A hate of Infestations as is

[schizmo]

I wouldn't exactly say choosing to play outside is choosing to play a harder difficulty, I would say it's choosing to play with a different set of challenges. Playing outside is easier, to me, because there are so many limitations to mountain bases, limitations that are easily overcome when playing with an open colony. It does honestly come down to play style for most people, I think. 

I still think most people play in mountains because its "easier" to defend against a lot of things, but that isn't why I choose not to use them, out of some sense of superiority. I just prefer civilization, sprawling farms, roads, and dynamic growth (and freedom to expand)

I also think mountain bases are ugly haha

What are those limitations? I enjoy playing on the plains too and I agree, mtn bases are fugly, but it's pretty clear to me that mtns are much easier. You need much less building materials, have more materials, and have an easier defense. Meanwhile, you avoid having to build a massive perimeter wall to protect your farmers from manhunters, having to aggressively eliminate mortars, and generally having to rely on trade to get metal and stone.

A few things wrong here, nothing says that players who don't use mountain bases are reliant on traders for stone and metal, it's perfectly acceptable and even common to mine out as much stone and metal as you need and then leave the mine open (since distant infestations are not an immediate threat) or fill the mountain back up with wood. You can also set up turrets to fight off infestations that happens to spawn inside of the old mine. Personally I fill the mines back up if I bother with them at all.

In my experience mountains are primarily limited in space, and their chaotic nature means space is often wasted on weird shaped edges, leading to funky shaped rooms or shoe-horning things into spaces that are too large or too small to be effective. The space limitation also means having to try and squeeze as much as possible into the pre-defined space, which affects things like having individually spacious rooms with clearly designated room roles, which by extension prevents the positive mood buff for having impressive workshops, rec rooms, etc. And if you want to change anything or redesign the layout inside of a mountain base it is a slow, careful process of making sure that no one gets killed. Buildings in a village can be torn down and rebuilt much more quickly, in the event that your needs change.

Space limitations also lead to issues with farms and livestock, particularly because you either have to do hydroponics which present power issues, or you have to venture outside which can become difficult to manage, too many exits and your swiss cheese mountain base is not as easily defended, not enough exits and you have to spend extra time to do ANYTHING outside, whether it's farming or harvesting wood or recovering drop pods/wounded spacers.

Speaking of power, all of your major power generation MUST happen outside, which means you have key structures outside of the confines of the base that need to be separately protected. If the raiders feel like getting into your base is too difficult, pathfinding might send them to your power, which can be costly to deal with and requires you to come outside to deal with it.

Space limitations also mean that power distribution is likely going to be on a single circuit, where a village layout has the luxury of individual buildings that can have individual circuits attached, meaning smaller battery banks on each circuit, meaning much smaller explosions from Zrrrt events, and also meaning the entire base doesn't go dark because only one building has lost power.

Heat management can also be an issue, and mountain stone cannot be repaired meaning your base is effectively deteriorating slowly until you replace damaged walls with stone brick walls, which is more of an annoyance than anything.

Mountain bases also seem to rely on kill boxes which to me is just cheap and boring. But that is a personal preference more than anything, and plenty of walled cities have kill boxes, too.

It's possible that some of what I'm saying is less than accurate because my experience with mountain bases is limited, frankly I dislike them so I've spent far less time trying to force them to work for me. It's possible there may be solutions to some of what I'm saying, and I'm just not aware of them.

Also as a side note, I don't mind a perimeter wall, it can be somewhat resource intensive but it's never been an issue for me. A well defended wall eliminates the need to construct main buildings out of stone, so ultimately you actually spend less resources on a wall than you do on buildings. Stone walls keep outside fires out of the village, and separating power circuits for individual buildings makes fire much less deadly or common. And with stone roads acting as fire breaks (and preventing any and all flammable grass from growing) even things like dry thunderstorms or flashstorms are not a concern for fire, so you can feel free to build literally everything out of wood. By the time raiders or robots can drop into the middle of your base you should have deep drilling and replace everything with plasteel, anyway.

[LordMunchkin]

A few things wrong here, nothing says that players who don't use mountain bases are reliant on traders for stone and metal, it's perfectly acceptable and even common to mine out as much stone and metal as you need and then leave the mine open (since distant infestations are not an immediate threat) or fill the mountain back up with wood. You can also set up turrets to fight off infestations that happens to spawn inside of the old mine. Personally I fill the mines back up if I bother with them at all.

In my experience mountains are primarily limited in space, and their chaotic nature means space is often wasted on weird shaped edges, leading to funky shaped rooms or shoe-horning things into spaces that are too large or too small to be effective. The space limitation also means having to try and squeeze as much as possible into the pre-defined space, which affects things like having individually spacious rooms with clearly designated room roles, which by extension prevents the positive mood buff for having impressive workshops, rec rooms, etc. And if you want to change anything or redesign the layout inside of a mountain base it is a slow, careful process of making sure that no one gets killed. Buildings in a village can be torn down and rebuilt much more quickly, in the event that your needs change.

Space limitations also lead to issues with farms and livestock, particularly because you either have to do hydroponics which present power issues, or you have to venture outside which can become difficult to manage, too many exits and your swiss cheese mountain base is not as easily defended, not enough exits and you have to spend extra time to do ANYTHING outside, whether it's farming or harvesting wood or recovering drop pods/wounded spacers.

Speaking of power, all of your major power generation MUST happen outside, which means you have key structures outside of the confines of the base that need to be separately protected. If the raiders feel like getting into your base is too difficult, pathfinding might send them to your power, which can be costly to deal with and requires you to come outside to deal with it.

Space limitations also mean that power distribution is likely going to be on a single circuit, where a village layout has the luxury of individual buildings that can have individual circuits attached, meaning smaller battery banks on each circuit, meaning much smaller explosions from Zrrrt events, and also meaning the entire base doesn't go dark because only one building has lost power.

Heat management can also be an issue, and mountain stone cannot be repaired meaning your base is effectively deteriorating slowly until you replace damaged walls with stone brick walls, which is more of an annoyance than anything.

Mountain bases also seem to rely on kill boxes which to me is just cheap and boring. But that is a personal preference more than anything, and plenty of walled cities have kill boxes, too.

It's possible that some of what I'm saying is less than accurate because my experience with mountain bases is limited, frankly I dislike them so I've spent far less time trying to force them to work for me. It's possible there may be solutions to some of what I'm saying, and I'm just not aware of them.

Also as a side note, I don't mind a perimeter wall, it can be somewhat resource intensive but it's never been an issue for me. A well defended wall eliminates the need to construct main buildings out of stone, so ultimately you actually spend less resources on a wall than you do on buildings. Stone walls keep outside fires out of the village, and separating power circuits for individual buildings makes fire much less deadly or common. And with stone roads acting as fire breaks (and preventing any and all flammable grass from growing) even things like dry thunderstorms or flashstorms are not a concern for fire, so you can feel free to build literally everything out of wood. By the time raiders or robots can drop into the middle of your base you should have deep drilling and replace everything with plasteel, anyway.

See here's the thing. You're talking about building outside of mtns on a mountain map. I'm talking about building on the plains with no mtns. On the plains, I really struggle to get steel and components (I usually run out of steel before I can even construct components).

I don't even understand your comment on mtns having limited space. If you're running out of space, you just mine more. Now you have more space and resources.

Power, agriculture, and livestock... these are trivial issues easily solved with proper base planning (multiple walls with turret decoys and traps inbetween). Heat can be an issue... that is once again solved by even a modicum of planning.

As for kill boxes... I use killboxes with plains and mtn bases. Kill boxes are just another fancy way of saying shooting the enemy from all sides. Some designs also incoporate traps and ways to slow down the oncoming enemies but the core principal is really the same. You might sneer at that, but late game, when you're facing 100+ raiders, using a kill box is the only way your 18> colonists are going to survive.

As for you not using a perimeter wall, well you've just left me baffled. How do you stop enemies from lighting your vents/ac units on fire? How do you protect your workers while manhunters are swarming? How do you control where enemies go?

What I'm getting at is that mtn bases and mtn maps in general give you lots of resources both in the form of raw resources and tunnels in which to live in. They also are abundant in natural defenses which can, with a few walls, save you even more resources. Your food and power concerns have never been really apparent to me. Most mtn maps have more arable land than you can use and plenty of space for power generators. Defending these exterior additions has also never been a challenge for me. The AI has a lot of difficulty dealing with one wall. Add 2-3 walls, traps in between, decoy turrets, kill rooms, intentionally infested areas... the AI even at the highest difficulties just can't deal with that level of attrition.

Finally, the reason I don't use wood at all for any of my structures any more is because of mechanoids. I've used fire breaks like you've said and in the end, it doesn't save me. Those inferno cannons...

[schizmo]

See here's the thing. You're talking about building outside of mtns on a mountain map. I'm talking about building on the plains with no mtns. On the plains, I really struggle to get steel and components (I usually run out of steel before I can even construct components).

No, actually I'm talking about building on the plains with no mountains, or very few hills. I mostly play on flat open land because I don't like mountains, but even those maps still spawn with a number of modest hills. Steel is not entirely hard to come by if you're careful and make your way towards Deep Drilling as one of your main priorities for research. I have occasionally been short on components, but trading for components is a lot easier than burning up all of my steel in the early to mid game, and I'm careful with where I spend them to begin with.

I don't even understand your comment on mtns having limited space. If you're running out of space, you just mine more. Now you have more space and resources.

This misunderstanding may be the result of assumption since neither of us was on the same page about which map we were discussing, it's not a matter of "mine more" it's a matter of "I've reached the end of the mountain" but again I was talking about flat plains or even sometimes hilly plains, where mountains are not huge and sprawling.

Power, agriculture, and livestock... these are trivial issues easily solved with proper base planning (multiple walls with turret decoys and traps inbetween). Heat can be an issue... that is once again solved by even a modicum of planning.

But at this point it's not much different than playing 100% outside in my opinion, and you still have the added risk of infestation for very little reward.

As for kill boxes... I use killboxes with plains and mtn bases. Kill boxes are just another fancy way of saying shooting the enemy from all sides. Some designs also incoporate traps and ways to slow down the oncoming enemies but the core principal is really the same. You might sneer at that, but late game, when you're facing 100+ raiders, using a kill box is the only way your 18> colonists are going to survive.

On some level you're correct but I have never taken that long to beat the game, so I do not encounter such massive raids.

As for you not using a perimeter wall, well you've just left me baffled. How do you stop enemies from lighting your vents/ac units on fire? How do you protect your workers while manhunters are swarming? How do you control where enemies go?

You've misread my post, I absolutely use walls, I stressed the importance of having a well defended wall to keep fire out of the village and keep enemies at a distance, but I don't use some massively thick wall with only 1 kill box entrance, my walls often have 1 or 2 entrance at each cardinal direction, they're just well defended. Two turrets out in the open near every entrance to keep raiders from approaching (because they will stay outside of the turret range and try to attack it) which gives my shooters enough time to set themselves up behind what I can only describe as Battlements and begin firing on raiders with long range weapons. It's about as well defended as you can get while still using pawns. I also try to keep all the trees and debris clear within a certain range of my entrances so that raiders have no cover to hide behind, this is helpful as well.

Finally, the reason I don't use wood at all for any of my structures any more is because of mechanoids. I've used fire breaks like you've said and in the end, it doesn't save me. Those inferno cannons...

Fire Breaks are only meant to prevent fire from spreading from one building to another, and also the use of floors prevents Grass from growing which is the only type of flammable ground (even wood floors are not flammable so even wood works for fire break) Remember that embers can drift 2-3 tiles away even over walls and start a new fire, so it's important to put breaks on both sides of your outer wall defending your village. By the time I have to deal with mechanoids I've usually gotten Plasteel walls on my important buildings, but again I put Deep Drilling as one of my higher priorities.

[Jorlem]

But it is too easy. ... We need more events like infestation (not necessarily of this strength) instead of fewer.

You're exactly making his point with this response; it could be summarized as "you shouldn't be able to play the game that way".

It could be summarized like that, but poorly. What I actually said was that you should be able to play the game that way, but it should be harder than in Dwarf Fortress. Humans are not dwarves. They're not burrowing animals. They're not short, stocky, muscular and used to hard work. In Rimworld, most of them are effeminate, fussy, overweight, traumatized or full of themselves. There are many backgrounds like cooks, artists, empaths, doctors, scientists, sex slaves, housemates, medieval lords, spies, clerks, social workers. Very few are miners, oafs, or other physical workers.

The mechanics ? Cabin fever is absolutely trivial. Serious cabin fewer is mitigated by a 2 minute (in-game time) visit to the outside. It's actually the opposite ! There are mood bonuses for indoor areas (spacious indoors, impressive dining room, decent bedroom), penalties for working outside, but no bonuses whatsover for having a nice park or a picnic table. To the point where the most effective outside colony is one that mimic an underground base. Build your base like a termite mound, a single building with rooms sharing walls.

Outdoors is a hostile, hostile world where enemies fall from the sky and bears randomly decide to hunt your farmers. Underground bases with their infestation problems still look cozy by comparison.

Personally, I think that if embrasures were allowed, tunneling under a mountain would suddenly become a lot less popular.  Modern open cities are just that, modern.  Go back even a few hundred years, and you'll find that most towns and cities had walls with things like arrowslits, crenelations, and other means of allowing defenders to protect themselves while fighting off attackers. 

An interesting set of battles to look at are the two big ones described in this video between the British and the Zulu, the first at Isandlwana, and the second at Rorke's Drift. (I am using this for two reasons, as it was a video easy to find that gives a good overview, and it has a small group with a significant technological advantage defending against a massively outnumbering enemy force armed with low-tech weapons, which is a very common situation in-game.)

https://youtu.be/KG_mbCgp_zU?t=3m36s

The first battle was approximately 20,000 Zulu against about 1,800 British, the latter with firearms but no defenses, ordered to form up in a line. The second was about 4,000 Zulu against about 140 British, with the latter having defenses consisting of makeshift sandbags, barricades (that they could fire through), and embrasures.  The first battle ended in a total defeat of the British, with few survivors, while the second ended with 17 British dead, about that many wounded, while about 850 Zulus were lost.

When the discussion turns to building outside, and to how combat is "meant" to work, the impression I usually get is that situations like Isandlwana are desired, given all the talk about forcing colonists to go outside their defenses to fight off enemies, instead of intelligently using the defensive structures we are allowed to have. (All the complaints about things like killboxes are part of this as well.)  I've seen it mentioned that the mods that add embrasures completely wreck game balance, something that I am completely fine with given how effective these sorts of defenses were in real life, which is why using them was standard practice.


Honestly, if we lost the ability to build auto-turrets, in return for gaining embrasures, I'd be perfectly fine with that.

[Swat_Raptor]

embrasures make sense conceptually but the current AI has no way good way of dealing with them. the current embrasure mods which act as wall which you can shoot through all just destroy the difficulty of raids and man hunter packs. So while they make conceptually their is no way I can see of implementing something like them without destroying the difficulty of 2 red events, and greatly reducing the difficulty of the other red events.

[Jorlem]

embrasures make sense conceptually but the current AI has no way good way of dealing with them. the current embrasure mods which act as wall which you can shoot through all just destroy the difficulty of raids and man hunter packs. So while they make conceptually their is no way I can see of implementing something like them without destroying the difficulty of 2 red events, and greatly reducing the difficulty of the other red events.

Thing is, I see that as a flaw of the red events, not the embrasures.  As stated in the description of the game on this site's homepage,

RimWorld is not designed as a competitive strategy game, but as a story generator. It's not about winning and losing - it's about the drama, tragedy, and comedy that goes on in your colony.

Forcing characters to hold idiot balls in order to increase the difficulty of strategic challenges does not make for a good story.  If the game relies on hamstringing my colonists by preventing them from using common sense solutions in order to make certain events pose a threat, then those events should be reexamined instead of removing their ability to build walls with small holes in them while allowing them the ability to build interstellar spacecraft.

For raids, give them siege weaponry like covered rams to help get close and smash down walls/doors/embrasures, and the ability to pull firearms through embrasures with melee attacks to deprive defenders of their firearms.  Add in weapons like catapults to attack walls directly from range and breach your defenses, instead of blindly charging in or destroying everything they ostensibly want to steal with random mortar strikes.

Manhunter packs should be removed, in my opinion.  All they do is necessitate a large perimeter wall that contains all your fields and such, preventing them from being a threat, and if they wander into your defenses, a huge surplus of meat.  Now that hungry carnivores will naturally attack colonists with they are the best source of food, I wonder if we even still need Manhunters in general.

[Elixiar]

Yeah it would be ok if you had some warning and time to prepare . or if they started off way smaller , and if you don't deal with it right away you get overwhelmed.

I like that though. It's a threat and a real possibility that you have to think about before you just think, yeah I'm gonna just tunnel into that mountain and have the easiest game ever with 0 consequence.

[b0rsuk]

If Rimworld is not supposed to be a strategy game or a tower defense game, why is Tynan so determined NOT to have embrasures in the game ? Doors already are de facto embrasures. Enemies know to attack them (but are not very good at choosing when). Stone doors are so tough they may as well be considered indestructible in an average sized raid. Typically when someone bangs at the door, the rest of the raiders goes another way, so those attacking doors just delay themselves and split from the pack.

Embrasures can have counters:
- tribal raids with small animals
- boomrat manhunter pack
- mad cobras
- industrial+ raiders can have smoke grenades

[Swat_Raptor]

Thing is, I see that as a flaw of the red events, not the embrasures.

I agree that Conceptually embrasures work they way you think they would and that therefore they are designed well enough but due to the AIs limited capabilities currently having them makes the game easy cheesy on any difficulty and if you destroy the difficulty you destroy much of the drama. I've played with Embrasures before but each time I've felt like I had to multiply the power of the enemy force by 3 or 4 times to make up for the difference they made. I don't expect the AI to improve in leaps and bound in the next few updates so I'm against embrasures.

my desire for good drama is also why I'm ok with infestations, I think they could be improved alot but they make building in mountains still have significant danger.  I would say that there needs to be more types of danger for mountain dwellers because right now there is not enough drama under the mountain even with the bugs.

each play style should be equally attractive, if one seems alot more advantageous than the other then some nerfing should be done so the game retains good balance.

[b0rsuk]

I think embrasures would have much less effect on balance than turrets have. Have you actually played with embrasures and NO TURRETS ? It's something I think I'll try.

Embrasures are power multiplier. They multiply the strength of your shooters. If it's not great to start with, embrasures won't make it spectacular.

Turrets on the other hand are a completely new gunner you can construct ! They can be fragile, especially in melee but
1) it's not a problem if there's an overwhelming number of them
2) embrasures make health of turrets irrelevant. You're not going to destroy an embrasure under fire.

[Swat_Raptor]

I think embrasures would have much less effect on balance than turrets have. Have you actually played with embrasures and NO TURRETS ? It's something I think I'll try.

actually i never had turrents with embrasures except for one time but the turrets just ended up shooting my dudes and animals so I scraped them.

Embrasures without turrents was still super easy, the only time when they did get breached was when there was huge mech raid with alot of inferno cannons, and it still slowed them down a bunch.

[ChaosOverlord]

Seriously, multiple bugs several times the size of a person just poof into existence in an actively-used bedroom? Nah, look up "balance" and "gameplay" and get back to me.

The dev menu is basically required at this point in the game.

So the bugs drop in through the roof or the floor!
People will complain about anything. It's a mountain, it's akin to living underground. You worry about above and below just as much as left or right.

[Jorlem]

Seriously, multiple bugs several times the size of a person just poof into existence in an actively-used bedroom? Nah, look up "balance" and "gameplay" and get back to me.

The dev menu is basically required at this point in the game.

So the bugs drop in through the roof or the floor!
People will complain about anything. It's a mountain, it's akin to living underground. You worry about above and below just as much as left or right.

Except we can't do anything to defend above and below, but we can left or right.

[GarettZriwin]

Seriously, multiple bugs several times the size of a person just poof into existence in an actively-used bedroom? Nah, look up "balance" and "gameplay" and get back to me.

The dev menu is basically required at this point in the game.

So the bugs drop in through the roof or the floor!
People will complain about anything. It's a mountain, it's akin to living underground. You worry about above and below just as much as left or right.

Except we can't do anything to defend above and below, but we can left or right.

Well if attack is instant then you don't want to keep colonists most of the time in rooms that are small/with one door/occupy most of their time. You can keep part of colony outside to minimise risk.