My interest in game is a challenge. From the beginning I started to play on maximum difficulty that I could manage (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=41992) and very soon even hardest difficulty wasn't enough (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=45664). I think that current balance is making game too easy for skillfull players but as final version 1.0 was released there is no point to whine about it.
So this guide is designed to improve skill for any player on any difficulty. Because all of this techniques were known to Tynan before release (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=45723) it means that there are no exploits here, all mechanics were tested and are working as intended.
For myself I will start new run with all sane artificial difficulties that I could think of to make my game more challenging and fun at the same time. I hope that someone could implement balance changes that will make game actually challgenig for good players (there is my request for that person in mod section - https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=45867), but there are no replies to that yet. There are few mods in that direction that you can use (see below).
For now if you are interested in this type of game, here is list my list of artificial restrictions:
- I use Realistic Degradation and Quality Values mod for balance purposes (in this mod hp of weapons and apparel affect it's stats)
- I use EdB PrepareCarefully mod to create starting pawn. I create pawn with only backgroung "Abductee", with no traits, zero skills and no interests
- I forbid myself to get any other new colonists
- I start on custom merciless Naked Brutality start with Tribe Faction. No save/loading of course
- I start on flat temperate forest with 20-days growing period and average temperature about 0°С. Game considers it "permanent winter" but it's not really is
- I forbid myself to move to better biomes
- I disable all events that I consider "good" or "neutral" (neutral events make bad events appear less often) except for traders. I disable resource pod crash, psychic soothe, self-tame, ambrosia sprout, farm animal wander in, wanderer join, transport pod crash, chased refugee, thrumbos pass, meteorite impact, herd migration, wild man wanders in, ship chunk drop, visitor grougp, traveler group, man in black, aurora, trade request, bandit camp request, incapacitated refugee quest, prisoner rescue quest, peace talks, escape ship quest
- I restrict myself from certain actions that I wouldn't do in real life in same situations (like organ harvesting or releasing naked prisoner into freezing temperature)
- I consider current wealth mechanic regarding buildings and items as broken (even if Tynan don't think so) and don't reduce health of buildings OR items to prevent wealth generation (more of that below). I play as if it affects their utility
- My goal is to launch ship with my starting colonist
If you can think of other ways to make game more challenging without making it less interesting - tell me. I understand that I can make it more challenging by tinkering with stats like research speed, learning speed or market value of all items. But I don't think that it makes game more interesting.
All relevant mechanics could be divided into several topics. They are written for merciless naked brutality with one pawn only, you can ajust it if your conditions are better.
Wealth and threats
Main mechanic of the game. You can check your wealth on history-statistics tabs. For threat strength it uses those numbers with number of building wealth divided by two (I will call it raid wealth). It counts all items with value on the maps, all structures (except unclaimed walls) and all floors (ancient ruins floors give you starting building wealth that you see on this tab).
When you are below 14k raid wealth you always have lowest threat possible, from 14k to 400k you add about 15 raid points for 1k wealth (you can check exact formula in this discussion https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=43894, this number is for merciless difficulty with no deaths and injuries, it is lower otherwise), one raider is "cost" 30-60 points.
So you can ignore wealth until you hit 14k raid wealth threshold and then start to manage it.
1. Get health of all items and buildings low. All items efficiency is not dependent on their health (icluding weapons and armor). So you should let items deteriorate before putting them in the storage. That way you remove almost all wealth from them. Same goes for buildings. You should melee attack them a little (not too much because of zzzt events). It works especially good with art, you can get sculptures basically for free and always have +15 mood buff in the room for beauty, buff for impressive room and VERY fast recreation source.
You can play easily using only this method alone.
2. Get rid of all unneeded stuff. You should save only those items that you are using or that are needed in case of emergency. Best way to do it is to sell it (you always need money) if it isworth something or let it deteriorate into oblivion if it doesn't. Always destroy unused weapons, 20% sell multiplier makes them unsuitable for selling. You can uninstall all the flooring on the map and use it to make art (which you can sell or damage and leave for yourself).
3. Don't have too much silver. You can always invest it into medicine, neutroamine, components or improve relations. If you invest in items don't forget about first advice.
4. In the late game you can use dead-man armor. Mood is not an issue then and 10% wealth multiplier is pretty good.
5. Be very picky about new pawns. They give big leap in wealth (more wealth - bigger leap).
Raids/threats
1. Design your base so that you can be completely indoors if needed (including acces to food storage and bedrooms). Stay indoors when manhunter pack comes in. It's easiest way to deal with it.
2. For starting raids you need just a few steel traps. Open one door when raid starts, put trap near it and wait while raider will come unto it and die. If he is incapacitated strip him (to sell apparel later), finish him and haul him to dumping zone. Close the door, make new trap and you are good. When you need to move your traps, don't reinstall them, use unistall-install to avoid 0.4% chance to die on it yourself.
3. When your raids will become bigger make outer wall with doors every 15-20 spaces with "trap entrance" which is corridor filled with traps.
4. For later game you can make some turrets to help the defense. They are especially needed if raiders avoid trap defense. Make sure that you make walls between them to avoid chain reaction if one of them explodes and put sandbags before them to make some cover. Also remove all possible cover for enemies.
5. Have some animals for fighting purposes, they will be needed for drop pods raids.
6. If you have access to belt shield you can use 1 of your pawns as running bait while other pawns shoot baited target.
7. Train your shooting. For that go hunting regularly.
8. Train your melee. For that you can go melee hunting for animals that usually leave only bruisers (like bucks or alpacas).
9. Use ally help using comm console for hard raids. That way you are basically trade silver for temporary firepower which is good deal with hard raids.
10. Have at least one long-range weapon like bolt rifle or sniper rifle. You will need them in sieges and versus mechanoids (you should kite mechanoids to you trap entrance).
11. At bare minimum make vests and advanced helmets for pawns protection.
12. It's good idea to research and have at hand go-juice for hard raids. Risk of addiction is worth it.
Disease prevention
It's most dangerous threat in early game. So you should start the game with that in mind.
1. Gather all healroot near the base (~25 is enough). Create and delete stockpiles to take gathered medicine with you.
2. Buy some normal medicine asap.
3. Capture prisoner and start training your medical skill performing surgeries on him (install and remove denture or peg leg). If you have 0 skill at the beginning just beat your prisoner by hands and then tend to him to get minimum necessary skill for surgeries. Get your 4k xp every day, train skill to 11-12 than release your test subject.
4. Research normal beds as your first research project.
5. Research drug table and penoxycyline next. After that you should be under penoxycyline all the time.
6. Make some pemmican so you are not worried about cooking food when disease hits.
7. If you got plague or malaria or sleeping sickness before you got penoxycyline follow this protocol: you should be all the time in the bed, getting up only for eating (if you are ravenously hungry it slows immunity gain) and treating yourself. For treatments use best medicine first (while you have best manipulation). See how good you treatment was and decide if you want to make new treatment 3 hours early or not. Be aware about stages of disease, don't be incapacitated out of bed.
Food, rest and mood management
1. Always watch for your pawns mood. They should never be in risk of break, combined with orther threats that can be deadly.
2. Deal with all basic needs to remove mood debuffs. Keep you recreation at maximum. If your pawn go to threshold of mental break send him to work in the room to get him some comfort and beauty bonuses.
3. Make some psychite tea for emergency mood buff.
4. Make some art (see wealth management section) to have +15 mood from beauty, mood buff from room statand source for very fast recreation.
5. If you have cooking skill make fine meals (you have to go hunting anyway).
6. You can "trade" mood for extra food. Just forbid all the food and eat when you have ~1% of hunger bar. That way you can save up to 40% of food by the cost of temporary mood debuff. It's relevant in the early game, but too micro-management intensive for mid-late game.
7. You can "trade" mood for extra working time. Just set schedule for work only and go to bed when you have ~1% of rest bar. That way you work up to 40% more by the cost of temporary mood debuff. It's relevant in the early game, but too micro-management intensive for mid-late game.
8. You can draft/undraft pawns to change there chosed mood recreation method to choose best one without tolerances (or reset any other activity you want).
Other tips:
- If you play with transport pods enabled than you should strip falling survivors, their apparel is quite valuable
- If you acquired greandes you can destroy all unneeded stuff with them. Works well for corpses after raids, you don't ever need smelter or crematorium
- You can also get rid of them by creating caravan, dumping all trash when it moves and immediately going back (works well if you have cargo animals)
- You can also use grenades to damage your artifacts that can't deteriorate to reduce their wealth contribution
- You should give your colonists hats with social buff to increase their relationship
- If you are in a dire situation with food (for example you run out of it during toxic fallout) you can wait it in caravan. Just create it to nearby location and then immediately stop for better food foraging
Moodwise and pricewise, properly tattered apparel is better than dead man's. Also raiders never have thrumbo and rarely have hyper. So its more convenient to ruin the dusters than kill a prisoner while wearing them..
Vs manhunter
Since manhunter have tendency to congregate outside your walls close to your pawns, you can use an open door firetrap to kill them. The open door vents, but not efficiently, so temperatures in such a place can rise >200 C. and you do not need to set many tiles on fire to deal with it. This is your answer to "killing 20 elephants with one guy".
One day I hope to apply this trap to humanoids, since instant kill only rolls on damage.
You can also you this behavior to kill them over deepwater. Since animals can only break doors when it explicitly disrupts a path, they do just loiter on opposite shore while you kill them. Map dependent though.
A windmill can also be used as effective vanilla embrasure (not tested on 1.0)
for shoot xp farming, I suggest culling an infestation to manageable amount and periodically clearing it and harvesting the spawned jelly. This is in my opinion the best income source in game, obviously gift most of it since there is very little to profitably invest wealth into
Regarding tattered armor. When it get hit it loses hp. If you have properly tattered apparel you are risking to be without armor altogether after few hits. But you are right, now when hp of armor is irrelevant tattered apparel can be good alternative to dead-man armor. And I meant power-armor mainly, because it sure is good but adds a lot of wealth.
Regarding manhunter packs. Why even bother with them? You just go inside your base and wait it out, researching or doing other stuff. No need to interact with them at all.
Regarding infestations. For the first few years I have none of them, they start to arrive only in late-game, when income is not a big issue. My problem with "manageable amount" is that if you control it then it's fine. But if you get hit by few incidents so you don't have time to keep them manageable then they can become real threat again. And my general strategy is to keep threats at minimum.
Good stuff. I wish optimal techniques like this were stickied, or on the wiki, because it's so easy to forget them while playing.
I found this funny:
Quote
- I restrict myself from certain actions that I wouldn't do in real life in same situations (like butchering humans or organ harvesting)
and
Quote3. Capture prisoner and start training your medical skill performing surgeries on him (install and remove denture or peg leg). If you have 0 skill at the beginning just beat your prisoner by hands and then tend to him to get minimum necessary skill for surgeries. Get your 4k xp every day, train skill to 11-12 than release your test subject.
Organ transplants, no. Mengele, yes. ;)
Quote from: fritzgryphon on October 19, 2018, 02:22:15 PM
Organ transplants, no. Mengele, yes. ;)
To be fair it's not quite Mengele. You are training on attackers that were going to kill or enslave you. If it is ok to kill those attackers then it should be ok to train on them with no permanent damage and releasing them afterwards. Harsh conditions require harsh moral and I think that this moral is appropriate.
What a master of mastery!
Quote from: BLACK_FR on October 19, 2018, 02:53:57 PM
Quote from: fritzgryphon on October 19, 2018, 02:22:15 PM
Organ transplants, no. Mengele, yes. ;)
To be fair it's not quite Mengele. You are training on attackers that were going to kill or enslave you. If it is ok to kill those attackers then it should be ok to train on them with no permanent damage and releasing them afterwards. Harsh conditions require harsh morale and I think that this morale is appropriate.
You're thinking of morals. Morale is what you get when you burn everyone to death for fun or something.
Quote from: TheMeInTeam on October 19, 2018, 03:19:28 PM
You're thinking of morals. Morale is what you get when you burn everyone to death for fun or something.
You are right, I meant moral of course. When you are writing in foreign language sometimes missteps like that happen.
Quote from: BLACK_FR on October 19, 2018, 03:32:41 PM
Quote from: TheMeInTeam on October 19, 2018, 03:19:28 PM
You're thinking of morals. Morale is what you get when you burn everyone to death for fun or something.
You are right, I meant moral of course. When you are writing in foreign language sometimes missteps like that happen.
Fair enough, I was at least as interested in helping to foist the proper way of fire onto heathens as I was in any actual grammatical correction.
yeah I agree at super low pop there is very little point killing manhunters
Quote from: BLACK_FR on October 19, 2018, 10:42:52 AM
If you can think of other ways to make game more challenging without making it less interesting - tell me.
Start on a Tundra or Ice Sheet hex instead of Temperate Forest. This forces you to invest in large electricity projects to farm indoors, which in turn attracts much more dangerous raids. And the lack of wood handicaps you early on.
Also, stop intentionally degrading your stuff. Pretend that damaged equipment doesn't work as well as good equipment. (I have no idea why this was removed; damaged solar panels used to produce less power in previous versions, right?)
Quote from: Shurp on October 19, 2018, 09:52:18 PM
stop intentionally degrading your stuff.
He doesn't. He just lists it as a way to make the game easier.
Quote from: BLACK_FR on October 19, 2018, 10:42:52 AM
- I consider current wealth mechanic regarding buildings as broken (even if Tynan don't think so) and don't reduce health of buildings to prevent wealth (more of that below)
Quote from: bbqftw on October 19, 2018, 09:18:20 PM
yeah I agree at super low pop there is very little point killing manhunters
Actually I think it's even more important for big populations because packs are bigger. Imagine that you were sieged but if you stay indoors siege will do no damage and go away after day or too. Isn't that better than fight them? You just need to make your base certain way.
Quote from: Shurp on October 19, 2018, 09:52:18 PM
Start on a Tundra or Ice Sheet hex instead of Temperate Forest. This forces you to invest in large electricity projects to farm indoors, which in turn attracts much more dangerous raids. And the lack of wood handicaps you early on.
I thought about it. But there is no way to survive with naked brutality tribal start on Ice Sheet. Remember, you won't have electricity for a long time, you won't even have clothes for a long time. My other restrictions made it impossible to play Ice Sheet. If I want to face challenges of Ice Sheet I have to abandon some of my other restrictions, those challenges can't be combined. They are both can be interesting but for now Tribal NB is more interesting for me, I want challenges that are compatible with that.
You modify our opening so much I wouldn't even call your gamestyle "naked brutality". Giving minor interest to all likes is a huge advantage for any colonist. Likewise a naked brutality game on Tribal is much easier than the original one. You've nerfed the difficulty significantly and pretend you're some Merciless Master.
I think you and I have very different definitions of the word exploit. Just because there are no rules to break, doesn't mean that any strategy is "legitimate". For instance, breaking items on purpose to reduce wealth value is not something anyone would do for any reason except to adjust some numbers. It's spreadsheet strategy. You act purely to adjust the value of an item, without touching any other aspect of the game. Changing the item's value in the game files would be the exact same action in my eyes - you're just taking the long way around.
Call it a loophole instead of a exploit if you want, but it's definitely not strategy.
Quote from: vzoxz0 on October 20, 2018, 05:39:44 AM
You modify our opening so much I wouldn't even call your gamestyle "naked brutality". Giving minor interest to all likes is a huge advantage for any colonist. Likewise a naked brutality game on Tribal is much easier than the original one. You've nerfed the difficulty significantly and pretend you're some Merciless Master.
I experimented with different openings and found that it is the hardest one (harder one will be only 0 skills and no interests at all). But if you do that you are better off to abandon starting pawn as soon as possible.
I compared this to "normal" start where you choose one of random-generated pawn. You can choose pawn with good traits that make big difference and few really needed skills for early game. Because they are already decent you early game is much easier. In mid- and lategame it doesn't really matter because you will have multiple pawns.
The only way to make it harder is to create pawn with no skills, negative traits (like mood debuff) and no interests and forbid yourself to banish that useless peace of meat. Do you think that for maximum challenge I should do it?
Also you said that Tribal start is easier than Spaceship start. That seems very strange to me. Can you explain why you think so?
UPD: I thought about difference between having interest and not having one. It's not a big one, just harder start. So I started new run with pawn with 0 skills 0 interests and pessimist trait and restriction that if I lose him it's game over. It' slightly harder but not too much.
Quote from: cultist on October 20, 2018, 05:43:23 AM
I think you and I have very different definitions of the word exploit. Just because there are no rules to break, doesn't mean that any strategy is "legitimate". For instance, breaking items on purpose to reduce wealth value is not something anyone would do for any reason except to adjust some numbers. It's spreadsheet strategy. You act purely to adjust the value of an item, without touching any other aspect of the game. Changing the item's value in the game files would be the exact same action in my eyes - you're just taking the long way around.
Call it a loophole instead of a exploit if you want, but it's definitely not strategy.
By your definition chessmasters don't use any strategies, they use loopholes/exploits to win. Sure, they don't break the rules but they use them as much as they can.
To the point of breaking items on purpose - I don't do it on order to make my game harder for myself and I proposed multiple times how to make balance good. Developers evaluated balance and decided that current mechanic is good and no changes are needed.
But there is more important point. You say that using in-game mechanic with in-game tools is the same as hacking the game. But when you grow smokeleaf and make joints and sell them - you are also using in-game mechanic with in-game tools. By your reasoning it would be the same as open devtool and spawn silver, "you just taking long way aroung".
Or if you are making sandbags to directly ajust hit chance of you pawn - that's the same as cheating.
Broadly speaking every strategy is changing some numbers to their desired states. If game mechanic works as intended and you use in-game tools... Then how do you differentiate good play from cheating? I'm genuinely interested how you do that.
Quote from: BLACK_FR on October 20, 2018, 06:15:56 AM
Broadly speaking every strategy is changing some numbers to their desired states. If game mechanic works as intended and you use in-game tools... Then how do you differentiate good play from cheating? I'm genuinely interested how you do that.
By evaluating whether it makes sense within the intended theme of the game. It's hard to imagine that colonists on a distant world would intentionally punch the things they build for the purpose of degrading them and making them less valuable. (Admittedly they do lots of other crazy things so it's not inconceivable, but it's too weird for my tastes)
Getting back to your OP, though, yes, I overlooked that you want to start on Naked Brutality. So Tundra and Ice Sheet starts are obviously out. But why not start on a Boreal Forest? You should be able to build a tiny cabin and a campfire with the wood available before you freeze to death. Although I admit it will be close -- you need 20 wood for the campfire and 80 for walls and a door. How fast can you cut 100 wood? How long does hypothermia set in? I think the initial temperature in a boreal forest summer is warm enough that you should be able to get your cabin built before you freeze... then you can build a short bow and go squirrel and rabbit hunting for your food and clothing needs.
@Shurp
That's bad criteria. Because different people will have different view what makes sense. For example, if you crashed on the world where you are constantly attacked because of shiny new things that you own it makes perfect sense to make them not new and shiny. More than that, it will be weird not to do so, like it's weird to not use seat belts when you are driving your car.
Regarding Boreal Forest. If you were dropped there why not just move out to more warm places? But imagine that you forbid yourself to move. You are also using only one pawn with no skills, no interests and pessimist trait. There is no way you can manage all threats if you have to spend so much time dealing with temperature. You need to get 3 construction ASAP, so you could make traps. Without traps every raid is deadly. And with 0 construction and no interest you will need a lot of work to do that. You will spend much time dealing with food. Food+temeperature+learning construction will take all your time with all the micromanagement tricks I layed out in OP. Then winter come. And you don't have any food reserves and you don't have any clothes apart from tribalwear (because you need to research complex clothing for that). And then you are dead.
Yes, I thought about that option. But with all other artificial difficulties I created there is no way to survive without moving to warmer biomes.
IMO, game should deliver fun as much as it can. If someone likes to build somthing, then destroy it to nearly dilapidated state, then why not? I only don't understand, why every one else should do the same?
Quote from: BLACK_FR on October 20, 2018, 10:43:36 AM
Regarding Boreal Forest. If you were dropped there why not just move out to more warm places? But imagine that you forbid yourself to move. You are also using only one pawn with no skills, no interests and pessimist trait. There is no way you can manage all threats if you have to spend so much time dealing with temperature. You need to get 3 construction ASAP, so you could make traps. Without traps every raid is deadly. And with 0 construction and no interest you will need a lot of work to do that. You will spend much time dealing with food. Food+temeperature+learning construction will take all your time with all the micromanagement tricks I layed out in OP. Then winter come. And you don't have any food reserves and you don't have any clothes apart from tribalwear (because you need to research complex clothing for that). And then you are dead.
Yes, I thought about that option. But with all other artificial difficulties I created there is no way to survive without moving to warmer biomes.
You say you need to work to construction 3 to build traps in order to survive, and you're intentionally handicapping yourself with zero starting skill. OK. But isn't that the same when you start in temperate forest? So there's no difference there. Remember that you start in summer in the boreal forest, so it's not that great of a challenge initially. It's only when winter sets in that it gets hard, and by then you surely have construction 3 and traps. And you can survive quite a long time on frozen elk meat cooked at a campfire. The major challenge is long term -- when you start trying to feed several colonists instead of just one, hunting won't be sufficient, and that's when your power needs grow rapidly.
Give it a try, it's not as hard initially as you think... in fact, I think I'm going to give it a try.
Also, one other thing -- you say you can't survive with all the other handicaps you've given yourself. Well, friendly temperature is a *huge* long-term advantage. Being forced to grow all your food indoors greatly restricts your expansion, and is worth abandoning lesser handicaps for.
@Shurp
First year is always the hardest one. In the long run temperature of boreal forest is irrelevant. If you can survive first year it's the same as temperate forest.
And right now I'm trying to go with all restrictions that I mentioned + starting pawn with zero skills, zero interests and pessimist trait. Sadly (?) there is much random (if you get hit by plague you are dead because you don't have time to prepare; in zero skills and mild interest you have time). So I failed few times.
I'm not sure that on Boreal forest it's possible, you just can't survive first 45 days. And what restrictions do you propose to remove that will make overall game harder in order to play on harder biome? Right now I'm playing on 30-days growing period with reasonably hard winters (~-10..-15).
I'm proposing that you restrict the growing period to zero, or as close to it as you can get and still survive the initial foraging period of making weapons/clothes for your naked survivalist. The ability to grow crops outside is a huge advantage -- and one you don't need at the start, because your lone colonist can live off the critters he hunts.
You can get a 20-day growing period in temperate forest if you look hard enough, and you can find 10-day in boreal forests (20 is the average there).
For now I'm struggling with "no skills, no interest" start with 30-day period. Do you propose that I add restriction to not grow outside or do you propose to start with 20-day period and don't restrict yourself additionally?
Also I have following problem with living on hunting for first ~2 years on boreal forest. Hunting is much more time-consuming than growing crops. With all other necessities you can't research complex clothing before winter. You can't make enough pemmican without crops on boreal forest (too little berries). And without complex clothing you can't go hunting in the winter. For the first glance I don't see any solutions to this problem. It's like Ice Sheet, but more prolonged.
But if you start on warmer biome and restrict yourself for growing crops outside it's doable.
Also what do you think about the fact that with all those restrictions there are certain random unavoidable risks that I can't theoretically prevent? For example if I got plague or if first raider is good melee fighter it's basically game over no matter what I do (it wasn't so when I had pawn with no skilld but with interest in plants and construction). Do you think that it's better to get those two interests or do you think that it's better to get lucky for the sake of "no interests" run?
Actually I think you don't need complex clothing to hunt by putting a piece of food outside (e.g. 1 berry) and collapsing a roof on whoever comes to eat.
Well, as practice, sure, go with the warmer climate and the restriction against growing food outside. That's the biggie. Maybe you could set a permanent "Toxic Fallout" event to occur after you've been on the planet after 60 days. (I don't know if the scenario editor is that flexible?) That would allow you to survive the initial Naked Brutality phase and create a suitable challenge once you have a base up and running.
Interesting point zizard, placing bait and surrounding it with traps should get you a free dead scavenger, right?
Quote from: Shurp on October 21, 2018, 11:54:17 PM
Interesting point zizard, placing bait and surrounding it with traps should get you a free dead scavenger, right?
Well free except the work and resources to make the traps, and the bait. And IIRC you can't make traps with construction 0, hence the ceiling drop. That I'm not sure will guaranteed kill anything sizeable, haven't really tested.
@zizard
I'm not sure it's reliable enough but it's interesting idea. How do you separate 1 piece of food?
@Shurp
Toxic fallout kills all animals, I think that it will make game less interesting. Why it's a biggie again, because of additional wealth that is created by sunlumps and hydroponics?
Quote from: 5thHorseman on October 22, 2018, 01:33:12 AM
Well free except the work and resources to make the traps, and the bait. And IIRC you can't make traps with construction 0, hence the ceiling drop. That I'm not sure will guaranteed kill anything sizeable, haven't really tested.
Doesn't matter if it kills them or not. Bleed out + they are retarded and will do the exact same thing again.
Quote from: BLACK_FR on October 22, 2018, 03:41:55 AM
@zizard
I'm not sure it's reliable enough but it's interesting idea. How do you separate 1 piece of food?
idk, don't think it matters anyway. They won't get to finish their eating progress.
Even hunting with a weapon is doable, as long as there's enough trees. You can make little huts with campfire to reheat.
It's a biggie because of the additional wealth generated by all the solar cells and windmills required to power the sunlamps and hydroponics. BTW, you don't need hydroponics to farm indoors on dirt. You only need it if you're farming on stone / sand / ice sheet.
And you can still have all the animals you want -- provided you keep them indoors and feed them. (See how the challenge scales swiftly?)
@Shurp
I usually make 1-2 steam generators and have excess power, so this restriction doesn't change much.
Plus even if it adds challenge it seems like no fun (challenge should be interesting). It's basically the same as to store 10-20k useless wealth for bigger raids. It's harder but not more fun. Idea of trying to start on boreal forest seems more interesting.
There are dozens of ways to make game harder (you can disable trade caravans for example or arbitrary forbid some useful thing). Idea is to find ways to make game more challenging and fun. Like disable all starting research or add another raid scaling factor based on time or something else.
Quote from: cultist on October 20, 2018, 05:43:23 AM
I think you and I have very different definitions of the word exploit. Just because there are no rules to break, doesn't mean that any strategy is "legitimate". For instance, breaking items on purpose to reduce wealth value is not something anyone would do for any reason except to adjust some numbers. It's spreadsheet strategy. You act purely to adjust the value of an item, without touching any other aspect of the game. Changing the item's value in the game files would be the exact same action in my eyes - you're just taking the long way around.
Call it a loophole instead of a exploit if you want, but it's definitely not strategy.
To make this case there must be some coherent way to draw a line between what is "exploit/loophole" and what isn't one.
For actions that are within the game's rules, the case made is almost always incoherent and arbitrary. Every once in a while in games a strategy is so degenerate it trivializes the experience, but in most cases someone sees a tactic they don't like and calls it an exploit without using any standards (not even in the framework of own thought).
Quote from: TheMeInTeam on October 22, 2018, 10:25:16 AMthere must be some coherent way to draw a line between what is "exploit/loophole" and what isn't one.
There's many ways to draw this distinction, but none of them will be "correct", since it's a definition that changes from person to person. If a player views what's been codified in the game systems as correct, then damaging items to reduce raid power is legitimate. If another player places value heavily on narrative and in-universe behaviour of their colonists, then damaging items in this way is cheating. Authorial intent can also matter. I'm currently reading Tynan's game-design book; Between that book and what he's written elsewhere, I feel that purposefully damaging items to affect raiders would be viewed as cheating. On the other hand, the game is balanced in a way that raids often result in a dead colony, rather than raiders running off with one or two slaves (which is what I feel is intended); When that happens, the only choice is to enable dev mode and "cheat" (but follow authorial intent), or to let yet another colony die to raiders (and follow what's been coded into the game).
Tynan created these degenerate incentives by tying all threat scaling to wealth.
The game is intended such that the player is blind to this degenerate incentive, and plays without knowledge of it.
In other communities, not knowing the core mechanics of the game is also known as "being bad".
If threats were time based, we could talk about interesting optimization. What's the fastest way to grow your economy? What's the best labor optimization routes? What's the best way to deal with pawns with poor traits (with time scaling there's now an incentive to work around bad pawns instead of speed 3ing to next raid)?
There's a lot more diversity to this strategy than "how do I maximize my utility/wealth ratio", but right now it doesn't matter past early game.
PS NB is calibrated such that taking a single hit gives a significant risk of death, so is any strategy that allows you to consistently flawlessly beat the first 5-6 encounters also a similar level of gamey/cheat?
@zizard
Did you check your "bait with food" strategy? Because boomalopes kinda makes it much more harder, you can't just kill them with the roof crash.
@AileTheAlien
I disagree about your idea that narrative and in-universe behaviour point of view will consider damaging your stuff as cheating. As I said before in this thread: "if you crashed on the world where you are constantly attacked because of shiny new things that you own it makes perfect sense to make them not new and shiny. More than that, it will be weird not to do so, like it's weird to not use seat belts when you are driving your car"
If you think "from pawn-view narrative" you can't just import your out-of-game knowledge that damaging your own stuff is stupid. If you live in a Rimworld universe where raiders are attracted to new shiny stuff then NOT damaging your stuff is stupid. And I'm speaking form strictly narrative perspective (because it's huge part of fun).
That's the reason why I put reasonable efforts in attempt to change mechanic where health of item don't affect utility of item. Not only because it's bad balance but also because it makes bad narrative.
For discussion about "no crop start"
It just occured to me why you can't theoretically win with that restriction. Reason is toxic fallout where there are literally no animals on the map. Without crops you can't make enough food storage to survive that.
Quote from: BLACK_FR on October 22, 2018, 10:23:44 AM
There are dozens of ways to make game harder (you can disable trade caravans for example or arbitrary forbid some useful thing). Idea is to find ways to make game more challenging and fun. Like disable all starting research or add another raid scaling factor based on time or something else.
I have a beta version of my Golgafrinchams mod if you'd like to give it a whirl. It comes with 2 scenarios that boil down to the basic crash landed scenario and the basic Naked Brutality scenario. I just ran the crash landed one and completed it with a win, and am happy to say the total lack of starting tech was a factor for longer than I'd even hoped it would be.
I would very much call it a way, though, to add difficulty AND an interesting change to the game.
It's beta because while it totally works, it's very basic. Literally all it does is removes all the tech nodes and gives the 2 scenarios so you don't have to edit the default ones.
Quote from: BLACK_FR on October 22, 2018, 01:16:03 PM
@zizard
Did you check your "bait with food" strategy? Because boomalopes kinda makes it much more harder, you can't just kill them with the roof crash.
I am a theorist, not an experimentalist. Theoretically you can outrange boomalope explosion with roof construction range.
Quote from: BLACK_FR on October 22, 2018, 01:16:03 PMyou can't just import your out-of-game knowledge that damaging your own stuff
First, I don't view damaging items as bad because of my out-of-game views; My colonists are living in a desperate world where such waste would be unthinkable. Second, you're actually breaking your own rules here, since the relation of raider strength to colony wealth is never explained in the game - that's out-of-character knowledge. Either way, you seem to have missed my main point, that there's no one "correct" way to play the game, since it varies by player, since you're still trying to argue that everyone follow your proscibed way of playing. I also disagree with what you claim is a good story - if a colony was being harassed by raiders for their wealth of items, the easier solution would be to just stockpile them outside, with a big sign that says something like "Don't fight us - take what you want!". The game actually (sort-of) allows for this; Raiders will sometimes steal items and leave the map, if you don't fight them, and keep them outside your main base.
@5thHorseman
I remember your topic about tech nodes. It's basically removes passive cooler, 400 relevant research points. And if you get hit by heat wave you just have to move to the new place or just wait it out in caravan. Since I have restriction on moving it's basically "when heat wave hits make caravan, lose 1-2 days and continue". Not very challenging but interesting idea.
Can you share link to it?
@zizard
Anyway if you get hit by toxic fallout you just die because you have no crops and no animals to hunt.
@AileTheAlien
Did you read my example? Imagine that you got into world where new shiny things attract attackers who want to kill you for real every few months. And where items work just fine if they are battered. Just imagine that from the point of view of pawn. In that case NOT to batter your items is just stupid. And your ransom idea is just flat out unreasonable, if you ever tried it you would unerstand why. They often would attack you anyway and on desperate world you don't have anything that you can give.
Second, you strawman my point. All your game knowledge is out-of-character, I didn't say that you can't use your game knowledge. I just said that for narrative purposes you have to abandon your stereotypes from real world and percieve game mechanics as physical rules.
Then you again strawman me by saying that I argue that everyone should play optimally. I just created guide how to do it if somebody wants to improve his skills at game. You can choose not to, I can't care less.
Quote from: BLACK_FR on October 23, 2018, 04:18:16 AM
@5thHorseman
I remember your topic about tech nodes. It's basically removes passive cooler, 400 relevant research points. And if you get hit by heat wave you just have to move to the new place or just wait it out in caravan. Since I have restriction on moving it's basically "when heat wave hits make caravan, lose 1-2 days and continue". Not very challenging but interesting idea.
Can you share link to it?
I don't have a link but I'll give you one when I do.
I've survived a few heat waves without coolers or moving (one ended when my pawn was lying on the ground at 99% heat stroke) so you *can* survive. And no, it's not like doubling the difficulty or anything but considering most of your strategies fall outside of what I find "fun" it's going to be difficult to suggest ways to make it both harder and still interesting.
Here's the link. It's not on Steam or anything just my personal site.
Golgafrinchams_beta.zip (http://pulpaudio.com/rimworld/mods/Golgafrinchams_beta.zip)
Quote from: AileTheAlien on October 22, 2018, 12:00:20 PM
There's many ways to draw this distinction, but none of them will be "correct", since it's a definition that changes from person to person.
The problem isn't that it changes person to person. The problem is that the same person defines it differently depending on mechanic. In other words, nearly everyone who claims strategies within the rules are "exploitative" goes on to violate the same standards they just used when considering other aspects of the game.
If a player rejects X tactic for Y reason, but accepts Z tactic despite Y reason, that player's argumentative position is not coherent. Exploit discussion is rife with this problem.
QuoteIf a player views what's been codified in the game systems as correct, then damaging items to reduce raid power is legitimate. If another player places value heavily on narrative and in-universe behaviour of their colonists, then damaging items in this way is cheating. Authorial intent can also matter. I'm currently reading Tynan's game-design book; Between that book and what he's written elsewhere, I feel that purposefully damaging items to affect raiders would be viewed as cheating.
I won't assume anybody else's intention, but viewing that particular action as "cheating" would be intellectually dishonest. At best that choice implies intentional fake difficulty.
That's not to say people shouldn't play how they want to play - good players often place additional restrictions on themselves beyond game rules for extra challenge, a change of pace, or to explore mechanics that are otherwise too niche to see regular use.
But "cheating" in this sense is *only* possible in regards to those made-up rules. It's objectively false in terms of playing the game normally.
QuoteOn the other hand, the game is balanced in a way that raids often result in a dead colony, rather than raiders running off with one or two slaves (which is what I feel is intended); When that happens, the only choice is to enable dev mode and "cheat" (but follow authorial intent), or to let yet another colony die to raiders (and follow what's been coded into the game).
I'd rather play the game that is there, as opposed to the game that is allegedly there or the game I/others think the developer might have been going for. The rules and mechanics define the game, not our feelings about them.
QuoteIn other communities, not knowing the core mechanics of the game is also known as "being bad".
I'm not sure this is 100% fair. You and I are both well acquainted with at least one other community where the game straight up hides the functionality of core mechanics, and I can think of a second off hand...both allegedly strategy games too. I'm not a fan of blaming players for developer mistakes, even if experienced players do eventually learn the hidden mechanics.
Can we all agree that deliberately degrading items to reduce threat points is a lot of unfun micro, and the developer never intended to encourage it?
Like how it used to be possible to punch your own pawns to reduce the adaptation curve. That got fixed, I hope this will too.
Quote from: fritzgryphon on October 23, 2018, 12:33:41 PM
Can we all agree that deliberately degrading items to reduce threat points is a lot of unfun micro, and the developer never intended to encourage it?
Like how it used to be possible to punch your own pawns to reduce the adaptation curve. That got fixed, I hope this will too.
Won't agree to all of that, no. Wealth scaling was deliberately implemented this way and the incentives that creates are obvious. It'd be disingenuous to create this system with its cost scaling, then expect players not to do devalue items to limit threat scaling. For games in general, if a developer doesn't want degenerate behavior the game shouldn't have degenerate incentives and try to hide them. That's a shortcut attempting to dupe casual players at best.
There are lots of "by design" things that require more rote-inputs-per-player-time than beating furniture down and not repairing, and even more where you're punished for leaving it to the game (auto vs draft hunting, hauling practices, even fire fighting).
By any definition you use to constrain anticipation of "unfun micro", you will find that this is *not* a serious contender for it and that by-design mechanics require more of your defined "unfun micro".
So, if a player doesn't punch every corn, component or bed, it would be sub-optimal play? And this mechanic is a deliberate, intended and fun part of the game's design?
To each his own, I guess.
I don't think sure full price masterwork items / high end weps / archotech all being noobtraps in many cases is also intended.
The fundamental issue with wealth scaling is it turns the game into calculating optimal utility:wealth ratios. This is absurdified in the case of degradation, but this mechanic invalidates so many parts of the game.
Incidentally, drop pod raids kill degraded structures pretty fast too.
Quote from: fritzgryphon on October 23, 2018, 01:01:34 PM
So, if a player doesn't punch every corn, component or bed, it would be sub-optimal play? And this mechanic is a deliberate, intended and fun part of the game's design?
To each his own, I guess.
Technically, yes failing to optimize is sub-optimal. Players will leave at least some optimization on the table in favor of their sanity/preferences, but the incentive and optimal play are there all the same. The real question to ask is why there is a degenerate incentive in the first place, and whether it needs to be there/adds anything to the game.
I flatly reject the notion that people that act on game incentives created by its own rules can possibly be "cheating" in any context but extra made-up rules, and carry a similar refutation for terms like "exploit" or "loophole". If a belief about these terms can't constrain anticipation to what the person stating it intends, it's not a proper/rational belief.
I don't think it's cheating either. The game does reward wealth control, and a player must necessarily do it to avoid large raids. Don't like it, either, but I accept the explanation; any non-wealth difficulty scaling would certainly become trivially easy or impossibly hard, depending on player skill, biome and event luck.
And agree, taking intentional degradation to it's logical extreme would be beyond anyone's patience, which is why I'd like to see the incentive gone. Save the hardcore the trouble of testing their sanity on a manual, repetitive task.
100% difficulty value for any item who's utility doesn't degrade with HP.
Interesting discussion.
I think some people don't like the idea that wealth management IS key to mastery of the game. But problem is that mastery is not dependent on what people like or don't like. It's based only on rules of the game. And before final release I tried my best to change those rules, but developers decided that current wealth and raid mechanics are good.
In this topic there is link to mod that replaces wealth-based raids scaling to time-based raids scaling. I plan to contact creator of that mod to see if he would like to implement some other changes (like creating link between health of item and utility of item).
Also I don't understand why so many people say that item or building degradation is micro-intensive? It's less micro-intensive than growing, making and selling drugs for example.
Getting 40% extra nutrition by manually feeding pawns IS micro-intensive. But it is not needed almost in all cases. But wealth management is needed in almost all cases, so if people have problems with surviving first thing that they should do is some wealth control. May be not full wealth-control, but just getting rid of legendary useless stuff.
Its a silly mechanic to be honest, manually degrading itens is a very silly and boring thing.
You might survive toxic fallout by eating the rotten corpses.
The degradation change was obviously intentional. They also intended to get away with it because most people don't check the stats.
@the_red_kraken
Degrading your items tactic (as one of the ways of wealth management) only exists because of this mechanic.
@zizard
You can't because rotten corpses will disappear long before fallout is settled. You need crops. Or you need allow yourself to move.
There is some fix to hp-don't-affect-utility problem in nearby topic - https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=46412
I will definitely use that mod in my next run.
Tox is hard capped to 10.5 days, is really that impossible to hedge against?
Not if you don't have crops stock. You can just create caravan and "wait it out" that way but it seems to me that restriction on growing crops is not reasonable and fun.
Quote from: BLACK_FR on October 23, 2018, 03:07:08 PM
I plan to contact creator of that mod to see if he would like to implement some other changes (like creating link between health of item and utility of item).
That mod also exists. I don't have a link but someone made one just yesterday or the day before.In re-reading your first post, you use it.
Quote
Also I don't understand why so many people say that item or building degradation is micro-intensive? It's less micro-intensive than growing, making and selling drugs for example.
One of the few things I've never bothered to do in the game, amusingly. Mostly because of the added busywork.
However, setting up a drug operation sounds like it'd be fun to try as a logistic exercise and it involves thinking about the chain of production, unlike "hit everything a lot."
I decided today though that I was going to try playing a game following your exact instructions. Except punching buildings. I just can't bring myself to do that. I want to see exactly how easy it is because - as Tynan himself hates - I've been theorycrafting that it's terribly boring and micro-intensive, but haven't actually tried it to SEE if it's boring and micro-intensive.
For items all you need to do is make a stockpile outside with the correct percentages.
Quote from: zizard on October 23, 2018, 10:18:08 PM
For items all you need to do is make a stockpile outside with the correct percentages.
LOL, now *that* is clever. Using in-game mechanics to take care of the tedious work of manually exploiting defective game design! Love it!
(Of course, I'm continuing to play B18. I refuse to get shot by any tribal carrying a short bow at 23%)
I have a question:
Quote from: BLACK_FR on October 19, 2018, 10:42:52 AM
I disable all research
...
I forbid myself to move
...
I disable ... escape ship quest
...
- My goal is to launch ship with all my current colonists and their bonded animals
Okay so even if you didn't disable the ship quest, you can't move to it and you disable research so... how do build the ship?
I can only assume that "disable all research" does not mean what it seems to mean. Unless you found a way to build a space ship with tribal tech :D You say there will be a link about it but I don't see the link.
Quote"trap entrance" which is corridor filled with traps
I don't do any trap corridors, killboxes, narrow hallways, walled off map sides or designs like that.
As soon as you build some kind of funnel for enemies to be forced into and be killed with traps or other means like 20 mortars or smartly placed miniguns the game gets boring for me so I don't do it.
I have a big defence perimeter meaning cover and some slowing down stuff all around the base. I got a few scattered traps without any supporting walls so they can be easily avoided and I do a few scattered turrets for distraction which have to be constantly rebuilt. Enemies can attack from every direction and even multiples ones and roam around the outer perimeter, start fires in the back while I am at the front or enter the base with explosives. Big later raids often overwhelm single pawns who will loose organs or might die. You sometimes even have to call factions for help or use other emergency things if Randy does evil things.
Its fun.
Basically the point is don't use architecture to defeat raids. Yes the game gets insanely harder you can't do it with all your restrictions.
My only real restriction is is: Don't do any defense that guarantees a raid being defeated without any effort. So every raid has to have a chance of wounding and killing some colonists. Architecture restrictions are basically a secondary result from that.
Exploiting the AI tendency to wander around a perimeter punching the walls is also a good strategy.
yeah look at this dirty exploiter
@5thHorseman
I edited open post yesterday to reflect new information, so it's not like you missed something when you read it first time.
Even I don't follow all advices that I gave. I give up manual feeding as soon as I can for example. Problem is that with little wealth management and reserve of food you can just play "hands out of keybord" style, doing some little things only when some important event is disrupting you.
Regarding starting without research. I meant "disable all starting research". But your mod gives big boost to all research (because it's not a tribal faction), and after consideration I'm not sure that changing tactic "make passive cooler and be inside" to tactic "wait as long as you can and then wait the rest in caravan" is fun challenge so I gave up on this starting restriction.
@cyberian
I thought that whole point of "be prepared" is to reduce risk. Of course if risk is your criteria of fun then you shouldn't be prepared for any events but you have to understand that for many people "don't be prepared" is bad recipe for fun.
Quote
@cyberian
I thought that whole point of "be prepared" is to reduce risk. Of course if risk is your criteria of fun then you shouldn't be prepared for any events but you have to understand that for many people "don't be prepared" is bad recipe for fun.
Yes you are right of course normally the idea is to build a smart base to counter all the challenges and be prepared in the best possible way. Best possible way meaning no harm to your colonists and your base.
Its just that there is no event that causes any threat after the beginning of the game when you have high enough mood bonus and stone walls and a couples of months of Pemmican or frozen meat in cold biome plus other resources.
So the only challenge remaining are Raids.
And with traps/turrets/minigunners plus assisting architecture you can remove the challenge from raids completely. At that point you are playing a peaceful Sims game. So you either enjoy that invul basebuilding aspect or you intentionally don't eliminate the challenge. Since the only roughly dynamic challenge are Raids and I also enjoy epic fights thats why I decide to not remove their Threat.
Ultimately theres no real challenge in SP games when you figured out all mechanics only MP against other humans could give you that. So you either like the more Mini-Zoo approach and pure basebuilding or you intentionally do stupid things to then have new things to figure out basically how you save the mess you just created.
@cyberian
What difficulty do you play? In my last full run (in B18) with all my preparations there were many raids that posed risks to my pawns. There are several reasons for that. First of all when you make benches you increase your wealth and raid sizes considerably. Secondly, there are many different types of raids that avoid prepared entrances: sieges, sappers, infestations, drop pods raids (first time when I encountered it I wasn't prepared and it killed my colony), poison and psychic ships etc. Also you need to go for the AI core via quest. So I don't think that with moderate or high wealth you can go without risk. If you make super-killbox that will bloat your wealth and you will have hard time dealing with drop pods etc.
I currently play Randy Extreme or serious or what its called so the highest of the normal diffs. That said I have a few mods that make stuff easier like the Medieval Times mod and Sidearm mod and a few minor others and I started with prepped Tough+Jogger Tribals in Boreal Forest. Biome choice was only because I dislike seeing Boomaloopes/Boomrats as they are ugly and they don't appear in that Biome.
I am not a Hardcore Rimworld player you are way more HC than me. I have not even finished the game once all my earlier plays (most of them on rough though) got boring and I abandoned them. Also occasionally stopped a game when a new version came out. That said I still have many hundreds of hours in it don't know exactly how much atm. I am a hardcore Dwarf Fortress and PDX player though so my current attempt at having fun at the game is coming from that mindset of gimping yourself in those SPs.
I want a reasonable size colony that remains vulnerable to attacks from all sides and where every large Raid usually leads to some melee somewhere where some pawns can be maimed or killed. That said when I see its getting too tough I do a bit better defense construction but I always want to stay at that edge if I see that noone gets injured in a raid I have to deconstruct some constructions to make it harder again. My main goal currently is to keep my starting 5 guys relatively unharmed so I am sacrificing the others for the flanks and their ranks get refilled with prisoners and other Randy Gifts.
I am not really playing in your league I am just stating what I do to keep the game interesting. I don't even know if I can manage it the way I currently play this colony might get horribly destroyed. That said loosing is fun (DF). Loosing the colony would be more fun for me than giving it up because its too boring.
Quote from: BLACK_FR on October 24, 2018, 04:11:47 AM
your mod gives big boost to all research (because it's not a tribal faction)
I wasn't aware that tribal factions had worse research. I'll look into that.