Hello,
I'm struggling to find any information on what adds to wealth and how much and how to reduce it or keep it low.
Does for instance research add to wealth?
Help.
I'm not completely sure but I think everything physical is accountable. Loot, food, materials lying around in stockpiles, things that you built, furniture, walls, everything.. Probably.
I read before that some people de-zone their stockpiles. I also read before that some people resort to burning loot they have no use for with a molotov to keep their wealth down. Sooo yeah..
Loot is supposed to be what the AI uses to balance the game. It isn't shown directly for a reason... be careful trying to manipulate is, as you can end up cheesing the game.
I think you can reduce it by removing expensive things from your "home" zone and dezoning stockpiles.
The idea that storytellers use only (or even primarily) wealth to determine how to scale threats is a myth.
The algorithm is quite a bit more complex than that and takes into account wealth, population, defensive strength, and several factors related to the time since the colony has taken damage, had people downed, or been at given population counts.
It would probably be a waste to spend a bunch of time trying to cheese wealth lower. Just enjoy the game.
Quote from: Tynan on June 22, 2016, 12:01:32 AM
The idea that storytellers use only (or even primarily) wealth to determine how to scale threats is a myth.
The algorithm is quite a bit more complex than that and takes into account wealth, population, defensive strength, and several factors related to the time since the colony has taken damage, had people downed, or been at given population counts.
It would probably be a waste to spend a bunch of time trying to cheese wealth lower. Just enjoy the game.
Still worth talking about wealth mechanics. I've always been a bit puzzled by the "Very Low / Low Expectations" moodlets and exactly what a room "fit" for a greedy person would be.
Quote from: Tynan on June 22, 2016, 12:01:32 AM
The idea that storytellers use only (or even primarily) wealth to determine how to scale threats is a myth.
The algorithm is quite a bit more complex than that and takes into account wealth, population, defensive strength, and several factors related to the time since the colony has taken damage, had people downed, or been at given population counts.
It would probably be a waste to spend a bunch of time trying to cheese wealth lower. Just enjoy the game.
Seems like Milon has been trying to debunk this for ages. Hopefully this new post of yours will help him in his endless war!
Speaking of wealth, how much does a greedy colonist need to be happy? The best I got was a -3 reaction, with statues and a royal bed.
Quote from: Wex on June 22, 2016, 08:24:29 AM
Speaking of wealth, how much does a greedy colonist need to be happy? The best I got was a -3 reaction, with statues and a royal bed.
Thought they just needed more than other people, so maybe try lowering values of the fellow colonists to increase the difference.
Quote from: Wex on June 22, 2016, 08:24:29 AM
Speaking of wealth, how much does a greedy colonist need to be happy? The best I got was a -3 reaction, with statues and a royal bed.
I can see where the confusion comes from, but wealth doesn't actually satisfy greedy colonists. Or rather, wealth is only a part of it. What you need to look at is the room's impressiveness (the first stat). This is a combination of wealth, space, cleanliness and beauty. So in order to satisfy a greedy colonist, you need a large-ish (5x6 is usually enough, you can go lower if you can boost the other stats high enough), clean, beautiful room with valuable items/furniture.
The flavor text for the Greedy buff/debuff sort of hints at this: "I'm greedy. I want a really
impressive bedroom!"
Ok, now it's clearer. The room is in fact a standard issue 5x5 room.
But I am happier with her -3 debuff (pacifist pawn) than the -8 of my best shooter's jealousy.
Quote from: Tynan on June 22, 2016, 12:01:32 AM
The idea that storytellers use only (or even primarily) wealth to determine how to scale threats is a myth.
The algorithm is quite a bit more complex than that and takes into account wealth, population, defensive strength, and several factors related to the time since the colony has taken damage, had people downed, or been at given population counts.
This is nonsense, at least for alpha14.
Wealth IS the primary source of threat points. Although colonists are part of the equation, they essentially count as 3636 silver worth of threat each which can be less than the value of some artworks. In my games, in the beginning the colonists count for ~50% of the threat points (especially since the first 2000 wealth doesn't generate threat) and later the colonists have usually contributed something like 10% of the threat points.
Defensive strength isn't part of the equation. Time since colony has taken damage is not part of the equation. Other than slow ramp-up multiplier that increases over time and gets pushed down a notch whenever colonists are killed or incapacitated, no historical values are part of the equation.
All haulable items in visible parts of the map and the apparel worn by your colonists are counted as your wealth in full market value. Your buildings are counted at half their market value.
You're welcome to reverse engineer StoryTellerUtility::DefaultParmsNow() to check out the algorithm if you disagree.
So turret spam is still the best way to defend your base. And now that we can wheel turrets and batteries around they can be useful against ship parts and sieges too!
Quote from: Tynan on June 22, 2016, 12:01:32 AM
The idea that storytellers use only (or even primarily) wealth to determine how to scale threats is a myth.
Quote
This is nonsense, at least for alpha14.
You do realize that the person you just quoted is the author of the game, right?
Quote from: DoomBudgie on August 06, 2016, 02:00:27 PM
Quote from: Tynan on June 22, 2016, 12:01:32 AM
The idea that storytellers use only (or even primarily) wealth to determine how to scale threats is a myth.
Quote
This is nonsense, at least for alpha14.
You do realize that the person you just quoted is the author of the game, right?
Shhh... it's funny watching him tell Tynan to reverse engineer it. :)
20 years of gaming and this is the first time I see someone claiming to know more about the game then the game developer!
Quote from: FalconBR on August 06, 2016, 02:34:05 PM
20 years of gaming and this is the first time I see someone claiming to know more about the game then the game developer!
I take it you haven't played many MMOs? Devs tend to balance the numbers to the point that they're comfortable with their own style of play, but the wider gamer population
always finds ways to break stuff.
You go, mzbear!
Speaking of, that explains the insane pawn power ramp up on ice sheets in A13. Not only did freezing caravans disgorge tons of value in the dead of winter, but raiding parties never made it far enough to down colonists or cause damage.
Tynan fixed that, though. Traders or raiders don't seem to show up beyond certain extreme temperatures in A14.
Anyway, although it's possible to accumulate enough wealth so that tougher raids appear, the actual rate at which you can do so is limited. There's only so many hours a day that colonists will work. Food stockpiles get used up. Items wear out and need to be replaced.
After the wealth and colonist points have been added together and scaled, anything over 1000 gets halved. So it takes twice as much wealth to get from 1000 points to 2000, assuming other factors are constant.
Quote from: mzbear on August 06, 2016, 10:48:11 AM
This is nonsense, at least for alpha14.
Although colonists are part of the equation, they essentially count as 3636 silver worth of threat each which can be less than the value of some artworks. In my games, in the beginning the colonists count for ~50% of the threat points (especially since the first 2000 wealth doesn't generate threat) and later the colonists have usually contributed something like 10% of the threat points.
Defensive strength isn't part of the equation. Time since colony has taken damage is not part of the equation. Other than slow ramp-up multiplier that increases over time and gets pushed down a notch whenever colonists are killed or incapacitated, no historical values are part of the equation.
All haulable items in visible parts of the map and the apparel worn by your colonists are counted as your wealth in full market value. Your buildings are counted at half their market value.
You're welcome to reverse engineer StoryTellerUtility::DefaultParmsNow() to check out the algorithm if you disagree.
interesting :
-Your buildings are counted at half their market value. (how do you get their market value?)
-a colonist is estimated around 3636 worth of silver (how did you arrive at this value?)
-iirc, a turret is around 0.4 colonist (is this the defensive value?)
-so this means that 5 turrets = 2 colonists = 7272 silver?
-does this mean that "colonists", "defenses", even "buildings" can be converted to an equivalent "wealth" value in silver?
Quote from: Tynan on June 22, 2016, 12:01:32 AM
The algorithm is quite a bit more complex than that and takes into account wealth, population, defensive strength, and several factors related to the time since the colony has taken damage, had people downed, or been at given population counts.
Does it take into account whether or not your turrets are powered? I'm hoping not. I normally keep my turrets turned off to save power, but I would hate to think that I was inadvertently telling the AI that I had weak defenses and was getting weak raids as a result.
(I doubt this because most of the raids are pretty strong -- I had to load an autosave when 50 wargs showed up, beat down my doors, and ate my colonists...)
Quote from: DoomBudgie on August 06, 2016, 02:00:27 PM
You do realize that the person you just quoted is the author of the game, right?
Yes, and that's
exactly why I responded. Had anyone else said what he said, I wouldn't have bothered, but now people on Steam forums are quoting him to refute accurate information about how raid sizes are calculated. So I figured I should issue some corrections to the misconceptions here as well.
Quote from: keylocke on August 06, 2016, 09:11:12 PM
interesting :
-Your buildings are counted at half their market value. (how do you get their market value?)
-a colonist is estimated around 3636 worth of silver (how did you arrive at this value?)
-iirc, a turret is around 0.4 colonist (is this the defensive value?)
-so this means that 5 turrets = 2 colonists = 7272 silver?
-does this mean that "colonists", "defenses", even "buildings" can be converted to an equivalent "wealth" value in silver?
You can view market value for everything in-game. Just click something and press the info button, you'll see that turrets have a market value of 425 silver. Market values are calculated by StatWorker_MarketValue. The turret requires 3 components (21 silver each), 175 steel (2 silver each) and 2500 work (0.004 silver each). That's 423 silver, I'm not exactly sure where the extra 2 come from and not going to check it now :P
The colonist value of 3636 silver is estimated from the threat point calculation algorithm, which I suppose I'll have to copypaste from the decompiled source in full for you to understand.
public static IncidentParms DefaultParmsNow (StorytellerDef tellerDef, IncidentCategory incCat)
{
IncidentParms incidentParms = new IncidentParms ();
if (incCat == IncidentCategory.ThreatSmall || incCat == IncidentCategory.ThreatBig) {
float num = Find.StoryWatcher.watcherWealth.WealthItems + Find.StoryWatcher.watcherWealth.WealthBuildings * 0.5f;
num -= 2000f;
if (num < 0f) {
num = 0f;
}
float num2 = num / 1000f * 11f;
float num3 = (float)Find.MapPawns.FreeColonistsCount * 40f;
incidentParms.points = num2 + num3;
incidentParms.points *= Find.StoryWatcher.watcherRampUp.TotalThreatPointsFactor;
incidentParms.points *= Find.Storyteller.difficulty.threatScale;
switch (Find.StoryWatcher.statsRecord.numThreatBigs) {
case 0:
incidentParms.points = 35f;
incidentParms.raidForceOneIncap = true;
incidentParms.raidNeverFleeIndividual = true;
break;
case 1:
incidentParms.points *= 0.5f;
break;
case 2:
incidentParms.points *= 0.7f;
break;
case 3:
incidentParms.points *= 0.8f;
break;
case 4:
incidentParms.points *= 0.9f;
break;
default:
incidentParms.points *= 1f;
break;
}
if (incidentParms.points < 0f) {
incidentParms.points = 0f;
}
if (incidentParms.points > 1000f) {
if (incidentParms.points > 2000f) {
incidentParms.points = 2000f + (incidentParms.points - 2000f) * 0.5f;
}
incidentParms.points = 1000f + (incidentParms.points - 1000f) * 0.5f;
}
}
return incidentParms;
}
Plain English translation of the code:
- First 2000 wealth isn't counted, but every 1000 afterwards provides 11 threat points.
- Colonists produce 40 threat points each, making them equal to (40/11)*1000 silver worth of threat.
- The initial wealth+colonists threat is multiplied by a ramp-up factor
- It is also multiplied by threat scale factor defined for the difficulty setting
- The first 5 big threats are special, first raid is always 35 threat, the following 4 are discounted by -50%, -30%, -20% and -10% respectively
- When threat gets above 1000, the amount over that is halved. The amount over 2000 is halved another time.
That's it.
The portions referred to but not copypasted above are wealth watcher and ramp-up watcher. The portions that affect the final threat points but aren't visible at all above are the various places where storytellers or incidents tweak things, for example refugee chased event gives +35% threat points and Randy randomly tweaks the value by anything from -50% to +50%.
StoryWatcher_Wealth calculates item and building values by considering all non-fogged (i.e. visible) items that are haulable and all equipment equipped and apparel worn by the colonists. These values are recalculated every 5000 ticks, i.e. every 83 seconds in 1x speed real time.
StoryWatcher_RampUp is the portion that Tynan refers to when he says the game considers when colonists have been downed etc. This mechanism has two internal counters that start to increase after 21 and 42 days respectively. The short-term factor begins increasing first, and it will take 162 days to become 2x multiplier. The long-term factor will take 360 days to become 2x. Whenever colonists are killed or incapacitated, it reduces both these factors. Short-term is reduced by 50% and long term by 10%, unless you have less than 10 colonists remaining in which case it reduces the ramp-up even more, and if you have only 2 colonists left it will reset the ramp-up multiplier completely and it will start slowly growing up again.
Even when both of the ramp-up counters are running and no mitigating events occur, it will take 26 hours of real time play (well, at 1x speed) to double the difficulty and another 20 hours to make it triple, then 18 hours to make it quadruple, etc. However, it still multiplies the original value determined by items, buildings and to a lesser effect the colonists. The basis of the raid size is still your wealth. If the ramp-up is at 4x, reducing your wealth will have 4x effect to raid difficulty as well.
Wealth is the core of threat calculations, plain and simple. Even if Tynan himself says otherwise, everything else is still a multiplier on top of the wealth. Defensive strength, last time the colony took damage (other than incap/killed), and historical population counts have absolutely ZERO effect to the threat calculation even if Tynan himself says otherwise. And I know this because I went through the whole code, starting from storyteller deciding to queue a raid all the way to where the actual enemies are spawned. I've read through it all and I simply don't believe I've missed anything.
@mzbear : cool. thanks for explaining.
but can you elaborate more about how "threat" translates to actual number of raiders/skills/equipment?
ie : i assume that since the first threat is 35, and the first raid is always just 1 person, does this mean that 1 raider = 35 threat (minimum)? and then the excess threat value is used to calculate higher level of gear or whatever?
i'm still not sure about the actual mechanic of that.
Mzbear is the hero we need.
I believe threat is used to "buy" raiders and equipment for said raiders to attack with. I don't know the exact numbers but I would assume that raiders scale to a point, against your current colony headcount + defense headcount. And then all the excess threat is used to soup them up until half the raid is power armour, charge rifles and sniper rifles with a sprinkling of doom.
From my gameplay experience, wealth surely is NOT the only value the game considers when calculating what to throw at you.
When I started off, playing mostly on plains maptiles in jungles (because malaria...) my defenses were usually just a wall of sandbags near the entrances to my complex, and just one or two turrets. In these instances, I had raiders spawn with mostly guns and only once did I get sieged by a mortar team.
Several games in, I started playing temperate forest, mountains and I started walling off my colony by creating a long flat area from my base, and placing a wall on the far side and filling the chokepoint with traps. Now with this setup, from raid 2 onwards, one or more raiders have ALWAYS carried frag grenades, with the game tooltip saying that there are sappers coming to blow through my defense.
In the first instance, my colony had the same tech/progress level as the second. Hell, first situation had my colonists using sniper rifles and assault rifles, while on the frag attack ones, they still use the survival rifle and a pistol. Both had thermal generators, all electronic workbenches needed (with my workshop designated as wealthy) and my colonists sleeping in nice, carpeted rooms and my hospital paved with sterile, silver tiles.
The game clearly, from my experience, takes more into calculation than just "you are worth xyz$$$$$$$$$"
Raid strategy is situational. If you have walls, it's more likely that the raiders will try to get around them.
Raid points are used to buy particular pawn templates, which each come with their own budget for buying equipment. At least that's what I remember.
The thing to bear in mind is that, even considering the impact of wealth in the calculation, your colonists will likely have a better life if they have a surplus of food, medicine, and good equipment. It beats the hell out of flirting with starvation, dying from post-battle infections, and trying to fight off raids with bows and clubs.
As has been pointed out, the calculation of raid points includes a halving factor at 1000 and 2000 points. All other things being equal, it would take 22000 additional wealth in items to go from 1000 to 2000, and 44000 additional wealth in items for every 1000 after 2000.
If you simply hoard wealth without coming up with a means of defending it, the game will seem more difficult. If you try to be poor, the game will seem difficult for different reasons.
I'd much rather that players downloaded a mod which almost eliminates wealth from the calculation (hint hint) than play the game a certain way which makes it more difficult in a predictably unpleasant way.
Quote from: keylocke on August 07, 2016, 10:21:26 PM
but can you elaborate more about how "threat" translates to actual number of raiders/skills/equipment?
Alright, let's go through this a bit further.
First, raid strategy and entrance mode get chosen in IncidentWorker_Raid. The threat points make no difference for these, it's completely random with only the limitations set by the strategies (such as minimum day a strategy is allowed). The strategy however has parameters to scale the threat points, see "pointsFactor" in RaidStrategyDefs. Selected entrance mode is also used to scale down threat points by 55% in case of center drop mode. Finally, in case the points actually too low to spawn anything, it will increase the points to bare minimum for the faction plus 5%.
Now, to the actual spawning... The selection happens in PawnGroupMakerUtility::ChoosePawnGenOptionsByPoints. First, a maximum single enemy cost is determined based on how many enemies the strategy requires and what the raid strategy requires. For example the sapper strategy requires a pawn with "GrenadeDestructive" weapon tag and it searches through matching definitions to make sure the single enemy cost cap doesn't go below that. The algorithm tries to use 50% of total points as the maximum single enemy cost, to make sure there's always at least 2 enemies unless that really cannot be afforded.
Faction definitions have a list of pawn kinds that can spawn when the faction attacks, along with their selection weights. PawnKindDefs have the actual definitions for the enemies and their combatPower stat which is used as the point cost for the spawn. The list of pawn generation choices will be filtered by the maximum single enemy cost, raid strategy-specific requirements and potentially the "melee only" requirement if set and so on. If the threat points exceeds 800, the selection weights increased by a "desire to suppress" factor which reaches 100% at 1600 threat points, beyond which it simply multiplies the selection weights by the actual combat power of the pawn. This way the end-game raids will favor spawning pawns with the highest combat power instead of spamming large number of weaker enemies.
The equipment is just randomized based on the PawnKindDefs, it has nothing to do with threat points anymore. Only the selection of enemy types has to do with threat points. For example, there's the "mercenary sniper" PawnKindDef with weapon money randomly chosen between 1200-1800 and a required weapon tag "SniperRifle". This means it's going to have any random sniper rifle it can afford, with the random choice weighed by the weapon's commonality*price. Similar process applies to the apparel set generation although it's a bit more complex as it tries to satisfy simple coverage and warmth requirements, repeatedly trying up to 80 times while slowly loosening its requirements.
tl;dr - Threat points are used to purchase enemies based on the "combat power" cost of their kind. Everything else is randomly chosen to fit the circumstances but not affected by the difficulty.
Quote from: Blato on August 08, 2016, 01:55:57 AM
Several games in, I started playing temperate forest, mountains and I started walling off my colony by creating a long flat area from my base, and placing a wall on the far side and filling the chokepoint with traps. Now with this setup, from raid 2 onwards, one or more raiders have ALWAYS carried frag grenades, with the game tooltip saying that there are sappers coming to blow through my defense.
Individual strategies can have custom code to alter their selection chance, and sapper strategy is the only one that does so. If you have a lot of turrets or lot of colonists, sapper strategy is more likely to happen. Traps, however, do not affect this calculation.
It's just random, but when it makes sense you will think it isn't. :)
It might be worth noting that in the sapper scenario, I had no turrets set up, and only 4 colonists.
Maybe the game takes pathing into consideration, and if it notices too many "man-made" obstacles, like walls that belong to your colony, then it sets the sappers to spawn more?
@mzbear : nice. that info is awesome.
so i guess, the base threat value is affected by total wealth (including value of colonists, animals, equipment, buildings, etc.. which can also be converted to an equivalent wealth value), even though the actual threat value used to calculate the raid, fluctuates based on several other factors (like the ramp up value and raid type).
also from what you mentioned, a colonist with high skills seem to increase the same amount of threat value as a crappy colonist. btw, do colonists in cryptopods still count in increasing threat value?
what about bedridden pawns due to disease? even though they're not incapacitated, shouldn't disease also affect the ramp up value the same way as death and incapacitation does?
Quote from: Blato on August 08, 2016, 07:13:53 AM
Maybe the game takes pathing into consideration, and if it notices too many "man-made" obstacles, like walls that belong to your colony, then it sets the sappers to spawn more?
Could be both. They definitely attack man-made walls. But also natural ones.
I once had a map like in the attachment (roughly. The scale is a bit wrong on some features)
Seemed like an awesome setup for defense. The blue line was the main defense for the entrance.
I did farming in the lower area with my fridge and kitchen right next to it. But it wasn't complete enclosed. The gap was just 1-3 tiles high and and less than 10 tiles wide (as said the scale a bit wrong). Didn't take much to block it. But sure enough they tried to sap through and once managed to do so.
But once I closed off the large upper area, they tried to sap through natural rock at another narrow point. And again were successful. They preferred that over attacking the 2 tile wide wall where they would have been easier to attack. It seems like they go for small distances when they have to tunnel, but also like to start away from the main defenses.
[attachment deleted by admin - too old]
Quote from: keylocke on August 08, 2016, 01:24:42 PM
also from what you mentioned, a colonist with high skills seem to increase the same amount of threat value as a crappy colonist. btw, do colonists in cryptopods still count in increasing threat value?
what about bedridden pawns due to disease? even though they're not incapacitated, shouldn't disease also affect the ramp up value the same way as death and incapacitation does?
Colonist skills do not affect threat. They're all worth the same amount of threat points.
Colonists in cryptosleep caskets still count. Basically, anything that gets displayed in the colonist bar at the top (except dead colonists) will count. thus, a downed colonist in a cryptosleep casket will still count in the threat calculations.
The ramp-up code is only notified about incapacitation and death. Being bedridden doesn't count unless the colonist is actually downed in a way that makes them drop their weapon.
Quote from: mzbear on August 08, 2016, 05:46:16 PM
Quote from: keylocke on August 08, 2016, 01:24:42 PM
also from what you mentioned, a colonist with high skills seem to increase the same amount of threat value as a crappy colonist. btw, do colonists in cryptopods still count in increasing threat value?
what about bedridden pawns due to disease? even though they're not incapacitated, shouldn't disease also affect the ramp up value the same way as death and incapacitation does?
Colonist skills do not affect threat. They're all worth the same amount of threat points.
Colonists in cryptosleep caskets still count. Basically, anything that gets displayed in the colonist bar at the top (except dead colonists) will count. thus, a downed colonist in a cryptosleep casket will still count in the threat calculations.
The ramp-up code is only notified about incapacitation and death. Being bedridden doesn't count unless the colonist is actually downed in a way that makes them drop their weapon.
Don't colonist skills affect the market value of a colonist? Because some colonists are worth more than others, when I've checked their info. Could indirectly affect threat points.
Quote from: Reviire on August 08, 2016, 06:25:30 PM
Don't colonist skills affect the market value of a colonist? Because some colonists are worth more than others, when I've checked their info. Could indirectly affect threat points.
All colonists are treated as 40 threat points, effectively same as 3636 silver. The market value is only used for items and buildings.
Quote from: mzbear on August 08, 2016, 05:46:16 PM
Colonist skills do not affect threat. They're all worth the same amount of threat points.
Colonists in cryptosleep caskets still count. Basically, anything that gets displayed in the colonist bar at the top (except dead colonists) will count. thus, a downed colonist in a cryptosleep casket will still count in the threat calculations.
The ramp-up code is only notified about incapacitation and death. Being bedridden doesn't count unless the colonist is actually downed in a way that makes them drop their weapon.
hmm.. i wonder why tynan didn't consider the value of a highly skilled colonist (especially ones with high melee and shooting skills) when calculating threat? i hope he changes that, instead of using a static value for all colonists.
while people in cryptopods or bedridden with disease should probably be considered to be like incapacitated when calculating threat with the ramp up.
anyways, what about animals? some animals are expensive but are crappy fighters, while some are cheap but great fighters. i hope these stats should also be included when calculating the base threat value, hopefully in the next alphas.
------
i think the main factors that should affect threat would be total estimated dps of your colony.
this includes total dps of all turrets, animals, and colonists with their relevant combat skill and equipped weapons.
and the game will check this dps value during each raid.
ie :
-check total dps value at start of the raid. (the moment the message for the raid pops up)
-then compare total dps value at the end of the raid. (the moment the message that says the raiders are fleeing pops up)
-the average of those two values will be used to calculate the threat for the next raid.
-this will prevent the exploitative behavior of removing the equipped weapons to artificially lower dps value.
-while being able to use the total dps value of the colony when calculating threat, could help ensure that the next raid would be appropriately challenging. (not impossibly hard nor pathetically weak) because it can more accurately measure your colony's actual fighting capacity.
I don't know why the game doesn't take account of skills when doing the raid calculation. But if it did then it would also have to take into account colonist health.
Anyway, colonists with a low skill in shooting or melee aren't necessarily useless in a fight. They can hold a club and dogpile on a raider.
Quote from: MarvinKosh on August 08, 2016, 05:27:17 AM
I'd much rather that players downloaded a mod which almost eliminates wealth from the calculation (hint hint) than play the game a certain way which makes it more difficult in a predictably unpleasant way.
Feel free to link.
Combat Readiness Check: https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=8004.0
Enjoy. :)
This is an interesting conversation
I'm surprised this doesn't have more commentary.
So is mzbear correct? Are there other attributting factors that Tynan post is referring to? Or perhaps a bug?
The fact that Tynan has addressed this and then the evidence provided (which I don't think anyone has actually verified?) basically goes against his statement makes it seem odd at best? Just looking for a better understanding...
The points calculation for a raid does include colony wealth. If you have a rich colony, then that's going to increase the points.
However, if part of your colony is damaged or destroyed by raiders and then has to be rebuilt, the damage done is tracked. What this means is that if raids are overwhelmingly successful, future raids will not have the same amount of strength (ramp down instead of ramp up).
Other things like this are tracked and do make a difference.
They are both correct, from a certain point of view.
By the way, the code example that was given is indicative of how the game calculates raid size. It's decompiled from the game's assembly files.
mzbear
So strategy when you start with 0 wealth, make sustain in food and other needs and keep wealth seperlow, while all your people research what needed is viable?
Raids were very weak so far, cause there are only 2 guys with wealth near 7000. Do they cosiderably grow up? Now its needed only few traps to repel them.
And what about crashed ships and infestations? Do they occur when your wealth is very low?
as they said, i think it's not just about wealth (all your assets including colonists/pets/defenses/etc).
it's also about time, since the increase in wealth is inevitable, you'd best prioritize that your combat capability is sufficient enough and just let wealth grow naturally
gist is : don't amass large amounts of devilstrand and/or make tons of legendary marble statues or silver or whatever, unless you have sufficient combat capabilities.
i think a lot of people try to prioritize beautifying their base instead of focusing on combat, which is why they keep getting ganked.
----
as for the mod that removes wealth from the calculation... i'm kinda iffy on it, since taking wealth away completely from calculation kinda removes the logical "motivation" for raiders.
So do turrets account in a special way or is it just their building value?
I'm wondering if my spotlights are seen as turret defensive buildings in the raid calculation size. :/