Raid Balance

[Trenix]

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.

I know this trick, it's exactly what I've tried. They went straight after my doors and broke through layers and layers of them and swarmed my base killing everyone in sight. I understand you're trying to help and are trying to offer me tips on how to fix this issue on my end. However you need to also realize and understand that it may be on the game's end. I personally now think that the longer you play, the harder the raids become, until you finally lose.

I guess that just might be what the developer ultimately wants from the game. I've tried all story tellers, none made a difference. I personally don't like the idea of building up an entire colony for days only to see it collapse in a few minutes because the game was designed that way. There is too much effort to put into each colony, just not worth replaying knowing it's going to be trashed eventually.

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 didn't always start with a colony like that. Sometimes I got it that way overtime as people were kidnapped, killed, and captured.

[baegle]

Once manhunters aggro on someone, they will punch through doors. That is true. Sometimes you have to make the decision to leave that colonist to die while the rest of your colony stays safe. It's a tough choice, but sometimes it happens. But the mechanic does exist to allow you to turtle when manhunters are about. You have to stay inside until they're gone. In my current game I bypassed 4 manhunter packs this way so far. However, my previous games I've died plenty to manhunter packs. It has forced me to wall up much faster. By focusing on my exterior walls first, I can survive a lot longer. I also need to patch my walls every time they get breached because manhunter packs are hard to deal with once they smell you.

And yes, I recognize that as your colonists die and get kidnapped you can end up with horrible people. That happens. I have taken to being very careful with who I offer shelter to and who I chat/recruit. I still capture raiders, but if they're not useful, I release them to try to increase my standing with their faction. When I get a call for help, I check the biological age and the occupation. 55-year old conceptual artist? Nope! I saw a young sheriff once, thought that'd be super useful. Nope! Sheriff occupation disables most skills! Be careful with picking your colonists or they become liabilities.

Yes, the longer the game goes on, the harder the raids are. I thought that would be obvious. The design of the game is to start you off easy and then ramp you up as you build towards the end game. In Cassandra, if you notice, you almost always get a single mad animal before your first raider. It's like a training event to let you know to get your act together. The first raid is almost always a single raider and the second one is either 2 or 3. By day 4 you almost always get a visitor to join your colony. It's a pretty predictable ramp.

I've definitely gotten frustrated with the game. Manhunter boomrat packs + pyromaniacs. Colony wide malaria infections. 7 day toxic fallouts (twice in 1 year!). Constantly losing limbs. The jaw of my best socializer shot off so he can't communicate.

But I have gotten better at managing risk over time. I currently have a game where I've survived my first year and half way through my second year. I have survived 2 air-dropped scyther raids, 3 seiges, 1 psychic drone ship, 1 poison ship, the plague, 6 mental breaks from my pyro, and a host of manhunter packs. It's doable. It takes practice, learning, micromanaging, planning, reacting, and being very very careful, and a lot of times not even that's enough.

But that's the fun of the game, in my opinion. It's not a story simulator, but the stories are awesome when they happen. It's a genuine challenge.

[TrashMan]

Frankly, raids should have some logical link to the factions and their bases.

Closer hostile faction is more likely to attack than a more far away one.
Losses in previous battles should also affect the likelyhood of sending out an attack.

Honestly, I'd like a more dynmic system, where factions send raiding/scouting/trade parties and factions can be destroyed and new ones created.

[O Negative]

I think it'd be nice if NPC factions had populations which the game pulled from when determining raid size. Right now, pirate and other factions are just an endless pit of people (which you can't always befriend), and the people in the raids hold no true value because the game can throw an infinite number at you.

I'd like to see my enemies' numbers fall with every failed raid, and rise with every successful kidnapping. I feel like it would add a lot more value to each victory, and a little less frustration when a colonist is left injured or even dead for that matter.

Perhaps an event of "full scale raid", where the storyteller throws every last adult member of the faction at you, and victory would mean the destruction of that faction. Heck, maybe that could be a new win condition

I don't know if it should apply towards Mechs tho :/ What do you guys think?

[Britnoth]

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.

Sorry but this is entirely wrong. Wealth from items are adding to raid size as intended.

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.

So you played the game for a couple of days max. Then declare the game 'impossible' and 'unbalanced'.

Here is your solution: Stop bitching at the game for being somewhat difficult to learn, and accept you aren't yet experienced enough at the game to play on the higher levels.

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

False.

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.

Nope. Just a few steel traps on the way inside your base are enough for the first few raids. Once you get turrets up, you can safely deal with any conventional attack.

You know some of the community never play with turrets or traps, right? 

Yes, the longer the game goes on, the harder the raids are. I thought that would be obvious.

False actually. The game gets easier the more people you have, due to raids having a very harsh soft cap to keep them from becoming extremely large later on.

[Trenix]

Once manhunters aggro on someone, they will punch through doors. That is true.

The moment I saw the hoard of boars, I threw all my people in the house and locked up. No one was aggroed by anything. I didn't lure them to my doors. Once again, I understand you're trying to help but you keep assuming its something at my part that is being done wrong. The problem is clearly that the game increases in difficulty overtime. It doesn't factor in that my colony is small and crippled after waves of raids. The game should give us a challenge that we can handle, not one we can't win even if we tried.

I don't want to abandon my colony and start over, but the game's mechanics are forcing me to do it. Maybe we need a story teller that emphasizes on fairness and doesn't make the game more difficult overtime. It'd be nice if also raids didn't kill and kidnap all my colonists so I have at least a fighting chance to recover. Rather have my things stolen over my colonists. A single colonist can't even treat his own infection for crying out loud.

[baegle]

Once manhunters aggro on someone, they will punch through doors. That is true.

The moment I saw the hoard of boars, I threw all my people in the house and locked up. No one was aggroed by anything. I didn't lure them to my doors. Once again, I understand you're trying to help but you keep assuming its something at my part that is being done wrong. The problem is clearly that the game increases in difficulty overtime. It doesn't factor in that my colony is small and crippled after waves of raids. The game should give us a challenge that we can handle, not one we can't win even if we tried.

You speak like an inconsolable victim. I'm not assuming it's something you're doing wrong, I'm telling you you're obviously doing something wrong because I'm playing the same game you are and I can avoid manhunter packs. I've also failed to avoid manhunter packs and every single time it was because of the position of my colonists relative to walls and doors and I've tried lots of theories. The reality of the game is that if the manhunter can draw a path to your colonist without an obstruction, then the manhunter will aggro and once that happens they will attack doors to get at the colonist they aggroed.

The game increases in difficulty overtime as you add more colonists and wealth. It doesn't factor in that some colonists suck. If you are down to a single colonist and your wealth is gone (animals killed, structures destroyed, etc) then the raids will shrink in size.

I don't want to abandon my colony and start over, but the game's mechanics are forcing me to do it. Maybe we need a story teller that emphasizes on fairness and doesn't make the game more difficult overtime. It'd be nice if also raids didn't kill and kidnap all my colonists so I have at least a fighting chance to recover. Rather have my things stolen over my colonists. A single colonist can't even treat his own infection for crying out loud.

Just delete the game and start a new on Phoebe Chillax. It's not worth the stress. It's just a game. Stop playing on a challenging mode.

[Trenix]

@Baegle Whoa there buddy, you need to calm down. I didn't come here to get feedback or help, I came here to provide feedback. Think you forgot what section of forum you're on. I know what happened and I know the mechanics.

Anyway it seems like the imbalance comes from market value. I'm not 100% sure about it, but appears that's the issue. The moment you get extremely valuable items, you need to either sell, destroy, or smelt them as soon as possible or you will be overrun if a raid or a manhunt should appear. I think the game should be re-balanced with the market value of things you've built, not things you have in storage. We shouldn't be punished for hoarding in a survival game, that should be expected. As for now, whatever is not in use, always gets destroyed, smelted, or sold as soon as possible.

[Serenity]

Anyway it seems like the imbalance comes from market value.

Yes. Even selling doesn't necessarily help as you then have the silver. The only way to get rid of the wealth is to trade it in for consumables, but you won't use them up quickly. Or just turn them into other stuff.

I destroyed three scythers from a psychic ship with land mines. They were all incapacitated and I was a bit overzealous in harvesting all their claws. Not such a great idea. The next raider was very large for that stage.

[Britnoth]

@Baegle Whoa there buddy, you need to calm down. I didn't come here to get feedback or help, I came here to provide feedback. Think you forgot what section of forum you're on. I know what happened and I know the mechanics.

Uhuh. Lets remind you of your opening post:

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.

So your feedback is 'the raid size was unbalanced'. Because you went from wood walls worth ~7 silver each to stone worth ~14 silver each.

Assume you have a large outer wall 100 tiles wide. thats 700 silver. That is about the same as 7 wooden dining chairs. When your colony wealth starts above 10k and is probably 30k+ by this point.

~~~~

It isn't like this is a new complaint. It can be summarised thus:

"The game sent me a raid or other event I was not prepared for, and didn't know how to deal with. I could not possibly have done anything better because I am infallible, so it must be the game at fault. Please fix."

followed by

"No, I don't want anyone telling me how to play the game better, because I am clearly the God of Rimworld. I am telling Tynan how to fix his game"

.. and you can expect the responses such an attitude might generate.

~~~~

Now, IF you wish to actually make a real suggestion to the game other than 'reduce raid sizes because I am too proud to learn the game on basebuilder' then you are more than welcome to do so. Otherwise, perhaps a mod can move this to another forum section and change to the title to one asking for help with the game?

Yes. Even selling doesn't necessarily help as you then have the silver.

Selling loot to traders really reduces your total wealth, as the traders always massively rip you off compared to the items base value.

[carbon]

An update on my raid tracking. I did a tribal start in a flat tundra map on Randy Intense to give myself a bit more of a challenge. Food, clothing, heating and mental states have all been chronic problems. Had to resort to digging up bodies from graves to get clothing when the first cold snap hit only 15 to 20 days in. Were it not for my colonists' love of parties (3 so far), I would probably have been much worse off.

That being said, after I made a mad race to get electricity unlocked, things generally have been improving. A couple well timed muffalo herds kept me going and I managed to throw together a geyser-heated greenhouse by early spring (which is not normally grow time where I'm at). At this point, 65 days in, I'm mainly short on manpower more than anything.

---

Raids were small at first, which is great since tribal starting weapons are terrible at anything more than 1v1 ratios.

The raid on the 21st was no joke, but it could have far worse. Seeing a guy with a triple rocket launcher when you only have sticks is disconcerting. Luckily, there was a nicely placed bit of rock just within aggro range and I managed to bait him into wasting the shot before the main attack was launched. During the engagement, most of the stuff outside my proto-base got torched thanks to a bunch of molatovs. Losses would have been higher if I had actually had much of value or if the fires had been allowed to burn for much longer.

The only truly serious raid was on the 48th. It probably wouldn't have been too bad but I got distracted or reckless. I had a colonist staring down a pirate sniper who had a 50-60% hit chance, but I didn't do the wise thing and pull back. The colonist was KIA'd instantly by a round to the heart. It didn't help things that they were bonded to a dog who instantly went berserk on me. With a fighting force of only 4 now, I had to send most of them to melee the dog for fear it would kill my other dog. If the enemy knew how vulnerable I was at that point, they probably would have easily won. As it stands, they focused their attention on punching random doors and burning trees (2nd bout of fire for them).

I eventually turned things around. I managed to grab a weapon or two off of them as they fell, which helped a bit. Mostly, it was playing a more risk averse version of hide and seek with them through the exterior doors than usual. Put enough rounds into a raider and they don't shoot as well anymore. Everyone except the sniper who was go-juicing their way through the punishment was either killed or captured. That includes the one melee raider who thought it was a good idea to flee the battlefield by bashing his way into the center of my base, where I promptly gunned him down.

All in all, a challenging, but survivable ordeal. The only permanent casualty was a reckless mistake more than the game being unfair. We'll see how it goes from here. I'll probably post again when the next year is through.

----

Table of raid data and an image of my base as it stands on the 65th is attached.

Date - down to the tenth of a day since game began
Raid type - faction and subtype
Raider# - number of enemies
Raider Notes - rough breakdown of the enemy composition
Colonists - total (high-tier combat / regular combat / non-combat)
Animals - total (dedicated combat / partial combat / non-combat)
Defense# - total (mortars / turrets / traps)
Wealth - total wealth at time of raid start (to nearest 1,000)
Casualties - total (killed, permanent injury, downed, minor injuries)
Special notes - subjective difficulty and major events, additional timing notes where applicable

Hopefully at least someone will find this useful for comparison.

EDIT: Oops. I realized I had a muffalo (3rd animal) for a bit that I never included. It spent raids indoors and never really got attacked, so I'm to going to ignore it, but it did exist for about D20 to D60. Sold it off in the end.

[attachment deleted by admin - too old]

[Gremdavel]

I do think wealth is perhaps weighted too heavily when considering raid difficulty.

I recently created a custom scenario; I never get enough gold, jade, uranium, or silver in the game to actually build all the stuff you are able to build with those materials, so I thought it would be a fun idea to have a single colonist start with an abundance of these materials so I could build furniture, structures, and crafts out of them.  Phoebe Chillax, because I was more focused on building, and I think I put it on Challenge or Extreme because, you know, I clearly had an advantage and didn't want it to be too boring.

First raid was 1 melee raider, as always.  Second raid... hahaha... was in all seriousness about 100 raiders.  Possibly more; there was a lot of overlap.  Hurt my FPS pretty badly.  They all fired at my pet first, and they accidentally killed probably about 10-20 of themselves in the process.  I had 2 colonists by this point, one with survival rifle and one with a pistol, no armor.  No traps, no turrets -- this was too early in the game to start thinking about those things seriously.

It was definitely amusing, but... my lack of colonists, weapons, traps, and other defenses should have had more weight in the equation.  Abundance of wealth alone should not merit such a ridiculous massacre, even at high difficulties -- at least not that early in the game (if you're 2-3 years along with that wealth yet still can't defend yourself, that's another story).  I don't want to turn raids off, nor do I want things to be too easy, but would like to play custom scenarios like this and still have a chance of survival.

[carbon]

On the easier difficulties, I think I would agree with weighting more toward 1v1 based on colonist numbers, rather than being wealth-based.

On harder difficulties though, the algorithm should definitely go aggressively after folks who are just sitting on mountains of gold and not building adequate defenses.

[Gremdavel]

On harder difficulties though, the algorithm should definitely go aggressively after folks who are just sitting on mountains of gold and not building adequate defenses.

Sure, but not that aggressively!  I had time to make two small buildings and some furniture.  I was actively building a fort.  Even if I had prioritized building tons of traps, I'd probably have been able to build about 10-20, and that would have optimistically taken out 5% of the raiding force if they actually hit them all.  Certainly no time to research other defensive tech.

[carbon]

Ideally, I think you DO want absurdly hard raids on extreme at least.

What's the point of having several different difficulty settings if there's a chance they're all too easy for someone?

Might as well be called:
Easy
Very Easy
Super Easy
Extremely Easy
Two Fluffy Bunnies Eating a Rainbow Sundae Easy

The range is what gives it real meaning.