Ludeon Forums

Alpha4f is out! Check ludeon.com for the latest. I changed the storytellers a lot so I'm very curious about how they're working for you.

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. Thanks all.

Somewhat conflicted regarding how to answer this poll.

Pirate difficulty seemed fine. Random events seemed fine.

Having a dozen squirrels go psychotic and murder my entire colony seemed a teeny bit unfair though. This was at around the 55 day mark, but I only had 4 colonists (would have had 5 - one death to pirates). Had 2 pistols and 2 rifles equipped at the time of the attack. The squirrels stacked up at a door, bashed it down, and then proceeded to incapacitate my colonists one by one (each one taking a couple of seconds to go down). I managed to equip frag grenades on the last colonist, but there was no way to get her to shoot because the squirrels are too damn fast (can't move away fast enough to get room to force-attack before getting meleed again).

If I had been thinking, I would have stacked all my colonists on one of my own turrets and then shot it until it exploded (hoping some colonists lived through the explosion). That doesn't strike me as the kind of thing a colonist would do though (very out of character meta gaming).

Some possible suggestions:

• Let melee hit everything in a square. The stacked squirrels would have probably gone down then.
• Let turrets shoot at the annoying furry rats.
  
• Larger movement/offense/defense penalties for stacked creatures.
• Let me train a squirrel army of my own.

Quote from: GrimTuna on June 08, 2014, 12:38:55 AM
Somewhat conflicted regarding how to answer this poll.

Pirate difficulty seemed fine. Random events seemed fine.

Having a dozen squirrels go psychotic and murder my entire colony seemed a teeny bit unfair though. This was at around the 55 day mark, but I only had 4 colonists (would have had 5 - one death to pirates). Had 2 pistols and 2 rifles equipped at the time of the attack. The squirrels stacked up at a door, bashed it down, and then proceeded to incapacitate my colonists one by one (each one taking a couple of seconds to go down). I managed to equip frag grenades on the last colonist, but there was no way to get her to shoot because the squirrels are too damn fast (can't move away fast enough to get room to force-attack before getting meleed again).

If I had been thinking, I would have stacked all my colonists on one of my own turrets and then shot it until it exploded (hoping some colonists lived through the explosion). That doesn't strike me as the kind of thing a colonist would do though (very out of character meta gaming).

Some possible suggestions:

• Let melee hit everything in a square. The stacked squirrels would have probably gone down then.
• Let turrets shoot at the annoying furry rats.
  
• Larger movement/offense/defense penalties for stacked creatures.
• Let me train a squirrel army of my own.

Squirrel,muffalo armies would be an awesome addition....

I want a war-muffalo

I was doing great until an army of 25 squirrels slaughtered my colony of 6 on day 41.

I played a 70-day game on Cassandra Classic. Although I got a little bit of non-standard difficulty, in that my first three colonists couldn't fight fires and my first recruit couldn't do so either, it wasn't appreciably challenging. The frequent psychotic squirrels and the occasional wave of mad muffalo kept me on my toes, but it was nothing 3-4 colonists couldn't deal with by grouping together and using their guns. I'd really like to see these alleged 25-squirrel waves. The worst I got was 4 muffalo. The lone squirrels were more annoying than anything else.

All the regular raids I received could be met in strength with the aid of maybe a turret, and an outlander town even came to my aid once when I didn't even remotely feel a need for their assistance. Here's how I dealt with the last raid, which came on day 70: http://puu.sh/9k1eO/c67a4bbc7d.png
There were originally eight tribals. My colonists, armed with pistols and one lee-enfield, advanced on them and overwhelmed them.

The wood economy changes were interesting. I wasn't as replete with logs as I'm used to being, since I couldn't divide them into planks anymore, but my first buildings were set up more quickly. Normally I have to be pretty conservative at first, and just stick with one log structure at first and add to it as plank production ramps up. Over time, I cleared away a lot of trees, but I was surprised by how little I was actually able to build with the amount of wood I got. Then again, most people won't be building medium-ish log structures. Here's what it looked like at the end: http://puu.sh/9k2VE/de40bd1706.png

I also noticed the lag time between actually cutting trees down and getting access to wood much more in this version. I suggest that hauling be made part of the wood chopping job, if that's possible.

My favorite thing about this game was having to deal with colonists incapable of being firefighters. Instead of designating home zones, I had to take down buildings, put up emergency walls, and cut away plants. In some ways, it felt more realistic than being able to have colonists wave at the fire until it went away because I had to consider fire's effect on its environment as a force in its own right.

Quote from: Aenir on June 08, 2014, 03:30:59 AM
I was doing great until an army of 25 squirrels slaughtered my colony of 6 on day 41.

...which is due to the universal melee damage. Melee aspect is utterly disproportionate that way. Do squirrels ever even miss an attack? I can't remember. On top of that, squirrels are a small target, inflicting a major hit penalty for anyone shooting at them, even at point blank range. Small size + unrefined melee aspect = disaster. And it doesn't even end there. A pistol does just as much damage as a single melee attack. That alone warps things to animal packs' favor. It takes 3 pistol rounds to kill a squirrel. They shouldn't be called squirrels anymore... Gods help if you fight in darkness or bad weather. The weather penalties are pretty unreasonable as well.

I've dealt with packs of 29 squirrels and 25 boomrats at one point (clarification: 2 separate attacks), but I had 12 colonists then. Didn't get a scratch but then again I had already built a small town with plenty of buildings, corners and streets. I divided my guys in groups of 4 and covered nearby streets, avoiding friendly fire. When animals go insane, it's vital to get together fast.

Still not really sure what I'm doing. Got through to Day 91 without much fuss. http://imgur.com/yMHJOjx
Noticed that my colonists tended to be incapped more (only one died so far, and that's because they were 'nadespammed while they were down).

Could do with some way to get rid of harvested agave fruit, really. Traders don't seem to want it. Maybe I could lure some boomrats into it..

I got a lot more trees than I'm used to seeing, don't know if that's coincidence. By the time I needed to resupply on them, most of the trees had been burned up by lightning fires, though.

Would be nice to be able to designate areas as orchards, where grass is eliminated, food plants are left and auto-harvested. You can see from the screenshots that I've got a bit of a berries/agave cultivation, but harvesting them was always a tiresome, manual affair.
Not that food was ever an issue, mind you.

I figure I'm two or three more raids away from pissing off Cassandra Classic enough that she sends some game-ending minigunner-infested horror-raid at me.

Medieval Oafs seem a touch OP. Maybe prevent them from using the shooting skill.

Overall, seemed quite a bit easier than I'm used to, but I'm still learning, so maybe I was just doing better. Or was attacked less. Difficult to be sure.

Quote from: frosty840 on June 08, 2014, 05:41:49 AM
Still not really sure what I'm doing. Got through to Day 91 without much fuss. http://imgur.com/yMHJOjx
Noticed that my colonists tended to be incapped more (only one died so far, and that's because they were 'nadespammed while they were down).

Could do with some way to get rid of harvested agave fruit, really. Traders don't seem to want it. Maybe I could lure some boomrats into it..

I got a lot more trees than I'm used to seeing, don't know if that's coincidence. By the time I needed to resupply on them, most of the trees had been burned up by lightning fires, though.

Would be nice to be able to designate areas as orchards, where grass is eliminated, food plants are left and auto-harvested. You can see from the screenshots that I've got a bit of a berries/agave cultivation, but harvesting them was always a tiresome, manual affair.
Not that food was ever an issue, mind you.

I figure I'm two or three more raids away from pissing off Cassandra Classic enough that she sends some game-ending minigunner-infested horror-raid at me.

Medieval Oafs seem a touch OP. Maybe prevent them from using the shooting skill.

Overall, seemed quite a bit easier than I'm used to, but I'm still learning, so maybe I was just doing better. Or was attacked less. Difficult to be sure.

Build a growing zone.

---------------------------
Got a game on about day 90 right now.

I have never been threatened by anything really, i got attacked by a pirate group ONCE, and am constantly attacked by small groups of tribal s.. but nothing i cant deal with...

It seems like it got remarkably easier.....

which is a bad thing, i do not really feel challenged.

Oh, I've got a growing zone, but that's for spuds, which your colonists have to plant manually.

I want something that lets self-setting berry plants and agaves grow, but makes your colonists rip up all the grass.

I'm just lazy that way :p

Quote from: frosty840 on June 08, 2014, 06:25:07 AM
Oh, I've got a growing zone, but that's for spuds, which your colonists have to plant manually.

I want something that lets self-setting berry plants and agaves grow, but makes your colonists rip up all the grass.

I'm just lazy that way :p

You can grow strawberries and stuff too (click the name of the plant that is growing to change it)....

Hrm... seemed really easy up until about day 120.  Then doom-raids started happening (4 caterpillars, 20 or so pirates, 40 or so tribals, etc., all just a few days apart).

A couple things to note:

• I chose to dig into a mountain rather than build out in the open.  The doom-raids didn't really start until I tried walling off an exterior area.
  
• The mapgen gave me lots of desert and not much soil.  Didn't think about it until I got to day 3 and realized the animals had eaten all my survival meals, for lack of poverty grass.  Trying to keep a farm going in the face of masses of starving animals was... interesting... until I got off my butt and started using the Hunt command.
  
• I think two hostile tribes is one too many, for the default difficulty at least.

A lot of people voted 'too hard'. Is it just the animal waves? What is too hard, exactly?

Quote from: Tynan on June 08, 2014, 08:54:25 AM
A lot of people voted 'too hard'. Is it just the animal waves? What is too hard, exactly?

keep in mind the majority still voted from *normal to too easy*
(7 people voted too hard on the last version too)

The sheer amount of melee creatures i think is the issue here, (having an entire herd of muffalo attacking one person etc) I had that issue, lost half my colony to a herd of those things because of this.

The animals aren't too hard to handle if you don't let them stack up. I've had success by having my guys run outside into little groups where the squirrels/muffalo approach one by one.

But anyway, losing half your colonists to a doom wave of muffalo doesn't sound like and issue at all... it sounds like FUN!

.... or is it really unbalanced and unbeatable? Inquiring minds want to know.

I am finding 4f good, got destroyed earlier, much earlier, in 4e though one thing i have found is that colonists do not automatically retaliate to threats such as being attacked by a squirrel which in previous changes would have shot at the attacking animal rather than walking until theyre dead.

Apart from this im having fun =)

I've found that everything was possible to manage for a while (mechanoids just sniping and keep moving and they then pose no threat) but after a while the numbers ramp up and you just have to turtle as much as possible, building very narrow tunnels: also keeping an eye on colony strength and keeping it down as low as possible.

Ergo, the problem I've found is that the raiders do not pose too much of a trouble but in fact get a little boring by the sheer number of them (rather than being a challenge): one thing that did get me off-guard was a raid about minute after the last, which was interesting (as still had not finished repairs).

I would like it if field fortresses were made slightly easier to manage from attackers - although have not attempted one recently and that colony strength should slowly increase and difficulty should slowly increase with time, + colony wealth, but not look at colony wealth in such great depth (that I think walls and other objects have an effect on it). Perhaps, if there was more mid-ranged combat - although I need to experiment with the different rifles and such.

Sieges will probably pose a greater challenge; animal psychotic attacks are fine in my opinion and require taking a few out at a time. In addition I think log walls I think should be half height walls - like sandbags but solid so you cannot walk through (and then you can also easily set fire to them if the enemy takeover, although trees appeared to be very sparse in my game but loads of bushes.

Okay. Also, keep in mind that you are intended to die eventually. I'd typically aim for player death somewhere between day 60-150. In future alphas this will make more sense since there will be an endgame and an actual way to win :)

Quote from: Tynan on June 08, 2014, 11:38:03 AM
Okay. Also, keep in mind that you are intended to die eventually. I'd typically aim for player death somewhere between day 60-150. In future alphas this will make more sense since there will be an endgame and an actual way to win :)

thank you for explaining what the goalposts for this survey. because now everyone knows that range is a decent time to die

question is if we die in that range should we count it as normal, or focus it on our own experience

Quote from: Tynan on June 08, 2014, 09:22:16 AM
The animals aren't too hard to handle if you don't let them stack up. I've had success by having my guys run outside into little groups where the squirrels/muffalo approach one by one.

But anyway, losing half your colonists to a doom wave of muffalo doesn't sound like and issue at all... it sounds like FUN!

.... or is it really unbalanced and unbeatable? Inquiring minds want to know.

I think its FUN ;)

day 99 so far in classic : I've experienced very few raid; the firsts ones on day 14, 17 and 20: one tribal each.
I've started randomly with two noble guy, maybe that why they starting so low ?
Right now i'm starting to see raid of 7/10 raiders, mainly with pistols, molotov and grenade.
In my side : 8 colonists, no turret, one m24, one enfield, one pump, the rest with pistols.
Far to easy at this stage.

****

In other note :
I started a randy random and... NEVER been raided. On day 7 i've got an errors saying :
Could not find any faction for raid to match parms (points=20.1199 maxSquadCode=50)
Followed by the same message three day later.
I've attached my savegame at the exact moment of the first appartition of this message:
mediafire download (http://www.mediafire.com/view/5vm64qi75900zl0/Bug.rim)
hope that help a bit

On day 45. Its not going so bad so far. I rushed an early large farming area (which also happens to be exactly where my orbital beacon is. Hauling is for chumps =)  so early on I had some money to work with. At 6 colonists now 1 fulltime farmer 1 chef/stonecrafter (mostly chef) 1 miner and 2 hunters. I had a psyotic wave of squirrels but only got attacked by like 10 of them which werent so hard with my hunters high shooting skills(1 r4 and 1 lee enfield)

I wonder. Does wiping the map of most creatures force them to come in a lower number when they attack?

On another sidenote. Will we eventually get the ability to sell meat and meals. Kinda annoying that the only reliable form of income is farming. And trade is you only reliable source of weapons.

Quote from: beeeeber on June 08, 2014, 01:19:24 PM
day 99 so far in classic : I've experienced very few raid; the firsts ones on day 14, 17 and 20: one tribal each.
I've started randomly with two noble guy, maybe that why they starting so low ?
Right now i'm starting to see raid of 7/10 raiders, mainly with pistols, molotov and grenade.
In my side : 8 colonists, no turret, one m24, one enfield, one pump, the rest with pistols.
Far to easy at this stage.

****

In other note :
I started a randy random and... NEVER been raided. On day 7 i've got an errors saying :

Code Select Expand

Could not find any faction for raid to match parms (points=20.1199 maxSquadCode=50)
Followed by the same message three day later.
I've attached my savegame at the exact moment of the first appartition of this message:
mediafire download (http://www.mediafire.com/view/5vm64qi75900zl0/Bug.rim)
hope that help a bit

Sorry, seems Randy has a bug there. However, you shouldn't necessarily get raided before day 7 ever anyway. I think the game overall should still work, and if you play with dev mode off these errors will not appear. What happened was that Randy set a random points count and sent it to the EnemyRaid incident code, which then tried to find a faction with a squad that could be bought that cheap. But no faction has a squad of 20 points, so it failed to find anything. Basically a harmless error message for now.

Hello :D

I am not super good at this game so i picked the easiest mode.

I had a good start, than got raided by 5 people wich was ok

The next raid was like 15 people where i had 6 people... instant death in day 40.

Now i restart but would really enjoy a gammemode where no problems occur so i can understand the basics. I still have no idea how to build a good defense. I thought sandbags are great but i learned they just jump over them *derp*

I so much enjoy this game!

Right now iam writing an application to help you coding!

Have a wonderfull day!
Matthias

I am on day 92, and it seems like the enemy raiders are starting to outgun the colonists. I am uploading a savegame with a raid just starting and another right after it ended. Although all my colonists survived, the raiders have weapons that have longer range than the turrets, and hence they were able to simply pick off each turret one by one and close in. Also, towards the later half of the game, the trading activity dropped quite significantly.

Are there any plans to add different types of weapons to the game or more security buildings? Maybe add a security upgrade research tree?

I am playing Alpha4f vanilla.
Raid Starting: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6_TKT3JWEh4VHRmYW9NUTRueDg/edit?usp=sharing (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6_TKT3JWEh4VHRmYW9NUTRueDg/edit?usp=sharing)
Raid Ending: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6_TKT3JWEh4UFQzSkpuSTh4SWc/edit?usp=sharing (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6_TKT3JWEh4UFQzSkpuSTh4SWc/edit?usp=sharing)

The game is immensely enjoyable, thanks for making it!

Quote from: MaMilaCan on June 08, 2014, 03:32:58 PM
Hello :D

I am not super good at this game so i picked the easiest mode.

I had a good start, than got raided by 5 people wich was ok

The next raid was like 15 people where i had 6 people... instant death in day 40.

Now i restart but would really enjoy a gammemode where no problems occur so i can understand the basics. I still have no idea how to build a good defense. I thought sandbags are great but i learned they just jump over them *derp*

I so much enjoy this game!

Right now iam writing an application to help you coding!

Have a wonderfull day!
Matthias

the storyteller 'Pheobe Friendly' has no raiders etc, so use that for base practice
sandbags are built more for cover or slowing the enemy down

for base defense - make sure you've got cover for both turrets and colonists.

these ive found out to be decent basics

if theyre raiders then you need to make sure there's a small amount of terrible cover that they will use, otherwise they will just run up to and flank you
If they animals you need small corridors where you can chokepoint them, by this i mean there is no cover for them but you can focus all shooting o one target
and if theyre mechanoids (really hard to encounter) get your colonists out of thier base and fight them in the open, (possibly make some small huts near your base for cover)

rimworlds enemies are like xcom's enemies but less smart (sorry Tynan!). they will use every trick and cover they can to kill you, even if that cover is not good at all.
and if there isnt any avaliable they will recognize that and just rush you down

apart from that hope you enjoy rimworld ^.^

Hey, first time posting in the Forums, so let's see if I can do this right. ^^
I started a game on Cassandra Classic and managed to "survive" up to day 131. I say that in quotes, because I got obliterated at around day 100 due to 15+ human enemies falling on my base and then reloaded the Save to try again. Eventually, those humans got replaced by 8 Mechanoids, that once again fell on my base and destroyed everything. I only lost 1 colonist out of 8 to them, but I'm not going to continue playing on that Save file.

Here's a picture of my base, when I got attacked.
http://i.imgur.com/MbGzFJN.jpg (http://i.imgur.com/MbGzFJN.jpg)

Here's a picture of the area where they fell. Thankfully I got some backup from another faction, or the two remaining Mechanoids would have destroyed the rest.
http://i.imgur.com/OnHqa7m.jpg (http://i.imgur.com/OnHqa7m.jpg)

I got a few Psychotic Waves as I played, but since I cleaned the area around my base regularly and had that 'funnel' defense near the top, they weren't a problem.

I think the current build is quite fun and fair, but the AI can be strangely overwhelming at times. I had at least 3 Colonists with a shooting skill above 10, and they constantly missed their target, when an enemy with a shooting skill of 4 rarely missed my Colonists. It's probably luck, but it's still rather annoying, haha.

Oh, speaking of luck. The first enemy that came to my base was barely able to do anything besides being a Warden, Builder and a Cook. The same thing with my 5th Colonist, but he was an Assassin, so he was constantly idle around the base unless I gave him something to hunt.
I had a lack of trees near the start, and for some reason, the initial plantation I made of them started to whiter earlier than usual. Some trees  had only 40 or so HP by the time they had grown about 70%

Basically, I think this build is nearly perfect as it is. The only thing I think should be tweaked around, it's the frequency of Slaver ships and number of positive events. Aside from 2 Miracle Recovery's and a few trade ships, everything else was only a minor inconvenience. I had about 5000+ Silver saved up to buy a Colonist or two, but the ships never came. I would have used the money for weapons, but the ships only sold Pistols, Molotovs, and the random 'Middle Tier' weapon.

Thanks a lot for your hard work, Tynan! Can't wait for the next update. ^^

Day 168. I believe it's 169 where the raids get gigantic.

I keep getting raided by mercs that day and can't survive. I have 9 or 10 colonists, with Charge Rifles, M16s, LMGs, and other guns, and I funnel the mercs into my base through doors, but they just destroy me every time.

There's at least 20 or 25 of them! Al carrying high tier weapons and rushing my colonists.

Haven't been able to survive once.

Early game is a little challenging until proper defenses are set up, after that I havn't really been challenged. Even with the Arachnid mod running, once you work out how to deal with them it's free meat. No turrets and I havn't faced more than 25ish opponent human raids. Maybe another difficulty level that the AI adapts and destroys sandbags and/or bust in walls instead of taking the route the player has preplanned. Dunno, I love this game but after a while the challenge is more about getting setup than anything else.

[attachment deleted by admin: too old]

not a difficulty problem but a minor bug. so i went to by an uzi off a combat supplier. and as luck would have it the pod dropped precisely on a pistol that was lying on the ground. the uzi basically doesnt exist and theres just a pistol sitting there

Day 73 and it's so unbalanced it's laughable.  Three straight waves of insane animals (then part of a spaceship lands and the radiation drives them insane as well) and I go from eight healthy colonists to zero. 

Had to reload.  Makes me not want to play the game. 

I have no problems with raiders, but 15 angry squirrels kill my colony.

I'm at the point now where I just want to quit the game instead of look for solutions.  They attack so fast and without warning that it makes it an action game and not a strategy game.

i played one game and died from a base-drop raid that caught me off guard around 40~ days.. mainly because the raids were so small and few and far between, and then suddenly ramped right up... on the Classic mode, it should feel more progressive I guess.

i just finished a 150+ day game on classic and really felt it was too easy. I ended up starting dev mode and sending armies after me once tech was done and there was nothing new left to build. I didn't get that many raids and lucked out on most with another faction being a distraction to split the hordes. I only had one colonist die in the entire playthru. But then after about day 115, the raids got huge and a party of raiders just stormed the place and it was over. Seems like the raiders are more accurate at shooting now. Didn't get ANY centipedes.

Animal waves were the toughest in the sense that it happens so quick and usually one colonist is incapped before you can set up the firing squads- most of the time, stray bullets kill your incapped colonists when these occur. Food supplies took a while to get to decent levels due to slow farming. Starvation was a good issue to see crop up and give me something to do.

Would have liked to see more of a rising curve of tension... even the classic feels like random in the way it lends preference to certain events. Would almost rather see a more linear progression in this mode (ie. 1 raider, hahaha, 2 raiders, hahaha, 3 raiders, hahaha) in the early game and then it gets crazy with double raids and eclipse/raids and such.

While I'm here- one thing I'd really like to see would be fog of war implemented, so you can't see details of the map without a radar system, similar to the command and conquer series. Knowing where the raids are coming from kills a bit of the tension- usually I just let my colonists sleep/eat/work until they stage the attack and then wait for them to come... not knowing their position unless I have a scouting/surveillance system would make each raid a bit edgier, methinks.

[attachment deleted by admin: too old]

For me, it was almost what I'd expect from Cassandra. I still question the sudden leap in raider attack power when they go from using pistols and grenades to heavy weapons just three days later. Playthrough details in another topic, here. (http://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=3956.0)

I think that many players spend too much on trying to build a solid defense line instead of a more strategic use of their colonists. Rather than place turrets and build kill boxes, I had my colonists shoot from doorways and around corners. I find it's much better to single out raiders and pick off one or two at a time while stalling the rest by shooting one round then retreating.

I think another problem players may be having is dealing with losses. So you lost half of your colony's population in one raid? That doesn't mean it's over. If you manage to hold out long enough, the raiders will just give up and move on.

During the second mechanoid raid, I sent most of my colonists out to their drop location to start dealing damage, then pulled back to let my colonists eat and rest. Then by the time the centipedes were in range of my colony, they were much easier to finish off, and the rain caused by the fires they stared in my preemptive attack helped keep my colony from burning down.

Quote from: Tynan on June 08, 2014, 11:38:03 AM
Okay. Also, keep in mind that you are intended to die eventually. I'd typically aim for player death somewhere between day 60-150. In future alphas this will make more sense since there will be an endgame and an actual way to win :)

Wow... Then too easy. The animal raids are a bit 'iffy' and I can see why people get caught out by them. I was lucky enough never to get a situation that was as bad as some described but I have 2 colonies at over 300 days O.o

Also, when I answered the equivalent poll for 4e I was at 400+ days on that one!

well my base is at day 115 or116  just barely over 15000 total value. with 8 colonists. now here come the raids. Im getting 1 about every week or 3 days now. usually including about 20 raiders. i have 4 m24s 2 r4s an m16 and a minigun(is this thing really worth it. seems to just miss a lot).

that or im attacked by 2 centepedes at a time. i think ive killed 8 of them so far. the current raids wouldnt be a problem if every 1 of them didnt drop straight into my base and start attacking. no colonist losses yet. basically the only way i can compete is by cheezing with the numerous doorways around my base.

( when they come. everyone runs inside. m24s go to the back out the door and look around the corner. and the 4 close rangers mob up on a door where i can get a shot at only 1 or 2 raiders. wipe them and bring them back inside. rinse and repeat )

I find the game fairly difficult. Have yet to have a colony make it past day 60. From around day 10-31 I will get psyco animal then pirate raid, then psyco animal, pirate raid. The amount of time balances out I think 

hello,
after a 100 days + I've voted Hard but nothing crazy. I'm at 9 colonists, raids are getting really tough. No turrets, no mg, no M24.

I've had quiet a bad silver situation from start until approx day 60, when my whole food production went A ok.

My main issue are still drop-on-top raids, especially now that waves are getting around 20 raiders.

Got lucky with slave traders and a dropping rescue pod, so I've been able to go without turrets, but I think now is the time to give the new toys a try.

Quote from: Utterbob on June 09, 2014, 12:58:15 AM

Quote from: Tynan on June 08, 2014, 11:38:03 AM
Okay. Also, keep in mind that you are intended to die eventually. I'd typically aim for player death somewhere between day 60-150. In future alphas this will make more sense since there will be an endgame and an actual way to win :)

Wow... Then too easy. The animal raids are a bit 'iffy' and I can see why people get caught out by them. I was lucky enough never to get a situation that was as bad as some described but I have 2 colonies at over 300 days O.o

Also, when I answered the equivalent poll for 4e I was at 400+ days on that one!

I agree

I may be too much of a nub to play this kind of game. I just cant seem to be able to survive for more than 30 days without some kind of help from mods, like the non-lethal turrets, or from the developer tool. For instance, at day 30 and something a huge wave of squirrels incapped all of my colonists. Had to use the dev tool to force a miracle heal in one of then, just to keep the colony alive.

Quote from: insanevizir on June 09, 2014, 03:26:38 PM
I may be too much of a nub to play this kind of game. I just cant seem to be able to survive for more than 30 days without some kind of help from mods, like the non-lethal turrets, or from the developer tool. For instance, at day 30 and something a huge wave of squirrels incapped all of my colonists. Had to use the dev tool to force a miracle heal in one of then, just to keep the colony alive.

You should have just restarted and tried again ;P death is part of these kinds of games, and rimworld (as tynan stated)

So day 345 and 5 centipedes drop in on top of me catching 5 of my 10 dudes in the open harvesting... 2 dead quick, long firefight resulting in 1 left on his feet and 3 wounded with one of those broke in restraints. The other 3 starved in bed before the fight was done. Recovering now... I'd like to change my vote up one notch. Oh, one burned in bed wounded :(

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Quote from: Bilxx1 on June 09, 2014, 04:47:48 PM
So day 345 and 5 centipedes drop in on top of me catching 5 of my 10 dudes in the open harvesting... 2 dead quick, long firefight resulting in 1 left on his feet and 3 wounded with one of those broke in restraints. The other 3 starved in bed before the fight was done. Recovering now... I'd like to change my vote up one notch. Oh, one burned in bed wounded :(

If you're that far in... please fully expect to get your face smashed :P As it stands I'm targeting players to die in the day 70-200 range.

Rather unrelated to the topic, but is anyone else mentally pronouncing "4f" like "Forffff"?

Haha,, bring it :)

Psychotic waves are a slap in the face. What are you to do against a wave of 25 boom rats? 20 muffalos? Wildlife attacks are frequent and either a waste of time (slow mode while a colonist punches an agitated squirrel to death) or incredibly frustrating way to just kill your colony unfairly (25 boom rats? screw that, load autosave...).

Get rid of them, they're nothing but completely frustrating - this is a colony builder not a less-fair version of Dark Souls

Same for pirates dropping on your colony - no. Just no. Save that for the harder story tellers, not Chill Calle. Indeed the "Chill" story teller is far from it - seems happy to dick you over in stupid ways early on just as much, if not more so, than Cassandra (could be a few bad experiences on my part)

My usual strategy is to get everyone tightly packed into a group and have all the animals funnel down a long straight path and hope i have enough DPS to take them all out. It's not perfect but it works most of the time.

The shape of the graph is a little strange. I'm curious about all these people voting "too hard". My hypothesis is that many of these are:

1. Hitting some specific unusual game circumstance that kills very hard. Animal waves, perhaps?
2. Playing extremely long games and eventually getting steamrolled by the late game storyteller. This is what's supposed to happen.

Can any more of these "too hard" voters shed some light?

Quote from: Tynan on June 09, 2014, 07:59:00 PM2. Playing extremely long games and eventually getting steamrolled by the late game storyteller. This is what's supposed to happen.

I didn't vote yet because  I didn't have enough time to play the new versions. I assume that a lot of players don't expect to be crushed and are frustrated by the experience. Not everybody here is a hardcore Dwarf Fortress fan and its definition of "fun".

I can only speak for myself but I find my enjoyment in building complex structures, managing tight resource budgets, training my colonists and make them happy. A lot of the incidents can be frustrating, especially if they repeat itself.

If I get hit with a mysterious blight on days 3 and 13 that's really more frustrating than a challenge. It's easy enough to harvest some wild plants or hunt animals for food. It's not challenging, it's a nuisance. After I have stockpiled enough food I stop caring about blights altogether.

Raiders are similar. There is a very fine line between nuisance, challenging and devastating. It all depends on what you expect to be pitted against I guess. The problem with RimWorld right now is that it is almost impossible for the player to influence the pace of enemy progression. In most comparable games you have some degree of influence, maybe by digging down into the next level, accepting new prisoners... I haven't found a reliable way to do that in RimWorld yet.

Quote from: Tynan on June 09, 2014, 07:59:00 PM
The shape of the graph is a little strange. I'm curious about all these people voting "too hard". My hypothesis is that many of these are:

1. Hitting some specific unusual game circumstance that kills very hard. Animal waves, perhaps?
2. Playing extremely long games and eventually getting steamrolled by the late game storyteller. This is what's supposed to happen.

Can any more of these "too hard" voters shed some light?

I initially voted "hard but beatable", but that was before you posted this:

Quote from: Tynan on June 08, 2014, 11:38:03 AM
Okay. Also, keep in mind that you are intended to die eventually. I'd typically aim for player death somewhere between day 60-150. In future alphas this will make more sense since there will be an endgame and an actual way to win :)

Given that benchmark, I'd probably change my opinion to "wasn't really threatened".  I generally don't start seeing unrecoverable (as opposed to suboptimal-result) challenge until around the 70-80 day mark, depending on initial map and faction setup.  Like right now, I'm playing an utter creampuff of a map - lots of soil (=no hungry animals going after crops), no hostile tribes (and only one pirate), and I scored three colonists off of the first three spawns.

Some thoughts:

• Mechanoids should be willing to finish their targets, instead of simply disabling like all the other hostiles do.
• Inferno cannons cycle too fast, given the panic they cause when they hit.
• Hunted animals should have a (small) chance of turning on their hunters, and a (slightly bigger) chance of fleeing.
• Pirate/tribe raids should be much more interesting once they start being interested in stealing things.  Hint, hint.

My base got killed off fairly early when "enemy drops right on top of you" when I only had 4 colonists, spread out and there were 6 pirates were able to kill 2 citizens right away.... leaving me with only 2 left inside with pistols.

I'm really not liking the enemy direct drop as it encourages the player to have everything built deep into a mountain. 

All but one of my games had its final downfall because of this mechanic.  (The other time was because a muffolo heard weakened my base right before the pirates attacked.)  ;D

I'm able to last around 100 days, but being killed off by airdrops in the middle of my base .... isn't fun.  If we had anti-air capabilities, then it would be an interesting mechanic.  But having no recourse other than to dig deep into the mountain isn't that fun.

Think that ability to detect them before they land would be nice, like a radar that would pick up orbital objects incomming in colony way or some spy network ^^

Quote from: Tiresais on June 09, 2014, 06:31:59 PM
Psychotic waves are a slap in the face. What are you to do against a wave of 25 boom rats? 20 muffalos? Wildlife attacks are frequent and either a waste of time (slow mode while a colonist punches an agitated squirrel to death) or incredibly frustrating way to just kill your colony unfairly (25 boom rats? screw that, load autosave...).

Get rid of them, they're nothing but completely frustrating - this is a colony builder not a less-fair version of Dark Souls

Same for pirates dropping on your colony - no. Just no. Save that for the harder story tellers, not Chill Calle. Indeed the "Chill" story teller is far from it - seems happy to dick you over in stupid ways early on just as much, if not more so, than Cassandra (could be a few bad experiences on my part)

Players are supposed to die between day 70-150 , ever played dwarf fortress? This game is about the story,not simply building a colony,  a story has to end eventually , and currently there is no end game, so tynan programmed the AI to smash us in between that time. So we have a cool story to tell our friends, it will make more sense once there are more various kinds of raids, but as it stands that is how it is, and its extremely fun no matter.

Just because you die in the end DOES NOT mean that its dark souls.

For me, it's the horde of animals.  Particularly preceded or followed by a group of raiders.

I think many are getting caught up on the fact that we are dying.  For me, it's not that I am dying, it's how I'm dying.  Either weakened or finished off by a horde of insane animals isn't what I enjoy or want to play. 

I don't mind dying due to slack defenses or poor management.  I won't continue to play this if it becomes a game where the AI is going to kill me off whatever the cost.  Especially when it's a group of insane animals that explode.   Seems like a very cheap direction to take this game and I hope it's not in the final product.  Sounds like the siege aspect is hopefully where we are headed instead, which is a reasonable way to lose.  If that's the case, I'm sure there will be another/updated mod that lets turrets fire on the animals to make them moot.

Having said that, I have played this game more than any other game in recent memory.  I really enjoy it. 

Quote from: GrimTuna on June 08, 2014, 12:38:55 AM

• Let melee hit everything in a square. The stacked squirrels would have probably gone down then.

Im just imagining some guy punching 5 squirrels to death with a single swing of his gigantic arm.

Quote from: sparda666 on June 10, 2014, 03:30:14 AM

Quote from: GrimTuna on June 08, 2014, 12:38:55 AM

• Let melee hit everything in a square. The stacked squirrels would have probably gone down then.

Taht guy, is a bad-ass

Im just imagining some guy punching 5 squirrels to death with a single swing of his gigantic arm.

Quote from: Untrustedlife on June 09, 2014, 11:33:25 PM

Quote from: Tiresais on June 09, 2014, 06:31:59 PM
Psychotic waves are a slap in the face. What are you to do against a wave of 25 boom rats? 20 muffalos? Wildlife attacks are frequent and either a waste of time (slow mode while a colonist punches an agitated squirrel to death) or incredibly frustrating way to just kill your colony unfairly (25 boom rats? screw that, load autosave...).

Get rid of them, they're nothing but completely frustrating - this is a colony builder not a less-fair version of Dark Souls

Same for pirates dropping on your colony - no. Just no. Save that for the harder story tellers, not Chill Calle. Indeed the "Chill" story teller is far from it - seems happy to dick you over in stupid ways early on just as much, if not more so, than Cassandra (could be a few bad experiences on my part)

Players are supposed to die between day 70-150 , ever played dwarf fortress? This game is about the story,not simply building a colony,  a story has to end eventually , and currently there is no end game, so tynan programmed the AI to smash us in between that time. So we have a cool story to tell our friends, it will make more sense once there are more various kinds of raids, but as it stands that is how it is, and its extremely fun no matter.

Just because you die in the end DOES NOT mean that its dark souls.

I have to disagree with you. Having a game that utterly destroys you after a set amount of time (Like you said: Between day 70 and 150) is not fun. What kind of game would do that? I would stop playing after that happens. (Keep in mind that this is just me, others may think so aswell)

It doesn't utterly destroy you automatically, it just ramps up and I expect most players to die in that range. This is the same model that was used in arcade games going back to the 80's - no defined ending, but rather a series of increasing challenges until inevitable death.

This version seems better but still allows me to survive without problems.  The additions i really like are how enemies that enter or drop near geothermal generators now destroy them instead of ignoring them like before.  I also like how raiders will fully attack and destroy stone walls and break through although this can be easily dealt with by building another wall behind it and still funneling them into your kill box.

The waves of animals actually presented some fun times, i did have large waves of muffalo attack but because they move so slowly especially over rock debris i was able to kill them easily, but the squirrels were a little more in numbers and faster.  My biggest problem with them is that once they get in melee, my colonist tend to get eaten alive by my other colonists using miniguns, charge rifles, and m16's.

Overall i think the difficulty is still to easy considering once you play the game through a few times, and understand the mechanics it simply turns into a game of waiting for the next raid, then clean-up to wait again.  The drop in raids were a great idea but for me they are no different then the normal raids because i use roofs to prevent them from actually dropping in my base anyway.

Quote from: vagineer1 on June 10, 2014, 01:18:30 PM

Quote from: Untrustedlife on June 09, 2014, 11:33:25 PM

Quote from: Tiresais on June 09, 2014, 06:31:59 PM
Psychotic waves are a slap in the face. What are you to do against a wave of 25 boom rats? 20 muffalos? Wildlife attacks are frequent and either a waste of time (slow mode while a colonist punches an agitated squirrel to death) or incredibly frustrating way to just kill your colony unfairly (25 boom rats? screw that, load autosave...).

Get rid of them, they're nothing but completely frustrating - this is a colony builder not a less-fair version of Dark Souls

Same for pirates dropping on your colony - no. Just no. Save that for the harder story tellers, not Chill Calle. Indeed the "Chill" story teller is far from it - seems happy to dick you over in stupid ways early on just as much, if not more so, than Cassandra (could be a few bad experiences on my part)

Players are supposed to die between day 70-150 , ever played dwarf fortress? This game is about the story,not simply building a colony,  a story has to end eventually , and currently there is no end game, so tynan programmed the AI to smash us in between that time. So we have a cool story to tell our friends, it will make more sense once there are more various kinds of raids, but as it stands that is how it is, and its extremely fun no matter.

Just because you die in the end DOES NOT mean that its dark souls.

I have to disagree with you. Having a game that utterly destroys you after a set amount of time (Like you said: Between day 70 and 150) is not fun. What kind of game would do that? I would stop playing after that happens. (Keep in mind that this is just me, others may think so aswell)

Dwarf fortress always kills you eventually.

I just got to day 108 and Cassandra dropped 3 Centipedes in my base, right in the middle of my farms. Some chaos ensued but I managed to pull through with only 2 incapacitated colonists:

(http://imgur.com/of6T7V6)

The difficulty felt too easy until now and this was a giant leap to about right. The only complaint I have so far is that the raiders really don't prepare you for a couple of mechanoids dropping into your base. A slightly more gradual difficulty curve would be appreciated. =3

PS: I got the mandatory mad boomrat just one day later. As expected. =D

I made it to day 140 and change on Casssandra.  The only non-vanilla mods I was using were "medical bed" and "embrasures".  The AI dropped 25+ centipedes onto my 10 colonists.  I immediately saved as this seemed like an impossible challenge.  So, I tried to beat it several times and could never get them all down.  This seems like overkill to me.  I think the problem is the colony wealth calculation.  I had the following stats:

Colony Wealth: 119675
Colony Wealth (Items): 101180
Colony Wealth (Buildings): 18495
Colony Strength: 11.6 (10 colonists and 4 turrets; One could argue that I should have built a million turrets but, they are useless in a solar storm so, I tend not to use them heavily.)
Enemy Raids: 26

Now, the items part is obviously driving my wealth.  But, I don't know the details of the formula.  Sure, I had some large stockpiles of food, metal, stone blocks, etc.  But, mainly, I had a million weapons from past raids that I had nothing to do with.  Food, metal and bricks don't make me capable of fighting off a larger force.  The combat traders don't show up enough (and when they do show up they are too poor) to remove the weapons dropped by previous raiders.  Are weapons that are not equipped counted?  If so, should you limit that formula to the number of weapons your colonists could possibly equip? Or, should you give us a way to convert weapons to raw materials (something like the "workplaces" mod) so they don't count against us?  Alternatively, maybe a different set of story tellers for those that want to try and play a longer game?  Just dropping an utterly unbeatable force (and I did try to beat them ... maybe I just used bad tactics) seems quite unsatisfying to me.  There has to be a better way to handle this than a sudden ramp up to the death drop.

I voted in Normal - a challenge, but nothing crazy

Everything was ok in my game, and had defeated the mechanoids all waves of raiders ... But I was beaten on day 172 , when a psychotic outbreak affected all Muffalos they were invading my base, killing all my colonists, one by one. .. I stay really frustrated by dying stupidly for a wave of Muffalos, as had survived the attacks of the so feared mechanoids...

It's all... Sorry for my bad english

Quote from: Ruin on June 10, 2014, 05:06:17 PMAlternatively, maybe a different set of story tellers for those that want to try and play a longer game?  Just dropping an utterly unbeatable force (and I did try to beat them ... maybe I just used bad tactics) seems quite unsatisfying to me.  There has to be a better way to handle this than a sudden ramp up to the death drop.

This so much!
I like longer games. 100 days is just for warming up. I want to be able to build a giant base with lots of unnecessary rooms and furniture for decoration. Right now if you stockpile food and resources, build large rooms with lots of furniture and collect weapons and manufactured goods for trade you are hurting yourself. You know you will get punished during the next raider attack. However, if you build a minimal base and delete stockpiles that you no longer need your chances of success go up.

Sorry, but that makes no sense in my opinion. The goal of every comparable game is to grow and prosper. Dwarf Fortress will give you more dwarfs if your fortress is more valuable. Prison Architect allows you to house more inmates, make more money, improve and expand. RimWorld gives you nothing and kicks you in the nuts.

I like a challenge, I really do, but I find it extremely frustrating to know that no matter how well I play, it will all be for nothing because the storyteller will just drop more enemies on me more frequently until my colony perishes. Up until Alpha 3 I was able to decide how long I want to keep playing - if I played my cards right. Now the storyteller decides at an arbitrary point to kill me. Why?

What is wrong with allowing me to manage my colony for as long as I want?

Dwarf Fortress does bring greater attacks if you have greater wealth. That's why the enemies are there - to steal your stuff.

I do understand your annoyance with the concept, if you get the sense that you're being punished for succeeding. This is an inherent problem with every adaptive difficulty system in games.

What alternatives can you suggest? The system used to cue off strength - colonist count, weaponry, turrets - but that concept came under lots of criticism as well. I suppose we could make a completely non-adaptive storyteller who just ramps up according to a fixed schedule, but that will match very few players. Almost everyone will be either way ahead or left in the dust. So what else is there? I'm really curious if you have a solution I haven't thought or heard of yet.

Quote from: Tynan on June 10, 2014, 07:11:32 PM
Dwarf Fortress does bring greater attacks if you have greater wealth. That's why the enemies are there - to steal your stuff.

I do understand your annoyance with the concept, if you get the sense that you're being punished for succeeding. This is an inherent problem with every adaptive difficulty system in games.

What alternatives can you suggest? The system used to cue off strength - colonist count, weaponry, turrets - but that concept came under lots of criticism as well. I suppose we could make a completely non-adaptive storyteller who just ramps up according to a fixed schedule, but that will match very few players. Almost everyone will be either way ahead or left in the dust. So what else is there? I'm really curious if you have a solution I haven't thought or heard of yet.

I don't think the difficulty itself is the problem, but the "win mindset". Rim World is meant to produce stories, but many people are just playing it in the sense of any other game. A game that is meant to beat you after so long might seem counter-intuitive to some. (Thank you for clarifying that, btw- I didn't even realize that myself.)

This is somewhat intensified by the current lack of an endgame. People are expecting to be able to meet the demands of a larger colony, since expansion is all there is to do currently. An update that explains that you're meant to die (for now) after x days would probably be more beneficial than endless tinkering with the difficulty.

Well right now the ever increasing attacks are the only challenge to overcome.
After a while it appears pointless to keep struggling just for struggles sake, but of course this is true at this time.
I am sure when there is an endgame or maybe even different endgames it will become clear that the challenges thrown in the path to victory may very well result in game over if there is a weakness, so if one manages to keep the game going one even can win at the end.

Having said this, after playing on Cassandra Classic for over 100 days I must admit that one psychotic wave of boomrats was the death of my base and I had to load an older save game where I did a first-strike on all boomrats on the map... just so a wave of raiders could attack instead.
Thankfully the raiders were not prepared for a melee brawl at my entrance doors, so I coped and killed nearly all of them.

But after day 100 its wave after wave... my base is full of dirt and I cant erect defenses and my cook is constantly behind on preparing meals...

Maybe the storyteller should also evaluate the overall happiness and cleanliness of the base to check if a prolonged break after yet another attack might be a good idea, at least it could wait to let me collect all the weapons scattered about.

Still - I must admit the balance is very good.
When 4 centipedes arrived I thought I was done for, but with some advanced strategies like sniping the one with the minigun off while they were preparing the attack and then doing a constant attack from 4 good cover spots by switching out damaged pawns I managed to win even as it was a close call.
To win like this yields great satisfaction and makes for a very enjoyable game.

Hopefully I'll find some time to let my folks work on the base though... its slowly becoming a game of viscera cleanup detail ;-)

Thanks Pirx.

I am hoping to get a proper endgame into the Alpha5 or Alpha6. This will be the one where you build a ship to escape the planet.

After that I'm looking at doing less combat by adding more stuff to build and customize in the base. It is a combat-heavy game because it's so light on other content.

Quote from: Tynan on June 10, 2014, 07:51:41 PM
I am hoping to get a proper endgame into the Alpha5 or Alpha6. This will be the one where you build a ship to escape the planet.

o_O
This.

In Dwarf Fortress, wealth is a measure of a lot of little things which all provide their own sorts of benefit. Wealth objects mean better decorations, more valuable trade goods, better weapons and armor, happier dwarves, etcetera. Right now in Rimworld there's not a lot that wealth can actually do except draw more raiders, and if you play like I do then it's kind of boring most of the time. 50 days is a long time, but that's when I start to get interesting raids, if I even do get those.

Instead of a single-factor approach, I would suggest a multi-part solution. For a start, let raid power/size be related to colony strength again as at least a secondary factor, because underproducing wealth fools the storytellers too easily. Then, add elements which allow accumulated wealth to open up possibilities as well as create sources of conflict. Use more resources as bargaining chips in diplomacy, and let hostile factions demand various resources appropriate to their type as tribute. Make simple story events to correlate with increasing wealth which implicitly invite conflict, like an appeal for shelter by a runaway slaveâ€"i.e. from a pirate factionâ€" who might become part of the colony if you accept them. This is aside from more obvious long-term wealth goals like buying spaceship parts off of traders with lots of silver.

Overall, I think wealth should invite enemies to tear you down, while strength should be the barometer they use to figure out how to do it.

I'm not entirely certain that one of the mods I'm using hasn't wacked things out a bit, but none state that they affect raids.  But, at around day 80 of my new colony, set to Cassandra Classic, I'd seen about 5 or 6 raids of ~300 enemies.  The great, game-lagging mobs of cave people were easy to chew up in my 10-killbox long maze of blasting charges that opened up into an arch of turrets and colonists behind sandbags.  So was the psychic wave of 18 or so muffalo.  The 309 space pirates (the number in the last raid, thanks for the lifeform scanner in Miscellaneous mod Haplo) were another story.  Especially with the Project Armory mod (by Evul, thanks, great mod), since they were packing RPG-7s and automatics and several laser/energy weapon varieties.  And I only had 15 colonists, lol.  The turrets stayed alive for about 0.5 seconds, and my colonists for about a second or so longer.  So yeah... kinda difficult? IDK it was fun while it lasted.

Quote from: Tynan on June 10, 2014, 07:11:32 PM
Dwarf Fortress does bring greater attacks if you have greater wealth. That's why the enemies are there - to steal your stuff.

I do understand your annoyance with the concept, if you get the sense that you're being punished for succeeding. This is an inherent problem with every adaptive difficulty system in games.

What alternatives can you suggest? The system used to cue off strength - colonist count, weaponry, turrets - but that concept came under lots of criticism as well. I suppose we could make a completely non-adaptive storyteller who just ramps up according to a fixed schedule, but that will match very few players. Almost everyone will be either way ahead or left in the dust. So what else is there? I'm really curious if you have a solution I haven't thought or heard of yet.

In my experience the best games are ones that adapt themselves to fit the individual users preferences. Of course there are limits to this but the closer you can come to it the better the game.

My recommendation would be to to have multiple variations of the story teller. The 'classic' ones you keep as is but also make one for longer duration colonies for those who like to play that way but want more then Phoebe Friendly. Like a 'balanced', 'Cassandra Balanced'. The balanced ones would determine raid strength from a base of colony defense and add on to that based on how well you handled the last raid. If the last raid did not kill anyone or do any damage then the storyteller ups the raid strength of the next one.

This keeps going until a lot of damage is done or one or more colonists is killed. Then it backs off again for a length of time depending on how much damage it did. If little damage was done then the backing off is slight if half the colony burns down and half the colonists get killed then it backs off a lot and a long enough time to give the player time to recover.

I would also love to see raiders with different objectives. Classic raiders would be there to loot and if they were too tough for you then you could back off and each surviving raider would make for your stockpile and loot a certain amount of resources from your colony. cannibals would attack until they killed one colonist (or prisoner) for each surviving cannibal and leave with the bodies. Invaders would be there to kill you off and take over your colony.

I think both of these things would help greatly with the enjoyably of the game although I know you have a lot of improvements you are working on I highly recommend adding balanced story tellers or something like it as soon as possible so players can play longer games.

I just thought of another alternative. As you are already into modding maybe you can make the storytellers modable so that the modding community could experiment and test different storytellers to find ones players like. This would allow many different storytellers to take shape and also take the work load off of you in having to try and balance out the storytellers as well as save you having to update the game just to try and fix a storyteller balance issue.

This game at this difficulty level (basic Cassandra) is way too frustrating.  I absolutely can't stand that this AI will stop at nothing to kill off your colony.  I'm about done with the game. 

I don't understand the purpose of the game, I suppose.  Day 97 and the game is over because I get hordes of raiders and insane animals?  I haven't researched half of the items.  I haven't built half the things I want to build.  I don't have time to repair yet alone build anything between events.  And this is with multiple reloads of my saves.

I hope this gets changed.  This is supposed to be a game where you build your colony.  Not inevitably die.  This game has gone the wrong direction and lost me if that's where we are headed.

QuoteThis game at this difficulty level (basic Cassandra) is way too frustrating.  I absolutely can't stand that this AI will stop at nothing to kill off your colony.  I'm about done with the game. 

I don't understand the purpose of the game, I suppose.  Day 97 and the game is over because I get hordes of raiders and insane animals?  I haven't researched half of the items.  I haven't built half the things I want to build.  I don't have time to repair yet alone build anything between events.  And this is with multiple reloads of my saves.

I hope this gets changed.  This is supposed to be a game where you build your colony.  Not inevitably die.  This game has gone the wrong direction and lost me if that's where we are headed.

As has been said elsewhere in the thread, there's no "end" in the current version of the game, which is why the game inevitably kills you in the current version. Tynan replied a few posts ago that he hopes to get the "end" of the game (putting together a ship to escape the planet) into the next version of the game (or the one after that). After that, I suspect the way the game works will change quite significantly.

At the moment, though, the game kills you after a relatively short period of time to encourage you to begin a new colony so you can try and experiment with new strategies.

Quote from: nuschler22 on June 11, 2014, 01:22:36 AM
This game at this difficulty level (basic Cassandra) is way too frustrating.  I absolutely can't stand that this AI will stop at nothing to kill off your colony.  I'm about done with the game. 

I don't understand the purpose of the game, I suppose.  Day 97 and the game is over because I get hordes of raiders and insane animals?  I haven't researched half of the items.  I haven't built half the things I want to build.  I don't have time to repair yet alone build anything between events.  And this is with multiple reloads of my saves.

I hope this gets changed.  This is supposed to be a game where you build your colony.  Not inevitably die.  This game has gone the wrong direction and lost me if that's where we are headed.

Just for shits and giggles, I played a game without messing with my work priorities (everybody had everything, left on "Auto Priorities"), and I was able to finish all my research by day 86.

I suspect that you are overreaching yourself.  You only need 15 squares of crops per colonist;  each colonist wants one 5x6 bedroom;  you only need one of each production facility.  And your initial three colonists don't even need that for the first week or two.

And if the "get off-planet before the natives eat you" thesis is still too much for you, don't play on Cassandra Classic.  That's what Phoebe Friendly is for.

Quote from: Tynan on June 10, 2014, 07:11:32 PM
Dwarf Fortress does bring greater attacks if you have greater wealth. That's why the enemies are there - to steal your stuff.

True and it makes sense to increase the attackers strength with colony size. But DF will also make new dwarfs join your colony based on how rich you are. This leads to an interesting balance of getting enough new dwarfs to recruit soldiers and stronger opposition.

In RimWorld you got this 10-12 colonist cap. The trouble is the only way to compensate for lack of more fighters is to build turrets once you reach the cap. And the only way to keep the upper hand in the "more turrets, more raiders" spiral is to build a silly amount of turrets.

Quote from: Tynan on June 10, 2014, 07:11:32 PMI do understand your annoyance with the concept, if you get the sense that you're being punished for succeeding. This is an inherent problem with every adaptive difficulty system in games.

What alternatives can you suggest? The system used to cue off strength - colonist count, weaponry, turrets - but that concept came under lots of criticism as well. I suppose we could make a completely non-adaptive storyteller who just ramps up according to a fixed schedule, but that will match very few players. Almost everyone will be either way ahead or left in the dust. So what else is there? I'm really curious if you have a solution I haven't thought or heard of yet.

I'll collect some ideas tonight and see if I can come up with alternative ideas. One idea that comes to mind at this second is to have a storyteller who "asks" the player how he is doing. That way the player can request a break, keep the storyteller going at the same pace or even increase the difficulty. You can call her Adaptive Amanda or something... =D

I would recommend not to use an arbitrary time to start killing the player off. Increasing difficulty over time is fine but sending new "clean-up crews" until the colony ceases to twitch, rolls over and dies is not imo. ;)

Quote from: DeMatt on June 11, 2014, 04:49:40 AM

Quote from: nuschler22 on June 11, 2014, 01:22:36 AM
This game at this difficulty level (basic Cassandra) is way too frustrating.  I absolutely can't stand that this AI will stop at nothing to kill off your colony.  I'm about done with the game. 

I don't understand the purpose of the game, I suppose.  Day 97 and the game is over because I get hordes of raiders and insane animals?  I haven't researched half of the items.  I haven't built half the things I want to build.  I don't have time to repair yet alone build anything between events.  And this is with multiple reloads of my saves.

I hope this gets changed.  This is supposed to be a game where you build your colony.  Not inevitably die.  This game has gone the wrong direction and lost me if that's where we are headed.

Just for shits and giggles, I played a game without messing with my work priorities (everybody had everything, left on "Auto Priorities"), and I was able to finish all my research by day 86.

I suspect that you are overreaching yourself.  You only need 15 squares of crops per colonist;  each colonist wants one 5x6 bedroom;  you only need one of each production facility.  And your initial three colonists don't even need that for the first week or two.

And if the "get off-planet before the natives eat you" thesis is still too much for you, don't play on Cassandra Classic.  That's what Phoebe Friendly is for.

What a waste of message you just wrote.

Quote from: frosty840 on June 11, 2014, 02:04:41 AM

QuoteThis game at this difficulty level (basic Cassandra) is way too frustrating.  I absolutely can't stand that this AI will stop at nothing to kill off your colony.  I'm about done with the game. 

I don't understand the purpose of the game, I suppose.  Day 97 and the game is over because I get hordes of raiders and insane animals?  I haven't researched half of the items.  I haven't built half the things I want to build.  I don't have time to repair yet alone build anything between events.  And this is with multiple reloads of my saves.

I hope this gets changed.  This is supposed to be a game where you build your colony.  Not inevitably die.  This game has gone the wrong direction and lost me if that's where we are headed.

As has been said elsewhere in the thread, there's no "end" in the current version of the game, which is why the game inevitably kills you in the current version. Tynan replied a few posts ago that he hopes to get the "end" of the game (putting together a ship to escape the planet) into the next version of the game (or the one after that). After that, I suspect the way the game works will change quite significantly.

At the moment, though, the game kills you after a relatively short period of time to encourage you to begin a new colony so you can try and experiment with new strategies.

Well, I suppose he shouldn't have asked how difficult people are finding it then, now should he?

That IS the point of this thread, correct? 

I understand the desire to defend everything about this game, but if he's asking for opinions then let people have their opinons.  Geesh.

Quote from: nuschler22 on June 11, 2014, 07:09:51 AMWell, I suppose he shouldn't have asked how difficult people are finding it then, now should he?

That IS the point of this thread, correct? 

I understand the desire to defend everything about this game, but if he's asking for opinions then let people have their opinons.  Geesh.

Everybody calm down lol

I think its very temptating to defend the game when someone gives a statement like "This game has gone the wrong direction and lost me if that's where we are headed."
In my opinion its a very harsh statement, especially within a thread by the game developer to ask about just that topic and signaling to be open to suggestions for change.

Such openness is rare and it would be sad if its rewarded by unnecessary harsh- or rudeness.

So... lets all calm down a bit and talk about the difficulty and how to improve the gaming experience?

Let's not write angry Internet messages to each other. It never works out well.

Duskprowler: This is actually almost exactly how Cassandra works now, with the exception that raids tend to go until you're dead instead of simply stealing things. I'm hoping to do a thievery behaviour for A5 so raids can be dangerous without always being so deadly.

There are difficulty spikes and randomness in the current Cassandra model. For example, she's supposed to tune down drop-in raids but because of a bug I think she doesn't. This makes these rather deadly. Based on the shape of the vote results (e.g. not a curve, but irregular) I suspect that people are voting "it's too hard" because of a small set of single frustrating experiences that certain players have. Like seemingly-unstoppable animal assaults or randomly overpowered drop-in raids. I can solve these case by case. The hard part is just working out what they are...

A5 will be better balanced and if I can get the endgame in, it will even get a reference point around which to balance. Since now people will know "hard" means "hard to do the endgame" instead of "hard to do... something...".

Even if nothing changes, I still love this game.  It is still a darn Alpha and I feel like I got more enjoyment for my $30 than many formally released games.  But, I think that the issue here might be all about play style and expectations.  Perhaps different storytellers can make it a fit for more people.  If some like wealth and some like strength, it sounds like two story tellers to me.  The really interesting question (to me at least) that Tynan posed is how do you construct the metric to determine how many points should be thrown at the colony next?  For example:

* Should wounded colonists be consider fractional strength? (e.g. a half health colonist is only 0.5 in the calculation)
* There are different types of turrets in the base game as a function of research.  Even more can be added via mods.  Should each turret type have its own strength value (instead of just 0.4 per turret)?  This would also enable mod developers to build a more (or less) powerful turret and have the AI adjust accordingly.  Even in the base game, an upgraded turret should be slightly more strong than a vanilla one.
* Should there be a multiplier for different item and building types based on wealth? (Maybe there already is?)
* It there a way other than wealth, strength and time to measure a colony?
* Should research figure into the equation?
* Would a hybrid of wealth and strength work better?

Tynan, would you mind sharing the wealth formula that the game uses to compute item and building wealth?

Quote from: Ruin on June 11, 2014, 10:01:27 AM
Tynan, would you mind sharing the wealth formula that the game uses to compute item and building wealth?

Sure, it just counts up the base purchase value of everything. For buildings, it takes the total base purchase value of their building materials.

Quote from: Col_Jessep on June 11, 2014, 05:15:47 AM

Quote from: Tynan on June 10, 2014, 07:11:32 PM
Dwarf Fortress does bring greater attacks if you have greater wealth. That's why the enemies are there - to steal your stuff.

True and it makes sense to increase the attackers strength with colony size. But DF will also make new dwarfs join your colony based on how rich you are. This leads to an interesting balance of getting enough new dwarfs to recruit soldiers and stronger opposition.

In RimWorld you got this 10-12 colonist cap. The trouble is the only way to compensate for lack of more fighters is to build turrets once you reach the cap. And the only way to keep the upper hand in the "more turrets, more raiders" spiral is to build a silly amount of turrets.

I think, in general, this is the heart of the problem.  There's no advantage to amassing wealth, as it brings you greater danger but not more colonists to combat that danger.

That and armies of 25 squirrels.  I had a boomrat event; at least those set each other on fire.  That was easier to deal with (and by that I mean only half of my colonists died instead of all).

against big muffalo swarms, keep yourself prepared with a U shaped wall and start building a line of buitcher tables to close the cirlce, just to get the materials there but not enough to trigger unit collision. when the swarm triggers, draft everyone inside your bunker and then complete the construction.

Sp with some !!science!! Ive been working a couple forts with the express purpose of keeping my value low. 7 colonists on day 60 or so. Total value owned is only ~5000 this is done by building small rooms. Using single doors to access multiple rooms. I havent been massively stockpiling food and mats and dont have a ton of batteries.

So far im on my 4th raid and theyre still only sending 2 raiders (as opposed to other colonies which were seeing 5 and 6 raiders by now)
Just curious if anyone else has played a... poorer colony out for 100 or more days and experience low raider amounts. Its only in my colonies when i start putting down mass carpeting and expanding everyones rooms that i start seeing jumps in raider numbers

Quote from: linkxsc on June 11, 2014, 12:36:46 PM
Just curious if anyone else has played a... poorer colony out for 100 or more days and experience low raider amounts. Its only in my colonies when i start putting down mass carpeting and expanding everyones rooms that i start seeing jumps in raider numbers

Yes, I try to kept my test colony "poor" on purpose. It was very easy until day 100 when Cassandra dropped 3 Centipedes into the middle of my base that attacked immediately. I was lucky to have everybody healthy and the Centipedes dropped into my second killbox. Made it out with 2 incapacitated colonist but that was mostly luck. I got two strong raider forces shortly after and started losing people.

It really bugs me that having a poor colony is the better strategy. Having a rich colony with lots of food, space and silver should attract more colonists to offset the difficulty imo.

Quote from: Col_Jessep on June 11, 2014, 01:45:10 PM

Quote from: linkxsc on June 11, 2014, 12:36:46 PM
Just curious if anyone else has played a... poorer colony out for 100 or more days and experience low raider amounts. Its only in my colonies when i start putting down mass carpeting and expanding everyones rooms that i start seeing jumps in raider numbers

Yes, I try to kept my test colony "poor" on purpose. It was very easy until day 100 when Cassandra dropped 3 Centipedes into the middle of my base that attacked immediately. I was lucky to have everybody healthy and the Centipedes dropped into my second killbox. Made it out with 2 incapacitated colonist but that was mostly luck. I got two strong raider forces shortly after and started losing people.

It really bugs me that having a poor colony is the better strategy. Having a rich colony with lots of food, space and silver should attract more colonists to offset the difficulty imo.

I'm hoping this will seem different once the shipbuilding endgame is in, since you won't be able to build the ship unless you build up your economy. We'll have to see.

It also depends where you set your standard of difficulty. It's akin to playing an FPS and just never leaving the first level. Sure, you survive longer, but you're not making any progress. Same with deliberately retarding your own economic development in RimWorld. The point of the game, I hope, is to make a rich awesome colony with happy colonists.

Quote from: Tynan on June 11, 2014, 01:52:40 PMIt also depends where you set your standard of difficulty.

I tend to play my XCOM on Classic Ironman. I'm okay with a real challenge but I'm not insane or a masochist (Impossible difficulty in XCOM).

Tough is fine as long as I don't get a certain death sentence on day 100+. More than 10 colonists are always welcome too... =3

^ sry not quoting my phone hates it.

I havent been retarding my economy. At all times i have money onhand to buy about anything id need. And all of my colonists have m24s or r4s or other higher end weapons. I just dont build excessive bases because it gets you roflstomped.


On a side note. How exactly will the ship work out. Have to research the parts and build it section by section? Also will the day 100 difficulty jump still happen when we have a winning goal?

All in all the difficulty isnt bad. And in some cases (keeping your colony poor to force raider numbers down) downright easy. Its just around d100 when raider groups start doubling in size and coming daily, that it starts getting hard.

It appears that the current wealth formula highly encourages building your base in the side of a mountain (no walls, smooth stone floors are  0 value). this should highly devalue the worth of your colony while not affecting your "progress." Those who are having a lot of difficulty could attempt this strategy.

Tynan, does the wealth calculation also take into account hoarded materials within your home zone or stockpiles (however, tracking wealth by stockpile is exploitable because you can delete the stockpile after hauling)

Quote from: sparda666 on June 11, 2014, 03:23:12 PM
Tynan, does the wealth calculation also take into account hoarded materials within your home zone or stockpiles (however, tracking wealth by stockpile is exploitable because you can delete the stockpile after hauling)

Yes. Which means that if you really want to try to exploit the game, you definitely can.

Quote from: Tynan on June 11, 2014, 01:52:40 PM
The point of the game, I hope, is to make a rich awesome colony with happy colonists.

It sounds like that is what Col_Jessep is getting at.  If you make a rich, awesome colony, the game becomes impossibly difficult.  It is defeating the purpose.  If that is not what you are saying, then my humble apologies.

Quote from: FroBodine on June 11, 2014, 03:44:05 PM

Quote from: Tynan on June 11, 2014, 01:52:40 PM
The point of the game, I hope, is to make a rich awesome colony with happy colonists.

It sounds like that is what Col_Jessep is getting at.  If you make a rich, awesome colony, the game becomes impossibly difficult.  It is defeating the purpose.  If that is not what you are saying, then my humble apologies.

I'm saying that the strategy of self-impoverishment isn't a strategy at all if you think the goal of the game is to make a wealthy colony. It works to achieve the goal of living a long time. But living a long time isn't the goal.

e.g. You can play Call of Duty and just hide in a corner and never shoot at anyone and probably survive for good long periods of time. But why would you? You're not making any progress towards the goal of the game, which is to get kills. You're alive longer, but it's pointless.

I'm drawing a comparison between this and the RimWorld strategy of simply not making anything so nobody attacks you. You can do the same in countless other games - Civilization, Crusader Kings, DF, Prison Architect - but in each case all you're doing is sitting there and refusing to play. You don't win Prison Architect by having no escapes or riots, but by having a big wealthy prison. You don't win CoD by never dying, but by killing a lot. You don't win RimWorld by lasting forever, but by getting rich.

I hope this will be even clearer when we have an endgame that requires wealth to achieve.

Aha but here we have a problem. Since there is currently no other goal in the game but to try and survive as long as possible, thats what every player is going to be comparing their experiences against.

Also the CoD analogy is lulzy. The goal is to get the most kills with the feqest deaths. If not for that why are there campers everywhere?

Thing is its just like dwarf fortress. Df has no defuned goal, just to survive. Both games steadily ramp up difficulty as time goes on. But it reaches a point in df where your easily too powerful to be taken out. This game on the other hand forces death upon you so you have to go and start a new colony. Yes i guess there is a degree of fun in the building of a colony (or df fort) but there is some enjoyment also out of watching something you spent hours making, run and survive.

Yeah we could all play phoebe friendly, but theres never raiders in that. In df as long as theres gobbos theres always seiges to give you something to do while managing your successful fort. It comes down to the player deciding then how hard they want their survival to be, not the game.

Quote from: linkxsc on June 11, 2014, 04:50:50 PM
It comes down to the player deciding then how hard they want their survival to be, not the game.

I am hoping to add more ways for this sort of thing to happen.

Quote from: Tynan on June 11, 2014, 03:56:12 PM

Quote from: FroBodine on June 11, 2014, 03:44:05 PM

Quote from: Tynan on June 11, 2014, 01:52:40 PM
The point of the game, I hope, is to make a rich awesome colony with happy colonists.

It sounds like that is what Col_Jessep is getting at.  If you make a rich, awesome colony, the game becomes impossibly difficult.  It is defeating the purpose.  If that is not what you are saying, then my humble apologies.

I'm saying that the strategy of self-impoverishment isn't a strategy at all if you think the goal of the game is to make a wealthy colony. It works to achieve the goal of living a long time. But living a long time isn't the goal.

e.g. You can play Call of Duty and just hide in a corner and never shoot at anyone and probably survive for good long periods of time. But why would you? You're not making any progress towards the goal of the game, which is to get kills. You're alive longer, but it's pointless.

I'm drawing a comparison between this and the RimWorld strategy of simply not making anything so nobody attacks you. You can do the same in countless other games - Civilization, Crusader Kings, DF, Prison Architect - but in each case all you're doing is sitting there and refusing to play. You don't win Prison Architect by having no escapes or riots, but by having a big wealthy prison. You don't win CoD by never dying, but by killing a lot. You don't win RimWorld by lasting forever, but by getting rich.

I hope this will be even clearer when we have an endgame that requires wealth to achieve.

I get all this.  But, if the game, in its current state, is too hard once you start doing well and become wealthy, that is not good either.  But, you know that.   ;D

Quote from: Tynan on June 11, 2014, 03:56:12 PM
I'm saying that the strategy of self-impoverishment isn't a strategy at all if you think the goal of the game is to make a wealthy colony. It works to achieve the goal of living a long time. But living a long time isn't the goal.

You probably don't want to repeat that in presence of my colonists... ;)
I think what we have here is the clash of two visions who are different but probably not exclusive.

Tynan, if I understand you correctly you want to tell a short but intense story with every colony. Life is hard out in the Rim and if you make too many mistakes... Maybe a bit like FTL: You have a deadline and you have to be ready at that point or die horribly.

I think a majority of the players who don't enjoy the new balance, me included, are in it for the building and management part. Think of us as the "Architects". We want to build Hedley's Hope, our own neighborhood, a 5 star hotel for our colonists, a Fort Knox for silver... I'm sure a lot of the Architects enjoy being challenged by raiders, tribes and mechanoids - as long as they can keep working on their colony until they are satisfied with the result.


I think the best option would be a storyteller similar to Randy for the Architects:
There should be no forced end around day 100. Difficulty should go up based on number of settlers similar to Alpha 3 and before because we will build large bases that are not necessarily optimized around defense. Raiders should aim to steal goods and weapons but not set everything on fire just for the heck of it. (You said that might be in A5 already.)

It would be completely awesome if you could expose the values the storyteller uses to evaluate your base to the XLM file.
Something like number of colonist/turrets, value of buildings/items, value of weapons...
A switch for open ended, death on day X and continuously increasing difficulty.
Maybe even a value for the likeliness of incidents like raiders compared to blights, mad animals and the like.
That way it would be easy for us to add new storytellers based on Cassandra, Randy or Phoebe to create our own perfect storyteller. I did that in Alpha 3 with Randy by increasing his difficulty setting and it worked like a charm.


No worries, RimWorld is already loads of fun and I'm sure you will make it into a really great game, reflecting your vision. A small backdoor for us Architects would be really nice and appreciated though. Probably financially attractive, too. Minecraft, Banished, Sim City (the old ones!), Prison Architect, Towns... Lots of people like to build, often just for creativity's sake.

The current build seems pretty reasonable though I am disliking the current mechanic of drop in attackers particularly after I got hit with a dozen pirates with advanced weapons dropping into the center of my home zone. 

Well, the storytellers are completely open to modding. You can change all their properties in the defs, and rewrite all the code they use to generate events if you like. I actually find it strange that nobody has made a storyteller mod.

As for the architect/winner dichotomy, I see what you mean. Certainly I'd like to support really long games with epic colonies by players who want to do it. A "forced death" isn't the goal and I do suspect that there is a bit of an (unintended) difficulty spike around day 100-150. This will have to be rebalanced. What I'm really hoping to do over the next few months is add a lot more construction and colony management systems so we can ease off combat entirely and the game won't feel empty. So combat will be the topping, not the bread.

Quote from: Tynan on June 11, 2014, 06:38:55 PM
Well, the storytellers are completely open to modding. You can change all their properties in the defs, and rewrite all the code they use to generate events if you like. I actually find it strange that nobody has made a storyteller mod.

Well, I played around with the numbers and stuff and made Randy slightly more difficult than Cleo in Alpha 3. Mod worked great but I didn't release it. Thought it might be a bit too rough. If I find the time I'll look into it again. Rewriting your storyteller code is probably beyond me though.

Quote from: Tynan on June 11, 2014, 06:38:55 PMAs for the architect/winner dichotomy, I see what you mean. Certainly I'd like to support really long games with epic colonies by players who want to do it. A "forced death" isn't the goal and I do suspect that there is a bit of an (unintended) difficulty spike around day 100-150.

Then all is good. =3

Quote from: Tynan on June 11, 2014, 06:38:55 PMWhat I'm really hoping to do over the next few months is add a lot more construction and colony management systems so we can ease off combat entirely and the game won't feel empty. So combat will be the topping, not the bread.

That sounds awesome!

I think that the raiding party goal mechanic would be better, adding to that that every faction would have diffrent wealth value for diffrent things i.e.
Pirates got 2x from silver value of wealth but would get only 0.3x from food.
Triblas would get 2x from food but would get only 0.3x from silver.
Spacer, midworld factions would mostly go for tech, which means 2x from manofactured items.
Cannepids detects power sources so thier attacks could be dependant on power storage and power output of colony.

Also with that mechanic in mind factions relations between themselvs could be used making a raid of two factions at the same time, dependable no thier relations they would either fight themselfs and colonist or shquish colonist togheter ;D

Tynan

One suggestion, increase the chances of capturing settlers ... A colony with many settlers is very difficult to manage, psychotic episodes, lack of food and all that this can create confusion ....

I'm enjoying Rimworld, 650 ish days so far, over 50 raids, Arachnids, PA and the Kitchen mod mainly oh and workplaces. Alot of the fun is ramping up defensive strategies as the raids ramp up. I like to keep in mind that these people are here to prosper, not just survive so I sell lumber, excess food, weps... etc. Ive lost alot of people and have been almost out a couple of times but were at 15 strong now. Toughest to deal with are Cent drops in the base, about 4 of those 5,5,6 and 6 in strength. Its not impossibly hard but it is challenging. Thank you for a great game!!!

After giving the poll choices and thread a quick read...

The idea of beatable is kind of amusing, considering there is no way to 'beat' the game other than make an iron-clad settlement the AI can't take down.  Unfortunately, even on Chill Callie, I have not been able to do that.  The thing that I can't seem to cope with are mechanoids.  Their weapons are just murderous and their high health is really hard to deal with before you end up losing the fight.  I find mechanoids and drop raids make a mockery of static defenses.  I do have hope that in Alpha 5 the colonists will get access to the mortar the same as the raiders (long range indirect fire would be amazing against large scale attacks); I also hope there is a high-damage direct fire weapon added in at some point, like a anti-armor cannon that will allow the colony to combat mechanoid raids and sieges weapons better.

Now, this is not to say that I do not enjoy the game, it's just that on any storyteller other than Phoebe, death is more or less inevitable.  I wish there was a difficulty between Phoebe and Chill Callie.  I love the game, I am enjoying the progress it is making; Rimworld is basically one of my 3-4 'dream game concepts'.  A space western colony sim.  I'll never not have fun playing it, I just wish I had more to play with (and bigger guns to deal with the damn mechanoids).

Also, I wish there was someone to buy all this stone brick I'm making...

Quote from: Col_Jessep on June 11, 2014, 05:44:47 PM

Quote from: Tynan on June 11, 2014, 03:56:12 PM
I'm saying that the strategy of self-impoverishment isn't a strategy at all if you think the goal of the game is to make a wealthy colony. It works to achieve the goal of living a long time. But living a long time isn't the goal.

You probably don't want to repeat that in presence of my colonists... ;)
I think what we have here is the clash of two visions who are different but probably not exclusive.

Tynan, if I understand you correctly you want to tell a short but intense story with every colony. Life is hard out in the Rim and if you make too many mistakes... Maybe a bit like FTL: You have a deadline and you have to be ready at that point or die horribly.

I think a majority of the players who don't enjoy the new balance, me included, are in it for the building and management part. Think of us as the "Architects". We want to build Hedley's Hope, our own neighborhood, a 5 star hotel for our colonists, a Fort Knox for silver... I'm sure a lot of the Architects enjoy being challenged by raiders, tribes and mechanoids - as long as they can keep working on their colony until they are satisfied with the result.


I think the best option would be a storyteller similar to Randy for the Architects:
There should be no forced end around day 100. Difficulty should go up based on number of settlers similar to Alpha 3 and before because we will build large bases that are not necessarily optimized around defense. Raiders should aim to steal goods and weapons but not set everything on fire just for the heck of it. (You said that might be in A5 already.)

It would be completely awesome if you could expose the values the storyteller uses to evaluate your base to the XLM file.
Something like number of colonist/turrets, value of buildings/items, value of weapons...
A switch for open ended, death on day X and continuously increasing difficulty.
Maybe even a value for the likeliness of incidents like raiders compared to blights, mad animals and the like.
That way it would be easy for us to add new storytellers based on Cassandra, Randy or Phoebe to create our own perfect storyteller. I did that in Alpha 3 with Randy by increasing his difficulty setting and it worked like a charm.


No worries, RimWorld is already loads of fun and I'm sure you will make it into a really great game, reflecting your vision. A small backdoor for us Architects would be really nice and appreciated though. Probably financially attractive, too. Minecraft, Banished, Sim City (the old ones!), Prison Architect, Towns... Lots of people like to build, often just for creativity's sake.

This "architect" group however IS NOT the majority, you can see this by looking at the graph.

Dwarf fortress tries it's best to kill you when you are "too" powerful

You can also see by playing well/watching lets plays that players can also become "too" powerful, (so much that they can never be defeated.) In this game, using kill boxes.

I suppose all people have their options though...

Edit: tynan you said earlier that it is intended for us to die around day 150, did you not. So why are you suddenly saying it is unintended....

I think I've gotten a handle on this now. Finally lost my first colonist on day 150+. Ironically, not directly to a raid, but to the rescuer walking through fire and my little man bouncing over the wall when he got dropped. Poor Hengvorst.

Those Mechanoids, they are rough. Melee'ing them down works sometimes if you can catch them in the open. Then they try to back away to firing range. But if you catch them like that in a place where they can't back away, your little men get trampled something quick. I was disappointed they didn't drop their guns. The time I had 6 of them drop on my trade beacon was a Game over man! I'm at a complete loss how to handle that one.

Outside of the mechanoid base drops, I'd rate things as fair.

The more I think about this, the less I am worried by it.  I think different play styles can be handled through different story tellers.  Perhaps it would be cool to surface both wealth and strength for the story tellers so that they can be built around either metric.  Maybe you could also surface the ramp up times so they could be adjusted (e.g. kill you in 100, 150, or 200 days).  But, in the end, we need to have the end-game more defined before this really can be evaluated.  Based on my experiences with the game to date, I am pretty sure Tynan will come up with something cool. :)