A step away from long term play

[Listy]

A9 seems to have taken a step backwards from long term play.

In the old A8 you could use some placeable items as barricades that you could shoot over. Which was very useful for dealing with the unending constantly ramping up hordes.

However that mechanic has been pulled from the game, now the bad guys can just walk over any obstacle you care to set up. This is leaving me in a bit of a bind.

So anyone one got any decent defences now you can't make a bunker that's going to hold on for more than 30 seconds? My current colony, well I'm looking at it and wondering how I'm going to defend it.

Tynan: With the recent insulation changes, along with this one it really feels like you're forcing us underground with the traditional complex killbox.
To date all but one of my colonies have been overground ones with the colonists in the front line manning the barricades against the oncoming horde.
Equally it feels like you're taking a step away from the long term play which was one of the beauties of this game. It Felt like you could dig in and stay.
Maybe for the next build a 1x2 Barbed wire barricade or thicket that's impassable. Something like this:
http://www.fallingpixel.com/products/32604/mains/barbwire04_prev01.jpg

[akiceabear]

No comments about the vanilla changes to your strategies, but Defend That Colony! is a vanilla friendly mod you may want to try.

[Panzer]

Yeah noticed that too, luckily the first thing to walk over my hydroponics maze was a neutral critter ^^, so no bad surprise there.

Wouldnt say longterm is not possible anymore, my colony right now (challenge randy, 12h playtime, 200k wealth, year 2) can fend off any attack the storyteller throws at me. In my experience, raids dont happen that often anymore and raid size isnt that large either, overall weapon damage has been reduced.

Inferno cannons and incendiary launchers got a huge buff though and are really scary now, mech raids with lots of inferno caterpillars are quite the challenge 

[Listy]

[...] incendiary launchers got a huge buff [...]

As in the Gun formally known as the T9? Does it actually have a blast radius now? IF so I might have to start thinking about using them. (when I get some)

[Panzer]

Yeah it does, 5 tiles cross-shaped. Pawns set on fire burn for a rather long time, during which they run around in panic. Forgot to mention, due to overall reduced damage turrets can take quite some punishment now before blowing up.

The new balancing takes some time to get used to, til now I rather like it, more than before, where you commited genocide on a daily basis

[Listy]

Yeah it does, 5 tiles cross-shaped. Pawns set on fire burn for a rather long time, during which they run around in panic. Forgot to mention, due to overall reduced damage turrets can take quite some punishment now before blowing up.

The new balancing takes some time to get used to, til now I rather like it, more than before, where you commited genocide on a daily basis

Good to know. On the Damage thing are you sure? Because I was getting a hell of a lot less colonists than normal, mostly because they all seemed to end up dead. Although that might simply be I wasn't causing enough damage and people were therefore legging it before capture.

Well I just got The Psychotic wave with Boomrats. So that my current colony doomed.
Hopefully my new one will make use of all I've learned in the last two days, and will be a bit better. Its Underground time.

[Panzer]

Yeah well thats what my gut feeling tells me, no facts here
You can take a look at the weapons table in the debug logging menu while in dev mode, ranged weapon damage is listed there. Couldnt find melee table yet but that has been rebalanced as well, noticed the damage of legendary weapons is now half of what it used to be.

[_alphaBeta_]

I'm not sure the game has found its final theme yet regarding whether it's a survival game, or an escape game. Given the ever increasing threat, it would seem it's an escape game with the eventual goal of holding out as long as you can before getting a ship ready. I'd personally like to see some mechanics added that make the survival game (with no intention of escaping) more viable. If I've spent enough time building up my colony, I don't always want to leave. In some cases, I think this realistic in the context of the game. Perhaps some colonists didn't have much to go back to anyway, so they'll make a stay of it where they are. Perhaps someday this could be controlled by which world you land on. Some could be more hostile than others and would be dictated by the type of game the player selected when making the world. If you land on a conflicted planet, eventually you'll be overwhelmed.

The escape model mode makes sense as-is. The threat will eventually become too great to hold out, even with added defense abilities. The challenge would be to keep the long-term mode interesting for the player without having the storytellers ramp up the challenge indefinitely.

Either way, I think the next step is to have access to better defenses. Bunkers, stronger turrets, and traps are the way to go. Plus the apparel system could use some automation or presets. Getting a half dozen colonists to don armor, helmets, shields, and weapons can be a daunting task, one that gets old in the mid to late game.

[tommytom]

I'm not sure the game has found its final theme yet regarding whether it's a survival game, or an escape game. Given the ever increasing threat, it would seem it's an escape game with the eventual goal of holding out as long as you can before getting a ship ready. I'd personally like to see some mechanics added that make the survival game (with no intention of escaping) more viable. If I've spent enough time building up my colony, I don't always want to leave. In some cases, I think this realistic in the context of the game. Perhaps some colonists didn't have much to go back to anyway, so they'll make a stay of it where they are. Perhaps someday this could be controlled by which world you land on. Some could be more hostile than others and would be dictated by the type of game the player selected when making the world. If you land on a conflicted planet, eventually you'll be overwhelmed.

The escape model mode makes sense as-is. The threat will eventually become too great to hold out, even with added defense abilities. The challenge would be to keep the long-term mode interesting for the player without having the storytellers ramp up the challenge indefinitely.

Either way, I think the next step is to have access to better defenses. Bunkers, stronger turrets, and traps are the way to go. Plus the apparel system could use some automation or presets. Getting a half dozen colonists to don armor, helmets, shields, and weapons can be a daunting task, one that gets old in the mid to late game.

Same.

Just like a8, you can horde research with a good researcher 24/7 in about one season or less.
Captured a high researcher with volatile trait (she broke a few times when I sold 2 prisoners for the first time and realize it's a huge negative), but after she was re-educated 3 times, I had no problem having hear research like crazy and all research is done.

All you have to do is get the resources and you can escape. You can literally research everything and not use 90% of it until you want to or get the materials. Doesn't seem balanced.

[Vexare]

I would prefer to have the option for long-term play be available even if it's a separate storyteller mode altogether (Sandbox Steve or something) where you still have threats but not ramped up over time to eventually make it too tedious to stay or too bogged down / lagged.

While I appreciate the story-line and the 'escape' theme ... after you've done it a few times, the obvious viable next step is sandbox mode. Challenges perhaps. I'm currently challenging myself to capture as many prisoners as possible and start a 'slave colony' (there's unfortunately no programming to allow it so it's just RP) as a challenge. But the obvious problem is that these founders came here purposely with the intent of starting a trade-colony plantation and not to escape as castaways.

[ZestyLemons]

Yeah it does, 5 tiles cross-shaped. Pawns set on fire burn for a rather long time, during which they run around in panic. Forgot to mention, due to overall reduced damage turrets can take quite some punishment now before blowing up.

The new balancing takes some time to get used to, til now I rather like it, more than before, where you commited genocide on a daily basis

I wonder if this was at all inspired by my mod, I did the same thing back when I was actually maintaining it.

[Setokaiva[IVL]]

No barricades with placeable items? Rock chunks still slow down pawns moving over them, and block some gunfire. Bunkers? just make a stone-wall structure, enclose it so it gains a roof, then knock holes at random points in the wall. The interior of this structure will be darkened, which (I think) causes enemies to suffer further penalties when firing on you. This also avoids the negative effect from being in bad weather (though I'm not sure if the aim penalty is from shooting at something in bad weather, or actually being in it).

Actually, Alpha 9 is a step closer to long-term play, with the addition of quality levels for weapons and apparel -- you can't just maintain a stock of perfect sniper rifles and rocket launchers, anymore, so the first few weapons and pieces of armor you snag off dead raiders are very likely to be nearly useless to you. This causes you to keep looking for better deals, gives incentive to recycle old weapons for metal more often, and generally makes the game tougher and more random. Fighting off Mechanoids with shoddy bolt-action rifles is not fun.

Interestingly enough, gun turrets do not come with quality levels, so they always fire at full power. Even more incentive to scrap old guns for more auto-turrets!

[NoImageAvailable]

I would prefer to have the option for long-term play be available even if it's a separate storyteller mode altogether (Sandbox Steve or something) where you still have threats but not ramped up over time to eventually make it too tedious to stay or too bogged down / lagged.

Isn't that basically Randy Random? After about a dozen colonies I haven't noticed any particular increase in challenge over time.

[Boboid]

A9 seems to have taken a step backwards from long term play.
In the old A8 you could use some placeable items as barricades that you could shoot over. Which was very useful for dealing with the unending constantly ramping up hordes.

However that mechanic has been pulled from the game, now the bad guys can just walk over any obstacle you care to set up. This is leaving me in a bit of a bind.

I can't imagine any situation where I would use anything other than a sandbag or a solid wall as cover.
I can't even pinpoint what you're specifically referring to - when you say " that a mechanic has been pulled from the game" without any context

[Listy]

I can't imagine any situation where I would use anything other than a sandbag or a solid wall as cover.
I can't even pinpoint what you're specifically referring to - when you say " that a mechanic has been pulled from the game" without any context

In A8 Butcher Tables, Research benches and Gun racks could all be made from Plasteel (Although not the Butcher table which is why I stopped using it) giving good hit points. They were impassable, but colonists could fire over them.
So it was common to use them as Embrasures in a Bunker or firing line. Allowing your colonists to fire over them, while being unable to be charged. When you've got ~30 colonists and you're getting charged by 100+ you can't physically produce enough firepower to stop the charge. Meaning that the enemy will reach that line of sandbags cross over it and then overwhelm your colonists.

The ability to fire in, while not in danger of being charged meant that it brought you time to whittle down the numbers. Now that option doesn't exist so now any long term colony either has to be very smart about its defence, or is pointless because its doomed.

In short: Sandbags don't do enough. Any other form of barricade option we had has been removed. Equally grenades seem much more useless now. As you have to be so close to the enemy that you'll just get murdered by charges.