Unstable build feedback thread

[Admiral Obvious]

Just posting to say Steel>Bears in terms of how hard it is to acquire.

You have almost daily influxes of bears in most biomes, and once you get good enough weapons to take down a bear in 1 or 2 shots, bear hunting is trivial.

Steel is extremely finite since, no matter the map, there's a limit to how much you can get, even with deep drilling.

[erdrik]

Seeking other feedback on the scythers, if anyone has some experience. Too easy? Too hard? Just right?

Ive only run into mechanoids 4 or 5 times, and only in groups no greater than 2 so far. (Im at around year 3, around 48 thousand wealth)
But Ive noticed the Scythers(melee variant, havent met a range scyther yet, and so far never more than one) are not particularly threatening to me so far. Im sure they'd be scary if they got in melee range, but so far Ive been able to prevent it by overwhelming them with ranged firepower while they chase a bait colonist. I think this is only possible because of the short stuns that my 4 colonists with 10+ shoot all equip with bolt action rifles have on it. My bait has never been caught by a Scyther.

... My ranged firepower may be skewing the situation tho? Dunno what they are supposed to be balanced against.

[erdrik]

Just posting to say Steel>Bears in terms of how hard it is to acquire.
...
Steel is extremely finite since, no matter the map, there's a limit to how much you can get, even with deep drilling.

I dunno about that. Im currently overstocked with steel.
4000+ in my stockpiles, and I haven't even touched the default deposits outside my base around the map.

Bears may be a "daily" occurrence but they are usually only 1 or 2 at most in my experience, and they require more direct micro and control to acquire their leathers

[JavaWho]

Seeking other feedback on the scythers, if anyone has some experience. Too easy? Too hard? Just right?

They are quick, I like that, had a colony over 200k, got scythers, lancers and centipedes 2 patches ago.  I think they are just right but have not been able to get to mega colony size yet to truly test.

[m44v]

Loving the game so far, last time I played Rimworld caravaning wasn't a thing. I'm playing Cassandra medium, mountainous temperate forest. My biggest screwup so far was building IEDs around a poison ship. I take note that mechanoids don't appreciate you doing that now, somebody lost a torso and I had to use a resurrector serum that time.

I have been playing for several builds so I will just mention what I think is still relevant currently:

• In an incapacitated refugee event, striping the incapacitated pawn will make him join your colony. Please no game, I didn't offer him help, I don't want him, I only want his stupid shirt for all the trouble of coming here. I had to revert to an earlier save, if that is working as intended then I feel the strip option is misleading.
• I find myself cursing the pathfinding algorithm since it has the habit of pathing through 3 doors inside a room instead of around the room, animals in particular. I had to modify my colony a bit so could avoid animals walking through the freezer and kitchen whenever I changed their areas.
• More of a bug, somehow I had a muffalo that wasn't assigned to any pawn ignore area restrictions, it was after treating its wounds I think. I had to sell it.
• Opening a grave usually means the pawn putting the corpse back in, you have to pause and change the grave's storage settings if you want to empty it. It gets tedious if you want to remove a graveyard.
• I rescued a pawn from a escape pod, only to have him die to a single hoof of a manhunting alpaca. Not only there's the problem that these guys like to leave the map when they can barely walk, but this guy died without a critical wound. I feel the chance to die when downed shouldn't apply for these rescued non-colonists.
• I dislike how every squirrel and rabbit can trigger traps now, my traps are meant for raiders and scythers, having to rearm them so often is a waste of pawn time for so little meat. I prefer the previous system, although before the change I had to take faction penalty because a friendly caravan managed to step into one and If I banished a colonist he would die in the traps near the entrance of the colony, "I hope he'll make it" -3 mood, right, he's dead right there.
• While doing a stash quest that was defended by turrets, I captured an enemy pawn that had pretty good stats. 14 shooting, 15 cooking, I'm totally recruiting her I thought until I saw that she was ascetic and a gourmand. Not only I think those traits are contradictory, but the +50% hunger plus her preference for raw food meant that she would eat the food that could feed like 3 pawns. That was a good pawn but no 3 pawns good, and I wasn't going to figure out how to force feed her meals while also allowing her to cook.
• During a volcanic winter I set for slaughter any animal that were down because of starvation (couldn't spare the food) but pawns would still try to feed them anyway.
• I don't know that is the purpose of the firefoam trap. The description doesn't give any hint, in what circumstance or why I would want to spray enemies with fire-extinguishing foam? I like my raiders burnt and crispy
• Nutrition eaten per day isn't in the information dialog of pawns and animals, you have to resort to the form caravan dialog for get that information.
• Materials doesn't give information about the health points of structures built with them. I had to build a marble, slate and limestone wall before choosing which one to use.

Some QoL I would really like:

• A way to assign medical operations to an specific medic, the same way you can do with workbenches' bills. A copy-paste for all bills, not just individual bill, for dealing with multiple workbenches. Drag&drop for bill priorities.
• And holy sweet gaben, comparing the stats of anything is a royal pain in the ass, is a back and forth clickfest and you have to keep the numbers in your head. I would really appreciate an interface for comparing the stats of pawns and items.

I'm not really pushing for the endgame and still haven't done half of the research tree so there is still a lot of stuff for me to see, in any way this is a great update.

[Oblitus]

Materials doesn't give information about the health points of structures built with them. I had to build a marble, slate and limestone wall before choosing which one to use.

After selecting material, you can press "i" near description in architect menu to see stats. Not exactly obvious, but it is here. But for stuffed bills there is no way to know until you craft it and "i" for the recipe is quite useless. One for the details of the already created bill is a bit more informative, but it is hidden after a bunch of clicks and still gives little to clarify stuffed production.

BTW about bills. I appreciate cremation in clothes, but it would be nice to at least take that pretty expensive shield belts - they are only relatively valuable things raids can bring.

[Tynan]

Amazing feedback m44v. First post hero right here!

[mndfreeze]

Pitching in with a small observation I haven't seen around here just yet.

My pawns won't prefer power armor to devilstrand duster + flak jacket/pants. I understand the armor might be similar over chest but coverage is far different. They also prefer advanced plasteel helmets to power armor helmets. I get if the power armor helmet is low hp it makes sense to prefer, but even fresh good power armor gets ignored.

In my previous power armor ready game, I didn't have devilstrand, and when I would set a persons outfit to allow power armor they would go swap it out first thing even with flak.

I'm having this same sort of issue with regular clothing as well.  I have a colonist that insists on wearing a normal leather tribal outfit @ 90% instead of alpaca or heavy fur 100% shirt and pants that are normal and good quality.

[Dsbinbuffalo]

Not gonna pretend I'm not hurt over the lack of love of my first post from Tynan.

[Tynan]

Not gonna pretend I'm not hurt over the lack of love of my first post from Tynan.

Yours was amazing too. Let me express my great sorrow for not calling it out by name.

[iamomnivore]

Have a story on the current state of the Thrumbo / Traps. Not sure which side this problem lies on but, here goes:

As you can see in the image, I'm attempting to take down a Thrumbo. Just previous to this (you can still see a freshly-made corpse) a tribal raid occurs and they come down through a cave system I've trapped. Every trap was hit and triggered (first raid from this faction.)

At this point it's time to take the Thrumbo down, before it decides to move on Lacey has no fear and has volunteered to take the first shot. Several plinks later we've got a few wounds and the Thrumbo loses it. Lacey runs for her life and nearly loses it but, Thrumbo hits the first trap and slows down. Lacey cleans her pants up and keeps running. Things look good -- We're eating Thrumbo and wearing glitzy fur coats, tonight! Then, Lacey looks over her shoulder in horror as this wily Thrumbo carefully steps around the next series of traps. She was sure it'd just chase her in the straight line, along the wall they both ran.

No. Mr. Thrumbo (I have to call him Mr. now, as he's attained sentience and is quite intelligent) proceeds to GO AROUND the line of traps. This was all coming at the group. A few shots later and Nils is running for his life as an accidental decoy. Here's where the image comes in. Once again, Mr. Thrumbo is running straight along the wall (where you see the red line begin.) Mr. Thrumbo makes a natural deviation to attack our best dog ever, Lady D:< Lady takes shit from nothing and fights back. Now, we love Lady and command her to get her newly "docked" butt out of there (RIP waggin' tails.)

Lady and Mr. Thrumbo went Friday Night Fights at the red box. Lady escapes, as Mr. Thrumbo takes a couple shots and moves toward Nils. Lady has gone straight up and starts to flee. By all rights, the colonists are waiting for Mr. Thrumbo to go right over the couple of traps in front its path so they can praise the sun.

As one can see, this never happened. Mr. Thrumbo follows the red line, post-fight. Lady took the blue route. Mr. Thrumbo says damn the fastest route, I'm going around.

I hope this helps highlight a bit of a funny issue. I'm not sure Thrumbos are meant to recognize and avoid traps. I don't have video but, I've attempted to replicate the moment with my terrible drawing. It was VERY obvious the Thrumbo was taking every pain to avoid the traps, after hitting the first. You can even see where it began moving upward and then stopped to course-correct back down and around. Thanks.

*Version 1.0.1957 -- Started this one in .1956;
*Extreme Difficulty
*Cassandra Classic
*Crashlanded

[attachment deleted due to age]

[Dsbinbuffalo]

Not gonna pretend I'm not hurt over the lack of love of my first post from Tynan.

Yours was amazing too. Let me express my great sorrow for not calling it out by name.

Thank you for acknowledging my obvious attempt at fishing for your attention!   

Much love dude. I love your game! 

[DubskiDude]

Seeking other feedback on the scythers, if anyone has some experience. Too easy? Too hard? Just right?

https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/8wr50q/10_unstable_scythers_are_stupidly_powerful/ here's the thread I made on it. I'd take the downvote-bombing it received with a grain of salt, though. Again, by design, Reddit is not the place for dissenting opinions. I was also particularly patient this time around with the multiple threads of discussion within. I tried ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Basically in that thread there were a handful of arguments saying that melee Scythers are fine the way they are - firstly that there are EMP mortars and grenades. But mortars are very inaccurate, and nailing a melee Scyther running you down with one is likely impossible. Grenades are more useful in comparison, but only when the Scyther has reached melee range and is carving your pawn up, because the Scyther is stationary at that point. It then becomes an issue of smothering the Scyther with EMP until you redirect all your pawns to kill it, while the Lancers or Centipedes pick off your pawns at a distance. Eventually the Scyther will become immune to the EMP, and all hell breaks loose.

There's the other argument of making killboxes/kill hallways. If I recall correctly, that's not how you envisioned Rimworld to be played. I personally don't take satisfaction in making a room designed to exploit the AI pathing, so I don't use killboxes, and I shouldn't be forced to make one to deal with a single enemy type.

There's also setting traps like deadfall or EMP mines. The former seems rather hit or miss. Unless you carpet the area between the ship and your pawns with deadfall traps, the Scythers might just sidestep them. The EMP mines seem a bit more reasonable, but they're single use.

Finally there is the argument for melee pawns, since Scythers have less armor vs. blunt. I personally have never used melee pawns in the 550-ish hours I've put into Rimworld, and I have a whole host of reasons why this is, but that's a discussion for a different day. Long story short, I just don't use them because it's too risky. And I shouldn't be forced to adopt melee pawns to patch up one gigantic hole in my tactics that just appeared out of nowhere with the advent of melee Scythers.

What do I suggest to balance Scythers? First up is lower Scyther's sharp armor. Currently it sits at 72% (iirc), which is only 8% away from Centipede's sharp armor. I don't think melee-only shock troopers would feasibly be on par with tank-like centipedes, especially since melee Scythers are SO much faster than centipedes. You could also slightly lower Scyther's move speed, since closing the distance is the only requirement for them to start dishing crazy melee DPS. Scythers behave as the shock troops that charge the enemy and cause chaos within the player's firing line, but given their speed, their raw damage, the way they shrug off bullets, and their ranged backup, it seems too unreasonable to expect someone in the early/mid game to handle it.

[Dashthechinchilla]

Seeking other feedback on the scythers, if anyone has some experience. Too easy? Too hard? Just right?

I got a poison ship on a tribal randy rough. I had about 7 pawns armed with 1 grenade, a good lmg I got from a quest, and some bolt actions i scrounged from raiders. I have an emp that some raiders brought to use on me, even though I don't have electricity yet. I had various mostly tainted flavk vests and pants, no jackets but not enough for everyone.

I brought 2 guns plus the two grenades to bear. A melee and a lance spawned. The lance immediately got stunned, and the melee charged the emp guy. The grenades took out the stunned lancer before I even realized he was still throwing them. I backed up my emp guy and brought forward my brawler with the jade knife. The brawler got the attention quickly and the emp guy stunned the melee. Lots of cuts but no serious injury. The emp guy has the wimp trait so I was sweating it when the melee charged, lol.

[Oblitus]

As one can see, this never happened. Mr. Thrumbo follows the red line, post-fight. Lady took the blue route. Mr. Thrumbo says damn the fastest route, I'm going around.

While pathfinding in 1.0 feels much better, it sometimes takes strange routes. Remove that rock chunk. I am using traps around the corners extensively, and they are great, but the path along the wall should be cleared and optionally floored so pathfinding would prefer it. My personal favorite - trapping walls around geothermals.

[attachment deleted due to age]