Ludeon Forums

Hey all! Another difficulty balancing poll for you! Please make sure you update to Alpha4e before voting. That's build 462. Balance has changed from earlier versions.

Please only respond to the poll if:

-You played a game on Cassandra Classic
-You played a long game (at least 50 days)

Any further feedback/stories/numbers/savegames you wish to post are also welcome.

Started playing yesterday, but today I got totally trashed on day ~120
7 Centipedes with inferno/minigun visited my base.

A few problems that doomed me:
Their 800*7 health pool is really hard to dent with R-4 Charge rifles.
A solar flare made sure 2/3rd of my gun turrets didn't work.

Quote from: Riithi on June 04, 2014, 09:48:04 AM
Started playing yesterday, but today I got totally trashed on day ~120
7 Centipedes with inferno/minigun visited my base.

A few problems that doomed me:
Their 800*7 health pool is really hard to dent with R-4 Charge rifles.
A solar flare made sure 2/3rd of my gun turrets didn't work.

Lol, so what did you vote?

I haven't voted yet, outside that encounter everything was fine.
Got the game yesterday and tried two times on easy callie, which went fine.
This was the first proper game, so it's kinda normal to get your ass handed I think.

As for feedback on the centipedes, the worst offender seemed to be the inferno gun which kinda invalidates cover.
The inferno gun sets the ground ablaze, so the defenders have to find new cover, so my guys are more busy running for their lives compared to shooting back. Combine that with the huge range and reasonable reload of the inferno gun, it kinda means my guys never get the chance to open fire, because they spend all their time running away.

Right now the best idea I have is to fill a field with stone pillars spread out, and just place men behind them.

Voted far too easy. Some details. Alpha 4e

day 20. 1 x pirate inside base.
day 31. 6 X pirates with pistols/molotovs - beat off by IT.
day 35. 8 X pirates with pistols - beat off by IT with 2 captured.
day 48. centipede x 1 in colony destroyed by colonists with just pistols, 1 x frag, 1 x LE. 2 colonists injured.
day 51. 11 x pirates with pistols, uzi, LE & frags - beat off by IT.
day 63. 7 X pirates with R4, M16, Uzi & pistols - Beat off by IT

Ended game through boredom as researched all etc.

Some other notes:

Very few comms contacts 5 in all with only one slaver - no weapon sellers. The pirates seem intent on destroying plant pots and lamps as targets which is just odd. There seemed no point in growing zones as tons of quick growing wild food - didn't bother hunting anything. No mad vermin, Muffalo or psychic waves in all that time. Fire-fighting is a bit strange with colonist preferring to work if both set to 1 priority.

Everything went fine until day 50. Raids were progressing nicely, 1, 1, 3, 3... Bunch of tribals... At day 50 a raid came with 3 guys using miniguns, and some more with uzis or something, and just like that I'm dead. Miniguns rocks!

Wealth: 25164, itens: 20331, buildings: 4833
Str: 6.4
Danger: high
Raids: 7

I think it would not be impossible to survive if I had invested in a killzone or something.

Quote from: Tynan on June 04, 2014, 08:04:52 AM
That's build 462.

In the latest hotfixed version that I downloaded the app says RimWorld461Mac.app. Did you update again or is 4e actually build 461?

dalanmiller: I updated again, you'll want to update to get 462.

Day 15, 1 raider
Day 18, 2 raiders, tribal weapons, 5 colonist
Day 21, 4 raiders, tribal weapons, 5 colonists, 1 colonist killed
Day 23-26, 6 combat ships in a row, lots of new weapons for me.
Day 31, 5 raiders, pistols, dropped in base, 4 colonists
Day 35, 6 raiders, advanced weapons, 7 colonists
Day 48, 17 raiders, advanced weapons, 8 colonists


Well, I lost a colonist early, but I blame that on me not being focused and moving him away from the battle zone when severy injured. Except from that, I didn't feel there was any real danger.

I was a  bit worried about the last raider attack though, it seemed a bit harsh at first, but it went surprisingly well, 1 incapacitated colonist, 12 dead raiders.

Thanks drb. How did you so easily defeat 17 raiders with advanced weapons?

Quote from: Tynan on June 04, 2014, 11:56:32 AM
Thanks drb. How did you so easily defeat 17 raiders with advanced weapons?

Never said easily :P But it went way better than I expected. My colonists stayed behind walls using that as cover, the raiders didn't have many places to get cover, so most of them stormed against my colonists in the open. Ohh.. yeah. I should probably mention the minigun I got from the previous raid, that helped a little as well. It is deadly against a group of raiders storming against you. Ended up with 12 raiders killed and 5 raiders fleeing.

Edit: I did vote easy though, but that's mostly because of the description; I wasn't really threatened.

I find it rather hard to decide what is "normal" for cassandra. Is 17 raiders at day 48 with adv weapons still "challange" or already "something crazy" and when it's "really hard"? I played this game a lot bt most times on Randy Random so I havn't real references what it should be.

Still working on b to see if I can work it. Just had 3 mechanoids at day 54. I survived. That was hair raising, but not as difficult as a giant mass of tribal weapon people. Had 3 people come from another settlement to help. They distracted one of them. I never did figure out what it had weapon wise. The other two had the charge rifle on steroids and that god awful fire cannon. I had my standard kill box. Stone walls with sandbag waffles. They seem really content to stay out and destroy stuff outside. Mechanoids really like to back off and shoot from range. One beat a hole in the wall and backed up to rifle my guys. It got one, maybe two volleys off that I saw before we killed it. Had they rushed like pirates or, please no, tribals, I would have been hosed. As it was, they are tough but beatable. I had 9 colonists. 1 charge rifle, 2 M16s, 1 uzi and the rest pistols. Everyone survived but I had to rescue one guy. Then I had a mental break and had to arrest that guy before I could get things put back together.

Here's my colony before I started rebuilding, but after major repairs. The power was out and all sorts of stuff was damaged.

(http://i.imgur.com/jQvFpdi.jpg)

That hole by the door hall is where the charge cannon one broke in and then got gunned down. The hole to the left is where the flame cannon guy broke in and then went out the left hole that his friend broke open - the one mostly killed by the helpers.

I haven't found it too difficult as of yet. I am on day 80 with 8 colonists. The raids have been increasing steadily with more advanced weaponry, and I was nearly wiped out by a raid that dropped in the centre of the colony! Fortunately I managed to build a few turrets moments before. No mechanoids yet however. I was able to build a decent killzone early in the game which helped a lot! No mods either. Having lots of fun though! :)

(http://i1107.photobucket.com/albums/h383/darastrix1/RimWorld02.jpg) (http://s1107.photobucket.com/user/darastrix1/media/RimWorld02.jpg.html)

Although the new build has made me focus on a lot of different things, for example, gathering metal and food has become more challenging I have found, which is a good thing. There was always plenty of metal laying around beforehand, no it feels more valuable. Same with silver.

Is there a way to check which storyteller you have? I am at day 47 and I have had 3 attacks. The first was the gimme guy. Second was 1 grenade guy. Third was 6 tribals, two died, two captured and 3 run off. I think I might not have picked Cassandra.

Voted Easy

Notes:
Cassandra Classic - Med map 275x275 if that matters

Day 15 - 1 Raider [Pistol]
Day 20 - 1 Raider [Molotov]
Day 32 - 5 Raiders [4 Pistols, 1 Frag Grenade]
Day 36 - 6 Raiders [4 Pistols, 1 Molotov, 1 Frag Grenade]
Day 47 - 5 Raiders [1 T-9 Launcher, 1 L-15 LMG, 1 R-4, 2 Molotov]
Day 50 - 10 Raiders [8 Pistols, 1 Lee-Enfield, 1 Pump Shotgun]
Day 66 - 1 Centipede [Inferno Cannon] (easily taken down with melee attacks, as it will continuously run away when being attacked)

So far pretty easy, no deaths, no incapacitated in any fights. Currently have 6 colonists. Will keep playing and let you know how the difficulty ramps up from here.

Im not sure if im just so unlucy but story teller keep spawning electricy blow incident preety often like each 3-4 days and this is like my 8 game alredy.
Anyways difficulity is pretty decent to a point, around day 102-110 where if your lucky you get 5-8 canepids if not you get around 30 raiders in which almost always 4-7 of them got miniguns, which only one of my colony survived ( didnt get many tribals yet) :D
But dont worry tyn i died 10 days later on yet another squieerls insanity wave :D

So i would vote Normal for moutain colony and hard but beatable (sometimes) for open colonies.

I really hope you don't keep making this game easier, personally this version is just to easy for me and can become quite boring once you set up a proper defense.  I think many people that are posting about the difficulty are forgetting about a few things or just doing some things massively wrong, at least in terms of the way things seem to be calculated for raid strength.

I really hope this game does not get easier but yet gets a bit more difficult and down the road i really hope the game evolves like you have stated where it adapts and changes so the player must also adapt and change their tactics and strategies.

A few notes for people before you post about how "hard" the game is:
1) Don't build turrets, again i repeat do not build turrets.  They increase the raid strength and the effect they have in battle is not worth how little they actually do in combat and in many cases later in the game they get out ranged and destroyed without even doing anything.
2) It appears the game is now also keeping track of wealth, which means everyone has to stop hoarding supplies and making extras of everything.  If you don't need it, don't build it.  If you don't need it don't produce it.  Separate bedrooms or even just multiple rooms in general is all cosmetic at this point and only increases wealth and raid difficulty.
3) There are so many examples of good base defenses on these forums for simply kill boxes, setup a simple area that forces the enemies to enter a killzone where they have no cover whatsoever while you are sitting behind stone and walls.  Or some killboxes are littered with stone and slag so the enemies literally cannot fire back.
4) Mechanoids are extremely slow, just outrange them with even a single character with an m24 and move back after every few shots when the mechanoid is in range and stops to shoot.  Don't sit and wait for them go out into the open field and fight them.

I don't want to sound dissapointed i just really would hate to see this game turn in to many other games lately that appeal to the casual gamers and are just far to easy.  Being comfortable in a game for me leads to boring quite quickly.

Quickly what i do to start a game: I either dig a 10x15 or 10x20 room into a mountain or build the same sized building next to a mountain and put everything in one room, benches and workshops against the walls one corner is turned into a 3x3 prisoner cell, and the other wall space is used for colonist beds as need.  The middle area is used for a table and chairs and stockpiles.  The spacious interior outweighs the sharing a bedroom penalty, and that is literally all the space you need period.  Set up a killbox at the entrance, and unguarded external geothermal generators are currently ignored by enemies so if they are across the map who cares.  Set up a beacon ASAP and trade for one or two decent weapons and it is gg.  This is just my opinion but i hope others consider my advice above before just trying once or twice and saying the game is to hard.  Remeber only build what is nessecary and don't stockpile anything that is not 100% needed.  Don't mine metal just to mine it.  Good Luck!

EDIT: I just want make sure it is noted i am not trying to "bash" anyone. I am just simply saying for a gamer that pays attention to the methods the game uses and creates a strategy or tactic based on that method it is just to easy whereas someone that wants to build a good looking colony might seriously struggle.  There are easier storytellers for that reason! I want a game that literally noone can last forever, or maybe 1% can at most.  It should be a true struggle to survive and people should be striving to just last a few days longer then their last play through!

But this is a story about colonists not cave trolls.

Quote from: mrofa on June 04, 2014, 10:42:44 PM
But this is a story about colonists not cave trolls.

Um...colonists as a rule in the past have eked out their existence in any way possible. Some lived in cave systems, others in jungles, others savannas and other grasslands. Which ever was close to a clean water source and plentiful food source (least for the more successful ones).

I would say, looking at it logically, if your forced to settle a hostile land in hostile times, the smartest thing would be to hole up in an easily defensible position with easy access to the essentials like food, water etc. In this case digging into a mountain makes perfect sense as it makes for 1 point of entry that can be sealed off should the need arise. One entry point makes defending what you have and your friends/loved ones much easier rather than having to defend farm land over several square kilometers.

Being able ot set up fast, easy and effective defenses would be the most important thing, thus the mountain entrance is best  for that reason, at least initially, then you can go off and wall off an area, make your kill zone and such. However remember making a singly entry way in your wall is exactly the same thing as having a single entry way into a mountain, it's a funnel.

Also in game terms I have found if I have 90%+ of my settlement in a mountain, I do not have anywhere near as many 'oh shit pirates just drop podded behind my walls away from my turrets and there are 20 of them!' type situations. 9/10 they are outside the wall system and thus funneled into the kill zone and dispatched...or they blow through the wall and kill me. Either way it ends up being fun.

I think its still a bit too easy considering a few factors. First of all, i dont use killboxes because they're boring and i have a feeling the AI will smarten up one day and try to go through walls if past raids all die in this one zone because i forgot to read the patch notes. So my base is a pretty open defense style but even without killboxes i can still fend off every raid so far without any losses.

Additionally, we have more options for defense, specifically to call in allies now. I've never had to do that despite having plenty of extra good will and allies ready to call in for support.

Thank you so much! I thought people would rip me apart for my post, i am happy to see others that share the same opinion! Ramp up the difficulty and tell people that think it is to hard to simply play on an easier difficulty setting.  Normal in some old games was terribly hard for most players, they would first have to play the easier difficulties to get good enough to play normal and so on.  I'm just happy I'm not alone in my thought process.

I'm on day 115 and having no problems at all, even time to clean mostly all of my base as well as laying wood flooring down everywhere, while still easily maintaining food and other materials (except metal which I haven't really been hauling since its farther from my home base).

The screenshot kind of compressed the sides in a little so it looks squished and I boosted the brightness on the screenshot cause it was super dark but here's what I've been doing in 4e
(http://i.imgur.com/NZEMaoD.png)

I do have a few blasting charges set up but I haven't used any against enemies, I built them more as a fall back if I started getting rocked but it hasn't happened yet.

This is on Cassandra Classic though and I have been playing the game for a few alpha builds and know what I'm doing (for the most part) in terms of base and character setups.

dem mods. blasting charges got removed you cheater!

Anyways, i'm now at the point on my map where i have so much metal that i have covered the entire open world surrounding my base with turrets just everywhere in the desert. While mechanoids outrange them individually, their AI often leads them into the range of multiple turrets and at least half of every mechanoid raid is destroyed by turrets, this is expensive but i make enough food to continually export it and import metal if i need to. Additionally, i have two allies with 100 goodwill so even if a mega raid came i could just call in double military support. Even then, i have an internal fallback point inside my base behind multiple powered doors that acts as both another storage room and a last-stand graveyard for raiders. Im essentially invincible right now. kinda boring and i dont even use the huge walls and funnels most people do.

My damn rich colony
(http://s29.postimg.org/fazah0nj7/screenshot8.png) (http://postimg.org/image/fazah0nj7/)

Stats
(http://s29.postimg.org/a9nb1wqoz/screenshot9.png) (http://postimg.org/image/a9nb1wqoz/)

Trying to thin out few of enemies before they attack (got only 6 colonists)
(http://s29.postimg.org/uv6o7jxnn/screenshot10.png) (http://postimg.org/image/uv6o7jxnn/)

No mods including blasing charges or royal bed ;p

I will survive this but most of colony will burn to the ground since i wasnt able to make it full from stone and one or 2 guys will die, that always happens like that, or when they dont die they are incaped and i dont have anyware to put them since most of colony is in flames :D

Haha well yeah I used the mods provided (except royal beds). I haven't updated any mods I have used in the past yet for alpha 4. Again I haven't used them offensively or for mining.

Screenshot of the colony i mentioned earlier with turrets everywhere and stuff:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16970274/Screenshots/RimWorld462Win%202014-06-05%2000-31-45-58.png

edit: a moment after posting this, a 15 pirate raid drop podded right into the center of my base to try to cause some havoc. I lost some walls and two turrets, but nobody died. Security success! love that event btw.

How do you have trees growing like you do? Is that from the fertilizer pump? Haven't used it yet since I use hydroponics mainly.

Also just a quick suggestion with the crematorium you should put some walls/roof around it. I was playing earlier and some rain messed with mine (although I don't remember it doing any damage) since I didn't think it needed to be indoors.

Nice setup btw

click any growing area and change the setting to grow oak trees.

the crematorium sparks off sometimes, i may build a little shed around it but fired extinguish pretty easily so i usually dont worry about it. as long as its not a battery outside or something rain wont cause catastrophic damage!

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16970274/Screenshots/RimWorld462Win%202014-06-05%2001-12-06-24.png
Soi havent gotten any psychotic animals or slave ships during this. Is it possible some events are bugged ty? or are those events just disabled in classic cassandra

I've had slave ships come by but not any psychotic waves yet (day 144)

I've only had 1 centipede attack though, which was early on. Is anyone else getting that low of an encounter rate on Cassandra Classic?

Well, I read everyone's opinion. I agree that now the game is not impossible to survive, but I still think that mechanoids are too hard. Half of my eight settlers, died in an attack where 3 mechanoids fell inside my base. There was no time to protect them, or attacking near ... Weapon of mechanoids: 2 minigun and 1 fire of hell.

One change that I saw, is that by attacking the raiders and his run some desperate, and this decreases the chance of catching some raiders ...

In 140 days I was visited by two combat ships,1 Slave Ship  and 2 agricultural and industrial vessels.


My vote was "Really hard, but beatable"


One suggestion, only raiders humans can fall from the sky into his base, mechanoids only entering in the map. This would reduce the frustration of playing only 150 days... And mechanoids going to drop yours weapon...

Again, sorry for my poor english.

mechanoids dropping into your base? christ. Not sure i'd be able to survive that either, the best place to fight them is far from your base in the open field. Especially with the miniguns on them... i cant imagine winning that firefight. maybe if you just abandon your base when that happens you'd survive, everyone run for the hills!

Quote from: Riithi on June 04, 2014, 10:14:28 AM
I haven't voted yet, outside that encounter everything was fine.
Got the game yesterday and tried two times on easy callie, which went fine.
This was the first proper game, so it's kinda normal to get your ass handed I think.

As for feedback on the centipedes, the worst offender seemed to be the inferno gun which kinda invalidates cover.
The inferno gun sets the ground ablaze, so the defenders have to find new cover, so my guys are more busy running for their lives compared to shooting back. Combine that with the huge range and reasonable reload of the inferno gun, it kinda means my guys never get the chance to open fire, because they spend all their time running away.

Right now the best idea I have is to fill a field with stone pillars spread out, and just place men behind them.

Just build a lot of cement tiles. Problem solved.

I'm writing this having gotten a colony to day 51. It's still going strong, six colonists and a turret surviving quite well with very little impeding it. 7 raids have hit so far, with only the 7th, in which 4 pistol pirates and a molotov grenadier landed right next to my power plant, resulting in it being set on fire. I've seen none of the mechanoids yet. I think I got fairly fortunate with some of the raids I had though. Some could have really gone badly (I think the 3rd raid was 4 grenade grenadiers) but I was able to get 2 L-15's and a pila from a trade ship and they seem to be absolute lifesavers, especially the pila. I've also almost always been able to set up flanking opportunities thanks to an open design settlement, alleys, multiple exits to most buildings etc.

It's been pretty easy... So far.

I might update at 100 days.

(http://i.imgur.com/DDY27lQ.png)

Quote from: DaNewb on June 04, 2014, 09:37:50 PM
I really hope you don't keep making this game easier, personally this version is just to easy for me and can become quite boring once you set up a proper defense.

When you play the game for the first time and you get wiped with two centipedes with absolutely no chance of survival just because you didn't do all the necessary steps you described, I'd say the game is quite broken.

It's no fun game if you need to know how the game works internally (turrets increase raid difficulty -> solution: don't build turrets). Every game gets easy once you figure out how it works and you use that for your advantage.

Turrets also don't increase raid difficulty (at least, not any more than walls, stockpiles, beds, or anything else that adds to your wealth).

My only issue was with the timing of the first Mechanoid. I'd had 1 combat supplier since the start (pretty early comms. station), Lee-Enfield was the best they had (I didn't buy it, as it happens). Had a few raids, all but 1 tribal to this point so I had a few sticks... some with string, others with pointy bits. The one raid that was from the more advanced faction was all pistols.

So with 4 people, equipped with 3 pistols and a Lee-Enfield (and a best possible, by this stage, of 2/2) an incendiary one decided to show up! I survived because of the targeting mechanics, one guy was always closer than the others and always moving to avoid as many shots as possible. Even with the large splash I could dodge quite a few and those that hit didn't take, so the damage per hit was minimal (as was the wandering around in panic). Had it been one of the other two weapons I'm pretty sure that would have an instant game end!

However, that aside just about everything else is on the too easy side for me. The thing is, I find the more the game adds, the more you need space to incorporate it and therefore, the more you have think about creative defenses. The fact that there are very few production chains that require any significant amount of space at the moment is (in my opinion) what makes it easy (as opposed to any pressing need to tweak the Storyteller side).

Also, stone is still very accessible early and the AI's tendency to path around stone walls, over making any attempt to breach them, makes it a little too easy to control fights much to soon in the game. Not sure how that's fixable though! Maybe a little later (tech unlock wise) and a mob type that has the means to breach it within a reasonable time-frame in the late-game.

But enough drifting... overall, had a one off event that was extremely hard and had a 66% chance to be nearly unstoppable at the stage of the game. But if we assume that to be a 1-off then the overall difficulty is very easy.

Quote from: Tynan on June 05, 2014, 08:37:37 AM
Turrets also don't increase raid difficulty (at least, not any more than walls, stockpiles, beds, or anything else that adds to your wealth).

This would imply that building a base inside a rock wall (i.e. using the cave walls instead of building walls) would artificially deflate your wealth?

Quote from: sparda666 on June 05, 2014, 10:10:31 AM

Quote from: Tynan on June 05, 2014, 08:37:37 AM
Turrets also don't increase raid difficulty (at least, not any more than walls, stockpiles, beds, or anything else that adds to your wealth).

This would imply that building a base inside a rock wall (i.e. using the cave walls instead of building walls) would artificially deflate your wealth?

That's true. Interesting point.

Quote from: Utterbob on June 05, 2014, 09:24:19 AM
Also, stone is still very accessible early and the AI's tendency to path around stone walls, over making any attempt to breach them, makes it a little too easy to control fights much to soon in the game. Not sure how that's fixable though! Maybe a little later (tech unlock wise) and a mob type that has the means to breach it within a reasonable time-frame in the late-game.

That's interesting. I'd been noticing that the attackers weren't taking my planned path. They seemed much more willing to try blasting/bashing in the sides of my kill box instead of coming through the "conveniently" open door. And with the reduced strength of stone walls, it's much more successful.

I think that I'd like to see some alternate events, challenges beyond getting attacked. Expand the blight to a plague. Make it be something that has to be researched in a certain time frame or most everyone dies. Better Power has that annoying mysterious object dropping. It could use something more than just being disassembled or waiting out the mostly harmless plasma storm, I'm not sure what though. Maybe some sort of invasive plant event where it overwhelms your base if you don't keep up with cutting it back or could require actually setting fires to burn it out. Something like that could be a real challenge if you get a particularly rainy period.

I'm okay with the pirates dropping down and attacking and even the mechanoids, but I think the on planet groups need to be neutral to begin with. Have some more robust interactions with them. We need to be able to influence them to join us, but they need to be able to influence us to join them. Say when a group comes to visit, we have a sweet place and one wants to stay and join. Or when they come, they bring some sweet company and one of our people decides the grass is greener over there and bails on us.

So just finished a game where I have a raid that I can survive...but have a tantrum spiral effect where everyone goes nuts. lasted 119 days or so on the difficulty listed here.

My thoughts:

After a few failed colony attempts at the 30-40 day mark I had a pretty decent understanding on how stuff comes so was able to adapt this time. That involved early comms and soem early weapon trading (only got another of the basic rifles you start with) and selling off excess weapons I didn't need. It resulted in some fun early fights in the 4th and 5th waves.

The fourth wave was a single minigun mech, he went down pretty easily I must admit. I just bum rushed him to 3-5 squares away then had everyone open up and had 1 guy standing opposite side (happened by chance to be the guy he had agro on) so the mech stayed put and my firing line just tore it apart. The AI kepts trying to get away from the melee dude, only to get into contact with my others and try to get away from them. To fix this I would suggest having them  go into melee if within 2-4 squares of hostiles otherwise their AI gets kind of wacky.

The last wave I had was around 12 raiders, maybe a few more, none with grenades. They hit me shortly after another raid so repairs hadn't been finished and food was low. Managed to drive them off, lost 2 people to them and 3 went nuts mid fight which made it interesting.

Now observations:

Only had 1 slave ship come in at around day 20ish when I didn't have anywhere near enough silver/trade goods to get anyone (bought the weapon and food that I ended up eating and not selling). I feel that the Slave ships are slightly too rare. They appear when you can't use them but when you want/need them they are never there.

Tree/Wood economy: It isn't really an economy due to the manpower required to make planks to sell vs just basic potato production or berries. More volume, faster and just as good to sell with the added bonus of being able ot be eaten. True boards and logs are amazingly useful for your colony, but as an economy item they seem pretty lack luster.

Mech Ai is easily exploitable by bum rushing into melee. No idea why, but whenever I stay at range I loose people in other colonies, this one (same version etc) if I run into close range they kind of just melt. Made having a shooting 12 guy with a minigun a real bad ass however with this tactic...having 3 like I did in the end and mech...or anything for that matter, go poof. Also jsut want to note...hunting with a minigun is frigging HILARIOUS! Everything but their target dies.

Trees. Everything else seems to eventually take over the map, teh berries, the big cactus and the agave plants. However once you cut down trees, your only future supply is what you plant yourself in the growth zones. Also the time it takes to grow them (20+ days) is a bit excessive for the amount of wood you get per tree when it's your only source. In my game I ended up having 5 rather large growth zones just for Oak Trees so I could do my building, repairs and testing.

Difficulty wise I found it challenging but beatable. If I adjust my tactics in my next game I feel I could last a bunch longer.

Suggestions is the mech AI weirdness, a glance into the economic value of wooden planks vs time invested in production and finally looking into why Slaver ships seem to be sooooo rare.

Quote from: Abadayos on June 05, 2014, 10:56:20 AM
looking into why Slaver ships seem to be sooooo rare.

My guess here is that there is a single or very limited event pool set and the slaver "competes" with the groups visiting and the single guy wandering. I've noticed since the factions got added, it's much harder to grow your colony without angering people.

Quote from: dd0029 on June 05, 2014, 11:04:57 AM

Quote from: Abadayos on June 05, 2014, 10:56:20 AM
looking into why Slaver ships seem to be sooooo rare.

My guess here is that there is a single or very limited event pool set and the slaver "competes" with the groups visiting and the single guy wandering. I've noticed since the factions got added, it's much harder to grow your colony without angering people.

I've been reading that the difficulties also have in built population limits, which would go far to explain why they show up early then never again later when your at or near teh pop cap.

The main issue with this is it makes the ingame trade 'economy' harder to use, however this may be intended. It makes buying and selling to the ships much more limited to weapons (selling excess), industry ship buying uranium and selling to farm ships. That's all you have. All the other good trades rely on Slaver ships that stop showing up due to possibly the population cap. Not so much an issue in Random Randy because of higher pop cap, but others it makes trade almost useless except to unload weapons. Then again I guess once you hit the pop cap you really don't need to trade as you are pretty much self sufficient or well on your way to be. However you will eventually use all the metal on the map and as trade is the only way to replenish it (aside from pods and mechs, but they are not common enough to be a reliable source). Mind you get it from the industrial ship but you get teh point.

A suggestion is this:

We have a comms station, why not able to request a Trade Deligation. A jack of all trades that you can request from other settlements your in contact with and have a certain standing with. They do the trade via the comm system somehow (tribals doing drop pods is weird but hey whatever). It can have a random selection of trade goods and weapons and able to buy slaves, but maybe not sell them, thus maintaining the pop cap but also having the other settlements have some interaction with your colony.

Another idea would be to have Trade Ships that are the same principle. Could ujust be an interplanetary trade skiff or from the moon or space base or whatever.

I'm rambling, it's 2am here so I'll stop but you get the idea I'm trying to unsuccessfully put across.

One thing I forgot to mention, after this last updated, the Raiders is coming to attack us, have far superior skills ... I came to fight raiders with greater than 10/10 skills, while my not passed 3/3. This decreases the chances of melee attack.

Quote from: Tynan on June 05, 2014, 10:24:14 AM

Quote from: sparda666 on June 05, 2014, 10:10:31 AM

Quote from: Tynan on June 05, 2014, 08:37:37 AM
Turrets also don't increase raid difficulty (at least, not any more than walls, stockpiles, beds, or anything else that adds to your wealth).

This would imply that building a base inside a rock wall (i.e. using the cave walls instead of building walls) would artificially deflate your wealth?

That's true. Interesting point.

Perhaps rock walls could be considered very ugly by colonists to compensate.

Even barring that, there seem to be too many advantages in cave dwelling. Single entry point. No drop-in raiders. Raiders won't attack rock walls. You can even expand to the edges of the map through a cave. It's rather OP compared to dwelling out in the open.

Having finally gotten around to 4E after the last couple of iterations, I feel the difficulty at the start might be perhaps one notch too high, and then after day 50~, several notches too easy. After I've developed my walls, turrets, and have enough R4's and M24's to go around, the AI isn't sending anything big enough to really challenge me UNLESS it's a drop squad in the dead center of my base, and then the difficulty goes nutty.

I feel that if they drop directly in the base, maybe the attacking force should be 75% of what it would normally be. The difference in difficulty between having them unexpectedly drop behind your defenses versus having to come through the front door is going to be hard to balance. I'm sure you could build an "emergency bunker" within your walls, but you're still letting them run rampant through your base setting things on fire if you do that, so really you're going to have to engage in a gun fight with whatever cover you have on hand.

Edit: Keep in mind the difficulty you're aiming for has to consider whether or not the game is going to be "iron man" on release. Do you want people having the option to save/reload often if something goes slightly wrong, or do you want people to live with the small (or large) losses that occur due to poor management or some bad luck? If you're going to disable save/load scumming, then you really can't make the game TOO hard, unless you want this to be like DF where your 5, 10, or 100 hour colony falls apart due a string of bad luck.

Quote from: SSS on June 05, 2014, 10:37:40 PM

Quote from: Tynan on June 05, 2014, 10:24:14 AM

Quote from: sparda666 on June 05, 2014, 10:10:31 AM

Quote from: Tynan on June 05, 2014, 08:37:37 AM
Turrets also don't increase raid difficulty (at least, not any more than walls, stockpiles, beds, or anything else that adds to your wealth).

This would imply that building a base inside a rock wall (i.e. using the cave walls instead of building walls) would artificially deflate your wealth?

That's true. Interesting point.

Perhaps rock walls could be considered very ugly by colonists to compensate.

Even barring that, there seem to be too many advantages in cave dwelling. Single entry point. No drop-in raiders. Raiders won't attack rock walls. You can even expand to the edges of the map through a cave. It's rather OP compared to dwelling out in the open.

Of course tunneling is better then building in the open because it's smarter than building in the open. There are just things in this world which are better then other things.

Quote from: Riithi on June 04, 2014, 10:14:28 AM
I haven't voted yet, outside that encounter everything was fine.
Got the game yesterday and tried two times on easy callie, which went fine.
This was the first proper game, so it's kinda normal to get your ass handed I think.

As for feedback on the centipedes, the worst offender seemed to be the inferno gun which kinda invalidates cover.
The inferno gun sets the ground ablaze, so the defenders have to find new cover, so my guys are more busy running for their lives compared to shooting back. Combine that with the huge range and reasonable reload of the inferno gun, it kinda means my guys never get the chance to open fire, because they spend all their time running away.

Right now the best idea I have is to fill a field with stone pillars spread out, and just place men behind them.

losing is fun :P

Quote from: Astraeus on June 06, 2014, 03:45:07 AM
Having finally gotten around to 4E after the last couple of iterations, I feel the difficulty at the start might be perhaps one notch too high, and then after day 50~, several notches too easy. After I've developed my walls, turrets, and have enough R4's and M24's to go around, the AI isn't sending anything big enough to really challenge me UNLESS it's a drop squad in the dead center of my base, and then the difficulty goes nutty.

I feel that if they drop directly in the base, maybe the attacking force should be 75% of what it would normally be. The difference in difficulty between having them unexpectedly drop behind your defenses versus having to come through the front door is going to be hard to balance. I'm sure you could build an "emergency bunker" within your walls, but you're still letting them run rampant through your base setting things on fire if you do that, so really you're going to have to engage in a gun fight with whatever cover you have on hand.

Edit: Keep in mind the difficulty you're aiming for has to consider whether or not the game is going to be "iron man" on release. Do you want people having the option to save/reload often if something goes slightly wrong, or do you want people to live with the small (or large) losses that occur due to poor management or some bad luck? If you're going to disable save/load scumming, then you really can't make the game TOO hard, unless you want this to be like DF where your 5, 10, or 100 hour colony falls apart due a string of bad luck.

as an avid fan of dwarf fortress, i feel the game is just hard enough to be challenging/extremely entertaining right now, especially on randy random.

I forced myself to play with no mods on A4e.  There were some touch an go moments in the first 40-60 days.  Then, it seemed to just ease up once I had weapons to go around and my walls up.  It seems a bit difficult up front and then far too easy in the later stages of the game.

Quote from: Astraeus on June 06, 2014, 03:45:07 AM
Having finally gotten around to 4E after the last couple of iterations, I feel the difficulty at the start might be perhaps one notch too high, and then after day 50~, several notches too easy. After I've developed my walls, turrets, and have enough R4's and M24's to go around, the AI isn't sending anything big enough to really challenge me UNLESS it's a drop squad in the dead center of my base, and then the difficulty goes nutty.

I feel that if they drop directly in the base, maybe the attacking force should be 75% of what it would normally be. The difference in difficulty between having them unexpectedly drop behind your defenses versus having to come through the front door is going to be hard to balance. I'm sure you could build an "emergency bunker" within your walls, but you're still letting them run rampant through your base setting things on fire if you do that, so really you're going to have to engage in a gun fight with whatever cover you have on hand.

Edit: Keep in mind the difficulty you're aiming for has to consider whether or not the game is going to be "iron man" on release. Do you want people having the option to save/reload often if something goes slightly wrong, or do you want people to live with the small (or large) losses that occur due to poor management or some bad luck? If you're going to disable save/load scumming, then you really can't make the game TOO hard, unless you want this to be like DF where your 5, 10, or 100 hour colony falls apart due a string of bad luck.

I definately agree with what you've said.

ok i've voted really hard died at day 70 due to 7-8 raiders dropping into the colony. even with tribal groups helping, stone walls and a decent supply of weapons, i just coulden't make it. consdering that said raiders didnt have advanced weapons yet and i haven't encountered mechanoids yet. made me vote really hard.

This isnt unfair difficulty but merely unforgiving, and i am thinking in terms for new players as well...

what i will say is we definately need better turrets, and that there is very few research that focuses on defense.
occasionally had problems with the early to mid stages which made it challenging and fun. just in its current stage, there is little you can do for late game unless you get very lucky with traders

Now we have wood maybe Balista could be the first turret option? Tribals have Pila and Balistas are pila chuckers.

After some more play I find that cassandra classic is too easy for sure.
Due to rng I only had one gun-toting enemy village, the tribals are piss easy.
After 180 days I just had the 7x Centipede attack again, and managed to take them apart in the open with 9 colonists, it took some reloads and I lost 2 colonists in the process, but it's doable.

I had pre-placed structures in the open made of  sandbag/stonewall mix, so my colonists fought a slow retreating battle mostly using guns that outrange the miniguns. Together with a few unlucky colonists in the centipede range to keep them occupied.

Quote from: Garen on June 06, 2014, 12:43:51 PM
I definately agree with what you've said.

ok i've voted really hard died at day 70 due to 7-8 raiders dropping into the colony. even with tribal groups helping, stone walls and a decent supply of weapons, i just coulden't make it. consdering that said raiders didnt have advanced weapons yet and i haven't encountered mechanoids yet. made me vote really hard.

This isnt unfair difficulty but merely unforgiving, and i am thinking in terms for new players as well...

7-8 raiders with simple weapons were able to take you out?

Were your colonist equipped and did you have any turrets?

You just had bad luck, they dropped inside your base...

Tynan

Another question, why now  the settlers dont take their maximum capacity (75)? Here to have to insist they take at least three times, and even then sometimes they do not take all.

It might be cool to be able to see what the ai is thinking in debug mode, perhaps even save it to a log which we could post in these types of threads. It might help you understand better whats happening during a game.

I just played a 175 day A4e game with Cassandra Classic. I found the difficulty level rather soporific until about day 50, when there was a sudden jump in raider strength. This has seemed to be the case for me throughout this sequence of alphas: low difficulty followed by a sudden jump near day 50. It's like there's an arbitrary spike around 50 days in. After day 50, raids got fairly challenging for another 60 days, although they were spaced rather long apart at times. A couple raids killed or incapacitated at least two colonists out of an average of seven, and a few more would have been worse if I hadn't called for help, although half the time the friendly fighters would just loiter on the wrong side of my base or be otherwise useless. One friendly group even tried to run straight through the enemy's ranks without fighting. They just got slaughtered by the gauntlet.

I got three mechanoid raids. The first one was a single centipede, which made me wonder why it even bothered showing up. The second raid on day 86 was not, to my surprise, as dangerous to me as a large pirate group: it only incapacitated a few people. The biggest challenge was fighting three centipedes in the open, because although one centipede with an inferno cannon is no big deal, two inferno cannons and one blaster can actually control a lot of space. When I realized I couldn't fight them all in the open, I had my colonists fall back and let the centipedes take on my outer four turrets. Centipedes don't seem to deal with turrets very well, so that took a while, allowing my colonists to recuperate a bit. By the time they encroached on my wood-walled base, they had been worn down a bit, and I found that my colonists were much more effective against them in close quarters, especially when the centipedes moved so that there were walls between them, cutting them off from each other's support. It was an interesting fight, being the longest and most damaging to my colony's structure, but in the end only two colonists were incapacitated while only a portion of my colony was threatened. The next one was a joke, even though two centipedes dropped right on top of the colony. For some reason, one of the centipedes was released from its drop pod into a different room than the other one, even though both drop pods landed in the same room. Despite the surprise, only one managed to do so much as break down a wooden door. I had a squad of six colonists dispatch them both fairly quickly at close range.

http://puu.sh/9iKfa/026014cb84.png
http://puu.sh/9iKdj/c9fed5cf3e.png

Around that time, the difficulty of raids started to no longer really matter; although I occasionally lost colonists, my colony as a whole seemed to surpass what the AI was willing to throw at it. I don't know why, but the AI doesn't seem to understand exactly how strong a colony is anymore. Overall, I feel it would have been more even and engaging if there had been more 3-5 person raids in the first 50 days, and if the most dangerous raids had been bracketed by smaller raids.

Nasikabatrachus

Are you using any mod? I'm not using, and I am unable to meet my demand for timber as you did to have so much wood? In my map there is no more trees.

Quote from: Leffa on June 07, 2014, 07:51:43 AM
Nasikabatrachus

Are you using any mod? I'm not using, and I am unable to meet my demand for timber as you did to have so much wood? In my map there is no more trees.

I'm not using any mods. You can grow trees in growing zones. I think my lumber needs were met by just one crop of cultivated trees.

Quote from: Nasikabatrachus on June 07, 2014, 07:55:07 AM

Quote from: Leffa on June 07, 2014, 07:51:43 AM
Nasikabatrachus

Are you using any mod? I'm not using, and I am unable to meet my demand for timber as you did to have so much wood? In my map there is no more trees.

But how do I plant? The boats that appeared to me, did not have the option to buy trees, just buy already cut logs.

I'm not using any mods. You can grow trees in growing zones. I think my lumber needs were met by just one crop of cultivated trees.

When you click on a growing zone, you can set what grows there by clicking on the "growing" tab and then selecting a plant to grow from the button that appears next to the word "plant".

Quote from: Nasikabatrachus on June 07, 2014, 08:34:20 AM
When you click on a growing zone, you can set what grows there by clicking on the "growing" tab and then selecting a plant to grow from the button that appears next to the word "plant".

tks bro!

Quote from: Nasikabatrachus on June 07, 2014, 08:34:20 AM
When you click on a growing zone, you can set what grows there by clicking on the "growing" tab and then selecting a plant to grow from the button that appears next to the word "plant".

Love your profile pic.

Started playing again recently after a bit of a break. Began with a nice Phoebe Friendly game to figure out the new mechanics and the like, then jumped straight into a Callie Classic.

I'm currently at Day 60ish and have had 6-7 raids, a few of which have been dropped right into my base. However, they were all survivable and I haven't suffered any casualties yet (apart from a friendly visitor who I shamelessly used to draw minigun fire from my colonists). I'm sure that the difficulty will ramp up as the days go by, but for the first 60 at least it seems very well balanced to me.

I only saw a few downsides, mostly revolving around the Pila being able to render someone nearly useless in one-hit, but the changelog mentioned that it had been nerfed in the next update. Also, graves could do with "dig up" confirmation, as it wasn't great when I reassigned a dumping zone as critical, only to have it filled with month-old dessicated corpses. :P

Other than that, it's coming along really well! Sinking quite a lot of time into it and it's very enjoyable.

First 3 games of this build.

1st game. Going quite well then on about the 10th day get a raid of 10+ raiders when I have 6 colonists. We are out gunned, out numbered and get owned badly. Graniders being the main problem.

2nd game. Get to about day 6 with my 3 colonists, get raided then immediately after we win all 3 f my colonists go insane at the same time.

3rd game. Playing well, then about day 20 get a raid far far bigger than I can handle. I get owned pretty fast.

I think my main problem is at the start I am struggling to set up camp fast enough and focusing more on keeping sanity than base defences.

Quote from: Kazzier on June 07, 2014, 05:30:45 PM
First 3 games of this build.

1st game. Going quite well then on about the 10th day get a raid of 10+ raiders when I have 6 colonists. We are out gunned, out numbered and get owned badly. Graniders being the main problem.

2nd game. Get to about day 6 with my 3 colonists, get raided then immediately after we win all 3 f my colonists go insane at the same time.

3rd game. Playing well, then about day 20 get a raid far far bigger than I can handle. I get owned pretty fast.

I think my main problem is at the start I am struggling to set up camp fast enough and focusing more on keeping sanity than base defences.

If you open Version.txt in your RimWorld folder, what does it say?

Quote from: Tynan on June 07, 2014, 05:32:31 PM
If you open Version.txt in your RimWorld folder, what does it say?

0.4.462 rev15899 (On classic difficulty)

I don't know if I have just been incredibly unlucky or I did something fundamentally wrong, however I just seemed to get matched up against things I wasn't prepared for far too early.

One reason for this is possibly because I turtle at the start. Looking for a good base location and moving, for example, from one side of the map to another. Not sure how that would effect it.

A big problem which you brought up in another thread was the wood/planks issue. That seemed to put me behind a lot at the start.

Quote from: Kazzier on June 07, 2014, 05:58:39 PM

Quote from: Tynan on June 07, 2014, 05:32:31 PM
If you open Version.txt in your RimWorld folder, what does it say?

0.4.462 rev15899 (On classic difficulty)

I don't know if I have just been incredibly unlucky or I did something fundamentally wrong, however I just seemed to get matched up against things I wasn't prepared for far too early.

One reason for this is possibly because I turtle at the start. Looking for a good base location and moving, for example, from one side of the map to another. Not sure how that would effect it.

A big problem which you brought up in another thread was the wood/planks issue. That seemed to put me behind a lot at the start.

That's Alpha4d. I hotfixed this balance insanity in alpha4e, which you can download from your link.

I'll be sending out a further Alpha 4 update in the next few days as well, with an announcement this time. You could also wait for that.

Quoteyour link

The owl downloads email that I already had?

Or is there another link that I am missing.

Yep, the one you already have.

Quote from: Kazzier on June 07, 2014, 05:30:45 PM
First 3 games of this build.

1st game. Going quite well then on about the 10th day get a raid of 10+ raiders when I have 6 colonists. We are out gunned, out numbered and get owned badly. Graniders being the main problem.

2nd game. Get to about day 6 with my 3 colonists, get raided then immediately after we win all 3 f my colonists go insane at the same time.

3rd game. Playing well, then about day 20 get a raid far far bigger than I can handle. I get owned pretty fast.

I think my main problem is at the start I am struggling to set up camp fast enough and focusing more on keeping sanity than base defences.

hmm, you should have built turrets.. in the current version wealth is what effects raids...
(did you have any weapons?)

A bit more testing.

This time I was able to reach day 81 with just little resistance. Had solid base with 12 colonists, all of the equipped with proper weapons. I didn't build turrets until day 50 or something as suggested here on the forums. I don't know if that affected anything but the game definitely seemed easier.

Can't remember what kind of raids I got at what time (btw built-in journal in the game would definitely help!). One of the raids was a single centipede, and I was able to finish that in no time using the melee only trick.

But on day 81 I got 12 pirates of which 4 had frag grenades. They opened my walls like can-opener on a tin can, got right into the base and killed everybody and half of themselves with frag grenades. Probably could try that again, but going to try out the latest build instead.

Frag grenades do seem a bit too overpowered, at least the amount of damage they do is quite considerable compared to regular guns. What do others think?

The problem with difficulty is that it's not constant. My last run was quite easy, but then the difficulty ramped up just in single go.

Tynan, how do you measure the difficulty of a raid? Is it just a linear sum of participants multiplied with some weapon danger modifiers or something like that?

BTW, you should have one more entry in the poll: Playable, but big spikes in difficulty. I would have voted that.