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The notification that tells you relations have improved contains a grammar error. It says "Relations have with faction have warmed. They are no longer hostile to you."

The first "have" shouldn't be there.

Perhaps a twin approach would be best. So you give the base skill, as now, then the effective skill (due to bionics, cataracts, etc). So if someone has a base skill of 10 shooting, but has cataracts in both eyes and one arm, their effective skill in shooting might be 1.

That's how it is already. Shooting skill is one of the factors that determine hit chance. Same with melee.

This applies to other things as well, such as surgery success chance, how much food butchering provides, etc. Sight, manipulation, and consciousness are all very important to many tasks. Even with social, having a broken jaw (which lowers talking) can affect trade prices and prisoner recruit chance.

I think it would be better to just let people know about the info tab more in the first place. The tutorial doesn't point it out currently.

[Maybe one of the times when you offer sanctuary the raiders chasing the person are only trying to kill a mech infiltrator who springs into mech form right after you "save" them.]

The spy event was removed because it was annoying.  I figure the same response to this idea.

HOWEVER!

A Mech spy within an enemy raid or visitor group would be interesting.  "Visitors from the village of peace and sunshine are visiting your colony."  Then just as they hang out and start to eat a Mech bursts out of one of them and suddenly its a slaughter.  The visitors fight it as you rally your people to finish it off. 

Or in the middle of a pirate siege the camp erupts in violence as a few show themselves as mechs.

That would be fun since it doesnt rip a colonist from you who might be very valuable.  But makes the regular events less predictable.  Maybe one of the times when you offer sanctuary the raiders chasing the person are only trying to kill a mech infiltrator who springs into mech form right after you "save" them.

That would be cool!

Yeah, I would prefer having to manually target wargs / insane animals too.

It might be time to let to story take its course?

If you had built a cyptosleep casket, you could've put the testy colonist in that until you had everyone else healed up. Your options are limited otherwise, unless you just want to kill off the offending colonist.

I wondered if this was possible. Do you draft the colonist and force him to melee or shoot the berserk colonist? I tried, but they only fought him AFTER his initial attack, but only if he attacked them. They didn't help out if a fellow colonist was being attacked by one of their own, but retaliated if personally attacked. It just made it a short fight because the berserk colonist was a brawler, specialising in melee attack, and was armed with a plasteel knife. Brutal.

So how do I defend my colonists against a broken fellow colonist? Do I draft them and force them to melee, or do I have to wait until they are attacked to defend themselves? Sadly, as the berserker is...well...berserk, I can't force him to drop his plasteel knife. Like I said in the original post, I rewound time by virtue of a former autosave and made him drop it and locked the bad boy in his room. But what happens if I open the door? Do I starve him? Will that affect the other colonists' morale?

You could actually arrest said colonist as well, but after you get them to re-join the colony they'll take a mood hit that will last a week or so, meaning you would need to pamper them for a bit.

Anyway, yes, a drafted colonist can arrest or attack other colonists via the right click menu. You can also have them shoot other colonists by clicking the drafted colonist's weapon and clicking on the offending colonist. No need to melee unless you just want to.

Also, in the future, try to at least keep a good amount of herbal medicine around. If you have a decent doctor, they'll be able to bandage/set/etc. wounds with good quality if they have herbal medicine. Poor quality treatments have a higher chance of scarring or becoming infected (which can be life-threatening).

I'm currently working on building a fortress in challenging cassandra classic. Given the crazy-large amounts of materials I need, adding rooms and expanding has been a slow process (as in, 60 days before getting a trade beacon and even longer before having five separate bedrooms). The way I'm expanding the base doesn't leave everything connected by hallways and such at first... Let's just say, it really has been challenging between balancing my colonists' mood, fighting or surviving the waves of enemies, particularly tribals (necessity is the mother of invention), and so on, but the warg attack is one of two or three highlights in my playthrough so far.

I had just finished putting walls around my growing zone... I'm so glad for that. I managed to hastily throw up a couple wooden walls and a wooden autodoor to close off the colony's center, kitchen, freezer, production room, and growing area off from the outside. The colonist's bedrooms were, unfortunately, disconnected. The center room was exposed on three ends, with the top end barricaded by the wood walls to provide access to the kitchen and such. Twelve wargs. Five colonists. I only had two turrets outside (on the north and south ends), which managed to take about three of them total. They skulked about for days before I figured that I might be better off trying to risk killing them off. I tried peeping out with multiple weapons; the sniper rifle could only get off one shot before allowing entrance, and none of my colonists were skilled enough to hit with it. The minigun could get a hit or two in, but the cooldown left too big of opening for counterattack. Interestingly enough, the pistol (a weapon that before now I hadn't considered very useful) was perfect for hit-and-hide tactics given its quick warm-up and cooldown. These tests and tactics continued for a couple more days, and some passing visitors managed to take down two more wargs (though none of the three survived it). Some wargs started dying of blood loss around that time, and I managed to finish off the last two the next day.

Seeing those blasted animals get butchered was immensely gratifying. My whole base was completely encircled with patches of blood.

Using turrets would take most of the fun out of it, to me. That felt more like a siege on the colony than any mortar squad did. I can only imagine if that had happened before I had a steady internal source of food.

In addition to (after) a vacation/break, maybe this would be a good time to flesh out the backstory and lore some more? It might make for a nice change of pace if you're getting burnt out on coding and gameplay brainstorming.

Thanks again for the advice guys. Any other suggestions?

Since you're already reading quite a bit, you might want to make use of the in-game info menus. It actually took me awhile to notice it. Basically, whenever you select any object, be it a colonist, an animal, a wall, a resource, whatever, in the bottom left of the screen within the interface there's a little "i" symbol. Click that to find out more about the object. The stats in these menus can be very useful- that's how you would find out that making a longsword out of plasteel is a good idea in the first place, for instance, since looking at the info for plasteel notes that it gives an offset to piercing damage. You can click on the stats themselves too, which sometimes offers additional info. Say, with a colonist, one stat might read that the speed they smooth floors at is x%- clicking on this would break down how the pawn's smoothing speed is calculated by the game (skills, sight [affected by eye damage or enhancements], etc.).

So... yeah. Check the info tabs if you aren't already. They're useful.

I wish the tutorial would point them out to newbies.

I've been using this method in the early game, when my colonists can't take on mechanoids through traditional means. Basically, you have one or two colonists with shields that are the bait- they don't even need to move. As long as they are the closest colonist to the respective mech, the mech will always fire at them. This is where the small numbers helps- the shield is never damaged enough to burst completely, and the mechs never wise up enough to attempt to melee. Your other colonists can take their sweet time chipping away at the mechs until they drop.

I had never tried to adapt it to larger numbers, though. I imagine the micromanagement needed would be insane.

It might be time to let to story take its course?

If you had built a cyptosleep casket, you could've put the testy colonist in that until you had everyone else healed up. Your options are limited otherwise, unless you just want to kill off the offending colonist.

If you think you might want to build a ship later on, you might want to hang on to enough to construct it. Beyond that, if I have an abundance of it, I tend to try to craft longswords out if it for any melee specialist(s) I have. Aim for masterwork or better and sell the rest (which turns a very nice profit, btw). Of course, I don't generally attempt to craft anything with it until I have a 20-level crafter, which takes awhile to get. Even when maxed out, colonists don't seem to have any floor for quality; the ceiling just rises. You want as much of an opportunity as possible to get a high-quality product when you're dealing with lucrative materials.

I consider turrets disposable, so I personally wouldn't use plasteel on something like that. Building your mortars out of it wouldn't hurt though. You could also build a saferoom out of it if you wanted, or even upgrade your prison walls. I don't think plasteel's beauty is enough to justify making art out of it. You're better off saving up and using silver or (if you're more dedicated than I tend to be) gold for high-end art. (Note: If you're wanting to sell the art rather than keep it, I've heard around the forums that silver art isn't profitable.)

Is it smart to melee a sycther because he landed in my base ignored the colonists and started to ignite the solar generators. He didn't even go after the colonists when they went past him. All I got is a pistol and melee what do I do😡

You can melee a scyther... but not that early on in the game. Even if I had 20-skill melee specialist with a legendary plasteel longsword, I would be hesitant to have him attack the scyther unless the circumstances called for it. (Also, on that matter, I don't think I would ever have a melee specialist attack a centipede, short of a total colony death scenario.)

Use the pistol as best as you can. You usually start off with a survival rifle also; you might want to consider using that instead depending on how much cover you have around.

Oh boy, more realism arguments. As long as it's balanced and adds to the gameplay, it doesn't need to mimic reality perfectly.

For balancing purposes I think the happiness debuff, the steel requirement, and (maybe) Botulism could all make it have it's share of drawbacks while still keeping it a worthwhile endeavor.

+1 to everything in cuproPanda's post, btw. That sounds awesome.

you have the code to back up the statement he must send a raid within 20 days?  As I have seen 30 days pass with no raids, just random drop pods, zzzzts, fires, but no raids.

Yes, but only from A10. I didn't even downloaded A11 because i'm waiting for mods, so i don't know if Tynan changed something.

Code Select Expand

    <random_MaxThreatBigIntervalDays>23</random_MaxThreatBigIntervalDays>

You can always look at the StorytellerDefs in Core

Are raids the only events considered a big threat?

Mass animal insanity and psychic waves can be pretty devastating. Blights, solar flares, and so on are more "minor".

Events are the bread and butter for a game like this imo, the more the better. I do understand the need to develop other core aspects of gameplay, though.

The faction system could use some work. I've been hoping for that for a long time now.