Bionics in A17

[b0rsuk]

I think you should have bought that Power Claw. It's really an okay bionic. It shines on characters with high Melee and Shooting skills (both 10+). No, he won't become a sniper, but give him some mid range weapon and put him in the front row. You get an average shooter and a scary melee combatant in one.

[Vlad0mi3r]

I think you should have bought that Power Claw. It's really an okay bionic. It shines on characters with high Melee and Shooting skills (both 10+). No, he won't become a sniper, but give him some mid range weapon and put him in the front row. You get an average shooter and a scary melee combatant in one.

Don't worry I did. 

[TheMeInTeam]

Power claw does cap the manipulation loss from fingers at 8%, but I don't like giving my pawns something where social fights are suddenly super lethal.

[Razzoriel]

Bozo raises a good point, but more about amputation than anything - currently limbs are too easily ripped off, when in reality a bunch of punches would NEVER rip your arm off (unless you were the hulk or had razor blade knuckles) but would instead leave your arm so bruised you couldn't use it.

Again. We need amputation thresholds, where each weapon/bullet is nominally capable of amputating accordingly.

[Trylobyte]

I've noticed that even over the course of a year my colonists, no matter how skilled or how well-equipped they are, begin to succumb to this.  Fingers snap off like pretzel rods in the face of assault by creatures that have problems breaking skin in the real world.  Eyes will become scarred by random squirrel attacks.  Pila change from throwing spears to limb-severing guided missiles.  Toes, noses, and ears go flying at the slightest provocation or fall off at the lightest touch of frostbite.  Even brain injuries are relatively common.  EPoE has been a lifesaver for my colonies and I'd consider it a virtually essential mod at this point - Tynan's adjustments to body part 'size' in A17 have made them come off way too easily.

What I'd like to see is having it possible for a body part or a limb to reach 0 HP (and non-functional status) without having it completely destroyed, with each non-essential body part having a certain damage threshold that's required to sever it.  Example, an attack that causes less than half a body part's total HP cannot sever it under any circumstances, an attack that causes between 50 and 75% of a part's HP can sever it if it's already destroyed, 75-150% can sever it if it's damaged, and anything higher than that severs it on hit.

[mumblemumble]

Right, but determining how is the difficult part.

maybe keeping in mind the body part, if theres bone, how much bone, what type of damage, ect

To be honest this could be covered under an entire health revamp.

[Perq]

Right, but determining how is the difficult part.

maybe keeping in mind the body part, if theres bone, how much bone, what type of damage, ect

To be honest this could be covered under an entire health revamp.

And this is pretty much what we need, weapon and severing considered. :@

[RimSol]

All valid points. -Don't take damage- is really a good way to look at it.

However, our pawns are also able to survive laying on the floor covered in 5 other's people's blood with 6 gun shot wounds to their body after being patched up by a guy with a 2 doctor skill.

[niklas7737]

our pawns are also able to survive laying on the floor covered in 5 other's people's blood with 6 gun shot wounds to their body after being patched up by a guy with a 2 doctor skill.

That just shows again that squirrels are more dangerous than assault rifles. I don't expect our weapons to work like in a movie, but I can't imagine a skilled shooter not being able to hit a group of tribesmen charging at him badly enough to down a lot of them.

Something that has been criticized before: I personally don't like how armor reduces damage by a given percentage.
To use squirrels as an example again: A colonist in power armor could still be downed by them. Imagine Iron Man dying because of a mad squirrel ...
Tested it: Colonist with melee skill 8 and normal power armor was attacked by five manhunting squirrels, took out for and was then downed by the fifth one.

Generally, our wishes would make the game easier in every way though ... I think there's just not a perfect solution.

[Aerial]

our pawns are also able to survive laying on the floor covered in 5 other's people's blood with 6 gun shot wounds to their body after being patched up by a guy with a 2 doctor skill.

That just shows again that squirrels are more dangerous than assault rifles. I don't expect our weapons to work like in a movie, but I can't imagine a skilled shooter not being able to hit a group of tribesmen charging at him badly enough to down a lot of them.

Somethink that has been criticized before: I personally don't like how armor reduces damage by a given percentage.
To use squirrels as an example again: A colonist in power armor could still be downed by them. Imagine Iron Man dying because of a mad squirrel ...
Tested it: Colonist with melee skill 8 and normal power armor was attacked by five manhunting squirrels, took out for and was then downed by the fifth one.

Generally, our wishes would make the game easier in every way though ... I think there's just not a perfect solution.

As much as I agree that much of this is horribly, *horribly* unrealistic, there's more than just the gameplay difficulty vs realism balance to consider. 

Part of the appeal of this game (IMO) is the absurdity of some of the things these colonists encounter.  A furry tsunami of manhunting squirrels being but one example.  I actually bought the game because reading the "funniest things that have happened to you in Rimworld" thread in the Stories subforum had me crying I was laughing so hard. 

So I agree that the game's challenge should not come from arbitrary difficulty or frustrating mechanics, but I don't want to see it get so "realistic" that the absurdity goes away.

[TheMeInTeam]

The game is chalk full of absurdity and that's part of its charm.  You'll notice that absurd mechanics are not called out at an even rate, and that's because some of the absurdity is "fun", IE it offers interesting choices, requires skill to succeed, or rewards planning.

Guns in this game have pathetic range.  Real guns could easily kill raiders well offscreen on normal-sized maps, even with amateurs firing them (similarly, raiders could kill colonists from offscreen).  I've yet to see this listed as a major strike to the game though, because the abstraction works to make players choose position, weapons, and how to handle different opponents carefully.

Losing limbs arbitrarily at an unrealistic rate is a problem because it is ALSO a gameplay design detriment.  It's not just that pawns are taking permanent injuries to creatures a healthy human adult could trivially dumpster while wearing basic clothing and a pair of gloves.  It's that pawns are getting maimed in this fashion while the developer is simultaneously telling us that changes were made "for balance", "to make melee more viable", or in a way that makes different playstyles available to the player. 

The A17 changes make it so that the overwhelming majority of possible combat approaches in the possibility space of Rimworld are non-viable; they essentially guarantee permanent damage to pawns, often sooner than later.  That dissonance is frustrating, inconsistent to other mechanic design, and not just illogical in the framework of reality but also within the framework of Rimworld itself.

Maybe "rig it so that your pawns never take damage" is intended design.  If that is so, however, why implement mechanics that encourage melee at all?  Why bother with a rich cover system if the real game incentives drive players to forgo using it and instead come up with every possible method to avoid exposing pawns to any gunfire at all?  This is why permanent dismemberment from what is, in game terms, relatively minor damage otherwise doesn't work.

[Bozobub]

our pawns are also able to survive laying on the floor covered in 5 other's people's blood with 6 gun shot wounds to their body after being patched up by a guy with a 2 doctor skill.

You can murder people with squirrels without artificially boosting the rate of lost fingers/toes/limbs.  Blood loss IS a thing, already.  Your example also has problems when ONE squirrel can do so extremely easily.

That just shows again that squirrels are more dangerous than assault rifles. I don't expect our weapons to work like in a movie, but I can't imagine a skilled shooter not being able to hit a group of tribesmen charging at him badly enough to down a lot of them.

Somethink that has been criticized before: I personally don't like how armor reduces damage by a given percentage.
To use squirrels as an example again: A colonist in power armor could still be downed by them. Imagine Iron Man dying because of a mad squirrel ...
Tested it: Colonist with melee skill 8 and normal power armor was attacked by five manhunting squirrels, took out for and was then downed by the fifth one.

Generally, our wishes would make the game easier in every way though ... I think there's just not a perfect solution.

As much as I agree that much of this is horribly, *horribly* unrealistic, there's more than just the gameplay difficulty vs realism balance to consider. 

Part of the appeal of this game (IMO) is the absurdity of some of the things these colonists encounter.  A furry tsunami of manhunting squirrels being but one example.  I actually bought the game because reading the "funniest things that have happened to you in Rimworld" thread in the Stories subforum had me crying I was laughing so hard. 

So I agree that the game's challenge should not come from arbitrary difficulty or frustrating mechanics, but I don't want to see it get so "realistic" that the absurdity goes away.

There's a difference between "absurdity" and "f*ck you, game", followed by not playing again for a long time.

[Toast]

My first and so far only "successful" colony in A17 is up to 8 people. 7 of them now have some kind of artificial leg. Two of them arrived with severe and painful scarring/impairment to a leg but the other 5 had it one-shot off in combat by either an enemy sniper or a scyther.

FIVE out of EIGHT colonists have lost a leg to ONE SHOT. The colony has only existed for three years.

2 of them have some kind of artificial arm due to having an arm shot off, and there are 2 more that have a missing finger that is, in comparison, laughably low-priority. My animal tamer has a bionic leg, a simple artificial arm, and a missing finger on the remaining flesh hand, and yet not a one of them was lost while trying to tame an animal.

So did the limb/digit hit chance go up astronomically, or did I just suddenly get stupider between A16 and now? I am using the same combat tactics I always have: everyone shoots from behind a full-cover wall and sandbags with turrets in front. Except for one guy who got caught trying to hide behind a tree, every limb loss happened because a sniper got some 0.fuckyou% shot to connect behind full cover. I can see no solution except, as noted, to never enter any situation where you can take damage at all. I never wanted to use boring "trap mazes" but in the future what choice will I have if I don't want an entire colony on crutches?

Forget the ship. The end-game win condition for this colony is EVERYONE HAS ALL THEIR LIMBS. In order to make this happen without pissing away all my money 700 silver at a time, I have to send a caravan out every single season by drop-pod to do a long and dangerous circuit of every settlement within range, searching desperately for bionics. I had one married couple divorce because the guy was spending so much time on the road that he and his wife forgot how to talk to each other.

How much fun is it to try and figure out who's going to do this caravan run when most of the colony has one leg or one arm? NOT VERY.

TL;DR: limbs and digits fly off at the drop of the hat, to the point where for me the entire game now revolves around replacing them. If you change this, then the rareness and expense of bionics would make them a coveted luxury rather than an infuriatingly out of reach necessity.

[Trylobyte]

My first and so far only "successful" colony in A17 is up to 8 people. 7 of them now have some kind of artificial leg. Two of them arrived with severe and painful scarring/impairment to a leg but the other 5 had it one-shot off in combat by either an enemy sniper or a scyther.

FIVE out of EIGHT colonists have lost a leg to ONE SHOT. The colony has only existed for three years.

2 of them have some kind of artificial arm due to having an arm shot off, and there are 2 more that have a missing finger that is, in comparison, laughably low-priority. My animal tamer has a bionic leg, a simple artificial arm, and a missing finger on the remaining flesh hand, and yet not a one of them was lost while trying to tame an animal.

So did the limb/digit hit chance go up astronomically, or did I just suddenly get stupider between A16 and now? I am using the same combat tactics I always have: everyone shoots from behind a full-cover wall and sandbags with turrets in front. Except for one guy who got caught trying to hide behind a tree, every limb loss happened because a sniper got some 0.fuckyou% shot to connect behind full cover. I can see no solution except, as noted, to never enter any situation where you can take damage at all. I never wanted to use boring "trap mazes" but in the future what choice will I have if I don't want an entire colony on crutches?

Forget the ship. The end-game win condition for this colony is EVERYONE HAS ALL THEIR LIMBS. In order to make this happen without pissing away all my money 700 silver at a time, I have to send a caravan out every single season by drop-pod to do a long and dangerous circuit of every settlement within range, searching desperately for bionics. I had one married couple divorce because the guy was spending so much time on the road that he and his wife forgot how to talk to each other.

How much fun is it to try and figure out who's going to do this caravan run when most of the colony has one leg or one arm? NOT VERY.

TL;DR: limbs and digits fly off at the drop of the hat, to the point where for me the entire game now revolves around replacing them. If you change this, then the rareness and expense of bionics would make them a coveted luxury rather than an infuriatingly out of reach necessity.

The rate at which 'sub-parts' (smaller parts of a major one, like fingers, toes, internal organs, etc) get damaged was increased dramatically between A16 and A17.  I hate to say it, but limbs coming off to high-powered weapons was always common - If you ever fought tribals with pila in A16 you'd know those things were capable of taking off an arm or a leg in one hit (though they got nerfed in A17).  It's just that now you don't have to just worry about whole limbs, but fingers, toes, ears, noses, and eyes, all things that were a lot safer in A16.  I've had colonists lose these fragile body parts despite being fully-armored in one hit from a fox or a wolf, and let's not talk about eye scarring.

[Jorlem]

That just shows again that squirrels are more dangerous than assault rifles. I don't expect our weapons to work like in a movie, but I can't imagine a skilled shooter not being able to hit a group of tribesmen charging at him badly enough to down a lot of them.

Somethink that has been criticized before: I personally don't like how armor reduces damage by a given percentage.
To use squirrels as an example again: A colonist in power armor could still be downed by them. Imagine Iron Man dying because of a mad squirrel ...
Tested it: Colonist with melee skill 8 and normal power armor was attacked by five manhunting squirrels, took out for and was then downed by the fifth one.

Well of course Iron Man wouldn't be killed by squirrels.  In the Marvel universe, squirrels act on the side of Justice, as can be seen below:

[spoiler][/spoiler]