Cassandra "Serious Challenge" Some thoughts.

[200Down]

So I've given extreme a go a few times but it's for masocists who don't mind restarting often if the RM gods don't favor them  Which btw I'm perfectly fine with. Just not my thing.

The "challenge" level feels quite good but eventually you'll need something more to test your metal so I have been giving "serious challenge"  a go and here are a few thoughts on it:
 
90% of the games seem to play out something like this: 
1: Getting up the "important" basics(not going to elaborate for peeps that haven't played much yet. It's part of the fun figuring out what steps work well
2: Sitting by with fingers crossed hoping for a trader selling weapons/armor.
3: "Oh I'm sorry Cassandra has decided you're well enough equipped so no traders for you good Sir or Madam".
4: Waiting for your ultimate defeat from a 2nd or 3rd wave of 10+ pirates.
5: Restart. Rinse Repeat.

Now, I'm all for a good, brutal, and nail biting experience but there seems to be quite a fine line between a brutal challeng and a difficulty that feels just plain broken.

Here's a few thoughts on possible adjustments:
1. Forcing some types of traders to always show up by a specific time.(again just some thoughts and these ideas my be outside the intended "feel" of rimword in general.
2. Cutting back on the initial "wave" size of enemies.(Not the later numbers though)
3. On higher difficulties the player gets his/her choice of "ancient" style weapons. Even swapping JUST the pistol with a shotty or sub seems to curb the early insanity.
4. Will add more after additional tests...........
    Ok, after about 10 more 1-2 hour restarts/sessions, at least half of them ended up being NO challenge in the beginning because either no raids at all for long periods or TINY amounts of baddies in those raids. We are talking 2-3 guys on the first 3 raids. The other half where throw aways because of MASSIVE raids like before. There's essentially no point in suggestions because she's just all over the place and not in an enjoyable or challenging way. She needs a total rewrite imo. And to actually be playtested a good 50 times because at this level of difficulty, you gotta be "spot on" or it's feels broken. All just my feelings on it of course and if this is how it's supposed to be then I guess I'll look to mods to fill the difficulty gap.

Please let me know if you've experienced something much different on the serious challenge difficulty. I simply may need to edit or remove some mods I'm using.

[Bitharne]

It would be good if you played the base game as said level and see how it goes imo.

[200Down]

It would be good if you played the base game as said level and see how it goes imo.

You're probably correct and I will likely test it many more times when a9 drops but intel then that's not a convincing enough reason haha. Got any actual thoughts of your own to add on the challenge level?

[Vexare]

So far, my own experience has been that Randomly Random is way worse than Cassandra but perhaps that's been the luck of the draw as I'm still new and have only a few tries. I also do not use any mods and I do not use the insane challenge levels - just casual.

I chose Randy for the one time I've decided to do a 'story' thinking it would make it more fun and man it's been a nutty challenge but there wasn't anything predictable. Half the time I was certain it was the end of the line for my colony and then at the last minute he would throw in a get-out-of-jail card by having an opposing faction show up at the same time, or a maddened boomrat would disrupt the entire siege with a chain reaction of deaths for the sieging team haha.

It's definitely fun.

Cassandra from what little I tried seems very predictable. But again, I haven't played it through all the way yet and am on casual settings because I'm new. The tweaking for this game seems to be necessary at higher difficulty settings.

[200Down]

 She does feel pretty predictable in "when" events will happen that's for sure and I never had the crazy random numbers problem on regular challenge difficulty. The challenge difficulty feels nicely balanced for starting out to me(well maybe not for JUST starting out but it's manageable after a short while).

Playing Randy you are prepared for a wild ride. It's right there on the tin Hell I'm afraid to try him on serious challenge after Cassandra's odd behavior. I think at higher levels you need SOME linearity just to have a chance if that makes sense lol. Otherwise it's the old exercise in futility .... spawn... 15+ raiders... restart.... tell you get something manageable and that's just wasting precious playing time. May sound harsh but that's how I feel about it

[Argon]

Cassandra is great until about year two, at which point her predictability and infuriating lack of traders finally gets to me, and I change the settings from 130% Cassandra to 160% Randy. This makes the game much more interesting.

-Argon

[200Down]

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Gives me another idea. Use Casandra's "challenge" script for the first say... 30-60 minutes on higher difficulties so you don't have soo many "broken" starting scenarios. Just a thought, meh... there's gotta be a better way to deal with that starting situation than that though.

Seems like most people are enjoying Randy on lower levels? Maybe use his instead but I couldn't even say sense it's been soo long sense I played him.

[Didact04]

There's far too much luck involved and too many things you can't acquire yourself for the increase in difficulty to be considered skill based. Basically, if you aren't handed what you need, you die. That's not a challenge. That's luck. You can't work with luck, luck works with you. That's not YOU doing anything, that's the game being merciful, and that isn't fun.

If you could make everything from scratch starting from the moment you put your feet on the ground, THEN you can start talking about skill-based things. But for now there's just far too much that the game needs to do for you for you to have a chance. That is simply a waste of everyone's time.

[200Down]

I completely agree with you. Still after playing her awhile you'll come to see that every action you take has more or less a equally substantial reaction from Cas. So in that sense she can somewhat be "managed"(on challenge difficulty or lower). This "story teller" system is a very odd but very interesting way to challenge the player regularly. But sadly it has plenty of downsides and the biggest one is simply that the player will never be rewarded for doing well. In fact, you could argue that the only instances where the player gets "rewarded" is when we play like shit, simply don't have experience with the game, or haven't yet learned to play by their twisted rules. In which case you'll have loads of injured people, no food, half you base burnt to the ground and Cas dropping candy from the skies quite regularly.

On serious challenge my main issue is the immediate massacre of your guys right from read-set-go. This doesn't always happen but so far... maybe 70% of the time you're basically boned after about 30-40 minutes. So you could spend literally hours and hours just trying to find a salvageable game to get to the actual "manageable" part.

Warning, filth incoming,
I think I finally have an answer for this conundrum. Rename serious challenge on Cas to serious mess, clusterfk, joke, asshat or anything else that would let you know that "hey buddy, this isn't Cas your playing". This is is a utter train-wreck. Impossible and no challenge at all rolled into one beautiful ball of rancid muffalo pies.  She's an angry sex starved middle aged widow with multiple personality disorder. One loves you and the other loves to hate you. She'll give you everything ,nothing, and anything BUT a "challenging" experience. 

At the very least you'd be ready for loads of bs. Kinda like you are with Randy