Alpha 17 is on public unstable branch

[YokoZar]

Industrious people now seem to have the "hard worker vs lazy" thought of normal people, not just lazy people.  The tooltip should probably be updated if this is intended.

They also have it against neurotic people, which seems probably unintended.

[ReZpawner]

Industrious people now seem to have the "hard worker vs lazy" thought of normal people, not just lazy people.  The tooltip should probably be updated if this is intended.

They also have it against neurotic people, which seems probably unintended.

This was an issue in A16 as well, it's not a new thing.

[parro]

Does anyone know if the saves corrupting with each alpha release will ever be resolved? just asking as I enjoy doing late game plays and watching my colony grow and flourish, and it does get a bit annoying having to start anew (not that its bad cause it creates new stories)

You should be fine, the biggest issue was back in A14 i think, when the drug names were forced to be changed, in this unstable A17 the only thing chaged was a weapon name? So if you're past that update there won't be an issue, even if a name changes between now and then you can always edit the save file and change it.

[Doc Savage NDMF]

Randy Macho Man Savage, Some Challenge. 6 person Military scenario, armed and vested, Spring drop.

Eclipse Day 2: No issue as I am just getting plants in the ground.
Mad Animal Day 3: It's a Rat, run..!
Raid Day 3: (1) Single Tribesman feeling buff and carrying a big stick. Well club anyway.
Solar Flare Day 5: Just in time to kill the first lights and cooler for a day.
Mad Animals Day 6: Two Raccoons conspire to "eat peoples and stuff".
Beavers Day 7: Yay..! Free meat..!
Cold Snap Day 8: Ouch. This will keep us berry picking 1/2 a season longer than we'd like to.
Raid Day 8: Two armed Pirates wait until well after dark and hit at night. (awesome TBH, as I don't have enough jackets for everyone to go out into the sub zero night to defend and the base is too small for defenses and multiple doors at this point. Not that I need everyone for this raid, but extrapolating this scenario into future raids of many more enemies it's neat to know this is a thing.
Frostbite Day 9: I build a bunch of fires around and micro 2 of the 6 for fingers and toes.
Cold breaks Day 11: We breathe exactly ONE sigh of relief as 3 of the 6 get Fibrous Mechanites.
Get 3 hospital beds up so we can rest until healed Day 12.
Day 13, 2 of the remaining 3 come down with the Flu.
No day 14. I don't relish being a baby seal...

Seriously. It appears the game has a VERY different idea of "Some Challenge" compared to the rest of all humanity.

I don't necessarily mind the Mechanites. If you have to get hit with something like this, it's the preferable one to get hit with. I had one colony where 4 of the 6 got hit with plague on day 2... That sucketh mightily and prompted a new start. Couple seasons in and it's not career ending, but 2nd day..? I got stuff to do.

Any new player will have issues with this at this difficulty level. I've only been around since b13 but I don't remember things being this bad off the rip. Rough, sure. Difficult, yes. In your face F off and just go play something else you pansy..? Not so much... As stated before, I base build more than anything else. I get that the "stories" are the driving force from the DEV standpoint. I find the stories to be limited in scope and repetitive, but they are appealing enough when combined with colony survival to keep playing. I'm not asking for the game to be a pushover, just a decent toehold. 

I'm to the point I'm going to edit the files after release to increase raid strengths and decrease the big wheel of cheese. I like the combat. I find the new combat system challenging, engaging and fun. It's not over the top, but it's not a pushover either. It fits the difficulty level pretty well, though I imagine it's a little weak for those that play on the higher levels. The rest of the repeating cycle of stuff just getting in the way over and over again not so much. Things happen. No issue with that. It's the feeling of being constantly clubbed I don't enjoy.

Bug wise, the AI is getting dumber. Whether it's grabbing everything non essential while food rots to running in front of weapon firing individuals and into fire when path finding, it's getting to the point I can't suspend enough belief in reality to continue playing to compensate for the levels of AI stupidity. We need some sort of algorithm that says "don't run in front of the bullets" at least. Instead I think we got some of Al Gore's rhythm... Hunters really do need to keep their backs to camp for when the aminals go zzzzt. Pawns need to really NOT run into fire (actual or gun kind) to grab the stone chunk. Pawns really do need to be able to NOT go out into the far reaches of the world into man hunter packs or raiders or when it's too hot or too cold to grab stuff we can do without for a day or two or ten. Pawns really need some common sense.

On the flip side, you seriously should get some kind of award for how few bugs actually exist in any given build. I have AAA titles that are final released that are nowhere near as reliable to play as RimWorld is. I can recall 1 crash issue which when showing up had already been reported. IIRC, it was fixed later that day. I may not agree on all the design issues or on every decision, but you have no idea how appreciative I am for having spent my $$ on something that actually works and is playable. Thank you sir for your diligence and work ethic and for showing anyone wanting to know how it's done.

Cheers..!

[Seinne]

Not sure if a bug or not, nor if it's new but...

When you are in a menu (world, restriction, orders, etc...) and click a pawn, I swear the menu used to close and go to the pawn, now it doesn't seem to.

[eugeneb]

Have played a bit more, I now have 1.5 years on my boreal forest (harder one, close to tundra) map with Cassandra rough. Raids have become very challenging and fun, now that some time has passed, raiders are carrying proper weapons and provide good level of challenge.

Disease, on the other hand, has been way easy for me. I didn't get anything like flu yet and have seen infection may be twice and was able to cure it with herbal medicine (in one case, applied herbal once only, the rest without medicine). My doctors are in 6-8 range and my jail has not had floor until very recently and yet the only pirate that got infected there was the guy who has spent a lot of time downed until I managed to pick him up. The other infection was one of my guys at the very start when I had 3-4 level doctors.

One interesting thing and I am very curious to see how it will play out: had friendly travelers passing by. One of them is 85 yo, frail, bad back, two cataracts, alcohol addiction. Needless to say he was very very slow. His friends have been waiting for him on the other side of map but once he passed out due to malnutrition, they decided to dump him and left. I decided to balance out my karma and do something good so I rescued him. Even after malnutrition passed he still cannot move. I wanted to give him beer to help him with his withdrawal and get him to leave but got notification saying that this will anger the faction so I stopped. Right now I am looking after him and really hoping that if he dies of old age on me, the faction won't get pissed off at me lol.

Also, I am not sure if it got changed but a couple of builds ago tribals raided me and I was getting -5 relations for each one I kill. I really liked it because it makes it harder to conver them to friends. I had another raid yesterday and haven't noticed this mechanic. I killed a whole bunch of them and my relations stayed at -40, where it was after I released some from the previous group. Now I am only 3 prisoners away from making them friendly.

---

UPDATE: Also, I don't know if it always has been this way but when I was playing yesterday, my brain damaged pawn died on spot after taking a joint.

[BlackSmokeDMax]

Does anyone know if the saves corrupting with each alpha release will ever be resolved? just asking as I enjoy doing late game plays and watching my colony grow and flourish, and it does get a bit annoying having to start anew (not that its bad cause it creates new stories)

I don't think that is a thing to be "resolved," that is a byproduct of adding more things to the game and things changing. Best bet is don't plan on that ever being a thing.

[Dashthechinchilla]

A little feedback on the tuning for rain/fire. I got into a bit of a feedback loop in a tropical forest. I had a fire, a thunderstorm came to put it out. But the thunderstorm kept getting in one last strike, causing a fire that wasn't extinguished by the storm. I end up in this cycle for about 4 days, and it happened twice. The first time a regular rain finally occured, the second time the last strike hit my base and the colonists put it out.

[kenmtraveller]

I had the exact same thing happen last night -- on embark I had a frail 84 year old with a wakeup addiction , and when he ran out of wakeup and went into withdrawal he became bedridden/unable to move.  I don't recall this happening previously, but it's possible I just never had this combo of attributes.  Not sure if this is intended behaviour or a bug.

Ken

[Tynan]

New build is up now! Just a few changes, seeing as we're content locked. This is 0.17.1546.

Unlike previous builds, this is a 'release' build, so it's not built with dev trace information. But, that means it should run faster.

Thanks for the feedback everyone. And as always, let's keep this thread to feedback to stay on topic.

EDIT: I've had to remove some posts. Please stay on topic. This thread is for feedback on the build. Not bugs (see Bugs forum), not open suggestions (see Suggestions forum), not question-and-answer. Thanks.

--------- CHANGES --------

Heat waves and cold snaps made a bit less frequent. Balanced down alpaca wool market value and corrected table maker calculations.
Fix: A trap and an item in a stockpile in the same cell causes infinite loop.

[ReZpawner]

Randomize button on start is still unbearably slow compared to previous versions.

[O Negative]

No point in asking. Posts asking are just removed without any explanation.

Source: I tried asking yesterday.

Ludeon Studios doesn't post ETAs for alphas, and Tynan has valid reasons for not doing so. He also has explained why posts are getting deleted.

On topic: The game feels ready on my end. I'm not noticing any bugs, balance or performance problems at this point. My machine is probably considered mid-range, and everything runs beautifully in the late game

[AdamTReineke]

I'm brand new to the game, I played the tutorial last night (in A16) for the first time and for a few hours after that. Tonight I played a world in 0.17.1546 for 437 minutes according to Steam, started with a the basic 3 survivor scenario and ran it 'til I died. I had two people join and captured four impossible to convert people, one who finally joined me. The prisoners demand on my food and medicine doomed me but, in the end, it was the beavers who finally got me.

Seems like a pretty stable build to me, as an uninformed observer it all seemed to be working right.

[Wintersdark]

Seems to be running pretty smoothly. 

I still feel the quests are still not really worth doing, as there's a massive risk involved with leaving your main colony understaffed, then facing an unknown force several days away with a small force of your own, after braving scary random encounters both ways.  I've tried several times during the last few builds, but every time I've met with failure... And even if I'd been successful, the rewards where unimpressive at best.

I love the concept, but unless I'm missing something strategically I'm not seeing them being worth anywhere near the risk.

[faltonico]

The far away scanner thingy is so, so, SO freaking useless... 30 days to scan, consuming power non stop to find a single chunk of resources far far away from the colony... common! if you want more resources a temporary mining colony is way more efficient than that. What advantages has that scanner to a mining colony? Sry i don't get it.