Messages

It would make sense to have t-shirts grant a little heat insulation. They're better to wear when it's hot.

The scale is not linear.

EMP grenades should damage personal shields. Using short-ranged grenades against melee guys is dangerous and I don't see why it shouldn't be rewarded. Pirates tend to outnumber you. Randy Random 100% has just sent a 4 MELEE ONLY siege against my colony which is building the spaceship, which is laughauble at this point. But that doesn't mean I could counter them with my own melee without casualties and lost limbs.

So my options against melee is, again, overwhelming turret firepower and especially turret explosions. Massed shielded melee guys are hard to break without losing at least a few turrets. Personal shields can have one niche counter in the form of EMP grenades.

I prefer more elegant and less game'y ways of discouraging fully underground bases. You're getting some extra benefits from digging holes, but it's too much. A good number of challenges only affect outdoor areas: lightning, storms, wildfire, mortars, raiders or mechanoids dropping directly on top of you.

What if underground bases had methane seeping from the rocks ? Enjoy your underground turrets with methane ! Earthquakes which are particularly dangerous to underground areas and cause cave-ins.

Power sources have to be exposed, so what if raiders were smart enough to target solar panels and geothermal generators ? What if they used chemical warfare, even tribals could be smart enough to choke your underground colonies with smoke.

I think some restrictions come far too often, for example incapable of hauling. I'd rather have most disabilities only manifest in -X to skill, -passion to skill.

Rice should only be plantable in shallow water or marsh.

By the way, making doctors feed patients is a bad idea.

I want my operations and treatments done by the most skilled doctor I have. A botched treatment can mean a scar, a lost limb or death. On the other hand, I don't think feeding patients has any skill requirement, and I don't think it's affected by any skill. My doctor is a careful shooter, but got his leg chopped off early on, so he fights in base defence only now. He is a skilled researcher and has a burning passion for art.

Having this peg leg veteran run around and feed patients is a waste of his time, especially when two of my soldiers come back from fighting off siegers injured. I have to manually order him to treat both, while someone else is feeding them.

So I'm tempted to assign more doctors, to help with feeding patients. Then they go and botch treatments and operations, I have to manually drag them from hospitals.

Proposal: make feeding patients fall under Wardening. It won't be perfect either, but the worst that can happen is you recruit someone later.

Slavery in African tribal societies was and is almost identical to the system that the West used in the colonial era. Tribal Africans actually went to war specifically to gather slaves. Europeans learned that system from black West African slavers, who went and enslaved a bunch of people, herded and sold them as cattle to Westerners. Difference is, we stopped. This still happens today, particularly throughout Africa and  Asia.

If you are interested in the subject, please read "Black Mother" by Basil Davidson. He was a historian and an archeologist specifically interested in Africa, how Africa looked from inside. This book describes how slave trade looked from inside Africa.

The slave trade in Europe stopped not because Europeans got civilized or kind, but because the industrial revolution ended. The market for workforce became saturated, people would travel to America to work there. Why bother with slaves. The American founding fathers who ostensibly opposed slavery had mansions with black servants.

Africans wanted to end the slave trade with Europe, they just couldn't. One of the most guarded technological advantages Europeans had were ships capable for long distance seafaring. They repeatedly rejected requests to sell this technology. So Europeans were able to travel along the coast, and if one region got wise and rejected slave trade they would go to another one. Worse, they would sell things like firearms. Suddenly your neighbors were armed much better than you, and we know where that leads. To stop slave trade completely Africans would all have to unite, and for the reason mentioned above only isolated regions managed to reject slave trade.
The best they managed to do was to insist that slaves are only paid for in rifles. They insisted that they only sell a slave if they got firearms in return. Then they had stuff to rebel with. This strategy was employed in areas like the delta of Kongo.

Long story short, slave trade with Europe fueled terrible wars in Africa and made tribes wage wars on each other to get slaves. Over 300 years of European/African slave trade has dealt terrible damage to African culture and society. There were many developed cities in Africa which eventually became desolated as a result, for example Meroe in Kush. Africa is the land of lost civilizations and there are examples of that in the book. Backed with source quotes, pictures, and photos.

This needs a new column in "work:overview" or similar. I may want to forbid someone swimming if there's a siege. One column combining all fun activities.

Swimming
Snowball fights !
Climbing trees
Fist fights, with no bruises that need treatment.
Gathering flowers, making garlands and wearing them.
Exploring. This would be more meaningful if there was fog of war. To make it look believable you'd have to make a list of cells seen by the colonist.
Jumping out and scaring other people. A hauler is carrying steel, Raygun jumps out and goes Boo! Hauler drops steel and loses a few seconds, then picks stuff up and goes on.
Anything but sex or masturbation. That's more offensive than murder in America. No one does it anyway.

Have you tried this approach where you keep track of all humanoid enemies killed by your colonists, and increase cost of going there as kills ramp up ? This should result in quite natural strategic behavior. Raiders would mark these areas as not worth going to.

Raiders could also use an improvement on tactical side. First of all they should use cover better, duck for cover when under fire and enemy is out of range.

I don't like killboxes, but I find my bases progressing into them as the game goes on. There just isn't enough steel and power to plant turrets everywhere, and I consider myself lucky if I can field half as many shooters as the pirate team.  Tribes are the worst, what other alternative there is to defending against tribes ?

We need alternatives to killboxes. Mortars are far too inaccurate to reliably counter sieges, and a major steel drain. I think current turrets are a crutch, they're the one-size-fits-all defense, they shoot, they explode, they attract enemy attention. Manned turrets that don't require power could be a step in the right direction. They're static, yes, but they would give colonists a reason to be where the bullets are flying. Guard towers that have to be manned, can shoot over walls, allow baddies to return fire, and have a minimum range so if someone is close by he can't be shot.

I also think there are too many colonists with shooting disabilities. My current colony is 11 people, no rerolling. There are 5 people who can shoot, I take everyone who comes by, and I even bought 2 slaves. Of the remaining one is an empath, another a brawler, one an old lady with TWO cartaracts, bad back AND frail - technically she has Shooting 8. There are also some melee guys and artists with 0-2 Shooting skill. 1 out of my 5 decent shooters has a peg leg now, I dreamed about giving her a bionic leg but there weren't any offers so far and the ship is 1/4 done.

This game needs something fun, like methane emissions underground.

That's plain mortars. Have you tried 3 incendiary mortars ? Sounds crazy, but might just work.

You probably need more of it. Check out a bill on a tailor table, click on "config". It says how much do you need. For example pants take 50, and that's one of lowest requirements.

Is this just me, or mortars are generally not worth it using yourself ? "Shooting" skill at 20 doesn't seem to improve accuracy. I guess I'd need 2-3 to have a measurable effect, and that's 500-750 steel.

Meanwhile you could have visiting friendly factions give you minor gifts. For example visiting tribes could give herbal medicine, fine/lavish meals, a dead elk, some leather. They might heal one of your sick or wounded. Visiting settlers would drop a small quantity of steel, stone blocks, or help you with construction if materials are nearby, or cut some of trees you've designated. These would be minor gifts of hospitality and goodwill.