Hi, i've released Adaptive Cassie Storyteller (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1823958161), which works as intended based on a suite of playthroughs i've done. Even though i've extensively tested it, the more the save files, the better i can adapt it.
The idea of this storyteller is to give players an incentive to fight raids actively, play permadeath and go explore. She'll adapt much more significantly to the death of experienced colonists or when your best shots are on the roads, wealth is less the main driver of raids size and increasing the number of colonists will actually helps you defend your colony (instead of proportional threat increase).
In order to test it in the most extreme situations, i'd like more saves, of flourishing colonies, but of collapsed/ failed colonies as well.
Players should be able to come back from ashes.
Thanks,
Edit: save files can be vanilla, i just need to check the threat points with the stotyteller
I get these errors constantly on this storyteller. On others, such errors do not appear.
System.DivideByZeroException: Division by zero
at RimWorld.IncidentCycleUtility.IncidentCountThisInterval (IIncidentTarget target, Int32 randSeedSalt, Single minDaysPassed, Single onDays, Single offDays, Single minSpacingDays, Single minIncidents, Single maxIncidents, Single acceptFraction) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
at RimWorld.StorytellerComp_OnOffCycle+<MakeIntervalIncidents>c__Iterator0.MoveNext () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
at RimWorld.Storyteller+<MakeIncidentsForInterval>c__Iterator1.MoveNext () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
at RimWorld.Storyteller+<MakeIncidentsForInterval>c__Iterator0.MoveNext () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
at RimWorld.Storyteller.StorytellerTick () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
at Verse.TickManager.DoSingleTick () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
Verse.Log:Error(String, Boolean)
Verse.TickManager:DoSingleTick()
Verse.TickManager:TickManagerUpdate()
Verse.Game:UpdatePlay()
Verse.Root_Play:Update()
Hubslib log: https://gist.github.com/HugsLibRecordKeeper/220209dedb95ac261ce5c20b73cf2cfc
Save file: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I79rUA9EB9YokPKB_Z9vgd17fUpZMs9P/view
This sounds like a neat story-teller. I always disliked the way raids were based on wealth and more colonists = stronger raids so that'll be interesting.
You mentioned that "She'll adapt much more significant to the death of experienced colonists or when your best shots are on the roads" and I was wondering what that means exactly?
@Hjkma thanks for the save, i appreciate it. There is a lot of mods though, so i'll have to download the list before being able to load the save and check for this error (i can't reproduce it in my saves). Meanwhile i've scrolled through the file, and i can see that you've been through tough times, 30 killed, max pop 21, year 3.
3 colonists are relevant for my storyteller: Diver, Perry and Dorian. How many colonists do you have at this point? Are these ones the most experienced in your colony?
In this situation adaptive cassie should be more lenient than cassandra classic.
@Ink. it means when an experienced colonist die, the raid discount is more important than when a rookie dies. An experienced colonist may weight as much as 3 times as a rookie colonist. They gain experience in battles.
Does the storyteller adapt based on deaths only, or does it take into account injuries or lost limbs?
Reason I ask is that most times you won't necessarily lose people, but can end up with people hospitalised for long periods, several lost legs/arms, stuff like that. Would be nice if the storyteller eased off a bit then.
Edit: Also, is it possible to try out this mod, or is it only available on steam?
Here's a dropbox link (https://www.dropbox.com/sh/58aw58yxywv2yv2/AAAzD8f14Om_xo-H1tQwFB8Ha?dl=0)
Quote from: Wanderer_joins on September 14, 2019, 04:18:36 AM
@Hjkma thanks for the save, i appreciate it. There is a lot of mods though, so i'll have to download the list before being able to load the save and check for this error (i can't reproduce it in my saves).
As for the error, it turned out to be related to the [KV] In-Game Definition Editor mod, I just reset all the mod settings and the error disappeared. It's not clear what's the matter, I don't remember that I changed values of storyteller Fuzzy Cassandra.
QuoteMeanwhile i've scrolled through the file, and i can see that you've been through tough times, 30 killed, max pop 21, year 3.
3 colonists are relevant for my storyteller: Diver, Perry and Dorian. How many colonists do you have at this point? Are these ones the most experienced in your colony?
In this situation adaptive cassie should be more lenient than cassandra classic.
I have 15 of them (it was like at the time of the save game) and these colonists are the most experienced fighters, also they are experienced builders.
Quote from: Wanderer_joins on September 14, 2019, 04:18:36 AM
@Ink. it means when an experienced colonist die, the raid discount is more important than when a rookie dies. An experienced colonist may weight as much as 3 times as a rookie colonist. They gain experience in battles.
That is awesome. I really like that idea compared to basing off wealth. I like the idea that you could have a complete badass that they just send hordes to try to take down.
Is that experience that the pawns gain in battle visible anywhere or is it all hidden for the storyteller to use and manipulate?
It's vanilla. But hidden in save file and .dll.
Quote from: Wanderer_joins on September 14, 2019, 08:27:24 AM
Here's a dropbox link (https://www.dropbox.com/sh/58aw58yxywv2yv2/AAAzD8f14Om_xo-H1tQwFB8Ha?dl=0)
Thank you. From what I could gather by comparing some files with vanilla Cassandra, yours is exactly the same in terms of the xml values, right? But if for instance you go a long time without anybody dying, then you risk facing tougher or more frequent raids?
Is it based on deaths, or amount of people downed and/or injuries sustained as well?
What about people kidnapped? Would this count as people killed, sort of? I remember in a previous game I had 6 of 9 people kidnapped, and still faced some pretty darn tough raids after that (until they wiped us out), because wealth was still high due to a big-ish base.
In the situation of 6 kidnapped out of 9, raids should be much lower. In vanilla, the issue is wealth at low pop.
People kidnapped = people killed.
For people downed, they don't count.
If you go a long time without dying, you risk tougher raids, yes, because you're doing well. But it's progressive, and that's why i wanted more save files. But from models, it should take some times before overcoming vanilla, and still, since i correct for high population, it should be under control.
Thanks. That game may have been survivable on your storyteller then. Although it was kinda boring with only 3 people tbh.
Quote from: Wanderer_joins on September 19, 2019, 03:00:29 PM
If you go a long time without dying, you risk tougher raids, yes, because you're doing well. But it's progressive, and that's why i wanted more save files. But from models, it should take some times before overcoming vanilla, and still, since i correct for high population, it should be under control.
I'm quite invested in the current save, so don't think I want to change settings now, but I'll try out this storyteller afterwards. Sorry for all the questions, but I have another one. It's not that uncommon for me to go for many years without losing (m)any people. At least if I get past the first 1-2 years as a tribal colony. Assuming this happens with your storyteller as well, going for instance 2-3 years without losing anybody, how much bigger raids would we be looking at? Or is it hard to tell because population comes into it as well?
Population, time of recruitment, potential deaths come into play. But i tried to make a balanced storyteller, so it's a progressive increase. You can always try in game for one raid and switch back.
To have a good idea of the modifier best would be a save file otherwise a screenshot of your population graph and your wealth could give an idea.
Here is the save file. Despite very good compression with tar.gz, I wasn't able to upload it here.
https://filebin.net/usihmy7zsywr3nsk
Not sure if you actually need the mods to load the save, but in any case I use these currently:
<li>Core</li>
<li>HugsLib</li>
<li>AllowTool</li>
<li>ModManager</li>
<li>Achtung</li>
<li>CommonSense</li>
<li>Numbers</li>
<li>WorkTab</li>
<li>Pharmacist</li>
<li>PickUpAndHaul</li>
<li>DefensivePositions</li>
<li>MedicalTab</li>
<li>AnimalTab</li>
<li>WhileYoureUp</li>
<li>RimworldSearchAgency</li>
<li>MoreHarvestDesignators-1.0</li>
<li>ShowDrafteesWeapon</li>
<li>StackXXL</li>
<li>DontBlockDoorMod</li>
<li>TraderDismissal</li>
<li>RecipeIcons</li>
<li>RF - Packed Lunches</li>
Since I have Numbers I can easily see the amount of kills. Therefore, if Breixo or Wasp were to die, with around 100 kills each (most are animals though), they would probably weigh heavier than some of the others.
I'll definitely try out your storyteller in the next save. That way I get a better impression of how it compares. Probably on Rough, as Savage was perhaps a step too far for me. Got to space, but damn was it hard.
No deaths here, but in truth that is because I save-scummed a few times. It was too hard to take deaths due to one-shot-kill auto cannon friendly fire :-\
I do use 2x or 4x storage (with StackXXL) on some types of material to make storage of food, textiles, steel and bricks more manageable, so it's possible lots of my stuff get truncated on load, affecting wealth.
I'm five years in, have 20 people, and the history graph looks like this. A little over 500,000 wealth.
(https://i.imgur.com/8ecMDXl.png)
Hi, thanks for the save file, it'll help a lot. Actually it's interesting to have a file with 0 death / save scumming, since one of the purposes of this storyteller is to create different difficulties over deaths. Here you would have explored the hardest path.
That said it's relative, it's harder compared to a story including deaths but i'll have to explore your save file on my labtop next we to see exactly how it does compare to vanilla (my phone is dieing trying to open the file). There is a random factor on experienced gained by colonists.
That said the screenshots showed you had a great fun and a very nice base design with a killzone not relying on a maze trap, i approve.
I'll edit this message when i've analysed the save, it's a good example of mature, successful colony.
One of the other goals of this storyteller, is to help people play with an active defense ( like yours) being more lenient and "rewarding" risk taking and deaths.
Play rough, take risks, go caravaning and embrace the story!
Cheers, glad it is helpful. I like to engage with the trade and events of the world, which is why in that save I edited the scenario slightly to add more quests and trade ships. Certainly dangerous to go on the road, especially when you get raids at home with half the people there, but we thankfully managed.
Actually thought the setup I had was a trap maze, but being quite new to the game I'm not all that up to date on all the terms and various exploits/whatever-people-want-to-call-them. After a search I see there are more cheesy approaches, such as this one (https://i.gyazo.com/87ebbc0be56c19e32852e8dcf2eebb88.png). I'm always too late to build proper defenses in the early game because I like to take on raiders in the open behind sandbags or chunks. Then we almost get wiped.
Here are a few other saves that may be useful: https://filebin.net/w6bzucj1nf5nh2y2
This is the first mountain base I have played (that survived past the first year). The two saves is from when I triggered the 15-day final assault, and just after we had somehow managed to survive the non-stop raids. You may spot a corpse or two around the map ;D Attacked from hordes of sappers from every direction, sometimes several raids simultaneously, and we were very close to dying. Maybe not getting wiped, but certainly getting in very dire straits when they broke into the base proper, or were very close to doing so.
Although I don't particularly like killboxes, that game in particular taught me that it's required. No way to deal with 200+ raiders unless you have a way to slow them down and attack them with turret support.
5 people died in that save, plus Gillespie was brought back from a vegetable state as she was downed from a one-shot by a lancer that brought her brain to 1/10, leaving her unable to move. Until we, much later, were able to get a healer mech serum and fix her. Don't recall the details very closely now, but I reckon at least a few of those deaths were chased refugees and suchlike that turned out crap and were downed or outright shot to death. Only saw one sarcophagus when loading the save.
Very similar approach between the saves tbh, but I like these semi-open bases with active defenses. I'm therefore intrigued to try out a different story teller to see how that plays out.
As an aside, I see upon loading these saves that item wealth has gone up considerably towards the end. I suppose that is dropped weapons and such from the huge raiding parties? We certainly weren't able to do anything in those 15 days than sleep, heal, and try to repair the defenses.
Right? You need killboxes at some point in the end game, and cheesy tactics like trap mazes artificially reduce the threat scale.
Actually you can play merciless without killboxes, but at the cost of losses, heavy micro and a combat oriented playthrough.
I like merciless for the mood management and other challenges, but the AI constantly pushing makes it really hardcore without cheesy tactics like traps or chokepoints.
That's why adaptive cassie is intended to keep these challenges and to give you significant breathing room if you accept losses.
I'll analyse the additional files this w-e too, thank you.
I was looking through page upon page of mods to look for inspiration, and came upon the Cassandra Hardcore (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=39107.0) mod, which is also made by you. It has some very neat graphs. If it's not too much work, how does Adaptive Cassie compare with the classic storytellers, say Cassandra Rough and Savage? Would be interesting to see such a comparative graph :)
Don't think I'm good enough to even play on Merciless, never mind without any way to funnel the probably gigantic raids :( Do you mean without any traps at all? I agree it's kinda cheesy since the enemies can't see them and we basically exploit pathfinding, but I don't really see how we would be able to handle 25-30 manhunting bears or rhinos if they get in our face either :-/ Or 150-200 tribal raiders without any way to thin out the pack a little bit before they all swarm us. I learnt the hard way that it can be a recipe for disaster, even when we have superior guns and armour.
I look forward to what you conclude from analysing those saves. Having looked about the place more, you look very invested into storyteller mods, and I want to try it out to see how the games adapt. I have to admit it gets kinda boring in the end game when I'm done teching, the base is "done", and it's mostly about waiting for raids, and get the ship built. More excitement in this phase would be good. And if the game ever gets more updates, I hope they manage to spice up the end game in some fashion.
The key to playing high difficulty is wealth control. I end up ship built around 250-300k wealth. You also need to develop slowly and invest in your colonists to turn them into bionic soldiers with good equipment:
graphs (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=41766.msg421610#msg421610)
graphs (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=41766.msg424239#msg424239)
Flat map boreal, taking advantage of marsh and body of water:
base example (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=41766.msg415670#msg415670)
Cassandra hardcore pushes this strategy to the extreme, and don't get me wrong, i praise Tynan for keeping the end game challenging.
But in order to play open maps with high wealth and caravaning, without being hardcore and cheesy, the storyteller has to be more adaptive. It's harder to make a simple graph for adaptive cassie since it's based on population / time, wealth points are changed etc.. but i will make a model based on your pop graph and time on recruitment and compare it to your data point. I want to check whether it doesn't get too difficult (ie much harder than vanilla) over time in the best case scenario (0 deaths).
Thank you. That was interesting reading, and viewing of graphs. I dislike the "need" for wealth control, although I understand it is required to succeed on those levels. Seems impossible to me to get to that stage with only 250,000-ish wealth. Typically I'm at 7-800k, and upwards of 1 million if we survive the 15-day terror (probably due to heaps of dropped weapons, and maybe apparel on the corpses, if that counts).
In my current game I made the best attempt so far at making everybody bionic super-soldiers, but it simply took too long for all the advanced components with nothing else really going on, so I decided to trigger the ship instead. That was with 25 people and around 800k wealth. I tend to craft apparel for trade, but usually don't have heaps laying about, so not sure what accounts for almost 3 times as much wealth.
But think I'd still prefer to stay at a lower difficulty (although Rough or Savage isn't exactly easy) and largely ignore wealth control. The game is a lot of fun up to the base is basically done. Then much dead time, and then fun and great challenge when the ship onslaught is triggered. In the OP you write "wealth is less the main driver of raids size and increasing the number of colonists will actually helps you defend your colony", which sounds like it would fit my playstyle quite well.
You have presumably checked out the save file, but here are a few pictures for others. In fairness I do have heaps of resources here, especially steel, becasue it became a big issue in the last game I played despite having 7000 or so when I triggered the end attacks. Probably rather a lot of wealth just there :-X
Base main (https://i.imgur.com/HWKu9Iv.jpg)
Base killbox (sorry) (https://i.imgur.com/YG88A1o.jpg)
Graph (many caravans and mining trips) (https://i.imgur.com/yDNs6ml.png)
160+ pop tribal raid (corridor bought us time to sort-of get into position) (https://i.imgur.com/19JDXRu.jpg)
Nasty mech ship (https://i.imgur.com/RIvLD6m.jpg)
There's a large overlap between difficulties. The psychic ship in your screenshot is worth my merciless ships, and beyond.
The different level are mostly relevant early to mid game, then it depends how you handle wealth and deaths.
Merciless is a flat 40% modifier, here your wealth is 100% higher than in my examples and each of your colonists weight 80% more than mines since their value is tied to wealth too. You end up dealing with significant harder threats on savage than mines on merciless.
Plus you didn't die, so adaptation must be high and savage weight adaptation more than merciless, paradox of lower difficulty.
Ooof, that is downright scary. This game is "only" on Rough :o
We survived the onslaught, but 4 raids in a little over 1 day was hard. Two mech raids and a pirate raid blew up everything. All turrets were gone or otherwise out of commission. Half the colony hospitalised. We had to run away from the killzone to avoid getting killed there. Later a double-whammy pirate drop pod attack + siege. I had a double-walled ammo depot, and 1-2 pods dropped on top of it. Didn't see it because attention was elsewhere at the time, but it somehow blew up the whole thing, including many of the double-walls (not just one layer), plus much of the undamaged granite mountain (900hp). There was an antigrain warhead in there too... Glorious hit (https://i.imgur.com/f5hX6iy.png) from the one that was thankfully already in a mortar, mind you :) Then the buggers shoot not one (https://i.imgur.com/huyDw1H.png), but two doomsday rockets in my face (https://i.imgur.com/VsYft1i.png). Thankfully the people downed from the first one somehow survived. Thank you marine armour + shield belt.
Had a save from when that ship in our fields touched down, so I tried to up the difficulty to merciless and pop it. Does that "take", so the points are increased to merciless, or is the ship content generated earlier? In any case, more centipedes came out (15 vs 8 earlier), but actually fewer numbers combined. About 40 (tried a couple times) vs 47 in the original Rough game.
I'm a slow player that almost always play at 1x, so games take time (and I get very attached to them, hence the probably too detailed coverage above for our purpose here), but I'll fire up a new one now and use your Adaptive Cassie storyteller. I'd like to try without a channel+trap corridor, but since I don't like to (ab)use wealth control, it scares me.. The raid sizes in the end-game are colossal, and from my meagre experience it's much worse on Savage vs Rough. This is surely not a linear effect (re: overlap in your post above), but according to the XML files, Rough has a threatscale of 1.0, Savage 1.55, and Merciless 2.2.
Sure, it's linear ( the 40% is the jump from savage 1.55 to merciless 2.2). But when you play at higher difficulties, it's harder to make silver, you've more deaths, and adaptation weight less, all factors which tend to reduce the threats.
For example you can have a look at the " fun points" on my graphs (adaptation), they are almost halved at the start of one of the ship sequences. I had one or two deaths, then the storyteller gave me a 50% discount on raids. If you try hard not to lose anyone during the ship defense (or save scum) it's much harder.
You can have a look at these graphs in devmod, debug graph. It's a strong incentive to have one or two rookie fighters in the frontline, ready to die for a purple heart...
Once again, in my view you're fighting merciless level raids. The next step will not be combat but mood management.
But with this discussion i think the soft cap of adaptive cassie should be vanilla.
Very interesting. Looked at a save from after the onslaught with dev mode on, and here is the screenshot. We took heavy damages and lost many limbs, but no people. The peak is at slightly over 1100 "fun points". About 920 right at the end, when the hell-ish onslaught was over.
(http://i.imgur.com/SOdkfYTm.png) (https://imgur.com/SOdkfYT)
Damage taken (from Statistics) probably includes buildings and so forth as well, and probably enemies too, because it increased too much to be only vs (my) pawns. About 420,000 at the end, and 275,000 when the reactor was turned on.
I shall fire up a new save with your storyteller, maybe on Savage, and hope I can survive long enough to get an impression of how it compares with previous Cassie Savage attempts.
Ok, so i've finally opened the save back home. It's working as intended, the threats with adaptive cassie in your end game are slightly lower than vanilla.
Here are the relevance of your pawns (purple)
(https://i.imgur.com/MV1TUx9.png)
As a comparison, in green, a merciless playthrough combat oriented, with an end game around vanilla's level.
Most of your pawns are relevant for my storyteller.
Two outliers:
Vebo the most experienced after 11 years, by a long shot.
Linnea the least experienced after 8.7 years, did you try to protect her from the frontline?
Sofia got her experience real quick.
Quote from: Wanderer_joins on October 06, 2019, 10:25:07 AM
Two outliers:
Vebo the most experienced after 11 years, by a long shot.
Linnea the least experienced after 8.7 years, did you try to protect her from the frontline?
Sofia got her experience real quick.
Wow, that's interesting and unexpected. Especially when I look at this when I loaded the save with the Numbers mod active:
(http://i.imgur.com/GgvJzrol.png) (https://imgur.com/GgvJzro)
Loads more must go into the experience than kills, because Vebo is in the middle of the pack, and Breixo is first by a fair distance.
Unfortunately I can't recall how I used the pawns in this game, but I'd say that typically everybody would be drafted. Does caravans play a semi-important part perhaps? Linnea being a Night Owl, she probably never went on a caravan or mining trip (or rarely), and spent much of her time mining or doctoring. Or perhaps she rarely if ever happened to man a mortar, which in some cases would rack up many kills, probably important for this hidden experience. If a raid happened and the night owls were tired or in bed, I would typically wait until the last moment before drafting them, or maybe even let them sleep (depending on what we faced). If we could attack with mortars I'd do that with 6-8 people, and then draft the rest when we had to.
I also sent out many caravans and mining trips, some of those faced fierce battle. Perhaps Linnea never went on these, while Sofia did? I honestly don't remember. Didn't particularly try to protect Linnea, but perhaps she happened to mostly be in a position where she didn't deal much damage.
Hmm, I actually remember how Vebo was used now, since I see he has a mini-gun. He was usually placed in a vulnerable position in the killbox, so he would be in decent range with the mini-gun. Meant he took quite some incoming hits and was downed a fair bit, but probably means he dealt a lot of damage against centipedes and whatnot that came into the killbox too.
This is the killbox I had towards the end of the game. Vebo would almost always be in the green circle. Melees behind mini-turrets trying to keep them alive.
(https://i.imgur.com/wbrKBpW.png)
Hmm. Looks like Linnea may have used a sniper rifle. That could mean she was placed north of the auto cannons in the above image. Perhaps she just sucked with it and didn't hit all that much, and rarely took incoming damage, being further away from the action.
Of course there was a lot of fighting without using the killbox too, especially at the end of the game, but those were chaotic as fuck, where I generally used whoever was close enough to intervene. Sappers caused me no ends of problems.
Do brawlers/melees do poorly in this metric? Against mechs for instance it was often way too dangerous to send them into battle (20+ centipedes sometimes, like this lot (https://i.imgur.com/nzRostM.png)), so they would often stand back a bit and try to repair mini-turrets. Most likely meant they took a lot of hits and damage, but not necessarily dealing out much themselves.
Cool to hear the onslaught might have been a little less severe with your storyteller. It was horribly brutal, especially in this Savage game.
Have started a new game with Adaptive Cassie on Savage. Have only played about two seasons/quadrums, but I think it was noticeably less violent in the start. Only one raid in the first season. Will be fun to see how things develop.
OK, i think they're just flukes and within the random distribution. The main factor is time. Melee is factored in as well and your melee fighters are doing well.
I could add more stats in the metric, but i'm not sure how it would impact the load of the cpu, so i'd rather keep it "simple".
Adaptive Cassie has the same rythm as Cassandra Classic, so you should only feel the difference on the threat scale (size of the threats). Notably when guys are out caravning.
Darnit, this is sad :'( Always a huuuuge worry when Cassandra doesn't send anything for a while. About a season with no action. Then it happens, and it's three groups of mechs. "Only" 6 of them in fairness, but that is hard when we don't have proper weapons and no armour, nor any traps and only a few sandbags for cover.
Opened up a door in the west because most went there, and we managed to take down two scythers. But apparently they broke through in the east as well. Smashed up a wind turbine before we could get over. A few more of them go down. But a lancer is hiding behind a solar panel. Truth with the EMP grenades from a previous raid is hiding behind a tree and throws a nade while other people are handling two other mechs. BAM. Truth is murdered. Sign of the times...
Very hard blow for the colony as he was our best cook and only artist. The rest of us got cooked too. Two others almost died to lancer shots in the chest, and if it weren't for the pelvis and sternum being indestructible, they would have been blown to dust as well.
I've put the poor chap in the freezer, and will build two sarcophagi there, and hope we can get a resurrection serum down the line.
Popped into dev mode to see what happened to "fun points". Kind of a dip allright. Hopefully Cassandra won't throw death on such levels at us for a while. [edit: Err, guess not. Few days later: Siege!]
Can you tell us anything about what these points/scale actually mean?
(https://i.imgur.com/XpasVnx.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/BEuWAIH.png)
Even without the friendly fire he would have been killed (by a hair). Can barely see the exclamation mark of another person downed further south. Shot in the torso.
(https://i.imgur.com/IEEbaGK.png)
Figured maybe a save using this storyteller from somebody other than yourself could be useful?
Naturally this is still quite early game. Huge drop-off in recovery, whatever those "days" mean, after the Truth murder + siege. Currently we have a bunch of prisoners from several groups of sappers. Unusually, a lot of them survived and were only downed.
(https://i.imgur.com/9vIwm3v.png)
No traps or killbox yet, only hiding behind sandbags, which is bound to bite us in the arse sooner or later. We shall see.
Managed to get the save just under 1MB by using 7zip compression and attach it here. Zip or tar.gz was too big.
Slightly touched on the pig incident (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=49438.msg465461#msg465461) elsewhere. Coupled with other stuff going very badly, I don't think we could have survived this on the default Cassandra Savage storyteller (knock on wood, we seem sort-of back on our feet now). She probably would have sent something worse after us sooner.
(https://i.imgur.com/fRxHIB5.png)
The 22 manhunting pigs very, very nearly did us in. Practically everybody down. Only Mandrill and the slow as heck Onesan was sort of up, and she's incapable of doctoring. Thankfully a few got up, and I managed to self-tend some of their wounds in the field before they dropped again at 45% blood loss (it lowers consciousness). The lousy and injured doctors had to do what they could, being the only people up, and I had to micro hard with loads of people 1-3 hours from dying. Because they were wading in blood and guts in the hospital, we got hit with 4 infections. Used all the 13 (heh, lucky number) normal meds we had acquired from rare traders, the last 3 on infections. Some got lousy 20-ish percent tends, but that can happen with so bad doctors (skill 0-1, and 4), with them being injured on top.
Mie was worst hit with the infection. But before I could do anything about it, a sapper raid hit us. There was absolutely nothing I could do about it. Most of the colony was in hospital, either out cold or fiercely struggling against serious infections. Could only put the various animals where they ended up going through into the inner base, and hope for the best. Thank goodness I remembered to uninstall and remove the infinite chemfuel gadget!
Several animals died from getting fragged, including the pig -- plus a great prisoner (Fox). They all got exploded into nothingness. But we eventually managed to make them flee and didn't lose any of the two people able to fight them. The cows are pretty darn good, and one of them got very seriously wounded. I used a pawn to fix it up as it was only hours from dying. Then I noticed the infection on Mie's leg had got to 90%. Camlaban, badly injured, was in the process of removing it, but was too slow. Mie died on the operating table with knives poking her infected leg. Despite being a good doctor, Camlaban only had 58% surgery success chance due to all the wounds, so he may have failed anyway.
Suddenly it dawned on me that both Truth and Mie were doctors, and we're now down to only Camlaban being capable. But on the upside, the three surviving prisoners have now been recruited, so we're up to 10 pawns. The mortar and 35-ish shells got exploded by the sappers, and looking at the pink dots, we're probably due another raid soon. But at least we have flak armour now, so hopefully we'll be able to stand up better in gunfights. I'm concerned about the basically total lack of defenses, but that giant drop in recovery and fun points probably meant we're still alive -- so there is that :)
Oh, and one of the pigs from earlier was out cold forever and had 94% malnutrition, we managed to rescue the girl, and she is now our new pet pig. Can't haul yet, but pigs are easy to train up.
A swarm of small manhunter animals is harder to deal with in the open, and fighting behind sandbags is really brutal. I'd add a few traps and turrets. Funneling pirates into traps is cheesy but using a few traps strategically placed is really useful and fair.
Mie is always a keeper for my colonies, such a good background, too bad she didn't make it. I've seen Truth, he's almost spent a year as a colonist, but you also have a good pool of prisoners. With Adaptive Cassie, the following raid must have been easier after the manhunter pack. It's nice to see she's working as intended, after almost two years and a rather good start, she's still more lenient than Cassandra classic as you're building your colony.
The fun points are reflective of the threat on your colony (vanilla) and the adapt days on "recovery" are translated into a factor. For example at 60 days (when you lost Truth) it's worth 1.2 (20% larger threats) 0.8 at 0 days (where you're in your last screen shot - i.e. -20%), and weighted 70% at savage difficulty i.e. +/- 14%. It can go higher but the growth is slower (like in your previous playthrough) so it's rather theoretical.
Bad news. We died. Ish. :'(
(https://i.imgur.com/XhShcvs.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/HwLC0Fs.png)
Three people on the road when 10-11 mechs (all scythers) landed outside our gates. Actually surprised it was such a tough attack with people on the road, but perhaps it was more a case of scythers being a nightmare to fight. Had it been 10-15 normal raiders we may have been okay. Actually had 4 melees as well, but they didn't stand a chance. Those awful swishing sounds, and arms, legs and ears flying every which way.
Not everybody dead here yet, and the three on the road will be back soon, but with 5 scythers still standing I consider this a total colony wipe.
(Onesan is on fire, and Mole's corpse is almost consumed by flames.)
Actually quite liked this base, map and colonists, so it's a bit sad.
Unfortunately I think the only lesson I can take from this is that without a killzone we are fucked. It really is that simple. Maybe short of extreme wealth control. But then we didn't have all that much wealth yet. I did notice that smoothed floors and especially smoothed walls add a pretty big chunk of wealth. And doubly so for walls since 20 silver is added in every adjacent room. Some of the wealth increases is due to smoothed material.
After almost getting wiped several times I did eventually put up some traps here and there along mountain passes, but no killzone. And that seems to be what killed us. Although I'm sure I could have done things differently here, like locking ourselves behind the gates and trying to lob mortars at them. Or employing other semi-cheesy tactics like bunching up behind a door with melees in front.
Think the save is able to be uploaded. Hopefully you can get something useful out of checking it out.
Thanks for the feed back, i'll check it out.
Do you have a save just before the scyther raid to see how it compared to Cassandra Classic?
Quote from: Wanderer_joins on October 19, 2019, 05:30:49 AM
Thanks for the feed back, i'll check it out.
Do you have a save just before the scyther raid to see how it compared to Cassandra Classic?
Have one from when I was forming the caravan, which should be pretty close.
This is when the mechs landed, which may be too late for your purposes?
Thanks, it will help. It's roughly working as intended, your colony had a good start, savage difficulty, day ~200ish, 9 healthy colonists. 10 scythers is a deadly threats, but they can be handled with a few casualties and micro. You had 4 melee with shields, animals and shooters. You can also die, but that's Rimworld ;D
That said i'm thinking of a few tweaks. The idea of this mod is to stick to vanilla balance but with more time for colony building, more importance given to experienced colonists and lower threats when colonists are out. I could delay the weigh increase of colonists at lower difficulty levels.
Cheers. Although it didn't exactly seem like a good start with several people dying and generally getting our arses handed to us whenever tough raids hit ;D
Will try the story teller again, though. I particularly like that it lowers raid strength during caravans, since I like to interact with the trade and quests. Sending people out can still be suicidal, but probably less so with your storyteller.
The bane of my failed colonies seem to be bad luck when taking on raiders in fair ways. I simply like taking on threats by sitting behind sandbags or chunks and have two teams firing at each other. Can work in the early game, but later on it gets dangerous, and in this case it killed us. Which, for better or worse, kinda forces me in the direction of cheesy tactics like killzones. It simply works, while also enabling us to take on threats (sort of) directly.
They may be even more important for tribal starts tbh, as even mini turrets are very far away. Hadn't gotten them yet in this game. We generally have terrible weapons and armour too, so are easily outgeared.
New game after getting wiped. After almost a full year we are only 6 people (first raider was great, then nothing), so we have gotten a few chased refugees. I took on two of them. Unfortunately the refugee was total gunk, so I left them at the map edge, hoping they'd get kidnapped so I wouldn't have to banish them.
Seemed things were a bit peaceful after that, so I checked out the graphs.
(https://i.imgur.com/ef4gpVH.png)
Guess this could be taken advantage of (but then you could suicide poor pawns in regular raids anyway, I've heard people do that). I am glad there is a function like this, however, as I've had games where almost the entire colony has been kidnapped, and in theory this could enable us to get back on our feet again.
As you can see the recovery is short when it's negative ( less than 10 days). Chased refugees are relatively rare at mid- high pop, so it's not really significant.
Even the strategy to recruit poor pawns to sacrifice is hard on the long term, because you've to recruit them and they always end up valuable in some way, and they still increase your threat points even if they can't shoot at their feet!
That's also why experienced pawns are weighted up to 3x a new recruit.
All in all, it's hard to base a strategy on attrition, but it helps for recovery.
Fair points. It did increase pretty quickly, although life also felt really quiet for a long time. But part of that might have been random spread. And especially as tribals, it takes a long time to recruit people (and the vast majority die in raids anyway, and soon there are barely human raiders), so it's not like it's easy to recruit new people.
Good grief. This is not a sight you wanna see. Doomsday rocket + triple rocket. Vast amounts of red liquid flowed out of Red.
(http://i.imgur.com/FNoqMO4l.png) (https://imgur.com/FNoqMO4)
Definitely not this either. I hate it when ships crash down inside the base, especially this late in the game, because obscene amounts of mechs will pop out. 8 centipedes plus almost 20 others.
(http://i.imgur.com/WmiEEzkl.png) (https://imgur.com/WmiEEzk)
Horrific fight. I actually installed an antigrain warhead trap (south of the ship), expecting some scythers or whatever to attack the people I had down there. Unfortunately for me they never did, and the battle was very tough -- despite asking for ally help (10 people came). 5 of my own plus an ally were downed, though thankfully *we* didn't lose anybody (but around 10 limbs/eyes). 3 allies fled mid-battle (bastards!), the rest died -- except the one person we managed to save.
So far the hospital has been almost ludicrously over-sized at 16 beds, but it was filled to the brim.
(https://i.imgur.com/4Sy0XXy.png)
Forgot to take screenshots of the dev mode graphs, but despite the heavy injuries, the graphs spike up pretty quickly. That looks fairly normal, however, unless you suffer deaths.
Don't know if you follow threads elsewhere on the forum, but I posted about a killzone I'm using now, because for better or worse it seems to be mandatory to survive for me, especially on Savage difficulty. I'm not using a a trap maze so far, but I do have a double corridor to buy me some time to get into position. I hope you don't hate me too much for it. I simply want to survive, and the last game ended rather quickly without one of these gadgets.
(It looks a little different now as I'm trying to move some turrets north, but this is the general set-up)
(http://i.imgur.com/Wsq4u8ul.png) (https://imgur.com/Wsq4u8u)
Yes, if anything i'm thinking of slowing the pace at which she catches up to vanilla's storyteller.
It is mostly okay in fairness, though perhaps that is also because I'm now using a killbox and it's easier to handle with giant raids then -- as long as they go that way of course. Recently 60-70 raiders attacked, and they brought big guns. Three or possibly four doomsday rockets went off in our face (took out all turrets+cannons of course), and once we counted the corpses afterwards, they left another 7 doomsday rockets and 7 triple rockets on the ground. Don't know how many more they brought (who ran away).
We survived okay, largely thanks to good armour in the late game I think, but I don't see how one could reasonably survive something like this without them all going into a killzone.
It's tricky though. It's fun to fight battles like this, as long as we survive haha! Yet it's also easy to get overpowered. Particularly in the early-ish stages of the game when have few people and poor weapons and armour.
Yes, and the idea of this mod is really to get away from the wealth crush. I've just rebalanced it, always in the spirit of a no killbox defense, delaying the time/factor.
It should be "easier" but in Rimworld much of the difficulty is in the playstyle of the player.
That is true, difficulty is wildly different depending on how one plays. Killbox/no killbox, wealth control/no wealth control, trap mazes galore/or not. Et cetera.
I'm using the version before some of the recent changes (downloaded from a dropbox link, because I don't use steam), so maybe it's tougher than vanilla now, I'm not sure. But we've had some tough raids, that's for sure. Almost 1300 fun points. 19 scythers dropped right on top of us, cutting off animals from escaping and pawns from engaging. 7 people downed, with countless lost limbs. Many animals died too.
This lot just showed up from the map edge. Holy cow.
(http://i.imgur.com/3ZQlSCSl.png) (https://imgur.com/3ZQlSCS)
22 centipedes (7-8 infernos) and 16 lancers. Good armour really helps, but people keep running into the middle of combat when on fire. One person became a vegetable from a 2/10 mangled scar brain injury, but other than that it went fairly well. Though I did, in desperation, fire a doomsday rocket and triple rocket into a crowd of around 12 centipedes. Nobody went down, and everything dead got evaporated (sad face for lost plasteel), but it must have done some damage. All walls disappeared :D
An attack like this would have completely ruined us without focus fire and cannon support.
Just a thought here, and maybe it would have to be for a different mod, but would it be possible to almost totally ignore wealth for raid sizes and frequency?
It's a tough one, though. Wouldn't be much fun in the late game if your 25 assault rifle pawns get attacked by 10 raiders. Or likewise, if you after a meltdown have 5 pawns, and they get attacked by 100 raiders because it is year 7 or whatever. Maybe if it was possible to calculate it on actual base structures/defences and pawn strength, rather than total wealth.
Speaking for myself, with little to no wealth control, I tend to end up with mountains of spare textiles and clothes (that I trade away when traders visit). Then backup marine helmets and armour that people don't wear automatically. Slightly degraded devilstrand pants, shirts and dusters, a pack of art, and hundreds of meals, thousands of pemmican, and maybe 10,000 vegetable+meat+milk, depending on weather/toxic events.
Maybe all of that shouldn't be ignored entirely, but the way things are now, the majority of wealth is item wealth. Some of that is equipment of course, but I reckon most of it is textiles, clothes/armour, ex-raider weapons, food.
Currently, in the late game with a mountain base, this is my spread (Fall 5506):
(https://i.imgur.com/EIUOike.png)
I've updated the dropbox version, same link.
Actually, wealth has very little impact beyond 400k. It's mainly the experience of your colonists which grows with time. I've reduced it in the last update. Another advantage she gives is for large colonies, the threats no longer increases linearly with the number of colonists.
22 centipedes is tough according to any metric :D
Thanks. Will stick to this version for now though, since I'm so close to the very end-game.
Interesting about wealth. I assumed wealth was still a solid driver here, since raid sizes keep going up. But if wealth over 400k doesn't matter very much, it's definitely good for my playstyle, since I tend to end up with wealth of 800k-1 mill. Currently around 700k (forgot that I had 7 people on the road in the above stat image).
New ship lands inside our base. Probably over-prepared (went through ~3500 steel! :o ), but I'm quite frankly scared of all these centipedes in the midst of our base. And we did need a lot of it tbh, including the anti-grain warhead trap. This time it went off :)
The auto-cannons were already there from before, so I have some defence against all the sappers, but most of the mini turrets are new, and of course all the traps.
(http://i.imgur.com/V0kyJMDl.png) (https://imgur.com/V0kyJMD)
(http://i.imgur.com/B7ZbOVol.png) (https://imgur.com/B7ZbOVo)
(http://i.imgur.com/HdIAAy1l.png) (https://imgur.com/HdIAAy1)
15 centipedes and 28 others. Yikes. Anti-grain trap took out most of the mini-turrets, but it also seems to have one-shot many mini-mechs, and even a few centipedes (head blown off on at least one I inspected).
Unfortunately all that preparation emptied our steel reserves, and we have much power infrastructure to rebuild, but it was probably worth it. No deaths, and only a few lost arms and legs. The friendlies were suicidal again, so most of the lost their lives. Wish they were a bit smarter in where they positioned themselves.
Unfortunately I placed the firing line too far back, so people with assault rifles (most of my guys) couldn't fire until the mechs came closer. But overall I'm pleased with how it turned out, and think there is a decent balance between high material cost from preparing like this, and reduced risk.
It does again show that play style matters a lot, though. I could have set up behind a sandbag line, with nothing else, and maybe gotten wiped out. Or at least lost 10-15 people. Once people go down, get set on fire, die, more people go down... It can quickly become untenable with sort of a doom spiral like that. I've seen it before in ship encounters. Have actually lost colonies to infections + bleeding post-battle because everybody are badly injured and inable to fix things. Then the spiral of mental breaks.
PS: Are others playing with this story teller? How are your experiences?
OMG. I think this shows the version I'm using is harder than default Cassandra now? Over 1700 fun points, which is around 500 more than I've had during the height of ship startup.
(https://i.imgur.com/qnZszz4.png)
Btw, I had a crew of 7-8 people on the road for over 30 days to various mining locations. They got attacked a fair few times, but managed to handle it without deaths or lost limbs (but some very serious injuries).
(https://i.imgur.com/LvMFySB.png)
Crew back, and I'm pleased about getting another raid, especially since it has humans. So much happening. This raid, plus a too deep infestation (spawned simultaneously). And then an ally stops by...
143!? :o
(https://i.imgur.com/zaja4IQ.png)
At this point the game lagged something unreal. And the game basically doesn't lag for me at all. Now it was one frame every 1-2 seconds ;D This huge force felt bonkers big at the time, but that was before I noticed what the sappers brought.
(http://i.imgur.com/1J94vEZl.png) (https://imgur.com/1J94vEZ)
That's a LOT of doomsday rocket circles... And they brought an equal amount of triple rocket launchers.
the almost 150 friendlies dropped in two big hurdles near the north-east of the map. The sappers entered further south, and went towards a mountain to hack through. I've never seen anything like this (but sadly none of the screenshots properly captured it). The first group of friendlies, around 70 people, simple evaporated from a hail of rockets and doomsdays. Everybody dead, and barely a corpse to show for it. Holy shit!
And they still had a handful more for the second group, though this lot largely survived. Earlier I was disappointed that so many friendlies joined, but this event made me very grateful ;D Thank goodness we weren't the recipients of all that hell. I lobbed mortars at the sappers, which only lost around 10-15 people at this point. Got a few kills here and there, as the group moved in towards our walls. Friendlies were engaging the other sappers, who oddly enough were largely out of weapons at this point :D Lots of casualties between them, but it was the friendlies that came out on top. Once the sappers started to flee, they got gunned down trying to exit the map. Only a few made it.
Tried to rescue 4-5 allies and capture around 5 badly injured raiders. Only two allies and 3 raiders made it back to the base. One raider was literally 2 seconds from dying, with 100% blood loss. Close call? Kinda!
This one ally had a rough time of it.
(http://i.imgur.com/qd8drbwl.png) (https://imgur.com/qd8drbw)
That is three different (or was it four?) doomsday rockets to the face. I counted up the pain, and it's at 212%. Yeah, I can see how that may hurt a little ;D :o
Amazingly she made a full recovery and exited the map without any permanent scars. Got +22 points for it, which is higher than I've seen from others. Don't know if that is based on the quality of the pawn, or the amount of injuries suffered, but it does vary quite a bit.
Anywho... you may say I'm a little concerned about starting up the ship now :-X :-\
If you've made it so far i'm confident you'll successfully start up the reactor. Don't be afraid to send your latest recruits to the frontline!
In the last update i've mainly rebalanced how the weights given to colonists increases with time, to make it more progressive. Here, at year 7-8, with few killed colonists, this factor should be high (even in the previous version i've never overcome vanilla's difficulty, but i had losses).
If you've got any save file before the launch it'd be really usefull to compare the end games.
The other points i'd like to check with the new version is whether raids on top aren't too easy and whether we can play merciless reliably without killboxes and cheesy tactics.
Have never had so many people before (almost 40), so even with heavy losses we'll hopefully get through it.
Admittedly this is Savage, but I really can't see how one can survive raids like this without a way to channel them into a field of fire. I got wiped when I tried at least. They are too many and too dangerous.
Will remember to save before triggering the ship, so you can check out how it would compare with vanilla Cassandra.
Looks like fun points top out at 2000? Never got this much in the vanilla Cassandra games (~1200 iirc), but I assume this limit is in the game itself? Probably a good thing tbh, as raids are intense as hell, and at some point it will be unmanageable in terms of lag and CPU/memory.
(https://i.imgur.com/NWIwvqR.png)
Yes, there's a hard cap at 20000 points in vanilla... which i've removed, because i don't like hard caps :D
That said adaptive cassie is much more progressive and lenient early mid game, she'll only catch up with cassandra classic in late game, if you've been really successful. And in the latest version it should take even more time, but still there's a 3 to one difference between experienced colonists and recruits.
But i don't think you're actually at 20000 points, it's the vanilla graph which i think is disconnected from the mod's formula. You're so high because you're wealthy and must have a large team (even in vanilla the points are mostly based on colonists in the end-game with large colonies).
That's intriguing, that the graph isn't correct because this is using a mod instead of the vanilla game. I've turned on dev mode now and then to check it out, and seen the graph rise and rise. Some of the raids have been crazy, like the doomsday one I mentioned. But given this info it's probably more in line with previous default Cassandra games on savage. I'll know more when the reactor is enabled and the game throws the kitchen sink at me.
It's a little scary seeing the upper cap is removed, but I'll see how it pans out :) Based on what you have said, it should be roughly on the level of default Cassandra now, or possibly a little tougher. Really glad I learnt about the Numbers mod, because now I can see how many raiders attack us (the game can only select up to 80 "things"). The last tribal raid was 187.
Edit: this is current wealth, just shy of 1 million. Only around 18% of that is in people and the horde of animals. Haven't lost any pawns, but a mortar sadly landed in the middle of the barn (safe-zone) and insta-killed 12-15 animals.
(https://i.imgur.com/nSSJUsh.png)
Errr, some attacks are kinda savage *gulp*
35 centipedes? I wrote a little more about it here (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=49415.msg467011#msg467011).
(http://i.imgur.com/5AP0K8Vl.png) (https://imgur.com/5AP0K8V)
Suffered our first death in Hutch. 9 others downed (I tried to save them throughout combat, but it was rough as hell). Had almost forgot about the two night owls. Thankfully one of them is a doctor, so we have one guy able to fix people. Poor chap has his work cut out for him now.
I don't know how many raids point or whatever this amounts to, but 80 mechs and 35 centipedes sure is rough.
Much wrecked afterwards you may say.
(http://i.imgur.com/1KUcOxZl.png) (https://imgur.com/1KUcOxZ)
Edit: I uploaded the file from just before the ship was triggered HERE (https://ufile.io/rqv3j8rp), in case you want to have a peek.
No cap confirmed 8)
Thanks, it'll help for the end game tuning, I'll look into it!
Edit: i've looked into it and you've overcome 20000 pts, you're using the 9-1 version (1st update). In the 11-3 version (2nd and current update) i tuned it down, since the philosophy of this mod is a "no kill box" storyteller. So even on merciless, 1 million wealth and 40+ colonists you'd still be under 20000pts. So if you plan to give another try, i'd say you're ready for merciless difficulty with adaptive Cassie!
Cheers, that is interesting. Perhaps I should indeed make the step up to Merciless then and see how we fare. It sounds like a pretty big boost from Savage (re: xml values), but it also sounds like we're kinda dealing with the same sized raids already, so.. hehe.
Anyway, the reason I came to the thread again (and saw your edit) was that we're 10 years in, everybody are healthy, we have resources up the wazoo, so I think it's time. I'm feeling confident based on the recent sapper raids, but we shall see.
Savefile for when I trigger the ship: https://ufile.io/m1b68z8p
Fun points topped out at 2000 as usual (which shouldn't actually apply), and wealth at 1.3 million.
(https://i.imgur.com/bBbSuEC.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/O5tIes5.png)
I'll post another save if we survive the onslaught.
Edit: Gee. Tough start. The counter is still at 15 days, we've had two raids on top of each other, and one death. Doomsday and triple rockets to the face from drop attacks are pretty much impossible to defend against. Just cross your fingers people only get downed instead of killed. RIP Rissa.
I don't even... This is unpleasant :o
(http://i.imgur.com/94DDyNch.png) (https://imgur.com/94DDyNc)
There were even more as well, though I'm not sure exactly how many came. First mechs dropped from the sky in three groups, and while I'm desperately trying to deal with that, another horde invaded. We survived, for now, and I'm trying to heal up people in the midst of cascading mental breaks. No more deaths thankfully (we had another in between these raids), but everything is destroyed. I used two triple rockets and two doomsday, so most corpses disappeared. Therefore not sure how many it was in total. But I'm pretty sure it was at least 50 centipedes and feck knows how many others. 80-100? Not impossible.
With that, only about 5 days in, I've moved everybody to "Anything" schedule so they can get some rest in between battles and repairs. Keeping count of raids now, and this was the 8th and 9th. I've used two antigrain warheads. One was a mighty sweet hit and basically wiped out the tribals in that one hit.
(http://i.imgur.com/hFm6hc9h.png) (https://imgur.com/hFm6hc9)
Yeah, 10 years and only one death, at that point cassie goes for the kill. Most of your colonists are worth more than a centipede for the storyteller.
But she also takes into accounts more significantly down colonists and health status, so it should help during the ship sequence.
This is fine since i like apocalyptic endings, but still, i delayed the time factor for those who like playing 15-20yo colonies. In this version the max weight was roughly reached after 5 years as a colonist, it's more like 10 in the last update.
An antigrain warhead on top of a tribal raid is always satisfying. And i've seen there's an outpost with 2 more :D
Yep, that quest came up when I had already decided to trigger the ship, so I actually didn't do it. Sounds like the latest version is a fair bit more lenient than this one, which is probably a good thing. Some of the raids throughout were pretty obscene.
But we survived! Two deaths and three combined, but not too bad all things considered. Only had one resurrection serum, so wanted to save it in case a truly crucial pawn died. Used three healer serums on brain scars, some of them were vegetables.
The first half of the 15 days was a lot worse than the last half. 4 spare antigrain warheads, plus the two other gadgets I totally forgot about.
Unless I missed some raids, we got 19 throughout the 15 days. 10 (!) of those were mechs, including centipedes dropping on top of us. But two of those cases were scattered drop-pods, so it wasn't terrible. With such wealth, it may actually be worse to get pirate on-top drops, because they bring the mass one-shot weapons. They certainly tore us a new bumhole early on.
Some stuff to rebuild before we lift off, including fixing an engine and rebuilding a life pod. The ~200 animals will unfortunately need to stay behind.
Here is the savefile from moments after the last attack is dealt with, and the reactor is ready.
https://ufile.io/1a54ibva
The raids from about day 7-8 were noticeably less severe. Either because we suffered two deaths, or due to attrition from all the people downed and injuries suffered. Some animals died too, but doubt that matters much. Due to all the mech attacks, we ended up with more components than fine meals ;D
(https://i.imgur.com/W7Vkr4u.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/Zsg9TEV.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/hMQZuOX.png)
PS: Alex ended up with a colossal amount of kills because he fired the before-mentioned antigrain that wrecked the tribals.
Congrats!
If there is any good time to lose one or two pawns, it's at the start of the ship sequence, it'll ease the following raids, works well with vanilla storytellers as well.
Alex has huge kill stats, that's also why i'd rather not use them in the metrics, outliers may be hard to deal with. As a side note kills from mortars also give mood buff for bloodlust pawns, so you could use 'chimpanze', 'legend' and 'morton' on the first round of mortars to fulfill easily their need for kills.
I'm impressed you made it with so few deaths with this set up, notably with mechs, your pawns behind sandbags are all in the AoE of their heavy charge blaser. Usually people hide themselves behind a mix of walls and sandbags, and spread the defense out.
Thanks :)
Good point about bloodlust. I didn't do that on purpose. When raids hit I generally just picked whoever was closest to the mortars, so we had a decent chance to get some hits before they got too close to our walls. But I do recall that once we flanked a tribal sapper crew and filled them full of holes, one of my pawns ended up with +37 from 5 kills. Wow! At other times I flanked them with somebody with a doomsday, which tended to get them to flee ;-) Again this was simply done with whoever non-shield that was close. And Legend, being a Night Owl, would often sleep through combat tbh. Depended when they hit us. He was a medic, though, and would often rack up something like 6000 XP (well above the 4000 soft cap) with only normal tends.
About walls+sandbags, this is something I was advised about earlier and tried out in a previous save. It works really well if the angle is basically straight on. Cover is obviously better than just sandbags. But in my experience it would often hurt us, because many people with narrower angles would not be able to shoot at enemies because a neighbouring wall would block their view. So this time I went for this simpler setup. As the colony grew they wouldn't fit in, so logistics was kind of an issue.
Mechs was always really hard though, particularly when they brought so god damn many :D Infernos are hell to deal with. People catch fire and run into the middle of combat. So I would micro real hard here, try to put people out. Sometimes a pawn would not actually be on fire either, but still run about. It helps to undraft-draft them. That 'resets' their madness. With so many infernos, however, it's impossible to sufficiently deal with it. You can get hit with 6+ infernos in the same area, meaning everybody will start running about. Firefoam poppers help for the first hit, but these battles could last for a real-time hour.
Heavy chargers was a big issue too ofc, but unless you rely on sniper rifles, or possibly bolt actions, you're going to have to get into the thick of battle to be within range. There will be a wall of bullets in both directions, so good armour is important. Without that, we would have suffered a lot more deaths. Oh, and if somebody could downed in a bad position (on fire, or badly timed mental break), I would try to rescue them witha shield belter. With so many bullets flying everywhere, stray bullets could easily kill off a downed pawned lying ahead of the sandbags.
Sappers are gruesome though. By the end here, as you can see from the save, I had autocannons and miniturrets everywhere in the various pockets, but sappers would still find a way. They'll gladly start zigzagging through the walls to avoid field of fire. Unless you're able to hurt them with mortars, the best solution is to flank them I think. Especially tribals. Not really an option with pirates when they have 10s of doomsday, mind you :o
This save was a lot of fun, so it's kind of a little sad to have ended it. Given what you have said, think I'll try out Merciless next, with the updated 11-3 storyteller. I honestly can't see surviving without a killbox though, despite you saying this storyteller is meant to be played without them. I liked playing without a trap maze, however, so will stay away from that moving forward.
Well, by the end here I did put many traps in strategic locations, especially where sappers had targeted, but it was pretty rare for anybody to actually trigger them. Most probably got triggered as raiders were fleeing the map tbh. But I liked having those IEDs in the maze. A few people would usually catch fire, and if there was some grass or trees there, it could cause some issues for invading raiders. And it felt less cheesy than traps every which way (and less maintenance ofc).
Thanks again for this storyteller. It's been fun to play with, and I especially enjoy being able to go on caravans without quite so much worry about the caravan or base getting wiped out. Wish the base game had more quests and events tbh, as it's fun to interact with them, although most aren't all that good (especially in the end game).
On Merciless, do you get a lot more mental breaks than on Savage? I can see that may be a big issue, particularly in the end when loads of relatives die in the huge raids. And we won't have more ways to boost mood after all. Oh, and I was helped in the end-game here by setting up the game with 25% chance for Transhumanist trait. That's why we have so many.
Edit: Oh holy shit that got long lol. Sorry! Didn't meant to erect a text wall ;D
Sappers are deadly if you don't block them before they get in. And i thought they could destroy your ship.
It's always a bitter-sweet experience when you launch your ship, so much time invested in your pawns and hours micromanaging their work. But at some point your colony is mature and they can live their lives.
The threats on merciless won't be much different from what you've faced, the main difference will be mood management.
Quote from: Wanderer_joins on November 18, 2019, 02:22:06 PM
Sappers are deadly if you don't block them before they get in. And i thought they could destroy your ship.
It's always a bitter-sweet experience when you launch your ship, so much time invested in your pawns and hours micromanaging their work. But at some point your colony is mature and they can live their lives.
The threats on merciless won't be much different from what you've faced, the main difference will be mood management.
You haven't been here for a year, but if you still keep half an eye on the forum...
Just wanted to say that since I returned after not playing the game since 1.0, I've picked up your follow-up storyteller
"Adaptive Threats". Would love if it was on github or some such place, but thankfully I was able to get it with anonymous login and steamcmd, since I bought the game directly from Ludeon and don't use steam.
Played one game but aborted it before getting all the tech and launching the ship. In a new game now, tribal ofc, and it's been fun. Hard to tell (for me) how much it changes things based on vanilla Cassandra, who I prefer to use. Something I've noticed that I'm not sure if regular Cassandra will do, is send two raids almost back-to-back, or one day after the other, more or less. In a similar vein, one time I had a flashstorm, and a few hours later (maybe it was after midnight in-game?) there was a dry thunderstorm. As you can imagine, half the map, if not more, went up in flames :D
I'm always putting this off for too long, until raids almost kill us off, but it's fun to play without a killbox for several years. Currently I'm at 260k wealth according to the stats page, about 3 years into the game. Have flak armour now, so that helps, but facing off with dudes in marine armour and assault rifles when we only have some bolt actions and devilstrand dusters is.... ROUGH! :D
Heartily recommend this mod, and would be nice to see your face around the place again =)