Alpha 17 is on public unstable branch

[Wanderer_joins]

100+ days into the build 1536, cassandra extreme, tundra, crashlanded:

*infection: they seem to be much easier to control for young healthy pawns, with a 17% tend quality, my 33 years old colonist's immunity kept building up faster than the infection severity on a wooden bed. I started with a 81 yo colonist but she didn't get infected. i treat with default on herbal, have still 10 medicines from the 30 original medicine. there is a lot of herbal medicine to forage

*raids: the peak of difficulty seems still to be around the end of year 1, maybe if the next raids are still under control i'll send a small team to raid an outpost

*quests:
-trade opportunity: had a small one early, 1 wooden longsword for 300+ silver, around day 25. It is interesting, relatively easy to realize and worth it. But i don't remember having any other trade opportunity since, some more would be appreciated, they are a really good reason to form small trading caravans early
-outposts: i don't really have the manpower to fight an outpost yet, so they are more mid-end game quests. given my economy, 2000 silver seem a reasonable reward
-item stash: here again more mid-end game quests

*population cap/recruitement: i really like the very low probability of the wanderer joining, so far had 0. Early got a few space refugees, then chased refugees, my population grew to 8 pawns reached day 60 then no real opportunity for the last 50 days. good change too, maybe i'll build a prison and start recruiting.

*room system: more balanced for beauty, sculptures are more valuable, we can easily use barracks (maybe too easily, actually i have only one large living room)

[GiantSpaceHamster]

More feedback as I continue my A17 playthrough (A17.1536 currently)

I've had more experience with quests since my last reply to this thread. I have had some caravan requests that I was able to fulfill (as well as some I was not able to). There are a bunch of crop requests. The ability to see the crop yield in-game in the info screen would help the player know how much to plant to try and meet a trade request.

I also did a couple "loot stash" quests. The second was particularly interesting. I attacked with two snipers and two chain-shotgunners against two well armored defenders with 5 turrets and a mortar. I sniped the solar panels and batteries to power down the turrets (taking pot shots at the defenders if they came into LOS). It wasn't until I took out the first solar panel that one of the two defenders came at me. The other was manning the mortar. He fell very quickly when he rounded the edge of a hill to run right into my two chain-shotgunners. My snipers then took out the other defender. I took a little damage from one mortar round, but nothing too serious. I claimed the base but was bummed to see how heavy the turrets were. Even with three alpacas for loot I couldn't carry any of the turrets back with me. The loot was worth it regardless, four neurotrainers! Plus a suit of good power armor and a good charge rifle from one of the defenders. It would have been much harder with the same number of pawns if I had not brought two sniper rifles, since I wouldn't be able to out-range the turrets.

I have not attempted any more "raider revenge" quests to take out bases since my last attempt was such a disaster and I haven't really increased my colony size much since then. I feel like the colony size you need for these quests is large enough that you could have completed the spaceship by then already. Or maybe I just grow my colony size slower than other people. If they are intended to be a late game challenge that's fine too.

The other thing I want to mention is something that has been on my mind since my earlier games in A15ish. Crafting is currently the only skill that is broken out into multiple separate jobs, but I still feel it needs more granularity. In particular, I often want to have "last priority" jobs active for smelting and making stone blocks. Sometimes I want them to be higher priority if I have an immediate need for the resources, but usually I just want to put those two things at a much lower priority than other crafting tasks. This is a scenario I find myself in so often that I wish I had a separate job to prioritize (or deprioritize) for these two tasks.

[giltirn]

As with others I have noticed that raids appear more frequent than before (Cass rough), and it seems that every raid has one guy with an incendiary launcher and several more with grenades. The incendiary launchers are particularly irritating because a pawn on fire often runs into the middle of a firefight and gets killed by my own guys, and even if it hits noone it often starts massive wildfires that take forever to get under control. Perhaps these things could be made a bit rarer?

[Rimrue]

Are animals supposed to run into a fire instead of pathing around it? I had to save one of my huskies because he decided that running straight through a small forest fire was a better choice than going around it. :/

Also, as the fire spread it killed almost all the animals in the area as they didn't seem to move away from it. And when they caught on fire, they couldn't seem to extinguish themselves before becoming incapacitated from their injuries. This included muffalo, ostrich, pigs, and goats.

Also, alphabeavers showed up while the fire was just burning out and over half of them ran straight into what was left of the fire and burned. I suspect perhaps they were trying to eat the trees that were burning. But it was still a bit, um, unbelievable to watch. Lol

[DariusWolfe]

The other comments about incendiary launchers reminds me of a peculiar issue I had with them.

I was attacked by a small raid with 1-2 incendiary launchers.  I had my bunkers set up by then, so I wasn't overly worried by the raid, but I remember being irritated that I'd clear-cut two tiles outside of my walls, but the grass had already grown back in. Has the grass regrow rate been increased? It seemed like a full time job to keep the grass from my courtyard and my perimeter.

Also, another note, the friendly fire rate for drafted pawns is still ridiculously high. The vast majority of the wounds I received in that raid were due to my pawns auto-targeting the melee pawn engaging my one melee dude; shot the shit outta my sniper who was in the line of fire a few tiles away from the shooters.

[Taoky]

I'm playing A17.1536 right now and 2 pawns got Malaria. So... bed rest, medicine, and all that. Everything was normal, 61% infection / 71% immunity, they got the medicine, so i start to focus on others things. Then one of them get out of the bed, and when i look the disease wasnt there anymore. He did not developed immunity, just puft... nothing.

So i reloaded an autosave, and tryed again. Same thing, both "lost" Malaria when immunity was 73%.
Normal Medicine, one in a hospital bed, but the other on a medical bed.

Edit... i played a little more, and they are still sick, but the disease is hidden.

[GiantSpaceHamster]

A couple notes regarding jobs. I really like that when attempting to force-assign a task to a pawn it will tell me in the context menu that someone else is already assigned to it, but I can still force-assign the task and it will override whoever was previously assigned. This is a great enhancement.

The second comment is that pawns still lock an entire stack when going to get a single item from it. This causes other job attempts to fail if there are no other available stacks for whatever the item is. This causes problems a lot for me after raids when multiple pawns need medical attention at the same time. Typically one will get normal medicine while the rest get herbal medicine. I have to manually cancel the 2nd+ doctor tasks and re-start them one at a time so they will get medicine from the single stack of it in sequence. One possible solution is to allow locking individual items in a stack. Anyone else going for the stack would then see only the unlocked (available) number and would leave behind the locked ones if taking the whole stack. This is also occasionally a problem with food when stacks of the good stuff are low, and with other resources occasionally like artillery shells.

[GiantSpaceHamster]

I remember being irritated that I'd clear-cut two tiles outside of my walls, but the grass had already grown back in.

If you build a roof two tiles out from your walls over the cut area, vegetation will not grow under it due to a lack of sunlight. You could also put down flooring, but roofs are free.

[ShadowTani]

Can anyone confirm if the abrasive trait have any effect anymore? I got a pawn with it, and I never seem to catch him provoking anyone. Well, I found he had slighted someone once, but really, I got colonists without the trait that does that more than him, he's literally the nicest dude in the colony atm (most well liked overall).

[Taoky]

I tested a little more, and is not only at 73% immunity. I delayed the treatment, and they "lost" again at something like 73% infection / 85% immunity. Look like is something related to the % difference between infection/immunity, 10~12 and the disease is hidden.

[wyoian]

Anyone else having severe problems trading for $ or finding bionics?
I generally make furniture and art for money since weapons sell for pennies but exotic traders don't buy furniture any more ? Couches at least. And they never seem to reset their trade inventory (maybe just reset it to something similar). It's been 2 years and all the 2 factions have are joy wires and power claws.

edit: grammar is hard.

[Wanderer_joins]

Anyone else having severe problems trading for $ or finding bionics?

3 years in, tundra, extreme, i've only traded with trade ships and trade caravans passing by. It's harder to make money, but i guess the idea is you should make your own clothes/weapons/armors.
So far i've bought 2 bionic parts: a bionic arm and a bionic leg. Iirc traders didn't have much more. I've looked carefully to raiders, one had a bionic eye and one a bionic arm, both died. I've not called for traders because they come often enough spontaneoulsy to buy my stock, and their fare is high.

It's barely enough to install parts on pawns missing limbs. I decided to install a peg leg instead on a pawn with missing a foot and i would give the bionic leg to a more strategic pawn. The bionic arm was for a crafter whose radius was shattered. I still have one colonist with an eye shot out, but i haven't seen an offer for a bionic eye.

So yes, harder to get but certainely part of the new balance to spice up the mid game.

[ShadowTani]

Anyone else having severe problems trading for $ or finding bionics?
I generally make furniture and art for money since weapons sell for pennies but exotic traders don't buy furniture any more ? Couches at least. And they never seem to reset their trade inventory (maybe just reset it to something similar). It's been 2 years and all the 2 factions have are joy wires and power claws.

I've been able to get 2 bionic arms and 1 bionic leg so far, no bionic eye though, but haven't actively sought them out (and I'm 4 years in). I've also been able to sell furniture to bulk goods traders, and found silver being consistently easy to get by fulfilling trade requests. :3 I'm also still able to empty local trade caravans for silver by selling the usual raid loots alongside stuff like smokeleaf joints.

[wyoian]

3 years in, tundra, extreme, i've only traded with trade ships and trade caravans passing by. It's harder to make money, but i guess the idea is you should make your own clothes/weapons/armors.
So far i've bought 2 bionic parts: a bionic arm and a bionic leg. Iirc traders didn't have much more. I've looked carefully to raiders, one had a bionic eye and one a bionic arm, both died. I've not called for traders because they come often enough spontaneoulsy to buy my stock, and their fare is high.

It's barely enough to install parts on pawns missing limbs. I decided to install a peg leg instead on a pawn with missing a foot and i would give the bionic leg to a more strategic pawn. The bionic arm was for a crafter whose radius was shattered. I still have one colonist with an eye shot out, but i haven't seen an offer for a bionic eye.

So yes, harder to get but certainely part of the new balance to spice up the mid game.

I do certainly make all my own clothes. Devilstrand still eludes me due to cold snaps and the increased growth time.

On all previous alphas I was never forced to use simple prosthetics on as many pawns as i am now. I have only seen 2 legs, few joywires and some power claws and I'm 4 years in. And I used to focus on calling in exotic goods and selling them couches but maybe i need to start making joints and selling other things to bulk goods traders. Seems like trade ships have much less than a16 too.

I've been able to get 2 bionic arms and 1 bionic leg so far, no bionic eye though, but haven't actively sought them out (and I'm 4 years in). I've also been able to sell furniture to bulk goods traders, and found silver being consistently easy to get by fulfilling trade requests. :3 I'm also still able to empty local trade caravans for silver by selling the usual raid loots alongside stuff like smokeleaf joints.

Maybe i'll make joints. Crafters are generally busy making combat gear currently, but i'll try that instead of furniture.

edit: can't english

[DariusWolfe]

Maybe i'll make joints. Crafters are generally busy making combat gear currently, but i'll try that instead of furniture.

Put a smoke-leaf specific stockpile immediately next to the crafting station, and set the bill to drop on the ground. They'll crank out the joints fast as hell, then get back to whatever important task you want them to.