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Yeah, I'm sure.

On reloading an autosave of a Sniper Squad attack, I ended up with a more manageable second raid. Still, though, I think just the idea that the sniper raider group can spawn on a second wave, of all things, needs to be looked at one more time.

So far since I've gotten the game, every second Cassandra Classic raid has had five raiders, three of whom have M-24s. I assume this is the new sniper squad or whatever that was added, but seriously, it's a bit much for a situation in which you can only have two pistols at max unless you buy from a combat trader. It takes two hits to kill one of my colonists and three to destroy a turret, and they can do it from out of the turret range.

This hasn't been a one-time thing either, it's literally every time. First raid is normal, I get a longer-than-usual pause, and then Sniper Squad shows up, kills my colonists and torches the place. I could handle even five normal raiders, but when three of them are nigh-untouchable because they can decimate my people from outside of their firing range, it gets kind of ridiculous.

Anyways, I figured I'd post here to make sure it wasn't just this happening to me and to get some tips on how to deal with them, short of just 'Hope a combat trader shows up and you can afford a good weapon' (Because I'm not even sure that would work).

As the title might imply, this is a pretty simple bug: Whenever the individual psychotic squirrel event occurs, there isn't a 'Go To Location' option available. This is in build 250, and upon further inspection it doesn't occur with boomrats. Muffalo have yet to be tested.

[Desensitization]

Desensitization: Not sure how easy this would be to code, but the idea is that the amount of sanity penalty a colonist faces decreases with every successive time they experience it. So after a while they'd barely blink an eye at things like corpse-hauling duty or darkness, while new recruits would still jump at everything because they aren't used to roughing it on an alien world. Perhaps certain professions would have more resilience to certain situations as well.

[The Sad Story of Mineston]

The Sad Story of Mineston
A tale of mining, adventure, raiders and romance.
Written by DeltaV.

So, the game came out today, so I excitedly booted 'er up and started a colony. This is the tale of its creation, growth, and eventual destruction.

*Long story ahead, but I like to think it's worth it.*
Things started off well enough; I'd obsessed over enough youtube series that I already had a precise idea of what I needed to do. I spied a little mouth in the mountains to the south with a geothermal vent inside, and decided that would be my colonists' home. Digging began on a dormitory/eventual prison, and the  colony was christened Mineston, because I completely fail at creativity.

Anyways, things were going well enough leading up to the first raider attack; food was low, because I didn't want to make any useless farms when I could have hydroponics soon, but otherwise everything was good. I'd managed to recruit a military commissar, and he was the one on the frontlines when an assassin decided to try her luck.

The fight took a nasty turn pretty quickly when she managed to skirt around my turret range and into the dump pile, where she had good cover and protection from the turret. Eventually, though, she was incapacitated by Commissar Guy (It's a shame, somehow in this last five minutes I've been writing I've forgotten most of the colonists' names. RIP guys.) and shown to the prison.

(Gameplay feedback: Pathing doesn't seem to do much besides try the shortest route; Commissar Guy ended up clambering slowly through the dump and back to get Assassin Woman to prison, even though there was a perfectly good path around that, while not directly shorter, would have taken less time in the long run.)

Anyways, I'd learned my lesson and built a wall around the dump. A time of peace was had from here out; ample power was built from the geothermal vent, more housing was built, and Assassin Woman was recruited, bringing our total to five, who will be referred to as such:

1. Mr. Entrepreneur - A midworld nerd and then an urbworld entrepreneur. I let him ignore all physical work in favor of research and wardening, since he was the only one with social or technological skills.
2. Oaf Lady - A medieval slave and then a medieval oaf. Simple enough.
3. Settler Man - A vatgrown soldier turned colony settler. Decent all-around, except for social.
4. Commissar Guy - Detailed above. A medieval lordling turned military commissar.
5. Assassin Woman - Vatgrown assassin. Basically a killing machine.

Anyways, a sort of golden age was achieved as we went through the second cycle; aside from a psychotic squirrel wave (Which Commissar Guy and Assassin Woman, the two with the only weapons, quickly dispatched) and a battery short-circuit (They catch on fire in the rain, apparently, and they explode when on fire, so it didn't end very well), things were going well. Hydroponics were set up, the main common room was expanded, an armory was built and plenty of materials were obtained.

And that is when the Sniper Squad (Proper noun because these guys were DEAD-LY) showed up. Five against two and a couple turrets would be dangerous enough, but three of those five had M-24s or whatever the advanced snipers are called. They approached from the north, and the battle went like so:

The snipers stayed back, out of reach of pistol-wielding Commissar Guy and Assassin Woman, and focused on the turrets, which promptly exploded. One of them, with help from CG and AW, managed to take out the two pistol-wielders. Things were looking up, so obviously this is where things went horribly wrong.

In the misguided belief that they would have to come for me sometime, I let CG and AW remain on the frontlines, out of range of attacking the Sniper Squad. Needless to say, that didn't work out, and the Sniper Squad, left to their own devices, plinked at the 2-wall, 2-sandbag cover until it was obliterated.

My next plan was to pull AW back and move CG up to a nearby rock face, where he would hopefully be able to flank the Sniper Squad, who were taking cover in rubble and cacti. This worked about as well as you'd expect; two direct hits killed Commissar Guy, bless his soul, and incapacitated Assassin Woman. I conscripted Mr. Entrepreneur to save AW, and Mr. Entrepreneur took a hit in the process; thankfully, he survived (The Sniper Squad was focusing on my one, out-of-range remaining turret at the time, which died horribly almost immediately but kept Mr. Entrepreneur from being the target). Next, while ME saved Assassin Woman, I sent Settler Man, my next best shot, to grab Commissar Guy's pistol in an effort to kill off the Sniper Squad.

Settler Man was killed instantly.

(Gameplay Feedback: Advanced snipers should not show up on the second raid of Cassandra Classic raiders, especially when there's three of them.)

Realizing that I was dead meat, since the only weapons the colony had were in the immediate Sniper Squad killzone, I decided on my last, desperate flanking move: I would dig a tunnel from the hall that housed the colonists' rooms to the outside to the south of the colony, which was only two tiles or so of mining. While one of my colonists did that, I recalled the rest to said hallway. Once we had broken through, everyone began sneaking around the edge of the mountain in an ingenious effort to flank the Sniper Squad while they were busy attacking the colony, grab the pistols, retreat to the desert nearby, which had a long stretch of open land that would supply no cover for them, and start plink-plinking away. For a second, I thought we were saved.

Sadly, it doesn't look like sneaking is implemented in the game (Gameplay feedback: Put in sneaking), and immediately one of the three Sniper Squad members noticed us coming and went around to take us out. I made a hasty retreat, but Oaf Lady was killed. Luckily, the Sniper Squad member decided that was enough, leading Mr. Entrepreneur alive to go back and hide in the room of the recuperating Assassin Woman.

While Mr. Entrepreneur and Assassin Woman hid, the Sniper Squad marched around my colony, attempting but mostly failing to do any damage, since they didn't have any way of starting fires or blowing things up. The most they could do was sort of hit doors, which they did for a while. Eventually, the notice of my salvation appeared:

"The raiders have given up and started to leave."

This revelation made me laugh a bit. I began running through the laundry list of things I would need to do: Two colonists wasn't necessarily a death sentence, so long as I got the pistols back, rebuilt the turrets, repaired the damages, et cetera.

And of course, Mr. Entrepreneur decided that was the perfect time to go insane.

He was fed up; He was hungry, he was injured, he'd seen all his friends gunned down around him, and he was huddling in a cramped bedroom while a bunch of raiders stomped around, and now the raiders had decided that their colony wasn't even good enough to attack!

Injured, starving and meaning well, Mr. Entrepreneur marched out the door into the rain and mist and thunder...

And punched one of the members of the Sniper Squad square in the jaw.

Interestingly enough, the Sniper Squad member didn't just whip out his M-24 and blow a hole in Mr. Entrepreneur's head; they proceeded to trade blows for a while. The rest of the Sniper Squad, apparently not having noticed, calmly continued punching doors; it seemed the notice that the raiders were about to leave had been a bit preliminary.

Assassin Woman woke up at this point from her coma/several sniper shots to the head and body, and I sent her out to help Mr. Entrepreneur beat up the Sniper Squad member.

Sadly, and this was the part that broke my heart the most, eventually Mr. Entrepreneur, and then Assassin Lady, were incapacitated by the Sniper Squad member, who proceeded to light the doorway they were standing in on fire and leave with the others. I was forced to watch as the two bled out, together, presumably confessing their undying love to each other as their health points slowly ticked down.

"Assassin Lady, I know this is a bad time, since we're both bleeding out in a heap together, but... I've always loved you, since the day I met you a cycle ago."

"*Grunts*"

"I know! You may be a barely-human vatgrown assassin with no social skills who tried to kill us all at one point, but since this is the end... I love you, Assassin Lady, I really do and I always have."

"*Grunts*"

They both died, and the camera panned out as the game ended.



Anyways, that's the (Slightly dramatized towards the end) story of Mineston. Sorry there was only the one picture at the end, I expected this to be a successful colony and I wasn't assuming there'd be enough real action to write a story on it.

As usual, please leave your comments and feedback below. I'd love to write some more stories like this based off my RimWorld escapades if you guys enjoyed it.

Tynan, you are officially the literal best game developer in history.

It WOULD be nice to be able to terraform. Just plop down a terraformer on the desert and it would change a radius around it into soil over time.

An idea that I've not seen yet: Make it possible to place growing zones on top of graves (the current ones and/or the mass graves that have been suggested.) The zone could conceivably get a small boost as a 'fertilizer,' or not do anything and just make building your colony a little more efficient in terms of space usage.

If this were to be put in, it should give a big decrease in happiness and increase in fear to colonists farming on the land. I mean, you're literally using dead bodies as fertilizer. They already freak out just walking on top of graves.

I agree that a mech suit would work well, but only in a context where it's going to be used for mining/constructing/etc. Maybe it adds a temporary skill boost to the person in it while they're using the suit, but takes fuel (There's uranium already in the game for unimplemented reactors IIRC).

My opinion on this ideas:

1. I like this. Maybe if you saved it as walls but set the stamp inside a mountain, it would automatically set the area to be dug out first?
2. This one is fun too. Maybe you could cycle through them by, say, clicking on 'walls' multiple times until the one you wanted was there.
3. Once again, a good idea.
4. I don't know about this, having every wall essentially be a light would use a LOT of electricity. Maybe just like ceiling lights or something.
5. Again, I like it.
6. I think the idea of rubble is that you have to move around to keep raiders from using it as cover. Although it would be cool if you could stack two on top of each other to save space, but it would work as full cover.
7. I like this one, but it seems like it would basically make you invincible; just get a bunch of metals, cover your outside with these defense walls and you're good forever.

Colonists should make an effort to go around areas like graves and active fighting unless they absolutely have to.

I've changed my mind: Use your money to buy all the swags.

All. The. Swags.

Swag
noun
1.
an ornamental festoon of flowers, fruit, and greenery.
"ribbon-tied swags of flowers"

EDIT: Either that, or buy a Yolo.

Yeah, Tynan deserves a round of applause, not only for making and continuing to make this amazing game but also for actively participating in the forums, directly acting on player suggestions, and all-around being a pretty cool guy from what I've seen.

Pshh. 300,000 isn't a lot, just get five or six hydroponics tables up and running and you can get easily that much in a few cycles with enough traders stopping by.

So, does the prototype pack come out at the same time as the game does, or did I miss an email at some point? I'll admit, I'm nearly as excited for the 'zombie tactical sim' and 'starship constructor', unfinished as they may be, as I am for the RimWorld release