Raid Balance

[Trenix]

So I was finally looking into changing up my walls to not burn to a crisp my entire colony every time something bad happened. The moment I did, I guess the market value of my colony rose drastically, because it caused a way out numbered raid to appear with high tier weapons. Not really fair to be out numbered from 1:2 with also a colonist that was incapable of fighting.

[nccvoyager]

Raids are calculated in A15C taking into account colonist count, and wealth in buildings.  The game is also supposed to take into account wealth in items, which means that you should be getting that type of raid regardless of whether you have stone lying around, or have built walls out of it.  Currently, a bug causes the game to not take into account the wealth in items when calculating raids.
  Setting up deadfall traps, even if they are out of wood, would help defend against this type of raid.  Getting turrets up and running would also help.

[Trenix]

Raids are calculated in A15C taking into account colonist count, and wealth in buildings.  The game is also supposed to take into account wealth in items, which means that you should be getting that type of raid regardless of whether you have stone lying around, or have built walls out of it.  Currently, a bug causes the game to not take into account the wealth in items when calculating raids.
  Setting up deadfall traps, even if they are out of wood, would help defend against this type of raid.  Getting turrets up and running would also help.

I tried removing the story teller from random to the one that allows you to have some breathing room in-between conflicts. Nothing changed. I had a toxic fallout then a volcanic winter, then a raid which was godlike with top tier weapons and gear and additionally outnumbering us. Sorry, but this game is completely imbalanced. Seeing my whole colony fall because of something I couldn't even fight back with, is ridiculous. Deadfall traps are also useless. The enemy is not stupid enough to go to them and it seems like my colonist are the one ones who run into deadfall traps, so I don't even bother.

Game is fun, but there is an awful lot of lategame content which is very difficult to get to. I'm also getting so fed up with having incompetent colonists, who can't haul, can't clean, can't fight, just too frustrating. Rimworld isn't funny anymore, it's getting annoying. Raids come, don't stop destroying your base until its gone, then they don't just steal your resource, but also all your colonists that are capable of recovering what you have left. Surviving with 1-2 colonist, is a guarantee loss unless you cheat. Also having two raids one after the other with intense equipment and numbers, nah no balance within the game. Not in any story teller. The way raids are calculated, just isn't fair. Also creating turrets? With so many wind turbines and batteries, I can barely keep my base powered.

[carbon]

Trenix, I'm sorry you're having a tough time. If you'd like to post a screenshot of your base or talk about strategy tips I'm sure plenty of folks would help out with that.

Personally though, I've been running Randy Challenge and it's been nothing but underwhelming so far (pure vanilla, no cheats, no turrets, no traps, no killbox, no mountain). The first year was pretty quiet with maybe one meaningful raid toward the end. But that dropped off 2 or 3 fully working charge rifles, which just made every subsequent encounter significantly easier. About 3 years in and I'm still waiting on a big event like a volcanic winter or fallout to slow my progress, but I'll probably have a luxury cruise ship built by the time it eventually comes.

The new ability to call in traders whenever you like also ensures there's never a real shortage of anything. Plenty of luciferium and bionics to go around.

EDIT: Looks like I didn't realize the difficulty settings have been renamed recently. The difficult I've been on is Randy Intense, 2nd hardest.

[Grishnerf]

@trenix   to get into the game is very harsh, but worth!
most of your complains are not really grounded, if you have played the game for a little bit.

for example: why do you start with People that cant clean or haul?
take some extra time in creating the pawns and your start will be much more easy.
and honestly this game is the hardest at the start.
later if you have the Basic stuff and know most game mechnics, nothing really dramatic can happen, unless you play challenge or extreme difficulty.

and for raid Balance, i also think they are not balanced.
but they dont need to. raids and events are there to kill you on any storyteller.
this is a survival-colony builder game, not just a builder game.
if you just want to build a base without any stress, just deactivate all major Events like raids in a Scenario.

[Trenix]

I played the game for many hours already and learned most, if not all, the mechanics. Picking the correct colonists is cheating and I'm just fed up with not only starting with incompetent colonists, but also capturing incompetent colonists. I enjoy harsh and challenging games, but not when it's literally impossible to win. While you may be lucky living for years with no issues at the highest difficulty, I'm playing on rough and been getting nothing but impossible to beat encounters.

Sorry but there is nothing I can do when 75% of my colonists are incapable of fighting, my enemy is decked out high tier gear, and I'm out numbered. This is a huge issue with balance and calculation. There is not much more to say than that. I've had random crap happen like my best shooter who is capable of fighting goes in a heart attack right before a raid. I mean seriously? The amount of times I had to load games and restart over ridiculous things is just too much. The game is overall random with no fairness whatsoever.

Maybe instead of complaining, I should suggest how to balance raids. So here is my suggestion, count up turrets, traps, and colonists, and make sure the raid number doesn't exceed that amount. When I have only two people but my market value is high, that means I should be attacked by 6+ enemies? This is supposed to be a game, not just a random event simulator. Tired of these type of situations when I know I'm going to die and there is NOTHING I can do about it besides watch it happen. There is something wrong with that. We need some fairness, even if it is its own story teller. And no there isn't one like that already, cause I've tried them all. All I see is randomness. I can't even just hide and let them steal some loot, they much rather destroy, kill, and burn down everything. They even kill my animals, for what purpose?

How would people know what I have anyway? Hording things shouldn't be frowned upon, but encouraged. I need to burn all my things because of the market value? Makes no sense. Maybe there should be scouts that go out to check my base before they attack, to see if I'm worth. Giving me the opportunity to arrest and kill them before they let their faction know my base is worth looting. That gives me the ability to actually do something.

[baegle]

For the record, I play Cassandra/Rough/TemperateForest/SmallHills with an average winter temp of 30F - 34F.

With strong combat characters, I've definitely had 2 people take on 6 and survive with little to no damage. There's definitely a lot of randomness but I don't see it in the raids. What I have found is that it's very difficult to get the timing right on building up defensive walls. I used to play large hills temperate forest but I find small hills temperate forest to be better because it gives the raiders less cover. I'm also interested in playing in boreal forest because the swamps in those forests slow down raiders a lot which can be used to take them out from a distance.

I definitely have a problem with the randomness causing "false starts" like the time an early berserk break made a colonist attack a boomrat and burned my whole colony to the ground because 1 person was sick and the other was a pyro. That was pretty bad. But you do have to cycle through your colonists before you begin. You cannot take what the randomized gives you, you'll never be able to work with that and it's not the intended gameplay. You are supposed to re-roll until you have something a least workable. You'll almost never end up with a dream team, there's no too much randomness in character sheets, but you MUST re-roll until you have your minimum skillsets while minimizing risks from traits.

But raids haven't been too bad, honestly. Pillboxes with roofs and sandbags provide great cover. Melee on standby allow your shooters to retreat without too much risk. If you can't kill the raiders before they enter your compound, there's a good chance you'll lose the colony.

[Trenix]

Just got +20 manhunter boars with only 3 colonists, 2 unable to do combat, yeah no balance whatsoever. Maybe it has something to do with this horn I got with such an insane market value, yeah definitely wrong thing to go buy for raid balance.

[Kegereneku]

I have noticed that NOT BUILDING TURRET reduce considerably the raids strength you face.

Balance have been part of a discussion about "Bringing Colony in the Open" (aka, not telling player to build covered-fortress to survive at all)

Right now I think that Raid are pretty hard because :
- They need to pause a threat to even the most well defended colony
- Their threat level is still calculated in "Raider to kill per second"

Discussed ways to solve that :
- If the raider don't have to over-number you to be a threat, you don't need as many of them.
- Have the raiders less suicidal, attempting more to steal what's outside (even if bolted down) than die needlessly.
- Have Manhunter pack be just hunter pack, no constant need for Great Wall of China anymore.

[Lightzy]

I never ever found raids to be dangerous really. Never lost cause of a raid.

But then I guess I'm one of those "strictly 1 entrance to the base, all covered by 8+ turrets and a field of traps on the way" guys.

Try that maybe?

[carbon]

Huh, I was going to suggest the opposite. Spreading out the enemy and taking them down 1 by 1 has worked well for me.

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Bad RNG definitely exists. I had a tribal raid immediately followed by a boomrat manhunter pack (as in it killed 2 of the retreating tribals 'immediately'), but with some tactical retreating, even that was survivable.

In the interest of trying to bring this discussion of out of the quagmire that is vague generalities, I'm going to try to keep track of raider vs. colonist numbers and timings to try to get a hard sense of what is 'typical' and 'survivable' at least within my games. I'll probably report back in a few days. If anyone wants to join me, it would probably be useful.

----

Numbers to track:
Date of raid (in days since landed).
Type of raid (faction and subtype [e.g. pirate - siege])
Number of raiders (+ any meaningful type info [e.g. two had rocket launchers])
Number of colonists at raid time (broken down into high-tier combat, general combat and non-combat)
Number of active defenses (traps / turrets / mortars)
Colony Wealth at raid time
Any "special" one-time tactics you had to deploy to survive the raid (call back-up, rocket launchers, deploy artifacts).
Dates of any major non-raid events (crashed ship, fallout, etc.)


I'm going to track a game until I could reasonably put together a ship and escape with all colonists (actually doing so is optional).

[Serenity]

For A14 there is a mod that takes some colonist stats into account:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=737985657

- Colonists who are incapable of violence give no points.
- Colonists with extremely limited mobility give no points.
- Colonists with limited sight, manipulation and consciousness are considered to be less battle ready than those who are healthy and give less or no points.

Also doesn't count all of the general wealth. So if you take in lots of loot you won't immediately face larger raids.

[baegle]

Just got +20 manhunter boars with only 3 colonists, 2 unable to do combat, yeah no balance whatsoever. Maybe it has something to do with this horn I got with such an insane market value, yeah definitely wrong thing to go buy for raid balance.

You shouldn't try to fight a +20 manhunter pack of boars with 3 colonists anyway. When that happens, you stay inside until the pass you by. Forbid your doors. You may have to sleep on the floor of your common area so that people still have access to food. Big manhunter packs are more acutely dangerous than toxic fallouts but they go away a lot faster.

And you should definitely NOT be starting a colony with 66% of your characters incapable of violence. I always reroll until I have at least 2 shooters. Sometimes I will try for a brawler for my 3rd character, but often I just want 2 shooters, a medic, a farmer, a warden, and at least 2 people capable of dumb labor and firefighting.

I have never obtained a Thumbro Horn so I have no idea what it does to the value of the colony or the frequency of raids, but there's definitely value in building a humble colony without a ton of awesome. I took a risk this past game and mined out a bunch of silver on the map and didn't cause major raid problems for me, but I also have left the plasteel and jade in the hills for now.

Good luck. Try getting better colonists to start.

What climate are you choosing? What terrain?

[Serenity]

When you get some awesome loot like thrumbo horns or AI cores and you are at a certain threshold you can definitely see a spike in the next raid.

[kuledude]

My raid expirence:
First raid- 1 melee guy
Second raid-1~3 melee guys
Third raid-3 weak ranged guys
Fourth raid-7 heavily armoured and heavily armed guys(power helmets, good kevlars, Snipers, M4's)

The jump is real.
Im guessing exploiting and cheesing is the only way to play this game.