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It does feel like hunting is unreasonably hard/time consuming.

If i hit an animal with a bullet or arrow, yes, it should probably run if it can, so the behavior is fine...but how many bullets/arrows should it take really, to take down an animal when you can line up a shot against a grazing or wandering animal (as opposed to in active combat, where panic and haste become serious factors)?

I have to agree. With 10+ colonists, even with 2 full-time hunters, the hunting takes too long to satisfy the need for meat, because my hunters end up chasing their prey all day.
I think it's the combination of

-Bad accuracy in general. It seems counter-intuitive to hunt with an Uzi over a Sniper Rifle, but the Uzi is better, for hunting, in the current system by far.
-Bigger animals (those with decent amount of meat on their bones) taking many shots before they are downed
-The newly added chasing after every prey.

I feel like there should be a damage bonus and/or hit bonus against animals intrinsic to the hunting job - this keeps animals (as) viable (as they already were) for active combat, while making it less likely that my pawn will have to chase a deer across the map twice over the course of an entire day while firing dozens of rounds at it.

I agree. A higher chance to hit animals who are idle seems like a decent fix, and would make slower, single-shot rifles a lot more viable. I've noticed that predators also stun their animals when they first pounce on them. Perhaps our hunters could have a chance to stun and/or at least slow their target, on their first shot, and then only have to give chase if the prey isn't dead after a few seconds.

Maybe it just doesn't grow wild in that climate? You can still grow your own correct?

I can still grow the non-wild variant, however, I would have expected the wild healroot to also grow in the Tropical biome. Temperature seems to have nothing to do with it.

I'm just looking for confirmation, if it's a bug or if it's intended to not grow in Tropical biome.

Started a new colony on build 1541, in a (Large size) Tropical biome using Randy Extreme. Arrived in Spring, with temperatures between 25 and 32 celsius (77-90 fahrenheit)

-Issue: no wild healroot anywhere on map.

I was kind of surprised by this, as I saw plenty of wild healroot growing in much colder biomes, in the past few builds.

Edit: created a colony in Boreal biome (also in build 1541), and saw plenty of healroot. I read the description of it, and it says that it's "prized by tribespeople in colder climates". Does this mean that it won't grow, by design, in hotter biomes? That would make tropical biome very difficult unless you bring a very skilled herbalist every time, due to the way infections work now.

-Regarding raid frequency

In version 1536, using Randy Random Intense, I was getting raided approx. every 4-5 days (9 raids over 47 days). Over those 47 days, I had 11 "Major Threats", so at least one every 4.2 days.

It does feel like major threats, including raids, happen a lot more frequently, and ramp up in difficulty a lot faster, than in A16. Randy Intense in A17.1536, as a result, actually feels more difficulty than Randy Extreme did in A16. Unfortunately, I don't see stats for total raiders killed/downed, but I'm sure I'm close to 50 downed/killed, over that 47 day period.

-Regarding enemy AI

I've had to cheese the new AI in order to survive the frequent, and big raids. They still fall for non-elaborate kill-zones, using armed colonists instead of turrets, but I'm glad that they now tunnel through perimeter walls, to attack from multiple angles (the old murder-labyrinth trick seems less useful now). It's just that they tend to stack up once again when they reach my inner base, if tempted by a small opening with all my colonists waiting inside, standing ready with a firing line.

I do believe it will be much harder to defend bigger colonies now, though, unless you manage to trick the AI by abusing their pathing and targeting priority. Like, they still seem compelled to enter killzones, getting swatted one by one, it just takes a more conscious baiting effort bait now, unlike before.

I'll play the newest build (1539) and report back.

I'm playing A17.1536 right now and 2 pawns got Malaria. So... bed rest, medicine, and all that. Everything was normal, 61% infection / 71% immunity, they got the medicine, so i start to focus on others things. Then one of them get out of the bed, and when i look the disease wasnt there anymore. He did not developed immunity, just puft... nothing.

So i reloaded an autosave, and tryed again. Same thing, both "lost" Malaria when immunity was 73%.
Normal Medicine, one in a hospital bed, but the other on a medical bed.

Edit... i played a little more, and they are still sick, but the disease is hidden.

Can confirm this. Had 2 colonists get malaria at the same time. One was treated with no medicine, and the other with regular medicine. The one treated with regular medicine got Malaria hidden almost instantly, while the other one retains it at 66% immunity.

This also means that I'm unable to force the colonist with hidden Malaria to rest in bed, since game doesn't acknowledge that the colonist has malaria.

Edit: a few minutes later, Malaria popped up anew on the colonist that was treated with regular medicine, apparently starting from 63% malaria and immunity progress
Edit 2: Aaand, it's gone again, from the same colonist, treated with herbal medicine.
Edit 3: back again, however immunity has been raised to 72% while Malaria progress remains at 63%, indicating it is indeed progressing while hidden. When it re-appears, it seems to be tied with when the colonists needs a new treatment.

The really odd thing, is that the other colonists has retained his Malaria throughout the whole process.

Added savefile.

[attachment deleted by admin due to age]

and to come to what i actually wanted to talk about:
Just had a prisoner die to infection that was at 87% and 90% immunity. and the game clearly said the prisoner died of infection.
why did the prisoner die before it reached 100% infection?

I think a prisoner dies if he reaches 0% consciousness, and extreme infection limits it to max 10%. So it doesn't take a lot to reduce the remaining 10% consciousness to 0%. As far as I know, consciousness is reduced by blood loss, starvation, pain as well as hypothermia or heatstroke.

TL;DR: The infection rate at the moment is if anything, lower than it needs to be. Just make sure to treat your colonists in time, and clean your damn hospitals.

I don't have any significant problems with infections when I reach a late-stage game. The problem is the inverse difficulty curve, where even a scratch can doom your colonists in early game, due to having limited medicine and poor accommodations. It's still possible, sure, if you micro-manage every single treatment right on time.

In terms of gameplay, I just don't find it appealing. It feels like the gameplay shifts 100% to wound treatment micro-management, once someone gets injured. It becomes a micro-management nightmare when several colonists become injured, which is sure to happen with the new improved AI, that likes to change targets and injure as many colonists as possible. I'm afraid that many players, especially new players, will find it extremely frustrating and off-putting.

I think infections SHOULD be a problem, unlike in A16, but the current implementation feels like a heavy dose of artificial difficulty, for difficulties sake.

Some quick observations based on a few hours of a17 of today's build, coming from someone who played a16 extensively (on Randy Extreme) but haven't played for a few months.

-Infections are incredibly dangerous. Even glitterworld medicine applied every cooldown by a Medicine 4 doc, while patient is 24/7 in a normal quality bed, is a harrowing race against time once infection starts.
-Randy Random Extreme seems harder than a16, but might just be a coincidence. Was getting hit by debilitating effects almost daily.

In relation to Randy, I was playing one colony in a zone with predicted temperature between -5 and +25 Celcius. I landed during summer, right before fall. Within 1-2 weeks of landing, I had both a heatwave and a cold snap, pushing temperatures from +45 to -15 Celsius. Several raids as well as a mechanoid ship landing in the middle of my base, followed by malaria, and then a surprisingly big raid of 8-10 well armed people (this is still within about 2-3 weeks of landing), and I ended up not being able to keep up with the wound treatment, and had infections as a result, which combined with malaria just annihilated my colony. Keep in mind that this is coming from an experienced Randy Extreme player.

-Melee combat feels broken, with everyone just swinging wildly into the air and hitting nothing. Feels much more RNG than before.

Related to the melee combat feeling broken: Had 2 fresh colonists get wrecked by a single rabbit, because they couldn't hit it (4 and 0 melee). Tried shooting it, but that accuracy was even worse, even at point blank range (due to being attacked meanwhile). Meanwhile the rabbit managed to cause severe wounds to the colonists, including a permanent eye scar (how does that even happen). This, in combination with the increased infection risk, feels incredible frustrating. To have 2 healthy colonists get wrecked by a rabbit within a few days of landing. Screenshot for dramatic effect http://pasteboard.co/5jGutAkDQ.jpg http://pasteboard.co/5kbVFACIH.jpg
So one single rabbit almost kills 2 colonists within 3 days on landing, due to infections, despite the colonists being armed with a steel knife and a gun.

-Performance does not really feel improved (not sure if it was supposed to be), when playing on ludicrous size (yes, I know there's a disclaimer saying it's not tested at that size). Fast-forwarding on ludicrous size makes the FPS hit single-digits, even with only 2 colonists and a very small base. I was hoping this version would improve this performance. My system specs for reference: 2600k, 8gb ram, Gtx970, Win10, game on SSD.
-Savegame size is still very big. One fresh save at ludicrous size, right after landing, takes 37MB.

Haha, yeah I've been checking daily since A16 hit. Refreshed github and saw you updated it "26 seconds ago". Pretty convenient.

Thanks for updating it, I find that that it's almost necessary once a colony gets big, to make the micro-managing tolerable.

Hi Fluffy,
Will you release "Work Tab" for A16?

I think he just did. https://github.com/FluffierThanThou/Fluffy_Tabs/releases

Thats not how it works. Performance and optimization is the last thing to do in a game unless its really game breaking and since you can play in a normal map with 10 guys thats not game breaking.

That's not what I see in other successful Early Access games, like Rust, Kerbal Space Program and Subnautica. They've been doing optimization passes every now and then to keep the game playable. Sure, this game is "playable" if you play with tiny maps and limit your population greatly, but it suffers from terrible FPS drops at high colonist count or map size. Playing on small maps with 10 or below colonists gets old fast, and in my opinion the dev should focus more on bigger scale maps and populations.

Remember that its still in early access/alpha.

And it has been for years. In my opinion, it's about time for some optimization. There's already plenty of features, and modders continue adding more.

My only real suggestion is to take time-off from adding features, and focus solely on improving performance.

The performance problems applies mostly to big colonies and big maps. I honestly don't see the appeal of playing on anything other than the biggest size maps, as you run into resource problems extremely fast, but performance is also a problem on smaller maps when you start having 10+ colonists.

If I'm wrong in assuming that a game of this technical caliber should run better, then please explain how.

Great job. Unfortunately it makes my game unplayable due to low FPS when I reach a high amount of colonists and prisoners, so I'll have to wait patiently for the optimized version. I respect that you want to add features before optimizing.

Really looking forward to messing with it when it's further along.

Thats because randy is easier than cassandra

Randy does screw with you for the shits and giggles.
Cassandra is coming for you the stronger you get.

I have to disagree there. Cassandra is predictable, only slowly ramps up difficulty, and can easily be countered by a good kill-box. Randy on the other hand can throw a 25x Warg manhunter pack on top of you only a few weeks after landing, and then drop a 20 man raid the day after, before you get a chance to recover.

I played Cassandra on Extreme as well, and it was much easier to handle, despite the larger raiding forces towards the end, exactly because Cassandra had allowed me to slowly build up my forces and base.

But that's just my opinion. I think we can agree that the hardest part of the game is managing the damn mood system

While I agree that there should be added more positive events and moodlets, the game does actually get quite manageable once you've played for a while. I'm at a point where I'm playing on Extreme using Randy Random, and still have more than enough time between events to chill out and enjoy building my colony. Once in awhile, I get a "perfect storm" of bad events and get screwed, but that's part of the game.