Alpha 17 is on public unstable branch

[trihero]

I'm not a Rimworld expert by any means (less than 40 hours played, never made it to the "end" game of spaceship building), and some of this feedback is not particular to alpha 17, but here we go anyways:

1) I really wish there were a convenient way to set up a specific a "cleaning" zone so that pawns only clean indoor areas like their rooms. In the current system, pawns clean automatically in the "home" zone but there is a signficant annoyance factor here because hen your pawns frequently clean up "useless" areas like rubble out in the wild or dirt on floors which to me is extremely low priority. Especially as the base grows larger they waste so much time cleaning up outside areas whereas the interior affects the mood so much I want them to clean there and ignore outside.

I am aware you can customize the area of the home zone, and that you can also toggle automatic home zone expansion, but I have found this to be a clunky option at best because when I set the home zone just to the interior of rooms, then suddenly I don't get fire notifications that are relatively close to the base and people only auto fight fires in the interior of rooms which makes it very unsafe during fire hazards. I shouldn't have to choose between automatic cleaning (of relevant, interior rooms) vs automatic fire fighting.

One suggestion I have would be to detach automatic cleaning from the home zone, and add a new zone specifically for cleaning.

2) I play around on lower difficulties (phoebe/peaceful or up to some challenge), but I do use the tribal setting because I love the feel of low tech and I like being able to choose 5 colonists for various skills, so that is the background. Now the "problem:"

I just plain don't understand the role of caravans/the new quest system.

They seem extremely roughly balanced. For instance, I got a quest in the third season of my first year, that was bring 431 wood and get a multi-analyzer in return. I thought "awesome!!!!" and so I went to try to set up the caravan. By this point I only had 5 settlers. I chose to send away 3 of them (including doctor, best fighter, and animal handler). I was lucky enough to have tamed some muffalos so I could carry enough supplies.

The location was 16 (!) days away, so I said ooook and brought tons of corn with a 40 day rot time. My caravan got ambushed 3 days in by a manhunting pack of 8 cats (yes, cats), ( I had 3 colonists with 2 great bows and a steel shiv) and I got completely rekt. My caravan perished and I ragequit.

After this experience I was left wondering so many things

- this was on the easiest settings, so it should be facerolling to get these quests successful otherwise why even offer them to begin with, but I failed hard. Maybe the game should take into account what settings you are on to determine how far away the quests are (tribals should have it easier since they can't tech up good equipment as fast)
- I don't have any understanding of whether the risk is worth the reward, for many reasons. 16 days = 32 round trip, so you're sending away a lot of colonists for about a season, so the home base is lightly defended and not many important things are being done there. I just don't get it, like it takes away from the focus of doing the things at your main base. I can't tell how much tech/weapons/armor I need to be able to survive something like 8 manhunting cats (god forbid if they had more advanced animals). I have no idea how caravans could be expected if I didn't have the luck of being able to tame some muffalos (many maps I've played on had no hauling animals). So the combination of the above makes it feel like caravans/quests are meant for extremely advanced players who have extreme luck in having the right resources, the right animals, the right amount of people not to lose at home while your caravan out, you have to know how well equipped you need to be to not die to something like 8 manhunting cats...I'm just confused.

I'm just so confused - are these caravan quests supposed to be an integral part of the game you should be considering often? Or just for the experts who understand every mathematical detail of the game so they can do it safely without sending too many people away? Or are they outright not supposed to be viable, but just there for hardcore players looking for a challenge?

Moderator's edit (Calahan) @ trihero - I merged the new A17 feedback thread you created with the existing thread on A17 feedback that Tynan (the developer) posted specifically for obtaining feedback on A17.

[Sunfish]

Hey guys! One bug I've seen is that when I am setting up a caravan with only prisoners as pack animals was that my colonist would start picking up and carrying far more than their allowed limit and just stand there and freeze. When I drafted him he'd move, and when I undrafted him he'd sometimes go and pick up more items, but other times he'd go to the item and get frozen again. The only consistency I saw was that he'd pick up single tile items like pants, but freeze on stacks, like smokeleaf.

The alpha has otherwise been pretty awesome though, thanks Tynan and company!

[Tynan]

Thanks for the feedback everyone. It's very useful. We're still adjusting and fixing. Please keep it coming!

Edit: Please keep it to specific feedback here, open-ended suggestions go in the Suggestions forum. Thanks.

[DariusWolfe]

It went from "My pawns don't have time to heal up between fights." to "I am bored. Let's go caravan or something."

I halfway wonder if that was intentional? Who's going to send a force out of their colony for days at a time when you're expecting to be attacked any day, or split your colony into a second site, which only doubles your exposure surface, divides your attention, and doesn't really increase your ability to deal with threats? Reducing the frequency of attacks almost seems like it'd be required to even make the caravan/attack mechanics viable.

- this was on the easiest settings, so it should be facerolling to get these quests successful otherwise why even offer them to begin with, but I failed hard. Maybe the game should take into account what settings you are on to determine how far away the quests are (tribals should have it easier since they can't tech up good equipment as fast)

Something you should probably keep in mind is that playing a tribal scenario is essentially playing on a higher difficulty level, at least in the beginning; It shouldn't be attempted unless you're fairly good with the basics, and want a more challenging scenario.

Other than that, I second your suggestions regarding cleaning areas. It's not especially fun having to micromanage your home zone to only include the spaces and structures you want cleaned/repaired/not-to-burn; Cleaning is the only really annoying part of the home-zone mechanics, so if it were broken out into it's own zone, that'd be a great QoL improvement. There's a mod or two that do this, but I'd much prefer if it were part of the Vanilla experience.

[Mihsan]

Very annoying thing with interface:
When I select pawn from work tab and then try to directly order him to do something - then pawn is unselected and tab closes. Should I report is as bug? Not sure.

Also I dont remember it be like that in A16.

[Tynan]

New update! Please keep the feedback coming, it's super useful!

Changes:

Made caravan ambushes less dangerous. The tribal start scenario description now notes that it is difficult.
Caravan request requested items value wanted now adjust to player wealth. Caravan request no longer requests heavy, low-value items like stone blocks or chunks. Raid strength is now a few percent higher per player pawn.
Slightly re-increased threat frequency.
Caravan request changes: Destination max distance 50->36. Don't fire unless player has at least 4 pawns total and 15 days have passed.
Fix: 10jobs/10ticks errors when a pawn tries to haul item off blueprint surrounded by fire.
Fix: Right clicking on an occupied bed causes exceptions.
Fix: Pawns can binge on drugs which they can't even reach.
Resource readout is now scrollable.
"Version mismatch" warning now says what type of file this is.
Fix minor UI annoyance: Pawns deselect when you close main tabs with a right click.
Site's inspect string now says what the threat is if it's known.
Fix: Relation-adjusted messages appear in situations where they shouldn't.
Fix: Errors when a pawn is despawned while bursting.
Fix: Faction relations on world gen and at landing differ.
Fix: Roads occasionally build over rivers in unrealistic ways.
Fix 2978: Job targetQueues don't deserialize from saves correctly.
Fix 2977: New DateReadoutTip: Seasons are not translatable.
Fix 2969: Geyser can spawn in the middle of a road.
Fix: GameComponents don't properly update on mod changes.
Caravan ambushes are a bit weaker.
Clarify descriptions of stats that don't change speed with skill to explain why.

[Tynan]

The build is live, it always takes a few minutes to upload.

This thread is for feedback on the build (not question-and-answer or open suggestions or bugs). Please keep it to feedback, thanks.

[kenmtraveller]

It's pretty awesome how quickly these updates are coming! 

A little more feedback on caravans/quests....
The world map and caravan system are really awesome and I want my colonists to have a lot of good reasons to use it.   The opportunity cost is high, since my colony development suffers, so rewards need to be significant.

One thing that might be awesome would be quests that gave the colonly more colonists.  For example, 'so and so is imprisoned by raiders and will be sold/executed in X days, rescue them and they will join your group'.  A new colonist is a significant asset, much more than something like a megascreen TV  -- it is a force multiplier.  I would be more likely to attempt such a quest, and not feel punished for doing so.  Doubly so if the imprisoned colonist is a relative or lover of one of my existing colonists.

In fact, I would like it if this sort of thing became a primary way of recruiting colonists.  Right now the whole 'imprison the raider until he agrees to join' thing still feels really creepy, and I rarely do it (and I never do it with space refugees).  I'm glad it's an option for those that like that kind of game, but these people who join under duress ought to , every now and then, change their mind and attempt escape, maybe setting a bunch of stuff on fire on their way out.  And their presence in the colony ought to trigger raids meant to 'liberate' them.

[Mihsan]

I had 5 or 6 ambrosia sprout events in my colony in 1 year. Is this working as intended?

Alpacas feels OP to me. They give lots of wool which is in the same time extra expensive. I was working hard to make prosperous colony, but was very surprised that 6 alpacas, which almost forgot about, has made almost all my money.

Also I wanted to grumble that my non-intellectual crafters try to make drugs (which is now intellectual work) and then saw that crafting bill can be limited by intellectual skill and not crafting. That is great little detail. But how can I limit my drug makers from carving stone and not cut off my low skill crafters from it in the same time?

Fix minor UI annoyance: Pawns deselect when you close main tabs with a right click.

Wow, not even 1 hour after I complained about it. O_O

[RemingtonRyder]

Peaceful difficulty: you still get the Chased Refugee incident.

[RemingtonRyder]

You could move the chem boy to a second colony where he can't get any drugs.

[Mihsan]

Big problem with route planing tool: it does not count takes winter moving time into consideration. It was very frustrating for me when my caravan with food for 3 days could not made it's travel expected in 2,7 days.

Also secondary problem is that winter moving speed is not bound to winter temperature. Why exactly caravans moves slower during winter in some tiles when it is +17° C there?

Plus I caught myself at not connotating "decembary" with seasons at all. It also added more confusion to this whole situation with caravan because my eyes sliped over that word and my brain gave me nothing about that it might be winter somewhere.

[theqmann]

Edge scrolling only seems to work in the middle of the screen edges, and not in the corners.  Is that intentional?

[ReZpawner]

One minor annoyance about the hauling: If you ask them to haul a stack of let's say 75 wood, and there's a stack containing 60 wood already in the storage area, they will only pick up enough to fill that stack.

So rather than carrying the 75, and filling everything up, they will take only 15.

[Tynan]

Edge scrolling only seems to work in the middle of the screen edges, and not in the corners.  Is that intentional?

Yes, it is.

Thanks for the info everyone. Just a reminder.

This thread is for feedback on the build only. Bugs go in the Bugs forum. Open suggestions go in the Suggestions forum.

I'm not going to make the colonist more similar because it'll really weaken the stories and gameplay variance. Some people are supposed to be useless; it makes life interesting. (I wrote a very long explanation of this design principle on reddit as well). I do hope to make a more sophisticated game-start colonist generator interface, though.