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[Search on these forums isn't being very helpful to me, so I'm starting a new thread...]

It seems to me that the current design of the game is that combat constantly gets harder as the player progresses.  That seems like a fine *option* for *some* storytellers, but not all of them.  I'd really like something less challenging, yet still not a total lack of challenge.  "Chill" Callie continues to not function as described (for me, at least); every wave of enemies is bigger than the last, until I am inevitably crushed.  This is both predictable and un-fun.

I'm enjoying the colony-management stuff, and it wouldn't feel meaningful without *some* threats to protect against.  But I want a Storyteller where the threat level is capped, at least until/unless I take some conscious action to invite trouble.

Now, I know the super-skilled players think I'm a wimp, and that Chill Callie is totally beatable.  But she's advertised as "a good choice for your first game".  I've played about 6 games now, in various alpha versions, and I still get consistently crushed.

Why do raiders always *attack*?  I mean, having the occasional group of psychotics is one thing, but this is *every* time.  What ever happened to extortion and negotiation?  Do they really just want to kill us all, or do they want our stuff.  I would (often) give them some stuff, if they would then go away at least for a while, if they only asked.

So, as discussed in a previous thread, I've been having trouble with Raiders.  I've learned some new tactics, which may help, but I also want to call Tynan's attention to something I've seen multiple times now.  The "corpse madness death spiral".

Once there are >10 raiders in a raid, I start to run into a problem.  Even when my defenses are good enough to kill them all, I don't have time to *recover* before the next assault.  Besides just dealing with the raw damage they caused (to both people and stuff), the raider's *corpses* are a huge issue.  Each one of them makes my people freak out.  I can bury them, but that *necessitates* putting colonists in freak-out proximity, and also takes up a significant amount of time/effort.  If I micromanage to get all the corpses buried fast, then my colonists start to go hungry, which upsets them further.  Even if I manage to avoid a mental break, I've lost several days worth of progress on the colony itself.

When I get hit by a raid of 20, there's a large chance that I just can't ever recover.  I literally cannot get all the corpses cleaned up before another wave of raiders hits.  And then my people start going crazy left and right.  What looked like a thriving colony is quickly reduced to madness and death.

Some suggestions:
* Make seeing corpses less of a negative.
* Have the impact of seeing corpses diminish over time.  ("Yeah, that dead body is gross, but I've been walking past it for two days now, and I'm getting used to it.")
* Make hauling/burying corpses cause positive mood.

Why are things which die automatically set to forbidden?  It seems like (at least if I specifically killed them) that I almost always want to then pick up the corpse (or dropped loot).  Having to explicitly mark it as OK seems like needless micromanagement.

Currently, after the early game, raiders pretty much always die or escape while still shooting.  You don't get the option to "Capture" them unless they are physically incapacitated (which doesn't happen often once you're well armed).  It would be nice to have some less-lethal ways of interacting.  The Raiders could surrender if things go bad.  Or they could at least stop fighting once they are "fleeing", and the player could be given "Capture" options.