Finite populations

[Kruniac]

I don't know who would create such a DF-esque world generation system and not implement a finite amount of people in each population.

I just got raided by my FIFTH wave of 8+ tribesmen. My turrets were still down from the last wave (THEY KILLED MY TURRETS WITH BOWS AND ARROWS. THAT ISN'T REALISTIC.), and all five of my colonists died.

You'd figure after 20+ people died trying to assault my base they would simply stop coming. Instead, your robotic AI just keeps sending these nigh fearless primitive heathens to rape and pillage my colony. That's a pretty large oversight, and that's coming from a fellow game developer.

Implement population count per faction, probably divided into combatant/non-combatant, with associated morale for decision-making based on losses. It's absurd to think that there are an unlimited amount of tribesmen within walking distance of my colony who don't mind that dozens have died trying to assault it.

On another note, the realism factor of damage needs to be adjusted. You cannot destroy a steel turret with arrows. It simply doesn't work that way. MAYBE a pilum could nick or ding a turret up a bit, but an arrow? Bows simply don't shoot with enough force to damage industrial steel.

I would also complain about bows outranging my turrets, but I'll leave that one to "The tracking system of the turret is the limiting factor in it's range." That explains it rather nicely.

End rant. If you don't have time to code a decent population system, give the source to me and I'll do it for you. Rimworld is amazing (I've been following it since you could put corpses in cages way back when), and I hope that you sell ten thousand copies, however these are simple design flaws that probably could have been addressed earlier on in development.

Best of luck,

Kruniac

[skullywag]

wow not pulling any punches eh? that post came across as very aggressive. Im sure Tynan has his reason for doing what he has done and I know he has said hes going to work on the enemy/neutral/friendly factions in the future and im sure he has a development roadmap of sorts. For now enjoy the alpha for what it is.

[cultist]

The turret thing is old hat, honestly.
The turrets are not super-advanced high technology created on some advanced planet. They're pieces of junk cobbled together by people who are (usually) not engineers or soldiers. Imagine the arrow hits a critical piece of machinery that wasn't armored properly because the guy who made it is actually a butcher or a farmhand.

[Fruit loops]

Seen that your very upset over bows and arrows killing turrets, it literately says "improvised" turret.

I am surprised that there even still are turrets.

Tynan has mentioned removing them so I am happy we have them. 

and fifth wave? some cultures have thousands of people (Mayan, Aztec etc.)

and whats the fun of building a colony with no threats?

I see your points but, most are not needed, already explained or just not wanted by the majority.
no hard feelings

[Kegereneku]

His rant is quite harsh and aggressive but I can kind of understand it.

In Cassandra Classic (challenge) you put a lot of work in keeping alive every single colonist as if each of them was an human being, yet against you enemy send INFINITE WAVE OF CANNON FODDER, as if your wealth was worth more than the mortar, plasteel weapon, devilstrand clothes and armor they attack you with.

For now, I'm putting that aberration upon the "Alpha" state of the game, the absence of diplomacy, the not-too-hard-survival and the innate limit of AI in video game.

However, if the game ever come to a "Complete" state I damn fully hope armed-combat to be very rare and exceptional crisis, not an usual-dangerous-loot-shipment.
To me, AI faction that DON'T attack with 3 times more colonist and don't like loosing anyone would be worth... loosing entirely automated turret.

When I'm attacked by a tribes of 20 to 30 tribesmen, I want to shit myself properly rather than sigh over the number of cadaver I'll have to cremate afterward or the hopelessness of my situation without "using exploit".

[RemingtonRyder]

I had a reply, but it was eaten by the forums.

Experiment. Find out what works and doesn't work. Personally, I find that tribals are not too diffcult - their armour is non-existent, and by placing walls strategically you can use a turret as distraction while your colonists shoot from high cover.

[Johnny Masters]

Sure hope turrets don't go away, and saying turrets are bodged together machinery doesn't stick when you can build high piece of technology stuff like powerplants, power armors, laser rifles... Truth is, damage reduction is VERY flawed, the system needs a major re-work done and will always need while arrows pierce steel turrets or punches made-of-meat bring down walls (slowly - but surely).

I'm also with Kegereneku on how combat is to be handled in the future, regarding numbers and/or frequency and specially not "having" to use cheaty exploitable tactics cough*killbox*cough, while still having a decent challenge. 

[Eleazar]

I don't know who would create such a DF-esque world generation system and not implement a finite amount of people in each population.

Rim world doesn't attempt to be a planet simulator.  At it's core is a Story-telling engine.  The point is for a series of interesting and dramatic things to happen to your colony, not for a plausible series of events.

[tommytom]

I generally don't bother with turrets. Still somewhat new to the game, but they generally have worse range, aim, can't be moved, drain significant power, etc.

With a few stone walls and sandbags, colonists mop up tribals no problem.

As long as you have anything better than a pistol or shotgun (survival or PDW... PDWs are godly atm), you can easily 3-for-1 tribals.

1-2 melees help.

I chock it up to chance, but only had one death from a tribal and it was random RNG "shoot around corners" (which is a feaure) where somehow 3 arrows passed the wall at max range (bows are TERRIBLE at max range), tho maybe they are "arced". Another raid, an arrow amazingly hit 100% and first shot directly hit the heart for instant death. Don't recall clothing quality, but I think it was cloth or starting hyperweave, no armor, just clothes.

[Thogapotomus]

I don't know who would create such a DF-esque world generation system and not implement a finite amount of people in each population.

Rim world doesn't attempt to be a planet simulator.  At it's core is a Story-telling engine.  The point is for a series of interesting and dramatic things to happen to your colony, not for a plausible series of events.

I think we all understand the "Story-telling" aspects of the game. For most people though, a good story is usually plausible and a great one most certainly is plausible.  There just needs to be a balance of drama, plausibility and fun.

The story-telling aspect of the game is still a long ways off from being at a good point though. The game is still in alpha, so it has a good excuse.

OP, if the raids are too annoying you can change up the story tellers at any point or use the dev tool to even things out. I'm not a big fan of how  Cassandra ultimately gets almost impossible without cheesing the AI. Randy is generally the best, but lately he's been giving me an insane animal every 1-2 ingame hours. So like every few seconds at 3x speed lol. My map is littered with bodies of villagers mauled to death by animals.

[praguepride]

I'll laugh so hard if he puts in a "population" system and these tribals have a pop of tens or even hundreds of thousands.

I like to think of it that these "tribals" are not just a small tribe of 30-40 people but a tribal nation ala Mongols or Aztecs. You're not facing all the warriors in the tribe, this is just a couple dozen bored warriors with nothing better to do on a saturday night...

As for the turrets...old arguement is old arguement. The name of the turret even changed to "IMPROVISED" specifically to address this issue.

I'm still waiting for blasting charges to make a come back

[stefanstr]

I would sooo like to see a system like that included. Maybe as a separate storyteller? Ron Realistic or something.

[akiceabear]

While I don't agree with the tone, I do agree that events should be rarer but more impactful - each attach should literally see colonists dying with certainty and me struggling to hold it together both during and after the defense. Of course, recruitment would have to change to accommodate this...

[Vagabond]

Hello,

I agree with the OP on both accounts; disregarding tone because you can't positively identify it. The populations I covered in my own post a few days ago:

https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=10724.0;topicseen

In regards to turrets, I'm not sure if anyone else here have 'cobbled' together a turret before, but my brother and I built a tank out of a TMAX (gas powered remote control car) that was based on the G.I Joe Rhino (it fit the 3.75" figures). Mind you, we had to manually operate the turret by switching the car's remote with a helicopter remote for the added controls. So mechanically, the turrets in game are more advanced. We routinely wrecked that thing going 25-35 mph and that turret never snapped, bent or malfunctioned.  Joints were all heavy bolts and rivets and the gears were all aluminum. Now imagine building this thing out of steel, able to withstand the stress of firing a bullet; I can't imagine anyone not slapping steel plates around the electrical components as a "just 'cause" thing while they are making in. A quarter inch steel plate is going to stop small arms fire at most ranges; hell, you're more likely to catch your own bullet if you are too close due to ricochet. A steel tipped arrow would shatter hitting a quarter inch plate.

So all you people throwing around the "improvised" argument are either trolling or have no idea what goes into building something like that. I'm no engineer. I'm not incredibly intelligent. I game. I play with RC vehicles. I shoot. I hunt. And I'm a biker. All family traditions. You don't need to be an engineer to know what needs to be done to keep a bullet from shredding something you've worked hard on and that is expensive resource-wise.

The turret thing is old hat, honestly.
The turrets are not super-advanced high technology created on some advanced planet. They're pieces of junk cobbled together by people who are (usually) not engineers or soldiers. Imagine the arrow hits a critical piece of machinery that wasn't armored properly because the guy who made it is actually a butcher or a farmhand.

That is easy. Require a person with x amount of crafting skill to start the build. Then make it so that it reqiures X amount of their added crafting and construction to finish the build (anyone can bring the materials). Because to be quite frank, It is usually someone with a background in engineering (sometimes military engineering) who ends up being the guy I send to build and craft stuff because his are the highest, which means he finishes it the fastest.

I'll laugh so hard if he puts in a "population" system and these tribals have a pop of tens or even hundreds of thousands.

I like to think of it that these "tribals" are not just a small tribe of 30-40 people but a tribal nation ala Mongols or Aztecs. You're not facing all the warriors in the tribe, this is just a couple dozen bored warriors with nothing better to do on a saturday night...

As for the turrets...old arguement is old arguement. The name of the turret even changed to "IMPROVISED" specifically to address this issue.

I'm still waiting for blasting charges to make a come back

Except a general breakdown of most demographics by age have around 20% as children and around 15% as over the age of 65. The rest are usually split pretty evenly  between male and female. Take into consideration that in a lot of cultures women either weren't combatants or were a rarity and you lower the fighting population down even more. Then you break up the male population into people who can't fight physically and you have less. Break it up further and you have all the men who are professional craftsmen, laborers, and merchants and you've got even less of a fighting force.

Now, don't get me wrong, these people would likely fight if you went into their neck of the woods, but as a raiding or professional fighting force meant to go abroad, you'd still have a much smaller population, and aside from fanaticism, they'd determine risk to profit. Maybe not as much the first time, where they are testing your defences and capability, but surely the second time. Why go after the guys who just decimated a large group of my warriors when joe shmoe down the way is a softer target; when you haven't been aggressive to them first.

Especially when the fighting castes were more often than not seen as the most suitable mates. Continuity of the culture is just as, if not more important than continuously being an aggressor for those cultures that believe in being such.

Cheers,
Michael

[tommytom]

Good post but the last part doesn't make any sense at all. I have not one iota what you are talking about or why you quoted that quote.