Messages

[long]

Not really. That would just make the player design the entire interior of his base with a false wall sacrificial zone for the demo team to blast through while he's maneuvering his entire colony into a pillbox set up along the edge of the entire mountain. The demo team blasts through and comes immediately under heavy fire.

I would say that it's perfectly fine solution. If your base design and troops defenses predicted attacks from varied angles - than you are suppose to win.
You used your troops, you used cunning design - I see nothing wrong with that.

What you do right now though is just a simple switch & bait. Where bait is the only doors into your colony and 2 blasting charges do the job. If not - tower clean the remains. You never used your troops in combat, took any risks nor lost any notable force.

Also, he's probably planted blasting charges like, everywhere, so the demo team will be heavily injured before they get inside.

That's extremely unlikely to happen - costs of such enterprise would be prohibitive, while still being very inefficient.

Taking an entrenched position requires an order of magnitude more resources than making it does. You know how a modern military would go about taking these mountainside forts? They'd drop a cruise missile or two on the killboxes, have choppers fly up to suppress the entrances and force the people inhabiting it back in.  Then they'd come up with multiple raid teams to breach several points at once with overwhelming numerical advantage - not five or six more than I have colonists, try twice the number of hostiles they're expecting, and they all have an overwhelming equipment and training advantage.

Noone would fly any choppers. Single bomb from F/A 18 solves the problem. Noone makes any raid teams nor anyone goes into caves. Yea, that bomb is expensive, but noone will risk lives for stuff like that.
Sorry, but this whole comparison to modern day real-world combat is total nonsense.

A WWII army? Watch The Sands of Iwo Jima. Bring about three times as many guys as you're expecting hostiles and get dug in for a long siege. Bring artillery pieces to pound their defenses to rubble - and bub, it takes a long time to pound through a stone mountain face with an artillery gun.

And in Rim Wold a single granade can break through mountain wall.
Again: comparison with real-world combat doesn't make any sense.

Frankly, anyone can design a game where the game just throws unfair challenges after impossible odds until it's game over. That's what you tend to do when you're trying to win a fight; make it impossible for the other guy to win. Nobody wants to fight a fair fight, they want to shoot all those guys over there without getting any of their friends killed and go home to call it a day. But it doesn't make it a fun game to play when it's the AI throwing that at you.

Noone says about AI throwing unfair challenges.

As you didn't noticed - I suggested a demo team with one very specific weakness - long-range combat and timer-based explosives. This means that any team armed with any long-range weapons will be able to dispose them before they manage to destroy anything in the base.
Secondly - I also suggested these teams to be rather small (1+2 or 1+3 raiders in most cases) to ensure they are weaker than regular raid forcing your colonists to step out of the base but at the same time NOT being in as much of a threat as they would be if faced regular raiding party. Player should feel encouraged to attack them, not discouraged.
Also third thing you haven't noticed is that these teams were suppose to be sent bit later in the game - when player already got chance to obtain some equipment and he either already build the doom-door trap exploit, or is building it right now.
And finally - to make sure your argument is totally invalid - I also suggested that these raiders are more of hit, steal, and run kind of thing. So even if you decide to ignore them - they won't wipe out your entire base. Rather: make enough damage to make it worthwhile to defend against them, but not enough to ruin the game if you loose.

How does the game update? Do we need to download again?

The number of downloads on the link sent was set to 3 so re-downloading is not really ideal.

Yes, you have to download again, as each new build is a full version of the game.
The number of downloads resets for each new version.

Well, I got version 250, according to changelog there should be version 253c but my counter didn't reset, and when I try to download - it's still v.250.
I think we have to wait for public updates, not just look into linked changelog for new versions.

Not really. Most of the suggestions here try to either add new stuff or fix things that we don't know any "official" fixes for. Meanwhile here we're certain what the fix will be.

Equally well we could have tons of topics about people complaining how there's too few features and AI isn't good enough. Which isn't really needed cause we know that and we know the solution is coming sooner or later.

Research isn't complete yet.

Eventually you'll have much deeper research tree, so picking a scientist will be much more profitable in a long term.

So I was thinking, what should a scientist be doing once all his projects are completed?  Well I could only come up with two conclusions.  One, would be maintaining the fruit of his labours, keeping it up and running etc.

Repair. That's already implemented.

And Two, would be passing on the knowledge he has, becoming a tutor and passing on education.

Sounds like you'd be better off by just assigning him for regular duties - whatever small bonuses he might give would unlikely stack enough to make it worthwhile (they won't make 1st guy work twice as hard, will they?)

I’m just trying to keep the Research skill useful once the projects have been exhausted, because honestly, I see no reason to include a scientist within my ranks, while a Settler with 3 points in Research can still do a good enough job, and still be a better builder and harvester than the scientist afterwards. 

Do what you do in real life. Change profession. Assign him to repair, warden or farmer duties. Problem solved.

Formations don't help with door exploit (you still got that one narrow point which gathers all the raiders and sends them through into the turrets / blasting charges).

The point I'm trying to make later on in my previous post is that it *would* help. If there is one narrow point, the AI will realise that its formation cannot fit through the narrow point without breaking formation (i.e., bunching up together). This could be the trigger for it to try and avoid that narrow point - possibly following a routine like the one you suggest, or possibly just destroying some of the walls/terrain around the narrow point to make it bigger.

Wouldn't it just create slightly bigger hole with pretty much the same effect?
Besides - if AI would relay on fire to demolish something (like it does now) it'd help only of door-trap is made on open air with walls. But not if it's made in caves.
Any alternative I can think of would be to send `demoman` with every single team - might be an option, sure, but it'd minimalize potential of coping with regular threats (I don't know if it's good or bad)

(I'm also curious how would such AI cope with W-shaped walls. It'd try to breach them till there's one hole through which all of the towers will shoot raiders while they continue attempts to destroy the wall? Basically invalidating whole strategy?
And what about bases that just got narrow corridors and small rooms? Such AI would've try to explode everything? Just because it can't fit into any corridor?)

My idea for incidents got few (rather crazy) diseases in it: http://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=38.msg1437#msg1437
^ should be worth checking them out

At present you can already buy metal through trade. 

Food and captives seems to be the main currency to acquire cash, and whenever i'm stumped for metal, trading to a ship has been one of the main methods of acquiring it.

ok, what I mean is more elaborate trade system (I'm sure it will come sooner or later though)

You could argue that you shouldn't have to rely on traders and there needs to be more options to acquire it, but in reality, ore is a finite resource.  To make it infinite without trade might make things too easy.

Totally agreed.

[different]

I had some thoughts related to this - specifically, what sort of AI routine should a demolition squad, or indeed a regular squad with some explosives experts, follow?
I think this is closely related to the raiders AI in general situations.

Well, it is and it's not. Part of the reason for this type of squad to exist is that it'd have a different attack strategy than regular raider AI.

So here's an idea:

1. Mark all of the rooms with towers as "forbidden", as well as anything under 70% of tower maximum range if there is no cover, and under 50% if there is cover.
2. Assign targets - everything that's 2 or less squares in area. Lamps, batteries, chairs, whatever will be there in future.
3. Find 3 shortest paths to any of these elements that doesn't go into "forbidden" area. If they're below 10 squares (2 shape charges explosions) - pick one randomly and attack.
3a. If there is no path matching these conditions - don't send demo team on a planet. Regular raiders will do just fine.
4. After breaking through - raiders should all quickly move through the hole - gunners shooting any resistance, demo guy protected by them should try to obtain an item. If resistance is small (say: 1 colonist vs 2 guys shooting) - additional gunners might go to pick the items.
5. When they got items - they should run back through breakthrough and than find shortest path outside of the map avoiding forbidden areas and ignoring towers fire.


On higher difficulty (further on in the game) the range in step 3 can be increased from 2 shape charges explosions to 3 (it should take proporcionally more time to dig through that.

One thing about the AI currently is that it always attacks in single file. This gives more firing time to the defenders and reduces the amount of fire the player faces at any one time. I believe it would make a big difference if the AI was able to move its units in a formation; for example, a line parallel to the player's defenses would allow them all to enter the player's range at approximately the same time.

Formations don't help with door exploit (you still got that one narrow point which gathers all the raiders and sends them through into the turrets / blasting charges).

After (imho) mediocre Towns and Gnomoria I actually like the no-z approach of RimWorld. It allows much more focus and removes a lot of frustration with your pawns getting lost on some edge while building walls around their house and so on. It allows the story to take focus and improves the game over all. I'm a big fan of Z-axis in 3D games, but I prefer my isometrics with little of it.

Totally agreed. I see no reason to add Z-axis. Game can be equally interesting without it.

[You cannot build a tower withouth any weapon]

Very good idea.

But may I add another one?
You cannot build a tower withouth any weapon - and if you use weapon on a tower: this tower will be armed with that.

So if you got pistol - you'll be able to build a tower and arm it with pistol. If you got a shotgun - you will have a shotgun tower. Or you'll be able to mix both into pistol-shotgun tower.
It will ensure we don't have any weird weapons out of nowhere, and add much more realism into the game.

It'd be great to be able to build two types of towers:
- Automated towers: 1 gun of choice, requires power, low health
- Manned towers: 2 guns of choice, doesn't require power, higher health, twice the cost, but if destroyed: you loose both guns and a colonist. Also raiders should have a chance to incapacitate a colonist in such turret, but he should be protected from any stun effects. Basically: Higher risk higher reward.

I think we need three kinds of squads in the raider team.
Demolition team, and the tunelers team and... the storm team,

demolition, will break through walls placing charges and pierce barricades.

tunelers, will dig down and come out in a certain place, making a direct connection between the entrance and the exit, which will allow the other riders to go across your defense lines.

storm, orbital drop units, will come down in groups of 3 in certain places, they will start an attack inmediately, they use shotguns and automatic weapons mostly.

Well, that might work too, assuming that they attack your base in stages, one right after another is done.

As for the other ideas you listed in that post - IMHO they go way over the board for what makes sense. Planet fortress? laser battery? disruption shield? How about we just pack everyone on a rocket and send them all back home? Will be cheaper and less struggle with raiders.

This would lead to chaos and would still be exploitable. Double and triple walling your base to bog the demo team down, or turning the entire mountain into a waffle for their pinheaded AI to choose to blast into.

It really wouldn't lead to fun, either. Frankly, if constant combat is going to feature into the finished game, then it is going to be a turret defense game, one way or another, and eventually the players will simply turn all the possible landing sites into massively-turreted killzones to wipe out raiders the moment they land.

o_O I have no idea what do you want to say here.

First of all - the idea you suggest doesn't work even now.
Imagine you put towers to cover entire map - obviously you can't put them on every square because of limited metal on a map, but anyway - now the raiders land:
1. Granades blow nearest towers.
2. sniper rifles destroy towers out of range.
3. You just wasted tons of materials for no benefit.

Simple Doors & Guns trap works 10 times better.


And that's exactly what this idea tries to prevent - doors & guns / demo charges tactic.

Yes - you cannot build a perfect AI (or actually - in some types of games you can get near it, but not in this one), but in no way that's an excuse for allowing obvious exploit to be kept in the game. As that's pretty much what we have right now: An exploit.

I would like to have more defense opportunities, because turrets doesn’t seems to be a good idea to protect the people. They are very fragile. A good idea would be some sort of energy shield for example. It could have a lot of energy costs, but able to withstand a quite beating. Buildable maybe as a turret platform or it could be inside of a building.   

Shield generators might be a bit too sci-fi.
It's still a colony. Not some magical high-tech base.

But in general - I totally agree that we need more stuff to defend. Even simple spring traps / holes could do the job.

So i read Tynan's quote in another thread.

I actually don't want to add more turret stuff because turrets aren't really helping the game. I'm even on the verge of cutting them. They take the fight away from the characters and make it a tower defense optimization game, which isn't what RW is supposed to be.

You could just make turrets really expensive. say 5k metal for one turret, but up their hp a bit. That means people may only get to have a couple of well placed turrets and thats all. You could also up their power usage or even make them so they have to be manned. That way the person manning them will take damage too. This also makes more sense in a Rimworld type of situation, i mean an auto turret is quite a complex piece of kit! i doubt my oaf and a couple of other random people could build one quite so effi

• make turrets much more expensive but increase HP.
• Limit the amount of turrets that can be built.
• make them unpredictable whilst being fired, or just altogether. (increase repair damage rate)
• Adjust the power needed to operate them.
• Remove the visual range.
• Add a power surge to the rest of your base whilst the turrets in operation, ie nothing else gets powered whilst turret operating.
• Add the need for a capacitor next to the turret to account for more power usage. (a simple battery)
• Make it so they have to be manned, or a colonist within a certain vicinity of the turret, or even assign a colonist to it like the beds.
• Add upgrade paths and make upgrades cost (more) metal. (I currently dont do any research because its pretty pointless)

IMHO:
It's too extreme and some of the points don't make any sense (eg. "remove visual range" or "make them unpredictable" or "nothing else gets powered whilst turret operating").

And if there are any manned turrets - they shouldn't consume any power at all, or very little of it. (these are kinda like manned HMGs. In real life they don't consume any power at all)