Messages

While the goal is probably to make the fun strategies actually viable, I don't think the current design is reaching that goal.  The only way to survive on extreme is to use some type of cheese, be it aggressively reducing wealth to the point where you never develop, or other manners of cheese defenses.  It's just as punishing to actually try to fight with your pawns as it ever was, which seems to be what we should want.  But armor is weaker and RNG based, pawns still lose body parts left and right, and it's even more punishing to actually progress your colony into higher wealth levels.

Maybe it's different on lower difficulties but on higher ones the only thing the changes have done is force you to cheese even harder. I think the solution to this isn't to keep nerfing turrets and traps.  It's to buff actually fighting with your pawns so you aren't so aggressively punished for doing so.

I'd be interested in hearing what strategies people are actually using in up-to-date high-difficulty 1.0 games (in up-to-date games from the last 2 days). I've only seen one report recently, someone on Phoebe Survival Struggle had a big symmetrical base with outer wall and inner turret lanes.

Turrets and traps are pretty buffed recently (based on feedback), I'm waiting to see how they play out as the conversation catches up to the reality of how the game actually plays.

I agree about "buff fighting with your pawns" - this is a major goal. But it's hard to say how to do that. I'm very open to suggestions here. There are challenges with this given that your pawns play by the same rules as enemy pawns; it's hard to say how to buff one side but not the other.

What about buffing defense through preparation rather than simply buffing player pawns (which feels a bit cheaty). An option to 'dig in' or 'hunker down' whilst drafted that would take time to trigger but then impart a state of increased defense/aim/maybe range could provide a similar effect without imparting superhuman abilities to the player! It would reward good defensive positioning and planning but in a way that could be balanced vs offensive strategies (which the player is not forced to take part in to survive)?