Difficulty Over Time

[Wexit]

So I've been playing hardcore SK on Phoebe rough. After 7 years, I got an event that I was in no way prepared for with 13-ish colonists and mainly light arms (Phoebe it admittedly too slow.)
During the event, all of my non-combatants loaded as much food as possible and some other basics and left out to the north in mid fall, while my fire team bought time and then escaped via drop pods ~60 tiles away. Really interesting turn of events to be honest, as my fire team then had to setup a temporary base with no provisions while the caravan made the 2 week trip to the new location.

Now, having left 99% of my wealth behind, losing several colonists in the fight, travel, and to disease, I have started Spring in the new colony. My first raid was a terminator. So the way I understand difficulty scaling, is that it is based on wealth, number of colonists, and time. With the way colonys can be abandoned and reformed, I feel like the last factor doesn't make much sense. Unless we're going to pull ourselves out of the world and say "difficulty scaling by time is to force an end-game condition," it seems to me like this factor should only be based on a colony's age - not total time played.

Does anyone know exactly how time factors into this? I would not have expected 9 colonists with shoddy light arms and tattered clothes (no power armor, cybernetics, etc) in an new base to get any form of mechanoids. I always figured the time component to be along the lines of how your enemies are aware of your existence. Moving a month's travel to the south ought to really dampen raids, as I've basically started a new game with slightly more skilled colonists.

Any thoughts? Any ideas on how time is factored in, or how it could be changed?

[RemingtonRyder]

There is a ramp-up factor which slowly increases over time. However, when a colonist is killed or incapacitated this factor is reset back to a certain value dependant on the population of the colony.

[Shurp]

After 7 years you had shoddy light arms?  Not good assault rifles and body armor?

Taking on 4 scythers and 2 centipedes isn't difficult provided you have constructed adequate inferno-canon defenses and the scythers aren't plinking you from outside your range.

[Canute]

A HCSK dev just wrote at the mod thread, the first 2 years shouldn't be any raid, so you can build up.
But HCSK is unique anyway, they modified many things , but not the vanilia storyteller like phoebe.
Yes terminators are strong enemys at the beginning, but didn't you got your own terminator before the raid happen ? Use it wisely as damage shield, then your soldiers can even kill the hostile terminators with bows/crossbows.

[Wexit]

Up until the escape, the worst raid had been a single centigrade and some stalkers, so soldier weaponry hadn't been a huge priority. I had several manned turrets, but they were destroyed in the escape. Other than that lots of standard low quality assault rifles and shotguns and one anti-tank rifle.

I do have a terminator which was able to fend off that raid, I just wasn't sure if this was just foreshadowing for a much worse raid on my new colony. Considering the previous raids I'd seen, I wasn't expecting mechanisms while still starving and living in tents at the new site.

I just don't want to end up in a situation where a worthless 3man colony start-up is killed by mechanoids on day 1 because I'm on year 5600 of this world.

[Canute]

The terminator will be your most valued pawn !
Without him most of my pawns would be dead or heavy crippled, he stand allways at the 1. row and try to take all damage. Let him take cover is mosttimes more important than that he shoot back. Your soldiers can flank and shoot at the enemies so they don't get cover.

Hint, when you start a 2. colony maybe your are geting another chance for a terminator.

[Shurp]

So I've been playing hardcore SK on Phoebe rough.
                              ^^^^^^^^

I really need to improve my reading comprehension.  I completely overlooked that OP is playing a heavily modded game... no wonder he's getting wiped out.

[Greep]

Well, even unmodded the difficulty just keeps rising to become intolerable. It might take 10 years or 50 years, but to my understanding, your equipment/pawn count maxes out while your enemies do not.

Threat points above 1000 get halved, points above 2000 get halved again.  But those points above 2000 will pile up.

Moving your colony doesn't reset all the multipliers, just your stash/building wealth, but the longterm rampup factor is just going to stay high.

"I just don't want to end up in a situation where a worthless 3man colony start-up is killed by mechanoids on day 1 because I'm on year 5600 of this world"

Yeah that'll just happen, your longterm multiplier will be like 3x/4x.  The game probably has one colony max by default atm while this is balanced out.

[b0rsuk]

But really, what would you expect ? That you can reset the difficulty by traveling to a new location ?

[Wexit]

But really, what would you expect ? That you can reset the difficulty by traveling to a new location ?

Pretty much, yes. If you are a rival faction arriving at a destroyed colony it is going to take time to track down the new colony. Even then, you would expect the sudden drop in wealth to deter large raider groups. Moving an abandoned colony half way across the map with little more than the food required to make the walk should fall just short of starting a new world entirely. Certainly it takes longer to learn about a new drop pod crash than it does to track a group of travellers, but I wouldn't expect any massive group of raiders to be interested in an armed but otherwise worthless colony - at least not if the motivation is material gain.

Are there any mods that adjust the time factor? I would prefer more frequent events that are tied more to the worth (or some other RPable factor) of my colony than an arbitrary ramp up designed to force an end game condition.

To use dwarf fortress as an example, you can live in a tiny fort that only eats and drinks the time away, and you will never see a massive siege or attack (or at least I didn't after 27 years.) Now if you mass produce gold crowns, you'll probably be wiped out be 150+ units by year 3.

[Greep]

Well, Rimworld was sort of designed to be a story about getting off the planet, so I think it wasn't very well scaled for permanent forts.  In any case I could make a mod that resets the storyteller rampups on settling if you're interested.

[Wexit]

I would be. Or at least having the storyteller treat new colonies more independently.
I haven't tried nodding rim world yet. Is the source or api out there, or do you have to decompile?

[Greep]

The mod help forum stickies and modding tutorials on the wiki has pretty much everything you want to know except detouring/patching/eflection (which you can learn by decompiling other mods), if you want to try it yourself   Wiki will show you how to decompile it and forum can get your basic setup. 

[Agent00Soul]

So I've been playing hardcore SK on Phoebe rough. After 7 years, I got an event that I was in no way prepared for with 13-ish colonists and mainly light arms (Phoebe it admittedly too slow.)
During the event, all of my non-combatants loaded as much food as possible and some other basics and left out to the north in mid fall, while my fire team bought time and then escaped via drop pods ~60 tiles away. Really interesting turn of events to be honest, as my fire team then had to setup a temporary base with no provisions while the caravan made the 2 week trip to the new location.

Now, having left 99% of my wealth behind, losing several colonists in the fight, travel, and to disease, I have started Spring in the new colony. My first raid was a terminator. So the way I understand difficulty scaling, is that it is based on wealth, number of colonists, and time. With the way colonys can be abandoned and reformed, I feel like the last factor doesn't make much sense. Unless we're going to pull ourselves out of the world and say "difficulty scaling by time is to force an end-game condition," it seems to me like this factor should only be based on a colony's age - not total time played.

Does anyone know exactly how time factors into this? I would not have expected 9 colonists with shoddy light arms and tattered clothes (no power armor, cybernetics, etc) in an new base to get any form of mechanoids. I always figured the time component to be along the lines of how your enemies are aware of your existence. Moving a month's travel to the south ought to really dampen raids, as I've basically started a new game with slightly more skilled colonists.

Any thoughts? Any ideas on how time is factored in, or how it could be changed?

How can you expect a different outcome.. That's way too many pawns to sustain in a new base without supplies and infrastructure.

Building decent assault rifles should be one of your first priorities.. your normal type AR's have an accuracy of 60% ish.. excellent and superior are around 160%

That you only have light arms is the problem.

Same goes with armour. With that many colonists 5 pawns with 60%+ armour should be enough for any fight.

[b0rsuk]

I don't think migration is intended as a way to skip difficulty of the game.