Alpha 16! Discuss.

[Visitor000]

While I have not yet played the new Alpha release, the video Tynan posted more than piqued my interest. So far, we now have an actual spherical planet that already pumped several ideas into my head, though hopefully in later builds we get better customisation on the planet (I.e. choosing which Faction type exists, no pirates, no tribes, or yes pirates, no others, etc) I also hope that we might get an Easter Egg Earth seed for us to play around in.

The ability to trade and attack other settlements makes me feel like I am playing Civ. Going around and becoming a large colony of warmongering cannibals who wipe all other settlements out. I also find the creation of other Settlements intriguing as, in my mind, I feel like we could somehow create an Empire or something of that sort.

What are your thoughts on the new Alpha build?

[A Friend]

Haven't personally played it yet. But I'm gonna ask those that have, does the caravan feature solve the lategame boredom issue?

Edit: I meant lategame, instead of endgame.

[SilentP]

I'm looking forward to the new tech tree and the addition of drop pods. 

The caravan seems interesting as well, giving a new style of play for nomadic tribes.

I hope there are new things to craft like bionic parts, prostheses, new weapons, new armor, new turrets.

The mod community certainly has their work cut out for them.  I *love* the Prepare Carefully mod and I hope it made it into A16.

It will be neat to see if animal husbandry is more viable now with the addition of caravans. 

[grinch]

played a16 a few hours.
New tech tree is very good, more intuitive.
Pets have new options, follow at draft, follow at work (yes/no), well at least your trained animals dont die due to IA stupidity.
The caravan thing its very interesting (muffalos are a must for transport cargo), you are free to move, split, settle. There are random encounters (rpg style) and other events (i see one for leave the planet) marked by flags. Max 5 colonies, they running simultaneously.

[RayvenQ]

Something I noticed today

Caveat Here that the save I found this on was created on Unstable, though i observed this behaviour also while playing on the release version, though whether it got patched or changed between the latest unstable and the release I'm not sure.

I had 3 pawns come down with plague, so I savescummed, gave all my colonists Penoxycyline and waited for the event to happen again, and it did, the same 3 got the plague (which Penoxycyline didn't actually block) However, I noticed that with my undrugged colonists, the percentages of plague infection vs immunity, were heavily off, it didn't take long for the plague to turn major, while my colonists immunity was still pretty low. The second time around however, when they have Penoxycyline in their system, their Immunity was pretty high (something around 60%) this time while the plague infection stayed the same.

I also confirmed this playing on the A16 release, except this time, I hadn't taken Penoxycyline beforehand, but once i did, my infected colonists immunity jumped up to around 60% right away.

tl:dr Penoxycyline acts like an antibiotic, not preventing illnesses (at least with plague, not sure about the others) but making your colonists immunity boosted when on the drug.

[Headshotkill]

I've thought about changing the 'building your own ship' ending, considering there's now a alternative 'make a journey to a ship' ending I think it needs rebalancing.
Maybe increase the amount of material needed to make a ship, so you have to make mining outposts or something, or go to areas for rare materials that aren't traded very often.
Maybe take out the current feature of the ai persona core falling from the sky and require you to attack a mechanoid hive on the world or something?

And to reply to RayvenQ:

Penoxycyline like in real life with antibiotics does not really prevent or cure diseases, those meds only weaking the pathogenes enough so your body can safely fight back the invasion with it's own immune system. Hence when you gave your colonists the drugs it immidiatly weakened the pathogenes giving your people a immune boost.

If it were totally realistic it wouldn't boost the immune devellopment process but instead slow down the speed that the disease worsens.


Random thought: Do we have immune deficiencies in rimworld yet?

Anyway, those are the firsts thoughts that jumped into my head when I tried the new version.

[Hieronymous Alloy]

In terms of core gameplay, the biggest changes are  imho

1)that spaciousness bonus only requires 42 tiles, allowing 7x7 bedrooms; coupled with the other rebalancing its a lot easier to get bedroom and other room bonuses

2) bionics installation and surgery are far more dangerous now; medicine now functions like herbal used to, so you need gliterworld meds and / or a souped up surgeon for guaranteed safe install of bionics.

Haven't played with the travel mechanics yet.

I would really like someone to update the gun dps calculator for the new gun values.

[Jimyoda]

I had 3 pawns come down with plague, so I savescummed, gave all my colonists Penoxycyline and waited for the event to happen again, and it did, the same 3 got the plague (which Penoxycyline didn't actually block)

It's key to know that certain hediffs (like infections, pregnancy, blood loss, etc.) are NOT listed as soon as they start, or at very low severity.  So it's probably certain that those colonists had *just* contracted the plague, but it hadn't been revealed yet. You would have needed an older save to go back before the infection really started.

Tynan sums it up well here: https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=28211.msg285386#msg285386

[RayvenQ]

Though it is good that it boosts the immunity, post infection, to the point where it can make it much more survivable.

[carbon]

Currently trying to build a drop pod-based bombing / attack system.

Option 1a) Splinter bomb - Fill drop pod with 375 (wooden) shivs, light resulting coverage area on fire (via incendiary mortar?).
Watch it all burn.
I tried an initial test run of this, ran into problems simply putting it together (you need nearly 400 open tiles of storage for one pod). Using wood also reduces the health to 40, which means it doesn't burn for very long. Not a problem if you just want to propagate fire (e.g. burn down a base), but less likely to result in enemy burn casualties.

Option 1b) Hatfall - Same concept as splinter bomb, only bigger. Using Tuque instead of shivs means one can stuff over 2,000 items into one pod. You just need a staging area big enough to house all of those hats and 50,000+ crafting material, but boy would that be cool. Upside is that tuque has more health than shivs so it will burn longer too.

Option 2) Boombomb - Tame some boomrats / boomalopes, drop pod them right on top of the enemy. *POP* *POP* *POP* Everyone's dead.
Downside is you have to stockpile several dangerous animals for when the right moment strikes.

Option 3) Cruise missile - Fill a drop pod with mortar shells. Litter an area with them. Light the fuse and watch the fun.
This will probably be the most practical and effective. It can safely be loaded up well in advance (actually drop pods are an inflammable place to store shells).
If you throw in a boomrat and some hats, it'll light itself. The only problem might be coverage area.

There are probably other ideas out there as well

[keylocke]

most AI bases are made of wood. so fun to burn stuff.  just bring enough steel and ammo to build incendiary mortar.

or just bring someone with a molotov/incendiary launcher, get a shield bait to distract enemies, then sneak behind their base and go crazy with the molotov/incendiary launcher and start multiple ignition points. then quickly retreat your shield bait and pyro so that enemies go back to their scorching base and get incapacitated by heat trapped inside rooms.

you can even unleash your gunners against the enemies once they're too distracted by the flames. shoot em 'til they're dead or incapped, afterwards stroll on in and claim your prize.

[Sirportalez]

Just played for a short time.
No insect meat in default on cooking stove! Yeah!

[buttflexspireling]

  I don't like the strategy of alternating rooms
in demand by colonists with prisoners' rooms
that aren't in demand. By this same strategy
of switching rooms heated by heaters with
rooms cooled by air-conditioners I try to
interrogate raiders. They like it.

[MailletC]

I migrated over to Steam a while ago, but I wanted to stop in and say this:

The sole feature I wanted to have included in the game is the ability to form a war party, and go raid the pirates that keep attacking me. Thanks to Tynan's everlasting benevolence, I can now form a caravan, and go give those pirates a taste of their own medicine! I'm going to make my Rimworld great again!

[Wishmaster]

A psychic ship just crashed within my walls.
I attack it, it spawns 2 centipedes and 2 scythers. After downing one scyther, the remaining mecanoids began to exit the map.... WTF ?? This never happened in A15 to me. Is this a bug ? Are mecanoids scary now ?
I checked their toils and it was well "Exit map" too...