I want to hear about exploit strategies!

[b0rsuk]

For many intents and purposes unconstructed walls count as full walls. They support roof, they block movement, they seem to have just as much HP, they have more beauty (0) than a rock wall (-2). I wonder if I could get away with hauling materials to construction zone and just leaving them there ! That's what the forbid button is for, isn't it ?

Mortars require math, not shooting skill. That isn't how you aim a mortar.

Are you saying colonists incapable of Intellectual shouldn't be able to use mortars ? Instead or in addition to incapable of violence ?

[Aatxe360]

For many intents and purposes unconstructed walls count as full walls. They support roof, they block movement, they seem to have just as much HP, they have more beauty (0) than a rock wall (-2). I wonder if I could get away with hauling materials to construction zone and just leaving them there ! That's what the forbid button is for, isn't it ?

Mortars require math, not shooting skill. That isn't how you aim a mortar.

Are you saying colonists incapable of Intellectual shouldn't be able to use mortars ? Instead or in addition to incapable of violence ?

Sounds legit.

[Jorlem]

I can't help but think this is somewhat relevant to the mortar discussion, given Rimtech and the like.

[Limdood]

Using 2 or more people when fighting a mechanoid beyond cover, and having one drop behind cover for a split second before coming back out to "reset" the mechanoid's targeting. I'm assuming it would work with other pawns, but generally other pawns have hte same firing speeds or quicker than your own colonists.

Not quite true.  A mechanoid will continue "aiming" even if their target has left range/los.  If the aim completes, and there is ANY enemy (of the mechanoids) in range and LOS, they will instantly swivel their gun to that target and fire, basically using the "aim" at a different target for the new one instead.  I've been unable to actually exploit the mechanoids not firing, however, i HAVE been able to use it to swap a mech's target to a shielded cover pawn instead of the unarmored nudist sniper it was originally targeting.

[Limdood]

possibly exploits:

Unroofing a burning building is instant, risk free, and automatically makes the interior nonlethal.

Sappers will not bother to "recognize" enemies until they're near their targeted entry point.  This means if the sappers have a long walk and you run out to meet them, they will wander right by your colonists instead of stopping/seeking cover/shooting.

If you have a single, unblocked entry into your base, you can make it a super long single tile corridor and line it with traps (just build door access to the corridor and a door exit from the base).  Even though raiders are supposed to remember the traps, only some of them will stop to try to attack walls to get through, meaning the traps will still all spring at the raiders.  (on the other hand, raiders remembering trap locations means that traps can never be worth it without forcing raiders to trigger them repeatedly over multiple raids)

[GarettZriwin]

For many intents and purposes unconstructed walls count as full walls. They support roof, they block movement, they seem to have just as much HP, they have more beauty (0) than a rock wall (-2). I wonder if I could get away with hauling materials to construction zone and just leaving them there ! That's what the forbid button is for, isn't it ?

They do not support roof, if you deconstruct walls near them then roof will actually fall, they only block way so roof can be constructed.

[Mathenaut]

For many intents and purposes unconstructed walls count as full walls. They support roof, they block movement, they seem to have just as much HP, they have more beauty (0) than a rock wall (-2). I wonder if I could get away with hauling materials to construction zone and just leaving them there ! That's what the forbid button is for, isn't it ?

Mortars require math, not shooting skill. That isn't how you aim a mortar.

Are you saying colonists incapable of Intellectual shouldn't be able to use mortars ? Instead or in addition to incapable of violence ?

Sounds legit.

Depends. It's math, not rocket science. If a colonist knows the geometry to construct something, they know the geometry to aim a mortar. If they don't and they fire anyways, it'll work more or less the way mortars function now.

As so many times, with so many other things with arguments like this, reality makes this easier, not harder. Properly done, every mortar shot after the first should land closer to the target with a very small deviation around bullseye. Hell, I might actually consider using mortars then.

[userfredle]

I gotta say the biggest exploits are micro managing snipers to pick off enemies that don't fight back, also u can move units from a cover wall back and forth and get free shots on mechanoids, also I can snipe the mechanoid ships that land and nothing will come to attack me, I don't even have to move my pawn back and forth.

[Vaporisor]

I gotta say the biggest exploits are micro managing snipers to pick off enemies that don't fight back, also u can move units from a cover wall back and forth and get free shots on mechanoids, also I can snipe the mechanoid ships that land and nothing will come to attack me, I don't even have to move my pawn back and forth.

I wonder if they could put in a mechanic to where if a sniper fires, they move to where the sniper was and look for targets.  Sniping and running would fit with a covert sniper more with reality.  Even just have certain people in the spawn set to be the investigators?

[cultist]

Doesn't a lot of this simply come down to "the enemy AI is bad and easy to exploit"?

[b0rsuk]

I have a boreal forest base with 2x2 fueled generators. Two power my base, two power a soil sunlamp on a separate remote circuit. My base has a slight power deficit (90-300W; slightly more if smelter is enabled). My sunlamp circuit has a slight power surplus (2000 - 1600 - 100 = 300W). Naturally, I practice battery juggling. I load one battery at a time in the sunlamp circuit. Once full, it's uninstalled and hauled to the warehouse. Conversely, when a battery in my base power room is about to drain completely, I replace it with a fully charged battery.
The whole time about 3 fully charged batteries are sitting in my warehouse, ready to be installed in case of a prolonged attack. Now the kicker: uninstalled batteries NEVER seem to go Zzzzt. I'm not sure if this is intended, but it allows me to avoid exploding batteries almost completely, and still have emergency power.

[stefanstr]

The problem is the same with a lot of similar issues, which is that there's no really good way to determine *why* an event happened for AI purposes.

As in, a guy starved to death - how do we know it was intentional by the player, and not just because everyone is starving?

A trader starved to death or burned to death - should his faction get angry? How do we know?

I can think of ways try to detect it but it gets tricky.

Do you really have to detect the "why?" Maybe it would be easier, and almost just as effective, to have a "member of my faction died in an inhumane way" thought. For colonists, if their buddy starves to death, they should be *extremely* upset - why has my friend starved? Are we running out of food? Then I could be next. Has someone denied him food? That's sick. - The reason is secondary.

It's trickier for the other factions, but I think it could be solved by A) limiting incoming pawns by climate (no caravans on ice sheets, for example) and by B) understanding when their pawns die in a fight with a hostile third party.

An unaccounted-for death should otherwise worsen relations - wouldn't you be at least suspicious if you send a group to see that new colony, and two of them don't come back, whatever the reason?

***

And speaking of other exploits, many of them are related to the way roofs work right now. If roofs were constructed and de-constructed tile by tile, it would solve a lot of issues.

[b0rsuk]

It's trickier for the other factions, but I think it could be solved by A) limiting incoming pawns by climate (no caravans on ice sheets, for example) and by B) understanding when their pawns die in a fight with a hostile third party.

Rather than hardcoding "no caravans because it's ice sheet", I would restrict them to Summer and maybe if it coincides with a heat wave. Base it on temperature and weather, not biome.

[carbon]

If you want to train your medical skill, the easiest way to do it is to hunt some big game animal with a pistol or an uzi (any weapon that does low damage per hit). Once the animal is downed, you can rescue the animal and perform often dozens of treatments on them. At 500xp per treatment (for 1.0x passion), that's a whole lot of essentially risk-free and cost-free xp.

After the treatments, you can either finish off the animal and turn it into lunch or let it recover and then shoot it and treat it some more.

I wouldn't really consider it an exploit, except it trivializes training the medical skill to the point that anyone can be made a great surgeon in only a few days.

[Zombra]

I have a boreal forest base with 2x2 fueled generators. Two power my base, two power a soil sunlamp on a separate remote circuit. My base has a slight power deficit (90-300W; slightly more if smelter is enabled). My sunlamp circuit has a slight power surplus (2000 - 1600 - 100 = 300W). Naturally, I practice battery juggling. I load one battery at a time in the sunlamp circuit. Once full, it's uninstalled and hauled to the warehouse. Conversely, when a battery in my base power room is about to drain completely, I replace it with a fully charged battery.
The whole time about 3 fully charged batteries are sitting in my warehouse, ready to be installed in case of a prolonged attack. [This] allows me to avoid exploding batteries almost completely, and still have emergency power.

I wouldn't call this an exploit, it just looks like smart management.  (Brilliant, actually!)  And it's not like you're getting all payoff with no cost; you're putting in extra work hauling these batteries back and forth all the time.  That deserves a reward.

As for batteries exploding, isn't it actually conduits that short out?  Makes perfect sense that batteries sitting by themselves won't suddenly explode unless you leave them out in the rain.  Can't be a wiring fault if there are no wires.