Unstable build feedback thread

[Madman666]

@Madman666
...
I would like to hear your opinion of the Steel LMSR.

No worries, I am not that good at English myself. To be brief:
- I use LRMS to find steel mostly.
- I send 5 to 6 armored guys out with like 10 muffaloes, which is suboptimal, but allows to ignore drop pod steel costs. The downside is that my base is very vulnerable during such runs.
- One jogger with bionic legs checks for an ambush - if its something i can deal with - i fight. If not - i bail.

And i absolutely love the fact, that i can find steel through use LRMS.

[Tynan]

New build! Still lots to do.

As always, please only comment on something you've played and tell the story about what happened when you played it. Theoretical or changelog discussion is fine for other threads but not this one.

And also please bear in mind that not every change is intended to be final. One way to tune things is to push things far and see what happens in testing. This is a fairly well-known game design technique I've been using since we did it on BioShock Infinite. So if something seems weird, there's no need to react beyond just giving your story of what happened with that feature.

Translators: You can now separately translate male and female words for animals and humans, since they're different in some languages.

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Visitors and traders choose less annoying spots to hang out.
Added caravan animals points contribution factor. Added special points factor for manhunters vs caravans.
Shift old early-threat-reduction factors into adaptation system.
Fine-tune incident chance interaction with population intent.
Psychic drone level based on points, not wealth. Rebalanced effect.
Misc text updates.
Made more animals safe to hunt. We now write the manhunter on damage chance in wildlife tab.
Misc balancing: -Flatten out chances of chemical interest drug binges per mood. -Centipede points cost increased. -Reduce centipede armor. -Made drop pod launcher cheaper. -Ease off outdoors need a bit. -Adjust points bonus for chased refugee. -Make medium slightly easier. -Adjust raid strategy chances. -Reduce alcohol tolerance gain rate so you can safely drink 1 beer per day.
Added MaleAnimal and FemaleAnimal keyed translations.
Translation files cleaner now writes fields in deterministic order (label first, then description, then everything else in alphabetical order).
Integrated Korean language worker.

[Greep]

At least the LRMS isn't as bad as my kneejerk reaction.

https://i.imgur.com/iUfpAuD.png
Do not go alone. This can be done with 1 VS 12.

Yeah I'd just walk away, though.  Not saying that's smart, but that's my plan 

[East]

I haven't found anything that really works for centipedes, and the worst part is the high amount of randomness in the raids.  I activated a poison ship and got 7 centipedes and only about 4 lancers and 4 scythers.  I got completely decimated. Reloaded and tried again, this time I only got 2 centipedes and 20+ lancers and sycthers and won easily.

Pretty much anything beyond 3 is completely impossible for me to deal with at present.  Even if I get a melee on all of them they will beat the melee in melee combat and then it's right back to shooting. EMPs aren't effective because they take so long to die they adapt. You may as well not even bring any traditional ballistic weapon other than a sniper rifle, and even charge rifles barely hurt them.  I have 2 charge lancers and those do okay, though not great.  I think I might be able to handle limited numbers if I had 6 ranged all with charge lancers.

I thought about trying to exploit the lack of heat armor but the problem is firing mollys or inced launchers at them pretty much means I can't use melee, which means a single one of them with an incend launcher of their own will wreck me.

Sycthers and Lancers feel fair, there are tactics to beat them and your weapons can actually hurt them.  Centipedes are just... it's ridiculous right now.

If that level of wealth is the right thing to attract the enemy. Reduce your ship's health to less than 50% with multiple mortars. Randomness always has both easy and difficult cases. We must always study the worst case.
If you drag it, you will take on turrets and superior terrain.

The problem is when you can not cope with the worst situation at all. For example drop.

[East]

As always, please only comment on something you've played and tell the story about what happened when you played it. Theoretical or changelog discussion is fine for other threads but not this one.

And also please bear in mind that not every change is intended to be final. One way to tune things is to push things far and see what happens in testing. This is a fairly well-known game design technique I've been using since we did it on BioShock Infinite. So if something seems weird, there's no need to react beyond just giving your story of what happened with that feature.

I tried hard as a post before. 85 save files and records. Please forgive me if I get a little out of perspective. So let me tell you.
Integrated Korean language worker. thank you.

[ChJees]

Speaking of safe huntable animals, will something be done about the "X animal have a Y% chance to turn manhunter" spam if you select a whole bunch of them and click hunt?

1. Select a herd of Muffalos
2. Click hunt
3. Enjoy top-left message spam and noise.

[callmewoof]

Loving 1.0 so far. Had a small bug, I had a pawn in melee with an enemy, and right next to my pawn was another pawn equipped with an auto pistol. I had the gun pawn manually fire at the melee attacker who was engaged with my other pawn, and nothing. No gunshots, no punches, nothing. She should have been firing at touch range, but instead just stood there doing squat.

Last note, I have to say that food poisoning is the most overpowered nightmare status in the game right now. I'd rather have a month of toxic air, or plague/malaria/anything for two weeks instead of a single day of food poisoning! Your stats drain so low it's a joke, you constantly throw-up which makes you hungrier (fine, IRL, I get it), but the biggest kicker is you have 30% eating rate, and if you vomit mid-food you have to start all over. I've watched pawns struggle to eat a single meal for over 8 in-game hours. Seriously, it's too much.

(btw, the current food poisoning status effect is much closer to the real life Cannabinoid hyperemesis. Source: I'm an RN who's cared for multiple patients with this diagnosis.

[dogthinker]

Came here to say this. I saw the story tab and thought "oooh is this a concise history of what the... oh no it's the character tab with a name that doesn't have anything to do with what it contains."

This is pretty hyperbolic. The tab contains the backstory, traits (often derived from said backstory) and skills (also largely derived from backstory).

Story's nice because it's short enough to fit on the tab comfortably and emphasizes what the game's about. We'll see how it turns out, this is something trivial to change so discussions on it are almost 100% bikeshedding anyway.

2c on this admittedly trivial topic - the "Log" tab might be better candidate for being renamed "story", as that actually shows the story of this pawn since it joined the colony... So that's where I go when I want to read about the pawn's history. Whereas I only go the tab currently named story because I want to check the pawn's skill levels and character traits.

Bikes and bikesheds in the game would be nice too. Faster caravans? Lavish meals delivered by gig economy workers?

[Teleblaster18]

First off, I got so agitated I forgot to save and just quit the game in frustration. (also Im still away from my main computer and don't want to associated this PC with my steam account so Im still on v1962)
I dunno what significance, intention, or rarity this is but it is technically an experience I had so Im posting it.

A raider with a shooting skill of 1 (not a typo, literally "one") with a "good" auto pistol, and an ambrosia addiction, got 8 "hits" in a row spread across three different colonist all of which were behind a line of sandbags and a wall. 5 of those hits were all on one colonist(which was his target).

I checked his hit chance by selecting him and hovering the mouse over his target.
Final chance was 8%

_________  C C C
SSSS W SSSS W SSSS W

_____ W WWWWWWWWW W R
_____ W ______________ W

I wish my colonists could hit that well with a shooting skill of 1...
Even if it is RNG or just the collateral misses rolling poorly against me, I really don't think a shooter with that low of a shooting skill should ever be able to match a 15+ shooter in hit frequency. Regardless of how it is achieved...

(I debated with myself for several minutes whether or not I should even post this, because I am obviously salty over the event...)

I removed a comment of my own 48 hours ago that expressed similar and generalized frustration, over an entirely different matter.  I'll give a brief synopsis of my impressions in very generalized terms:

The efficiency of the systems in 1.0 is generally better and a step forward from B18.  I'm specifically referring to the "Wildlife" tab, the ability to cut and paste bills, the simplified caravan system, and the like.

The actual gameplay is another matter.  Comparing 2200+ hours of B18 gameplay with (I'm estimating here) 100+ hours or so of 1.0 in it's various iterations - is feeling very much like "Death by 1000 Cuts": needlessly and annoyingly frustrating, with a worryingly imbalanced mid-game.

I have to restate my personal gameplay ethos here:  I'll happily take 2 hours to re-load a single threat scenario, and re-play it until I feel that I have a grasp on how to approach things;  in B18, I found that this paid dividends.  In the game's current 1.0 state, I don't feel like that sense of "trial-and-error" is enjoyable on many levels nor paying dividends, and I'm personally feeling (and I'm reiterating that this is how things "feel" to me) that the game is in the process of changing from a "figure out how to use the tools provided, because there's a way to succeed" perspective towards a "guaranteed loss in the name of storytelling" outcome.  A meaningful loss and sacrifice from a storytelling perspective is quite a different proposition from a meaningless loss, and all too often, I'm struggling to account for events that seem to be meaningless to me.  These feelings are affecting my willingness to continue engaging with 1.0, and I was nowhere near a "burnout" phase with B18.

I know in advance that this will not be a popular sentiment, so I, too, hesitated in writing it.  I'm well aware that 1.0 is in a development state, and that things are bound to change...and honestly, that's what keeps me playing right now, rather than enjoying the current experience.  I hope to articulate specifics at some point, because criticism without offering viable suggestions is a waste of everyone's time...I just wanted to confirm that you are not alone in your feelings, at the moment.

[Scavenger]

killbox

That's impressive! And looks awesome, and would be quite fun to watch a couple times.

However.. Wasn't the point of most of the changes for the final release to really Nerf kill boxes? They don't seem as strong as they were, but still they are the go-to the majority of the time I read these posts. With traps being quite prominent. Generally in the form of zigzagging trap paths into a big kill box. You guys may enjoy it, but I find it gets rather boring without having to react to things very much.

[Tynan]

Teleblaster, I would love to hear something specific that drives your impressions.

It's also important to account for the fact that every game gets boring eventually. So your feelings may just be based on the fact that you've played so much already.

2,000 hours on a game like this (or any game) is extremely exceptional; I consider it a decent success if a player hits 30 and a high success if they hit 100.

Scavenger - Never intended to prevent killboxes, they're an interesting and valid strategy, but they shouldn't be the only strategy is all.

[Koek]

Visitors and traders choose less annoying spots to hang out.

How about you make us choose where they can hang out using something alike the marriage spot? Less hassle for you to program (I think) and gives us more direct control.

[Greep]

I find trap corridors eliminates about 50-70% of threats in 1.0.  Which imo is just fine given how many raids the game throws at you.  If I had to deal with 50 full on big threats before I have a fully established colony I'd get bored even faster.

[Kerr]

Am starting a new colony and noticed that "Hunting Disabled" is on a lot of the backstories now, and it took me a minute to realize it causes "Incapable Of Violent". Is this intentional?

One of my pawns to choose from is Organ Farm Childhood (Hunting Disabled, No Violence) and Tactician Adulthood (+ Shooting, etc).

Actually, 4/8 of my random pawns to pick from are incapable of violent... It's one of the more crippling traits.

[East]

Visitors and traders choose less annoying spots to hang out.

How about you make us choose where they can hang out using something alike the marriage spot? Less hassle for you to program (I think) and gives us more direct control.

One more thing to do here is that it costs the faction caravan spot recipe. They will not be able to easily change the upper operating point and prevent abuse.

And you need a dismiss feature to send the faction caravan out immediately.