Alpha 17 is on public unstable branch

[Rah]

Code Select Expand

int numberOfSheeps = 0
for(int i=0; i<sheeps.length; i++)
{     
     numberOfSheeps++;
     if(me.asleep) break;
}

You seriously need some sleep, but good job !
btw, could you explain "GiveRandomSurgeryInjuries() now uses Rand.Element()" a bit further?

[YokoZar]

Shouldn't travel time along roads be faster?  They don't seem to list any difference.

[username2]

so pawn got malaria, was treated with glitterworld + had sex with husband and was healed in less than 1 night. is this intentional?

edit: pawn got malaria 3 days in a row and was healed instantly by glitterworld medicine 3 days in a row

[Rah]

so pawn got malaria, was treated with glitterworld + had sex with husband and was healed in less than 1 night. is this intentional?

edit: pawn got malaria 3 days in a row and was healed instantly by glitterworld medicine 3 days in a row

That sounds like an awesome way to treat malaria. But no, immunity is supposed to build up for all the infections.

[ReZpawner]

Thoughts on the latest version: (6th of Septober, 1st year).

Infection seems fine - even at times a bit on the low side. I had my pawns perform surgery in a very filthy room; a room without even a basic floor, and the patient still only got one infection - which was healed even with a level 5 doctor.

Disease should probably not occour in the first two seasons. As we speak I'm on 5th of Septober, barely out of the first season, and 3/5 tribals now have muscle parasites. Thankfully I should have enough healroot to tidy them over, and it definitely could've been a worse disease, but it's still something that's a bit rough for this early in the game. I can't help but think that very few players will have established a decent hospital this early in the game.

For some reason, one of my Alcoholic colonists decided to go on a mental break and binge on ambrosia - this would have been fine, if we actually had any. Right now his binge consists of him sitting by a table 'relaxing socially'. Not a major bug in any way, but probably something that should be checked out at some point.

I can't help but think that farming is rather overpowered at the current time. I'm barely on day 6 as of me writing this, and I already have a net-worth of 29974, just from some cotton, some smokeleaf plant-parts and potatoes. Is there any reason why cloth and smokeleaf leaves are so expensive, while being so easy to come by? (cloth is probably the biggest sinner here, since it has a value of 1.90, and just from a small field of 200ish squares, I have had enough for 5 chairs, 5 toques, and a remainder of 1400. That's pretty insane for a normal sized harvest. )

Absolutely loving the new ventilation settings for open\closed. Glad it finally made it into the game, as it felt like it was missing in older alphas.

Loading times seem to have changed a lot in the most recent alpha. Same goes for the randomly generated pawns at the beginning of the scenario. I know there are a few people like me who can spend hours trying to generate some decent pawns at the beginning of the game, and with the extra added lag there, I'm worried that we'll talk hours before I'm finally in-game. Hope this is something that will be optimised again at a later time. It's not really a major thing, but it's something that could be (and has been) better.

In combat, trees need a serious nerfing for cover. At this moment, a tree provides better cover than chunks, which is Shirley some mistake. Even a 9.3% grown birch-tree has a 43% cover efficiency. Granted, it's a while since I was in the army, but I don't recall saplings, twigs and leaves to be that effective against gunfire. They also have the same hitpoints as a chunk of rock, which seems a bit overpowered. If I had to select ONE problem that needed fixing prior to the release, this would have to be it.

Edit: typos.

[Polder]

Agreed about infections generally not being dangerous. On the other hand if they hit a colonist that has a mental break then they can be very dangerous.

There's a problem with mental breaks and caravan ambushes. It seems that a colonist that can have a mental break is likely to have one the instant they are ambushed, which means they might just wander around in a daze while being attacked.

[Angust]

This is build 1542.
Rebalanced some drug market values:
--Neutroamine 10 -> 6
--Beer 9 -> 12
--Go-Juice 45 -> 53
--Wake-up 24 -> 45
--Herbal medicine 12 -> 10
Penoxycyline production 3 neutroamine -> 2 neutroamine
Added new econ analysis tool for drug prices. It's rough.

I'm excited to see these new numbers, but I think you should also up the neutroamine cost of Wake-up from 2 to 3!

I can't help but think that farming is rather overpowered at the current time. I'm barely on day 6 as of me writing this, and I already have a net-worth of 29974, just from some cotton, some smokeleaf plant-parts and potatoes. Is there any reason why cloth and smokeleaf leaves are so expensive, while being so easy to come by? (cloth is probably the biggest sinner here, since it has a value of 1.90, and just from a small field of 200ish squares, I have had enough for 5 chairs, 5 toques, and a remainder of 1400. That's pretty insane for a normal sized harvest. )

With 200 tiles of cotton you get 2600 cloth worth 4940 wealth and which can be sold for between $1976 and $2470 depending on difficulty, plus social bonus. Though cotton should not be harvestable in only 6 days... are you talking about partly grown plants?

Anyhow I agree with ReZpawner on sellable crops being an overpowered wealth/money maker. I added them to my sheet and created a tool to analyze the effect from RISK of each crop dying before reaching maturity.

http://i.imgur.com/r8Ps0fR.jpg

With 5% risk per day (arbitrary percentage), surprisingly, cotton is probably not the most overpowered crop. Strawberries are. Followed by potatoes (!), followed by corn/cotton. Risk of spoilage or detoriation value losses after harvest not taken into account. The balance also differs depending on wether you are limited by labor or grow space.

I think all the raw crops (except devilstrand) could use a large sell price nerf overall, but to balance them against each other we probably need a better estimation of RISK.

Fun fact: If there is a 5% risk per day of any crop dying, you will on average lose 86% of your devilstrand crops, 51% of your cotton, 63% of your corn and 23% of your rice.



Edit: Changed some typos and details in the wake-up suggestion.

[tomay]

Tribal start /Cassandra/some challenge/Temperate forest
Things i noticed from first 100 days
- 2 blights
- no "Wanderer Joins" events
- 1 arm lost during social fight - i think this is bit too harsh
- 1 rescue pod event, rescued pawn left colony not fully healed, right after he could walk again
- 2 rescue fugitive event - i always reject those ugly abrasive pyromaniacs with dementia
- 1 malaria event (2 colonists) - i bought 10 penoxy earlier, healed easily with herbal meds, normal beds, sterile floor, doctors lvl 6, 4x treatments if i remember well
- 1 toxic fallout (short, ~7 days)
- 15 major threats
- 7 enemy raids - one scyther survived 8 triggered steel traps!
- 4 manhunters packs - first pack it was single arctic wolf
- 2 maddened animal packs - it would be very helpful to have tagged all maddened/madhunter animals with an icon above them
- i noticed much more predators than usually on temperate forest map, always at least 3 on medium size map

[Wintersdark]

Agreed about infections generally not being dangerous. On the other hand if they hit a colonist that has a mental break then they can be very dangerous.

Seems, in the current build at least, infections are basically a foil to ensure you've got a hospital set up and a doctor. 

I'm pretty happy with where they are: Assuming all is well, they're a non-threat.  However, if you're travelling, or unprepared, they can be a problem.  I like them that way; they basically add a bit of extra risk without being the game-stoppers for early games they were when more dangerous previously. 

[Mehni]

I just had a dog do something it completely shouldn't do. There was a raid and I had zoned it away from danger.

Instead of staying put it decided to run after a raider that kidnapped their bonded master and go apeshit on them.

It was awesome.

[Doc Savage NDMF]

Been starting new campaigns every update, some patterns on Randy Some Challenge:

-All starts are in northern Temperate zones. I like having to deal with both cold snaps and heatwaves. It's what the weather is around here so it seems "normal" to have to combat both.

-Always start in Spring, er "Aprimay" (ugh). Have had a cold snap every start within the first week. Many on day 2/3. Kills getting any farming off the ground. Today it waited until day 9, just after I had everything planted.

-Blight has hit every game late Spring early Summer. When combined with the Cold Snap crops just end up being a waste of time. If the cold snap hits day 2/3, you can at least get something in before this comes along and just bitch slaps you into Summer...er "Jugust" (spring break fun or mimes wanting a new hobby..? still ugh though) A lot of foraging and hunting until I can get enough power to grow indoors is the only solution and makes for very straight forward, simple and boring play.

-Infections were way over the top, now they're just tame. Infections from injuries that is. I hate them with a passion, but they need to be ticked up just a smidge. If it's way too easy for me, it's a non factor to anyone who knows what they're doing. (difficulty of some challenge should have "some" challenge)

-Speaking of infections... Plague on Day 2 anyone..? Flu on day 5..? None of these for at least the first couple months please. It's like bombing your own cities and just adds insult to injury. It takes way too long to set up a game with half way decent pawns to have it wasted on this stuff.

-Raids have been manageable. I hate (love) the new AI. No more just camp and wait. Even kill boxes can be rendered useless. A lot of walls and hide stall them for a bit, but you can only have so many defenses. It's making open area compounds a knife edge to protect. It's good.

-Randy has a habit of sending 2-3 one after the other, which can get hectic when pawns get wounded. Can be mitigated by walking the line between nice camp and high value camp. Also good.

-Thank you for toning down the grenade spam. Level is good for this difficulty now. Still get multiple pawns with explosives and still manage to get somebody blowed up most encounters, but at least I have a chance to get out from under it.

-As an added Bonus if you order now, we'll throw in a psychic drone..!! Just pay separate shipping and handling... Always in the first 10 days or so, always at the worst possible time. I do get soother drones sometimes as well though, which is nice.

-What is with recruited pawns and not being able to clean/carry/cut..? I've gotten ONE in all the starts that could do the 3 C's, the rest were non C doing mother fill in the blanks. Don't like that at all, it feels cheap. Mama said never play against a stacked deck, and this is one part of the game that feels just like one.

-And old people... So... Many... Old... Pawns... Was there an AARP convention in the next town over we didn't hear about..?

-I intensely dislike the whole "I'm a random pawn and I just decided I belong here" mechanic. Um, NO. You don't choose to join me. Seriously... "Porko is 95 and a pyro..." Ugh. I'm not a person who kills pawns easily, but Porko, you gots to go away. If any of the pawns were half way decent it wouldn't be so bad, but it reeks of stacked deck saddling you with excess baggage.

-Like the new berry graphics, like the wild med plant. Hate the new stone chunks. They look like I got stuff on my screen and the colors are very hard to differentiate. (I'm old)

-Like the rivers and the roads.

-Caravans are confusing as the hot place. I figured out to make them work. Sorta. I ended up with someone wounded in an ambush and couldn't rescue/save/carry them. It felt silly. I was a stone's throw from base but couldn't just carry the guy there. Then he starved and died. Haven't used a caravan since. Did I miss a tutorial or something..? The whole added dimension of game play sounds like it could be fun, but the frustration factor is something I won't even deal with, not with all the frustration you already get just staying home.

-Point blank Chain Shotgun on an Emu sitting still. You'd have to be a horrific shot to miss. But they do. Level 1 or 2 shooter, yea I can see it. "Where's your toe Floyd..??" Level 8,9,10..? Not so much. If there's anything that could possibly stun an animal, having a chain shot gun go off point blank while your sleepin' would be one. Momentary? Sure, but a hesitation enough for a ca chunk and a second shot before you could get off the sofa.

-Why do Hunters always go AWAY from camp to shoot..? Always on the other side of the animal from camp. It should ALWAYS be Animal<<Shooter<<Camp, not Shooter<<Animal<<Camp. When (not if) that animal goes berserk, you want to have the shortest distance to run away to safety, not have to run PAST the raging claw machine to try and get home. Having to micro hunting because of this is tedious at best.

-We really need some new events. The never ending grind of storm, snap, blight, man hunting, flare, raid gets way to monotonous and predictable. I only play Randy as the others just make me dizzy. Randy throws some curves, but with the limited playlist even he sounds like a broken record.

Overall the game is enough to keep me playing, 665 hours and counting. It kicks my teeth in, enrages me to no end and has to be one of the most frustrating experiences you can have. I don't do the whole misery or gore or lets eat people and make them into hats thing. I don't do the whole convicts in space thing. I'm a builder at heart. It's incredibly difficult to build and maintain a thriving colony with everything that gets thrown at you, and when I get there it's very satisfying. When I don't I see the doctor to up my blood pressure meds...

Cheers..!

[Numar]

There seems to be a bug in the calculation when the food will rot during a caravan. I get a fixed number of "rot within 1.1 days", no matter which food and how much. I'm using some QoL mods though, so I can't say for certain that it's not mod-related.

[Dashthechinchilla]

- i noticed much more predators than usually on temperate forest map, always at least 3 on medium size map

I noticed something similar on temperate. Cass rough, crashlanded. I started with the larger medium map and had 5 to 6 wargs, 3 to 4 bears, and a few cougars and wolves. Needless to say within a week they have eaten most of the other wildlife and turned their attention to me. I thought it was because I usually use the smaller medium map and wasn't familiar, but temperate always seems to have a lot of predators.

[rsgm]

There is a bug where you can move pawns if you right click on mountains even when they are not drafted. I don't think there is any way to exploit it, so its not a huge issue, just a bit of weirdness.

[ShadowTani]

-Infections were way over the top, now they're just tame. Infections from injuries that is. I hate them with a passion, but they need to be ticked up just a smidge. If it's way too easy for me, it's a non factor to anyone who knows what they're doing. (difficulty of some challenge should have "some" challenge)

I've found the challenge lies in dealing with infections out with your caravan. I understand you gave up on them, but grabbing item stashes and fulfilling trade opportunities are really neat sources of resources. They have a fair amount of risk to them, but at least the threat scales with each individual caravan and not with your base wealth so it usually feels reasonable I think. At times my caravan would been lost to infections entirely though if I wouldn't been able to send a drop pod with a skilled doctor and proper medicine. Practicing good cleanliness and providing comfy beds I don't notice infections much at base, but I've lost one caravan guy to infection before I got to research pod launchers, and another when I experienced a raid right after my caravan team had taken out an outpost which proved to be more "bloody" effort than I expected (f'ing triple rocket launcher guy out of nowhere).

It might be tame at the base, I agree with that, but how much of a problem should infections really be at a base where your pawns enjoy a standard quite a bit above that out in the bush? Infections do cause a major issue out there "on the road" and after crippling attacks at the base;  in regards to balance that's where the infection challenge should be I think. Perhaps when new mechanics makes it easier to survive away from base, but atm I think it feels pretty balanced from an overall perspective.

The problem you had with not being able to rescue your pawn in your caravan is probably due to a little annoyance that you can't manage pawn inventory on the caravan forming menu. It's fine if you still got access to the map, then you can just go to the gear tab of any pawn or animal to drop stuff to give you potentially enough carry capacity to haul a pawn; the items you drop will then appear in the item list on the caravan menu instead of being MIA. If the caravan is reformed by force however then one is out of luck apparently - unless I'm somehow missing a hidden option to manage pawn inventory on that menu.