Non winnable situations are a pain...

[Auriodk]

While fighting raiders, dealing with mad animals, managing temperatures and so on I am getting a bit tired of the game. I play on second easiest mode and just now I had two people recovering from shot wounds and then all of a sudden the plague hits the rest of the colony. Medicine is used abundantly and I am hoping for just one trader that never arrives, my folks try hard but in the end everyone is incapacitated due to the plague except for one. I had 9 people in total and none of them dead but the last one still up isn't a medic.

I love a challenge but non winnable scenarios should not be presented in any game.

The scenario is also extremely predictable, mad animal, raider, heat wave, raider, raider, mad animal .... at least you know what will come. (depending on location of course). I do love the game but at the moment I have had too many scenarios that just seem far too unfair in the events that do happen randomly.

PS: ... and what is it with breaking up? Engie´s boyfriend breaks up and she gets sad, that's normal. However she does find a new lover, gets married with someone she is extremely happy with and still has -15 due to her boyfriend breaking up ages ago.

[milon]

If you're using Cassandra, then you WILL have non winnable scenarios. She just keeps hitting harder. Recommended for Losing Is Fun enthusiasts.

If that's not your style, then try Phoebe for a basebuilder experience, or Randy for absolutely unpredictable games.

And about the mod impact: that actually followed real life and makes perfect sense. Give me a sec to find the relevant link...

Edit: here, see this thread
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=21908.0

[Listen1]

Cassandra Usually pushes for non-winnable, as milon said.

The threats dosen't have a stable phase, they are always on constant growth. I would recommend Randy Random, because sometimes amazing things happen.

Since they are always random, you will not be pissed that a Flashstorm happened on top of your solar panels during a toxic fallout with a manhunter pack of rabbits outside your main door. You'll be pretty amazed that during this situation a wanderer joins...

...And is killed by the rabbits.

[milon]

I was playing in an icesheet biome with Randy one time.  I had only played a couple hours, and there was virtually no food.  Randy to the rescue!  Drops pods from the heavens!  Meat galore!  ...  Oh, wait, it's human meat.  -_-

Randy loves to troll.  And my colonists were fed that day.  ^_^

[MeowRailroad]

Sometimes things only SEEM unwinnable. I just survived a tough winter where 3 colonists died of infections, and one of the 3 surviving colonists often had berserk rages due to his lover rejecting his marriage proposal and later dying, 2 friends dying, getting rebuffed by other colonists, his dog dying, his bonded muffalo dying, and on top of all that, he was a pessimist. I guess those events won't help him become more optimistic since they prove his outlook true. 

Although I bet he listened to this song a lot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y983TDjoglQ

[Zombra]

I love a challenge but non winnable scenarios should not be presented in any game.

Well ... there are a lot of ways to play Rimworld, but you have to understand where the developer was coming from.  The default game mode is essentially intended as "tell a great story about how your colony got killed".  There literally was no way to "win" the game in most of the early versions.

Also remember that the whole basis of the game is non-scripted, procedural systems including frequent random elements to push things off balance.  In a dynamic game with no real scripting, eventually the dice are going to come up unfavorably to you.  Just how it is.  Fight hard, try to save your people, and maybe learn what you might do differently next time around.  Don't get mad if they all get killed.  Instead, try a new colony the next planet over and see if they might be more successful.  That's part of the fun here.

If you want a guaranteed "happily ever after" story, you can play it that way too; crank down the difficulty.  That doesn't make you a bad person or "doing it wrong" - that's why those settings are there.  But the default difficulty is not and was never intended to provide a "happily ever after" experience.

Good luck.

[Mkok]

In all the time I spend in Rimworld, I have not even once encountered a non winnable situation. The most I had was a raid demanding few reloads, but not much. It can get hard, but not non winnable. (though I play only randy, so cassandra might be different) 

And I survived through a -100°C winter, with no resources, barely enough electricity to heat up 1 room, no parkas (pawns froze seconds after getting outside  ), and a psychic ship that crashed in mid autumn, with no way of reaching it till summer. While I had only the starting weapons (so even If I managed to reach that ship, a single scyther would massacre my entire colony without fail  ). Not to mention that morale was pretty low even before the ship crashed  Got some real Fun that time 

[Listen1]

In all the time I spend in Rimworld, I have not even once encountered a non winnable situation.

I beg to disagree, in this latest build, A14, i've encountered many non-winnable situations on Cassandra Challange.

The scailing in the events makes it quite impossible to survive some event sequences. My colony is half-year into the game, I have 5 colonists and since i'm playing 50% outside/50% inside the mountains, I got a Infestation.

6 Hives. Each of them popped out 3-5 bugs. I have some experience in bug hives, so I destroyed them all with minimal losses. But that left my base full of trash and goo. A day after that, a siege happened with 2 fire mortars, aiming in my outside base, making it burn, and again, no issues, I know how to manage that. My base was full of fire, goo, and corpses of animals and bugs. Many animals died in the fire, I changed their area but for some it was too late. My Handler got some nasty debuffs. But I pushed the siege out and returned to my base to clean it up and fix the powerlines. One day passes, I started to clean the corpses and floors.

The next day a tribal raid shows up with 19 tribals. I had five turrents, that were utterly smashed by pilas and greatbows. I drafted my colonists that had survival rifles, snipers and charge rifles to deal with them and fended off the tribals, with a loss of one of my colonists.

Then a malaria strikes and 2 of my colonists get it. Now I lack Manpower to clean my base, haul the corpses, and heal everyone. I had medicine, and decide to make them work half a day and stay in an improvised hospital the rest of the time.

After 3 days, things are starting to look better, cleaner, food was ok, medicine was growing again, another raid happens. 7 melee guys with personal shields. And that was the doom of the colony.

With this sequence of events, I was left powerless to do anything or react. This was the half of the third season.

[ThiIsMe007]

I think unwinnable situations produced by the RNG should stick to Randy (for the masochists and Rimworld vets) and Cassandra end-game.

Being randomly hit by a lethal disease ("plague") that decimates half of your small colonist pool during the first year, including your only decent medic, or watch all your crops gone over night right before the winter season because of a "mysterious blight", including your much needed and slow-growing medicinal herbs, because traders just won't supply you enough, is not a worthy story of the demise of a colony to relate and play through.

To me, it's just a waste of time.

[Zombra]

Being randomly hit by a lethal disease ("plague") that decimates half of your small colonist pool during the first year, including your only decent medic, or watch all your crops gone over night right before the winter season because of a "mysterious blight", including your much needed and slow-growing medicinal herbs, because traders just won't supply you enough, is not a worthy story of the demise of a colony to relate and play through.

Some of the events could definitely use some sprucing up.  I kind of like Mysterious Blight as is actually.  But it is very weird for a colonist to spontaneously develop "a touch of plague" with no other context.  Shouldn't there at least be a horde of plague rats to herald the disease?  A warning alert that your kitchen is getting too dirty and poses a major health risk?  Something?

My colony is half-year into the game, I have 5 colonists and since i'm playing 50% outside/50% inside the mountains, I got a Infestation.

6 Hives. Each of them popped out 3-5 bugs. I have some experience in bug hives, so I destroyed them all with minimal losses. But that left my base full of trash and goo. A day after that, a siege happened with 2 fire mortars, aiming in my outside base, making it burn, and again, no issues, I know how to manage that. My base was full of fire, goo, and corpses of animals and bugs. Many animals died in the fire, I changed their area but for some it was too late. My Handler got some nasty debuffs. But I pushed the siege out and returned to my base to clean it up and fix the powerlines. One day passes, I started to clean the corpses and floors.

The next day a tribal raid shows up with 19 tribals. I had five turrents, that were utterly smashed by pilas and greatbows. I drafted my colonists that had survival rifles, snipers and charge rifles to deal with them and fended off the tribals, with a loss of one of my colonists.

Then a malaria strikes and 2 of my colonists get it. Now I lack Manpower to clean my base, haul the corpses, and heal everyone. I had medicine, and decide to make them work half a day and stay in an improvised hospital the rest of the time.

After 3 days, things are starting to look better, cleaner, food was ok, medicine was growing again, another raid happens. 7 melee guys with personal shields. And that was the doom of the colony.

... And stories like this, tales of adventure, hardship, triumph, and defeat are exactly what this game is about!  Great, crazy story!  ::applause::

[ThiIsMe007]

Some of the events could definitely use some sprucing up.  I kind of like Mysterious Blight as is actually.  But it is very weird for a colonist to spontaneously develop "a touch of plague" with no other context.  Shouldn't there at least be a horde of plague rats to herald the disease?  A warning alert that your kitchen is getting too dirty and poses a major health risk?  Something?

Well, I would definitely support that.

There are enough rats around to indeed imagine that some would carry a nasty disease, and make it a vital task for any blossoming colony to tame cats (or equivalent) that hunt those buggers down, or to trap the access to their food, or to try to otherwise eradicate them before they become a major issue. Keeping your colony clean should help too, of course.

About the "mysterious blight", I don't have knowledge of *any* disease that 100% kills crop over-night. There are always signs (parasites, the colour of the soil, the smell, etc.) that announce the forthcoming catastrophy. Measures can be taken to isolate, or destroy the diseased parts, to prevent it from spreading.

Even in the case of cricket swarms or tornadoes, which wouldn't leave much behind after their passage, fields are not left completely bare and empty. Here again measures can be taken before shit hits the fan : watching the weather for tornadoes, setting the priority on saving whatever can be harvested before the swarms move over from whatever they're devastating in the surrounding region, etc.

Anything is better but "LOL, one-hit death" events.

It is not a matter to completely remove nasty events, but to give the player at least some tools to counter them, and make even such huge setbacks at least somewhat interesting to play through, because challenging intellectually.

[Zombra]

Yeah.  Not gonna defend Blight as a realistic event, but it is a cool game event.  That is, it's uncool in a very interesting way.

[Listen1]

Blight could be changed by a Storm of acid rain, if you build a roof until it passes, your crops can be saved.

... And stories like this, tales of adventure, hardship, triumph, and defeat are exactly what this game is about!  Great, crazy story!  ::applause::

Thank you! but I was playing cassandra, that should be the "Normal" storyline. And that sequence of events is pretty deadly, I had to reload the game to keep my colony. Right now I had to change difficulty and I feel dirty about it.

I have no problem on the tales of hardship, I enjoy this challange. But the way things happened, I was left powerless, and this is not a good gaming experience.

[ThiIsMe007]

Blight could be changed by a Storm of acid rain, if you build a roof until it passes, your crops can be saved.

Another good suggestion.

I really think the game would benefit from making such random events dynamic (the player can react to them) rather than static.

Some players probably will object ("dumbing down", "making it too easy", etc.), and that is when the storyteller feature could chime in, making such random one-line events exclusive to Randy.

[BlackSmokeDMax]

Blight could be changed by a Storm of acid rain, if you build a roof until it passes, your crops can be saved.

Another good suggestion.

I really think the game would benefit from making such random events dynamic (the player can react to them) rather than static.

Some players probably will object ("dumbing down", "making it too easy", etc.), and that is when the storyteller feature could chime in, making such random one-line events exclusive to Randy.

Or just make the difficulty settings being lower take things like that more into account. Randy does not equal hard. Randy = Random. The difficulty level is currently set differently, let's leave it that way.