Alpha 17 is on public unstable branch

[ttgg]

Some quick observations based on a few hours of a17 of today's build, coming from someone who played a16 extensively (on Randy Extreme) but haven't played for a few months.

-Infections are incredibly dangerous. Even glitterworld medicine applied every cooldown by a Medicine 4 doc, while patient is 24/7 in a normal quality bed, is a harrowing race against time once infection starts.
-Randy Random Extreme seems harder than a16, but might just be a coincidence. Was getting hit by debilitating effects almost daily.

In relation to Randy, I was playing one colony in a zone with predicted temperature between -5 and +25 Celcius. I landed during summer, right before fall. Within 1-2 weeks of landing, I had both a heatwave and a cold snap, pushing temperatures from +45 to -15 Celsius. Several raids as well as a mechanoid ship landing in the middle of my base, followed by malaria, and then a surprisingly big raid of 8-10 well armed people (this is still within about 2-3 weeks of landing), and I ended up not being able to keep up with the wound treatment, and had infections as a result, which combined with malaria just annihilated my colony. Keep in mind that this is coming from an experienced Randy Extreme player.

-Melee combat feels broken, with everyone just swinging wildly into the air and hitting nothing. Feels much more RNG than before.

Related to the melee combat feeling broken: Had 2 fresh colonists get wrecked by a single rabbit, because they couldn't hit it (4 and 0 melee). Tried shooting it, but that accuracy was even worse, even at point blank range (due to being attacked meanwhile). Meanwhile the rabbit managed to cause severe wounds to the colonists, including a permanent eye scar (how does that even happen). This, in combination with the increased infection risk, feels incredible frustrating. To have 2 healthy colonists get wrecked by a rabbit within a few days of landing. Screenshot for dramatic effect http://pasteboard.co/5jGutAkDQ.jpg http://pasteboard.co/5kbVFACIH.jpg
So one single rabbit almost kills 2 colonists within 3 days on landing, due to infections, despite the colonists being armed with a steel knife and a gun.

-Performance does not really feel improved (not sure if it was supposed to be), when playing on ludicrous size (yes, I know there's a disclaimer saying it's not tested at that size). Fast-forwarding on ludicrous size makes the FPS hit single-digits, even with only 2 colonists and a very small base. I was hoping this version would improve this performance. My system specs for reference: 2600k, 8gb ram, Gtx970, Win10, game on SSD.
-Savegame size is still very big. One fresh save at ludicrous size, right after landing, takes 37MB.

[ReZpawner]

I see a lot of people complaining about infections here. If you have a doctor that's awful (skill 5 or less), you're going to have a bad time.

It's really not that bad. I have had people treated by doctors with 5-6 skill, in a kinda rubbish hospital with wooden floors and regular beds, and with herbal medicine, that survived the ordeal easily.
Firstly: What you need to do is keep an eye on the patients. They will require more than one treatment for the infection, and if you don't hurry that up, then sure - they will die. If you keep an eye on them ("next treatment in X.XX hours"), and your doctor is even slightly competent, you shouldn't have any problems at all, unless you're horribly unlucky with the treatment quality.

The second thing you can do is to prevent the infections in the first place. Setting up a small hospital with sterile floors isn't THAT expensive, and it will save you a lot of grief. Once you have that, make sure to keep the damn place clean. I've seen screenshots of hospitals that were covered in dirt and blood, and the owner had the balls to complain about the infection rate being too high. If you're doing surgery in a pool of shit, of course it's going to get infected.

TL;DR: The infection rate at the moment is if anything, lower than it needs to be. Just make sure to treat your colonists in time, and clean your damn hospitals.

[ttgg]

TL;DR: The infection rate at the moment is if anything, lower than it needs to be. Just make sure to treat your colonists in time, and clean your damn hospitals.

I don't have any significant problems with infections when I reach a late-stage game. The problem is the inverse difficulty curve, where even a scratch can doom your colonists in early game, due to having limited medicine and poor accommodations. It's still possible, sure, if you micro-manage every single treatment right on time.

In terms of gameplay, I just don't find it appealing. It feels like the gameplay shifts 100% to wound treatment micro-management, once someone gets injured. It becomes a micro-management nightmare when several colonists become injured, which is sure to happen with the new improved AI, that likes to change targets and injure as many colonists as possible. I'm afraid that many players, especially new players, will find it extremely frustrating and off-putting.

I think infections SHOULD be a problem, unlike in A16, but the current implementation feels like a heavy dose of artificial difficulty, for difficulties sake.

[Wanderer_joins]

I've been playing the rich explorer scenario since it's now routinely playable with self tending. With infections back and the rebalance of medicine potency, i'm wondering if the 40 glitt meds doesn't make it easier than the crashlanded scenario with 30 standard meds. I get you're slightly disavantaged buy the .7 penalty at self-tending, but it can be easily offset by the doctoring skill and/or first guys joining.

The guy is already rich, he could start with a few glitt meds, more standard meds and then buy some more if needed according to opportunities.

[Limdood]

With sight being capped at 100% for surgery and now being capped for shooting, is there any significant reason to try to "augment" yourself with bionic eyes, EXCEPT for replacing an injured eye?

When I checked the XMLs, sight is capped at 200%

Thank you.  I had not checked.  That implies that Tynan merely added the cap as a "just in case you have freaky mods that screw with this value" precaution.

[kenmtraveller]

With respect to infections, I would just like to point out that they are incredibly dangerous in real life.  My father almost died, in a hospital, from four separate drug resistant infections that he acquired during surgery for a heart bypass.  I'm pretty sure he was treated by a skilled doctor and that herbal medicine was not used

I travel a lot in remote/rural parts of Asia and South America.  I always carry a spare tube of topical antibiotics with me to hand out, because more than once I've seen kids with untreated infections in places with no access to medical care.  Those infections, often just from minor scrapes, can become fatal.

[Angiel]

I see a lot of people complaining about infections here. If you have a doctor that's awful (skill 5 or less), you're going to have a bad time.
TL;DR: The infection rate at the moment is if anything, lower than it needs to be. Just make sure to treat your colonists in time, and clean your damn hospitals.

i have to disagree with you.
To be able to deal with infections as they currently are you need a very good doctor, very good medicine and cleaners.
let's say you start with the normal 3 ppl scenario. and you randomize your colonist to at least get 1 good doctor and all to do dumb labor
if you get raided what are the chances that two colonists don't get hurt so that they cure the 3rd person of infection? because you need the doctor and someone to constantly clean the blood of the person that is injured. if that one person that cleans is injured as well then he is spilling blood on the floor constantly and again your doctor is busy curing the first one meanwhile your other colonist is risking infection as we speak.
you start at the beginning, you don't have much silver to build a sterile room. hence the chance is pretty much 50 percent to get infection no matter how good your doctor is if your room is spotless.
and lets say you micro manage everything and all, you built as soon as possible a sterile room. to treat one person of infection you need at least 3 normal medicine i think depending on his immunity gain. you only start with 30 medicine, if you have 3 colonist you can afford only 10 infections if you are lucky. and chances to get more medicine depends on traders and you are also pretty much out of silver cuz you built that sterile room.
the only way to get a colony going imo is to tweak the scenario and get glitterworld medicine from beginning until you make things running.
And plus every time you are raided you need to keep your ppl constantly on the bed to recover from infection. that pretty much makes the game an agony because by the time the pawns are cured another raid is coming hence again infections again in bed. and so on ... it just becomes a game of curing diseases and not building a colony.

and to come to what i actually wanted to talk about:
Just had a prisoner die to infection that was at 87% and 90% immunity. and the game clearly said the prisoner died of infection.
why did the prisoner die before it reached 100% infection?
picture in attachment.

With respect to infections, I would just like to point out that they are incredibly dangerous in real life.  My father almost died, in a hospital, from four separate drug resistant infections that he acquired during surgery for a heart bypass.  I'm pretty sure he was treated by a skilled doctor and that herbal medicine was not used

I travel a lot in remote/rural parts of Asia and South America.  I always carry a spare tube of topical antibiotics with me to hand out, because more than once I've seen kids with untreated infections in places with no access to medical care.  Those infections, often just from minor scrapes, can become fatal.

Your father had a really complicated surgery done to the heart. which chances to get infected are high especially since you put a foreign object inside the body. The tissue doesn't heal well around the device and so on. The infections the children had were because they weren't treated on time and left to be.
And here we are not talking about real life. If this was real life game i wouldn't want to play it to be honest. i have enough of my real life i don't need to play it in a game as well.
Plus even if we are to compare real life to his game. The infections we speak of in this game is that they come even if you cure the pawn immediately as he got hurt. In real life to get infection you need to not treat the wound for more than a day and also be in a very dirty environment. In rimworld A17 you get the pawn into a sterile room it becomes dirty because the pawns blood is getting on the floor making it a 75% chance to get infected no matter if you cure him or not. with good medicine or not.

[attachment deleted by admin due to age]

[ttgg]

and to come to what i actually wanted to talk about:
Just had a prisoner die to infection that was at 87% and 90% immunity. and the game clearly said the prisoner died of infection.
why did the prisoner die before it reached 100% infection?

I think a prisoner dies if he reaches 0% consciousness, and extreme infection limits it to max 10%. So it doesn't take a lot to reduce the remaining 10% consciousness to 0%. As far as I know, consciousness is reduced by blood loss, starvation, pain as well as hypothermia or heatstroke.

[trihero]

Another annoying things about caravans is if you send them on a long enough journey (even 8 days one way trip) they will arrive at the destination at 0% joy.

[Tynan]

Okay, I'm going to address the health balance. Thank you everyone for the info.

[kenmtraveller]

(removed incorrect quote, was trying to respond to the 0% joy after caravan journey thing)

Yeah, this is an issue, along with people breaking during caravan loading.  It feel too me like there ought to be a virtual 'camping' activity during the caravan journey (not with a real map, just abstracted) where joy requirements can be met.  There could be a lot of factors that affect joy regain during that time, like whether a fire is used, whether anyone brought a harmonica, the personalities of the travellers, and whether bedrolls/tents are brought.

[wyoian]

Not sure if I saw something in patch notes about caravans getting upset if they get injured in your map, think i did, but if that is the case, can we add a trading spot to the game.

Before this was subject to abuse for obvious reasons, but now if we freeze/burn them it would anger them? Also now if they get caught up in the line of fire which often happens with how they positon (literally inside my deadfall traps half the time), it will also anger them. We can't tell them to leave when they are in danger, and we can't control the spot.
Also if I mis remembered reading something about them angering then this is all hypothetical. Tried searching in this thread but didn't see it mentioned.

[ReZpawner]

It is correct that if they are killed, you will lose reputation with them. As for cold, they will leave the map if the temperature is out of their comfortable range.

[Angiel]

I think a prisoner dies if he reaches 0% consciousness, and extreme infection limits it to max 10%. So it doesn't take a lot to reduce the remaining 10% consciousness to 0%. As far as I know, consciousness is reduced by blood loss, starvation, pain as well as hypothermia or heatstroke.

Then shouldn't be announced pawn died due too much pain instead of infection?
I don't really know the mathematics around the percentage of these. But i am just trying to understand it logically.
my prisoner wasn't starving wasn't having hypothermia or heatstroke and blood loss was taken care of cuz he was bandaged. So that leaves only pain.
How is any pawn supposed to survive to extreme infection if the pain from extreme infection plus injuries reduces the 10% to 0%?
The pawn is bound to have injuries when he gets infected.

Sorry if i seem to be dragging this too much. the post can be deleted if it is considered an inconvenience to the subject of the topic

[wyoian]

It is correct that if they are killed, you will lose reputation with them. As for cold, they will leave the map if the temperature is out of their comfortable range.

I more meant people locking them in a freezer/sauna for the porpose of killing them for their inventory, as having a trading spot would allow you to make them walk up to an insect hive or go into a small area where you have it set up to kill them "neutrally" in the past.

edit. This is why since they get upset now we could have a trading spot without it being free loot. Also it prevents them from being in crossfire