Messages

"I think for basebuilding is for other difficulties. Merciless should be VERY HARD, it should differ from peaceful difficulty in a meaningful way. Do you agree?
Also I consider myself power player and would love to participate in discussions regarding balance (for free)."

Yep, I certainly agree, I was just lamenting the situation that happened in the feedback thread- a lot of people were playing above their skill level and complaining about it. I also mentioned a constantly increasing time based difficulty setting in that thread, with the caveat that relocating or large disasters, like most of the colony gets wiped, would ease the difficulty back for a bit. v0v we'll see what happens in the next version, hopefully power players will get that brutal setting they want.

Recruiting is still the best way to get pawns, at least if you want halfway decent ones that you can be picky about. Also, you can rescue from drop pods, but that's no guarantee they will join, capture and recruit for good pawns.

I agree with the improvements in the OP, but I'm afraid there will be pushback from those who want to play as a basebuilder in merciless difficulty, as was already seen in the B19 feedback thread. I watch Rimworld streamers, and it's way more interesting viewing when it is hard and dramatic- power players want winning to be a real challenge, most I've seen are pretty unfazed by colonist deaths, lost limbs, etc. I hope that the devs watch videos or are in contact with power players for feedback at the hardest levels, general community feedback nerfed things a bit much this time around.

Some feedback:

It seems that many traders come right at night when pawns are all going to bed, not critical but kind of annoying- I imagine there is some reasoning behind it though?

I had a bunker composed of limestone walls and sandbags, like so WSWSWSW, 4 drafted pawns behind it, and they wouldn't shoot a scyther 3-5 diagonally tiles away as it destroyed a solar panel. Also, a lot of times when you have drafted shooter pawns and right click something to attack they go to melee it. I'm kind of frustrated with combat lately, it feels unintuitive. I am playing modded though.

I do like the themed raids, I had an all melee raid which was fun, and I wish I would have tried to save the colonist who had like 19 snipers on her tail.

Might be a bug, I had a visitor sick with the flu visit while I was sniping a charge blaster centipede, the centipede had 4-5 rounds of shots at the guy who was firing at it from pistol range, dude didn't have a scratch on him.

I second making killboxes, even though I should because I'm awful at combat. Not so much a refusal but a strong choice not to use the mini turrets, they can be a bit chaotic for my tastes.  I don't butcher humans, but only because of the colony wide mood debuff. It'd be neat if you could have the cannibals do it in secret, like if nobody sees it happen or sees the byproducts its all good.

I'm curious if Steam has any data available for developers to get the most bang for their buck, that seems like it would be extremely useful.

I like the move to do another beta, having a stable-ish release brings in a lot more play testers than an unstable testing version. Hopefully some clarity will happen in regard to balance with a bigger pool of players, as opposed to a handful of squeaky wheels getting the grease and muddying matters a bit. I'm interested in seeing what kind of difficulty tweaks the modders come up with, watching playthroughs of good players it seems that maybe B18 had a better (as in more challenging) hard difficulty than what is currently happening.

This is a feedback thread so please stay focused on experienced-based feedback. Thanks.

I hope this is on topic then- I've played since A17, and recently watched a playthrough using B18, and I miss the old scythers that have both strong melee and ranged- they were a good scary enemy, it'd be great to see them back, even as a third type of scyther. Having only melee or ranged puts them at raider level, as opposed to a high tech level.

What difficulty and what biome? Disease chance varies depending on location, maybe try a different place next time.

regarding stonecutting, it's about increasing the cost of a superior material, simple as that. Stone is the strongest easily accessible material and it doesn't burn, it should take some work to utilize it, whereas wood is the weakest and is flammable. Its a cost/benefit decision for players, a game balance, that's all.

GOOD idea, added to my list of needed mods when the dust settles!

A big part is managing what the colonists eat first, if you have a ton of meat and not many veg you can switch simple meals to meat only and make kibble from the remaining meat and veg for example. Just managing the simple meals can help a lot. I'd a;so recommend not going too crazy on the animals if you are just starting out, they can be a pain to keep up in the wrong scenario.

Just spitballin' here, some quick ideas ignoring "but muh base building sim":

A system where different factors affect raid type, wealth attracts more pirate raiders, research attracts more tribals, time played attracts more mechs. To avoid player manipulation it would only be increased odds, not a definite raid type. Eg if you have a lot of research you have a 70% chance of a 100pt tribal raid, an 20% chance of a 90 pt pirate raid, 10% chance of a 80pt mech raid. No matter the playstyle there is never 0% chance of a raid type, but the player can influence it a bit, and still can complain later about the shitty RNG because they didn't get their way.

Be old school and scale raids based on colony age only using a constantly increasing factor- no matter the population or wealth they get harder over time. This is less sandbox and more straight up game-y. Perhaps decrease the factor if a colony moves to a new location and restarts from scratch or a major catastrophe happens like 2/3 of the colonists die. This would give a sense of urgency to the game and could be fun.

I like the idea that uses past raids as a factor for scaling, if plain old walk-in raids do little damage increase drop ins, or have a seige + flank walk-in raid combo. This could be a workaround for killboxes.

You could be mean and increase the chance of a raid happening during a solar flare, I feel like these could be smaller/less powerful to account for the raiders assembling quickly to take advantage.

Looks like a good one- I had pawns feeding animals fine meals, can this prevent that as well?

Thirding this, last time it happened was Xorkun, engineer who doesn't exist in my colony. Happened 3 times so far (maybe same name?), playing cass rough in jungle.