Messages

Gee golly, thank you so much guys for helping me fix and balance the mod, im taking notes and see to it that the next iteration will be not so broken.

And i have already made a stun gun. Its available to be made on the modern assembly I original/ttm worktable.

Can i ask for a changelog/patchnotes on the things that you changed with your copy Cat123? Ill be sure to learn some things from you

Also goo poni and oragepoilu thanks as always! and be nice

Nice mod, not sure how much of it is yours (all of it?). There's little things - like why have the master build list in different mods? TTS Mining has a table listing a parent mod's workstation build list. No doubt I'll work it out, but the structure seems odd at this time.

Sarcasm - less cool, but *shrug*, we can't all take criticism gracefully.

Suggestions:

Move Solar Panels parts, Battery packs and Beacons to Electronics Table & lower the tier

As it says on the tin - no way any of these should take a program module. Solar panels & batteries currently require you to kill / process mechs. Not so much potatoes, but should be mid tier, not highest tier.

Oil is currently far better than all other energy sources

A single oil refinery gives 4500w and can support 5 generators with x3 oil tanks each (6000w) easily. So, if you stretched it, you could easily have 12 generators with only 1 tank each (14,400w). Compared to geothermal (3600w) and solar (lol) there's no competition - not only that, it only requires mid tier building materials as compared to geo & solar which currently require program modules + advanced modifier.

This is a balance issue, and could do with looking at - or at the very least, geothermal should give 12kish.

Science Fiction Weapons currently do same / less damage than modern era weapons

Not sure if there's an excel table listing the various weapons, but a lot of the modern era weapons do more damage than the SF weapons. e.g. that Russian Sniper rifle (35+) vrs the Plasma burst sniper (12x2). There's also a bunch of references (Aliens, W40k etc) that aren't really useful - for one thing, if the mod is ever bundled into the main build, you can't have TM stuff in there (legally).

Updated AI = waste of resources

For the massive cost increase of an AI core (6k), you get +2 skills across the board, and that's it. Not worth it, by a long shot.

Food production at fireplaces is vastly OP

Compared to making basic meals (highest tier stuff required, elec hob) with 12+ cooking, the fireplace churns out at least 20 meals in the same time. I'm currently feeding a colony of 15 just with 1 fireplace.

The speed needs reducing or the # of materials (food) needs upping. There's no reason to have any other food production unless you want the +morale effects.


Bugs:

Black Void event - if it is an eclipse when it starts, no darkness occurs

Had fog and eclipse when it started, there was no visual darkness. Could be either of them.

Tested: it's the eclipse - when it ends, darkness is correctly applied.

Void beasties still spawn, colonists still have -7 morale penalty, the visual dark effect just doesn't trigger.



Still, mod is nice. 50% of the guns (and all those tables... no wonder I never found the stun gun, I wasn't going to build 6 tables all virtually the same) need pruning and the beacon stuff.

Oh well shet, here's me thinking that you've lost ALL of the beacons and are flipping shit because the mod is shit because you lost all the beacons. Sorry for assuming that you attempted to tear down the console. You're an expert on game design but didn't try tearing it down. 10 out of fugging 10.

I stated three times that I thought the mod was excellent. Stop projecting and/or drama whoring.

The XML is simple to mod, so I'm just going to release an alteration / balancing mod for this.

Oh, and for the record - I lost 4 beacons total, due to covering everything I wanted to trade and massive wildfires. If you've forgotten, in the base game the beacons are rather easy to replace. Natch.

You need just one to trade with locals (orbital beacon), two to trade with ships (beacon and console) and three to call a ship on demand (beacon, console, signal beacon).

By not answering the question, you supplied the answer.

My console was still alive, meaning I can disassemble it for the remaining beacon.


However, I'm still going to edit the XML and move Solar Panel Module, Battery Module and Beacon to Electronic Table & remove the requirement for the program module. I'm looking through the XML now, haven't found which mod has the XML for the Electronics yet.

It'll take me 5 mins once I have.


p.s.

"Stubborn". No, I just know how to design games. Thanks though, it would have been a lot simpler if you'd stated "You can disassemble the console for a beacon" instead of being aspergers about the mod.

[no]

You just don't understand what aim the game and the mod. The game also aim to be a roguelike and the mod aim to to do it in a harder way. It's not simcity, you really don't get the type of gameplay here. but well, if you don't get it i don't care, at last you read the whole stuff. Just try to not forget  that of course if you do 3 mistake in a row you will loose at some point.

I understand completely; I'm not exactly a stranger to roguealikes. However, there is no other item that functions like this, apart from colonists - the initial x3 tools might count, but loosing those only requires perhaps 20min restart. It's a simple and needed change - beacon should be on the antenna tech level / metalworks table. It's not rocket science, nor does it take a genius to work out the game balance. But thanks for grasping at "L2P NOOB" justifications for it.

I suspect that if you start the mod without crafting 7+ you'll likely be shafted as well; although this is mentioned in the readme.txt so that's fine.

2 year old colony, perfect in most other respects (level 20 researcher, wee), survived a load of events: discarded due to beacon issues. Not fun.


>Off to edit the XML & rebalance this so that it's a tier lower & built at the electronics table.

[apart]

Only a really few people have issues with the beacons - all of them are new to the game/mod. I can't even call this an issue because it happen only if you have done three time huge mistake (loose three building with beacon inside).

There is robot actually with a mod included in the pack (MAI). Two version mainly ; the low tech first version can haul/clean, and the second can have part to do other stuff as well. In your next game, after you took some time to avoid loosing your three beacon again, try to go in the tech tree toward the MAI and build a few - don't rely on them too much because you will have trouble when you run out of energy (and they cost a lot) tough.

Actually, I've researched all the AI - no cleaner specific model (although it might be the lowest one?) - can't build them, of course.

And no - simply because you know how to avoid something as trivial as beacon # limits doesn't mean it isn't broken.

Your problem is having played too long and assuming total knowledge = "that's balanced". At no point should loosing a single item (limited to 3 without trading) cause the game to be unwinnable apart from colonists. This is a game about colonists, not about "saving your precious beacon". If you can't see that this is a massive design flaw, then don't reply.

Major case of the blinkers there chap. :rolleyes:

You won't see ships at all until you have the capacity to trade with them in the first place. Building your antennae in a high traffic area of an open colony that might lead to them being bombed a lot (mortars only target colonists, you can use that to your advantage by drafting someone and having them stand close to the mortar but out of range of their guns.) is silly. I've always kept mine out of the way because I don't want to see it and I barely use it. The orbital beacon must have a stockpile within it's radius and that stockpile must contain the items you wish to trade. Simply having silver stashed somewhere within the base is moot. There is a stun gun, actually.

I'm aware of the conditionals to trading, and the mechanics. (Gee, helpful forum).

This is the insanity at the moment:



Can't trade, can't buy beacon, game is totally broken. At the very least, land based traders should have an inbuilt beacon within X tiles of their tent.

For the beacons, actually you can only have them from :
Starting pods (x3)
Ground-traders (usually by one or two)
Ship-trader (Some ship have a lot of them)
Crafting from the Advanced Modifier (to place down this workbench, you need a part from a trader)
Random event (i'm not sure for the crates), but sometime a colonist will have a stroke and you will be send a LOT of the same item around him; So only two chance from the whole list of item to find either the beacon or the Advanced modifier)

Ground traders don't come near my base anymore, and if I trade with them there's simply no option to exchange goods with them > the "not enough silver" issue, even though I have 4k+.

Your list actually highlights the issue - the beacon antenna are buildable on the production stage below, and there's no reason for a single low level item to cause so many issues.

If the solution is :cheesing: (i.e. selling the antenna to keep it safe) then you know something is broken.


New things:

Colonist # balance

With so many new processes, and new events, the pool of available colonists is actually lower. I've only been able to get 7 so far, have never seen a slaver ship (even if I could talk to them) and so on.

Surprised no-one has modded tasers / stun guns yet.

AI colonists

Nice touch - should be cleaner robots though! Cleaning is a low reward job and time is precious with the new mods. A horde of cleaning AIs is just what I need...

Issue #1 - Beacons
The beacon is at electronic devices. It's a fairly early tech, IMO. Metal Synthesis > Makeshift Contraptions > Electronic Devices, beacon acquired. It should only take a couple days at most unless you are leaving research as a footnote. I tend to have someone simply research and research and research until I have Weapon Smithing, BioTech and Basic Furnishings, which is a fairly comfortable point to be at.

Nope. I'm talking about the production chain.

I've researched the entire tree up past bionics, and the beacon doesn't appear at any table - not even at the electronic workbench. This guide - https://i.imgur.com/xDUsKsN.jpg - clearly shows you need an advanced mod table to build them. Currently my game is now broken / unwinnable: the land traders won't set up close enough for me to trade a single item so I cannot get a beacon, and of course I can't contact ships.

It's broken, both in design terms and gameplay terms.

Issue #2 - Solar Panels
I assume you talk only of standard solar panels as you can build shoddy ones quite readily from Makeshift Contraptions. You can also build Wind Compressors and TBH, those things should serve you for quite some time. I had 4-5 of those things holding up my colony for quite a while. Using Oil is a sort of mid-game stepping stone to lift you off of the makeshift stuff but at the cost of requiring a dedicated hauler or to be playing so slowly that most of your colony is idle. Otherwise oil drums are constantly empty.

Again, this is about balance. With an advanced oil refinery up (4500w) there's no reason to build the proper solar.

Again, this is a bad design choice putting the parts too high up the production chain.

Issue #3 - Weapon lockers
I have no idea why you would use those over just creating a stockpile for weapons. They take up the same amount of space and store the same amount of weapons, except one uses resources and the other does not. My trade beacon's stockpile tends to act as the armoury, new colonists can pick up spare weaponry from there until I can build them something.

Two reasons: aesthetics and practicality. Lockers mean it's easier to streamline defenses so that I can put electro grenades near the kill zone to swap in case of mechs.

Added to that, it's still a bug / broken.

Issue #4 - Project Armoury
You can turn this off. Go into the mods and disable the Project Armoury TTM patch. I find that there is quite a lot of bloat in the armoury with duplicate weapons (Barrett M82/M107, same gun pretty much). Vanilla weapons might feel a little bland though with just one of each weapon type. A pistol, shotgun, rifle, assault rifle, energy rifle and sniper rifle. And an assortment of tribal stuff.

Thus my comments about pruning.

Issue #5 - Campfires
You don't fiddle with the campfire itself, you fiddle with the woodpile beside it. Same with the grilling racks, fiddle with their storage so that they do not store raw veg and you should avoid having 2-300 vegetable kebabs going rotten. Then again, if you have some haulers, bring them to the trade beacon and sell them.

Again, I stated you can't easily fiddle with the woodpile / grills.

Issue #6 - Food
It's a supply chain. There's a couple more steps involved beyond "to make food, have meat and two veg". Chop up a creature, prepare the meat, smoke it (smoked salmon, anyone?) then cook it into a meal. Prepared meat doesn't go off but smoked meat is food, which can lead to it going off or being eaten by colonists when you would prefer to cook it into something better. You'll probably want a dedicated cook to keep on top of this. If you leave everyone to do everything, nothing will get done because so many things need to be done.

I'm aware that it's a production chain.

It's a production chain that is bottle-necked and dysfunctional atm. Not having skill 7 in cooking -> never being able to raise the skill.

Added to this is the fact that smoked meats are eaten raw, rarely cooked with. Smoked salmon = eaten raw. Jerky = eaten raw. And so on.

Issue #7 - Producing medicine
You'll have to provide a screenshot with puush, screenSHU or some other program similar to these. I've never had an issue producing medicine. IIRC, you do need someone skilled in medicine or crafting, I don't remember which exactly and if no-one is capable, pfft, you ain't gonna get a single drop of morphine out of those herbs.

Ah, now that did explain it. My doctor had crafting turned off. Level 10 doc is enough to craft med kits.




Anyhow, the mod pack is very good overall, with some decent thought into it. It's made vanilla look unappealing However... I've now got to abandon my 1yr October colony because I cannot get beacons. >.<

That sounds like you don't got any wood log at any of your stockpiles.
When the game thing you don't got any wood, it don't show you the option when you select any.
The default selection is random, and don't saything that you can could build that kind of selection.
But that is a basic thing of the game not from the mod.

Yes, it's been answered four times now thanks.

The real bug was with the defaults - i.e. new tech labelled "plasteel X", "sandstone Y" etc.

Ok, fixed everything.

I'll write up feedback, but somethings that immediately stuck out:

Beacons are way too high on the tech tree.

It's entirely possible (I have this at the moment) to lose your beacon (from bombardment) and not be able to replace it. Roaming traders tend to set up far outside your colony once you've put defensive walls in, and I'm currently stuck in a loop - cannot trade, cannot get beacon to trade, cannot get advanced modifier machine bit to make advanced modifier to make beacon.

Solar panels = impossible to make and too high on the tech tree

See above. You can build oil refineries before solar panels. This is obviously borked for balance reasons.


Weapon lockers and other storage lockers lack the universal 'tick / untick all'

This isn't so much an issue with food storage, but is a massive pain with weapon lockers.

Guns are real world models - ugg

The guns mod is also more than a little silly - functionally, there's no point in having 100 odd weapons that are all the same. Needs serious pruning. And no, I don't want every Earth national variant of a gun that shoots bullets in epic detail - it doesn't fit the SF theme and strikes me as oddly obsessive / creepy in that "Ohhh, you collect WW2 'memorabilia', I seeee" way.

There's then x8+ different smithies for each type etc. Waaay too much. I suspect this is a mod that's been added to the package 'just because'. Needs seriously toning down and/or not in the total package.

Campfires need a light / damp option

Can't switch them off. Can't tell them not to use planks. Can't easily switch out foods (veg / meat). There's also a bug with them regarding rain: once rained on, they apparently break permanently and you cannot restart them. In the end I rebuilt one with a roof over it.

Atm I can do nothing else but constantly churn out 1000's of grilled foods with no option to micro the thing. Leads into...

Food tree is dysfunctional in the extreme

Why does basic dish take smoked meat? This doesn't work for two reasons: firstly, any RL cook will tell you that this is insane; secondly, see above issues with campfires. The entire process sticks right there. Raw meat takes 11 basic meat. Uff.

Added to this - there seems to be only one recipe that you can use to train your cooking up to 7 where the basic dishes can be made (both in soup menu and in food preparation station). I didn't start with any cooking, and haven't found any colonists with it - and in 1 1/2 yrs, my highest is 5.

Concoction Table doesn't work for med packs

I have all the ingredients, it's set up correctly, but no colonist can use it.




I'll add more - all in all the mod pack makes Rimworld very very good, there's just a lot of niggles.

Installed correctly, loaded mods in turn, TechTreeMini loaded first. vr 3.3fullpack.rar

Created a brand new world and brand new colony.

1) Played for about 10mins, tried to build a hut with log walls and wooden door. Clicked on the door, it turned to silver. Doesn't turn back to wood (not selectable). Reloaded; is now gold default with only silver choice. Unlocked new researches (wooden walls), none of them appear. Wooden door still not there.

In fact, all the defaults when unlocked are broken. I have default double-bed sandstone, plasteel table (short) and so on. Only option to change them to is... silver.

2) Quit game. Reloaded game. Unloaded mods. Quit game. Reloaded game. Loaded mods (double checking correct order). Loaded save game - comfortable mat now has GIANT red cross on it. But reload did fix that I could select "wood planks" - defaults are still all over the place though.

Looks like the issue is if you don't have the base material, the option won't open up. Not sure about the mat though, remains broken.

3) The new events - the % seems... wildly inaccurate. I've scumm'd 15 times now, and no matter the % chance (even as low as 48%), I failed them all.

<Lots of great info!>

Thanks for the info dump, appreciated


As for 18) - no idea. I suddenly started getting mental breakdown alerts with -14 "Saw a rotting body" and I was frantically checking to see if I'd not cleaned up the last tribal attack.

Nope. Somewhere in the wilderness one of my colonists lay dead. Checked him and it said "died of old age". I'd just not noticed >.<

[and got injured]

Ok, second attempt:

Temperate forest / large hills, medium sized map, 60% Cassandra: launched ship with 14 colonists saved, year 2 November (so 3 years, basically). Hostile native camp, hostile raider camp (so had criminals + lots of tribal attacks).

Some notes:

1) Kill zones: totally required. 1 square entrance, 12 sentry guns & 6 firing positions. I combined this with x3 mortars inside the same kill zone (but past the guns) which could fend off the encamped mortar attacks.

2) Colonists can take cover - this is never explained, but very important! So thanks for that advice

3) Building under mountains - hugely important, mortar fire cannot hit & the AI seems to enjoy targeting it (especially if your kill zone is at the entrance to the mountain).

4) Melee - underwhelming and/or useless. There's simply no useful melee weapons (cannot forge / trade for them either. e.g. where's the power swords? plasteel axes? etc) & even the scavenger claws aren't much use. Colonist with bionic arm + scavenger claws + full power armor + devil underwear = took several mins killing a rabid squirrel and got injured. She had 14 skill in melee, minor passion for it & brawler (!!)

5) No use for flowers or special croprowhatever trees. Farmed them, useless (assumed flowers > herbal medicine, no luck)

6) Would like to see more world threats - floods, earthquakes, monsters spawning (most threatening wildlife so far has been a deer) etc. At the moment there's little sense that this is a hostile planet (although, will try new biomes); mining out mountains, in particular, is too safe & easy to avoid problems; need some chance of tunnel worms / lava etc as a threat!

7) Malaria - seems to spread like plague and/or have the same variables. At one point, 7 people got malaria at the same time (!), despite me draining swamps in my colony. Should be % effected by open stagnant water / swamp / mud tiles. No quinine or cure. Same for plague, which should be curable - perhaps new bench "Medical research bench" in future?

Plasteel - basically what trading is for. Was a bit squiffed that the Alien ship didn't give any. Would be nice to have it craftable at the top of the industrial research tree.

9) Power usage: 3 geothermals are required, plus 7-10 solar. Batteries (x20 ish) seemed largely useless. Lights need to have switches attached so that colonists will auto on/off bedrooms.

10) Blight - why does it effect all crops? Makes little sense. Should be crop specific plus require research to cure or be durational: i.e. cannot grow crop X until time Y has passed or cure researched.

11) Visitors - don't do anything. Would like to have market stalls / bar / social area / campfire etc with special bonuses. e.g. "Spoke to someone outside the colony +7", "Heard tales of native Goddesses +10" etc.

12) Abrasive is vastly unbalanced. You simply cannot have a colonist with this trait.

13) Organs - largely useless. Harvested a full human set, never had to use them. Bionics in general aren't really worth the hassle.

14) Map only had metal, no silver / gold seams. Mined > 26k metal. Saw slate, but the building materials don't seem to be in / matter at the moment. RNG issue, but if the map had had the opposite (silver/gold, no metal), it would have been impossible. I'll try on an open map, but lack of metal will probably prevent a decent colony / ship.

15) Fire extinguishers - should be tradable for. AoE fire fighting. Likewise, need an option for "fire fighting zone" so that colonists don't run out beyond walls to fight fires that might at some point rage near a stone wall.

16) Turtling / concentric rings of stone walls. Like the game Qix, this is 100% the way to win. Slowly expand territory by annexing with stone walls without breaches, continue until most of map is taken (barring your single entrance). The problem is: if my colony had been breached anywhere but the killzone, I'd have been instantly over-run / squished.

17) The research tree / manufacturing trees obviously need work / more options. Research should be split into categories (medical, military, economic, industry, social) and need lots more options for all of them! At the moment, I think I'd researched everything / built everything (barring ship) within the first year - the rest of the time was spent scrounging up plasteel.

18) Colonist died from old age - there was no notification and I only realised once people started freaking out at a rotten corpse. Needs a notification.

19) The RNG only has a few invasion options, and is totally :cheesable:. By far the worst is "criminal drop pods" that drop into the middle of your colony - this is an instant reload atm.

20) The multitude of clothing options are under-used at the moment, and don't seem to have specific bonuses / differences; would be nice if different materials were slanted towards different crafts.

21) Not enough animals; no ranches / breeding, means I could only rarely use fine meals and never made a luxury meal. Would be a good expansion.

22) Noticed that there was fog - would be cool if there were other types of gases. e.g. explosive gasses while mining, poisonous ones near thermal vents etc.


Very enjoyable at the moment, but needs more flesh to it. So, all in all - pretty good experience. Looking forward to seeing the game progress & expand!

The numbers and ramp up in difficulty is calculated based on your wealth. Some of that is based on the buildings you own. Build too many turrets too early youre gonna get squashed as they arent turrets that murder raiders they are glass cannons. As it stands now as you build/get more colonists itll get harder and harder, after about 3 years yes youll need cheesy tactics to survive. This is being addressed by Tynan in future alphas. Not sure what to suggest right now bar messing a bit more and see which difficulty fits you.

Reading the forums / most recent patch notes, this was reported as fixed in this build. (e.g. # of turrets =/= sudden difficulty spike).

I had a total of ~6 normal turrets and 2 mortars on 100% Cassandra (normal). All the mobs (pirates and aliens) could easily outrange the normal turrets, even without mortars, making them useless.

However, the real killer was the extreme lack of time between encounters - literally 5-10mins between them, with no chance of repairing / healing etc.

[From about 300 tiles away]

Hi there. New to Rimworld, not new to the genre or strategy in general. Some questions:

1) Playing Cassandra, 100% - are the events / attacks scripted, or RNG? i.e. is there a set progression / escalation of encounters, or is it pure RNG? e.g. First 2 raiders > 4 raiders > 1-2 scythe machines > groups of raiders > and so on?

2) Does anyone play without :cheese:? i.e. I've read the forums, seen the "kill boxes" exploiting the AI's stupidity, and yet the vanilla difficulty is just silly.

Example:

I have ~7 colonists (2 captures, 1 RNG drop and 1 slaver bought), and have begun to turtle - stone wall around my area, x2 geothermal resources, 4 turrets and 2 mortars (only just got the tech) on my main entrance. Firstly, a raiding party sets up 3 mortars, and pummels my base. From about 300 tiles away (far SE corner of a mid sized map, I am in the far N / NW). I have 2-3 combat people, all using light arms, no armor and skill roughly 6-8; I cannot charge them, so... we exchange mortar fire for 15+mins until they run out of food & I can charge them. What this really does is drain my resources as I constantly have to repair. I cannot pick up their mortars to install in my base once I have killed them (!).

Immediately on killing the last one, 6+ raiders spawn and do a direct beeline to my base. I fight them off, just, loosing all the remaining turrets (2) and taking 3 prisoners. This is with the lucky help of 5+ visiting villagers. The raiders all have combat armor, some with power armor and machine guns that can hit turrets just outside the minimum range of a mortar. My toughest person has a single piece of combat armor and a M24 whatever sniper rifle.

Immediately on housing the prisoners and turning one of them (5mins, max), 2 large bug aliens and 1 fast scythe sniper spawns. My two quickly built EMP mortars (using the last of my resources that were depleted earlier) only stun them; my explosive mortars can't hit them. They decimate my walls at a range of 20+ squares (far, far outside normal turret range, but just inside mortar range, of course :rolleye:) then push on through my feeble fire (3 people with sniper rifles) and get a good 75%+ hit rate with their machine guns. All my combat people are down, the remnants have pistols.

I quit - the game simply isn't winnable at this point.


RNG or just bad weighting?
EMP - why does it only stun machine enemies? Fried circuits = damaged circuits.
EMP - stun doesn't last long / mortars are horrendously inaccurate for me... not so inaccurate for the AI.


So: I'm not interested in testing broken kill boxes and/or :cheesing: the AI, I'm just interested to know if the default difficulty is consistently this hard. If this is consistent, then alpha testers are damaging this game - it's an old problem with small niche games with dedicated fan bases (it's a form of mudflation where limited content + multiple replays leads the most experienced testers to demand difficulty curves far in excess of anything sane), but really - not so much fun.

I'm going to try again, but - having moved through the slowish build up to getting a colony onto it's feet, getting ROFL stomped by three over-powered events in quick succession is pointless. I pretty much maxed my colonist numbers and potential before this happened, and it simply wasn't beatable.