I want to hear about exploit strategies!

[Grizzlyadamz]

(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)

I'm using them by making multiple 'shortcut' hallways in parrallel, with all but one stuffed with traps- there's only one safe path through for my colonists to use, while enemies have an ~80% chance of getting it wrong. And whenever the enemies wade into an unsafe path, those traps aren't re-armed- it becomes the new 'safe' path for my colonists. Seems to work ok so far.

[b0rsuk]

(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)

So a trap can trigger once per hostile faction. If you have 2 hostile tribes and 1 pirate faction, a trap can trigger 4 times, including mechanoids.

But there's a way to make them trigger known traps. It's called setting them on fire. While burning, they will run around and not care. So spice things up with an incendiary IED trap, a molotov or incendiary launcher. Traps made out of stone don't burn.

[pdxsean]

I saw this over on reddit, it seems to fit...

https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/4hb0d3/a_neat_little_trick_to_utilize_the_space_between/

[Likif]

Planting IEDs all around crashed alien ships before I pop them makes short work of the contents. Maybe have them pop if someone comes really close as a solution? That would also deal with the 'enclose ship in walls with a single exit'-strat.

[Argelle]

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.

It's not on my account an exploit, as surgeons in real life do practice (and get experience !) on animals close to human being (pig).

[Bairne]

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.

For starvation, why not just do a check on death to see if they can/could have pathed right then? If they can't find a path (regardless of their actual mobility/ability to follow said path) from wherever they are to the edge of the map then apply penalty. If they can, no penalty.

The same could be done for colony pawn starvation. If the door is forbidden and thus blocks the path to the edge of the map upon death = euthanize penalty.

Taking it one step further: do this check on downed rather than death, so that the player can't just deconstruct the obstacle before it dies. I'm not sure how memory intensive this would be rather than just checking during the death event since that likely runs relatively quickly while the data from the downed event would have to be stored for a while.

[Vaporisor]

The better way to counter the locking in a walled off area is to have a regular check for routing.  If they lose routing, it starts just losing standing.  When they go to leave, make use of the sapper AI but have it try to get out instead of in.  "So and So are trying to leave but are trapped and are trying to dig out"

We also have it for prison breaks, at least i had one they punched out a wall.  Have caravans stuck bust their way out.  Try tapping them in, they let in -50c cold right into your greenhouse during escape or tear down a solid mountain wall on ya.  As for animals, I don't consider it an exploit but they could put up disturbed sleep so that trying to build walls around them as they slept gets them up and walking around.

[stvnlee]

Haven't seen this one mentioned yet so here goes:  It is possible to sell uncollected steel from all over the map just by making a zone where the steel currently is at.  If you delete your in colony zone, you can guarantee that you are selling the distant steel.  This could be resoloved by having to build an unpowered trade statue which would be used by the local traders.  Think of it as a low-tech orbital beacon.

Similarly, make a stockpile (cleared to hold nothing) that contains all the silver where you landed.  (Exclude stone & slag, which otherwise might get moved.)  Then you can buy without ever having to move your silver.

Actually, I like to make my initial landing zone such a stockpile anyways, so I get an instant inventory.  Since it is cleared to store nothing, everything is movable as usual.

[b0rsuk]

I saw this over on reddit, it seems to fit...

https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/4hb0d3/a_neat_little_trick_to_utilize_the_space_between/

I don't think this is an exploit. In real life, many plants like to grow close to trees.
If you really wanted to prevent that, I would implement shade. Trees would steal sunlight of adjacent plants.

[stvnlee]

Two exploits I use frequently enable me to affect the world without requiring peon action.  They've already been mentioned, but I'll detail how I use them.

1)  reconnecting power
  a)  connect to solar panel when sun is shining, to wind turbine when wind is blowing, and only to battery when no alternative
  b)  I thought of using a dead battery to reconnect to turn things off, but the posted idea of reconnecting to an unconnected power line seems better

2)  rezoning roofs
  I often play in cold regions.  So I can close the roof at night to heat and keep it heated, and open it during the day for free light and growing.

And my favorite exploit:  indoor rose pasture in work/dining area.  Roses have a much higher beauty than flooring.  They don't require the light of a sunlamp -- only 30% (and even heaters will provide 60% light in adjacent cells).  Because they have a 5:1 life:grow time, they will mature even in poor light.  Then when mature let livestock graze on them.  Plus, the livestock nearby colonists will result in more nuzzling.

Note:  flowers provide beauty even if they can't grow (in an always dark area).  Fix would be to have them provide increasing beauty as they mature.

[Shurp]

In a13, roses have a new flag set:

<preferability>NeverForNutrition</preferability>

Are you sure livestock are still eating them?

[DarknessEyes]

I have an huge room digged inside the mountain, with a small tunnel leading to it.
90% of times the infestation spawns in that room because its way bigger than my base.

That room is sealed and have alots of heaters set to 200ºc with a switch.
They can spawn and live for a few minutes but they will die from the heat.

Edited:

I like the idea of punishing the players who build underground.
However this infestation thing spawning hives very close to your base is kinda stupid.

Something like an manhunt event with bugs that could dig into your base should be better =P
Chance of event based on amount of tiles mined.

In current state hives should spawn a hive queen when the hive health goes bellow 25% hp.

[Spectreofoz]

RE Bugs Swarm:

Long range attack is only good if , bug swarm is small and shooters are uninjured. If either of these arnt in your favour then One has a alot harder time managing or even destroying them.

Open Roof thing , tricky, Swarm has to be under a thin Roof , myself being a Mountian Player this doesnt happen alot.
But saying that I have use the unroof feature one time after the swarm Unroof themselve's and drop Mortor fire bombs on the suckers , still took a day or two to land a decent hit tho.

has for freezing them ( dont know if they suffer heat stroke ?) could Bugs become more increasingly adaptive to envoriment after each spawn?

[milon]

I don't think this has been said before, but nocturnal hunting (especially a Night Owl Brawler melee hunter) is seriously OP.  Most things die before waking, so it's more like designating meat-plants to be harvested than anything else. 

[UnseenSpectacle]

Honestly, I think the biggest problem with the infestation mechanic is that it will only catch a player off guard the first time it happens to them in the game. After that, the player quickly learns that, short of not digging into mountains, there is little one can do to prevent the infestation from eventually triggering. As such, it becomes a very easy event to exploit with extremely powerful outcomes. My response on every colony that will build into the mountains is to purposefully trigger the spawn in a specially designed freezer/turret room where I can eventually contain the maximum 30 hives. After this, I can dig into the rest of the mountains with impunity. The happy byproduct of maintaining 30 hives is I have no problems whatsoever with food, money, or further infestations. In short, a properly managed maximum infestation completely breaks the economy of the game and fails to prevent a player from building mountain complexes.

As far as how I would balance them...

I think infestations need to be balanced against how much you have dug into the mountains so that the player cannot simply just design a single room and know the infestation event will trigger in it. (As I currently do when I want to exploit the event.) Additionally, if there is a long running infestation (which indicates it is highly likely the player is purposefully managing it.), I would include the possibility of the infestation dying out or a period of time where the respawn rates drop dramatically (sort of like a blight event for bugs). I am not against the player being able to farm infestations, but right now the amount of pawn labor required to cultivate a bug farm is very little investment compared to the vast amount of resources the player receives in return. Another possible option for non-farming players would be to introduce resource intensive items that can reduce/eliminate spawn chance in a certain area of effect when built. All of these would serve to give players cost/benefit and risk/reward scenarios that they must consider and make an infestation something more than just a binary switch to the player.