feedback - being punished for playing efficient / quickly building a defense ?

[DFplayer]

Hi,

i spent this weeked playing a lot of rimworld, and i love it. It    obviously misses a lot of content, but its already so much fun that i spent more time with it then i initially wanted to.

but there is one thing that didn't felt right.

I made a lot restarts trying to improve my early game as best as i could and at some point i observed that even though i clearly became better, i actually survived for less time on each restart.

I recently made another restart but i limited myself to two turrets and have tried to keep my number of colonists low, and i'm surviving for way longer, as the attacks and disasters have a lower impact. I safe a lot of resources by doing so and can spent more time on research or building houses etc.

Before that i started with two miners and a grower/hauler/builder , using a lot of stockpiles to mine minerals as quickly as possible, creating small camps next to bigger veins - beds and a paste spender - to keep paths short. So, i really built a lot of turrets as quickly as possible. The first or first two waves of raiders usually were small, i gave my best to capture everyone (i always aim for having a prison cell before the first raider comes). The third wave however was always intense, about 14 raiders with frag grenades and pump guns. I managed to survive but half of my people were harmed (haven't died however), they weren't able to recover before the fourth wave (even bigger) hit and i hadn't rebuild even half of my defenses and food became spare. (because the other half was busy repairing and replacing walls/turrets)

I tried that strategy again and again, always improving it a bit. The third wave became bigger each time and at some point the third wave came along with a solar flare.  - on that game i had like 5 solar flares in a row! Thats ridiculous. Maybe that was just misfortune, but it just seems like doing well will lead to worse random events. On the other hand, in my current game i never had a solar flares. Another time, after one of my colonists died by a lightning and burning in the very early game, i had a lot of minerals drop from my ship afterwards (multiple times in a row). While i don't dislike that kind of balancing in general, its to obvious and too prompt.  And i guess its exploitable too.

So, at my current savegame, were i have far inferior defense, i'm doing better.

I read about a few similar experiences in this board.

Ok, i know this is because of balancing, but it sucks. Knowing that you do better if you play at a slower pace is killing the fun in trying to play as efficient and fast as possible.

When i get better at the game, i want to feel like i actually became better. One game of the mirrorwind series had a similar balancing approach, and some other rpg games in the past had too. The better your character became, the stronger the monsters became. While this results in always having challenging enemies instead of enemies that die by one hit, or being onehited by an enemy, it also makes improving feel worthless. You play against yourself, not the game. After obtaining a very rare and strong item or gaining a level up you want to feel stronger and seek new challenges, not the world around you adjusting and thus making that item or level up feel like it never happened.

When i manage to have an amazing early game i want it to feel like an amazing start, instead i feel like i pushed myself to quickly into the mid/endgame and thus lead myself into an early gameover. (because by building all this turrets and walls, which also takes time, i hadn't spent much in research, for example. Also, because my colonists never had a big fight before, they lack the skills in shooting they would have when i reached that defense level at at a slower pace)

I know there needs to be some scaling with your progress to keep the game challenging for good, experienced players and newbies alike (also for lucky events / lucky starting positions) but its to harsh and it seems like scaling is solely based on your direct defense (turrets) and indirect defense (number of colonist).

Dwarf Fortress uses a similar approach, but its more subtle. You have wealth (which isn't related to defense!). The more wealth you have, the more bandits/demons/zombies/megabeasts etc. will try to get some of your wealth. Improving your defense doesn't increase wealth, however. Also, wealth needs to be reported to the outer world to take effect.

If you seal yourself in and never trade or let someone come in or out of your fortress, no one will ever know of your riches and attacks won't increase. (which may lead to a boring game, but its realistic and fun. Also, its a sandbox game, not a linear game.).

And if you don't seal yourself its not immediately reported, it will definitely increase the number and strength of attacks, but it will take some time till it reaches the full effect.

So you can actually feel like being ahead of the game by playing efficient, but the game does know very well how strong you are and will adjust, just not immediately to let you enjoy being ahead for a small time and giving you a chance to adjust to the new dangers.

Its more intuitive too, reaching a lot of wealth without any defense is bad and will soon lead to gameover. You don't need a lot of defense if your fortress isn't worth anything, but you won't attract migrants either and won't have a lot of money to trade with merchants. Improving your defense won't increase the danger directly (indirectly though, as to do so you will dig out minerals and gems, which you will process, both will increase your wealth... )

I also think its important to measure your "strength" in something else then defense.

If expanding your defense leads to bigger attacks its kind of the opposite of your intention. And its kind of absurd too. Imagine having a "poorly defended" utopia with a lot of minerals and food (my current save game) (by poorly defended i mean only a handful of turrets) compared to a worthless shithole with hundred of turrets (because all minerals and time have been spent on turrets instead of fancy housing there is nothing to gain or steal).

Which would you rather attack as a raider? Ok, gamelogic, but it can be exploited (which i'm currently trying to do).

So far i can say that the best way to defend yourself is to try to be as efficient as you can with as little as you can. Which is fun too, but feels like exploiting a game mechanic or handicapping yourself. I would suggest new players to try to avoid building turrets whenever possible to have a better defense, with the exception of one or two strategically placed ones, which, really, is the exact opposite of what you would expect as a new player!

Edit - PS:

i really felt in love with the combat mechanics of the game. They are the best i have ever seen in a sandbox / df like game. I like them even more then the combat mechanics of DF.

[Untrustedlife]

You talk alot about dwarf fortress, but you are wrong, your population AND wealth AND especially your location effects the invasions in dwarf fortress. And dwarf fortress has more threats then this game currently has, and DF punishes you for digging too deap by demons , demons do Not attack by wealth or population unless a demon is in control of the civilization, in which case you still don't get attacked by demons you get attacked by the race (goblins,kobolds).The elves attack if you disrespect the forest too much (cutting down too many trees) or if they are already at war with your specific dwarven civilization or you treat them with disrespect.Wealth and population also has No effect on megabeast raids. Those are fully random. Building in an evil biome, means you get constantly attacked by zombies no matter what population or wealth you have.
You can also avoid necromancer towers or other civilizations almost entirely by building in a completely deserted location.




Try a different strategy.
If you keep using the same strategy of course you will be attacked, having turrets makes raiders THINK that you have something worth hiding, avoid building turrets until when you actually need them, also, raider  attacks are extremely easy to react to late game via making minefields, which have no effect on the raids because they are hidden. You can survive for eternity if you have efficient defense set up.Playing effectively does not mean making a  bazillion turrets. Playing effectively is getting into the mountain side and building up before you make yourself known with having a defense set up.

Seems odd at first but it makes sense.

[DFplayer]

You talk alot about dwarf fortress, but you are wrong, your population AND wealth effects the attacks in dwarf fortress. And dwarf fortress has ,more threats then this game currently has, and DF punishes you for digging too deap by demons demons do Not attack by wealth or population.Wealth and population also has No effect on megabeast raids. They are fully random.

Try a different strategy.
If you keep using the same strategy of course you will be attacked, having turrets makes raiders THINK that you have something worth hiding, avoid building turrets until when you actually need them, also, raider  attacks are extremely easy to react to late game via making minefields, which have no effect on the raids because they are hidden. You can survive for eternity if you have efficient defense set up.

I know, but wealth has the bigger impact.

Also, wealth increases the number of migrants after the second, so its definitely related.

Yes, there are other threats in DF, but "clowns" and thelike are threats of the endgame

According to the wiki, megabeasts are affected by wealth.

My main argument however is that your strength shouldn't be measured in your defense. What if you have a low defense but are otherwise doing really well (like researching everything or mining the whole map?) ? In that case the attacks should be stronger then if you do very bad but have a huge defense (maybe because you are doing bad and are afraid of the next attack. Which would make sense from the view of a player who doesn't know about this game mechanic)

My other argument is that by balance approach like this, you will never feel ahead of the game, which makes playing better worthless, but exploiting this game mechanic will give you benefits.

EDIT:

Strength is calculated by 1.0 x Turrets + 1.0 x Stable (any that are not incapped) Colonists + 0.4 x Incapicated Colonists. (Dunno if prisoners count or not)

So if you have 10 Turrets, 8 Stable People and 2 Incapped People your total strength is = 10 + 8 + 0.8 = 18.8

This quote is from an other thread, its how strenth is measured according to a modder.

So, it doesn't matter how much you research, how many minerals you mine, how much food or cash you have, how many weapons you bought, how fancy your colony is.

The only things that matter are number of colonist and turrets.

You can do everything in this game with a small number of colonist, so you can keep these two numbers artificially low, thus exploiting a game mechanic.

[Untrustedlife]

Perhaps tynan could consider adding more variables to the attack calculations. (perhaps your amount of resources)

This will be difficult in the next version though because we are using a full on dwarf fortress style stockpile system in the new version.

[DFplayer]

I think it would already help quite a bit to have two variables.

One is the desired strength, one is the current strength.

After each cycle increase (or decrease) your current strength towards the desired strength, so you will actually benefit for a small time of being ahead and if something bad happens, like one of your colonist dieing to lightning strike, the game won't promptly stuff you with mineral and food drops from your ship or travelers instead of raiders. (such game mechanics should be subtle in my opinion, so they won't destroy the illusion of randomness or sandbox feeling)

Or changing the considered strength of turrets so that building them won't make you more vulnerable instead of better defended.

But there definitely needs to be more variables used to calculate your strength, so it can't be abused by keeping that number artificially low.

PS: i added the current strength calculation in my previous post.

Edit:

Some written thoughts.

The current formula sets a colonist equal to a turret, i guess that is the reason why having way more turrets then colonist is counterproductive.

A colonist can increase his skills (shooting / melee) and you can give him stronger weapons by buying or looting them, you can also micromanage him to avoid grenades which a turret can't, the firepower of a turret however is alway the same, so they can't improve over time. Also, colonists repair and extinguish fire, and they don't explode on death. Further they produce and mine, which will allow you to be better prepared for the next wave. EDIT: and colonists aren't affected by solar flares, which makes turrets useless.

I guess that 6 colonists with good weapons and decent shooting skills and a turret as a meattank (6 + 1) is stronger then 3 colonists  and 4 turrets (3+4), also the first should be able to produce more things to sell, thus buying expensive weapons faster then the later. Both are considered equally strong by the game, however.

So, if a turret isn't even better suited for defense then a colonist with expensive weapons and decent skills, you would never want to build more then one, or none. Which makes them nothing more then a trap for new players.

If you build 3 turrets, its considered the same has having 6 colonist, but having 6 colonist is definitely preferable. Also, you can immediately build 3 turrets at the very start of the game, but finding 3 additional colonists take a lot of time, time in which you can buy weapons and train the shooting or melee skills. It could take some hours to find 3 additional colonists. So you can increase your difficulty to the level of a 3 hour game in the first minutes of the game, just by immediately building 3 turrets at the start. (a new player may be tempted to do that, because they are afraid and want to play it safe...)

If you build 12 turrets while still having 3 colonists (which really isn't hard to do) you increased your difficulty to the endgame (desired population cap is 15 according to the default story teller). That also explains why i have as many raiders as the desired maximum population of the storyteller so early in the game.

I will try my next game without a single turret....

[Tynan]

I do need to revisit the player strength estimator.

I think what you'll see in future is a bit more variation and randomness as well. It won't be as obvious exactly how your forces match the raiders because the matches will be really nonlinear and idiosyncratic. E.g. They have an energy-shileded robot with melee attack, you have a cloaking field and mine field. They then show up with 20 slave raiders with pistols and clubs, but you have a team of snipers and a kennel full of attack dogs. The asymmetry will make the balance less sensitive.

So, yes... I do intend to solve this, both by balancing but also by obviating the problem as I've described above.

[Trensicourt]

Can we have more of a certain extremes? Once in a while a very powerful group of raiders is going to raid your colony. Like a special event.

[DFplayer]

I think what you'll see in future is a bit more variation and randomness as well. [....]

That sounds great .

Btw. i started my "no turrets" game and i survived wave for wave. I never lost more then 2 people on a wave and if i did the next wave was smaller or it took a long time till the next wave arrived. (and i haven't lost anyone on the first 10 waves or so). It still felt vary well balanced (and was definitely more fun then my previous attempts!)

In about 6 hours of playing (in the fastest speed possible) i only had one single solar flare instead of 5 in a row. The game started to lag though.

So, currently, the least turrets you have the better and no turret at all is a perfectly working strategy.

Oh, just another thing i observed in this game. One of my 3 starting colonists wanted to leave the colony and i arrested him. Afterwards there were a lot of travelers passing by, also events like someone crash landing and being wounded etc. So  i build a big prison and convinced 8 people in a very short time.

Is it possible that arrested people don't increase your population and thus the game keeps throwing people to recruit at you?

[Argus]

Can we have more of a certain extremes? Once in a while a very powerful group of raiders is going to raid your colony. Like a special event.

I'd like this, but unless you're late game, this would probably destroy your colony. As such, we could tweak the event slightly: in a fit of sadism, these powerful groups of raiders always leave one person alive where possible, although they still destroy like half your base. In this way, you can continue having FUN even if you get this event early-mid game.