Alpha 17 is on public unstable branch

[nickla23]

Are there any release notes on the changes in Alpha 17?

[DariusWolfe]

Are there any release notes on the changes in Alpha 17?

As A17 isn't "released" yet, the answer is technically no.

However, there are several posts by Tynan throughout this thread with build notes, detailing the changes and tweaks implemented with each build.

Official release notes will consolidate all of the changes (while omitting iterative tweaks), and if history is any indication will include a shiny new video where Tynan talks about some of the highlights of the update.

[giltirn]

110 days played, 18 major threats, 17 raids - avg of 1 raid every 6.5 days. Cassandra Rough, single colonist start with no items on tropical rainforest biome. 

Hacking around with the save file, my raids occurred with 'dates'
290842
349000
897000
1372000
1396189
1512000
2005000
2233000
2629000
2825000
3956000
5194000
5474572
5830000
6037000
6465000
6601000

Given that it appears there are ~60000 ticks per day, the most recent raids were 4.7, 6.00, 3.45, 7.15 and 2.30 days apart which seems pretty frequent to me.

[Sunfish]

When it comes to regular raids vs raids following a distress call, has anyone else noticed that the distress call raids are like 3 times larger than the regular ones?

[Rah]

However, the recruiting opportunities seem a lot more scarce.  I have yet to see a crashed pod in A17 and I've only gotten a couple of chased refugees (playing a mix of Randy Extreme and Cassandra Rough/Intense).  Capturing raiders is kind of a crap shoot (pun intended), which is good for that game mechanic but kind of frustrating if that's my only reliable option.

I got 2 or 3 pods in 30 days with Cass Extreme. I think we all have different storyteller experiences, which is how it's supposed to be. I haven't gotten any joining visitors though, but I think that event was reduced iirc.

[makkenhoff]

When it comes to regular raids vs raids following a distress call, has anyone else noticed that the distress call raids are like 3 times larger than the regular ones?

Yeah, definately have noticed it. First time I got a distress as tribal, I accepted it as per standard protocol. Big mistake, 3 raiders chasing them, one armed with a chain shotgun, another with a survival rifle, the other with just a club. I managed to take them down with a short range melee desperation charge; but not before learning that the survival rifle can now (or maybe I've just never had it happen) pierce a marble wall, shatter a rib, and still hit the shoulder of the one who dared to hide behind the wall. Needless to say, I decided to really think hard before hitting that accept button. I decided I won't take anyone over 25, unless it is one of my personal favorite pawns.

[faltonico]

Did you manage to fix the memory leak when raiding? It was impossible for me to go on a raiding spree in A16. I have yet to have a good enough colony to begin raiding in A17 to test it.

[Tynan]

Thanks for the feedback everyone! We're almost there. I'm looking at doing some final adjustments and the team is fixing bugs too.

Please keep it coming!

[makkenhoff]

I've had a few deaths from mental breaks, typically, a mental break resulted in bad things happening - but I'm running into different problems than A16 that are game killing with small groups. I've got a pawn right now, who has a mental break (dazed, because his bad back hurt, he also has fiberous mechanites which isn't helping.) at midnight the 3rd of Jugust, and he remained so for 22 hours; the risk of death from starving is pretty high if his food state wasn't full. By the end of his 22 hour wandering ordeal he was malnutritioned at 70%. If I get any 'lasting' medical problem that affects consciousness, I might end up with a dead pawn.

I'm not really sure how much one pawn should be able to endure physically and mentally before having a breakdown; but for a relatively minor starter issue (bad back), it escalated quickly into a near death experience... on Phoebe Peaceful.

But, maybe pawns should be capable of eating while under a non-violent rampage?

(Edit: He died, I had 20 seconds of time to tell him to go eat before he mentally broke again, this time for starving, which he caused himself.)

[whitebunny]

I've had a few deaths from mental breaks, typically, a mental break resulted in bad things happening ..

Just to be sure.. Are you trying to arrest these mentally broken pawns ?
That's what i do when someone breaks in less than favorable conditions or i notice that they're going to starve themselves to death. They don't get a catharsis buff, but they live.
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[frostypaw]

I noticed panthers scream with human voices when they get injured sometimes. 

On cassandra rough it seems like I get raids in clusters (like none for a while then 2 all of a sudden).  I don't think this is necessarily bad, just a difference I noticed. 

I often got messages (playing on tropical rainforest) that healroot x0 rotted away in storage.  I didn't notice any loss so maybe this is a bug?  I had some healroot growing, and some of it was accidentally under a roof.  Either way the x0 part of the message made it seem like this was a bug. 

I really like the decreased frequency of cargo pods.  I also think all the retextures are great! 

Also, I don't think I can recover prosthetics from dead colonists.  Is this intentional? 

[GiantSpaceHamster]

Can anyone else comment on raid frequency?

Any hard data would also be useful. As in, exact recorded raid times. There should be a record of it in the History tab.

Cassandra Rough
205 days passed
30 major threats
18 raids

I also did a few item stash quests, at least two of which had combat, so those type of quests add combat beyond the raids that come in. It's hard for me to say if the stats above are higher or lower than usual, but with more stuff to pay attention to on the world map I would not mind if the raid rate has been reduced. The one thing that is absolutely not fun to deal with in any way is when I end up in combat on two maps. I usually just reload because the micro in those instances is brutally tedious.

Unrelated: Sorry to be a hater on this, but the "quadrum" names are silly. I much preferred the season names. Maybe coming up with new quadrum names rather than splicing months together would sound better.

[Rah]

I've had a few deaths from mental breaks, typically, a mental break resulted in bad things happening

That's actually something I noticed as well. One pawn fell asleep dazed, which is unusual, after an already long mental break, which caused him to get severely malnourished. I regained control of him a bit later, but he was pretty close to death by then. Was unable to arrest. But other pawns have had normal breaks I think.

[Tynan]

New update! This is build 1540.

Thanks for all the feedback on last update! Very useful as usual.

I've adjusted some balance and bugs around raid frequency as well as population gain incident frequency. So I'd love to hear more about how those are working.

I think we're closing in on release; I hope to have a release candidate ASAP.

---------------------

Adjustments to faction naming content.
Fix: Faction leader titles not capitalized in Factions MainTab.
Disallow Wimp trait when spawning pawns of a faction hostile to the player faction
Clarified penoxycyline description.
Typo fixes.
Fix: Threat cycle StorytellerComp sometimes sends no threat during a threat interval.
Renamed 'survival rifle' to the more accurate 'bolt-action rifle'.
Adjusted population intents to give population a bit more easily and earlier.
Population intent from time is now defined on a curve.
Population intent is now evaluated from a curve instead of a custom multi-part lerping function.
Added some debug output for incident chances with population. Adjusted some pop-gain incident chances to be closer to each other.
Undo tweak to water coordinate swapping; think this was a Unity editor bug.
Fix: DamageUntilDowned() can sometimes kill the pawn.
Fix: Rivers can undercut stone roofs so that they no longer have sufficient support.
Fix: IncidentWorker_RefugeePodCrash causes errors when DamageUntilDowned() fails and kills the pawn.
Fix: Some debug code accidentally included.
Add a little extra debug instrumentation to HediffComp_TendDuration.
Fix: Vertically flipped water depth texture.
Caravan pawns will now eat food which is about to rot first.
Fix: Sapper raiders may end up paralyzed when attacking a base with generators against the outer walls.
Fix: Impossible to prioritize eating if the food is already reserved by someone else.
PathFinder Cost_PawnCollision: 100 -> 175
Cleaned up JobGiver_AISapper a bit.
Made sure that a pawn can't start fleeing and manhunting at the same time.
Fix: Tame predators can start fleeing while hunting.
Fix: Tame predators can hunt berserk colonists.
Fix: Pawns avoid spawning on top of items.
Fix: Rotating doors (e.g. when you build an adjacent wall) causes warnings.
Fix: Doors don't block diagonal interactions.
Fix: Ambrosia can spawn in fogged areas.
Fix: Missing tails don't affect SummaryHealthPercent.
Fix: Player sometimes receives inappropriate "is no longer incapable of walking" messages when a pawn is downed from disease.
Translations update.
Creative content update. Added debug output to count and list solid backstories of any category.
Clarified required light level on plants to 51% from 50%.

[Rimrue]

It's definitely getting there! Thanks for all the hard work!

I find the number of quests in the first year a bit frustrating as I know I am no where near ready to take them on. Admittedly 2 of my first games were tribal so I was way behind the curveball there, Lol,  but even in my current game (vanilla Crashlanded scenario), 30-some days in I only just got a third gun and have 6 colonists. I've had 3 raids so far, I believe, and the first 2 showed up with just clubs and shivs. The 3rd had an EMP and a survival rifle and a club. So a bit of a jump there! Lol

But I've had, I think 4 or 5 quests in those first 30 days. Not sure if that's high or average, but it's frustrating as I know I'm no where ready to try to tackle them. :/

So maybe fewer quests in the first year?

Thanks!