Play through vs reload

[Dorian]

Just curious how people play.  Not that either way is wrong, it's totally up to the player.  I've only got 55 hours of play so far and try to roll with the punches when many people die, or when something gets destroyed, but I sometimes reload out of frustration.

How do you play?

[GiantSpaceHamster]

Depends a lot on my mood, but I usually try to play through if I can. If it's been a long day and I just want to play super casually I may reload more often for less severe reasons.

Currently I'm attempting the Ice Sheet Challenge, which is set to permadeath by default. But some nights I just have to play a more casual game.

[Hans Lemurson]

It depends on whether I feel what happened was "unfair" or if I'm trying to learn something.  Permadeath can make me excessively cautious and refuse to innovate or go outside of my comfort zone. 

I sometimes reload on the justification "Let's pretend I started over with a new colony, but just did everything exactly the same way up to this point".  It saves a lot of time I would have spent repeating the same actions over and over.

Other times I might feel that a consequence is too extreme or unfair, so I fix it in dev mode and then inflict a lesser consequence.

Generally what I consider to be unfair are those things which I could have avoided with proper micro-management, but let my attention slip at the wrong time, like sending a guy out on the ice sheet to retrieve a chunk of slag without re-warming him from his last outdoors job.

[A Friend]

I only savescum on the saltiest of times. Aside from that, I mostly just roll with Randy's bullshit spree.

[TheMeInTeam]

As a rule, I'm impatient in gaming.  Reloading carries a burden and I don't like doing it.  It feels like it cheapens the weight of past decisions, but it also loses time.

For me to reload, it must be something where I am saving sufficient time to overcome those burdens.  That is of course subjective, because for me reloading a predator "hunting" colonist w/o notification has nearly 0 cheapening factor (this mechanic is inconsistent with overarching design to the point of not being reasonably justifiable)...while if I were to mismanage micro against a raid and reload it it could easily cheapen the experience enough that I'd rather restart if I can't survive on.

[RazorHed]

Some of the game systems as is are really cheap as to be more challenging , which can make them utterly frustrating at times, and if I had to go on through those uncontrollable events , I wouldn't bother playing the game. Its different if doing a challenge I guess though.

[giannikampa]

I save every "bad news" letter i get. One way or another i'll survive but i'll never skip a treat. Rarely events need a reload or two, mostly because in year 15 you can't do stupid mistakes like not sending animals in a safe place or guiding your dfence force trough a safe route.
In my defense..my base has no walls nor turrets

[travin]

At this stage of development and my level of experience with the game, I see no problem with backtracking when something goes wrong. But I try to balance it with "oh well, that's just the way it goes" and roll with it.

I'm still learning and have lots of it still to do, so learning the outcomes of my stupid mistakes and learning to make better choices is the goal, rather than some notion of ethics that I'm doing something wrong. However, as I learn reasons for reloading become fewer and fewer and rolling with the punches is not only preferred but more enjoyable.

[Dorian]

I appreciate all the different opinions, thanks!

I thought I would ask because I was playing with 7 colonists and tried to take out a psychic ship.  I killed the centipedes and scythers but lost 4 people.  I went back to my base which is partially in a mountain with one guy recovering in bed, and I immediately got a huge infestation which killed my 2 colonists that were mining steel just as the guy that was recovering came to help.  He got hit once and went down, and bled to death.  It was a bad day, so I reloaded.

[SpaceDorf]

I save on every combat event and large surgery.

I don't like the hardcore style of playing, because it is like throwing all that effort I put in a colony in the trash.

Still I go with the punches .. the savegame forces me to play through the bad event, but it gives me several tries.
The times this are necessary are normally a total colony wipeout .. so instead of restarting a new one I reload.

The other occasions I reload on are when surgery goes terribly wrong.
When the lvl 15 Medic destroyes 8k worth of equipment because of a messup,
or chopped some organs to pieces .. thats just plain bullshit ..

limb loss, permanent brain injury, hunting accidents and single deaths are no reason to reload.

[makapse]

the only times i reload is when i get scars(outside of social fights) and death that was avoidable by micromanagement. Randy extreme is FUN as it is.

[Hans Lemurson]

As a rule, I'm impatient in gaming.  Reloading carries a burden and I don't like doing it.  It feels like it cheapens the weight of past decisions, but it also loses time.

I still remember your article about how to play through a game of Civ4 in 4-5 hours, it was quite impressive.  I generally took several weeks to see a game through completion, with turns sometimes taking 20+ minutes when I had tough decisions.  I was flabbergasted that you were able to play so fast, and tried to learn from and study your methods so that I could play faster myself.

I failed, but it was still worth the effort, and to this day I try to keep in mind that spending 20 minutes trying to figure out the right way to do something, although no time passes in the game, is still not "free" and is what prevents me from completing more games.

[Beider]

Only two things I will reload for is obvious bullshit surgery, for instance if someone chop off an arm while fixing a leg... wtf? How? Even though this rarely happens after I learned that now you just need glitter medicine for all operations.

The second thing I may reload for is when a hunter kills a hauler in one shot or some idiot hauler decides to run to haul gear from dead raiders in the middle of a firefight and I don't notice before it is too late. I find those situations so bullshit since it just happens because the AI is bad.

[Shurp]

It very much depends.  If a colonist I don't like much gets killed in a firefight I'll bury him and move on.  But if his eye gets shot out and as a result he's more of a liability to the colony than before I'll probably reload.

Basically, it depends on how entertaining things will be after the problem.  If the game is going to be less fun then I reload. 

[Brutetal]

I have my first colony which is five years old, on which I test things. There, I do not hesistate to reload if something bad happens.
In all other colonies, I activate permadeath. It's just more fun to run with the disastrous events that occur.
The only moment where I really, REALLY want to reload is when a pawn gets torn apart from a panther or other predator because there is absolutely zero warning before the predator hits the first strike.
I lost two miners in anotheer colony that way and it feels super frustrating. I know I could just set their zones and so on so they don't get hurt by accident from a hungry panther but... That's too much micro for me. Also I need my miners unrestricted, because I dig out every mountain to get all resources out of the map before going to deep drill.