Tired of imbalance...

[keylocke]

i think i suggested a long time ago that the storyteller should be able to read the "combat value" of the player colony based on total pawns, their equipped weapons, apparel, bionics, and their combat skills.

Equipped items or even available items are a bad metric to use.  They would lead to ridiculous behavior like "We're due for a raid, everyone change into your swim trunks and dump your guns in the lake so it'll be an easy one."

it depends on the amount and the timing of the "checks" that the storyteller makes to determine a colony's combat value.

ie :

if a storyteller randomly checks your combat value and then averages your combat value between those checks, then even if you suddenly dump your combat gear, the storyteller can still recognize that sudden downward spike in combat value without the drop in population.

the storyteller can then flag that spike as an attempt to cheat, and not include that value in your combat average.

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edit :

though i agree that time and wealth should still be factored in raid difficulty..

a wealthy yet weak colony does not really require a doomstack of raids, nor does a strong but poor colony only merit a weak raid.

colonist combat skills are a huge factor in determining strength and weakness.. however, combat "skills" is not considered as "wealth", nor does it necessarily reflect "time". (some people joins with high combat skills right from the start)

but when it comes to combat, these combat values are more important than wealth and time in determining a good difficulty rating for a challenging raid.

[Aarkreinsil]

I think the biggest problem is that the enemies have no clear purpose other than just blindly killing all of your guys and/or kidnapping some of them. In Gnomoria for example, the goblin invaders come with the sole purpose of stealing valuables. So if you know you can't take them on, you can just let your people hide in a corner while the goblins ransack your shiny stuff, then they'll leave and be happy. You can even pay them off with tribute/protection money to make them stop attacking you.

There's also a bug civilization that's pretty powerful and that just wants to raid your food/drink stocks. They just want to guzzle down all of your booze.

Why can't we have something like that in Rimworld? I hate being attacked by 20 tribals that all drop masterwork golden spears, worth 15k each, when even smelting that crap down barely decreases the final value. And it takes forever to let those things decay out in the open, too. I even tried giving it all away to traders for absolutely nothing in return, but here I sit, waiting years upon years for the right trader to take away my fortune.
And it's not just the increased raid strength, but also the "Low expectations" mood bonus thing that gets influenced by this. Especially on ice sheet you can lose that +15 "Extremely low expectations" mood bonus completely, if a caravan dies at your doorstep and dumps a crapton of legendary, golden garbage in your garden.

[Devon_v]

I wonder if most people are building colony wealth too quickly.

I play exclusively on Randy Challenge and the only times he can sink a colony is when he stacks multiple events. Raids don't go up in size unless your colony wealth does. I've had some colonies in their second year still seeing single digit raids because they've made terrible progress. My current colony started without a researcher and it took forever to get any recruits.

So long as your colony is poor you get a HUGE mood bonus for all your pawns. There's no need for luxury if no one expects it. The convinced by warden buff is over the top OP as well, so you can leave prisoners in a 2x2 filthy box. All those weapons dropped by the tribals? Don't collect them. Stone blocks worth to much money? Don't cut them, the chunks are worth squat. You can have resources on hand without having them "liquid".

Get your defenses in order first, then build wealth. Nobody wants to assemble a small army to knock over a hovel.

[Aarkreinsil]

All those weapons dropped by the tribals? Don't collect them. Stone blocks worth to much money? Don't cut them, the chunks are worth squat. You can have resources on hand without having them "liquid".

The thing is, if they die anywhere inside your home zone, the value of their dropped equipment immediately counts towards your wealth. Apparently now even if you put all of their crap in a dumping stockpile out in the wilderness, then remove the stockpile, forbid the items and remove the home zone, the item's value still counts towards your overall wealth.

[Gennadios]

All those weapons dropped by the tribals? Don't collect them. Stone blocks worth to much money? Don't cut them, the chunks are worth squat. You can have resources on hand without having them "liquid".

The thing is, if they die anywhere inside your home zone, the value of their dropped equipment immediately counts towards your wealth. Apparently now even if you put all of their crap in a dumping stockpile out in the wilderness, then remove the stockpile, forbid the items and remove the home zone, the item's value still counts towards your overall wealth.

Yep, aparently players were gaming the system by keeping junk out of their base,  earlier. As of a few updates ago, any item on the visible map now belongs yo your colony. GL,FH!

[Devon_v]

Okay, it needs to be incinerated then, or bartered away for consumables. That's actually kinda annoying.

[Shurp]

Well, it helps to fix trade so that you can sell them.

And yes, the traders also need to be fixed, the number of gold/uranium/jade items they walk in with is ridiculous.

[Gennadios]

Okay, it needs to be incinerated then, or bartered away for consumables. That's actually kinda annoying.

Incinerating is a great feature but on extreme biomes there are way too many other early priorities to dive right into smelting or incineration, not to mention my example where I didn't even have colonists equipped to survive the cold long enough to haul stuff in for disposal. The player being responsible for removing crap the game dumps of their doorsteps is also a symptom of a wider problem in Rimworld - early design was so hell bent on preventing cheeze tactics that literally the entire game is now about cheezing the AI to give the player a fighting chance. There isn't even much in the way of player agency anymore, it's all about doing the minimum necessary so that the AI stays off your back.

Rimworld needs a Storyteller overhaul ASAP. I'm talking scavenger spawns to remove stuff from the map so that it's not 100% the player's problem, raiders and pirates that can be bought off with goods/captives before they assault, OP slaver/mechanoid runs ONLY when the player population reaches too high a threshold. Generally just more events so that the AI director doesn't feel the need to spam visitors/traders that can't handle the weather every other day.

[Shurp]

The scavenger idea is actually pretty good... except... if the map is so cold that everyone is dropping dead within squares of showing up, how is the scavenger going to survive?

Scavenging mechanoids hunting for gold, maybe?

[Gennadios]

The scavenger idea is actually pretty good... except... if the map is so cold that everyone is dropping dead within squares of showing up, how is the scavenger going to survive?

Scavenging mechanoids hunting for gold, maybe?

I swear that NPC pawns have some kind of hidden buff that keeps them alive longer than player colonists normally would. They're not really required to stay on the map with any length of time, just move around long enough to pick up a few choice items and break for the border. Maybe meander just long enough for the player to muster the forces to fight them off if they take something that the player wants. Mechanoid scavengers that stick around the map trolling metal/component drops have the potential to be more of a danger than Manhunter packs, imo.

[CheeseGromit]

I wonder if most people are building colony wealth too quickly.

For me at least I've found it exceptionally easy to build wealth at a rate that exceeds my ability to defend it, even at base builder level. That's looking purely at number of colonists, their skills and equipment. If I used turrets and kill-box tactics it was a different story but I haven't played that way for a while.

[Agent00Soul]

The scavenger idea is actually pretty good... except... if the map is so cold that everyone is dropping dead within squares of showing up, how is the scavenger going to survive?

Scavenging mechanoids hunting for gold, maybe?

Then turn them off for icesheet.

Not everything has to be balanced for icesheet.

[rexx1888]

counter point, the player shouldnt have to feel like the game is less fun just because they chose somewhere to live an the ai cant cope.

if ice sheet is so lethal to visitors, then visitors need the tools to survive there.

[hwfanatic]

Maybe you should reconsider playing biomes and map sizes this game was not designed for and settle with "only" -50 at winter and standard-sized map. I'm saying this because I already have quite a few ice sheet colonies behind me and I have rarely seen any visitors freeze their ass off unless maybe in hard snow if they have their movement impaired by injury. It's really not commonplace.

[Gennadios]

Maybe you should reconsider playing biomes and map sizes this game was not designed for and settle with "only" -50 at winter and standard-sized map. I'm saying this because I already have quite a few ice sheet colonies behind me and I have rarely seen any visitors freeze their ass off unless maybe in hard snow if they have their movement impaired by injury. It's really not commonplace.

Extreme ice sheets have the most fun early game loop. Spending 3 seasons hauling and filling up stockpiles and then dedicating the winter to construction and crafting is unique.

For the record, I play standard map sizes on the coldest point of the map. If this temperature is available unmodded I consider the game being designed for it.