Messages

[non-combat]

I will put scores on a ten-point scale (10 is hardest) based on my intuitive perception:

Animals 7/10
Artistic 3/10
Construction 5/10
Cooking 6/10
Crafting 4/10
Growing 7/10
Medicine 8/10
Melee 10/10
Mining 6/10
Intellectual 2/10
Shooting 9/10
Social 8/10

P.S.: I see problem with some skill learnyng not in the way that they grow, but in the lack of ways to practice them enough. It is the exact problem for melee, medicine and (somewhat) shooting. There must be some additional jobs (like random non-combat injuries for doctors to practice) or training/joy things (like punching bags or shooting range).

1. Are animals useful in combat? Do you use them? If so, why?  If not, why not?

1. At early stages - yes very useful. Bunch of dogs or even elephants can give major (if not single) reason in defeating enemy raids. And while losing animals is bad - it is still much better than losing people (losing animals = saving people's lives). At late stages - no, not at all and for many reasons: it is more risky (because of doomsday and inferno launchers mostly, but also because of better weapons in general) and less rewarding, less reasonable (your colony can fight safe enough w/o using animals at all); plus at this point losing animals = losing morale. There is also performance issue - when I just cant have 300 huskies in reserve (which is adequate number of huskies agains raids on my colony). In all of my late games I always end up shifting from combat animals to only "economical" ones, who generate wool/milk/meat, can haul and/or travel with caravans; using and losing them in combat is a waste. I might consider reinforcing lategame caravan with combat animals, but it is too much discomfort of fighting against interface to bother.

2. Are there annoying/weird points about animals in combat?

2.1. My major issue - swarming of animals around master. It is just asking for friendly fire or use of some AOE weapon from enemy. There really must be some level of direct controll over animals (at least "go over there and wait" order).

2.2. General inconvenience of interface to deal with large numbers of animals. Switching masters or "follow master" options - it can be done only for one animal at a time; it gets worse when I need to use different kinds of animals (boomalopes, fast animls, tank'ish animals) in different combats; multiply this on problems of world map travel when I need to quickly change master of muffalos during world map encounter, or master left his animals in colony and they need new master to fight in raid. Too much clicks to bother. It asks to add some new feature like grouping of animals (to manage animals as a group instead of individuals).

2.3. Very annoying feature: assignment of animal mastery to it's trainer. For small colony? It works ok. For big colony with many animals and trainers? It ends up in a mess of most of my animals rest safely in a barn, while some newly trained puppies will follow random masters on the battlefield and be killed by a stray bullet. It kills puppies, Tynan!

2.4. Brain damages on large animals. I have built giant tribal colony mostly on using elephants in combat (no way I would survive that long without them). But at some point I had to stop using them in combat at all because of multiple brain damages on most of them - it was literally THE reason. About 50% of all animals could barely walk; two pregnant females could not walk at all; only couple of newly tamed elephants did not had any brain damage. But this problem might be caused by just something beign off with brain damage in general in last build (especially in connection with reworked melee).

3. How are you using animals in combat?

3. The most typical example: my soldiers take cover in front, my animals with master stay behind and to the side. Enemy engages my soldiers; after a bit of firefight I send my animals to attack from a flank together with melee guys. But against weak threat I can send animals right away. And against some threats I might not use them at all (like mechanoids with inferno launchers).

1) Had to arrest colonist because of his addiction.
2) Some time later he got "prison breaker" mental break and released all prisoners in his room.
3) Imprisoned colonists should not have "prison breaker" mental break.
4) Arrest colonist, give him bad mood, wait. There must be other prisoners also.

Giant rich colony, 63 colonists, arid shrubland, no mountains. I give my permission to use this save file.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/9bvuu8fh82ezumg/Save%20for%20new%20trailer%20%28Mihsan%29.rar?dl=0

1) Had colonist with shattered spine. At some point he started to fall out of his medical bed very often. After investigation I figured out that it was caused by pawn watching TV.

2) What happened: pawn with shattered spine always falls out of the bed after watching TV.

3) I was expecting for disabled pawns not to fall out of the bed (ever).

4) Reproduce: take disabled pawn, place him in medical bed, place working TV in front of him. Look at pawn falling out of the bed after he watches TV.

P.S.: Save with reproduced situation attached.

[attachment deleted by admin: too old]

Quality and beauty of stone chunks. Just imagine superior piece of rock that you can drop into your garden with flowers to get beauty bonus. Normal stones should be neutral in beauty (or a bit ugly).

It is a know bug in A17 that Mechanoids in Ancient Danger block the Colony Naming event when it should occur which itselfs blocks several other conditional events. ( Elections from the Leadership Mod for example )

Wow. I just deleted a save file with such error. There was also constant income of friendlies (~ once in 1-2 seasons) on my map while there was no known enemy to help against. I have no mods at all by the way.

7222

1) Pawn had bad'is and started wandering.
2) Pawn snaps out of wandering. He is hungry and wants to sleep. He stars to eat meal, but falls asleep. I force him to wake up after 1 second with draft/undraft. He goes into berzerking state almost instantly.
3) Pawns not to berzerk right after wandering. Even if he slept for 1 second..
4) Low mood => daze => 1 second sleep => berzerk.

[Serious remarks about gameplay:]

Rich explorer, started in desert (cold'ish one) on the river close to road. Randy intense.

I set myself a goal to see how my rich explorer will die. It took him 54 days to do so: his caravan was ambushed by 3 manhunter alpacas and, while he was wandering in daze (with his charge rifle, god damn him!), his friend shot his girlfriend in the leg by accident. Apacas downed everybody. Girlfriend bled out, other two people died from starvation. They were conscious all this time (just could not walk) and very close to caravan camel that had some pemmican on him.

Only in this game: during severe starvation I prefered to dig out graves and eat people rather than butcher bonded camel and warg. By the way that mood debuff (even with "soylent green" machine) is very brutal now.

Serious remarks about gameplay:
- Cold snaps are too often. In 3 games I had this feel already, but in this last one those cold snaps were killing my food just all the time. There was 4 or 5 of them in 54 days I think.

- There was one very spoiled moment: when my caravan was dying on the ground, game asked me to leave that temporary caravan map. I could not do so because none of my colonists could move. So they were just deleted. This was very lame: if my colonists have to die, then I want to see that. If this game is about generating story, then dont take that story from me.

- Friendly colonies have too small ammounts of food on them, especialy long lasting types of it. I was hoping to save my colony from starvation with trading, but between 3 visited settlements I found none that had corn/potatoes/rice (which is the most logical thing to buy as food because it can be stored w/o refrigeration for a long time and does not cost much). One had berries, but they are more expensive than pemmican (quantity was low also). Some had meat, but it is hard to deliver it before spoilage. Some had meals, but it is more traveling food for caravan rather than survival strategy. Ammounts of pemmican was comical in all visited colonies.

1) I was reforming my caravan.
2) I wanted to take some stone chunks and pressed ">M" button (load untill maximum mass). It worked right and loaded couple of them. Then I pressed ">>" button that showed up instead of ">M". It loaded every stone chunk on the map.
3) ">>" button should no load items over caravan's maximum carry weight (or should not be shown at all).
4) Repro: form caravan, press ">M" button two times.

Image:

Do you have a savegame with this situation? If so, please attach it!

Nope, sorry, it was on permadeath.

IMO making joins is obvious crafting.

But making Yayo, Go-Juice and medicine is intellectual work that implies knowledge of chemistry. It is very much not the same as carving stones, tailoring hats and forging swords, which is more about having hands in right place.

Does that pawn has "ascetic" feature? Such pawns will eat raw food.

Which one is the best? and in what situation?

I love how people always ignore/forget survival rifle, which is my favorite weapon because of long range, high accuracy and hight damage per shot. It is great for defensive fighting.

Charge rifle is awesome tactical/assault weapon that you will move in on your enemy. Perfect for close/medium range.

I lost my trust in assault rifles when I had to use them against armored pirate on Go-Juice. It took insane number of bullets to put him down. I prefer my pirates with lesser ammounts of bigger holes in them.

LMG's work fine against centipedes because they are easy to hit. I guess it can work against masses of covered enemy too... but if your enemy can find cover, then you are doing something wrong. For other purposes it just not accurate enough.

Minigun I dont like because it ignores accuracy skill. But it is great as tool to destroy hives and crashed ship part.

P.S.: But really weapons does not matter so much. I once had assault team of bionical soldiers in power armor that was using machine pistols. There was nothing that they could not kill.