So I was finally looking into changing up my walls to not burn to a crisp my entire colony every time something bad happened. The moment I did, I guess the market value of my colony rose drastically, because it caused a way out numbered raid to appear with high tier weapons. Not really fair to be out numbered from 1:2 with also a colonist that was incapable of fighting.
Raids are calculated in A15C taking into account colonist count, and wealth in buildings. The game is also supposed to take into account wealth in items, which means that you should be getting that type of raid regardless of whether you have stone lying around, or have built walls out of it. Currently, a bug causes the game to not take into account the wealth in items when calculating raids.
Setting up deadfall traps, even if they are out of wood, would help defend against this type of raid. Getting turrets up and running would also help.
Quote from: nccvoyager on September 07, 2016, 05:20:43 PM
Raids are calculated in A15C taking into account colonist count, and wealth in buildings. The game is also supposed to take into account wealth in items, which means that you should be getting that type of raid regardless of whether you have stone lying around, or have built walls out of it. Currently, a bug causes the game to not take into account the wealth in items when calculating raids.
Setting up deadfall traps, even if they are out of wood, would help defend against this type of raid. Getting turrets up and running would also help.
I tried removing the story teller from random to the one that allows you to have some breathing room in-between conflicts. Nothing changed. I had a toxic fallout then a volcanic winter, then a raid which was godlike with top tier weapons and gear and additionally outnumbering us. Sorry, but this game is completely imbalanced. Seeing my whole colony fall because of something I couldn't even fight back with, is ridiculous. Deadfall traps are also useless. The enemy is not stupid enough to go to them and it seems like my colonist are the one ones who run into deadfall traps, so I don't even bother.
Game is fun, but there is an awful lot of lategame content which is very difficult to get to. I'm also getting so fed up with having incompetent colonists, who can't haul, can't clean, can't fight, just too frustrating. Rimworld isn't funny anymore, it's getting annoying. Raids come, don't stop destroying your base until its gone, then they don't just steal your resource, but also all your colonists that are capable of recovering what you have left. Surviving with 1-2 colonist, is a guarantee loss unless you cheat. Also having two raids one after the other with intense equipment and numbers, nah no balance within the game. Not in any story teller. The way raids are calculated, just isn't fair. Also creating turrets? With so many wind turbines and batteries, I can barely keep my base powered.
Trenix, I'm sorry you're having a tough time. If you'd like to post a screenshot of your base or talk about strategy tips I'm sure plenty of folks would help out with that.
Personally though, I've been running Randy Challenge and it's been nothing but underwhelming so far (pure vanilla, no cheats, no turrets, no traps, no killbox, no mountain). The first year was pretty quiet with maybe one meaningful raid toward the end. But that dropped off 2 or 3 fully working charge rifles, which just made every subsequent encounter significantly easier. About 3 years in and I'm still waiting on a big event like a volcanic winter or fallout to slow my progress, but I'll probably have a luxury cruise ship built by the time it eventually comes.
The new ability to call in traders whenever you like also ensures there's never a real shortage of anything. Plenty of luciferium and bionics to go around.
EDIT: Looks like I didn't realize the difficulty settings have been renamed recently. The difficult I've been on is Randy Intense, 2nd hardest.
@trenix to get into the game is very harsh, but worth!
most of your complains are not really grounded, if you have played the game for a little bit.
for example: why do you start with People that cant clean or haul?
take some extra time in creating the pawns and your start will be much more easy.
and honestly this game is the hardest at the start.
later if you have the Basic stuff and know most game mechnics, nothing really dramatic can happen, unless you play challenge or extreme difficulty.
and for raid Balance, i also think they are not balanced.
but they dont need to. raids and events are there to kill you on any storyteller.
this is a survival-colony builder game, not just a builder game.
if you just want to build a base without any stress, just deactivate all major Events like raids in a Scenario.
I played the game for many hours already and learned most, if not all, the mechanics. Picking the correct colonists is cheating and I'm just fed up with not only starting with incompetent colonists, but also capturing incompetent colonists. I enjoy harsh and challenging games, but not when it's literally impossible to win. While you may be lucky living for years with no issues at the highest difficulty, I'm playing on rough and been getting nothing but impossible to beat encounters.
Sorry but there is nothing I can do when 75% of my colonists are incapable of fighting, my enemy is decked out high tier gear, and I'm out numbered. This is a huge issue with balance and calculation. There is not much more to say than that. I've had random crap happen like my best shooter who is capable of fighting goes in a heart attack right before a raid. I mean seriously? The amount of times I had to load games and restart over ridiculous things is just too much. The game is overall random with no fairness whatsoever.
Maybe instead of complaining, I should suggest how to balance raids. So here is my suggestion, count up turrets, traps, and colonists, and make sure the raid number doesn't exceed that amount. When I have only two people but my market value is high, that means I should be attacked by 6+ enemies? This is supposed to be a game, not just a random event simulator. Tired of these type of situations when I know I'm going to die and there is NOTHING I can do about it besides watch it happen. There is something wrong with that. We need some fairness, even if it is its own story teller. And no there isn't one like that already, cause I've tried them all. All I see is randomness. I can't even just hide and let them steal some loot, they much rather destroy, kill, and burn down everything. They even kill my animals, for what purpose?
How would people know what I have anyway? Hording things shouldn't be frowned upon, but encouraged. I need to burn all my things because of the market value? Makes no sense. Maybe there should be scouts that go out to check my base before they attack, to see if I'm worth. Giving me the opportunity to arrest and kill them before they let their faction know my base is worth looting. That gives me the ability to actually do something.
For the record, I play Cassandra/Rough/TemperateForest/SmallHills with an average winter temp of 30F - 34F.
With strong combat characters, I've definitely had 2 people take on 6 and survive with little to no damage. There's definitely a lot of randomness but I don't see it in the raids. What I have found is that it's very difficult to get the timing right on building up defensive walls. I used to play large hills temperate forest but I find small hills temperate forest to be better because it gives the raiders less cover. I'm also interested in playing in boreal forest because the swamps in those forests slow down raiders a lot which can be used to take them out from a distance.
I definitely have a problem with the randomness causing "false starts" like the time an early berserk break made a colonist attack a boomrat and burned my whole colony to the ground because 1 person was sick and the other was a pyro. That was pretty bad. But you do have to cycle through your colonists before you begin. You cannot take what the randomized gives you, you'll never be able to work with that and it's not the intended gameplay. You are supposed to re-roll until you have something a least workable. You'll almost never end up with a dream team, there's no too much randomness in character sheets, but you MUST re-roll until you have your minimum skillsets while minimizing risks from traits.
But raids haven't been too bad, honestly. Pillboxes with roofs and sandbags provide great cover. Melee on standby allow your shooters to retreat without too much risk. If you can't kill the raiders before they enter your compound, there's a good chance you'll lose the colony.
Just got +20 manhunter boars with only 3 colonists, 2 unable to do combat, yeah no balance whatsoever. Maybe it has something to do with this horn I got with such an insane market value, yeah definitely wrong thing to go buy for raid balance.
I have noticed that NOT BUILDING TURRET reduce considerably the raids strength you face.
Balance have been part of a discussion about "Bringing Colony in the Open" (aka, not telling player to build covered-fortress to survive at all)
Right now I think that Raid are pretty hard because :
- They need to pause a threat to even the most well defended colony
- Their threat level is still calculated in "Raider to kill per second"
Discussed ways to solve that :
- If the raider don't have to over-number you to be a threat, you don't need as many of them.
- Have the raiders less suicidal, attempting more to steal what's outside (even if bolted down) than die needlessly.
- Have Manhunter pack be just hunter pack, no constant need for Great Wall of China anymore.
I never ever found raids to be dangerous really. Never lost cause of a raid.
But then I guess I'm one of those "strictly 1 entrance to the base, all covered by 8+ turrets and a field of traps on the way" guys.
Try that maybe?
Huh, I was going to suggest the opposite. Spreading out the enemy and taking them down 1 by 1 has worked well for me.
----
Bad RNG definitely exists. I had a tribal raid immediately followed by a boomrat manhunter pack (as in it killed 2 of the retreating tribals 'immediately'), but with some tactical retreating, even that was survivable.
In the interest of trying to bring this discussion of out of the quagmire that is vague generalities, I'm going to try to keep track of raider vs. colonist numbers and timings to try to get a hard sense of what is 'typical' and 'survivable' at least within my games. I'll probably report back in a few days. If anyone wants to join me, it would probably be useful.
----
Numbers to track:
Date of raid (in days since landed).
Type of raid (faction and subtype [e.g. pirate - siege])
Number of raiders (+ any meaningful type info [e.g. two had rocket launchers])
Number of colonists at raid time (broken down into high-tier combat, general combat and non-combat)
Number of active defenses (traps / turrets / mortars)
Colony Wealth at raid time
Any "special" one-time tactics you had to deploy to survive the raid (call back-up, rocket launchers, deploy artifacts).
Dates of any major non-raid events (crashed ship, fallout, etc.)
I'm going to track a game until I could reasonably put together a ship and escape with all colonists (actually doing so is optional).
For A14 there is a mod that takes some colonist stats into account:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=737985657
Quote
- Colonists who are incapable of violence give no points.
- Colonists with extremely limited mobility give no points.
- Colonists with limited sight, manipulation and consciousness are considered to be less battle ready than those who are healthy and give less or no points.
Also doesn't count all of the general wealth. So if you take in lots of loot you won't immediately face larger raids.
Quote from: Trenix on September 11, 2016, 02:47:52 AM
Just got +20 manhunter boars with only 3 colonists, 2 unable to do combat, yeah no balance whatsoever. Maybe it has something to do with this horn I got with such an insane market value, yeah definitely wrong thing to go buy for raid balance.
You shouldn't try to fight a +20 manhunter pack of boars with 3 colonists anyway. When that happens, you stay inside until the pass you by. Forbid your doors. You may have to sleep on the floor of your common area so that people still have access to food. Big manhunter packs are more acutely dangerous than toxic fallouts but they go away a lot faster.
And you should definitely NOT be starting a colony with 66% of your characters incapable of violence. I always reroll until I have at least 2 shooters. Sometimes I will try for a brawler for my 3rd character, but often I just want 2 shooters, a medic, a farmer, a warden, and at least 2 people capable of dumb labor and firefighting.
I have never obtained a Thumbro Horn so I have no idea what it does to the value of the colony or the frequency of raids, but there's definitely value in building a humble colony without a ton of awesome. I took a risk this past game and mined out a bunch of silver on the map and didn't cause major raid problems for me, but I also have left the plasteel and jade in the hills for now.
Good luck. Try getting better colonists to start.
What climate are you choosing? What terrain?
When you get some awesome loot like thrumbo horns or AI cores and you are at a certain threshold you can definitely see a spike in the next raid.
My raid expirence:
First raid- 1 melee guy
Second raid-1~3 melee guys
Third raid-3 weak ranged guys
Fourth raid-7 heavily armoured and heavily armed guys(power helmets, good kevlars, Snipers, M4's)
The jump is real.
Im guessing exploiting and cheesing is the only way to play this game.
Quote from: baegle on September 11, 2016, 11:46:05 AM
You shouldn't try to fight a +20 manhunter pack of boars with 3 colonists anyway. When that happens, you stay inside until the pass you by. Forbid your doors. You may have to sleep on the floor of your common area so that people still have access to food. Big manhunter packs are more acutely dangerous than toxic fallouts but they go away a lot faster.
I know this trick, it's exactly what I've tried. They went straight after my doors and broke through layers and layers of them and swarmed my base killing everyone in sight. I understand you're trying to help and are trying to offer me tips on how to fix this issue on my end. However you need to also realize and understand that it may be on the game's end. I personally now think that the longer you play, the harder the raids become, until you finally lose.
I guess that just might be what the developer ultimately wants from the game. I've tried all story tellers, none made a difference. I personally don't like the idea of building up an entire colony for days only to see it collapse in a few minutes because the game was designed that way. There is too much effort to put into each colony, just not worth replaying knowing it's going to be trashed eventually.
Quote from: baegle on September 11, 2016, 11:46:05 AMAnd you should definitely NOT be starting a colony with 66% of your characters incapable of violence. I always reroll until I have at least 2 shooters. Sometimes I will try for a brawler for my 3rd character, but often I just want 2 shooters, a medic, a farmer, a warden, and at least 2 people capable of dumb labor and firefighting.
I didn't always start with a colony like that. Sometimes I got it that way overtime as people were kidnapped, killed, and captured.
Once manhunters aggro on someone, they will punch through doors. That is true. Sometimes you have to make the decision to leave that colonist to die while the rest of your colony stays safe. It's a tough choice, but sometimes it happens. But the mechanic does exist to allow you to turtle when manhunters are about. You have to stay inside until they're gone. In my current game I bypassed 4 manhunter packs this way so far. However, my previous games I've died plenty to manhunter packs. It has forced me to wall up much faster. By focusing on my exterior walls first, I can survive a lot longer. I also need to patch my walls every time they get breached because manhunter packs are hard to deal with once they smell you.
And yes, I recognize that as your colonists die and get kidnapped you can end up with horrible people. That happens. I have taken to being very careful with who I offer shelter to and who I chat/recruit. I still capture raiders, but if they're not useful, I release them to try to increase my standing with their faction. When I get a call for help, I check the biological age and the occupation. 55-year old conceptual artist? Nope! I saw a young sheriff once, thought that'd be super useful. Nope! Sheriff occupation disables most skills! Be careful with picking your colonists or they become liabilities.
Yes, the longer the game goes on, the harder the raids are. I thought that would be obvious. The design of the game is to start you off easy and then ramp you up as you build towards the end game. In Cassandra, if you notice, you almost always get a single mad animal before your first raider. It's like a training event to let you know to get your act together. The first raid is almost always a single raider and the second one is either 2 or 3. By day 4 you almost always get a visitor to join your colony. It's a pretty predictable ramp.
I've definitely gotten frustrated with the game. Manhunter boomrat packs + pyromaniacs. Colony wide malaria infections. 7 day toxic fallouts (twice in 1 year!). Constantly losing limbs. The jaw of my best socializer shot off so he can't communicate.
But I have gotten better at managing risk over time. I currently have a game where I've survived my first year and half way through my second year. I have survived 2 air-dropped scyther raids, 3 seiges, 1 psychic drone ship, 1 poison ship, the plague, 6 mental breaks from my pyro, and a host of manhunter packs. It's doable. It takes practice, learning, micromanaging, planning, reacting, and being very very careful, and a lot of times not even that's enough.
But that's the fun of the game, in my opinion. It's not a story simulator, but the stories are awesome when they happen. It's a genuine challenge.
Frankly, raids should have some logical link to the factions and their bases.
Closer hostile faction is more likely to attack than a more far away one.
Losses in previous battles should also affect the likelyhood of sending out an attack.
Honestly, I'd like a more dynmic system, where factions send raiding/scouting/trade parties and factions can be destroyed and new ones created.
I think it'd be nice if NPC factions had populations which the game pulled from when determining raid size. Right now, pirate and other factions are just an endless pit of people (which you can't always befriend), and the people in the raids hold no true value because the game can throw an infinite number at you.
I'd like to see my enemies' numbers fall with every failed raid, and rise with every successful kidnapping. I feel like it would add a lot more value to each victory, and a little less frustration when a colonist is left injured or even dead for that matter.
Perhaps an event of "full scale raid", where the storyteller throws every last adult member of the faction at you, and victory would mean the destruction of that faction. Heck, maybe that could be a new win condition :P
I don't know if it should apply towards Mechs tho :/ What do you guys think?
Quote from: nccvoyager on September 07, 2016, 05:20:43 PM
Raids are calculated in A15C taking into account colonist count, and wealth in buildings. The game is also supposed to take into account wealth in items, which means that you should be getting that type of raid regardless of whether you have stone lying around, or have built walls out of it. Currently, a bug causes the game to not take into account the wealth in items when calculating raids.
Setting up deadfall traps, even if they are out of wood, would help defend against this type of raid. Getting turrets up and running would also help.
Sorry but this is entirely wrong. Wealth from items are adding to raid size as intended.
Quote from: Trenix on September 11, 2016, 01:53:34 AM
I played the game for many hours already and learned most, if not all, the mechanics. Picking the correct colonists is cheating and I'm just fed up with not only starting with incompetent colonists, but also capturing incompetent colonists. I enjoy harsh and challenging games, but not when it's literally impossible to win. While you may be lucky living for years with no issues at the highest difficulty, I'm playing on rough and been getting nothing but impossible to beat encounters.
Sorry but there is nothing I can do when 75% of my colonists are incapable of fighting, my enemy is decked out high tier gear, and I'm out numbered. This is a huge issue with balance and calculation. There is not much more to say than that. I've had random crap happen like my best shooter who is capable of fighting goes in a heart attack right before a raid. I mean seriously? The amount of times I had to load games and restart over ridiculous things is just too much. The game is overall random with no fairness whatsoever.
Maybe instead of complaining, I should suggest how to balance raids. So here is my suggestion, count up turrets, traps, and colonists, and make sure the raid number doesn't exceed that amount. When I have only two people but my market value is high, that means I should be attacked by 6+ enemies? This is supposed to be a game, not just a random event simulator. Tired of these type of situations when I know I'm going to die and there is NOTHING I can do about it besides watch it happen. There is something wrong with that. We need some fairness, even if it is its own story teller. And no there isn't one like that already, cause I've tried them all. All I see is randomness. I can't even just hide and let them steal some loot, they much rather destroy, kill, and burn down everything. They even kill my animals, for what purpose?
How would people know what I have anyway? Hording things shouldn't be frowned upon, but encouraged. I need to burn all my things because of the market value? Makes no sense. Maybe there should be scouts that go out to check my base before they attack, to see if I'm worth. Giving me the opportunity to arrest and kill them before they let their faction know my base is worth looting. That gives me the ability to actually do something.
So you played the game for a couple of days max. Then declare the game 'impossible' and 'unbalanced'.
Here is your solution: Stop bitching at the game for being somewhat difficult to learn, and accept you aren't yet experienced enough at the game to play on the higher levels.
Quote from: Kegereneku on September 11, 2016, 03:30:47 AM
I have noticed that NOT BUILDING TURRET reduce considerably the raids strength you face.
False.
Quote from: kuledude on September 11, 2016, 12:12:47 PM
My raid expirence:
First raid- 1 melee guy
Second raid-1~3 melee guys
Third raid-3 weak ranged guys
Fourth raid-7 heavily armoured and heavily armed guys(power helmets, good kevlars, Snipers, M4's)
The jump is real.
Im guessing exploiting and cheesing is the only way to play this game.
Nope. Just a few steel traps on the way inside your base are enough for the first few raids. Once you get turrets up, you can safely deal with any conventional attack.
You know some of the community never play with turrets or traps, right? ::)
Quote from: baegle on September 11, 2016, 11:50:21 PM
Yes, the longer the game goes on, the harder the raids are. I thought that would be obvious.
False actually. The game gets easier the more people you have, due to raids having a very harsh soft cap to keep them from becoming extremely large later on.
Quote from: baegle on September 11, 2016, 11:50:21 PM
Once manhunters aggro on someone, they will punch through doors. That is true.
The moment I saw the hoard of boars, I threw all my people in the house and locked up. No one was aggroed by anything. I didn't lure them to my doors. Once again, I understand you're trying to help but you keep assuming its something at my part that is being done wrong. The problem is clearly that the game increases in difficulty overtime. It doesn't factor in that my colony is small and crippled after waves of raids. The game should give us a challenge that we can handle, not one we can't win even if we tried.
I don't want to abandon my colony and start over, but the game's mechanics are forcing me to do it. Maybe we need a story teller that emphasizes on fairness and doesn't make the game more difficult overtime. It'd be nice if also raids didn't kill and kidnap all my colonists so I have at least a fighting chance to recover. Rather have my things stolen over my colonists. A single colonist can't even treat his own infection for crying out loud.
Quote from: Trenix on September 12, 2016, 02:38:11 PM
Quote from: baegle on September 11, 2016, 11:50:21 PM
Once manhunters aggro on someone, they will punch through doors. That is true.
The moment I saw the hoard of boars, I threw all my people in the house and locked up. No one was aggroed by anything. I didn't lure them to my doors. Once again, I understand you're trying to help but you keep assuming its something at my part that is being done wrong. The problem is clearly that the game increases in difficulty overtime. It doesn't factor in that my colony is small and crippled after waves of raids. The game should give us a challenge that we can handle, not one we can't win even if we tried.
You speak like an inconsolable victim. I'm not assuming it's something you're doing wrong, I'm
telling you you're obviously doing something wrong because I'm playing the same game you are and I can avoid manhunter packs. I've also failed to avoid manhunter packs and every single time it was because of the position of my colonists relative to walls and doors and I've tried lots of theories. The reality of the game is that if the manhunter can draw a path to your colonist without an obstruction, then the manhunter will aggro and once that happens they will attack doors to get at the colonist they aggroed.
The game increases in difficulty overtime as you add more colonists and wealth. It doesn't factor in that some colonists suck. If you are down to a single colonist and your wealth is gone (animals killed, structures destroyed, etc) then the raids will shrink in size.
Quote
I don't want to abandon my colony and start over, but the game's mechanics are forcing me to do it. Maybe we need a story teller that emphasizes on fairness and doesn't make the game more difficult overtime. It'd be nice if also raids didn't kill and kidnap all my colonists so I have at least a fighting chance to recover. Rather have my things stolen over my colonists. A single colonist can't even treat his own infection for crying out loud.
Just delete the game and start a new on Phoebe Chillax. It's not worth the stress. It's just a game. Stop playing on a challenging mode.
@Baegle Whoa there buddy, you need to calm down. I didn't come here to get feedback or help, I came here to provide feedback. Think you forgot what section of forum you're on. I know what happened and I know the mechanics.
Anyway it seems like the imbalance comes from market value. I'm not 100% sure about it, but appears that's the issue. The moment you get extremely valuable items, you need to either sell, destroy, or smelt them as soon as possible or you will be overrun if a raid or a manhunt should appear. I think the game should be re-balanced with the market value of things you've built, not things you have in storage. We shouldn't be punished for hoarding in a survival game, that should be expected. As for now, whatever is not in use, always gets destroyed, smelted, or sold as soon as possible.
Quote from: Trenix on September 14, 2016, 02:32:28 PM
Anyway it seems like the imbalance comes from market value.
Yes. Even selling doesn't necessarily help as you then have the silver. The only way to get rid of the wealth is to trade it in for consumables, but you won't use them up quickly. Or just turn them into other stuff.
I destroyed three scythers from a psychic ship with land mines. They were all incapacitated and I was a bit overzealous in harvesting all their claws. Not such a great idea. The next raider was very large for that stage.
Quote from: Trenix on September 14, 2016, 02:32:28 PM
@Baegle Whoa there buddy, you need to calm down. I didn't come here to get feedback or help, I came here to provide feedback. Think you forgot what section of forum you're on. I know what happened and I know the mechanics.
Uhuh. Lets remind you of your opening post:
QuoteSo I was finally looking into changing up my walls to not burn to a crisp my entire colony every time something bad happened. The moment I did, I guess the market value of my colony rose drastically, because it caused a way out numbered raid to appear with high tier weapons. Not really fair to be out numbered from 1:2 with also a colonist that was incapable of fighting.
So your feedback is 'the raid size was unbalanced'. Because you went from wood walls worth ~7 silver each to stone worth ~14 silver each.
Assume you have a large outer wall 100 tiles wide. thats 700 silver. That is about the same as 7 wooden dining chairs. When your colony wealth starts above 10k and is probably 30k+ by this point.
~~~~
It isn't like this is a new complaint. It can be summarised thus:
"The game sent me a raid or other event I was not prepared for, and didn't know how to deal with. I could not possibly have done anything better because I am infallible, so it must be the game at fault. Please fix."
followed by
"No, I don't want anyone telling me how to play the game better, because I am clearly the God of Rimworld. I am telling Tynan how to fix his game"
.. and you can expect the responses such an attitude might generate.
~~~~
Now, IF you wish to actually make a real suggestion to the game other than 'reduce raid sizes because I am too proud to learn the game on basebuilder' then you are more than welcome to do so. Otherwise, perhaps a mod can move this to another forum section and change to the title to one asking for help with the game?
Quote from: Serenity on September 14, 2016, 02:38:30 PM
Yes. Even selling doesn't necessarily help as you then have the silver.
Selling loot to traders really reduces your total wealth, as the traders always massively rip you off compared to the items base value.
An update on my raid tracking. I did a tribal start in a flat tundra map on Randy Intense to give myself a bit more of a challenge. Food, clothing, heating and mental states have all been chronic problems. Had to resort to digging up bodies from graves to get clothing when the first cold snap hit only 15 to 20 days in. Were it not for my colonists' love of parties (3 so far), I would probably have been much worse off.
That being said, after I made a mad race to get electricity unlocked, things generally have been improving. A couple well timed muffalo herds kept me going and I managed to throw together a geyser-heated greenhouse by early spring (which is not normally grow time where I'm at). At this point, 65 days in, I'm mainly short on manpower more than anything.
---
Raids were small at first, which is great since tribal starting weapons are terrible at anything more than 1v1 ratios.
The raid on the 21st was no joke, but it could have far worse. Seeing a guy with a triple rocket launcher when you only have sticks is disconcerting. Luckily, there was a nicely placed bit of rock just within aggro range and I managed to bait him into wasting the shot before the main attack was launched. During the engagement, most of the stuff outside my proto-base got torched thanks to a bunch of molatovs. Losses would have been higher if I had actually had much of value or if the fires had been allowed to burn for much longer.
The only truly serious raid was on the 48th. It probably wouldn't have been too bad but I got distracted or reckless. I had a colonist staring down a pirate sniper who had a 50-60% hit chance, but I didn't do the wise thing and pull back. The colonist was KIA'd instantly by a round to the heart. It didn't help things that they were bonded to a dog who instantly went berserk on me. With a fighting force of only 4 now, I had to send most of them to melee the dog for fear it would kill my other dog. If the enemy knew how vulnerable I was at that point, they probably would have easily won. As it stands, they focused their attention on punching random doors and burning trees (2nd bout of fire for them).
I eventually turned things around. I managed to grab a weapon or two off of them as they fell, which helped a bit. Mostly, it was playing a more risk averse version of hide and seek with them through the exterior doors than usual. Put enough rounds into a raider and they don't shoot as well anymore. Everyone except the sniper who was go-juicing their way through the punishment was either killed or captured. That includes the one melee raider who thought it was a good idea to flee the battlefield by bashing his way into the center of my base, where I promptly gunned him down.
All in all, a challenging, but survivable ordeal. The only permanent casualty was a reckless mistake more than the game being unfair. We'll see how it goes from here. I'll probably post again when the next year is through.
----
Table of raid data and an image of my base as it stands on the 65th is attached.
Date - down to the tenth of a day since game began
Raid type - faction and subtype
Raider# - number of enemies
Raider Notes - rough breakdown of the enemy composition
Colonists - total (high-tier combat / regular combat / non-combat)
Animals - total (dedicated combat / partial combat / non-combat)
Defense# - total (mortars / turrets / traps)
Wealth - total wealth at time of raid start (to nearest 1,000)
Casualties - total (killed, permanent injury, downed, minor injuries)
Special notes - subjective difficulty and major events, additional timing notes where applicable
Hopefully at least someone will find this useful for comparison.
EDIT: Oops. I realized I had a muffalo (3rd animal) for a bit that I never included. It spent raids indoors and never really got attacked, so I'm to going to ignore it, but it did exist for about D20 to D60. Sold it off in the end.
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I do think wealth is perhaps weighted too heavily when considering raid difficulty.
I recently created a custom scenario; I never get enough gold, jade, uranium, or silver in the game to actually build all the stuff you are able to build with those materials, so I thought it would be a fun idea to have a single colonist start with an abundance of these materials so I could build furniture, structures, and crafts out of them. Phoebe Chillax, because I was more focused on building, and I think I put it on Challenge or Extreme because, you know, I clearly had an advantage and didn't want it to be too boring.
First raid was 1 melee raider, as always. Second raid... hahaha... was in all seriousness about 100 raiders. Possibly more; there was a lot of overlap. Hurt my FPS pretty badly. They all fired at my pet first, and they accidentally killed probably about 10-20 of themselves in the process. I had 2 colonists by this point, one with survival rifle and one with a pistol, no armor. No traps, no turrets -- this was too early in the game to start thinking about those things seriously.
It was definitely amusing, but... my lack of colonists, weapons, traps, and other defenses should have had more weight in the equation. Abundance of wealth alone should not merit such a ridiculous massacre, even at high difficulties -- at least not that early in the game (if you're 2-3 years along with that wealth yet still can't defend yourself, that's another story). I don't want to turn raids off, nor do I want things to be too easy, but would like to play custom scenarios like this and still have a chance of survival.
On the easier difficulties, I think I would agree with weighting more toward 1v1 based on colonist numbers, rather than being wealth-based.
On harder difficulties though, the algorithm should definitely go aggressively after folks who are just sitting on mountains of gold and not building adequate defenses.
Quote from: carbon on September 15, 2016, 05:32:28 PM
On harder difficulties though, the algorithm should definitely go aggressively after folks who are just sitting on mountains of gold and not building adequate defenses.
Sure, but not
that aggressively! I had time to make two small buildings and some furniture. I was actively building a fort. Even if I had prioritized building tons of traps, I'd probably have been able to build about 10-20, and that would have optimistically taken out 5% of the raiding force if they actually hit them all. Certainly no time to research other defensive tech.
Ideally, I think you DO want absurdly hard raids on extreme at least.
What's the point of having several different difficulty settings if there's a chance they're all too easy for someone?
Might as well be called:
Easy
Very Easy
Super Easy
Extremely Easy
Two Fluffy Bunnies Eating a Rainbow Sundae Easy
The range is what gives it real meaning.
The storytellers (Pheobe, Cassandra, Randy) all decide how often events occur.
The difficulty decides how large events are, and how much they are scaled compared to the colony wealth.
The base scale of threats depends on number of colonists, number of turrets, (I think turrets are included,) wealth in buildings, and wealth in items. (Apparently it has been fixed, and wealth in items is actually included in the calculations now.)
This "threat" value is then scaled up, or down, depending on the storyteller difficulty level.
If wealth is not included in the calculations, you can build a huge base with floors made of gold, golden hospital beds, golden walls, and two colonists and only worry about a couple of raiders ever attacking.
Raiders want your stuff.
The more stuff you have, the more raiders want your stuff, and the more of them come to try to get it.
The more colonists and turrets you have, the more of a threat you pose to raiders that want your stuff, and thus the more raiders come to try to get that stuff.
Quote from: O Negative on September 12, 2016, 05:25:54 AM
I think it'd be nice if NPC factions had populations which the game pulled from when determining raid size. Right now, pirate and other factions are just an endless pit of people (which you can't always befriend), and the people in the raids hold no true value because the game can throw an infinite number at you.
I'd like to see my enemies' numbers fall with every failed raid, and rise with every successful kidnapping. I feel like it would add a lot more value to each victory, and a little less frustration when a colonist is left injured or even dead for that matter.
Perhaps an event of "full scale raid", where the storyteller throws every last adult member of the faction at you, and victory would mean the destruction of that faction. Heck, maybe that could be a new win condition :P
I don't know if it should apply towards Mechs tho :/ What do you guys think?
And how will their faction grow if we're in a backwater planet aka Rimworld that doesn't attract that many people, and reproduction takes too long to keep a sustainable colony if all their members die during offensive raids?
It's not that hard to fend off against raiders (I use hallways filled with traps to weaken them then kill em in a kill box, does this make my statement null?)
Wouldn't that make the game too easy then?
Quote from: nccvoyager on September 15, 2016, 06:35:06 PM
If wealth is not included in the calculations, you can build a huge base with floors made of gold, golden hospital beds, golden walls, and two colonists and only worry about a couple of raiders ever attacking.
Again, I'm not saying wealth shouldn't be included in the calculation. I'm just saying it should probably be weighted differently. Yes, extreme difficulty should be extremely difficult. This was not extremely difficult. This was hilariously, absurdly impossible.
What might be a cool mechanic, come to think of it, would be that wealth is factored into the equation (and as much as it is now)
only if a raider escapes back to their faction. Then you can imagine a narrative where they tell their faction about your vast wealth, and they amass a giant army to take it. It would mean that the more wealth you had, the more important it would be to leave no survivors. Each faction could have some sort of "perceived wealth" amount that updates whenever one of them "visits" your colony and makes it out alive.
Quote from: nccvoyager on September 15, 2016, 06:35:06 PM
If wealth is not included in the calculations, you can build a huge base with floors made of gold, golden hospital beds, golden walls, and two colonists and only worry about a couple of raiders ever attacking.
The problem is that certain high value loot like AI cores and scyther claws make the next raid already noticeably more difficult. The jumps in raid strength just seem to abrupt in some cases.
Quote from: Gremdavel on September 15, 2016, 10:36:53 PM
Again, I'm not saying wealth shouldn't be included in the calculation. I'm just saying it should probably be weighted differently. Yes, extreme difficulty should be extremely difficult. This was not extremely difficult. This was hilariously, absurdly impossible.
You were using a modified game that gave you an incredibly inflated start. That is not reasonable feedback for game balance. If the raid is too large, then you can use all that inflated wealth by leaving it outside for them to steal then go away.
Quote from: nccvoyager on September 15, 2016, 06:35:06 PM
The storytellers (Pheobe, Cassandra, Randy) all decide how often events occur.
The difficulty decides how large events are, and how much they are scaled compared to the colony wealth.
The base scale of threats depends on number of colonists, number of turrets, (I think turrets are included,) wealth in buildings, and wealth in items. (Apparently it has been fixed, and wealth in items is actually included in the calculations now.)
This "threat" value is then scaled up, or down, depending on the storyteller difficulty level.
Correct. Which is why I made a modded storyteller that uses different raid scaling to maintain the challenge after the first couple of seasons...
Turrets are not included above their base material value.
There was never any bug with colony wealth. Just people with enough knowledge in how to use the scenario but none in how the game creates raids, giving themselves a ton of free stuff at the start and then wondering why the first raid spawned was the same 1 guy, when the game is hard coded to send your first raid as 35 combat points each time.
Second raid is 50% of your normal raid points from wealth and colonists. Which is why it will be stupidly large if you give yourself all the free gear.
Quote from: Britnoth on September 16, 2016, 07:14:40 AM
You were using a modified game that gave you an incredibly inflated start. That is not reasonable feedback for game balance.
Well, because the scenario editor is part of the "vanilla" game, I respectfully disagree. I understand your perspective, and Tynan may certainly disagree that wealth should be weighted differently, but that doesn't make my feedback invalid or unreasonable.
Gremdavel, do you happen to still have the save file to go back and quantify total wealth, date of second raid and whether this really was on extreme difficulty?
Look at it from the raider's perspective a moment.
Which sounds like a more attractive target to you? The landing pod that crash landed with three guys that have a few days of food and some basic materials between them or the landing pod that crash landed with one guy with a fortune in gold and jade?
Quote from: carbon on September 16, 2016, 12:19:51 PM
Gremdavel, do you happen to still have the save file to go back and quantify total wealth, date of second raid and whether this really was on extreme difficulty?
Unfortunately I think it's been overwritten, but I still have the scenario template saved. I am fairly positive it was extreme difficulty, and certain it was the 2nd raid. And the wealth... super immense. Absurdly so. So much gold, silver, jade, and uranium that I had to set them as items nearby instead of starting items, and had to set the colonist to start on the ground instead of a pod because apparently when there are that many stacks on the ground, landing pods glitch out and my colonist couldn't make it to the map. I probably made an error when I immediately created a stockpile underneath all of it.
This was, of course, all just for fun and to see what would happen. And to see what gold walls and jade doors look like, etc.
*Builds El Dorado (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Dorado)*
*A bunch of Conquistadors show up thinking they own the place*
Seems accurate enough. :D
Except they didn't even steal anything! After they killed my colonists they proceeded to destroy as many structures as possible and then I got a message that they'd felt satisfied with the amount of destruction they'd done, and they left. I guess they were in more of a "wealth is forbidden in this land!" mindset than a "give us all your money!" one.
Quote from: Gremdavel on September 16, 2016, 02:17:04 PM
Except they didn't even steal anything! After they killed my colonists they proceeded to destroy as many structures as possible and then I got a message that they'd felt satisfied with the amount of destruction they'd done, and they left. I guess they were in more of a "wealth is forbidden in this land!" mindset than a "give us all your money!" one.
A fair enough point. They should take what they can carry when they leave (or summon muffalos to load up if they kill all encountered resistance).
Quote from: Britnoth on September 16, 2016, 07:14:40 AMTurrets are not included above their base material value.
Ah, okay. Well, turrets are pretty powerful then...
As for the wealth, that explains it. I didn't realize the first attack is
always a single raider.
Quote from: Gremdavel on September 16, 2016, 11:02:42 AM
Quote from: Britnoth on September 16, 2016, 07:14:40 AM
You were using a modified game that gave you an incredibly inflated start. That is not reasonable feedback for game balance.
Well, because the scenario editor is part of the "vanilla" game, I respectfully disagree. I understand your perspective, and Tynan may certainly disagree that wealth should be weighted differently, but that doesn't make my feedback invalid or unreasonable.
???
*changes game rules using editor, complains game is now unfair*
:o
What.
:o
I don't even.
:o
Quote from: kuledude on September 11, 2016, 12:12:47 PM
My raid expirence:
First raid- 1 melee guy
Second raid-1~3 melee guys
Third raid-3 weak ranged guys
Fourth raid-7 heavily armoured and heavily armed guys(power helmets, good kevlars, Snipers, M4's)
The jump is real.
Im guessing exploiting and cheesing is the only way to play this game.
That "jump" is caused by the fact that the first waves of raids have hardcoded limitations on how much stuff they can field. So they actually don't scale with the stuff you have all that much, which means that if you've build up like mad.... you are going to have a bad time when the storyteller is finally unchained, especially on higher difficulties.
Also to Gremdavel your feedback is invalid. If I were to increase melee damage to 3000% with the vanilla editor I'm not allowed to complain that melee does too much damage(because I
modified the game to a point of inbalance rather than the base game being unbalanced), the same is true for the weight calculation of wealth when you
modify the game to start you with boat loads of items(because you are creating the imbalance yourself rather than there being an imbalance in the game).
The scenario editor should be seen as a basic modding tool within rimworld and not like an always balanced vanilla enhancer. You can seriously screw yourself with that scenario editor, try starting on ice sheets with a scenario that forbids hunting and taming, and doesn't give you any starting food. There is no way to balance the potential of those kind of scenarios being made(aside from making any non-balls to the wall challenge scenario a cakewalk).
I however fully agree with the fact that raiders should raid the place leaving with whatever they can rather than trying to wreck the place and then leave empty handed. But from my own experience they seem to do that already. I currently have a colony with an open stockpile(basically just an area with pillars and a roof) and if I don't seriously harm the raiders(like killing one or two) before they get somewhere in the vicinity of the stockpile they will just snatch whatever valuables I have and leave. Which due to the set up of my base can happen from time to time depending on which direction the raid comes.
I get that you disagree with me, but that does not mean my feedback is invalid. The scenario editor is a wonderful tool for discovering things about the game -- it can be used as a user-driven QA environment, great for discovering edge cases. Perhaps the game's behavior which I described is exactly what's intended. That may easily be the case. But that's up to the developers. They can use my feedback to make a judgement call based on their vision for the game. The developers may disagree that wealth should be weighted differently, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't give that feedback based on extreme cases I can set up with the game's own tools.
Quote from: Trenix on September 10, 2016, 04:33:20 PM
Quote from: nccvoyager on September 07, 2016, 05:20:43 PM
Raids are calculated in A15C taking into account colonist count, and wealth in buildings. The game is also supposed to take into account wealth in items, which means that you should be getting that type of raid regardless of whether you have stone lying around, or have built walls out of it. Currently, a bug causes the game to not take into account the wealth in items when calculating raids.
Setting up deadfall traps, even if they are out of wood, would help defend against this type of raid. Getting turrets up and running would also help.
I tried removing the story teller from random to the one that allows you to have some breathing room in-between conflicts. Nothing changed. I had a toxic fallout then a volcanic winter, then a raid which was godlike with top tier weapons and gear and additionally outnumbering us. Sorry, but this game is completely imbalanced. Seeing my whole colony fall because of something I couldn't even fight back with, is ridiculous. Deadfall traps are also useless. The enemy is not stupid enough to go to them and it seems like my colonist are the one ones who run into deadfall traps, so I don't even bother.
Game is fun, but there is an awful lot of lategame content which is very difficult to get to. I'm also getting so fed up with having incompetent colonists, who can't haul, can't clean, can't fight, just too frustrating. Rimworld isn't funny anymore, it's getting annoying. Raids come, don't stop destroying your base until its gone, then they don't just steal your resource, but also all your colonists that are capable of recovering what you have left. Surviving with 1-2 colonist, is a guarantee loss unless you cheat. Also having two raids one after the other with intense equipment and numbers, nah no balance within the game. Not in any story teller. The way raids are calculated, just isn't fair. Also creating turrets? With so many wind turbines and batteries, I can barely keep my base powered.
Yes baby, the game is meant to kick your ass and actually have losing conditions. Try an easier difficulty.
Second update for my quantitative raid tracking colony covering D65 - D120. First update (D0 - D65) can be found here (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=25790.msg264398#msg264398) for those interested.
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Non-Raid overview:
Given I'm on Randy Intense, a lull in the action was inevitable. The second summer and fall were that lull. One infestation occurred on D67, but I didn't even bother to include it on the raid table since it was far enough away to not present an active threat. Dispatched with only one minor bite from a scarab.
A slaver must have heard my earlier calls for more manpower, because they arrived with two slave who actually had decent stats for once. Bought both eagerly and put them to work.
Winter was tough as far as weather. Had recurring brown outs due to lack of sunlight. Repeatedly forced to shut off nearly everything but the heaters to keep my plants and colonists warm. Had enough wood fuel to get through it and a few solar flares without cutting things too close. Power situation is much improved by end of the second year, so I don't anticipate a repeat going forward.
I'm still a bit lacking on things to sell (growing things being tough in the tundra). So my wealth and ability to buy shiny things has been reduced compared to what I'm used to, but I have all the necessities at this point. We're definitely in mid-game territory.
Ler, the colonist who keeps hitting on all my females, finally has a lover. Maybe he'll finally stop having a -15 mood de-buff from all the rejections. Makes my life easier.
The colonists must have sensed the two year anniversary of the colony. They started a party to celebrate (pictured below).
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Raid overview:
The first raid after the summer lull was on D81, but I ended up being so disappointed by it that I willingly accepted a request for help from a model that same day. The second raid was certainly beefier, but still not above the 2:1 ratio. They were dispatched with only a few bits of wall knocked down and singed trees.
The D84 warg raid was interesting at least. They slaughtered a visiting trader and a prisoner I had released seconds before they came. However, so long as they are spread out around my base, it's easy enough to pick them off one at a time. Took 24h to do, but I dispatched them all without casualties. I still never figured out where the last two wargs went.
Compared to wargs, D93 muffalos running through thick snow are a joke. Poor traders.
The D100 Poison ship is the sort of event I would savescum if I were a less reputable player. I should have just taken potshots at it with sniper rifles until they were all dead. Instead, I stood way too close to it behind some walls and hoped a single EMP would somehow protect me. I realized what a horrible mistake that was when 6 mechs popped out on all different sides of the ship. The EMPer managed to stun a single scyther before he and another colonist were inferno cannoned out of cover and quickly gunned down. I tried to be a hero and save one of the downed, but my surrogate hero met a similar fate as the two before. Don't EVER be a hero when mechs are involved.
I really thought I was going to be completely overrun. Even Randy thought so. He spawned friendlies to "help", but 3 of the 4 only had pistols and they spawned on the opposite side of the map.
Thanks for nothing, Randy!
Good news is I was actually smart enough to position 2 snipers back from the main group to add supplemental sniper fire to the mix. They at least helped take out a few and provide distractions for the rest. A little praying and spraying and I somehow managed to pull through with only the initial two dead (of a total of 7 seven combat). My surrogate hero actually made a full recovery, but his savior took some flame to the eye.
Boomrat raids are fun. But again, spread out, in thick snow, not nearly the terrible threat you think they should be. Thick snow is the MVP of my colony this year.
The D115 sapper raid was the first sapper to actually do some real sapping. Three grenadiers concentrating on one spot can cut through slate walls like butter. Didn't help that I had two friendly fire incidents early on. My doors are still mostly unpowered stone, so repositioning to counter an enemy that's made it inside was tough. They made it as far as my prison before I could get a decent firing position on them. Sadly, one of the prisoners who died was the grandfather of Ler, who already lost his father in the first year. Ler is probably smart to choose non-violence.
Now I have fallout to deal with. Not that it matters much. Tundra never had many plants or animals to start with.
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Year #2 Major casualties:
2 Deaths
1 Burned eye (replaced with bionic)
1 Destroyed big toe
Raid table and current image of base attached.
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Finishing up my raid tracking colony:
D0 - D65 (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=25790.msg264398#msg264398)
D65 - D120 (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=25790.msg265187#msg265187)
D120 - D183(end) is here
Save game at endpoint can be found below (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=25790.msg266105#msg266105).
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Non-raid overview:
Spent the first half of the summer indoors due to fallout. For late Summer and early Fall, I did the best I could to greatly expand my indoor growing operation before the cold set in again. Aimed to ease cashflow problems with excess food and goods to sell. My stonecutters struggled to keep up as the rock chunks were getting farther and farther from base.
Finally finished the Deep drilling scanner which took ungodly amounts of research since I'm a Tribal. Spent most of the Winter trying to locate a plasteel deposit in preparation for building a ship out of here. Found one after about 12 exploratory drill rigs hit steel instead. With that running and my grow operation producing lots of food to sell, my wealth really starts spiking. In the first 10 seasons it reached 150k, that doubles to 300k within another 2 seasons.
I get ready to build the ship, but I still haven't had a psychic ship land at any point, so I call in a set of 4 exotic traders at the same time. After some price shopping, my man "Kazz" hooks me up with an AI core for a "measly" 3,806 silver. Sure, Kazz, whatever you say. I also start buying up bionics around that time point.
Turns out ships are actually really steel-costly to build. I desperately try to pump out enough of the stuff during the Spring to make the 3rd year anniversary deadline, but it just can't be done. Probably could have made it if I hadn't decided to include all the cosmetic enhancements on my ship, but spending all this effort just to leave in a flying pogo stick simply wouldn't do.
There was another infestation in there at some point. Too far and too exposed to be memorable.
----
Raid overview:
Randy sends a pitiful 5 raiders on D120, who stand around like idiots getting fallout sickness before attacking.
Two sets of mech raids on D132 and D147. Can't figure out why, but all the mechs have only 60% movement despite being in perfect health. In the first instance, Randy tries to favor the mechs by giving them a manhunter hare as back-up. In the second instance, he sends me both friendlies and visitors, but counterbalances a bit by invoking a Zzztt... event while the fight is playing out. I have enough high quality weaponry at this point that the mechs get dealt with without much drama.
I captured a friendly tribal in the D147 battle to try to get at least one tribal raid by the end, but it wasn't to be.
D171 raid got partly distracted by my exploratory drill rigs far from base. The raid in general is a good example of why raids simply don't do as much damage once you have decent weaponry. Once you can essentially guarantee most of the enemies take at least modest damage in the initial confrontation, they are hobbled by wounds the rest of the fight and never pose a threat.
Psychic ship at D177 was too late to provide the AI core to my ship. I wasn't going to take the chance of a close quarter exchange like in year 2. I tried setting up some explosive traps around it and used exclusively snipers to engage. The traps were really lackluster. Only one was triggered and did pitiful damage. Good news is 4 decent quality snipers make mechs a non-threat.
One last raid on D179 looked to be a bruiser. 4 Triple rocket launchers (triprocks) made me think I might actually be in trouble. Then, 3 seconds later, two traders I had called a few days earlier drop in. One of them was only a few tiles away from the raiders. The trader AI really can't deal with threats in-transit, so they were largely on the receiving end of the punishment, but at least they baited all 4 triprocks without me having to lift a finger. What was left of the raid didn't hold up to the first exchange of gunfire I had with them.
----
No major casualties this year, so the totals for the colony are:
3 Dead (1 to sniper fire, 2 to inferno mechs)
2 Permanent injuries (both bionic'd by the end)
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Synopsis:
At no point did Randy Intense ever send a 2:1, Pirates:Colonists ratio raid or higher at me. It's possible that's due in part to my lower wealth (tundra is harsh for tribals), but playing on an easier biome would simply have made getting better weapons and gear a breeze. I never did unlock making charge rifles or power armor. Not that it mattered.
Of the deaths, all were essentially preventable.
Manhunter raids, while there's snow on the ground, not a threat.
Friendlies, while helpful in theory, need to come more prepared for whatever threat they are dealing with and spawn closer.
Even if a woman rejects your advances the first 25 times, you should keep asking. She'll marry you eventually. ;D
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Raid table, base at endpoint and my Cadillac of flying pogo sticks attached below. Save file will be one post down (attachment limits).
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The save file in case someone wants to extract harder data than what I've provided.
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