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They do if it is an obvious choice, but once on a ahip site without launching the reactor. They just smahesd everything and then left a few of their dead ones behind - thats not reasonable.

They need to have a more clear goal (except the mechanoids, which makes sense that they just destroy pawns ) which can be related to a raid size system based on key items and adaption maybe on time and damage on previous ones, but if it is damage related I can already see knowingly harm or down pawns to reduce size.

The only independant raid size is time and that can really kill you if you have some setback.

Why not ignore the colony wealth and everything?  Just send x pts of raid and guage the result?

100pts raid = 0 injury, light damage, total raid kill.  +100pts for next raid.

so, its based on how easily you repel a raid.  if you get your ass kicked, it reduces the raid points.  this way, a killbox player gets stronger raids because they can defeat them.  where an open colony with the same basic wealth gets smaller raids because they are more damaging to them.  also, if you just had a raid that did a lot of damage, the game knows it did damage and will dial down the next one.

other things it can look at is the average health of pawns, how much medicine or food you happen to have, extra components, basically anything that decides how quickly you can recover from a raid.

this way we can have legendary gold statues all over the place but the single pacifist pawn in your colony wont be overwhelmed with a hundred raiders

This sounds like a good approach.
What is bugging me most of the time is that raider are just trying to do dmg, they should have some form of behavior that targets valuable stuff.
They wont raid you for your gold floor or that gigantic power generator - cant plunder them anyway. Instead they want to have that crazy gun or snatch all the gold you have in your storage.

I was very surprised on my Sea Ice run that the one raider, while I was door peeking/hiding for a short time decided to snatch those 300 gold lying outside from a meteorite and run with it. He didnt manage to get that but it was a behavior I think is logic - no pawns in sight? grab that stuff and run - stuff is hidden but that one pawn just vanished behind the door? smack it down and capture this guy, then run.

This is slowly going further off topic, because those are all suggestions - but I wanna throw in there that herding animals is always at a loss of food, simply because it is a living organism that burns energy. Let me lie with this one and say that growing plants and eating them nets you more than ten times the nutrition than feeding it to an animal and eating the meat. Therefore animal products should be a luxury. So I agree with the suggestion to be rquired for lavish meals or wool being special.
Also, great food often is a result of good and varying ingredients and not just by using more of the same

Randy Merciless on Sea Ice
Mods: Numbers, Private Hair Style Collection

Chickens of a trade caravan just stole my meals that are located behind doors and in my stockpile.
Also forbidding the door obviously does not work. Do I have to place a wall in front of my doors now, everytime I get a trader?
Sounds like a minor issue, but on Sea Ice that can easily mean death if trader animals now steal food.

Summary of two runs with the same goal: AD raiding and ship launch

Storyteller: Randy Merciless
Commitment Mode
Biome: start was probably temp forest
Scenario: naked brutality
Time: couple of hours
Complete Mod List: Numbers, Private Hair Style Collection

Since I saw a post here about a succesfull AD raid run with ship launched, I wanted to try it myself.
Since I mostly play on merciless, I chose it here too. Should not have chosen commitment mode, since the start and a bunch of other stuff is a big roll of dice.

So i started with the naked pawn, good with shooting and traits that at least have one mood improvement.
At first just set up camp, get some food supply. I did not notice before that a bow required crafting 2, cost me a lot of time to make and cancel knifes to get to 2, since the pawn had not a lot other skills besides shooting. Big annoyance, I will pay attention to that the next time.

After the pawn is established and has the first clothing I opened an AD. If unlucky and those are mechs -> pawn dead, if insects hit and run with a bow still kinda works. Best outcome are enemies in cryptosleep, because friendlies just dont attack insects. Also, an enemy pawn incapable of violence still is aggressive, chases and attacks on his own - feels weird.

Even after some equipment, ADs are pure chance with one or two colonists. The very small can contain a bunch of mechs and large ones can be pretty much emtpy - so there is no telling how big the threat is.
This is the point where I regret commitment mode, since I am testing limits reloading would be nice.

Anyway, I end up with power armor and at least bolt action rifles - good weapons are much rarer than everything else or I was just unlucky.
First run was just one pawn up until the end at the hidden ship site, the other one 3 up until there.

While traveling, I noticed that food poisening due to dirty cooking area is unpossible to prevent if cooking on a camp fire. I had times were my pawns got food poisening every time they are in the recovering stage and was stuck at places for a looong time. With a static colony I never had problems, but with this traveling it is huge. Bad cooking has also an impact but if I wanna survive I need military pawns, not gourmands eating all the food. Even flooring the surrounding 3 tiles and always cleaning did not help, maybe it even got worse.
Regarding campfires, some control how much heat they emit would be good - everyone can keep a fire low or let it burn hot; maybe add some options to control fuel consumption after it is build. That way it gives some temperature control. Now I can only put it inside if its below -10°C and still might need to keep the door open.

Another temperature thing is I had two pawns get "slept in the cold" when the room was constant over at least 15°C with comfortable temperatures between -2 and 50°C. Sounds like a bug.

Sometimes pawns would refuse to use the table with stool to eat although it was 8 tiles away, not occupied, no restrictions and hunger bar above the lowest. Could not figure out why, redrafting no help, doing sth didnt help either. Next meal was good again ...

I am unhappy about the muscle parasites and those other weird illnesses: I have no clue how long they are there, they dont get worse or better and they dont seem to require bedrest (apart from increases tiredness) so they just make a pawn worse by giving -15 mood from pain and feeling sick. So what I am missing here is some form of control: Give us some information in what state this illness is or add the possibility to research it with a doctor to gain info about it - something so that a pawn is not in danger of breaking for a completly unknown timespan.

Upon reaching the ship loaction the real trouble begins. Basically founding a new colony with decently equipped pawns on a tile that already has huge wealth, raiders never below 10 in numbers and since I started traveling right away, almost no research and no colony infrastructure. Before the first raid comes I dont have enough time to establish food (due to biome, shrubland) and beds so they dont break all the time. Also decontructing half of the ship doesnt help much, although it gives a few starting resources.
No defense mechanisms means raiders just run for the ship or batter through the walls surrounding it to destroy the ship - note that I did not start launch sequence. Or if colonist are outside they get swarmed. Also there is something weird happening with pawns retreating behind doors: Even if the distance between melees at the door is two tiles and they have a ranged weapon, they just run back to the closing door and engage in melee combat. That is quite frustrating and ridiculous.

I could safely say that both attempts failed at the ship site, because I was unable to defend and raiders just smashed the ship to pieces.
As people said before - less destructive and more pawn and item oriented raids would be cool - see a pawn vanish ebhind a door, smash it and capture him instead of smashing stuff and then just leaving without a gain for the raiders. Maybe only the pirates try to destroy everything and just burn the place.

So all in all with my setup, where I reach the ship site with just equipment seems unpossible to manage. One destroyed required part means I have to research ship building which kinda kills the point going there and spending years researching turrets, IEDs, mortars kills the fun part of it making a run on the run
I am not sure what I need to change to keep the spirit and still make it work on merciless difficulty - turning that down a notch would be a possibility but not what I am looking for.
For now, the huge wealth spike and that I have to defend all the vital parts of the ship are the challenges.


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I see that you've returned to the original component / advanced component models! Personally I'm really happy about that.  Speaking of, after playing the game a bit with the new meat models, something just feels off about them still.  I honestly think they should return to their original design and colors.. Don't fix what isn't broken right?

I strongly disagree, the overall direction of the art changes are great: Stronger colors, much clearer what that stuff is supposed to be. The old components are not as good, the new ones were my favorite art change so far. Although the meat is not as great as the components, it goes in the same direction, only the color is not as strong.

Difficulty: Randy Survival Struggle (now classified as "Savage")
Commitment mode: Yes
Biome: Mountainous Boreal Forest
Time: 3,5 years
Mods: custom hair styles collection
time last days: 17h

Even in naked brutality, I managed to aquire colonists and stuff relativly fast for my usual games, probably because it is not the highest difficulty.
Only one colonist died so far: he got the plague on an item stash quest reltively early in the game. This was kinda frustrating because I had no way of saving that one - no bedrolls and no medicine.
When it comes to armor, I usually skip the research for flak armor to get faster to the more important stuff like turrets, because in the cold biomes a flak jacket with 15°C cold isolation prevents the colonists from going outside for a longer time. The option to choose the material makes them not a good option - the insulation does not have to be as good, just better than that according to material. Also, why is the vest armor 115% against sharp, jacket only 46% on the same quality level in addition to the fact that the jackets extended cover are only the arms.
So far all the Prisoners were easy to recruit, breaking resistance did not take long and after that a piece of cake.
Also, I noticed that a pawn with the kind trait went on an insulting spree.

When I tried to install a bionic leg on a pawn, the pawn chose the worst medical bed, although an excellent hospital bed was available. I didnt notice and obviously the surgery failed and the leg was wasted. Frustrating that such a hightech piece is gone.

Raid sizes with that many colonists were suprisingly small - my colony was never in real danger.
The latest ship part spawned one centipede, one scyther, 3 lancers - good cover and assault rifles were enough to take them down without a downed pawn. Maybe thats good for this difficulty level.
Infestations bring more trouble, but I think I am prepared with a melee frontline and 3 tiles wide hallways to give enough room to shoot. No need for animals or turrets under the mountain.

All in all this run feels like I wanted: some threats that require good planning and execution but not as unforgiving that I cant enjoy building a base and creating a new glitterworld - who needs to escape if the place is already good?

Just a quick question at the end: what is the milestone to unlock "merciless" now that I clicked on the button to unlock it? ^^

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I might found a few things that are not intended, I dont know if they are considered bugs:

Pawns assigned to hauling but not constructing "haul" a grave and start the building even if there is nothing to be done except the building itself (no trees to cut or sth). That means it is a useless trip.

While digging at smoothed stone, pawns assigned to contructing repair the wall.

If an open area (e.g. previous enclosed in a mountain) is closed with a wall, a manually assigned "ignore roof area" is reset and a roof will be build. This happens each time a one piece of the enclosing wall is constructed.

I would love to see a split of small (single) and medium stack for stuff thats lying on the ground and then shelves similar to the tool rack: stacks on them over 75 will get the symbol for a large stack. Those shelves would increse the maximum stack size, but dont prevent deteriorating.

I like the new components art a lot, but the advanced ones dont look like anything to me, that means I cant identify them as what they are.

Why not have a rack of ribs and a couple of neatly stacked steaks as the meat art and a number shows how many of them there are.

This one is a great suggestion for the regular meat. The human meat pile looks like one big red triangle (I have a lot of them in my cannibal colony =P ), but I dont know how to improve that. In general, if the same item is stacked next to each other, forms that fill the square evenly look better than those just filling half of it.
For the silver, what about a stack of coins instead, I cant unsee the silver potatoes either.

For the new trap changes - it really forces me think differently about my defences, especially because of the huge resource consumption if the traps are triggered. I have to test that more, but I like it!

Tynan, the story I made up was that this guy got exiled from the tribe for cannibalism and I did not recruit any new pawns at all - all colonist deaths were people wandering in or refugees that did not have the trait. I know that it is a horror story and the scenario is planned do create one. I am just sad that I didnt manage to find a second cannibal

So far I had a lot of fun playing the 1.0, the naked brutality is a great addition.
After a few quick starts with that mode I decided to make a cannibal colony on the ice sheet.
Colony persists over multiple versions (up until the "trap not adjacent" change).
Game settings are random, extreme and map temperature between -80°C and -10°C.
I started with one pawn - forced cannibal trait, no resources and tribal tech level. To test stuff (like damage and behavior) I decided against permadeath.

The early game had very few incidents, only one raid. Although it made building first defences easier it almost starved the cannibal.
Keeping up with a trap defense system helped against almost all forms of raids.
Over the colony time I killed 18 colonists, joined as wanderers or refugees, simply because they wont last long in a cannibal colony without that trait.
In all those colony years not a single cannibal made it onto the map, dead or alive. I might have forgotten to check some of the dead peeps though. I dislike that they die so quickly - I rather have some colonists with major body impairments than all of them dead. The lonely and exiled cannibal seeks some new cannibal friends!

Keeping only one colonist seems to reduce the threat level to a point where the maximum amount of raiders was like 5 to 10 peeps.
Up until now the colony is 5 years old and reached gun turret tech level.

I only had one sapper raid so far and they completly!! ignored my colonist and just continued to destroy random walls. I would love to see those sappers go for storage areas, grab some valuable stuff and run for it, but this raid was just shooting practice; they even ran right past my storage (maybe a building/furniture was the most valuable?).

All human raids died in a trap system without the need of fireing a gun - what strikes me as weird or unnatural is that they start smacking down walls when they flee instead of taking the free passage (all traps already triggered) and allowed me to get some extra meals by firing from minimum range.

A huge contrast are the mechanoids: triggering very few traps and taking little damage (seems to be intended), all ok but even turrets cant kill them. I like that they pose a huge threat, but with my one tribal colonist counterplay seems difficult.
The scythers are easier to deal with, since I can kite them; the lancers one shot from superior range. I really like the change to the minigun of the centipedes, now you have to pay attention where to stand and they even hit sometimes :O
Gun turrets definitly help but the huge and expensive turret does little to no damage even if it hits.  Same accuracy as the small ones although much more expensive? Also, the information window doesn not provide damage and armor pen info. It makes the turret look pretty week. Havnt tested the sniper turret as comparison yet.
The barrel durability is a great addition, as I would love to see an ammo system for weapons (just a hope, I know it would be a HUGE change).
A lot harder than raids are the crashed ship parts as the mechanoids have to take some major dmg to make them chase my colonist into the base.
It seems like the psychic ship goes to extreme a bit too fast for my taste (5 days until high, 7.5 to extreme), although getting psychic foil helmets might need to be a higher priority for me.

Another QoL improvement would be a stockpile option for tainted apparal, now I have to micro-manage that by creating multiple stockpiles, changing the priority and forbidding tainted parts. Another option would be the reclaim fabric from apparal, even if it is very little and takes considerable time. As of now, the only option is to put them outside and let them rot given that enough other apparal is available.

I know that there were comments about the story tab, but I would also like to see it changed.
If I click on it, 99% of the time it is to check the skills or sometimes the traits of that pawn. I think the tab should be named after the primary use - which is certainly the skills and traits.

All in all great stuff is happening and I like that there is need for change in defense strategy meta, but as already mentioned if it gets nearly unpossible to prepare for all kinds of attacks the frustration level might dramatically increase.
I like to build a beautiful base and permanent colony but I dont wanna miss out on hard challenges and the sense of accomplishment when my colony manages to deal with big threats.

Oh, and another thing, traders now stand in front of my defenses, but only if the base is closed in with walls and only open to a trap/killbox like area.
Also, trained animals behave "random". When drafted they follow but dont attack on close range and if they decide to attack they follow very far. Example: trying to pull mechanoids from a ship part; moving through door so they take the long way around through traps. Husky decides to attack and runs after them (20 to 30 tiles or sth), even when the pawn stays behind the door; follows very far until the mechanoids reevaluate targets, turn and kill the poor husky

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Thanks! I missed it because I edited in the non steam version and had to edit it in the steam version to upload!

I have some ideas for scenarios and want to share them via the workshop, but since I never uploaded sth before I have no clue how to do it.
Searched the forum with the search options, only found how to upload mods ( dev mode and then click upload button ) which doesnt work for me it seems. Also there is nothing directly in the steam workshop.
So is there a fast solution?
Sorry if this question already got answered, I can't find it.

-> Episode 41 <-
Get ready for the spaceship launch! - Finale

-> Episode 38 <-
Its all about the bug hive infestations!