[MOD PACK] (Alpha 9) Epokalypse 1.02b [Hotfixes n' Tweaks!]

Started by Epyk, February 20, 2015, 03:40:19 AM

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Does Epokalypse feel balanced?

Yup! Just the right amount of challenge!
It has a few kinks! Translation: Mostly balanced (Please comment the issue)
I can't survive the Epokalypse! Translation: Unbalanced (Please comment the issue)
I haven't tried the Epokalypse.

lughtaj

My colony is finished. I tried to kill the spitters this time, instead of hiding and waiting it out, especially after they broke into my kitchen. Everything had been a struggle for a few months, since a meteor storm killed my three best colonists. It didn't even have to be the end, the last spitters starved to death before my last two colonists finished bleeding out on the ground. I could have hidden from them again.

This was mod version 1.02, game version 9e, Cassandra 100% difficulty.

start March 1 5500
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9dxz1k6m9lw9a9e/epokalypsestart3.png?dl=0

end September 11 5501
https://www.dropbox.com/s/n4i5ffla69gc7ei/epokalypseend3.png?dl=0

Nevodark

Quote from: Epyk on February 27, 2015, 02:53:24 AM
Quote from: Nevodark on February 26, 2015, 03:11:10 PM
Though about adding combat realism at all? or would it be incompatible with current mods?

I'll play a few rounds and run some tests and see if I like it.

Been playing with it quite a bit now + your modpack and i quite like it. Dosent seem to conflict with anything so far.

Also big tip to anyone struggling with the horrors etc. Because they are so fantastically slow just set 2 of your colonists on them. Get one to attract them all and make him run in a circle whilst the other shoots from a bit further away. They never seem to catch the one running round. Same for zombies.

With a few turrets outside and 1 guy running round you can easily crush HUGE amounts of horrors without any deaths.

MyNameIsSpyder

I'm looking forward to trying this out! Only thing is, I can't decide to test this or the Slavers mod first...

Kyos

Cassandra Classic. 100% Difficulty thingy-upper.

Humble Start

Everyday Chores...

Present Day Colony of "Doom'd"

I think something broke... Do I have to start the challenge over?

Mechanoid Hivemind

For lighting out side just use i think its Itchflea or something like that outdoor lighting ( i am so so sorry if i misspelled your name :( ) i guess ill give this another shot
The individual is obsolete. When you and your kind are extinct, we will cleanse our collective memory of the stain of your existence.

Nevodark

#155
http://gyazo.com/534de344c59636bba87d3a61bb61c383 .

I dont have a screenshot of my start i didnt expect it to go so well.

After 263 days i have a ship built with enough space to save 6 of my colonists :D

Playing on randy 100% ive had quite a lucky run i think so far. probably going to end this colony here.

The zombie virus only very recently went airborn so ive not really experienced a mass uprising of corpses yet.

Ember


Mmogog

[BEWARE -- SPOILERS --]

In a 100% challenge game, temperate forest biome, Cassandra Classic storyteller I managed to stay strong 5 years until I got bored with the colony and built the ship with room for my 22 colonists and left. Including 4 colonists that were in cryptosleep because they were abrasive or assassins.

Built principle - holed up in the mountain

I decided to build inside the mountain exclusively with a single entrance to the outside world. It was vital that I did not leave my colonist to wonder outside much. I had only  a small area with no mountaintop roof that I enclosed so I could grow trees, and where I ended up placing 4 mortars and some shooting and melee training facilities. The cooler for my kitchen led to a duct that had no rooftop but was sealed off by several rows of walls.

Defense - semicircle of turrets and a single wall entry at the focal point

I originally planned on making a huge circular killbox at the entrance (51 diameter) as I usually do in other games. However, I did not have space on the map to make it inside the mountain and ended up making only a semicircle of that same size at the entrance, as I soon realized that I could not maintain such a huge killbox on an outside zone considering the hordes of enemies I faced with this mod. The semicircle with mostly advanced military turrets worked pretty well, but I kept loosing 1-3 turrets every time a had a huge raid.

The game-changing nuke trap

The most game-changing discovery for me, which would allow me to continue to play this game possibly forever, was a "trap" to kill nuke the first wave of enemies automatically, making only a single improvised turret (and some log walls) only get destroyed every raid. Since all I had to do was rebuild the "trap" and patch the walls, I was making more steel with trade then spending on defense. You can see the trap built (missing an obvious wall piece) at the top of the "killzone" picture at the album linked below.  It was placed in front of the single wall opening and closed with walls on the sides. This "trap" consists of an improvised turret next to a nuclear bomb, closed with log walls on 3 sides and a moat on the 4th side. The initial wave of enemies would go for the improvised turret because it was the first thing firing at them when they arrived at the colony. The moat would hold the melee units off for a bit until more arrived. By the time they were able to reach the improvised turret, there was already a huge gathering of units near the turret (and the nuke) and the turret explosion set off the nuke too. This would outright eliminate the first wave, allowing my defenses and colonists to pick out the remaining units without a single additional loss. The improvised turret+nuke combo costs about 200 steel and 2 uranium. If you are trading well, it is quite cheap. The log walls cost only 3 wood each.

Different monster raids and how I dealt with them

This is how I ended up dealing with the advanced raids this mod pack offers after trial and error:

  • Zombies: kill of the first wave with the trap. Lock my colonists indoors, have a nice night of sleep, make sure everyone eats in the morning and then I take all of the ranged colonists across the map to hunt the rest. It does not pay off to leave them on the map as they may wonder inside the base one by one and could bite an unsuspecting colonist. It takes two days, but it is the easiest group of enemies of deal with. Note: all the colonists that were still with the group by the time I killed the last zombie were going nuts with all the dead bodies littering the ground.

  • Horrors: the starting horrors raids are quite weak. However, once the game starts sending spitters, they become quite nasty. These creatures will not go inside your base, they will just  wait next to the entrance. They have a long range fire AoE spit. After setting my colonists and my defenses on fire trying to fight them off I decided to lock myself in and wait, hoping another group would come and fight them. I learned that they starve to death waiting for my colonists to come out in about 3 days. So I would just wait it off, rather then having to deal with the fire storm in the form of spits.

  • Ants: The most annoying. The basic melee units and the middle-tier ranged ones are not so bad. My defenses would take care of them even without my colonists firing. However, last unit tier consists of ant queens. These nasty beings stay at the border of the map and continuously spawn basic melee ants. They do not starve themselves to death like the spitters, so I had to deal with them because the continuing crossfire at my base would take a toll on my walls. I ended up dealing with them with a set of 4 mortars (1 incendiary, 1 steel, 2 devastators - devastators are the best). I would have to manually aim at the queen ants for a long time, even with using colonists with good aim, as they would stick to the corners of the maps and were hard to hit. However, I discovered that once you "shred" them with a mortar, they get a bleed and will eventually die of blood loss or untreated infection. So at the end I would just make sure I got a few hits in each queen ant and wait it off inside the base, having my semicircle of turrets kill the basic melee ants that kept getting spawned for days straight if needed. I decided against manually targeting the queens until they were dead because it was so boring and because the colonists would switch targets if the queen they were targeting died and often hit my own defenses trying to target the basic ants that were making their way into my base. I set a geothermal on fire and even hit my ship once! I had 10 queens come to attack my base once and dealt with that with minimal losses. It did, however, take  3-4 days of mortar fire and waiting for the infection to kill the damaged queens.

Other notes

Needless to say, it is vital for this strategy to have all of the food you need generated with hydroponics inside the base.

Normal human and mech raids were ridiculously easy compared to the most advanced raids of monsters. It was quite funny to get a combination of different raids at the same time as they would fight each other in addition to fighting you. One time an overwhelming zombie horde made pirates that arrived to assault my colony flee before they even got a chance to attack.

It is was also cool to see the stage 2 of the zombie virus - airborne. This means that dead people will always rise as zombies. I used to keep fresh zombie bodies in freezer for butchering and selling the leather until a zombie woke up and attacked my cook! No more, they get incinerated right away.

The most challenging thing was dealing with all of the dead bodies. Not only will the piles of rotting bodies drive your colonists insane, it will become harder to move around as the squares with bodies in them slow your colonists down.  I had to have 2 crematoriums and 2 butchers tables working full-time just to keep the area nearest to the base clear of corpses between raids.

As I did not get a single ancient ship drop on the map during the entirety of the playthrough I had to buy and AI core for the ship's computer at the exotic goods merchant for 7000. Along with all of the steel I had to buy to make the ship for 22 poeple, it took quite a while to raise all the silver I needed once I decided it was time to leave this rimworld.

I did not think of taking a starting screenshot of the beginning of this colony but I uploaded an album of the base after my colonists left on the ship. You can see the date on the corner (5505) and and I can send the save file for verification.

The image album with explanations can be found at the following link:

http://imgur.com/a/V6ODU

Cheers,

MMOGOG

Edits: text reviews.

geredis

Is there supposed to be a Storyteller with this mod somewhere?  From how the Epokalypse Experience mod itself (the one that says that it's 'how it should be experienced' ), it seems to suggest that there is an additional Storyteller option.  However, looking at the options, there is only Cassandra, Phoebe, Randy, and Wave Survival.  There are no others.  Is it indeed just a general reworking of the default three stories, or is it supposed to be possible to activate Epokalypse in some more obvious way?

Epyk

Quote from: geredis on March 02, 2015, 01:23:30 PM
Is there supposed to be a Storyteller with this mod somewhere?  From how the Epokalypse Experience mod itself (the one that says that it's 'how it should be experienced' ), it seems to suggest that there is an additional Storyteller option.  However, looking at the options, there is only Cassandra, Phoebe, Randy, and Wave Survival.  There are no others.  Is it indeed just a general reworking of the default three stories, or is it supposed to be possible to activate Epokalypse in some more obvious way?

No, it just changes some of the core games mechanics.
Longer growth time, more raids, etc.

Epyk

I'll get to other replies and update the leader boards ASAP.
Been very busy past week.

demonofelru

dude you have to add this, this is sick!
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=9221.0

i am playing cassandra 130% 7 years  14 colonists a huge ass base standing strong almost got wiped out by a meteor shower and 2 horror raides one after another, damn meteors hit the power supply, and horrors when they come they come like 20 spitters, if anyone has problems with them heres a hint: get your colonists under overhead mountain, they cant shoot through it, they act like mortars ;) will post when i die

Chaotic Skies

What happened to the pack? This pack sounds awesome, but is too outdated, as i have alpha ten and eleven only. Will you start updating the pack again, or no? If not, that's fine, just would like to know ;)
Farewell and Thanks for the Fish.