0. DON'T PANIC


1. What is combat revive (CR) ?
Combat revive is the use of a syringe against an aggressive zombie in order to get rid of him. Any zombie debarricading, chewing humans, or damaging generators is considered aggressive.


2. Most common stereotypes about combat revive.

It's much better to use your needles to revive other survivors instead of reviving zeds.
People repeating it miss one important point - we aren't CRing zombies instead of reviving survivors. We're CRing zeds instead of shooting them. It allows to save lots of AP which can be spent to revive even more survivors.

CRed zed will spy.
Feral zombies have nobody to spy for. Horde zombies generally know harman locations already. Zombie spies aren't so useful and common cause all important data can be gathered from metagame sources for 0AP. They're also much less dangerous than aggressive zombies.

CRed zed will overbarricade, PK, GK
No if combat reviver is smart - if revived zed doesn't have construction, human combat skills he can't do anything (have you ever tried to kill somebody with 10% punch?)

CRing is dishonourable
Zeds turning harmanz into zeds are ok, and harmanz turning zeds into harmanz aren't... weird logic.


3. Costs of combat revive compared to other weapons (reviver's point of view)
Calculating cost of combat revive is pretty easy. We need one syringe (avg find rate: 1 per 8 searches in a powered NT), one successful scan, and one 10AP "attack" with 100% hit ratio. It gives us total cost of 19AP. 11 need to be used during revive procedure, so it's (theoretically) possible to revive 4 zombies and retreat/dump their bodies. Combat revive efficiency isn't affected by body building nor flak jacket (see below).

Cost of weapon attack is much more difficult to estimate. It depends on many varying factors. For a fire axe it's 42 AP (against a zombie without body building), and 50 (against a zed with body building). Most players assume that shooting a no-body-building zombie without a flak jacket costs about 20-30 AP, and it costs 35-45 AP to kill 60HP zombie with a flak jacket (searching ammo is about 40% in both cases).

Encumbrance cost is even better. You need to carry a DNA extractor all the time (4%) and 1 syringe (2%) per every revived zombie. So - using 24% (extractor+10 needles) of your load you are able to CR 10 enemies. If you use all your load for guns and ammo (with avg search rates and without dropping anything) you'll be able to kill 4-6 zombies without restocking.


4. Costs of combat revive compared to other weapons (zombie's point of view)
This time it's easier to calculate for weapons:
* Ankle Grab zombie, non Headshot human - 1 AP
* Ankle Grab zombie, Headshot human - 6 AP
* non Ankle grab zombie, non Headshot human - 10 AP
* non Ankle grab zombie, Headshot human - 15 AP

For CR it's more complicated:
* if we revive an Opportunist or Dual Nature player - he'll join our side, AP cost doesn't matter here
* Ankle Grab zombie who decides to jump - 2 AP + cost of finding an enterable high building (varies from 2 to 40 AP)
* non Ankle Grab zombie who decides to jump - 20 + cost of finding an enterable high building
* Ankle Grab zombie who decides to let other zeds kill him - 2 AP + cost of finding a horde (for him) and about 25 AP for other zombies
* non Ankle Grab zombie who decides to let other zeds kill him - 20 AP + cost of finding a horde (for him) and about 25 AP for other zombies


5. Finding targets
Potentially - every zombie is a target for combat revive. Of course there are some barhah fundamentalists with brain rot. It's impossible to revive them unless you have Necro Net Access skill and you are inside a powered NT building.
But when reviving them is possible you shouldn't discriminate them. Before continuing with other CR procedures you have to know zombies profile. The best way of getting their profiles is monitoring events happening in your area (like zombies destroying barricades, generators, killing/dragging other survivors or attacking you). Profile viewer GreaseMonkey script makes it a bit easier. Sometimes you have to react fast after login. Don't close page containing all important events. Open new tab and start barricading/healing using it. Later come back to your first tab and spend some time looking for suitable CR targets. You should always have some free space in your contact list (5-10 slots) in order to add zombies. Use DNA extractor only if you can't find any targets using previous method.


6. "Small" drawbacks
In all points above we ignored one very important problem... A combat revived zombie may want to fight against us in human form, and he will be much more effective... Obviously there is no way to make the zombies join our side. We simply have to revive zombies who aren't going to harm us while in human form. There are only 3 ways to make sure that an aggressive zombie isn't going to thank us with a shotgun:
* Revive zombies who are going to help us in human form (an Opportunist, Dual Nature), using standard revive procedure.
* Revive zombies who don't have and can't buy human attack skills.
* Revive members of groups not allowed to attack in human form (like Militant Order of Barhah).


7. Notes...
Most zombies and survivors hate combat revives and combat revivers. As Emerald sexy Green said: "we do not exist to make (un)life comfortable for zombies," so you don't need to care about zombie feelings. I can swear you that zombies don't cry after eating your brain/tearing you into pieces. Other survivors in the building are more important - they can add you to their PK or DNR list. It's nice to use 1 AP to say "I know what I am doing, I scanned them" or something similar after reviving 3 zombies in a mall.


8. Don't agree or have a question?
Feel free to post. I'll add an answer to the main post and remove your post after doing so.

It's not only my work, many 404 members contributed to it. I'm only the person who made a list of our ideas.