Game balance issue

[Calahan]

Uh, this is a spam bot (?) I guess. See those tiny black links? Linking to a sports betting site "ufa365.com", probably for SEO purposes.

Nice spot! and many thanks for the heads up on those hidden links, as I just quoted the OP to check the text and it's filled with those hidden links.

@ All - I didn't want to delete the thread as even though the OP was spam/plagiarism, the thread does contain legitimate posts. Therefore I've deleted the OP and merged the rest of the posts with Shurp's original thread.

@ Shurp - Hope you don't mind me merging replies to the imposters thread with your original one. They were replies to your OP though, so the answers sill apply (even if someone else stole your OP for their own nefarious purposes).

[Shurp]

Lol, I was trying to figure out what happened there.  Mysteries upon mysteries!  But now it all makes sense.  Thank you Calahan!

[Bozobub]

OK, yeah, that had me rather confused for a bit.  Thanks for the explanation...

[Shurp]

So, again Rimworld is doing its best to piss me off...

Cassandra: here's a solar flare.  So much for using turrets to defend yourself.
Cassandra: here's a raid of 15 pirates too.

Me: here's 15 devmode explosions.

Maybe with a colony worth of 50,000 I should have an alternate method of defending myself... but there's no way my 7 inexperienced pawns are going to win a firefight outnumbered 2:1. 

The good news is that I can handle any *other* threat.  I have enough mortars to blast sieges, sappers meet relocated turrets when they break through my perimeter wall, ship parts are easy to handle behind freshly built bunkers on site...

...but it seems as if Rimworld is intended to be a game where you're designed to lose.  In which case, why bother?  Just order your pawns to kill each other at the start, it's must simpler that way, yes?

[dearmad]

So, again Rimworld is doing its best to piss me off...

Cassandra: here's a solar flare.  So much for using turrets to defend yourself.
Cassandra: here's a raid of 15 pirates too.

Me: here's 15 devmode explosions.

Maybe with a colony worth of 50,000 I should have an alternate method of defending myself... but there's no way my 7 inexperienced pawns are going to win a firefight outnumbered 2:1. 

The good news is that I can handle any *other* threat.  I have enough mortars to blast sieges, sappers meet relocated turrets when they break through my perimeter wall, ship parts are easy to handle behind freshly built bunkers on site...

...but it seems as if Rimworld is intended to be a game where you're designed to lose.  In which case, why bother?  Just order your pawns to kill each other at the start, it's must simpler that way, yes?

What would be wrong with lowering the difficulty?

Really struggling to understand your complaints here...

No. No actually I'm not trying to understand them so much, they really seem unreasonable at the moment.

In your op you mention "too easy" and "i can handle anything but..." it reads to me like you haven't played the game for long time periods where a long series of events all combine to eventually take you down in subtle ways... you seem to have an oversimplified view of the "Game" as a sequence of straightforward events that don't break your interdependent systems...

play it more and turn it down a notch, sounds like you'll still die to me.

[Shurp]

In order to play without turrets, I need to turn it down several notches.  At which point all the other threats become trivial.  The game would turn to sitting around in boredom waiting for the next raid, instead of furiously rebuilding my defenses and making sure I have enough resources to handle the next raid.

Think of it this way: I just had a ship part crash.  Three scythers and a centipede popped out.  I defeated them relatively easily.  If I turn down the difficulty, I'll just have 2 scythers against my 7 pawns, a really dull battle.  I don't want to do that.

[Mday]

I play without turrets.
1) less components for maintaince
2) draw less power, hence you don't need to rely on solar and battery. No Zzzzzt
3) no turrets loss hence no replacement cost
4) You are completely fine even during solar flare event.

Plasteel trap is OP. Lay as many as you can and you will be fine even without turrets.

[Shurp]

Yes, that is one deficiency in my play -- I haven't done much with traps.  But what do you do when sappers show up?  I can move turrets to wherever they decide to break though the perimeter, but I imagine I'd have to have an entire minefield full of traps to be effective against sappers - ?

Also, can you have enough traps when 30 tribals show up?  My 8 turret / 7 pawn defense takes them down adequately (the turret explosions, while expensive, are very helpful)

BTW, the expense of power and materials for turrets is a game feature for me.  I enjoy the panic of figuring out how to scrounge up more resources to rebuild my defenses.

[Mday]

Usually the mortars alone can force enemy raiders to retreat. Snappers rarely attack the walls. The trick is that
1) Snappers want to blow up your mortars for it is expensive and easy to destroy.
2) Snappers tends to find the weakest spot to breach which is suppose to give you minimum time to respond. So they will avoid breaching the thick walls.
3) Snappers tends to avoid turrets so they will pick a location where there are least covering fire form turret to breach..

If the snapper attack my thick walls, I fire mortars at them. This only happened 2 times. The walls can take some mortar fire. Once all snapper is dead the rest of the raiders will go for the hallway and get owned by the traps. In my barn there are 50 panther ready to chase retreating raiders.

There are 88 traps in the hall way. Plasteel traps has such a high damage that, usually it takes 1~3 traps to kill a tribal raider. Scythers can take anything from 1~6 traps to kill, depending on where the scyther get hit. I send my boars to the north ready to ambush the roaming 1~2 scythers that targets my generator/power line. I can ignore the rest of the centipede and let the traps take care them.

[Jibbles]

Your experience with sappers are a bit different than mine.  They love wrecking my walls. They'll even ignore single walls and head for the double. Actually, they went for my triple wall which is something I rarely do. They were dedicated to bust through that spot too.

If you find turret explosion helpful then give IED Traps a go.  You can always shoot the trap if you feel like the raiders aren't going to trigger it.  I have to agree that the mortars are extremely effective vs tribals.

[Mday]

Your experience with sappers are a bit different than mine.  They love wrecking my walls. They'll even ignore single walls and head for the double. Actually, they went for my triple wall which is something I rarely do. They were dedicated to bust through that spot too.

If you find turret explosion helpful then give IED Traps a go.  You can always shoot the trap if you feel like the raiders aren't going to trigger it.  I have to agree that the mortars are extremely effective vs tribals.

Would you mind sharing a screenshot of your base? I am curious about this.

[A Friend]

Maybe with a colony worth of 50,000 I should have an alternate method of defending myself... but there's no way my 7 inexperienced pawns are going to win a firefight outnumbered 2:1.

You actually can. You will likely take some casualties but it won't be a game over unless you screw it up. Just be creative with your tactics. I say this with confidence because I've handled much much worse.

The good news is that I can handle any *other* threat.  I have enough mortars to blast sieges, sappers meet relocated turrets when they break through my perimeter wall, ship parts are easy to handle behind freshly built bunkers on site...

...but it seems as if Rimworld is intended to be a game where you're designed to lose.  In which case, why bother?  Just order your pawns to kill each other at the start, it's must simpler that way, yes?

The point of Rimworld is not losing. It's surviving for as long as you can and having fun while doing so. Survival is a well known genre in gaming and can come in any form, it's not just exclusive to FPS zombies. If you're playing this game in search of a win condition of some kind then you're in for a not-so-fun ride.

[Shurp]

Well, the reason I'm playing Rimworld instead of Dwarf Fortress is that for me having fun means *not* losing -- but having to struggle significantly to accomplish this.  I'm not looking to win, just an entertaining way to not lose.

It looks as if baiting sappers and lots of traps could work... but I admit I enjoy mowing them down with turrets more.  And the maze/trap game seems too "gamey", exploiting the AI and breaking the illusion.  Real pirates would just stand back and hurl grenades until they had a nice clear path to where they were going.

[Mday]

Um.. I just did some testing using dev mode.
Apparently, what Jibbles say in the earlier post can occur. In my first couple of tests I let the snappers do their thing. The snapper and raiders will not walk the trapped hallway. They will instead keep lobbing grenades at every wall that cross their way, and this includes walls that is deep inside the base. It seems that while doing this the AI will only point the snapper at one direction and I suppose it is targeting my only pawn. So after a day of grenade lobbing the snapper will give up and retreat. By the time this happen they are usually deep inside my base. During this set of test the thickness of the wall has no influence on snapper's path finding.

On my next set of test I spawn in more colonist pawn and fire mortar at the raiders. If the group get hit, whoever survive the bombardment will walk the hallway. Hitting the group with dev tool explosion/kjll/damage and etc has no effect on AI's pathing. If any snapper get killed by dev tool, the group will just pick another pawn and dig the wall open if needed be. So it seems that for this trapped hallway strat to work, you need to hit them with some mortar rounds.

I may do some further testing on how the AI find its target for the snapper. So far it doesn't seem like room's wealth has anything to do with it. Turret seems to help in deterring snapper from attacking an area but doesn't work 100% of the time.

[giannikampa]

I totally confirm that attakers go for your colonists: I play with no walls or turrets, just a ton of traps here and there. When i get a raid i place all my pawns so the attaking forces has to walk in a trap field while long range guys shoot at them. they occasionally attack some animal of mines if it gets in range but still go for the group of humans far there.

I could appreciate many raids launched at me in a base with almost nothing and no pawns (so it is a single attaker cause of the wealth): they(he) go for reacheable things to destroy like horseshoes pole or table and stools outside. rarely he attacks the walls and go inside to destroy something there. many times they keep attaking walls even if the room is accessible, they must think the wall is more valuable than the few destroyables nearby.

When i left the base i deconstructed the beds and a chesstable: raiders totally ignore deconstructed things