I have 5k hours on RimWorld so clearly I enjoy playing it (BTW >99% were played at merciless). I love rich strategy games where I have many valid options to tackle a perceived problem. RimWorld excels at this since there is no one way of playing it, there is little to no railroading so the player is free to chose. Although brutal at times (like Randy sending 4 raids in 24 hours) the events are not actually rigged to destroy you; in the sense of the storyteller being programmed to, for example, consistently send a solar flare to disable the turret defence system and then swarm the player with raids. This makes turrets a valid option and increases re playability immensely. This design decision is everywhere.
Rimworld is also a base defence game which is something I enjoy a lot too since I always loved playing these types of games. I love beefing up my defences or coming up with strategies to try to win against overwhelming odds.
The extremely rich (from a strategy pov) survival base defence game was completely subverted with the introduction of mechanoid clusters. All of a sudden I am no longer defending a base but being forced to go on the offensive against overwhelming odds with little to no strategic options. This game went from having a LOT of valid options to tackle problems to an abysmal bias towards early WWI tactics or human wave if you will. I go from I love the game to I cant stand playing it due to being so uninteresting, tedious, repetitive and even dumb.
These clusters are akin to having raiders show up at your base and use an ability that can instantly "melt" all the players walls, traps and turrets.
I hope that this gets addressed and more options are introduced to fight these things; removing their turrets immunity to fire, solar flare, mortar and bullets would be a start.
Thanks for reading.
Dropped by the forum just to post this message. This is just completely broken to the point it doesn't even vaguely feel play tested.
It's tantamount to saying let's drop a game ending event in your lap that you can't counter and see how you feel about being trolled by it when the answer is blindingly obvious: Not OK man, not OK.
Don't even have royalty yet but already loving the turtle tears.
It might need some balancing but I look forward to having a reason to maintain a sally force instead of just pulling mortar triggers while watching megascreen behind the killbox.
Couple observations then for you:
1. You've yet to play it, interesting that you'd jump into a conversation about something you know nothing about.
2. Making a game hard isn't hard. In fact it's the easiest thing in the world to do. Presenting interesting choices, challenging circumstances and being entertaining is the hard part. Killing off a colony with OP events is trivially easy to do.
My experience and from what I see from people playing Royalty on YouTube and twitch tells me that I agree that these events are hard and will make turtle strategies redundant and even dangerous. But to say that there's nothing you can do about it and that it's a colony killing event is a bit extreme. The only mech clusters you can't obliterate with mortars while watching megascreen behind the killbox are the ones with mortar shields. You must have got incredibly unlucky if all your mech clusters spawned with a mortar shield.
Speaking of YouTube, almost every single popular RimWorld Youtuber apart from that one guy who knows what he's doing is standing there attacking mechs with no cover from ranged. At least they learn quick because people tell them to use melee in the comments and then lo and behold, mechs are not a threat anymore when you ambush the ranged ones with armored melee characters. You can also use smoke screens, EMP grenades and pretty much everything else. Also the mech clusters drop random walls in most of the time stupid places so it's really easy to just cheese them with line of sight tricks.
Don't see it like this myself, and mechanoids are my particular menace. I'm always losing appendages to them.
Here's some points I'd like to bring up which I'm starting to realize myself after playing Royalty for a while.
You call Rimworld a base defense game, but it isn't. That was just the most common form of combat because players weren't heavily encouraged to go out on raids. The raid quests are generally low reward and high risk, while being tedious and time consuming. They pull your colonists away from important tasks for extended periods of time and that's just not tenable at higher difficulty levels.
This new gameplay element is not new, it's old. Been there for years. It's just more accessible now.
Strategic options are abound. If you're just throwing your nublets into a meat grinder that's your problem. I'm using traps offensively, using the terrain, using mortars, flanking maneuvers, etc... I think I built a total of 4 IED's during the last.... 5 years?... I've played Rimworld. My current save I've got a stockpile of 40 or so that I use offensively.
I don't have 5k hours in the game. Maybe 1k. I just picked it back up for Royalty after a good 9 month hiatus. Coming back with a blurry memory into a game with so many new things to learn has been like playing a new game, and I'm learning every step of the way.
Sounds to me like you're stuck in a rut and blaming Tynan. Game isn't fun anymore? That's usually a sign that you should take a break, not blame the devs for your own self-inflicted misery.
I like caravaning and doing combat quests above all else yet those Mech clusters, from what I can observe, is simply too overbearing on all aspect of the game.
The difficulty spike of Mech clusters over pretty much every other threat in the game is completely unbalanced, it should be better balanced with respect to colony wealth.
Quote from: Whifflepits on March 04, 2020, 11:35:49 AM
Don't see it like this myself, and mechanoids are my particular menace. I'm always losing appendages to them.
Here's some points I'd like to bring up which I'm starting to realize myself after playing Royalty for a while.
You call Rimworld a base defense game, but it isn't. That was just the most common form of combat because players weren't heavily encouraged to go out on raids. The raid quests are generally low reward and high risk, while being tedious and time consuming. They pull your colonists away from important tasks for extended periods of time and that's just not tenable at higher difficulty levels.
This new gameplay element is not new, it's old. Been there for years. It's just more accessible now.
Strategic options are abound. If you're just throwing your nublets into a meat grinder that's your problem. I'm using traps offensively, using the terrain, using mortars, flanking maneuvers, etc... I think I built a total of 4 IED's during the last.... 5 years?... I've played Rimworld. My current save I've got a stockpile of 40 or so that I use offensively.
I don't have 5k hours in the game. Maybe 1k. I just picked it back up for Royalty after a good 9 month hiatus. Coming back with a blurry memory into a game with so many new things to learn has been like playing a new game, and I'm learning every step of the way.
Sounds to me like you're stuck in a rut and blaming Tynan. Game isn't fun anymore? That's usually a sign that you should take a break, not blame the devs for your own self-inflicted misery.
Right, I had a mechanoid cluster literally pop in my front door catching one of my colonists outside while he was sowing. It was just a couple of years into the game when I had 2 techs researched on a naked brutality run on tundra very near the north pole. None of my 5 dudes had flak or helmets. The best gun was a normal assault rifle that I bought the rest had machine pistols captured from raiders. That mech cluster had 6 sniper mechs (1 lancer and 5 pikeman) along with 5 turrets (2 blasters and 3 slug turrets IIRC). Luckily I also bought a shield belt from that same trader. That excellent shield broke at least 3 times whenever my one dude tried to franticly build 1 wall at a time wall (behind cover) to get to the stranded colonist. Luckily no one died because that dude succeeded in building the wall to rescue the stranded friend.
If this mech death squad had landed elsewhere with an EMI or a high psychic drone my only option would have been to charge into certain death or to tediously build that stupid wall to get to the stupid thing; either that or cower inside a mountain and accept living in the stone age and or having mental breaks every other day. I had 70k wealth btw. If it was not for that shield belt everyone would have died.
Raiding was never mandatory in this game, ppl that enjoyed it did it (Ive done it several times) ppl that don't enjoy it built a base, defended it to then build the ship and get out. The difference is that now raiding (which BTW I enjoyed for a fair bit) is now mandatory and it is absolutely rigged to down or kill colonists. When you raid a pirate base the pirates will only outrange/outgun you if you let them. Wrt to mech clusters we are always the one that has the least range and have to tackle them on the open field assumig that on top of the mortair shield they also dont have a bullet shiled. I dont want to suffer through building a stupid wall to take turrets of the equation to tackle something as stupid as these mech clusters are. They should be linked to research and reserch should provide a way to deal with those things without being either stupidly dangerous for colonists nor stupdly tedious. At higher levels of wealth just stepping out of your walls it is already stupidly dangerous but now we also have to march into machine guns ala WWI style due to the lack of any interesting, valid or fun options.I think not.
Honestly I really like the clusters except except except for the 'mini hellfire' I think it is called... the double energy cannon that rapid fires half way across the screen. The only thing I can do against it is mortar it, although I have seen people report using smoke and other gadgets.
Usually I can ignore clusters on the edges of my maps but it is shocking how often they completely wipe out pirates or merchants without suffering any losses.
Quote from: LakeWobegon on March 04, 2020, 01:13:01 PM
Quote from: Whifflepits on March 04, 2020, 11:35:49 AM
Don't see it like this myself, and mechanoids are my particular menace. I'm always losing appendages to them.
Here's some points I'd like to bring up which I'm starting to realize myself after playing Royalty for a while.
You call Rimworld a base defense game, but it isn't. That was just the most common form of combat because players weren't heavily encouraged to go out on raids. The raid quests are generally low reward and high risk, while being tedious and time consuming. They pull your colonists away from important tasks for extended periods of time and that's just not tenable at higher difficulty levels.
This new gameplay element is not new, it's old. Been there for years. It's just more accessible now.
Strategic options are abound. If you're just throwing your nublets into a meat grinder that's your problem. I'm using traps offensively, using the terrain, using mortars, flanking maneuvers, etc... I think I built a total of 4 IED's during the last.... 5 years?... I've played Rimworld. My current save I've got a stockpile of 40 or so that I use offensively.
I don't have 5k hours in the game. Maybe 1k. I just picked it back up for Royalty after a good 9 month hiatus. Coming back with a blurry memory into a game with so many new things to learn has been like playing a new game, and I'm learning every step of the way.
Sounds to me like you're stuck in a rut and blaming Tynan. Game isn't fun anymore? That's usually a sign that you should take a break, not blame the devs for your own self-inflicted misery.
Right, I had a mechanoid cluster literally pop in my front door catching one of my colonists outside while he was sowing. It was just a couple of years into the game when I had 2 techs researched on a naked brutality run on tundra very near the north pole. None of my 5 dudes had flak or helmets. The best gun was a normal assault rifle that I bought the rest had machine pistols captured from raiders. That mech cluster had 6 sniper mechs (1 lancer and 5 pikeman) along with 5 turrets (2 blasters and 3 slug turrets IIRC). Luckily I also bought a shield belt from that same trader. That excellent shield broke at least 3 times whenever my one dude tried to franticly build 1 wall at a time wall (behind cover) to get to the stranded colonist. Luckily no one died because that dude succeeded in building the wall to rescue the stranded friend.
If this mech death squad had landed elsewhere with an EMI or a high psychic drone my only option would have been to charge into certain death or to tediously build that stupid wall to get to the stupid thing; either that or cower inside a mountain and accept living in the stone age and or having mental breaks every other day. I had 70k wealth btw. If it was not for that shield belt everyone would have died.
Raiding was never mandatory in this game, ppl that enjoyed it did it (Ive done it several times) ppl that don't enjoy it built a base, defended it to then build the ship and get out. The difference is that now raiding (which BTW I enjoyed for a fair bit) is now mandatory and it is absolutely rigged to down or kill colonists. When you raid a pirate base the pirates will only outrange/outgun you if you let them. Wrt to mech clusters we are always the one that has the least range and have to tackle them on the open field assumig that on top of the mortair shield they also dont have a bullet shiled. I dont want to suffer through building a stupid wall to take turrets of the equation to tackle something as stupid as these mech clusters are. They should be linked to research and reserch should provide a way to deal with those things without being either stupidly dangerous for colonists nor stupdly tedious. At higher levels of wealth just stepping out of your walls it is already stupidly dangerous but now we also have to march into machine guns ala WWI style due to the lack of any interesting, valid or fun options.I think not.
So you chose a deliberately excruciatingly difficult scenario, and managed to survive by the skin of your teeth. That's exactly the way it should be I thought?
Keep in mind what you just described is exactly like the old-school hot-drops where they just bomb into the middle of your base without warning.
What I think you're complaining about is the difficulty spike that's now happening on the most difficult game settings. I'm pretty sure that was done because of all of the people who've been waltzing through the difficult scenarios like it was a sandbox mode.
It's jarring and a bit ego-bruising not to be able to keep that slider at the top of the bar, but I won't call you a sissy if you back it down for a notch for a year and see if that works for you. I think I'm about to have to change storytellers myself, Randy is getting on my nerves, but the masochists deserve to be entertained too.
Better ways to handle it? Absolutely, he could have added another difficulty setting instead of dropping us all in the hot-seat, but I'm also kind of enjoying it. I wouldn't have challenged myself by upping the setting on my own.
I also think some of the difficulty spike is being added in response to some of the broken-tier rewards you can get from the new quests. It's not that hard to get a couple linked monoswords by 2 years in the game if you aren't freezing your genitals off on the tundra and they *shred* mechs. It's just sickening how effective melee can be now. I haven't tried the zueshammers yet but I have a feeling they were purpose-built for mechanoid swarms. Soon.
I've got my complaints about them too posted in the ideas section. I just think you're being a bit dramatic by declaring the changes garbage, literally unplayable and calling for a complete rollback. They can be adapted to until there is a balance pass.
Some notes that may make your experience more bearable, when the mechanoids aren't landing in your lap (That's just always going to be a big FU, don't think anyone will argue that):
EMP mortars are OP. Hit the mortar shield first and the bases fall relatively easily. Instead of sending everyone in on a senseless charge keep 3 or 4 people on the mortars and only charge in after you get a direct hit on the moving units, which tend to cluster in the center. After that just pray that you get a couple more indirect hits to reduce the fire you take. 4 people on mortars is worth a dozen attacking on the field.
The walls they throw up also make them super-easy to flank once you've bombed the couple turrets that're usually peeking out. Go set some IED's and sandbags on one side and then poke a hole in the wall to get them chasing you, it's a reverse killbox.
Use a rabbit. Dope someone up on yayo and Go-juice as much as you dare, give them a shield belt and as much armor as you've got and send them running through the base screaming like a lunatic. They generally survive, and draw the majority of the fire. If you've got a jogger with bionic legs they can even outrun the scythers after taking some decent damage.
I won't argue that there's some rebalancing to be done, but the game isn't broken. Not yet.... The mechanoids are manageable as long as you aren't charging them head-on, and I think that's the point. Most of the "tactics" I see people using in Rimworld amounts to filling the gap with bodies and waiting to see who grinds who up first. There's a lot more that can be done and the new mechanoid bases encourage players to explore that.
Quote from: lugaruclone on March 04, 2020, 02:00:33 PM
Honestly I really like the clusters except except except for the 'mini hellfire' I think it is called... the double energy cannon that rapid fires half way across the screen. The only thing I can do against it is mortar it, although I have seen people report using smoke and other gadgets.
SMOKE! I didn't think about smoke. Gotta try this next.
Second edit: I just noticed there's an EMP launcher in the list for the machining bench. Starting to worry a lot less about the next cluster.
Quote from: LakeWobegon on March 04, 2020, 01:13:01 PM
Right, I had a mechanoid cluster literally pop in my front door catching one of my colonists outside while he was sowing.
Getting mech clusters right inside or next to your base has already been removed in the latest versions of the game on Steam. That at least shouldn't be an issue for you moving forward.
FYI It has nothing to do with difficulty, do not confuse tediousness with difficulty. The mechanic is tedious, poorly implemented/balanced to the point of being broken. Then it is repetitive as F, as soon as I or someone else (usually someone else) defeats the thing it pops again and again and again to the point that the entire map is littered with their stuff. On top of it it does not bring anything relevant to the table wrt gameplay and story. The reason why I play Rimworld (on merciless) its becasue it is a very difficyult, interesting and engaging challenge. The only feeling I have when I see mech clusters is "oh here comes that effing stupid thing again, man so annoying". It tests my patience but not my brain.
A much better implementation and NOT tedious in terms of story and gameplay would be for a totally walled in cluster to try slowly terraform the map. Since mechs are immune to cold or heat they could very, very slowly for example reduce the temperature to a point that it would eventually be nigh on unberable. The usual mech raids (as seen in 1.0) could pop from that mech base that would also strenghten over time as the players wealth/population evolved (just like in 1.0). it should be totally impossible to takle in begining and a huge undertaking (like up to 10 times stronger mech raid) in the late game but the player would have time to prepare for it. The player could even chose to not tackle at all and try to survive eventually at tempertures of -200 celsius or sopmething and only be raided by mechanoids. If the player managed to defeat the mech base they would be defeated just like what happens to human factions. The player could also try to race to space and avoid the fight. This would be interesting because it presents a challenge but the player also has interesting options. Being only raided by mechs (due to being too cold) or trying to adapt to survive at eventually -200 would also be "refreshing" form a gameplay/story pov. Instead what I have is a very obvious and very rigged attempt to turn RimWorld int a puzzle game that looks more like WWI in an expansion that brings all kinds of sci fi into the game. At least this is how I see it.
QuoteA much better implementation and NOT tedious in terms of story and gameplay would be for a totally walled in cluster to try slowly terraform the map.
For sure the infrastructure for that is there... I had them block out the sun on me (super effective, I was running a desert solar farm) once and also I think there was a 'poison ship' type building spewing toxins.
Having something that just brutally changes the temperature and slowly escalates would be pretty badass and likely doable within the new structure. Personally I would love to see one slowly transform tiles to something useless like sand so even if you take it out quickly there is a permanent 'scar' on your map.
Mech clusters in general are brutal but they are in no way invulnerable. Do I feel more forced to have colonists come in harms way dealing with them? Yeah, but I've also gotten a lot better about crafting armor and obtaining combat drugs for these hot drops. More often than not, these clusters are either on a decent delay or proxy activation, meaning you have time to stage a front that is advantageous to you. Don't like your odds due to the turrets (which I agree to an extent are kinda scuffed due to their zero warmup on shooting)? Mortar them so the foot soldiers come to you (mortar shields can be disabled for an in-game hour by hitting it with an EMP mortar, which you can follow up with a volley of regular shells with good timing).
Mech clusters force you out of your defensive comfort zone, something that really only outpost raids took the player out of. Adapt to something that isn't just a killbox design and you'll be fine against the clusters for the most part.
Player turrets have a minimum range. Charge blasters don't. I'm surprised this got past beta.
Edit: Nope, changed my mind.
Not getting into this unreasonable argument.
Quote from: Ser Kitteh on March 04, 2020, 11:13:42 PM
Player turrets have a minimum range. Charge blasters don't. I'm surprised this got past beta.
The comparison isn't particularly apt. While they're both called Turrets they serve entirely different purposes so comparing them inherently doesn't make a lot of sense on a case-by-case basis.
Mechanoids also don't have to be concerned with temperature. Asymmetry is common and quite useful in game design.
Except before Royalty, the enemy pirates and outlander towns used the same turrets as the players do. This allowed the player to understand their limits because they're the same. Charge blasters with their insane range and power is likely the most damaging ranged enemy in the game.
Quote from: fritzgryphon on March 04, 2020, 11:12:47 AM
Don't even have royalty yet but already loving the turtle tears.
It might need some balancing but I look forward to having a reason to maintain a sally force instead of just pulling mortar triggers while watching megascreen behind the killbox.
Mortars are terribly inefficient/inaccurate and turrets that player gets are in general trash.
Normal/logical defenses work only with mods, without them you require cheap AI exploits (killboxes). Preemtive Strike had the right idea on how to handle raids.
Also, the fact you enjoy the irritation of people who play the game differently than you is disturbing.
I think that they simply must be scaled down. The fact that they can easily deal with other threats actually encourages to turtle even more and relay on your new guards!
Expirirenced players can simply destroy nasty buildings and leave turrets to guard map.
Quote from: Ser Kitteh on March 04, 2020, 11:13:42 PM
Player turrets have a minimum range. Charge blasters don't. I'm surprised this got past beta.
Do they keep shooting when you melee them? Why would a charge blaster have a minimum range? It doesn't when it's mounted on a centipede.
Quote from: RicRider on March 05, 2020, 07:38:39 AM
Quote from: Ser Kitteh on March 04, 2020, 11:13:42 PM
Player turrets have a minimum range. Charge blasters don't. I'm surprised this got past beta.
Do they keep shooting when you melee them? Why would a charge blaster have a minimum range? It doesn't when it's mounted on a centipede.
They don't have 46 range when mounted on a centipede.
Quote from: Ser Kitteh on March 04, 2020, 11:13:42 PM
Player turrets have a minimum range. Charge blasters don't. I'm surprised this got past beta.
On top of that their range cooldown is bugged, according to the UI they are supposed to have a cooldown of >7 seconds but instead they keep firing as if they were a centipede. The high ranged cooldown (if it worked) would open up a few more tactical options but atm it is buggeg which makes those things even more OP due to the insane range. The slug turrets ranged cooldown is also bugged.
Quote
Do they keep shooting when you melee them? Why would a charge blaster have a minimum range? It doesn't when it's mounted on a centipede.
They do and a single turret easily breaks an excellent shield belt at that range. I know because I tried it 3 times and 3 times the shield belt broke.
Quote from: Boboid on March 05, 2020, 02:20:42 AM
Edit: Nope, changed my mind.
Not getting into this unreasonable argument.
I am curious why you find it unreasonable. For example yesterday I decided to give the expansion another try and during 8 hours of play I did not have a single raid besides mech clusters. I enjoyed the defensive nature of Rimworld; I enjoyed having the "high ground" to try to win against overwhelming odds. Now the game consistently forces me to go raid or else suffer huge penalties like disabling all electrical devices (including my turrets while theirs work just fine), -30 to the mood, toxic fallout, being bombarded by insanely accurate mortars (while mine are sh*t. I once needed 49 shells to hit a ship while in sharp contrast the mech mortairs landed 2 hits in a row on my pawns). What is wrong with saying that I dont like it and would therefore like to see changes to increase the strategic options?
Edit: Oh and the mech assemblers, if for some reason I cant tackle the cluster but it has assemblers... I am punished with a mech per assembler every single day for not playing the way they want me to play. Its so bloody tedious, repetitive and not fun. This is not the RimWorld that I know and love that is for sure.
Since I don't have and probably will not get the DLC, I cannot be completely sure, but these sound like completely valid criticisms, if even half-true.
Strong agree. Early game the clusters are relatively manageable, but late game they are just completely insane. On year six I have around 20 colonists with an average of recon/advanced flak armor and plasteel flak helmets, and all armed with charge rifles or snipers. Mech clusters spawn with literally dozens of turrets and mortars at this point in the game. There is no real winning strategy. Smoke either works in some weird way I don't understand, or does not work as advertised at all; I had a group of 8 colonists approach a dormant cluster, popped a smoke psionic power, and then opened fire. Surprise surprise - all the turrets immediately locked on despite all my visible colonists being inside smoke, tearing them to shreds.
I modded the turrets down to 30 range and even then, while it still feels much more reasonable (sniping turrets can actually work once in awhile) there's still a lot of problems. You can't really kite the clusters because when there's 10+ mortars letting them get even one volley off means that half your base is getting leveled. You can't fight inside the clusters because smoke doesnt work on the turrets, and even if it did then it's not gonna be enough to save you from fighting 10+ centipedes and dozens of pikemen/lancers/scythers homing in on you in the open. There's really no strategy that at all feels "well played" or effective. Any loss against them feels cheap and unavoidable.
I think one good change would be scaling the threat of the cluster inversely with the threat of its building. As it stands now a climate adjuster of most of the time sun blocker is pretty much completely impotent as a threat, while a high psychic drone building or consciousness reducer is a crippling catastrophe. The problem here is that the accompanying mech cluster is the exact same size. Why? It's much harder to fight off a cluster when you have -30 mood (mental breaks in the middle of fighting) or constant toxic fallout than it is when there's slightly less light or colder temperature.
In summary:
-Less turrets and weaker turrets (range is insane, damage is enough to down even power armored colonists in a few volleys, smoke seems ineffective)
-Scale raid to threat of central building. Higher threat building means lower threat cluster.
-Nerf mortars somehow. Maybe remove them entirely? Replace them with a different mechanic that there's a reasonable way to defend against when there's 10+ of them?
Quote from: lt_halle on March 06, 2020, 12:53:44 AM
Smoke either works in some weird way I don't understand, or does not work as advertised at all; I had a group of 8 colonists approach a dormant cluster, popped a smoke psionic power, and then opened fire. Surprise surprise - all the turrets immediately locked on despite all my visible colonists being inside smoke, tearing them to shreds.
Smoke actually
does work in some weird way. It's unintuitive IMO, and I just recently posted it in the bug forums since either the descriptions or the mechanic need to be changed to accurately resemble one another.
Smoke only stops turrets locking on if there are 2 tiles of smoke between the turret and the target.
So as an example:
[Pawn][Smoke][Smoke][Turret] = Safe
[Pawn][Smoke]-any amount of distance- [Smoke][Turret] = Safe
[Pawn][Smoke][Turret] = Not safe
[Pawn][Smoke]-any amount of distance- [Turret] = Not safe
The smoke that a pawn is standing on doesn't seem to count so:
[Pawn+Smoke][Smoke][Turret] = Not safe
So in general you want smoke between turrets and your pawns, ideally directly on the turrets.
Though do remember that 2 tiles of smoke is required and smoke physically ON the turrets doesn't contribute.
Hope that helps.
Edit: Also you can never safely melee a turret because there will never be enough smoke between the turret and your pawns.
Quote from: lt_halle on March 06, 2020, 12:53:44 AM
There's really no strategy that at all feels "well played" or effective. Any loss against them feels cheap and unavoidable.
That's obviously the whole point. Forcing pawn damage = story telling.
So I still haven't bought Royalty because I'm content exploring 1.1 mechanic changes for now without getting into the whole 'whining noble' aspect of RimWorld (and psi powers), but I have to concur, there's too many 'mech things' going on.
I like to play Phoebe merciless (laugh it up fuzzballs) because I like base building and usually I'll get 2-3 raids back to back in the spring from the various enemy tribes and factions. Two years in a row now I've just got ship drops and mechanoids podding in on my map. Not a single human raid for two years! Before I even had decent weaponry I was plinking scythers with short bows.
I mean I get that RimWorld is pushing us to get off the planet faster but you know what's gonna happen for people who like base building right? I'm just gonna add mechanoid drops to the list of things that are annoying as hell to deal with all the time that I disable at scenario startup like toxic fallout. I presume there's also going to be mods coming out that lower the frequency of mechanoids or something. It feels dumb to do this but since I'm base building who cares right?
What I'd like to see is some kind of a sliding scale option at scenario startup that lets me tailor the interaction with factions in a way. I don't want all my conflicts to be with robots... seriously it just gets tedious after a while. I could have been unlucky so maybe my observation is all wrong and I should play a few more games, but literally while I'm fighting mechs from one ship drop another one lands on my farms in the middle of the base. Seems excessive!
Also if you don't like the idea of sliding scales then at least give us a way to go to mechanoid bases on the world maps and remove them from existence, like the way we do with other factions.
My main problem with mech clusters is that they are overrepresented. I learned to deal with them, but i hate that i they are regular threat. I just miss having raids at this point.
Quote from: zizard on March 06, 2020, 09:43:23 AM
Quote from: lt_halle on March 06, 2020, 12:53:44 AM
There's really no strategy that at all feels "well played" or effective. Any loss against them feels cheap and unavoidable.
That's obviously the whole point. Forcing pawn damage = story telling.
That's a bad point then. Damage is a punishment mechanism - it is generally a result of non-optimal play. Let's take an extreme example of a random event that results in randomly dealing 5 gunshot wounds to half your colonists, with a chance to kill them. That's the entire event. That's obviously forced damage, but I wouldn't exactly call it story telling. The story telling aspect comes from HOW the damage was inflicted.
You line your colonists up at your bunker. They're holding the line admirably, but you don't notice an enemy carrying a rocket launcher sneak in through your chokepoint. Before you can down him he manages to get a shot off, shredding 3 of your colonists! This is a story - the player encountered a tragedy which was made into existence by their own negligence. It's also thusly a learning experience; the player is unlikely to be so lackadaisical with their enemy targeting in future raids.
Contrast this with a mech cluster raid. You line your colonists up, in the barren open field in which a mech cluster has set up with a mortar shield protecting its main building and 9 mortar turrets. Your colonists use smoke launchers to cover their advance, setting up to destroy the nearest cluster of turrets. As soon as they land a shot, 50 something mechanoids pour out of the dozens of pods in the cluster, and a dozen and change more rain down randomly from the sky. Your colonists are faced with two options - retreat and deal with the mechs, having the colony get bombed to hell as a result; or, fight onwards while getting absolutely destroyed by the massive army of mobile mechanoids despite the safety from the turrets.
There is no winning scenario. There is no outcome that feels like a triumph. There are two sides of a very crappy coin that the player gets to pick their poison with. Most importantly, there's no learning from this that improves further outcomes. The player is screwed in some way no matter what they do. The core element of a tragedy is that the tragedy occurs for some reason - if this tragedy is emergent through gameplay, it must be as a result of player action. The game just deus ex machina-ing a tragedy onto you with nothing you can do about it is uninteractive, feels unfair, and most importantly is not fun.
You argue that the game is a story generator, but I'm not sure how much I want to play a story generator where every story ends with "and then they all died to the 8th mechanoid cluster in a row"
It's a joke, when the player gets screwed over with low to no counterplay, I call it "story telling". Who knows, maybe devs believe it unironically.
If it was a joke then sorry. There are a lot of people who unironically fall back on the "it's a story generator!" argument when there's some piece of the game that's poorly balanced.
Mech clusters just received a massive nerf today.
- Limited mortar numbers
- Minimum range for some turrets
- Cooldown for some turrets/increased
Tynan clearly listened to the concerns people had
I totally agree with your post. Clearly all those other comments saying otherwise didn't play far enough to see what's up aka didn't accept any quests / have a mountain base / have a killbox / have 4 colonists with a wooden shack.
Hey guys, so a few things:
1 - I appreciate the feedback. I'm here to make you guys happy so anything you say will be thoughtfully considered. Absorbing and processing feedback is basically what I do all day (across many different feedback channels, forums, subreddit, discord channels, twitch streams and youtube videos, media reviews, Steam reviews, and trusted friends and testers).
2 - Clusters were extensively tested but people have different skills and playstyles so I'm still adjusting them going forward (as you can see from the patch notes). It also is clearly an adjustment from the old turtling gameplay, which is understandable but was the goal all along. Adding variety and new strategies to the game is good, and a great way to do that is to give the player the initiative instead of always putting him in a reactive role.
3 - RimWorld is not a skill test. Just because you play skillfully doesn't mean you'll never lose anything - at least at high difficulty. It's not made to proportionally reward skill. It's got an element of skill but it's not a skill measuring game. Most games are about measuring and rewarding skill, where for RimWorld this is not the central goal of the design.
A story where nobody ever loses anything is not a good story. As a storytelling game, RimWorld is designed to create temporary losses. Note that this is different from a full colony wipe - with skill and forward planning, full wipes should always be avoidable (this doesn't mean any situation is recoverable, but it means that it could have been feasibly prevented). But that doesn't mean you'll never lose any particular resource at any moment.
4 - Expanding on the above: There is a difference between losing a resource (like a pawn or a turret) and losing overall. If you play StarCraft, you expect to lose some marines and tanks. It's part of the game, and expected, even if you're skilled, as long as the game isn't impossible to win overall. RimWorld at high difficulties is similar. You should expect to lose people, get knocked down, and have to recover. Expect to lose half your base or even see the man in black. Recovering is part of the challenge. You can always win the game; it doesn't mean you'll always be gaining and never lose a single person, weapon, resource, emplacement, or battle at any moment. Pawns are a resource to be spent.
5 - I expect Merciless is now harder than it used to be. I consider this a good thing since it was way too easy before. Wider difficulty range is a better game design, since it supports people who really want a true challenge that most people genuinely cannot defeat; while others can just go down to the difficulties that aren't in red text and don't require a special menu interaction to unlock. (Though note that having such a challenge means most people won't be able to beat it.)
Quote from: RicRider on March 06, 2020, 11:09:32 AM
So I still haven't bought Royalty because I'm content exploring 1.1 mechanic changes for now without getting into the whole 'whining noble' aspect of RimWorld (and psi powers), but I have to concur, there's too many 'mech things' going on.
I like to play Phoebe merciless (laugh it up fuzzballs) because I like base building and usually I'll get 2-3 raids back to back in the spring from the various enemy tribes and factions. Two years in a row now I've just got ship drops and mechanoids podding in on my map. Not a single human raid for two years! Before I even had decent weaponry I was plinking scythers with short bows.
I mean I get that RimWorld is pushing us to get off the planet faster but you know what's gonna happen for people who like base building right? I'm just gonna add mechanoid drops to the list of things that are annoying as hell to deal with all the time that I disable at scenario startup like toxic fallout. I presume there's also going to be mods coming out that lower the frequency of mechanoids or something. It feels dumb to do this but since I'm base building who cares right?
What I'd like to see is some kind of a sliding scale option at scenario startup that lets me tailor the interaction with factions in a way. I don't want all my conflicts to be with robots... seriously it just gets tedious after a while. I could have been unlucky so maybe my observation is all wrong and I should play a few more games, but literally while I'm fighting mechs from one ship drop another one lands on my farms in the middle of the base. Seems excessive!
Also if you don't like the idea of sliding scales then at least give us a way to go to mechanoid bases on the world maps and remove them from existence, like the way we do with other factions.
That was well thought out, kudos. I appreciate hearing a more level-headed assessment, than the..."overexcited" versions I've been reading.
And thanks for the updates, mooguy and Tynan!
Good stuff; this is a constructive thread.
I'm still not sure how I feel about mech clusters yet. They're definitely new and different and exciting. And some of the turrets that kill you from massive distances and explode when engaged in melee have definitely killed many of my favorite pawns.
But it's overwhelming to the strategies that I know. The strategies that used to work for me, not necessarily all the strategies that are possible.
There's a new metagame now and I'm just not sure that I've tried enough of the psychic powers to know whether or not the mechanoid drops are really overpowered...
The berserk power is an instant kill on enemy units. As is the Skip power if you have a small army of club wielders. I've found my illegal psion was able to take down ~50 mechanoids over a few days, admittedly while pissing off the royals considerably.
I might actually want to give it another few weeks to see if there are strategies that let me deal with these clusters effectively.
I generally enjoy the mech clusters.
The walls especially were a really nice touch. They create safe zones and interesting opportunities to carve holes where you can hit exactly what you want to shoot without drawing additional fire. I think the worst stage of the game for mech clusters is the early game and that's not because they're too hard, but because they often don't come with any walls. You have to go through the trouble of building a wall far from base before any fun can really start. I think creating lesser versions of some of the mech turrets and buildings might also help add complexity to early mech clusters without adding difficulty. There's nothing particularly fun with just 4 random turrets and a handful of barricades sitting in the middle of nowhere, which is often the first introduction people are probably having to mech clusters.
I also like that some of the buildings can be useful if you preserve them. There's obvious stuff like the unstable power cells, but also keep shields and spawners alive can have long term utility. The shields can be used against future clusters (and raiders) that have the bad luck to spawn nearby. The spawners are the target practice some folks have been asking for for ages that doubles as a resource fountain.
I no longer fear scythers. Psycasting burden renders them largely harmless.
I do wish I had a clearer description of what does and does not provoke the dormant state to break. I'm never sure how much creative license the game is giving me to set thing up before the shooting starts, so I often don't really bother.
The mech cluster below is a good example of the fun risk / reward trade-off mech clusters. I had a plant killer land right next to my trees, but at the same time the mortar shield overlapped my geothermal generator. I was really hoping I could preserve the shield so I'd never have to worry about cracking open the generator again for repairs. Sadly, there was an explosion cascade that hit the shield, but I did get the upper unstable power cell intact; so not terrible overall.
-----
Edit: I do think mech clusters can get a bit stale with more than 2 or 3 in a row. It's nice to shoot at things that bleed and feel pain occasionally.
Today's update includes some changes very relevant to the discussion.
https://steamcommunity.com/games/294100/partnerevents/view/1706240323220949451 (https://steamcommunity.com/games/294100/partnerevents/view/1706240323220949451)
Expect ongoing adjustments to the clusters; it's a new concept so it'll need multiple tuning and redesign cycles to really bed in.
Quote from: Tynan on March 07, 2020, 01:32:29 AM
Today's update includes some changes very relevant to the discussion.
https://steamcommunity.com/games/294100/partnerevents/view/1706240323220949451 (https://steamcommunity.com/games/294100/partnerevents/view/1706240323220949451)
Expect ongoing adjustments to the clusters; it's a new concept so it'll need multiple tuning and redesign cycles to really bed in.
Wow, these are some really great changes. They address a lot of the problems I had personally. I'll have to play them out but from the looks of it the mech clusters should be much more in-line with other threats now! Great work, Tynan
Honestly the minimum range addition alone is great, I feel a lot less inclined to spam mortars at the blaster cannon now if I'm actually allowed to close the gap and not get punished for it.
What pleases me most, frankly, is Tynan's obvious attention to player feedback. When it makes sense, that is ;). I didn't really need a lot extra in RW before, so the update will take some getting used to, but this kind of (re)work might even get me to buy the DLC. Eventually, anyway, after a few iterations ;D.
I heard Ludeon is looking into making the clusters non-hostile initially as a way to balance.
Personally, I'd like the clusters to start as an ally, actually protecting your base, but have the relations decline over time.
I agree though. The game needed to give players an incentive to stage an attack. Raid siege was supposed to do that, but it never worked out that way.
Quote from: kclace on March 07, 2020, 09:58:40 PM
Personally, I'd like the clusters to start as an ally, actually protecting your base, but have the relations decline over time.
What would be the rationale for the clusters to protect you?
Quote from: jerome736 on March 08, 2020, 06:39:59 AM
Quote from: kclace on March 07, 2020, 09:58:40 PM
Personally, I'd like the clusters to start as an ally, actually protecting your base, but have the relations decline over time.
What would be the rationale for the clusters to protect you?
I would say, they don't protect you per say, they protect themselves and as long as you are no threat to them, the don't attack you.
Declining relations translates in you growing over time and becoming a threat to the cluster.
Traders in addition should either keep away from you as the cluster exists or get stupid ideas about the cluster.
Last option. The cluster starts expanding.
They would protect you because they are the enemies of every other faction. Let me give you an example.
I've been attacked by mechanoids, but because I was behind walls, the mechanoids decided to attack all the insectoids on the map first.
You are right though, traders would still get attacked. Your relations with other factions would deteriorate. Maybe that would be the point though.
Heck you could even have quests where you complete objectives for the mechanoids in order to keep them as an ally. Now there's some good story telling.
Quote from: kclace on March 08, 2020, 09:35:05 AM
They would protect you because they are the enemies of every other faction. Let me give you an example.
Whah?..... Why would that ever make sense?
The mechanoids are hostile because you are organic. Period. They have no reason to draw distinctions between you and other tribes, or you and insectoids, or you and the foliage. They're not going to war with you because of ideological differences or because you insulted their mam. You're organic, and you should be sterilized because you're not mechanical. That's the end of it.
IF for some reason you wanted to find a reason for making mechanoids less hostile(but... Why... Why ever?...), it would be for installing implants, which would completely retcon the entire gameplay loop (Get richer and more powerful and the less enemies and challenges you have? No, that isn't fun.)
Quote from: kclace on March 07, 2020, 09:58:40 PM
Personally, I'd like the clusters to start as an ally, actually protecting your base, but have the relations decline over time.
It would be funny if the mechs were initially friendly and helpful, because they are too weak to beat your colony, and know it. They would give you gifts, protect your base, trade, share tech.
Then after they have imported or manufactured enough units they become hostile and crush you. The only colonists that remain are nudged onto reservations or used as slaves.
Quote from: fritzgryphon on March 08, 2020, 03:39:50 PM
...
It would be funny if the mechs were initially friendly and helpful, because they are too weak to beat your colony, and know it. They would give you gifts, protect your base, trade, share tech.
Then after they have imported or manufactured enough units they become hostile and crush you.
...
The first time that betrayal happened I would
never allow it to happen again. It would instantly place that encounter in the "crush them while they are small" category, never to be removed.
It might be an interesting shock the first time it happens, but from then on it would just become a too easy encounter for free resources.
I never thought the canon on mechanoids was ever fleshed out? I was under the impression that mechanoids are an important part of the labor force on glitter worlds, but sometimes the AIs rebel.
In any case, my idea would be that if you were allied with the mechanoids, they would let you trade with them. One thing you could buy would be mechanoid implants, which would negate the negative effects of their buildings, but eventually, the impants would assimilate the pawn, and you would lose control of the pawn. If you try to remove the impant, the mechanoids turn against you. Kind of like the borg eh?
While I was beta testing Royalty several months back, I had a gut feeling people wouldn't like clusters :') seems like my prediction came true. Tynan is nerfing them slightly so hopefully it all evens out, but I kinda wish clusters would drop sandbag-like structures instead of just walls, that might ease the "meat grinder" feeling of clusters.
I've been loving the Mech Clusters. There a lot of fun and bring much needed variation. There are so many ways of dealing with them all which require thought and tactical play. Would love to see them expanded further. I don't use killboxes, turrets or traps so i think this type of event will suite me and players like me a little more than those that have been relying on the enemy walking into ambushes (not that there is anything wrong with a bit of that).
Melee combat feels so much better now too, using a combination of ranged and melee to deal with mechs is a blast and also helps with Mech Clusters in general. Recon Armor + Coagulator + the new melee weapons is very powerful if used right.
The two most recent hotfixes seem to address a lot of these concerns. Mech mortars were nerfed and reclassified as a "problem causer" instead of a combat threat, so only one can spawn per cluster. And mech clusters were made a separate event type instead of a raid strategy, so they should pop up less frequently. Overall the mech buildings have gotten a lot weaker since release.
Thank GOD that charge turrets have a minimum range now. Sure the long range is annoying but it's inaccurate, so I'm cool with that.
I did a quest where their range was like, four tiles in radius, and because it was in a U-shaped and my pawn with the sword broke down the steel wall and was able to bash it down properly. So that's nice.
Quote from: Tynan on March 06, 2020, 10:00:58 PM
2 - Clusters were extensively tested but people have different skills and playstyles so I'm still adjusting them going forward (as you can see from the patch notes). It also is clearly an adjustment from the old turtling gameplay, which is understandable but was the goal all along. Adding variety and new strategies to the game is good, and a great way to do that is to give the player the initiative instead of always putting him in a reactive role.
I don't see how. You are still reacting.
Something like Preemptive Strike, where raids are generated and travel on the map and can be intercepted, is a much better option. (would be even better with proper vehicles)
Combine it with AI colonies having some basics stats (wealth, population, defense) so that raiding them can cause them to stop sending raids (at least temporarily) and you have proper reactive gameplay.
Destroy the enemy colony close to you and they have to send attacks from a colony that is farther away, giving you more time to prepare and intercept.
Kill enough of them and their population drops so they can't send big raids untill it recovers.
And if AI factions actually properly interact (raid and trade with eachother - simplified) you now have a far more reactive world adn reasons for the player to leave his adobe.
Quote from: TrashMan on March 10, 2020, 05:25:29 AM
Quote from: Tynan on March 06, 2020, 10:00:58 PM
2 - Clusters were extensively tested but people have different skills and playstyles so I'm still adjusting them going forward (as you can see from the patch notes). It also is clearly an adjustment from the old turtling gameplay, which is understandable but was the goal all along. Adding variety and new strategies to the game is good, and a great way to do that is to give the player the initiative instead of always putting him in a reactive role.
I don't see how. You are still reacting.
Something like Preemptive Strike, where raids are generated and travel on the map and can be intercepted, is a much better option. (would be even better with proper vehicles)
Combine it with AI colonies having some basics stats (wealth, population, defense) so that raiding them can cause them to stop sending raids (at least temporarily) and you have proper reactive gameplay.
Destroy the enemy colony close to you and they have to send attacks from a colony that is farther away, giving you more time to prepare and intercept.
Kill enough of them and their population drops so they can't send big raids untill it recovers.
And if AI factions actually properly interact (raid and trade with eachother - simplified) you now have a far more reactive world adn reasons for the player to leave his adobe.
It was tested for months before release from what i have read, but a testing team can only do so much. They cant keep testing forever or content never gets released.
What your describing is massive fundamental change to the game. It would remove most of the events from our settlement map and we would be spending most of our time roaming the world map attacking other caravans and settlements. While that might be fun it would remove a lot of danger from our map and colony, seeing whats coming removes the element of surprise and makes it easy to prepare.
Remember in Rimworld we are the small guys, the survivors. We are not a military force or planetary conquers, we are the underdogs trying to stay alive and if possible thrive and escape. What you are wanting is by no means bad but to me its a different game entirely. Maybe it could work after many more updates and game changes, but it would take a long time.
I honestly don't see how that would be 'changing the game fundamentally', I've being using Pre-emptive strike forever and it is balanced for what it is. You can stand guard, but it's one colonist that wouldn't do anything productive, preparing for an event that maybe occur every season, for which you may or may not need the warning(most of the time no). It doesn't remove much danger from the game but it does give you many more ways to play and deal with a threat, which is good.
The only unbalanced building is the unmanned radar which does everything but that can tweaked easily. And even if you could spend your time attacking caravan and settlement, nobody is forcing you to, fighting raids on even ground is a terrible idea anyway.
Quote from: gav00uk on March 10, 2020, 11:05:26 AM
What your describing is massive fundamental change to the game. It would remove most of the events from our settlement map and we would be spending most of our time roaming the world map attacking other caravans and settlements. While that might be fun it would remove a lot of danger from our map and colony, seeing whats coming removes the element of surprise and makes it easy to prepare.
I do not follow your logic.
Why would it remove most events from the map?
Why would you be spending most of your time roaming?
Have you even tried Preeemptive Strike or Scouting mods? There is a CHANCE to detect incoming, that depends on distance, size and equipment. You might get a several hours of warning. You might get almost none. how is getting no warning at all good in any way, shape or form?
Quote
Remember in Rimworld we are the small guys, the survivors. We are not a military force or planetary conquers, we are the underdogs trying to stay alive and if possible thrive and escape.
And going out and exploring and scavenging is not part of survival?
Fighting against other hostile groups is not part of survival? Small tribes have fought agaisnt eqachother since antiquity.
It's not like other settlements are massive nations that are unassialable.
You're not supposed to turtle because your defences get nerf upon nerf, to the point that killboxes and dumb AI abuse are required survival strategies. You're not supposed to go out either.
What are you suppsoed to do.
Just want to preface this by saying I love the introduction of mech clusters! It was a delightful moment of discovery when Cassandra dropped the first cluster on my hapless colony. However, I share a nuanced version of OP's sentiment. The current combination of shields and turrets makes dealing with mid/late game mech clusters rather formulaic, repetitive, and micro-heavy. Cleaning up turrets is especially tedious. Clusters are less fun than they could be.
Mech cluster drops could be made more interesting if they had more variation, especially in shields & turrets. Variation is chaotic. Chaos is
interesting. Here are a few suggestions off the top of my head:
- Allow mortar and bullet shields a random quality rating that results in a percent of incoming interceptions instead of producing a deterministic result
- Shield coverage area could be made non-deterministic too
- If some turrets required a power source and batteries, it would increase the number of strategic options for dealing with them
- Perhaps turrets with a built-in power supply ought to run out after a period of time and self-destruct
- Mech clusters that launch explosive and incendiary mortars from a defended position is a little overbearing, but launching EMP mortars to shut down colony facilities and make pawns throw up sounds amusing.
- No matter how advanced it is, a bullet shield really shouldn't eat a doomsday rocket whole. The rocket should have either passed through, or detonated on the shield and tragically killed the pawn who launched it
Quote from: Nainara on March 19, 2020, 02:37:18 AM
- Perhaps turrets with a built-in power supply ought to run out after a period of time and self-destruct
+1 When the offensive part of a cluster is defeated, the player has 0 incentive to destroy the remaining turrets (they are useful for gimping raids and shooting caravan muffalos). This makes the player have to micro zones and pathing of all their colonists and animals around the huge turret ranges until a raid/caravan/natural force eventually destroys them (in one case, 3 whole weeks).
e. The reasoning could be, if the mechs can't support the turrets, they would choose to destruct them to prevent their capture and reverse-engineering (not that you can do that but it would realistically be possible).
Quote from: gav00uk on March 10, 2020, 11:05:26 AM
Remember in Rimworld we are the small guys, the survivors. We are not a military force or planetary conquers, we are the underdogs trying to stay alive and if possible thrive and escape. What you are wanting is by no means bad but to me its a different game entirely. Maybe it could work after many more updates and game changes, but it would take a long time.
Completely agree. The ability to go around pounding other settlements and their raiders into the ground is already possible in the game, however it's a reward for players with good bases and a force capable of doing this. It's an alternative to building the ship and getting off the planet, which is the purpose of the game.
In general I think RimWorld is a great game that goes away from the 'you are a legendary hero with super powers' style that most games these days go for. It's a good alternative for people who are sick of the 'I want to be a level 20 wizard on day one' games out there.
By now the main thing im getting irritated with for turrets, esp the bulletspam one is that they have no warmup time. Theres nothing you can do when you instantly get obliterated the moment you poke out from a corner. Is this why the empire sends us pawns they dont mind if they die? So i can suicide them against the first few volleys to give my own pawns time to shoot back?