First game: a story of muffalos, friendship and death

Started by danderson, October 09, 2013, 03:01:16 PM

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danderson

(some suggestions inlined, which I'll cross-post to the suggestions forum. I realize that some of the suggestions involve either player model or implementation complexity; they're just things that I think I would like, not things that I'm convinced are necessary.)

First game! I went with the initial character roll rather than try to min-max the abilities, let's see how that went. I ended up with an expert miner, a scientist, and a silver-tongued salesman (aka "dirt hauler").

We made planetfall in a nice enough area: some soil for crops, a geyser a short walk away, and enough food and metals to be getting on with. The first few days went as you'd expect: building walls around the sleeping mats; a solar array for doors and lights; some batteries after that embarrassing first night when the power went out at sunset; and a few farm plots and a paste dispenser to keep starvation at bay.

By day 5, I was feeling good about this planet. It seemed placid and welcoming. Then, as my scientist was building her research and comms lab, I noticed that my salesman wasn't planting crops as he should have been. A little scrolling later, I find him engaged in hand to hand combat with an enraged muffalo. Just as I found him, he collapsed from blood loss, and the muffalo thankfully went off to bother some other nearby critter.

Well, just in the nick of time! I send my miner to haul Mr. Rodeo to a bed before he bleeds out completely. Oh, remember that critter the enraged muffalo was after? Yeah, it was a boomrat. Fire in the homestead! My two conscious colonists drop everything, including the bleeding-out third colonist, to go fight the fire. Eventually they beat it down, and come home to find that their friend has died, a mere two tiles from the safety of a bed.

(Suggestion: make hauling wounded colonists to safety separate from generic hauling, and give it the highest priority. Firefighting is important and all, but I'd rather spend a few more hours fighting the fire than end up with one fewer colonists because he was dropped and left to die.)

(Suggestion: this is one of the several times that I struggled with the static job priority order. While I realize that it introduces additional complexity to allow reordering, I believe it would make the colony easier to manage. If you want to keep things simple to start with, how about a research item to unlock it, e.g. "Colony administration" or somesuch? Blah, that sounds like even more cognitive load. I dunno.)

On the dawn of the sixth day, the rim is looking distinctly less welcoming. I let my guard down for a moment, and it took one of my people. After a quick spot of grave-digging and burial, I build three auto-turrets on the exposed flank of my colony. Can nasties smash through walls? I sure hope not, I want them to charge around the buildings and into machine gun fire. With my insurance policy firmly in place, I let the pair of survivors return to farming. The harvest is upon us, and without it they'll run out of food in a few days.

The rim had more in store for me (hint: it's mostly not good things :) ), which I'll post in a followup.

Drabus

Nice story, good first painful experience! hehehe

I agree on the prioritizations. Tynan had a system earlier but I think the reason was that it was deemed too complex. It would be interesting if it could have the overview screen and then a simple/complex method, with simple being default, and complex being like "advanced options" that allows you to change the priorities for each individual settler. For example, one will haul always before anything else, THEN would mine, whereas another guy would mine first, then haul.

I'd also love to see a few other things on the overview, such as equipped weapon. Thanks Ty!

Semmy

awsome awsome story.

You gave me a laugh.
Could you guys post a screeny of the overview
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Edmund Burke

Hypolite

You can manually bypass the priority system by selecting a colonist and right-clicking on the task, it should show "Prioritize [what you want him to do]" and he'll do it no matter what.

Nice story ;)

danderson

Quote from: Hypolite on October 09, 2013, 05:12:48 PM
You can manually bypass the priority system by selecting a colonist and right-clicking on the task, it should show "Prioritize [what you want him to do]" and he'll do it no matter what.

Nice story ;)

Yeah, I discovered that after the first guy bled out, when trying to convince the survivors that they should really build a grave now plz. Lesson learned for future mayhem :).

danderson

As they say on TV, "And now, the conclusion..."

Day 7 dawns. The harvest is going well, we should have enough food to sell soon. A weapons ship passes by, and I spend most of my money on a single lee-enfield. I can't afford anything else, not until the harvest is over. Out of nowhere, my autoturrets open fire. It's a lone guy, and oh yeah, there's a notification that someone is passing through.

(Suggestion: any chance of an IFF? It seems like he was no threat, but I didn't have the option to just talk to him, or welcome him)

After a couple of solid hits, the stranger collapses. I hastily construct a prison cell, and start nursing him back to health with a view to recruit him. Fortunately, the cell doesn't have a view on the fresh grave, so he might be tricked into thinking that this is a well-run colony. While my warden plies him with food and words, my scientist goes to work on improving food yield.

Day 8, the harvest is complete, and Archer has agreed to join our little world! He's a trained soldier, so I gear him up with the rifle and put him on construction detail. It's high time we split the dormitory into individual bedrooms. Things are looking up again!

(Suggestion: any way to move items of furniture without selling them? Seems that selling only partially refunds the object, so it's a net loss if I just want to scooch the bed to the right a bit)

Midway through construction, pirates land and start planning an attack. There are only two of them, against my three turrets and a soldier. Pah, easy, let them come!

When they do come, I realize I've slightly overlooked something: they have masses of cover that they're using to safely get closer, while my turrets are out in the open. The turrets can still get some hits, but it's very slow going, and the pirates have a much better hit rate. Soon, one of the turrets is heavily damaged. I try sending my miner in to fix it, and of course it blows up in his face. One turret and one colonist down :( .

Okay, time to send my soldier in. Unfortunately, in my rush to get things sorted out, I order him to melee attack, and shouldering his rifle, he charges out of cover and across the plains. That works about as well as you'd expect against two pirates with rifles, and we're down to just the scientist, armed with a pistol she doesn't know how to use. The other turrets hold the pirates off a little longer, but eventually they also blow (taking the power out with them), and my colony breathes its last, overrun by the raiding scum.


So yeah, that was a short and terrible playthrough. Major lesson learned: Rimworld is descended from a tactical shooter, and as such it is really important to secure a tactical advantage. Numerical superiority means nothing if you don't know what to do with it.

I only took one screenshot this playthrough, fairly early on. It looks like I got my early story muddled: the muffalo attack was during the construction of the common room (laid out in the screenshot), not during the lab's construction. Pace doesn't make it into the next day.

I'll try to take more shots in future, though it's quite hard to remember that while trying to also run a colony :).

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Semmy

Thans for the accompanied  screenshot and awesome story
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Edmund Burke

Christian

#7
Hi, is it okay if I quote part of your story for my preview of Rimworld?

danderson