Hello one and all! Colonist tier from Kickstarter here, wanting to give my impressions of the game so far. I've played two colonies so far and as far as I know have experienced all the game systems. I've only played on Cassandra Classic. Mostly this will be criticism, but please take it as constructive! I like the direction of the game so far and hope for great things.
Topic I: Survival and Progression
It seems survival is pretty easy actually. This was a little contrary to my expectations, which are perhaps too hardened by Dwarf Fortress and similar games. It's nearly impossible to run out of food, even in the early stages of the game. This might have to do with the very fast pace of food production, coupled with sky-food and easy access to emergency bushes. I'm guessing this is waiting on the cooking system, since then you can have progressively more difficult but more psychologically valuable foodstuffs.
On a similar note, the (non-combat) random events of the game presented no threat in survival terms. They were more annoying than anything. There was a mild psychological threat from power-failure related unhappiness though. I mean, not every random event should be earth-shattering, but they really didn't cause me to alter my gameplay at all. Things I would love the game to encourage me to do for gameplay reasons: Build fire breaks. Seperate my power networks. Retreat underground or indoors due to intolerable conditions. Be forced outside. Change up what the viable survival strategies are. It's alright if the basics are very robust if the basics don't always work or can't get you what you really want.
But yeah, progression. It seems like most everything is available off the bat. You can get trading and sentry turrets and basically everything but hydroponics up and running very quickly. And you don't need any help surviving as detailed above. So it's pretty much just expanding your infrastructure to support more colonists (that you don't really need anyway) and to make your colony more defensible. it feels a little weird to be crash landed and being able to build automatic sentry turrets right away out of a generic resource. There's clearly more progression intended in terms of armaments and tech - Uranium, shells, and missiles make that clear. But even the basics are pretty extravagant.
On a similar note... I didn't really feel like I was improving my armaments with the raiders, even after getting the energy weapons. All the weapons other than Pistols felt pretty competitive with each other, it's only grenades and molotovs that mix things up! And I mean...not just in terms of incinerating the mass graves.
Topic II: UI
Painting buildings felt clumsy. I kept expecting right click to delete blueprints of the same type as i just laid down. It would certainly be easier not to have to go into the Cancel tool to remove errant wall blueprints.
The drafting mechanic works well, but functionally speaking in an attack I want everyone drafted anyway. Even those I don't want fighting needed to be drafted in order to hide. And then after an attack sometimes I would miss someone when I was de-drafting. All in all I think the game needs a draft-all on/off switch. A good game to consider in this respect is Evil Genius, which used a three-level alert system: green was all clear. Yellow alert would alert your minions to arm themselves then return to their duties, while Red Alert would cause your minions to sprint around the base actively searching for enemies to engage. This sort of tiered alert is already fairly applicable given the seemingly optimal strategy of simply turning off sentry turrets when there's no attack.
Topic III: Random stuff
The weapon names threw me a bit. The m24 in particular i assumed to be some vaguely improved future m16. It wasn't until I used it and noted its low rate of fire that I looked at the sprite more closely and realized it was a sniper rifle. Given the number of different weapon types that seem projected for Rimworld I would suggest genericizing the weapon names ('assault rifle' 'sniper rifle') or at least making the weapon role clear from the name('m16 assault rifle').
The rain effects are awesome, but if you dig into solid terrain it looks weird having rain between your corridors and rooms. I would suggest blocking the rain effect on all mountain tiles and seeing if that looks better, assuming everyone doesn't think i'm crazy on this one ;)
Weapon ( & tool?) stockpiling seemed awkward. It is nice to see exactly what weapons you have, but it sure takes up a lot of space to rack or stockpile all the weapons you get compared to what feels 'realistic'.
Electrical systems...seem a little fiddly. I love the basic systems but building the grid seems inelegant. It just feels messy some of the time, i get power cables next to eachother, I have to knock down rock to build wall in its place for electrical reasons...Doors of all things have power cabling..? because they have to for power flow reasons? I don't really know what to recommend here to be honest.
Job priorities seem a little screwy. I felt forced into doing manual priorities because many tasks just never got done otherwise (research & cleaning for example.)
Ok, cool. Thanks for the feedback.
I actually did have rain blocked on the mountain. It does look weird.
You're likely very good at the game seeing as you're a DF veteran. Maybe Cleopatra or Randy would be better for you for now. The game will know more ways to hurt you in future versions.
Quote from: TheDeadlyShoe on January 28, 2014, 10:50:15 AM
The weapon names threw me a bit. The m24 in particular i assumed to be some vaguely improved future m16.
I lol'd hard :P vaguely improved future M16 is called M4 by the way ;)
I'm definitely against using generic "machine carbine, carbine machine" names. They are so... boring. Adding a type to naming is a better idea, but would really hurt with longer names. Best way to deal with it is to just add descriptions and stats.
Other point of yours - using RMB to cancel - I would also disagree with. RMB to cancel command is way more standard for me - and I believe for most people of general audience, but may be mistaken in that. I do agree there could and should be a way to cancel while planning tho - but I would rather see it under alt+LMB.
I have almost starved a couple of times, but it is fairly difficult if you don't get your hydroponic farms rolling quickly. Though a blight will ruin your day if you are running just enough. But again, the hydroponic farms produce fast enough with some emergency random harvesting to get you through. I did have someone go crazy during my most recent game with a combination blight/raider attack. But that was because I had him rescue someone and then forgot to de-recruit him in the heat of the fight and the post cleanup.
Fires can get out of hand as well if you don't aggressively set your home area. I did appreciate "Lucky"'s commitment to taking a nap in the burning bed next to the burning wall. On that topic, I liked the tutor tip that the home area is a trigger for firefighting.
New patch comments:
I mostly really like the new dumping area mechanics. I was really interested to see how raiders were using my dumping areas against me after I had cleared out all of the gun range cover. But then I got to thinking that I could do the same thing with intelligent dumping area placement and get ghetto sand bags out of the deal. Bonus.
One other thing on dumping grounds, the seem to have higher priority even at normal priority for corpses than graves do. I was confused for a while when raiders kept getting piled in there instead of my fresh mass graveyard.
Trading, however, I'm not so happy about. It seems excessively gamey at the moment. First, the currency as an item seems odd. I get the general idea behind having to have items on the landing pad, but I don't see what it's adding as a mechanic. As it is, you just make that a priority storage space and have several so you have access to everything for trading. I found it particularly annoying when it was time to sell off my haul of pistols. I had to clear out a landing pad first, then destroy the equipment racks I had been storing them in to get them moved. It got to be so tedious, I just gave up on trading anything other than slaves.
Then there's the trade interface itself. The drag left and right thing was not intuitive. I could kind of understand if the mechanic was used somewhere else, but it's unique at the moment. For me, it's also not terribly precise. The center zero tauntingly suggests you can enter something. Could we just get some text boxes? For that matter, could we get a bit more detailed accounting of the trades, x units + y unit cost = z total cost. Also some way to work multipart trades, ie buy my slaves with tasty potatoes or a stack of pistols.
I have a vague ambition to redo the trade interface some day.
Quote from: dd0029 on January 28, 2014, 02:23:48 PM
I have almost starved a couple of times, but it is fairly difficult if you don't get your hydroponic farms rolling quickly. Though a blight will ruin your day if you are running just enough. But again, the hydroponic farms produce fast enough with some emergency random harvesting to get you through. I did have someone go crazy during my most recent game with a combination blight/raider attack. But that was because I had him rescue someone and then forgot to de-recruit him in the heat of the fight and the post cleanup.
Fires can get out of hand as well if you don't aggressively set your home area. I did appreciate "Lucky"'s commitment to taking a nap in the burning bed next to the burning wall. On that topic, I liked the tutor tip that the home area is a trigger for firefighting.
New patch comments:
I mostly really like the new dumping area mechanics. I was really interested to see how raiders were using my dumping areas against me after I had cleared out all of the gun range cover. But then I got to thinking that I could do the same thing with intelligent dumping area placement and get ghetto sand bags out of the deal. Bonus.
One other thing on dumping grounds, the seem to have higher priority even at normal priority for corpses than graves do. I was confused for a while when raiders kept getting piled in there instead of my fresh mass graveyard.
Trading, however, I'm not so happy about. It seems excessively gamey at the moment. First, the currency as an item seems odd. I get the general idea behind having to have items on the landing pad, but I don't see what it's adding as a mechanic. As it is, you just make that a priority storage space and have several so you have access to everything for trading. I found it particularly annoying when it was time to sell off my haul of pistols. I had to clear out a landing pad first, then destroy the equipment racks I had been storing them in to get them moved. It got to be so tedious, I just gave up on trading anything other than slaves.
Then there's the trade interface itself. The drag left and right thing was not intuitive. I could kind of understand if the mechanic was used somewhere else, but it's unique at the moment. For me, it's also not terribly precise. The center zero tauntingly suggests you can enter something. Could we just get some text boxes? For that matter, could we get a bit more detailed accounting of the trades, x units + y unit cost = z total cost. Also some way to work multipart trades, ie buy my slaves with tasty potatoes or a stack of pistols.
i don't know why you were destroying the equipment racks, you can just forbid certain weapons from being in the racks or make the racks low priority (and have somebody hauling) also you don't need to clear out launch pads you can build more (it took me a while to try that) or you could have multiple small custom stock piles on top of the launch pad not just one over the whole thing.
I don't mind the trading interface, although just typing on a specific number would be good, but the thing i don't like about it now is the noise, it used to sound fun but now its annoying
That's good to know about the weapon racks. It hadn't occurred to me to click on them to see their priority. Though, with the new stockpile areas, I just designate areas along wider halls as single strip drop areas for weapons instead of using equipment racks. They get stored and I don't need to "pay" to have them stored.
On the landing pad thing, it did occur to me that I could have built new ones after going through all that falderol, but by that point it would have messed up the whole fung shui of the area. ;D I didn't really need to trade for anything by then anyway. The tediousness of the whole process from beginning to end is odd. Prior to the landing pad thing, I didn't mind the trading tedium as much.
that is a good point about the weapon racks being pay to store, they used to be the only way to store weapons, but now they are sort of redundant, maybe the weapons should be counted as clutter/mess if they aren't stored in racks (maybe they are???) so they have a use
Quote from: thestalkinghead on January 28, 2014, 04:06:55 PM
that is a good point about the weapon racks being pay to store, they used to be the only way to store weapons, but now they are sort of redundant, maybe the weapons should be counted as clutter/mess if they aren't stored in racks (maybe they are???) so they have a use
They're actually pointless atm. I'm hoping in the future to set it up so shelving has a general-use purpose of increasing storage capacity. They would hold way more than dumping crap on the ground, which is why you'd spend effort to build them.
Quote from: Tynan on January 28, 2014, 11:00:20 AM
Ok, cool. Thanks for the feedback.
I actually did have rain blocked on the mountain. It does look weird.
You're likely very good at the game seeing as you're a DF veteran. Maybe Cleopatra or Randy would be better for you for now. The game will know more ways to hurt you in future versions.
Awesome..:)
Hmm reading my post it might have been overly harsh :(
And I don't know how that mystical hanging sentence got there.
I do enjoy the game and certainly don't regret kickstartering!
I will check out Cleopatra and Randy for my next run throughs. It is after all more than possible I was simply fortunate in my food scrounging.
QuoteI'm definitely against using generic "machine carbine, carbine machine" names. They are so... boring. Adding a type to naming is a better idea, but would really hurt with longer names. Best way to deal with it is to just add descriptions and stats.
I agree that it's less interesting, but IMO there's a twofold problem: first is making it quickly apparent to the user exactly what each weapon does, and second is the incongruity of a 1970s selection of guns in the space future...
Actually TheDeadlyShoe, Tynan DOES have an explanation for having 1970's based weapons in the game. Basically humans can come from all eras of time periods: ie Medival, Industrial Revolution, Modern, Space-Age, Futuristic, etc...
He has a document explaining all of this, but I can't remember where he posted it. If someone else knows about what I'm talking about, could you link it. I believe its the Cyrosleep one.
Quote from: palandus on January 29, 2014, 12:08:20 AM
Actually TheDeadlyShoe, Tynan DOES have an explanation for having 1970's based weapons in the game. Basically humans can come from all eras of time periods: ie Medival, Industrial Revolution, Modern, Space-Age, Futuristic, etc...
He has a document explaining all of this, but I can't remember where he posted it. If someone else knows about what I'm talking about, could you link it. I believe its the Cyrosleep one.
Here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pIZyKif0bFbBWten4drrm7kfSSfvBoJPgG9-ywfN8j8/pub
And Here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fUO3KKbAbTxMP1lqphnnodY0NPoOVblCUkDw-54MDUc/pub
And Here:
Quote
The core idea in the RimWorld universe is diversity. In this setting, humanity is spread across the galaxy, yet lacks any way of traveling or communicating faster than light. Combined with the fact that stellar civilizations regress (due to war or plague) as often as they progress, this means that someone traveling between stars may end up interacting with people at any level of development, from pre-agricultural tribes to transcendent machine gods.
He says it many other places as-well.
Quote from: Tynan on January 28, 2014, 04:13:31 PM
They're actually pointless atm. I'm hoping in the future to set it up so shelving has a general-use purpose of increasing storage capacity. They would hold way more than dumping crap on the ground, which is why you'd spend effort to build them.
I dont know if this is a cheap suggestion, but I would suggest allowing guns of the same type to stack in a gun rack
I know there's a variety of tech levels in the game; that wasn't the point. Crossbows <----> Ray Guns is fine by me. It is more that the future specifically uses 1970s NATO guns ;)
Yeah, admittedly it doesn't make that much sense that they'd use these specific weapon designs -
Maybe!
I mean, look. The AK series rifle has been in use for 63 years and isn't slowing down. The Colt 1911 is passing its 102nd birthday. Firearms don't really go obsolete. So I think it's actually reasonable that people in hundreds - maybe thousands - of years would use some of the same weapon designs if their tech level matched it. Especially if many of them were in longsleep for hundreds or thousands of those years, to skip social upheavals or just to travel slowly between stars.
Exactly.
So does that mean we will be getting some flintlock pistols and some blunderbusses? Or maybe a hand-powered gatling gun?
Quote from: palandus on January 29, 2014, 02:18:10 PM
So does that mean we will be getting some flintlock pistols and some blunderbusses? Or maybe a hand-powered gatling gun?
It's quite likely. Though bow and arrow will likely come first (tribal raiders).
Bows & Arrows are unlikely though, unless there are natives. Ancient Firearms aren't likely, because what are the chances of discovering blackpower if their tech level is so low.
Bows and Arrows are more likely than finding 1970's NATO weapons though.
Bows and Arrows have been around for a very long time, from the tribal era, to the medival era. Heck, even bows and arrows are used today for sport, and sometimes hunting.
Though what is truly unlikely is seeing any weapon from Russian Overkill occurring in this universe... one can dream though...