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Congrats!

If there is any good time to lose one or two pawns, it's at the start of the ship sequence, it'll ease the following raids, works well with vanilla storytellers as well.

Alex has huge kill stats, that's also why i'd rather not use them in the metrics, outliers may be hard to deal with. As a side note kills from mortars also give mood buff for bloodlust pawns, so you could use 'chimpanze', 'legend' and 'morton' on the first round of mortars to fulfill easily their need for kills.

I'm impressed you made it with so few deaths with this set up, notably with mechs, your pawns behind sandbags are all in the AoE of their heavy charge blaser. Usually people hide themselves behind a mix of walls and sandbags, and spread the defense out.

Yeah, 10 years and only one death, at that point cassie goes for the kill. Most of your colonists are worth more than a centipede for the storyteller.
But she also takes into accounts more significantly down colonists and health status, so it should help during the ship sequence.
This is fine since i like apocalyptic endings, but still, i delayed the time factor for those who like playing 15-20yo colonies. In this version the max weight was roughly reached after 5 years as a colonist, it's more like 10 in the last update.

An antigrain warhead on top of a tribal raid is always satisfying. And i've seen there's an outpost with 2 more

No cap confirmed 

Thanks, it'll help for the end game tuning, I'll look into it!

Edit: i've looked into it and you've overcome 20000 pts, you're using the 9-1 version (1st update). In the 11-3 version (2nd and current update) i tuned it down, since the philosophy of this mod is a "no kill box" storyteller. So even on merciless, 1 million wealth and 40+ colonists you'd still be under 20000pts. So if you plan to give another try, i'd say you're ready for merciless difficulty with adaptive Cassie!

Yes, there's a hard cap at 20000 points in vanilla... which i've removed, because i don't like hard caps

That said adaptive cassie is much more progressive and lenient early mid game, she'll only catch up with cassandra classic in late game, if you've been really successful. And in the latest version it should take even more time, but still there's a 3 to one difference between experienced colonists and recruits.

But i don't think you're actually at 20000 points, it's the vanilla graph which i think is disconnected from the mod's formula. You're so high because you're wealthy and must have a large team (even in vanilla the points are mostly based on colonists in the end-game with large colonies).

If you've made it so far i'm confident you'll successfully start up the reactor. Don't be afraid to send your latest recruits to the frontline!

In the last update i've mainly rebalanced how the weights given to colonists increases with time, to make it more progressive. Here, at year 7-8, with few killed colonists, this factor should be high (even in the previous version i've never overcome vanilla's difficulty, but i had losses).
If you've got any save file before the launch it'd be really usefull to compare the end games.

The other points i'd like to check with the new version is whether raids on top aren't too easy and whether we can play merciless reliably without killboxes and cheesy tactics.

Animals are aweome. The line is drawn by my cpu 

I've updated the dropbox version, same link.

Actually, wealth has very little impact beyond 400k. It's mainly the experience of your colonists which grows with time. I've reduced it in the last update. Another advantage she gives is for large colonies, the threats no longer increases linearly with the number of colonists.

22 centipedes is tough according to any metric

Yes, and the idea of this mod is really to get away from the wealth crush. I've just rebalanced it, always in the spirit of a no killbox defense, delaying the time/factor.
It should be "easier" but in Rimworld much of the difficulty is in the playstyle of the player.

Yes, if anything i'm thinking of slowing the pace at which she catches up to vanilla's storyteller.

As you can see the recovery is short when it's negative ( less than 10 days). Chased refugees are relatively rare at mid- high pop, so it's not really significant.
Even the strategy to recruit poor pawns to sacrifice is hard on the long term, because you've to recruit them and they always end up valuable in some way, and they still increase your threat points even if they can't shoot at their feet!
That's also why experienced pawns are weighted up to 3x a new recruit.
All in all, it's hard to base a strategy on attrition, but it helps for recovery.

Thanks, it will help. It's roughly working as intended, your colony had a good start, savage difficulty, day ~200ish, 9 healthy colonists. 10 scythers is a deadly threats, but they can be handled with a few casualties and micro. You had 4 melee with shields, animals and shooters. You can also die, but that's Rimworld 

That said i'm thinking of a few tweaks. The idea of this mod is to stick to vanilla balance but with more time for colony building, more importance given to experienced colonists and lower threats when colonists are out. I could delay the weigh increase of colonists at lower difficulty levels.

Thanks for the feed back, i'll check it out.
Do you have a save just before the scyther raid to see how it compared to Cassandra Classic?

A swarm of small manhunter animals is harder to deal with in the open, and fighting behind sandbags is really brutal. I'd add a few traps and turrets. Funneling pirates into traps is cheesy but using a few traps strategically placed is really useful and fair.

Mie is always a keeper for my colonies, such a good background, too bad she didn't make it. I've seen Truth, he's almost spent a year as a colonist, but you also have a good pool of prisoners. With Adaptive Cassie, the following raid must have been easier after the manhunter pack. It's nice to see she's working as intended, after almost two years and a rather good start, she's still more lenient than Cassandra classic as you're building your colony.

The fun points are reflective of the threat on your colony (vanilla) and the adapt days on "recovery" are translated into a factor. For example at 60 days (when you lost Truth) it's worth 1.2 (20% larger threats) 0.8 at 0 days (where you're in your last screen shot - i.e. -20%), and weighted 70% at savage difficulty i.e. +/- 14%. It can go higher but the growth is slower (like in your previous playthrough) so it's rather theoretical.

OK, i think they're just flukes and within the random distribution. The main factor is time. Melee is factored in as well and your melee fighters are doing well.
I could add more stats in the metric, but i'm not sure how it would impact the load of the cpu, so i'd rather keep it "simple".

Adaptive Cassie has the same rythm as Cassandra Classic, so you should only feel the difference on the threat scale (size of the threats). Notably when guys are out caravning.

Ok, so i've finally opened the save back home. It's working as intended, the threats with adaptive cassie in your end game are slightly lower than vanilla.

Here are the relevance of your pawns (purple)


As a comparison, in green, a merciless playthrough combat oriented, with an end game around vanilla's level.

Most of your pawns are relevant for my storyteller.

Two outliers:
Vebo the most experienced after 11 years, by a long shot.
Linnea the least experienced after 8.7 years, did you try to protect her from the frontline?

Sofia got her experience real quick.