Poll: In its present state (Alpha 15), do you think RimWorld is well balanced?

[OFWG]

Difficulty level is irrelevant when you can launch the ship in under four days.

I'd like to see that...

[Zhentar]

So do you have the batteries each connected to their own generators? Or can you connect all the generators to all the batteries and then on the power going from the batteries to everything else have them all separate?

Sorry I don't know exactly how this works but it sounds like it has something to do with the amount of power going through.

Just avoid building so many batteries in the first place. I try to stick to one, though I haven't built huge mega bases. Conservation & fueled generators can carry you through eclipses easily enough.

[Zanzibar]

Sorry for singling you out, but these kind of issues are brought up fairly often it seems. And they are pretty much entirely wrong.

No problem!
After another 50 hours played, I'm leaning towards agreeing with you.

You will get random wanderers joining.
You will get refugees being chased that will join.
You will get escape pods landing nearby that are easy recruits.
You will get downed raiders that are often fairly easy recruits.
The new recruit system actually increases recruit rate, if you are willing to wait a little longer between capture and recruit.

What I think the game somehow needs to make more clear is that pawns are more likely to join if you already have very few of them. It's most obvious when I play with the "Single rich guy" scenario. It's very counter-intuitive the way things are now. Looking at it with any kind of logic, pawns should be More willing to join if your colony is larger/richer/more well defended. But I can see why it would, for gameplay purposes, be the opposite. They just need a way to really show it.

[Britnoth]

Difficulty level is irrelevant when you can launch the ship in under four days.

I'd like to see that...

https://www.twitch.tv/disnof/v/90144696 launched 1h 23m into the stream.

PS. He actually had a better map than I did.

[CascadingDragon]

Difficulty level is irrelevant when you can launch the ship in under four days.

I'd like to see that...

https://www.twitch.tv/disnof/v/90144696 launched 1h 23m into the stream.

PS. He actually had a better map than I did.

And here I thought I was decent at this game...

[sadpickle]

Difficulty level is irrelevant when you can launch the ship in under four days.

I'd like to see that...

https://www.twitch.tv/disnof/v/90144696 launched 1h 23m into the stream.

PS. He actually had a better map than I did.

And here I thought I was decent at this game...

He's using a doctored start. Industrious and Neurotic combined make a pawn do work insanely fast, and Nudist is an easy joy buff to balance out the Neurotic break point. I'd be interested to see how long it takes with a pure vanilla start. Couple in-game weeks is my guess.

[Britnoth]

The start is vanilla. Anyone can reroll their starting colonists.

[carbon]

There's nothing inaccurate about calling it a doctored start. It clearly is.

There's also non-vanilla UI augments in there, which at the very least reduce otherwise necessary micro. Some of those definitely do get used during play as well, so it isn't purely cosmetic.

That's just the stuff that pops out within 30 seconds of skimming, could easily be more under the hood. That is not to say it isn't still impressive, it just isn't really vanilla.

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[Britnoth]

You can reroll until you get certain traits. That is just reducing the time taken to get the characters you want.

100% Possible in vanilla.

Events do not fire until day 5, so removing them had no effect on the game.

100% vanilla. (no idea why they are disabled still)

Those mods are only UI mods.

100% vanilla. Or do you think vein miner or priority haul are somehow cheating?

A doctored start would be editing the game to give you something you do not start with. Which it clearly isnt.

Any more lies?

[sadpickle]

A doctored start would be editing the game to give you something you do not start with. Which it clearly isnt.

Any more lies?

Let's not get vitriolic over word choice, gentlemen.

Could you roll three colonists with the exact three same desired traits AND essential skills without using the scenario editor? Sure, if you sat there for several hours. Does knowing the shape and size of an exposed vein without mining it out 100% vanilla? It's clearly not. It's not like it's some enormous advantage either - it's purpose in the speedrun is to verify you have enough material for the ship.

All I mean is, I consider a pure vanilla start as the original Rimworld experience - the classic Crashlanded scenario with no mods, UI or otherwise. The scenario editor has perhaps challenged this notion. But to get semantic, my use of the word "vanilla" is deliberate. The game is designed as it is. If you mod any aspect of that design, UI or otherwise, it's not a strictly vanilla experience.

[Britnoth]

If you mod any aspect of that design, UI or otherwise, it's not a strictly vanilla experience.

This is the same attitude I suspect you find with some players of Dwarf Fortress. They consider the games total lack of UI to be an integral part of the games difficulty.

They are of course, being ridiculous. 

In case some of you are not native English speakers: If you say you have doctored something, it has the specific meaning of changing something in a fraudulent manner.

Accusing someone of playing a doctored start means he is being accused of editing the game save to add things he should not have, and attempting to decieve people about it. So please stop calling myself and others cheats. 

[Supert]

I would like to see this guy playing Dungeons and Dragons.

"Dude, why the hell your character has 18 in every single ability score?"
"Well if I would have infinite time to discard characters and create new ones I would eventually roll 18 to every ability. So I just took 18s to save time. It is not doctored start."

[Britnoth]

So if someone did have 18s in most stats, you would accuse them of cheating too?

Interesting. 

[Edmon]

So if someone did have 18s in most stats, you would accuse them of cheating too?

Interesting. 

Setting aside the point of using modifications to get Nth power improbable starts with minimal effort, where is the skill or challenge in using such a start to accomplish anything?

Speed running is all about breaking the game to finish in the shortest possible time, of course, but character creation is effectively a dynamic difficulty level. It's a decision that occurs before the game actually starts. So, what you've done is effectively set the game to "needlessly, super easy".

This game has difficulty set by, the A.I. story teller, the colonists and the biome...

I think the games balance is very good, getting on topic, but your settings really matter...

[carbon]

To doctor, simply means to alter or revise. It can have a negative connotation, but doesn't necessarily always does. I personally was using it something like definition #13 from here.

Dwarf Fortress is a game I play almost exclusively with the Lazy Newb Pack (a popular series of UI improvements and bugfixes for the uninitiated). I suspect that I'm in the majority in that regard, since unaltered DF is a cumbersome and ugly experience.

Nonetheless, I don't go around telling myself or others that I play "vanilla DF". That honor belongs to a small group of folks with a far higher tolerance for pain than myself.

----

I want to make it clear that I fully understand and, to a degree, support the use of the ease-of-use modifications within the context of speed running and streaming. Not doing so would be brutally boring to play and watch.

What I'm not supporting is calling that modified form of the game "vanilla". It is unnecessarily misleading, whether intentionally or not.

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On topic, I voted for the second from the top option. There are a few lingering balance issues with things like buying awful statues that are worth considerably more once you turn them to scrap. Raiders also need to do a better job of altering between 'wandering' and 'watching for targets". The pure wandering status just makes them too easy to pick off without risk.