Messages

The scroll/zoom increment seems alright to me at 1920x1200 resolution and 1x UI scale. In the colonist log or history message list boxes, one notch on the mouse wheel will scroll very slightly more than two lines of text. Zooming the colony map from maximum to minimum magnification takes a total of 23 notches. If anything the increment could probably be a little bit larger without feeling too "jumpy".

If I may add a cheeky sort of related feature request here, it would be great if the minimum magnification level for the colony map could be lowered to allow more or ideally the entire map to be shown on screen. I know this can be modded easily but it would be nice to have in the base game. Thanks for your continued support of an excellent game!

Can confirm, mouse wheel direction is inverted for me on the Linux version (running on Gentoo). I looked for a "mouse wheel invert" option but couldn't find one so I guess it is a bug.

Notes from my latest attempt on Naked Brutality Cassandra Hard Permadeath:

World was generated with version 1.0.1951 and survived to today running on 1.0.1954. Many errors were shown when loading after game updates but I have yet to see 1.x crash or corrupt a save and performance has been alright. A minor inconvenience is that my preferred method of launching the game via the Steam notification area menu always starts the 32-bit version - which I quit as soon as possible since I always want to run the 64-bit version.

I spend an embarrassingly long time rerolling before finding a good colonist candidate since I won't accept anyone with severe disabilities, addiction, or terrible traits for this attempt. Finally RNGsus grants me Stephen, the 50-year-old Human Computer with burning passion for shooting and mining. He is Too Smart, Ascetic (great for Naked Brutality), and Super-Immune. The latter is perfect since all my previous attempts at Naked Brutality ended with death due to infection - herbal medicine was never enough for immunity to catch up, but Stephen should have a chance to survive.

Stephen crashes into the Bluetrout Swamp, a temperate swamp featuring a huge river flowing from the north to the New Abeneiro Ocean to the south, and some small hills thanks to the Northern Sharp Fox Mountains directly bordering the area to the east. On the west river bank is a small valley between slate hills with a steam geyser and a 6x10 marble structure which Stephen claims as initial shelter.

Stephen is able to establish basic amenities fairly quickly with amateur construction skill and trains his crafting skill by making awful steel knives until reaching the level 2 skill required to make a poor quality short bow for hunting and fighting off the first few raids. Stephen never bothers burying attackers; corpses get dumped out of sight in a remote area of the swamp where they deteriorate relatively rapidly. Near the end of spring he acquires pants, shirt, and a very nice hyperweave parka from an escape pod survivor. I think there may have been a game bug preventing me from rescuing the survivor - he bled out in the mud - but at least Stephen did not have to be naked any longer.

At the start of summer a raider brings a poor quality autopistol which Stephen equips and gets a lot of use out of (it isn't replaced until the end of the year). A wanderer named Mushinto joins the colony, he is a 47-year-old Bounty Hunter and a Greedy Night Owl. Mushinto's burning passion for social skills makes him the colony negotiator and he also assumes responsibility for cooking despite being entirely uninterested (Stephen is even worse at it).

Summer is spent digging out a well-insulated cryostorage area inside one of the nearby slate hills. The river bank is very irregular and consists almost entirely of mud and rich soil, but there was one spot close to the freezer that could be made to support a watermill generator. My favorite new 1.x feature is reinstallable work benches (I hate wasting resources by deconstruction just because I built something on the wrong spot) but finally being able to smooth rock walls without mods is a close second. With the freezer complete, work begins on an adjoining kitchen and dining room.

Nutrition from hunting is supplemented with berries (which curiously all magically changed color in a game update) and some rice grown on the generous amounts of fertile soil. During the summer Cassandra also blesses the colony with regular cargo pods filled with drugs, including almost an entire stack of medicine which came in handy for treating malaria and flu later.

In fall the colony accepts a refugee chased by a few not very well-armed bandits. Her name is Tzaeru and she is a Steadfast Abrasive Brawler Paramedic, bringing expert medical skills as well as some needed professional experience working with plants (neither Stephen nor Mushinto could grow healroot). Shortly after her arrival a lengthy volcanic winter begins and a cold snap forces everyone to move into the now completed kitchen - it's the only room with heating. Tzaeru is stuck idle inside until the cold snap lifts since she lacks warm clothes, but Stephen's hyperweave parka allows him to work full time outside despite the cold and he is busy building a new hospital/laboratory building next to the kitchen.

Stephen is a professional researcher but can never find time to actually do research due to other critical responsibilities and constant raids from all except one neighboring faction. The colony struggles greatly with mounting a good defense without access to decent firearms or turrets, but somehow our brave trio manages to fight every raid off with just the aforementioned autopistol, short bow, and steel knife. Our luck can't last - Cassandra is not going to keep sending weak bandit bands and natives forever.

At some point in the winter a game update removes the research requirement for bridges, allowing the colony to build a bridge over the huge river. A dozen or so chickens join the colony and I unwisely decide to build a wooden chicken coop on the river bank next to the bridge. I wish I could build more resilient, fire-proof bridges out of stone or steel - this thing is basically built out of fuel! A while after the chicken coop was completed - but before I found a way to feed the chickens and not having them lay eggs all over the map - a 5-man pirate raid arrived from the east, this time with scarier gear. One had an excellent autopistol, two had poor quality revolvers, one had some kind of melee weapon, and one had a good quality incendiary launcher.

Stephen and Mushinto managed to get some shots in while the pirates killed chickens, downing the melee pirate. Tzaeru killed the autopistol guy with her knife on the bridge. A lengthy shootout followed, with several incendiary shots landing on the bridge and near the chicken coop. Eventually the last pirate fell and my badly wounded colonists could focus on trying to quell the big chicken coop conflagration before it spread to the dense vegetation to the south of the colony. The coop, bridge, and nearby farms were a lost cause. Chickens on fire were running all over the place; all of them except one rooster died. The pirate bodies and their weapons were destroyed in the fire, except for the excellent autopistol which could be salvaged as a weapon upgrade for Stephen. Stephen and Tzaeru recovered fully from their wounds but Mushinto got his left eye cut out, leaving him with permanently poor sight.

There is a period with fewer raids allowing the colony to rebuild and recover somewhat. In Septober the second year a new pirate raid arrives, this time seven strong - armed with automatic weapons and frag grenades. With my colony severely outmanned and outgunned, I decide to activate my secret weapon of last resort: the nearby ancient shrine. The plan is to hide behind a two tile thick slate wall built on the west side of the small valley and let the pirates fight with whatever evil lurks within the shrine.

With the pirates closing in from the west, Stephen deconstructs one of the ancient shrine marble walls and starts running towards the slate wall door leading to the colony. It's not very far at all - only eleven tiles - but the ground is marshy and there is dense vegetation impeding movement. Mushinto and Tzaeru are waiting on the other side of the slate wall. Inside the shrine are three ancient cryptosleep caskets, four advanced components, seven luciferium, an orbital power beam targeter, two lancers, and a centipede equipped with a good quality heavy charge blaster.

The mechanoids immediately emerge from the opened shrine, filling the air with charged projectiles. Stephen gets hit by three blaster shots and a lance shot and falls unconscious near the shrine. The pirates arrive and open fire on the mechanoids. Stephen lies in the crossfire and gets hit by three more shots. Mushinto and Tzaeru can only wait and hope for an opportunity to rescue the colony founder. One of the pirates paths around the northern hill, wading in the river and enters the colony from the east. Tzaeru acts as tank using a recently acquired steel club while Mushinto fires arrows at the pirate, who soon succumbs dropping an excellent quality machine pistol.

Meanwhile the pirates on the other side of the wall have killed both lancers and brought the centipede to a sliver of health while losing two of their own. A barrage of charge blaster shots hits a grenadier, downing him. With four of their ranks lost, the remaining pirates flee in panic. The centipede starts moving towards the colony. Mushinto, now equipped with a machine pistol, attempts to provide suppressive fire in cover while Tzaeru tries to rescue Stephen. She almost makes it back but gets killed by a volley of charge shots, dropping Stephen - who dies from blood loss shortly thereafter. Despite his cover, Mushinto gets hit by a charge shot to the torso, falling unconscious. The nearly destroyed but still fully functional centipede proceeds to tear the colony buildings apart while Mushinto bleeds out. GG

The colony lasted for 85 days, reaching a peak wealth of about 23k of which 16k was items.