Speed run challenge

[Britnoth]

Quite an irritating map. No visible plasteel and unlikely to find any. Rich in silver, gold and jade however, but most resources were a long way from the map centre, involving long walk or haul times.

Started with a careful shot... but he is also your researcher; delaying hunting. I planted a large crop but as usual, got a blight half way through its grow time. Relied on the mined silver and gold around the map for money until I recruited someone reasonable at hunting.

Decided to go for trading for the plasteel and ignore the deep mining research trap. Three outlanders to trade with made this pretty obvious.

First visitor was a lone lvl 17 researcher.... I probably should have risked nabbing them, but ehhh.  If i had plasteel to mine I would have, but wanted to keep my trade options open. Research was done before resources were ready in the end.

Built some turrets.. but in the end they only saw action once. Other raids were when I had traders visiting and I did not want to risk shooting them.

Ship ready at 19 days 1 hour. I hadn't played a no plasteel map in a15 and it shows. 







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[sadpickle]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvUL28Skt6E

[LedgeG2]

Quite an irritating map. No visible plasteel and unlikely to find any. Rich in silver, gold and jade however, but most resources were a long way from the map centre, involving long walk or haul times.

Started with a careful shot... but he is also your researcher; delaying hunting. I planted a large crop but as usual, got a blight half way through its grow time. Relied on the mined silver and gold around the map for money until I recruited someone reasonable at hunting.

Decided to go for trading for the plasteel and ignore the deep mining research trap. Three outlanders to trade with made this pretty obvious.

First visitor was a lone lvl 17 researcher.... I probably should have risked nabbing them, but ehhh.  If i had plasteel to mine I would have, but wanted to keep my trade options open. Research was done before resources were ready in the end.

Built some turrets.. but in the end they only saw action once. Other raids were when I had traders visiting and I did not want to risk shooting them.

Ship ready at 19 days 1 hour. I hadn't played a no plasteel map in a15 and it shows. 

Agreed about the map being irritating. I played the map quite a few times to get a good run, but ended up launching at 17 days 15 hour.

How did you get the silver to trade for that much plasteel? I ended up slaughtering all of the first traders and sold their stuff later to traders in other factions.

Anyways the run was recorded, so I'll upload to my youtube later and chuck a link for anyone who wants to watch.

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[Britnoth]

Agreed about the map being irritating. I played the map quite a few times to get a good run, but ended up launching at 17 days 15 hour.

-no save scumming and permadeath must be on

[LedgeG2]

-no save scumming and permadeath must be on

I was under the impression that it's not savescumming if you reload the entire map from the start? I could be wrong about this, but I thought space races were the same. You could start again from the beginning? Forgive me if I'm wrong, I'm still new to these race things.

[carbon]

I'm generally with Britnoth on this.

If I could redo the map, I'd have no reason research the deep mining scanner, since I already know where a plasteel deposit is. That alone would shave several days, but wouldn't be fair to anyone else.

Also, your photo is a tad revealing, if you get my drift.

[LedgeG2]

I'm generally with Britnoth on this.

If I could redo the map, I'd have no reason research the deep mining scanner, since I already know where a plasteel deposit is. That alone would shave several days, but wouldn't be fair to anyone else.

That's a good point (I haven't thought of abusing the deep mining resources like that).

Here are my reasons for why I think restarting from the very beginning should be okay in a challenge like this.

1. Fairness: Only having one run, means that some people are more advantaged than others from completely RNG reasons. For example, in my first run, a wanderer joined my colony who was completely useless. Artistic was one of the only capable skills, I ended up euthanizing her so that she wouldn't eat all my food. That, among some other things that happened made the run very unlucky. No matter how good we are, a bad run can slow our game dramatically. If however, we could reload from the beginning, it would give a safeguard for generally unlucky runs while still having a relatively normal game.

2. Speedrun: In my mind, if we are speedrunning a particular map, then it's about challenging ourselves and the community to learn how to abuse and exploit the map as much as possible to win as fast as possible. So knowing where to deep drill, although seems very exploit-y is completely okay. I should clarify that I don't think this holds true for general game speedrunning. In standard game speedruns, it's about beating the game from the very beginning, which is the start game menu, in as little time as possible. So playing the same map multiple times would be cheating, since random map generation is part of the game. But we are still allowed to start over from the beginning (start game menu). But when someone gives us a map to play, the loading of that map becomes the beginning location. So it would be totally okay to restart from there.

3. Savescumming: The only thing I can find in the rules that is even related to being able to retry the challenge is savescumming. From what I understand, savescumming is the process of saving a game before something bad happens and then reloading to manipulate the RNG to your advantage. This can be repeated to get optimal rolls on everything and essentially abusing the RNG system to the point that in any normal game, the order of events that happened would essentially be impossible. There is also the possibility of saving just when a bad situation happens so that if you mess up, you can just reload and retry, without having to start from the beginning. This is against the nature of speedrunning so I agree that it should be a rule. However I don't think that loading the game from the savestate given to us is savescumming. Firstly, the game is still a normal game, the RNG system isn't being abused throughout the game (merely reset for fairness among participants). Secondly, reloading the map from the save file given to us involves no saving on our part. Maybe this situation should be called loadscumming? lol.

4. Fun: Personally, I really enjoyed playing the map multiple times and seeing myself improve along the way. It allowed me to try a few different strategies and to find one that works. Perhaps there are better strategies for this map. Well the beauty of being able to retry the challenge means that we can go find them. Only having one attempt, where RNG is a deciding factor for my performance does not sound fun to me at all.


I'm not sure what intention the OP had for how the challenge was supposed to be undertaken regarding multiple attempts. But whether or not I agree with them, I will respect their decision on the matter. Either way, thanks for the challenge, it was fun .

Also, your photo is a tad revealing, if you get my drift.

Do you mean that the screenshot is too zoomed out?

[carbon]

We all get bad RNG and have less than ideal strategies. One example: I had Toni undergo a mental break that rendered her useless for an entire day early on, but I rolled with it.

It's also not quite fair to the folks who only have enough time / interest to make one go at it. Certainly if this were less of an ad hoc challenge, between random volunteers, a race to lowest time via unlimited retries would make sense.

In any case, for the record:
My attempt was a singular try, beginning to end, with no advanced knowledge of the map contents.

[Britnoth]

Restarting the map is just the same as save scumming at any other point in the game:

1. You now have foreknowledge of the map and its resources.


2. You can simply restart if you make a mistake or get sub optimal RNG.

The skill involved in the game is reading the map, your colonists, and the events that happen and adapting your strategy to them. Trial and error is removing skill from the game, not just the RNG.


3. There is no risk involved in taking risky actions. Open up the ancient danger? Delay building defences? Arrest visitors? Kill traders? Just restart if something goes wrong.

The problem to me here is you take all the risk out of the game. No risk, and any reward feels worthless. Doing well then feels worthless. Going faster than someone else feels worthless. Going slower just feels like you should have played the map ten times instead of five. At that point, the game is no longer a competition, but just an exercise.

Do you mean that the screenshot is too zoomed out?

From what I can see:

a) You had foreknowledge of the map and decided to setup right there based upon it.

b) You are unaware of some important game mechanics regarding the research bench. 

[carbon]

Oh yeah. Didn't even see that bit.

Research benches outside get a x0.75 workspeed penalty. You want them inside and in a clean room (sterile is ideal).

[LedgeG2]

Restarting the map is just the same as save scumming at any other point in the game:

1. You now have foreknowledge of the map and its resources.


2. You can simply restart if you make a mistake or get sub optimal RNG.

The skill involved in the game is reading the map, your colonists, and the events that happen and adapting your strategy to them. Trial and error is removing skill from the game, not just the RNG.


3. There is no risk involved in taking risky actions. Open up the ancient danger? Delay building defences? Arrest visitors? Kill traders? Just restart if something goes wrong.

The problem to me here is you take all the risk out of the game. No risk, and any reward feels worthless. Doing well then feels worthless. Going faster than someone else feels worthless. Going slower just feels like you should have played the map ten times instead of five. At that point, the game is no longer a competition, but just an exercise.

You've just described how general speedruns are played, yet at the same time said that it feels worthless. So I'm just going to say that you can have that opinion but I disagree with it. I think the skill here is the strategy, execution and adapting to what happens throughout the map.

From what I can see:

a) You had foreknowledge of the map and decided to setup right there based upon it.

b) You are unaware of some important game mechanics regarding the research bench. 

Of course I had foreknowledge of the map. I straight out said it. I wasn't trying to hide it because I legitimately thought it was the rule. Based on my arguments I still have this eerie feeling that it should be.

Hahahahah, I did not know that.


I fixed the screenshot anyways. Sorry about that.

Oh yeah. Didn't even see that bit.

Research benches outside get a x0.75 workspeed penalty. You want them inside and in a clean room (sterile is ideal).

Thanks for the heads up . Didn't think sterile would make a difference either.

[Britnoth]

You've just described how general speedruns are played, yet at the same time said that it feels worthless.

Correct. 99% of speed running feels worthless (to me at least).

If your actions don't really matter, why not just play a VN or something...

PS. As people complained that starting with the perfect traits wasn't realistic, I tried a run using the default crash landing scenario. Just heavily rerolled my starting 3 colonists until I got something suitably impressive. Launch time: 3 days 7 hours. Game is still unbalanced as all hell.

[LedgeG2]

PS. As people complained that starting with the perfect traits wasn't realistic, I tried a run using the default crash landing scenario. Just heavily rerolled my starting 3 colonists until I got something suitably impressive. Launch time: 3 days 7 hours. Game is still unbalanced as all hell.

Nice... Ohh yeah, after you mentioned your time to me a few weeks ago, I tried a few times myself and got like 8 days. I would love to know what strategies you used and how you executed them, did you record? Is there a community or forum around speedrunning this game? With race events and records and stuff? I'd love to get into it.

[Britnoth]

There are a few twitch streamers/rotten-fruit-throwers (like myself) that play space race runs. Sadly the last 2 alpha updates have made it a bit of a joke now.

Recorded I have, uploaded I have not. I suppose... I don't feel it is warranted when there are literally 3 or 4 decisions to be made when a run lasts sub 4 days. 

Start with incredible colonists. Take all the drugs. Don't waste time doing things you don't need. Get up the comms console immediately and call an exotic goods trader and pray they carry an AI core. That is about it.