ongoing round, you still might be very likely to get selected as a mother-zombie.
Check or bind the ze_queue command to know whether or not you'll be zombie next round.
Round Timer
At the top of the screen during rounds, you'll notice a timer. When it reaches zero, the Human team will automatically lose. In most cases, it will be unreasonable to reach this since you would have to stall out at certain areas for an exceedingly long time. Some maps, however, have timers that may just barely be enough to complete the stage.
Map Votes
A vote will be triggered for the next map at 6:00 on the Map Timer viewable on the Scoreboard (Not to be mistaken with the Round-Timer)
Players will be able to either extend the current map or vote for the next map among a selection that has been randomly selected or player-nominated.
Humans losing 3 times in a row disables the map extension. It can be regained by Humans winning the round after the 3rd loss in a row before the automatic vote has been triggered. Each map is typically limited to 2 extensions.
If the team restarts a round before reaching 5:00 on the Map Timer, they will be able to play a round of the map before leaving.
After a map has been played, it will be on cooldown. Players will not be able to nominate and play that map until enough other maps have been cycled through. (Currently 3 Map CD)
Players may also force a map vote if enough people use the RTV command after 30 seconds of a map change; or through the usage of Skial Credits (That method will always show a 'Don't Change' option to extend.)
Modes
Normal Difficulty - The standard way to play. Currently no modifiers.
As the standard difficulty, it's the only way (new) community map records/progress will count towards being completed. View Map Records notes for any additional requirements.
Casual Difficulty - A more relaxed take on the game mode, useful for learning or practicing a map:
Humans take less damage, (-30% Map Damage Reduction; Stackable with Battalions.)
Friction is disabled; tl;dr generally allowing zombies to take more knockback.
Zombies are slowed for much longer, (+1 second to slow duration.)
Even individual pellets will slow zombies from afar, granting solo-stalling capability almost exponentially.
The server will automatically engage a vote for Casual Difficulty after (2) consecutive losses at the start of the following round; until a win is achieved.
Sidenote
There are other zombie-esque game modes available on TF2!
Years ago, it was primarily Zombie Fortress (ZF) - now, the zombie genre has branched out quite a bit each having their own unique spin on things.
Zombie Escape (ZE) (You're here!)
Zombie Infection (ZI) (Recently, TF2 has seen Zombie Infection join the party into official Valve matchmaking Casual servers as a Halloween-exclusive game-mode.)
Other servers do host ZE, such as Otaku.tf. Do note that while some of the things discussed here may be applicable to both in terms of game-sense, versions of ZE for Skial and Otaku vary significantly in gameplay, map rotation, and the tools available for use on the server.
Comparisons to other games
Those familiar with Zombie Escape on CS:S, CS:GO, and GMod may find many similarities between the three. While TF2 does share a few elements, the mechanics of TF2 ZE make for a very different yet interesting experience when compared to them. There are different classes, movement is always fast-paced, and combat is a lot more close-range. You'll even notice that strategies for a map could differ drastically in contrast to what's usually done elsewhere. This all contributes to a different feel to the game mode that one may or may not find pretty exciting.
Healing?
Mostly to nudge away at the ignorant misconception of TF2 Healing mechanics nullifying the balance of a boss or map; healing mechanics are commonly disabled by maps that are typically newer ports (eg, Santassination, Mako V6, Djinn, etc...)
Some of the older ports or TF2-made maps might be balanced around keeping healing on specifically and instead, bosses will do higher damage or still have their insta-kills to compensate enough. (Uchiha, Offliner, Sandstone, Breezy, etc...)
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