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[Death by a Thousand Cuts]

Death by a Thousand Cuts

Storyteller: Cassandra
Difficulty: Merciless
Scenario: Naked Brutality
Biome/hilliness: Arid Shrubland
Commitment mode: No, though I play in that style
Current colony age (days): ~20
Hours played in the last 2 days: ~8
Complete mod list: None

Just as things were getting stabilized a camel went mad. Zippy got off a few shots with her poor quality bow, but due to inexperience with the new door changes the camel muscled its way indoors. As I watched in horror, the camel bit Zippy in the shoulder, downing her. About 8 hours before she was going to bleed to death, Zippy gets up! She's at zero mood, but there's plenty of time for her to eat some berries from the floor and tend herself, right? Not quite... she gets food poisoning from the berries, vomits throughout her self treatment, and finally goes berserk. In her haze of camel bite and food poisoning induced rage, she attacks the 4 remaining chickens that joined the colony about a week prior (she'd been slowly slaughtering them as they starved to death in the corner). While Zippy is able to take out a couple chickens, she takes about 15 scratches and goes back down. Killed by her own chickens.

The Man in Black

Storyteller: Cassandra
Difficulty: Merciless
Scenario: Crashlanded
Biome/hilliness: Temperate Forest
Commitment mode: No, though I play in that style
Current colony age (days): ~40
Hours played in the last 2 days: ~8
Complete mod list: None

Nothing noteworthy early game -- I put up a few nice bedrooms and storage/dining rooms with about 2/3 of the storage built out of stone, but the freezer is still wood. Two of my colonists decided to get married, then immediately break up (seriously, the notifications came in at the exact same time: Propsal Accepted! Breakup!).

Of course immediately after I deconstruct the wooden freezer walls to upgrade them I get a raid with a molotov guy. My defenses are in shambles, and the raid goes about how you would expect -- the molotov guy lights the freezer on fire, as well as a bedroom, as well as all three of my colonists at various points. Finally we drive off the raid (with no deaths), but one of my two doctors can't move, and everyone is wounded. By the time I get the fires put out, everyone has infections. I'm able to get 2 of the three of infections treated before my doctor goes catatonic. So I've got one guy infected in such a way that he can't move, another infected and now catatonic, and a third infected who refuses to doctor at all. Infection lock -> certain death.

But no! A Man in Black appears to rescue me. He's even got good medical. Of course, he wants to change into the dogskin shirt that by some miracle didn't burn up in my storage room before treating anyone, but beggars can't be choosers. If my rescuer wants to change his shirt, let him. That being said, he isn't able to save anyone except the jerk who wont doctor, so really he's just the burial crew.

The Man in Black is kinda weird: his "sex" is "Man in Black." I assume there is a "Woman in Black" and that they suffer from psychic drones as appropriate. Just kinda a funny way to note the "in Black" origin. I was expecting it in the Backstory, but my Man in Black looks like a random wanderer.

I'm planning to keep going with this colony of now two; we'll see how it ends.

Initial Thoughts on New Door Behavior

• Theorycrafting: I want to like this b/c it's realistic, but I think I'm gonna hate it. A wall + doors used to be the best defense in rimworld. Now, not so much.
• First death: Died to a gazelle on day 4. The shame.
• Resurrect with dev mode and spawn a bunch of single person raids/animal insanity to try things out: Well, it's probably okay mid/late game where I can use the new behavior to lure a couple raiders inside a killbox trap (since raiders don't hold doors open). Early game is much harder.
• Further attempts: I'm not sure. I kinda like the idea, but the execution leaves something to be desired. I think my main issue is that it used to be possible to recover from a mistake during  micro on early raids (taking a hit from club man or whatever), now if I make a mistake the raiders/mad animals are in the base and it's likely GG. I'm sure I'll get better as I get used to how early I need to retreat now, but... meh.

• Early naked brutality is now much harder:
• one mistake in micro and raiders are in the base. (I know, git gud)
• one mistake in micro and ranged units are pretty much dead vs a melee unit. (I know, git gud)
• no longer safe to put anything outside by a door. A raider attacking a bench near a door is close enough to follow you back inside if you open the door. This doesn't seem terrible, just an adjustment.

• single mad animal events are much harder
• most animals are faster than humans now. Previously this meant you had to have an outbuilding to retreat into at a reasonable distance. Now you pretty much have to be inside all the time to be safe, since animals will always catch up and you can no longer shut doors in their faces.
• the animal AI around small buildings will often run around the corner. Peeking out to shoot frequently now means the animal gets inside. Previously, you could frequently get one shot at an animal as it came around a corner, then retreat. Now, taking almost any shot is suicide. Note: this is only really bad when you have a small building, as the animal will circle the building, staying close to the walls. Probably a non-issue later in the game, but early game this is painful.
• A short bow can fire one shot at an animal before you must retreat due to its short range/animal speed.

• A pawn outside the base is no longer even remotely safe, even if you have built outbuildings (see mad animal notes above).
• there are no longer "close calls" for anything chasing your pawn. Either you are obviously safe, or you're dead. (I know, git gud)
• A single melee hit on a pawn now ensures that raiders will enter the base. This is due to the interaction with various melee and door changes in 1.0 (slow down on melee hit + raiders entering doors means a pawn cannot ever get away if they get melee hit once)

Random notes from recent playthroughs

• I saw a 10 person siege, with 10 sniper rifles.
• Tried to fulfill a trade caravan for 8 normal jackets with a couple tainted (normal quality) jackets. Did not work -- which seems right to me, except nowhere in the UI does it explain why I can't fulfill the trade. It just gives me a message about needing 8 normal jackets, while I'm literally looking at a list of 8 normal jackets in the Items menu. I'd recommend changing the wording of the event to say something like "they want 8 non-tainted jackets."
• Incapable of violent pawn went berserk
• I saw a Tough Wimp in the pawn selection screen
• I keep forgetting where "smooth surface" is. I expect it to be in the structure menu, since it applies to walls now. It's also kinda a painful tool to use since (1) I can't just drag it quickly for floors now - I have to carefully drag to make sure it doesn't apply to the walls by the floor, and, (2) You can't smooth corners of rooms, which means it's frequently useless as a wall if I want to put power lines around a room. It would be great if the pawns could build the corner pieces of smooth just like normal walls (a great recent addition)
• A quick build button for transport pods on the UI when a transpod launcher is selected would be nice
• Greedy for impressive bedroom --> Run Wild. She's so fed up with not having a nice bedroom she decided to live without one entirely.

[Short Story About Food Poisoning]

Storyteller: Cassandra
Difficulty: Rough
Biome/hilliness: Jungle with a small river and mountains
Commitment mode: No, though I play in that style
Current colony age (days): 25
Hours played in the last 2 days: ~8
Complete mod list: None

Short Story About Food Poisoning

Context: I started with a lvl 4 cook, cooking in a room with dirt floors (-0.95 clean). I did not see food poisoning until day 19 (I started cooking around day ~8), then hardly a single day went by without multiple incidents. From day 19 on at least one person was in some stage of food poisoning at all times. I didn't last long enough to get my kitchen cleaner and see how that impacted things.

day 19: 2 food poisonings (Ally, Perfection)

day 22: 2 food poisonings (Ophelian, twice) - Ophelian got food poisoning, then went on a food binge when it hit major. Having had food poisoning serveral times, that's about the last thing I would do if I mentally broke down during it. That being said, it was pretty hilarious to watch her get through 3/4 of a meal, then drop it and vomit everywhere, then pick her meal right back for try number 2. Then... get food poisoning a second time from that meal. Literally: drop meal to vomit, pick meal back up and start eating, recover from food poisoning, finish meal, get food poisoning. I was crying with laughter.

day 23: 2 food poisonings (Opelian, Perfection) - Openlian got food poisoning with her morning meal. That was 3 meals in a row for her. She must hate Ally (the cook) at this point.

day 25: 1 food poisoning (Ally)
    - Raid. *Everyone* has food poisoning at this point (one recovering, one intial, one major). Move speeds 2.02, 1.01, 1.01. One of my colonists literally didn't make it to the fight, despite being in her bedroom when it started. Thank goodness my husky is trained and we're on rough, so I only need to down one raider. We survive.
    - I take a refugee event late in the day, since there are visitors and a war caravan around to fight for me. I get a luciferium addict
    - I push my luck and hunt some elephants (I'm pretty much out of food due to food poisoning at this point), thinking that the war caravan will help if things go badly. They do -- but it's not enough. A herd of elephants pounds down my doors and everyone is gored to death.


Other notes:

   
• I think buildings are breaking down without a warning message. I'm not sure if that is intended or not.
• Jungle with caves: 2 sets of ants broke out of hidden areas. It's the first time I've seen that.
• Hunting panthers trigger 2 sets of ant attacks on my colony.
• Is it intended that when a pawn vomits it cancels their task, even if forced? I queued up 5 "refill passive cooler" tasks to a pawn with food poisoning, then watched her grab some wood, walk out of the storeroom, vomit, drop the wood, cancel her current task, then go back into the storeroom to grab wood for the next "refill passive cooler" task. She only successfully refilled the final passive cooler, leaving me to re-assign the first 4 again. It seems like she should vomit, drop her wood, and retry her current task. Assuming the task was assigned manually. (Edit: I tried this a second time with only a single task queued up: she returned to her current task after vomiting. So maybe this is an interaction with the task queue?)

A few things I noticed today when continuing my forever alone run from yesterday.

I got a plague message for a pawn not in my colony, or on my map, with the "jump to locaiton" button greyed out.
   
    Hunting animals avoid traps -- which makes for very weird behavior when they are in a trap hallway and you have a pawn shoot them. Right up to the point they revenge, the animal zig-zags around the traps. As soon as it revenges, it runs right into the next trap.

    I tried a trap hallway for the first time. Even a fairly short one pretty much handles all normal raids very easily. When and how traps get auto-rebuilt (with the global auto-rebuilt option turned on) is still weird: I frequently ended up with missing traps in the line. Do traps need to be in home zone to get auto-rebuilt? Have auto-rearm checked? Both (which is where I ended up)?
   
    Pawns don't get the "I could have helped" debuff when refusing a refugee event with a relationship, but do when you refuse to caravan to rescue someone. Honestly, I'd prefer that debuff to be removed completely, but I think it should be consistent.
   
    Thrumbo's list their manhunter chance at rifle range as 35% -- but at rifle range (bolt-action) the hover tooltip lists the manhunter chance as 8.3% with a level 9 shooter/level 10 animal handler. 8.3% for a thrumbo seems low with a pretty mediocre shooter/animal handler: I'm able to get in a lot of free shots before they go manhunter most of the time.
   
    During a raid I ordered 5 colonists to shoot at a raider who happened to be standing on top of my sixth colonist, who had just been downed. My colonists faithfully fired - at my downed guy - instantly killing him. I'm willing to accept a lot of "colonist missed and hit his downed buddy" shenanigans, especially when I order shots nearby, but I think what actually happened here is that I attempted to order my colonists to shoot at a raider, and instead I targeted my own downed colonist (too many direct hits on him for it to all be missed shots). Perhaps the stack ordering of items in a cell should put your colonists last for targeting purposes?

[Thoughts from playthrough]

Storyteller: Cassandra
Difficulty: Merciless
Scenario: Naked Brutality
Biome/hilliness: Temperate forrest (30 days growing) with a small river and large hills
Commitment mode: No, though I play in that style
Current colony age (days): 77
Hours played in the last 2 days: ~8
Complete mod list: None

My plan for this time was to only accept good pawns. It didn't really work -- too many events now where you simply can't see what a colonist will be before recruiting, and RNG decided that no one even remotely good would raid me and not get killed. I took an incapable of research pawn (named Lightning) as my starting person, which as I approached day 50 with still only a single colonist became more and more clearly a huge mistake.

Thoughts from playthrough

• I'm seeing some issues with pawns picking up whole stacks of items -- I'll tell them to haul a pile of berries, and instead of grabbing the first stack and then other stacks near it, they pick up only part of the first stack, and nothing else. So I tell them to grab a pile of 21 berries, with 3 piles of 8, 4, and 7 nearby. And instead of hailing 40 berries, the pawn grabs 6 from the first pile.

   
• Not trivial to reproduce, but I'm seeing it pretty frequently.
• Edit: yeah, this is happening almost every time I give a haul order manually.
• Edit: I think this has something to do with the hoppers -- pawn is trying to fill them so only grabs enough berries to top off a stack. Then when I reissue the order, for some reason he hauls a full stack to the non-hopper stockpile.

   
• Quick sleeper is an amazing trait, especially on Naked Brutality.

   
• While I remained at one colonist until day 51, I did get a number of prisoner rescue type quests. But there's just no way I'm caravanning with one person and no long term food source on Merciless. All my prior experience with caravanning tells me every event is a trap. But it's clear that my "forever alone" run is mostly my own fault.

   
• On day 29 I noticed that my pawn has never failed to construct a wall this run: looks like his sucess chance is 100% b/c he isn't injured. Interesting change -- I like never failing on consturcing walls/floors, but it feels like I should sometimes fail when building other (harder) stuff, even though the penalty there is higher. Failing constructing a wall happened so often it just felt anoying, but was such a minor cost it didn't add any "please don't fail constructing" moments (like I feel when my pawn is using the last component on some critical new building I need).

   
• Blight seems worse now. B18 blight felt too easy. This doesn't feel too hard, but it's creates a sad kind of micro where I just have to pause and click *soooo* many times to tell my pawns to cut the blighted plants. I wish there was a "cut blighted" tool I could just drag over a field.

   
• The new dessicated animal corpses look great.

   
• Has opportunistic hauling been disabled? I'm basically never seeing my pawns use it. Even when they are heading back to do stuff right next to my stockpile (like, within 5 squares of it).

   
• Animals hunting your colonists for food avoid traps. I just watched a cougar zig-zag through my trap field to attack my dog

Story: Alone Forever
day 2: Visitor gives me a gift of 147 silver
day 8: Visitor gives me a gift of 11 medicine, faction approval: 0
day 13: Lightning observes a corpse after a raid with a psychic drone and goes on a minor break: tantrum, and destoys all 31 components we had gotten from ship parts.

   
• Feels weird that I am more worried about minor mental breaks than major ones. I'd much rather see a berserk than a tantrum.
• since i still only have one colonist, there was nothing I could do except watch.
• On the bright side, that drops my wealth by about 1000, so maybe my colonist was really just trying to make the colony safer

day 16: Second wild man wanders in. I'm still at one colonist.
day 17: A lynx hunts my colonist for food, scratches him twice. I self tend and set to bedrest. Pawn literally stays in bed, starving himself, until he is fully healed. I didn't force him to "rest until healed," but that was the behavior I saw (I triple checked b/c I couldn't believe he would get out of bed to feed himself once he was fully rested).

Of note: I'm running a wood generator and paste dispensor, both of which I rarely do. Is there no way to force a pawn to eat from the paste dispensor? Is that why my pawn refused to feed himself while sick? (it also made the loss of 31 components so much more painful. The pawn could not have choosen any other item in the colony more damaging to his own survival to destroy. Perhaps pawns should not destroy entire stacks of extremely valuable items? Just partial stacks?)

day 20: Wild man number 3. Too bad my animal handing is only at 4, making all these wild man events worthless. Well, that's harsh. It's fun to watch them walk around/hunt and gather. And it's funny to think about how many wild man there must be on this rimworld to see three in 20 days. It's quite the little pack of wild men circling my berry patch.

day 24: Visitors give me 3 glitterworld meds

day 25: When my berry patch is harvested, the wild men are reduced to eating carrion: the corpses from my raids (I threw them into an open building to rot rather than burying them)

day 29: It's the middle of fall and I celebrate by gathering up the corpses of my 3 wild man companions and hauling them to the corpse pile. Hypothermia took them all.

day 30: Shaman trader gives me a gift of an excellent wolfskin t-shirt. This is getting a bit ridiculous -- so far every non hostile has felt so sorry for me that they left me a present. But I guess I am living down in a cave by the river.

day 40: The local tribal SLAVER felt so bad for me they left me a good silver knife. I'm not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, having everyone, including the slaver, give me gifts seems crazy. On the other hand, it's day 40 and I am still alone. Plus, *silver* knife.

day 46: raider lights himself on fire outside my base. Alone forever.

day 49: another trader gives me 2 glitterworld meds

day 51: I take a refugee event b/c apparently I'm never going to down a raider. AJ joins, and she's okay (not good, but okay). But of course she can't researc either

day 58: Bud, a wanderer with psychite and wake-up additictions joins. But she has level 1 research! I guess I'll keep her around until she goes crazy and kills herself mid-raid. We'll see I can at least get recurve bows before she suicides. She came in with some wake up and flake, so we'll see.

day 59: Bud ODs on flake.

day 64:

   
• Bud has spent most of her time since she joined in a psychotic state, and now goes catatonic. She did manager about 100 points of research in there though. So maybe in another year we'll have recurve bows.
• Lightning gets malaria.
• Thanks to the good meds visitors gifted us, AJ is able to help both malaria ridden Lightning and catatonic Bud through their issues.

day 67: I get my first multi raider raid. 3 guys with knifes, and one with a machine pistol. Bud is still catatonic, so it's up to AJ and still malarial Lightning to fend them off.

day 71: Bud is still catatonic. It's a bit hard to tell though -- that state isn't listed in her health tab, or on her info screen, and her name isn't colored. So sometimes I forget and think she's just sleeping and will wake up. While she's out cold I burn the last of the drugs she came in with. Don't do drugs kids.

day 74: Actually, I don't think Bud's catatonic anymore. I *think* what's happening is that while she was catatonic her wake up and psychite withdrawals proceeded far enough that she can no longer move: she's got a combo penalty of -40% movement and -70% consiousness. Well, I guess that's fine. I guess she probably wont suicide.

day 76: Second multi person raid. Pistol, shotgun, grenades. Grenades carried by a frail, altimers guy who goes into a confused state immediately. But they wander, so he recoveres in time to attack. Traps fend them off. Looks like even though traps are single use, they still can be set to auto-rearm? What would that even do now? About half the time it looks like auto-rearm is true by default (maybe when the traps are in home zone?) and half the time is is false by default. I set them all to true and we'll see what happens.

A mad muffalo comes and pounds on my door. What's this about manhunter animals not attacking doors?

day 79: I get my first downed raider who isn't completely terrible. I'm gonna call this the end of "forever alone"

That's all for now. I'm not sure if I'm going to continue this colony, but I felt like I had enough feedback from this admittedly weird run to share.

[attachment deleted due to age]

[Drop Podding]

Storyteller: Cassandra
Difficulty: Rough
Biome/hilliness: Temperate Forest, Large Hills
Commitment mode: No -- I play in the style of commitment mode, but do not turn it on in.
Current colony age (days): 229
Hours played in the last 2 days: ~ 8
Complete mod list: No mods
Version: 1.0.1970 - 1.0.1980
Scenario: Tribal

Since this is a long running colony I'm just going to highlight a couple stories as well as some things I noticed throughout that might be worth thinking about.

I tried Rough difficulty instead of Extreme this time around because I wanted to try out drop pods (I almost never caravan in any form when playing on extreme). Generally raid strength seemed fine for Rough difficulty (much easier than extreme, but still some hairy moments). I lost one colonist during my play, but thankfully had a resurrection serum for him. I was able to defend my base pretty much exclusively with walls/doors/sandbags. I built a couple of the new turrets around day 200 but have not yet seen them fire. I have not yet found any uranium, so haven't built a sniper turret.

Since this is a fairly old colony, I should mention that I normally play on speed 3, and haven't seen any lag to speak of so far, with ~15 colonists and ~20 animals. In B18 I tended not to play colonies much past the 150 day mark due to lag. So I'm definitely seeing improved performance in 1.0.

Drop Podding
Not as painful as caravaning, but still painful. This was my first ever colony trying out drop pods, and I feel like I missed something obvious about them. I'll give one experience (my first) to illustrate, but my subsequent attempts went pretty much the same way:

• 3 people caravan to fill a trade request
• All three went to extreme break risk loading things up
• One went into a daze, other two just got into the pods. After coming out of daze, the third got into the pods, before they were full. So all three colonists loading the pods stopped about halfway through the process. Not clear how to prevent this.
• With everyone in my colony set to haul, only one person at a time would keep filling the pods after the initial 3 people got inside.
• Guys inside near starved to death, one went to 76% malnutrition before the pods got loaded
• Launch!
• Turn in quest!
• Trade! Oh wait, I get a 14% price penalty because my negotiator is starving...
• Oh wait, caravan can't move...be great if there was a warning for this before I launched the pods and created a non-functional caravan...
• Drop pod a muffalo onto them - now the caravan can move, but I don't have enough food to get home
• Send the caravan towards home, drop pod them some food when they get about halfway back

I'm not sure if I'm just not seeing these things in the UI, or missing something fundemental about drop podding, but it would be great if:

• You could see the carrying capacity of the caravan that will be created from a drop pod along with the drop pod load capacity (or the capacity these pods would add to an existing caravan).
• There was a warning that you are going to create an immobile caravan.
• There was some way to edit the contents of a pod without everything in the entire pod barfing onto the ground around it. So, for example, I could swap out jade for food when I realize my caravan wont be able to move if I launch. I reloaded my save after canceling my pod loading the first time and getting a giant item barf explosion.
• Pawns set to get in drop pods got in last -- *after* loading everything.
• Pawns did not starve themselves/go into exhaustion while loading the pods
• There was a way to add a pod to a launch group after the fact.
• There was a way to remove a pod from a launch group after the fact.

Basically, it would be great if the experience was a little more forgiving and polished. I'll probably drop pod again as long as I'm playing on the lower difficulties, but as cool as it is in theory, it's a bit painful in practice.

The Escape Addict

• I gave a pawn some yayo to help his mood, and he got addicted immediately. Don't do drugs kids.
• A short time later he went on a wake up binge -- he walked directly past the 20 wake up in a shelf in my dinning room to go halfway across the map to pick up some forbidden flake. Seems like it should be a psychite binge/flake binge?
• Once he ran out of flake, he came back to the wake up. And got addicted, of course.
• I arrested him, because I'm not dealing with a double addicted pawn who is currently ODing on wake up
• I set him to reduce resistance, but *not* to recruit. The idea being I would keep him in jail throughout his recovery from addiction.
• My warden, with an inspiration, goes and talks to him - and recruits him. Seems like a bug.
• So I have to arrest him again, and this time during the arrest he resists, so I have to beat him up
• I can then capture him, but see the warning about angering his faction -- which is my faction. Seems like another bug.

Possible Bugs/Things to Look At

• Traps: I don't generally use them a lot, but with the change to make them disposable I built a few to try it out. They triggered, and I pretty much forgot to replace them. I didn't make a trap corridor or anything, so it was easy to forget where I put them. I'd prefer if traps were "refillable" like campfires/turrets and could toggle whether to fill them or not.
• The /10 in bills is slightly misaligned in bills, causing text to overlap. Honestly, this just looks like a programming error where the "/10" text is drawn before the quantity of an item is known, so overlap occurs with enough items.
• "Finished" messages (such as toxic fallout finishing) aren't stored in the messages tab
• Caravan arrived/returned messages aren't in the messages tab
• Warg has min animal skill of 1, wild boar is 3 -- seems backwards.
• Space traders droped their cargo pods into my chimney, a 4 square unroofed hole in my freezer. Not really a big deal, but a weird place for them to pick to deliver items.
• I kept a 100% difficulty prisoner with 50 resistance just to see what would happen. After spending months lowering his resistance, he joined on the first recruitment attempt with a 6.3% chance. Seems like either a bug, or I don't know what prisoner recruit difficulty acctually means. I assumed a 100% prisoner would never be recruitied.
• I equiped a pyro with a incendiary laucher -- got message "hunter lacks ranged weapon". Very glad he wont hunt, but the message could be clearer (it's good enough, but could be better)
• I have a lvl 19 crafter -- even when crafting 100% of the time, it seems like he loses more skill than he gains while hauling materials to the bench from close by (< 20 cells). I don't think this is *actually* true, but it feels bad when I can literally watch his skill decay so quickly.
• Manhunting packs still 100% attack doors. I'm not sure why the tooltip says they dont -- that has never been true since I started in A16. 21 manhunting polar bears eat through a door very quickly when they all attack it at once. I honestly am not sure whether the attacking doors should be fixed or not, but it seems like at the very least the in game help shouldn't give false information to new players.

[attachment deleted due to age]

• What the circumstances were: 1.0.1968


• What happened: An error message appears in the debug log when attempting to warden two prisoners in a double bed in a tiny room ("10 jobs in 10 ticks"). Log file attached.


• What you expected to happen: Warden to attempt to recruit as normal.


• Steps we can follow to make the bug appear on our machine:

* Create a new game
* Build a 2x2 room with a single double bed (filling the entire room). Make this a prison room.
* Get 2 prisoners housed in that room
* Have warden attempt to recruit them. I *think* the warden can attempt to recruit one of the prisoners, but gets the error when attempting to recruit the other.
[/list]





[attachment deleted due to age]

It also makes sense to not be able to start recruiting instantly while the guilty-timer is still there. I just don't understand why I also can't release or execute them.

I was wondering if this was a bug, too. Apparently you can now only recruit prisoners, not release them.

Yeah, this definitely seems like a bug to me -- if you can't execute them while they are considered guilty, what's the point of the considered guilty feature?

[an disciplined preparation]

Tooltip for Hard difficulty has: "diverse strategies, an disciplined preparation, and luck" -- probably meant to be "diverse strategies, disciplined preparation, and luck"

Made it to day 65 on 1964 (some early game stories are in a previous post) but it looks like the new build has an incompatibility which is making prisoner recruitment UI not appear, so I'm gonna start a new colony. I doubt this is a real bug, as starting a new game and dev spawning in a prisoner shows the recruitment UI just fine, so I didn't post anything to the bug forum.

Ramp up graph attached.

A couple more thoughts from having played ~10 colonies on 1.0 now:

Random dislikes:

• The change of the name of the "Character" tab to "Char" for colonist details -- yes, I get that all the tabs are the same size now, but "char" feels ugly (no offense intended, I've made this trade off in UI design myself before). I also think that "Character" is much more obvious for new players than "Char".
• While in general I like the new art, I don't really like the neutroamine graphic. Not sure why, but it seems a little out of place to me
• I don't really like the names "commitment mode" and "reload anytime mode" -- they feel awkward (hence the need to have "mode" in both of them). I think the tooltips on these are good though.

Random likes:

• Having "border friction" with factions seems well done. I wasn't one to settle right next to a faction outpost anyway, but now the penalty really encourages me to get a little further away just to keep alive the possibility of caravan trade.
• The "inspired" icon and inspiration time remaining are really nice to have -- it gives enough info on the pawn icon to keep me from forgetting about inspirations.
• Combining animal and colonist zones is nice. Reduces unncessesary complexity, especially for new players.
• I generally like the new leather types. I'm not sure if I'm just paying more attention now, but it feels good to scan the map and see a megasloth -- good armor! Hunting feels more interactive, and I often hunt for leather now, whereas before I always hunted just for food.

[attachment deleted due to age]

One of the most fun games of Rimworld I've had in a long time, with plenty of sex and violence:

Naked Brutality, Temperate Forest, 1964)

I get an early refugee event, which happens about 5 seconds before the second raid. Thankfully Bluntsworth isn't worthless, and we're able to fend off the simultaneous raids.

Day 21: Bluntsworth and Hillary become lovers. Double bed goes in.
Day 22: 3rd raid, one pirate with a good pistol, good hyperweave pants, good glak vest, and good cloth shirt and hat. About half of the shots from my sad little bows that manage to hit are completely deflected. Eventually he goes down, but not before burning up all my healroot and berries.
Day 23: Bluntsworth rejects Hillary's proposal. Hillary came on way too strong I suppose. Double bed goes out.

A couple more raids -- we get Von through a refugee event (everyone almost dies, but not quite). Bluntsworth gets an infection, and then we have to fight a tribal raid a day or so later, right as he needs a treatment. I hustle everyone into the dining room, moving a bed and some healroot along with us. Von treats Bluntsworth as Hillary tries to fend of the tribesmen. More crops burn down, but no one dies.

Day 28: Bluntsworth starts up a relationship with Hillary again by talking about how smart he is. Hillary is still heartbroken, but decides that obviously Bluntsworth is really smart, because he wants to get back together with her. Double bed goes back in.

Day 30: Hillary gets malaria. *sigh* Hillary gets some good treatments from Bluntsworth, and even though she gets food poisoning she pulls through.

Note: I feel like food poisoning is "good" now. I definitely know when it happens, and take steps to try to prevent it, but it's nor so frequent that it kills my colonies (as it seemed in earlier 1.0 revisions).

Day 33: Von goes berserk. Bluntsworth and Hillary, still feeble with Malaria, beat the shit of out of Von because he's acting crazy right outside their bedroom. Bluntsworth proposes as he tends Hillary's new bruises and ongoing Malaria. Hillary accepts.

This couple is fantastic. Hilarious. I'm seriously considering turning the difficulty way down so that I don't lose them.

Naked Brutality, Extreme, 1064, Temperate Forest, Mountains with Caves and Ants

First three single person raids (2 normal, one refugee event) all decided the best thing to do was attack the insects on the map. RIP raiders. In fairness, they didn't have to go far out of the path to my base to do so... but one raider literally chased a spelopede almost halfway across the map to keep melee attacking it as it fled. At this point I have no real idea what causes the cave ants to decide whether to attack or flee -- they attacked and wrecked the first two raids, then decided to run away from the third raid.

Had a Doe and an Ibex Doe self tame during the first ~12 days -- they were easier to train than I remembered, and reasonably useful against the single mad animal events. I guess I'll keep them around for a bit

Watched my level 4 constructor botch building a grave three times in a row. I thought this was removed back in A17 (iirc, it was an issue with graves incorrectly having a quality?), so I'm not sure if bringing this behavior back was intentional or not.

Day 34, finally feeling like things might be off the ground -- I now have three colonists, 3 short bows, and a small base. I'm about to build a water mill! Three person raid arrives - one with a knife, one with a pistol, and one with a pump shotgun on go-juice. I retreat into my storage room to snipe as they attack, and plan to release my animals when they get close. Shotgun raider runs up and shoots my initial colonist Anita in the liver with a 10% chance to hit (I believe it was shot 3, taken as Anita was retreating back into the base).

I survive the raid, but even with a reasonably clean room, one person doctoring and the other cleaning throughout the treatment, Anita gets an infection in her torso. Since she was shot in the liver, that means she's dead (I did have my best doctor tend her with healroot just in case, but no dice). The colony can't survive without her, so RIP.

Perhaps I'm just much worse at 1.0 than previous alphas/betas, but it seems like it's *much* easier for a colonist to get one shot now.

Naked Brutality run on 1694 -- made it to day 34. Pirate raid comes in with two machine pistols and a couple revolvers. Things are going fine until one both of the machine pistol guys go god mode at the same time: on one side of my base a pirate shoots a machine pistol down a hallway and simultaneously hits two colonists hiding behind doors on different sides of the hallway in the torso. That's one effective volley.

On the other side of my base pirate two starts firing his machine pistol, and despite having a 4% hit chance, proceeds to hit my colonist multiple times in a row. And my colonist of course misses every shot.

Possible bug: one pirate ran straight up to a doorway and started punching a colonist -- colonist did not attempt to fight back in any way, just sat there and took punches until he went down (I thought he was fighting back, but no).

Too bad, I was hoping to try to tame the wild man that had wandered in a few days before. Next time.

[Context:]

Context:
Cassandra Extreme, Crashlanded, Temperate Forest, small hills (40/60 growing days), coast + small road + river.
Some stories from a recent colony (1961-1962), up to day ~50. Told in approximate order.

Deer Bounty
Deer no longer revenge! So much meat to be had!

I get it, it's winter, aka, I didn't realize I was playing Frostpunk
End of the first fall in the colony -> Volanic Winter -> Cold Snap -> Solar Flare within the span of 3 days. I went from 2C to -20 C. I first walled off my bedrooms and built 4 heaters (that plus torches in the rooms kept everyone reasonably warm). Just as I got that set up and working I had to quick build 5 campfires so no one got frostbite while sleeping.

A Couple "Normal" Raids
I built a traditional killbox to see if they still worked at all. The answer is kinda, sometimes. Raiders split up and generally avoided coming into the killbox opening, preferring to beat on my slate walls. Fair amount of waiting to see where they would come through, taking position, and killing them. I doubt I'll build a killbox again without a true choke point on my map, though my defensive tactics remain about the same (pop in and out of doors, spread out, etc.. Nothing special.).

The new split raids are interesting, especially the ones that flee as separate groups. Normal defensive tactics seem to work fine on these raids.

All Melee Sapper Raid, aka, How I Learned to let go and Love the Chain Shotgun
I got lucky and was able ti purchase a chain shotgun from a combat trader around day 20. Then, around day 35, I got my first sapper raid.
They sapped through a door in the side of my base, and came through one at a time (around 10 in the raid I think). I had positioned one guy with chain shotgun in a nearby door + several others furhter away with pistols and survival rifles shooting to get the impact deduff. Chain shotgun guy pretty much murdered the entire raid as they came through, took a pistol shot and slowed down, and slowly walked toward their death at the hands of a chain shotgun.

This is the chain shotgun I always wanted. Okay, yes, it felt OP for this specific raid in an incredibly satifying way, but nearly useless in all my other raids.

The Little Siege that Couldn't
I was able to pick off around half of the raiders in a siege using a couple guys with survivial rifles before anyone tried firing back. Raiders attacked the colony, and I killed one more to make them flee. Raid over before they built a mortar.

A Centipede Wrecked Me, aka, Two Shots to the Heart
A poison ship landed near the bottom corner of the map, and me with no mortars and only two rifles. I built some close up fortificatoins (parallel lines of walls with small bunkers at the far end), put my short range guys there, hide my pacifist with a couple alpaca behind a hill. amd opened the ship up from distance with my two survival rifle pawns.

One melee scyther, one inferno cannon, one charge blaster. Melee scyther charged in, and I was able to kill it behind the bunkers with my two shotgun pawns. Meanwhile, the charge blaster centipede shot two colonists through the heart in about two seconds, with < 10% hit chance on both shots. It then proceeded to down one of my guys with a survival rifle, and my pacifist when I tried to rescue. Yeah, the inferno guy and melee scyther caused some chaos, but I was essentially wrecked by a single mech (vs my 7 colonists + 4 animals).

Game over.

I saved scummed this to try a different strategy against mechs: same fortifications, but this time I brought emp grenades (which I've never used before). This time I got 2 melee scythers, and 3-4 lancers. EMP grenades were basically useless until I was able to (with several injuries) kill the melee guys. Then EMPs kept the lancers out of commission until I was able to kill them. I'm not chalking this win up to my strategy -- I think I would have been killed again if there had been a charge blaster centipede this time around.

Thoughts

• Centipedes with charge blasters seem too strong. Long range, apparently amazing accuracy, and one shot colonists (with good clothes but no armor yet). I was able to "win" my save scum raid with twice the number of mechs b/c I didn't get one of these. They just feel insanely strong. Or maybe I just got really unlucky.
• It takes a long time to get to armor research
• Tree sowing seems totally useless (I tried it a previous colony, and the map had regrown trees by the time I was able to sow a 10x10 field of poplars with a lvl 10 grower)

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Just wrapped up a couple of a18 colonies (1704 - 1717). Impressions:

- Brain injury chance has been increased too much in my opinion -- I saw more colonists get brain injuries in one colony than I have in my ~700 previous hours of play (4 in my first colony, 1 almost immediately in my second). I'm fine with seeing this occur sometimes, but it seems tuned too high in a18.

- Limb loss seems well balanced with vanilla bionics now -- I was able to purchase replacement eyes/limbs for just about everything I lost in my large a18 colony (played about 4 years) in a very reasonable length of time. I may play without EPOE now

- Swamp biomes are great, though I was sad that no swamp specific animals were introduced. Very fun new biome, and I like that it presents different early game challenges than other biomes

- Tornados -- there's been a fair amount of discussion in this thread, so I don't want to beat a dead horse here. But it does seem like they happen too frequently, and (though this is probably just RNG), too frequently in the early game where they can really hurt.

- Cave bugs -- several early raids in my colony with caves were completely defeated by the bugs in a cave far away from my bases (and not on any path to get to my base). That is, several raiders spawned in, then ran directly away from my base to fight the bugs in a far away cave.

- Job queueing is amazing

- The new mental breaks generally seem fine, but may need some tweaking. I had one pawn throw a tantrum and completely destroy an excellent shield belt in three hits which I had just purchased (way before even a nearby pawn was able to get close). That was pretty painful and not fun.  When the tantrum selects an object to destroy that is more than a few spaces away it's more fun -- I might actually be able to arrest/beat down the pawn before something gets destroyed.

- The new inspirations/frenzies generally seem fine, but some tweaking might be nice. I had several recruit/surgery inspirations that I was unable to make use of, even with the large grace period. Perhaps pawns shouldn't get recruiting inspirations when there are no prisoners in the colony?

- Caravans -- I still think the risk/pain of caravans is not worth it. Yes, some of the rewards are now great, but I still found myself dismissing the caravan opportunities pretty much every time. The mechanics of caravan creation/management and uncertainty about things like "will my pawns actually treat each other during caravanning this time?" outweigh the rewards for me. In theory, I love caravans. In practice, I never use them, and the a18 rewards did not change that.