Back in B18 I completed merciless naked brutality without good events (like resource pod crash or wandered joins) on tribe start with no lost colonists and made a guide https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=41992 .
B19 bringed many changes so I decided to repeat that run. In new version there was big wealth rebalancing that is discussed here https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=43894 (general discussion) and here https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=43206.msg427423#msg427423 (more technical discussion).
I started new run and understood that game became so easy that you can complete it with 1 pawn with virtually no risk at all (after first 2% of the game). Sad part that you don't need to face most of the events, you don't need to be in a risk (even in the hardest possible scenario), but hard risky events are what make game interesting. You can artificially create new challenges for yourself, but the fact that its not game that is throwing them at you but yourself makes them less fun.
There is quite hard and engaging start into merciless naked brutality, where you need micro-managing and taking advantage of every mechanic, but after that you can stop micro-managing and breeze through the rest of game like you can do on peaceful difficulty.
So this post is designed to help people who struggle with game on any difficulty at any time (you can employ tactics that you comfortable with; if you employ them all it will be an easy ride). It's also designed to point out all imbalances that I could find. I would like that they would be fixed. I want hardest possible difficulty to be actually hard!
So let's begin.
Wealth and threats
Main mechanic of the game. You can check your wealth on history-statistics tabs. For threat strength it uses those numbers with number of building wealth divided by two. It counts all items with value on the maps, all structures (except unclaimed walls) and all floors (ancient ruins floors give you starting building wealth that you see on this tab.
When you below 14k raid wealth you always have lowest threat possible, from 14k to 400k you add about 15 raid points for 1k wealth (you can check exact formula in discussions of wealth above, those numbers are for merciless difficulty with no deaths and injuries, it is lower otherwise), one raider is "cost" 30-60 points (you can check it here https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Raider).
So you can ignore wealth until you hit 14k threshold and then start to manage it.
1. Get health of all items and buildings low. In new version all items efficiency is not dependent on their health (icluding weapons and armor). So you should let items deteriorate before putting them in the storage. That way you remove almost all wealth from them. Same goes for buildings. You should melee attack them a little (not too much because of zzzt events). It works especially good with art, you can get sculptures basically for free and always have +15 mood buff in the room for beauty, buff for impressive room and VERY fast recreation source.
And that's how you win the game.
THE END
Just kidding.
2. Get rid of all unneeded stuff. You should save only those items that you are using or that are needed in case of emergency. Best way to do it is to sell it (you always need money) if it worth something or let it deteriorate into oblivion if it don't. Always destroy unused weapons, 20% sell multiplier makes them unsuitable for selling. You can uninstall all the flooring on the map and use it to make art (which you can sell or damage and leave for yourself).
3. Don't have too much silver. You can always invest it into medicine, neutroamine, components or improve relations. If you invest in items don't forget about first advice.
5. In the late game you can use dead-mans armor. Mood is not an issue then and 10% wealth multiplier is pretty good.
6. Don't take useless pawns. They have quite good leap in wealth.
Raids/threats
I actually didn't face any serious raids or threats in b19, so I checked only trap defense. I will put tactics from b18 but it can be out of date. If that's the case than I will update it when people correct me.
1. Design your base so that you can be completely indoors if needed (including acces to food storage and bedrooms). Stay indoors when manhunter pack comes in. It's easiest way to deal with it.
2. For starting raids you need just few steel traps. Open one door when raid starts, put trap near it and wait while raider will come unto it and die. If he is incapacitated strip him (to sell apparel later), finish him and haul him to dumping zone. Close the door, make new trap and you are good. When you need to move your traps, don't reinstall them, use unistall-install to avoid 0.4% chance to die on it yourself.
3. In B18 when my raids became bigger I made outer wall with doors every 15-20 spaces with "trap entrance" which is corridor filled with traps.
4. For later game I made some turrets to help the defense. They are especially needed if raiders avoit trap defense. But with new traps I'm not sure about that, may be traps are better. If you do make them, make walls between them to avoid chain reaction and sandbage before them to make more cover, remove all possible cover for enemies.
5. Have some animals for fighting purposes, they will be needed for drop pods raids.
6. Train your shooting. For that go hunting a lot.
7. Train your melee. For that you can go melee hunting for animals that usually leave only bruisers (like bucks or alpacas). But be careful.
8. Use ally help using comm console for hard raids. That way you are basically trade silver for temporary firepower which is good deal.
9. Have at least one long-range weapon like bolt rifle or sniper rifle. You will need them in sieges and versus mechanoids (you should kite mechanoids to you trap entrance).
10. At bare minimum make vests and advanced helmets for pawns protection.
11. It's good idea to research and have at hand go-juice for hard raids. Risk of addiction is worth it.
Disease prevention
In current version it's most dangerous threat in early game. So you should start the game with that in mind.
1. Gather all healroot near the base (~25 is enough). Create and delete stockpiles to take gathered medicine with you.
2. Buy some normal medicine asap.
3. Capture some prisoner and start training your medical skill performing surgeries on him (install and remove denture or peg leg). If you have 0 skill at the beginning just beat your prisoner by hands and then tend to him to get minimum necessary skill for surgeries. Get your 4k xp every day, train skill to 11-12 than release your test subject.
4. Research normal beds as your first research project.
5. Research drug table ane penoxycyline next. After that you should be under penoxycyline all the time and that's endgoal.
6. Make some pemmican so you are not worried about cooking food when disease hits.
7. If you got plague or malaria or sleeping sickness before you got penoxycyline follow this protocol: you should be all the time in the bed, getting up only for eating (if you are ravenously hungry it slows immunity gain) and treating yourself. For treatments use best medicine first (while you have best manipulation). See how good you treatment was and decide if you want to make new treatment 3 hours early or not. Be aware about stages of disease, don't be incapacitated out of bed.
Food, rest and mood management
1. Always watch for your pawns mood. They should never be in risk of break, on merciless it is devastating.
2. Deal with all basic needs to remove mood debuff. Keep you recreation at maximum. If your pawn go to threshold of mental break send him to work in the room to get him some comfort and beauty bonuses.
3. Make some psychite tea for emergency mood buff.
4. Make some art (see wealth management section) to have +15 mood from beauty, mood buff from room and source for very fast recreation.
5. If you have cooking skill make fine meals (you have to go hunting anyway).
6. You can "trade" mood for extra food. Just forbid all the food and eat when you have ~1% of hunger bar. That way you can save up to 40% of food by the cost of temporary mood debuff. It's relevant in the early game, but too micro-management intensive for mid-late game.
7. You can "trade" mood for extra working time. Just set schedule for work only and go to bed when you have ~1% of rest bar. That way you work up to 40% more by the cost of temporary mood debuff. It's relevant in the early game, but too micro-management intensive for mid-late game.
8. You can draft/undraft pawns to change there chosed mood recreation method to choose best one without tolerances (or reset any other activity you want).
I think that covers all main topics. And now I want to talk about how to make game more balanced. Goal of the balance is that the game offers interesting game for harder and easier difficulties with the same in-game mechanics. Now many mechanics are imbalanced to the point that they are easily exploited and that is not good. Answering the question like "why don't you just ignore wealth management tips to make your game harder?" I say that I'm not very fond of making unnecessary difficulties for myself. My interest is in overcoming them, not creating them. But I'm happy when easy/cheesy tactics are fixed and I want that to happen. I hope that pointing to the weak mechanics that can be taken exploited will help with that.
So here is a list of changes that can make balance very good (cool thing about them that they won't make game of average player harder but it will remove all main weaknesses of previous system):
1. Rework wealth generation. Make ancient ruin floors claimable like ancient ruin walls (it's stupid that you can and should deconstruct them in order to make raids less powerful). Add efficiency to most of the items dependent on the health. Weapons should have less accuracy, food should have less nutrition, art should have less beauty, workshops should have less work speed and so on. For those items where changing efficiency is a bad idea (see erdrik reply below) remove wealth reduction.
The way you can now reduce wealth without any drop in utility of items is ridiculous.
2. Rework minimum wealth threshold. Make it dependent on difficulty. Make it 28k on peaceful, 14k on rough, 0k on merciless or something like that.
3. Make threat multiplier that increases with time! Make an option to choose between raid strength that scales based on wealth and raid strength that scales based on time. You can choose one of them or both (in that case raid strength should be increases by both multipliers). You can change that multiplier for different difficulties (with 1 for lower ones). It should be the case that you can't just chill indefinetly on low wealth levels, you HAVE TO develop your colony.
4. Make an option to add raid strength/wealth with new research. You can count it as 0 on lower difficulties, but on higher difficulties it should be a factor. It's not good that I can basically research ship without making complex base. It should be the case that if I'm progressing with research (which represents progress in the game) I HAVE TO face harder threats and develop my colony accordingly.
Other than that I really want to see rework on cleaning mechanic. It's so annoying that there is a gap between time mess appears and time that you can actually clean that up. Please, please remove that gap, it creates nothing other than frustration.
Thanks for the post. Will check back again in another month or so. Wealth still ruling outcomes awkwardly and no other real changes seems the news of the last month. I still love the game and have my fingers crossed.
Overall, wealth scaling makes this game a silly exercise.
You make a master thrumbofur duster. What's the correct move?
Ill tell you this, burning it/tainting it is better than wearing it. 3k for protection which it outclassed by 10x cheaper items on vitals is a joke.
I am not sure adv helmet is worth since it is only helpful for like ~0.4% of hits since you're looking for brain full deflect as brain mitigated shot makes your colonist a vegetable. How many hits are you taking in a typical colony? With your low pop, I imagine less than 10. I think I average less than 1 enemy gunshot wound an year with 8-10 people colony (typical nondrop raid ranges from 13-20). I don't use traps or external turrets but I got my own tactics though.
You guys have a weird way of playing games.
Quote from: bbqftw on September 16, 2018, 01:24:15 PM
I am not sure adv helmet is worth since it is only helpful for like ~0.4% of hits since you're looking for brain full deflect as brain mitigated shot makes your colonist a vegetable. How many hits are you taking in a typical colony? With your low pop, I imagine less than 10. I think I average less than 1 enemy gunshot wound an year with 8-10 people colony (typical nondrop raid ranges from 13-20). I don't use traps or external turrets but I got my own tactics though.
In B18 it was quite a lot more actually. I wasn't damaging my furniture then so raids were quite big for my 2-4 guys. Some times raiders didn't went through trap corridor so there was gun fight. I was under 75% cover from doors and with 4-6 turrets to back my 3 pawns up, but there were quite a few shots. Hits were rare but one time one bullet one-shoted one of my pawns because he wasn't wearing any helmet. So I thought that ~150 wealth per colonist is very much worth it for that additional protection.
Shots in the head are not always make pawn a vegetable. But even if they do you have super-healing to heal him (in new version). Actually you also have ressurection, but it doesn't have 100% chance to ressurect as far as I know.
What is your tactic for big raids in b19, are you willing to share it?
Quote from: lowdegger on September 16, 2018, 05:06:03 PM
You guys have a weird way of playing games.
That's called "winning". It is very fun, you should try it.
One facet of it is shield belt baiting (AIs commit way too hard to shooting at shield belt and regeneration rate is excellent). Basically present your shield belter as only available character in LoS, then when they commit to shooting you can just open up with rest of your guys, preferably with range advantage (so they won't switch targets). Using shield belt in conjunction with only bolt actions vs last siege on merciless (10v14) I had maybe 2.5% chance of getting hit during the entire fight, and 80% of that hit chance was a mistake from me miscounting sniper rifles. And this is with enemy having 2 snipers and I have none, if I have range parity this becomes a lot easier.
I think for your pawn count, its not that good since you're committing a higher % of your effective dps. And enemy AI changes target sometimes. But for my scenarios, I would say it mitigates at least 70% of shots onto the belter if you're just trading behind high cover.
And how you deal with melees that can and will engage that bait? Also that means that you other pawns can't use miniguns which are insanely good weapons. Also are you sure that they won't overcome that shield?
I thought about shield belt for my melee guy, dont remember why I didn't use that tactic. If Tynan changes wealth and raid system I should give it a try. It's quite in the late-game anyway.
A gun hit appears to do triple damage to the shield (e.g. 18 damage BAR shot in fact does 54). Even normal belt regens like 13 hp a second, so as long as you aren't doing things like challenging multiple long range weapons at midrange with no cover you should be fine. I know some people just post their shield belter behind a sandbag against 10+ enemies and it takes ridiculously long to break lol
For melees -
siege - if they chase you, you can Xv1 them, and you only need typically one solid hit to reduce their speed to non threatening amount. And their chase range is limited.
sapper - know your timings for door close. This applies to manhunter too (I practiced a lot in dev mode this to understand the timings). Worst comes to worst you can just traffic jam a hallway with animals
drop pod - I feel like animals are the best option here. Its probably the most dicey type of raid since often you feel compelled to trade to avoid property damage. With isolated rooms you can tie up people in melee then Xv1 them.
all else - any killboxy solution like trap corridor works here
Generally speaking with sniper rifle you outrange sieges anyway and can fire for free, choosing targets without sniper rifles. In that case bait would be good only in sniper vs sniper battle?
How door timings relate to belt bait?
About drop pods I agree. I have animals in late-game solely for that purpose.
The situation I was talking about I didn't have range parity. So it was my bolt action vs sniper. You are right that if its sniper vs sniper, target selection becomes a lot easier.
The only way melees are threatening is if they run into your base, so that is my main concern and why I mention knowing the door timers. I'm not sure how many external doorways you use, but I still use quite a bit since for sappers I feel like it's much safer to contest them at external wall.
Similarly to nuclear war, the only real way to win RimWorld, is not to play.
Quote from: BLACK_FR on September 16, 2018, 07:34:02 PM
Quote from: bbqftw on September 16, 2018, 01:24:15 PM
I am not sure adv helmet is worth since it is only helpful for like ~0.4% of hits since you're looking for brain full deflect as brain mitigated shot makes your colonist a vegetable. How many hits are you taking in a typical colony? With your low pop, I imagine less than 10. I think I average less than 1 enemy gunshot wound an year with 8-10 people colony (typical nondrop raid ranges from 13-20). I don't use traps or external turrets but I got my own tactics though.
In B18 it was quite a lot more actually. I wasn't damaging my furniture then so raids were quite big for my 2-4 guys. Some times raiders didn't went through trap corridor so there was gun fight. I was under 75% cover from doors and with 4-6 turrets to back my 3 pawns up, but there were quite a few shots. Hits were rare but one time one bullet one-shoted one of my pawns because he wasn't wearing any helmet. So I thought that ~150 wealth per colonist is very much worth it for that additional protection.
Shots in the head are not always make pawn a vegetable. But even if they do you have super-healing to heal him (in new version). Actually you also have ressurection, but it doesn't have 100% chance to ressurect as far as I know.
What is your tactic for big raids in b19, are you willing to share it?
Quote from: lowdegger on September 16, 2018, 05:06:03 PM
You guys have a weird way of playing games.
That's called "winning". It is very fun, you should try it.
I thought that was for real life. Takes all sorts I guess...
Here's something you might find interesting, any items placed in a pod gets it's wealth removed from your colony...
essentially, use pods as storage until you need to use the items...
..lol, now that's dodgy
..sorry, i am playing B18.. dunno about next updates
Interesting exploits, but do you really find this fun?
Quote from: Scavenger on September 18, 2018, 09:29:32 PM
Interesting exploits, but do you really find this fun?
It was fun finding them (they are not bugs, but more like taking advantage of some mechanics). Now I can't finish my run because it will take too much time without challenges in the process (my b18 run had challenges all the way to the end).
Problem with
not using those tactics is that you can't distinguish them from just a good play. You can make game more challenging by playing poorly, but for me it even less fun than making game too easy by playing too good.
That's why I created suggestions how to "fix" the balance (and make many of those tactics obsolete) - I want to play as good as I can and still have challenges. I posted them in suggestion section too.
Some of the tactics are in no need of "fixing" because current balance is good (actually most of the advices above).
It was fun to read.
Quote from: BLACK_FR on September 16, 2018, 07:34:02 PM
That's called "winning". It is very fun, you should try it.
Pausing an item, when it's 1 work left, then canceling a bill, then haul it, then forbid it, then making a new bill an so on, and so on is very fun? I'm not fun person then. :o
You can win without all that, just gotta get good. And for the most players it's not about "winning" I'm sure - it's the process.
Anyway, I'm gonna have fun my way. Maybe you should try it too. ;)
I think it's kinda cheesy strategy, that's why I want that it will be fixed. That's why I made proposals so that other good players and me could play to the best of our abilites and still have challenge.
My way to have fun is always hardcore way (at least in this game).
I agree with the improvements in the OP, but I'm afraid there will be pushback from those who want to play as a basebuilder in merciless difficulty, as was already seen in the B19 feedback thread. I watch Rimworld streamers, and it's way more interesting viewing when it is hard and dramatic- power players want winning to be a real challenge, most I've seen are pretty unfazed by colonist deaths, lost limbs, etc. I hope that the devs watch videos or are in contact with power players for feedback at the hardest levels, general community feedback nerfed things a bit much this time around.
The whole idea of auto difficulty and raids scaling with wealth is weird and a huge can of worms.
You can invent all sorts of half-fixes and improvements, but it would all be solved if raid scaling changed to just increase with time. Suddenly:
- players would have an incentive to get wealthy as quickly as possible
- players would be encouraged to get as many people and animals as they can
- would be encouraged to keep their items in top condition
- encouraged to mine as as as they can, claim as fast as they can
- research as fast as they can (no I DO NOT WANT to consider if a new research is worth the extra threat points!)
- if a raid wipes out half of your colony, they don't suddenly start going easy on you
- if you send some people out in a caravan, raids against your outpost wouldn't suddenly scale down to be 'fair'.
At the very least, I would totally play a storyteller which only scales difficulty with time.
QuoteAt the very least, I would totally play a storyteller which only scales difficulty with time.
Call him Chronos! Or Wednesday!
Personally I'm not as good at Rimworld. And I don't play in a way to min/max difficulty so I think most players won't be effected by issue. Because it takes a good understanding and playing against the way I like to play to accomplish this. That said. I would love the Devs to flesh out a more detailed difficulty curve if A) The Devs thought it was a good idea. B) It would not ruin the game. C) The players also wanted it.
But yeah a game mode or storyteller that works off of Time > Wealth could be interesting. Maybe early game wealth is most important but as time goes on time replaces wealth for the most part. Or maybe a game that uses MAX Wealth. So it does not use current wealth but the highest wealth your colony has reached.
The problem in my opinion is Rimworld is a product of YEARS of work and balance. It's almost at release and I think some of these suggestions will change the core of how Rimworld works. I personally find Rimworld hard on higher difficulties. So I mainly play on lower difficulties. I could get better but I like Rimworld for what it is. I love watching Lets Players though and I am disappointed if the Lets Player can easily win without trouble because they have learned to abuse game mechanics instead of just having skill. But I still think the game is challenging. And if you have to do things like purposely let your items deteriorate to lower wealth. Than that is META. Most people won't play that way even if they know about it etc.
But my opinion still stands that if the Devs want to tweak stuff or add a mode or story teller that may offer more of a challenge for those who choose to play the game like this etc? I'm all for that.
Does anyone know how much a tamed-for-release thrumbo contributes to raid strength? I got a freebie and I'm wondering if he's worth keeping around as a tanky monster or if I should just sell him.
Quote from: Crow_T on September 22, 2018, 11:11:08 PM
I agree with the improvements in the OP, but I'm afraid there will be pushback from those who want to play as a basebuilder in merciless difficulty, as was already seen in the B19 feedback thread. I watch Rimworld streamers, and it's way more interesting viewing when it is hard and dramatic- power players want winning to be a real challenge, most I've seen are pretty unfazed by colonist deaths, lost limbs, etc. I hope that the devs watch videos or are in contact with power players for feedback at the hardest levels, general community feedback nerfed things a bit much this time around.
I think for basebuilding is for other difficulties. Merciless should be VERY HARD, it should differ from peaceful difficulty in a meaningful way. Do you agree?
Also I consider myself power player and would love to participate in discussions regarding balance (for free).
Quote from: b0rsuk on September 23, 2018, 01:23:22 AM
The whole idea of auto difficulty and raids scaling with wealth is weird and a huge can of worms.
You can invent all sorts of half-fixes and improvements, but it would all be solved if raid scaling changed to just increase with time. At the very least, I would totally play a storyteller which only scales difficulty with time.
It's definitely good option to have. My new idea is the following: make an OPTION of raids scaling by wealth, scaling by time, scaling with research. You can choose 1, 2 or 3 scaling options. If you choose 2 of them than scaling is harder than if you choose only one. If you choose all 3 and merciless and naked brutality and disable all good events and starting pawn with no skills - then you basically screwed. It will be almost impossible to beat. That's what I would try to beat. Let it be optional but let it be there. Do you think it's even better idea?
Quote from: sadpickle on September 23, 2018, 10:16:59 AM
Does anyone know how much a tamed-for-release thrumbo contributes to raid strength? I got a freebie and I'm wondering if he's worth keeping around as a tanky monster or if I should just sell him.
The formula is complicated, but you can check your pawns and pets value at history tab at statistics section at colony wealth (people and animals).
You can add new thrumbo and check how that value had changed, than delete him back using dev mod.
Than you will see how much wealth does it add and you can calculate how many raid strength points it adds using formulas from this topic.
"I think for basebuilding is for other difficulties. Merciless should be VERY HARD, it should differ from peaceful difficulty in a meaningful way. Do you agree?
Also I consider myself power player and would love to participate in discussions regarding balance (for free)."
Yep, I certainly agree, I was just lamenting the situation that happened in the feedback thread- a lot of people were playing above their skill level and complaining about it. I also mentioned a constantly increasing time based difficulty setting in that thread, with the caveat that relocating or large disasters, like most of the colony gets wiped, would ease the difficulty back for a bit. v0v we'll see what happens in the next version, hopefully power players will get that brutal setting they want.
So I got info from Tynan (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=45866.0) that at least current mechanic of unfinished items would be fixed, because it current usage can create exploit. I never use confirmed exploits, so I'll remove it from OP.
Also I slightly updated my suggestions to include all feedback in all topics that I got.
I hope that there is a way to know if there would be other changes on wealth and raid strength or not.
So I played an ultra-low-wealth game and won it on Randy Savage with few (but existent) problems.
However, I'm not sure how much easier it would have been, really. In the end I got bored pretty quick so packed up and headed to the crashed ship so I could just take off. Before that, I was seeing some raids that - precisely because I had such low wealth and therefore poor items - were actually getting difficult to handle.
Now, I refuse to micro everything (or almost anything really) so maybe this just isn't for me, but simply not having lots of nice things and not keeping extras of anything did not seem to be enough to make Savage a walk in the park. I think I would have had quite the challenge researching all the starship things while keeping the colony alive for years with very little to show for it.
As it was, when I decided to bail and head to the ship I was on the 3rd or 4th generation of the 2-4 people in the base, having all the previous ones die down to 1 person who held on until someone showed up to help. One of the final guys to take off was a Man In Black, in fact.
So while "Keep the wealth low" is great advice, it's not - in my opinion - the panacea that seems to be the trend in this forum. Yes it's better to not have a dozen sets of marine armor in storage, but I personally found it much easier to fight off raids of dozens of mechanoids with marine armor and charge rifles, than the few bandits that totally wrecked my guys that had leather clothes and poor quality autopistols.
Just to preface this thought: more of a feels than hard data, but watching youtubers play 1.0 merciless it would seem that hard raids/caravan ambush type events have been nerfed in favor of more mental breaks to make up the difficulty compared to a18 and previous. Anyone else notice this? Maybe the wealth factor ramps up slower in merciless now?
@5horse
Goal is not to simply be poor, it is to be as strong as possible with least wealth.
Quote from: zizard on November 04, 2018, 12:27:03 AM
@5horse
Goal is not to simply be poor, it is to be as strong as possible with least wealth.
I understand that. Getting strong weaponry and armor without also accruing other wealth proved difficult, as did protecting my base with static defenses without the same. Either my wealth was rising or my pawns were going on mental breaks every other day.
I'm not saying I'm the greatest player in the world. I'm saying this felt not much (if any) easier than the way I play the game normally.
Quote from: 5thHorseman on November 03, 2018, 02:04:26 PM
but I personally found it much easier to fight off raids of dozens of mechanoids with marine armor and charge rifles, than the few bandits that totally wrecked my guys that had leather clothes and poor quality autopistols.
This makes me wonder, how much weapons and clothing are weighted by the raid point calc. Also, does it matter if the items are equipped or not?
Colonist and bionic market value is weighted huge, but maybe clothes and weapons aren't. In that case, decent equipment for them would be worthwhile, especially for high-value pawns. Does anyone have the raid point formula?
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=43206.msg427423#msg427423
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=43206.msg427444#msg427444
Quote from: 5thHorseman on November 03, 2018, 02:04:26 PM
So I played an ultra-low-wealth game and won it on Randy Savage with few (but existent) problems.
..
So while "Keep the wealth low" is great advice, it's not - in my opinion - the panacea that seems to be the trend in this forum. Yes it's better to not have a dozen sets of marine armor in storage, but I personally found it much easier to fight off raids of dozens of mechanoids with marine armor and charge rifles, than the few bandits that totally wrecked my guys that had leather clothes and poor quality autopistols.
You just played it badly, to be honest. If you play without realistic degradation mod you can have best weapons and marine armor without adding to wealth any substantial amount. Also you should have good defense. Your traps and walls and turrets add some wealth but they definitely worth it. If you didn't use that it's on you.
I'm finishing my ship research in my current run with 1 pawn without interest on merciless naked brutality without good events except caravans and I didn't passed 20k wealth threshold. And I don't even use tactics that I described (I don't even lower hp of food) because I don't need to. I just don't have anything that I don't really need. And I don't really micromanage anything because it's not worth it, only few things like killing predators etc.
For your point of mental breaks. Just remove all debuffs, make good sculpture to your big main dining/rec/working room to get buffs from that, create pekoe tea reserve for bad days and you should be good.
@zizard
It's excatly right.
@fritzgryphon
They add their value (price) to the wealth, it doesn't matter if they are equipped or not, even dead animal body on the other part of the map that was killed by bear is adding to wealth.
In vanilla you can lower that value by lowering hp if item without any loss of utility.