Poll: In its present state (Alpha 15), do you think RimWorld is well balanced?

[Franklin]

No bias here, I'm just curious what this community thinks of the present state, difficulty levels aside, of course. I'm also looking for specific examples of what you consider imbalances that need to be addressed. I might consolidate the provided examples for a 'most expressed issue' list to round out the curiosity.

[Spudra]

I had a lot of trouble with diseases in the (i guess it was called) rainforest biome.
But i havent played that biome a lot, but in the period i played it, it was a real pain in the ass, everybody getting diseases. Haven't had it in the desert nor in the tundra biome (both in Alpha 14)

Maybe somebody who has a bit more experience with the "rainforest"ish biome knows if its too much or not compared to the others?

[sadpickle]

I had a lot of trouble with diseases in the (i guess it was called) rainforest biome.
But i havent played that biome a lot, but in the period i played it, it was a real pain in the ass, everybody getting diseases. Haven't had it in the desert nor in the tundra biome (both in Alpha 14)

Maybe somebody who has a bit more experience with the "rainforest"ish biome knows if its too much or not compared to the others?

I rolled a rainforest colony last night, and it is BRUTAL. Constantly getting malaria, sleeping sickness, flu, you name it. Makes sense in a rainforest setting, those places have historically been big disease vectors. But it causes serious mood issues with the pain and sick debuffs. I guess that's to balance the year-round growing season, a substantial source of wealth on a flat map.

I think the game is pretty well balanced. It's definitely not too easy, not by any means. I can reliably make it the first year on Phoebe Rough, after that it's in the hands of RNJesus. I think the tech tree is bloated and needs some work. Raid scaling should be less zerg-like; they should be bringing better equipment as the colony wealth grows but not mountains of men, it encourages killbox cheesing too much. If I ever make it to late-game in this Alpha I'll be able to provide feedback on that part of the game.

[CannibarRechter]

Very late game, the raids will sky drop right into your main base. With mechs.

[Scalare]

I dunno, I never completed a game before. But right now some things are just so weird that it's impossible to take them into account (ie the things the colonists want are far from what you'd expect on a survival game, they are more like a bunch of hipsters whining about the environment rather than having actual food)

[cultist]

Yes I would say it is balanced. In fact, with all the new drugs I have not had more than a couple of mental breaks over several playthroughs, so maybe it's a bit too easy if anything.

Cassandra is still much harder than Randy because she will quickly reach a point where large attacks are the norm rather than the exception. Meanwhile, Randy will sometimes go for more than a season without anything bad happening, allowing you to massively expand your defenses or fully recover from a bad situation. Once things go south on Cassandra, you're usually boned.

[Zanzibar]

After about 50 hours played, I'm still not entirely sure. I'm leaning on yes and no .

The main part I consider unbalanced is the recruitment of pawns.
As it stands, it's Way to hard to replace them. I love playing on Hardcore, but when you have four pawns and your only method of getting more is to capture raiders... That's not a good design choice, in my opinion.

Typically, playing at a hard difficulty on Hardcore, it constantly feels like luck is the deciding factor, with Very few ways to mitigate it. (Considering all it takes is two lucky shots from a pistol wielding raider, and you have two dead pawns and your save is essentially screwed. (Because even if, by some luck, you captured two raiders in the same raid, I generally get several raids in between recruiting even one of them. And that's with high speech characters.)

So yeah, some stuff still needs work.
It wouldn't hurt if they made the randomness of the 3 starting pawns a bit less... Random as well. It should be rare that you're completely screwed over from the start. Having to sit for 10 minutes and just press "next pawn" to find a few that can actually survive is tedious at best.

Just my 10 cents .

[Elixiar]

You can buy them from passing orbital traders or finding crashed escape pods.
I think 3 ways is enough to get more colonists because if they were *too* easy to replace the weight of losing them would not really mean anything. As it stands, especially in the early game losing a colonist can almost be game ending which I like.

[Britnoth]

After about 50 hours played, I'm still not entirely sure. I'm leaning on yes and no .

The main part I consider unbalanced is the recruitment of pawns.
As it stands, it's Way to hard to replace them. I love playing on Hardcore, but when you have four pawns and your only method of getting more is to capture raiders... That's not a good design choice, in my opinion.

Typically, playing at a hard difficulty on Hardcore, it constantly feels like luck is the deciding factor, with Very few ways to mitigate it. (Considering all it takes is two lucky shots from a pistol wielding raider, and you have two dead pawns and your save is essentially screwed. (Because even if, by some luck, you captured two raiders in the same raid, I generally get several raids in between recruiting even one of them. And that's with high speech characters.)

So yeah, some stuff still needs work.
It wouldn't hurt if they made the randomness of the 3 starting pawns a bit less... Random as well. It should be rare that you're completely screwed over from the start. Having to sit for 10 minutes and just press "next pawn" to find a few that can actually survive is tedious at best.

Just my 10 cents .

Sorry for singling you out, but these kind of issues are brought up fairly often it seems. And they are pretty much entirely wrong.

but when you have four pawns and your only method of getting more is to capture raiders...

You will get random wanderers joining.
You will get refugees being chased that will join.
You will get escape pods landing nearby that are easy recruits.
You will get downed raiders that are often fairly easy recruits.
The new recruit system actually increases recruit rate, if you are willing to wait a little longer between capture and recruit.

Typically, playing at a hard difficulty on Hardcore, it constantly feels like luck is the deciding factor, with Very few ways to mitigate it.

The game is not ruled by RNG. There are many ways to mitigate it: it is called planning ahead. The only point I would agree with is the new mood penalties are very RNG, but not enough to end runs without other mistakes being made.

Having to sit for 10 minutes and just press "next pawn" to find a few that can actually survive is tedious at best.

If you find that tedious, then stop. 3 random colonists are always viable. Even the really bad ones. 


From my own view: Since a12 the games balance has been thrown entirely out the window if you play the game in a 'competitive' manner - to get the ship researched and built most efficiently. That part of the game went from skill based in 12, to luck based in a13, to entirely predictable cheesiness in a14/a15. It is a lot less fun. 

[OFWG]

The game is not ruled by RNG. There are many ways to mitigate it: it is called planning ahead.

Yeah nope, not even close. In a recent game I had a Zzzt (a totally random event that is actually made worse by planning ahead with battery power) in my freezer, which exploded into a 2700 degree F firestorm that obviously nobody could get to without collapsing. Since this was in the middle of winter, on a map with almost no game to hunt, it was a dramatic but entirely RNG way to die.

...3 random colonists are always viable. Even the really bad ones. 

Not a chance, if you get 2+ pacifists you're 100% screwed. The game is not at all balanced for anybody but the since-alpha-1 masochists who like to play on "cripple me" difficulty.

[Serenity]

The game generally decides that at a certain point you get a certain event type, but what event you specifically get within that group is purely random. For example you could reload and get a different type of raid.

[Muramas]

I don't really see a point in this.

Obviously things are not balanced and that is fine...It is a early access / alpha game. Things will be continually added, changed and worked on until it goes to beta. While in beta, things balance out until it is officially released.

[RandomGirl]

The game is not ruled by RNG. There are many ways to mitigate it: it is called planning ahead.

Yeah nope, not even close. In a recent game I had a Zzzt (a totally random event that is actually made worse by planning ahead with battery power) in my freezer, which exploded into a 2700 degree F firestorm that obviously nobody could get to without collapsing. Since this was in the middle of winter, on a map with almost no game to hunt, it was a dramatic but entirely RNG way to die.

...3 random colonists are always viable. Even the really bad ones. 

Not a chance, if you get 2+ pacifists you're 100% screwed. The game is not at all balanced for anybody but the since-alpha-1 masochists who like to play on "cripple me" difficulty.

I just use the "plan ahead" mod, so I can custom-build my colonists. I like to make little roleplay setups for them, like a group of angry teenagers trying to colonize a planet all on their own, a "planned colony" with three families and a few single people, complete with animals, tons of supplies, etc, and then "accidentally" drop them into a biome they didn't plan for (ice sheet was a challenge), or a colony full of replicants who wanted to start a new life away from humans, so they're much hardier and have a more even assortment of skills, etc.

My current colony that I'm playing was an old guy with four young girls (he wanted to have a "harem"), but they murdered him before he could get out of his crytosleep pod, and so now they're on their own on a new world. None of them are terribly skilled (he brought them along for ther looks, not their brains), but they've managed to cobble together a pretty solid colony. They had a couple of other people join up, they have some cows now and a couple of random camels that wandered in and joined them, and living in a huge carved-out mountain with a huge walled courtyard outside.

The girls are kicking the planet's butt.

[stu89pid]

No bias here, I'm just curious what this community thinks of the present state, difficulty levels aside, of course. I'm also looking for specific examples of what you consider imbalances that need to be addressed. I might consolidate the provided examples for a 'most expressed issue' list to round out the curiosity.

I usually use the term balanced for PVP games, so I was hoping you would clarify what you mean by balanced in this aspect.

I do believe the current storyteller/difficulty settings/and custom scenarios create a good environment for a rimworld player of any skill level to enjoy.

[DariusWolfe]

I went with the "No, not really" option, though I don't really mod it for balance. It's still entertaining, but a lot of that is because of how hilariously bad and unbalanced some things are. Were the game advertised as being feature-complete and a lot of the balance issues were still there, I'd probably find the game a lot more frustrating than I do; Knowing that Tynan is focused on adding features and fixing game-breaking bugs moreso than fine-tuning the balance allows me to be a lot more philosophical about the frustrating aspects.