RimWorld change log

[Xerberus86]

I am exited for rebalancing raid mechanics. Too often colony of 3 who happened to have a lot of buildings and weapons was raided by team of 8+ guys.

most of the time my colony consists of 4 - 5 people (bought rimworld like a week  ago), i only play with TTM and no vanilla so that might be one reason but i also get after a while at least a dozen raiders visiting me. even with the added challenge of the TTM mod it is still manageable to defend your colony with 4-5 people (so 3:8 in your case) against like 12 with the right equipment and map layout.

in general i do NOT like these nerf, when people have trouble with the difficulty then there are plenty difficulty settings below challenging which is the NORMAL gamemode! there are ONLY TWO harder difficulty settings. i hope that with this nerf also comes two new difficulty settings tbh. am still playing on challenging but once i fully mastered that level i want toincrease the challenge rather then lower it.

would be interesting to know if the user information that is collected is also sending the list of mods you have installed, i enabled the option and entered my forum username for clarity / bundling the infos. some of my colonies failed hard but that is why i keep coming back, if i had no trouble / challenge then this game would be just a 2D topdown minecraft. (my (subjective) opinion of course)

[ShootyFace]

Hrm, well, we can test the new raid system and hopefully Tynan listens if we hate it. As it stands, I love the difficulty. It's what keeps me coming back, like Xerberus86 said. For an incomplete alpha, RimWorld has the distinguished position as my favorite game for the past few months. I have played crazy hours worth, and do not see that stopping anytime soon. I mostly play Classic Cassandra or Randy Random on Challenging, and think that it's almost perfect how the difficulty scales during play. My gripes would be psychic events and mechanoid hordes, but those are manageable at this stage. I'd like to see more raid types, too. Drop ins can ruin your day, but what about stealth assassins? Meteor strikes? Maybe roaming behemoths that randomly spawn on the map and cause chaos.

Anyway, reading over the changelog I am very excited for alpha 7. Looks to be taking what is already a fun, challenging game into deeper, darker territories. Can't wait.

[Gabriel_Braun]

(bought rimworld like a week ago)

Welcome to the game and don't despair;  Cleopatra is dead and you need never fear her touch! lol
No dude this isn't a nerf at all, it's a revisit of balance that needed doing.  What you think are difficulty levels are nothing of the sort-  They used to be similar a while back but not anymore.

If you play a game with Phoebe Billie on the highest challenge rating you will face less frequent attacks but the severity of those attacks will be just as punishing as her older sister gets after a similar amount of time.

The reason is that the threats thrown at you are judged by calculating the time since the last bad thing happened with the formula:-

OpaqueMechanic=((DamageTaken/Wealth_Gained)+MagicNumber^42)

If the colony wealth (which is a total of buildings and resources) exceeds the damage received in the last unfortunate event then it cycles up and up until you eventually die with randy being the only exception.

###End_Rant###

I like the fact that wealth is less important than colony population as it means we can choose to have a small number of important pawns and get back to the original idea of quality over quantity like Tynan spoke about in an old blog post.  (I think it was emergent storytelling or something like that?)

If you want to see something interesting then play with randy random on any level of challenge

The issue is valid however;   By offering options in a determined way much like a difficulty setting would be displayed in 'normal' games the window for misinterpretation is open however if you would like to see why things are going in this direction I'm sure you can get a copy of A5 from Tynan if you ask him for a link to the Spartans at Thermopylae earlier method of ramping difficulty

[Xerberus86]

Hrm, well, we can test the new raid system and hopefully Tynan listens if we hate it. As it stands, I love the difficulty. It's what keeps me coming back, like Xerberus86 said. For an incomplete alpha, RimWorld has the distinguished position as my favorite game for the past few months. I have played crazy hours worth, and do not see that stopping anytime soon. I mostly play Classic Cassandra or Randy Random on Challenging, and think that it's almost perfect how the difficulty scales during play. My gripes would be psychic events and mechanoid hordes, but those are manageable at this stage. I'd like to see more raid types, too. Drop ins can ruin your day, but what about stealth assassins? Meteor strikes? Maybe roaming behemoths that randomly spawn on the map and cause chaos.

Anyway, reading over the changelog I am very excited for alpha 7. Looks to be taking what is already a fun, challenging game into deeper, darker territories. Can't wait.

"behemoth's" as you call them i have actually suggested in my gigantic suggestion thread:
http://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=5942.0

we currently have three types of invaders (tribal, raiders and mechanoids), but the thing is that we can classify this challenge as "many easy to medium enemies", which ultimately delivers the challenge in numbers and us having to spread our manpower (or designing kill boxes) to fend off the horde. a "behemoth" like you wanna call it would be a completely unique take on the combat level und invert the "many easy to medium threats" situation to "one single large threat". it should also have the abililty to destroy walls / defense positions more easily and we could add different types of "behemoth's" which are immune to different types of attacks (hint at the new damage types and the natural armor of things and the new "craft x thing out of x material and gain their value (or part of it)").

maybe we could have like a nano-cloud that colledts ores / materials from the area and then transforms them into a large (multi-tile) behemoth which stomps through the region and might attack the colony. iron behemoth could have a high resistance the bullets ("piercing" damage?) and could be weaker against energy weapons or blunt weapons

[ShootyFace]

Good points, Xerberus86. Pretty much what I was thinking. They could maybe even provide Tynan with a 'cheap' clean-up activity if the behemoths were maybe drawn to large quantities of unburied dead. The behemoth could spawn at the edge of the map, roam about eating corpses, and eventually setting it's eye(s) on the colony. I forget what they are called in Dwarf Fortress, but some of the most exhilarating moments in DF for me were when a legendary beast would appear. It usually meant annihilation, but there was always the distinct possibility you would be able to overcome it. I think that's what the mechanoids are supposed to be, but I think giving us a rare event like a behemoth attacking would be plain fun. Or I've just watched Pacific Rim too many times.

[Xerberus86]

(bought rimworld like a week ago)

Welcome to the game and don't despair;  Cleopatra is dead and you need never fear her touch! lol
No dude this isn't a nerf at all, it's a revisit of balance that needed doing.  What you think are difficulty levels are nothing of the sort-  They used to be similar a while back but not anymore.

If you play a game with Phoebe Billie on the highest challenge rating you will face less frequent attacks but the severity of those attacks will be just as punishing as her older sister gets after a similar amount of time.

The reason is that the threats thrown at you are judged by calculating the time since the last bad thing happened with the formula:-

OpaqueMechanic=((DamageTaken/Wealth_Gained)+MagicNumber^42)

If the colony wealth (which is a total of buildings and resources) exceeds the damage received in the last unfortunate event then it cycles up and up until you eventually die with randy being the only exception.

###End_Rant###

I like the fact that wealth is less important than colony population as it means we can choose to have a small number of important pawns and get back to the original idea of quality over quantity like Tynan spoke about in an old blog post.  (I think it was emergent storytelling or something like that?)

If you want to see something interesting then play with randy random on any level of challenge

The issue is valid however;   By offering options in a determined way much like a difficulty setting would be displayed in 'normal' games the window for misinterpretation is open however if you would like to see why things are going in this direction I'm sure you can get a copy of A5 from Tynan if you ask him for a link to the Spartans at Thermopylae earlier method of ramping difficulty

i know double posting is kidna bad (maybe someone chimes in while i'm writing *wink*) but here we go .

i understand that it should be put a slightly (!) larger value on population than wealth, what good are your 1000000 silver (*dream*) if all of your colonists are dead or dying? nothing!

if we go in this directon then i would like to have:

a) some more difficulty settings, i think adding two more and increasing the top scaling of currently 160% to 190%  and 220% is ok for some players which want a masochistic game from time to time^^, if those are just adjusted %-values then this addition shouldn't take long and would give the players more options. i also don't really like games having more easy / easier than normal difficulty settings than harder ones, i love to increase the challenge as i go and i start with "normal", so easy-mode is kinda meh for me. now some people like those really easy games and its ok, but some love a good challenge.

b) why not give us another slider / difficulty level set which determines the "occurence of events", meaning that we can adjust the intervall between those events, shortening the window in which we can recover, and thus granting us access to a new level of customization. currently we can decide the scaling of those invasions and the type of storyteller which is indirect a type of occurence but more of a "style of events".

if its only a matter of adding three or four / five additional selectable options to the storyteller screen then why not add it?


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

this now might seem a bit offtopic but is still related to difficulty levels. i watched rimworld since its kickstarter phase and watched a bunch of LP's, finally bought it almost a week ago. i fiddled with the vanilla game for a while but then jumped in to one of the overhaul mods (TTM) which changes the gameplay-focus a fair bit. in vanilla you have everything to your disposal from the start, well almost but at least the majority of it. with the overhault mod you only have a rubble wall (50 hp), sleeping spot, grave and an crt which is like a smaller version of a research bench. the mod made the game heavily research and crafting dependant which adds more progression to the game. i don't start with solar generators and geothermal generators, i start after doing 2-3 tiers of research with "makeshift" solar generators and batteries which main ingredient are potatoes (which is kinda not unrealistic). my point is that adding more progression to the game and making it harder makes it also more appealing or even addicting to other peoples because it a) the immersion is greater and b) the challenge keeps coming back so that we try to do "better" next time or "survive a bit longer". <-- that's the reason games like project zomboid or roguelikes in general are interesting and especially lately a trend of recurring roguelikes has appeared.

players are fed from spoon-feeding games and what some challenge, having fun doesn't always mean winning, sometimes it means losing. moba's are fun to play because they provide a unique challenge with an easy access to the game mechanics which require less twitch-skills and more thinking and they offer evolving opponents.

i feel that rimworld is a great game with its unique game mechanics which draw some inspirations from games like dwarf fortress but slowly it gains the amount of features and mechanics to stand on his own and as a DF player i have to say that rimworld is on a great course and it shouldn't fall to the bear trap of making the game too easy.

in the last couple days i found people saying that this game is a bit too hard for them. well then they should decrease the difficulty level, no shame in that. [rant]why should everyone have their game made easier on the normal setting, we have 3 easier settings and only two harder ones. [/rant] of course some will fail, as i started out i couldn't keep my colonists alive for more than 30 - 60 minutes before they killed each other or starved to death. i had to go to the wiki and read about the optimal space requirements for colonists (25, so 26 with a bed in it) and learn how much feed i should grow, in case of the ladder i am still finetuning (sometimes too many growables which won't get all done and sometimes too few). but that is part of the fun and later on will / should get fixed with a tutorial or more helpful or rather more informative information pop-ups.

i also love to play dwarf fortress because at first it is daunting, as a huge difficulty course but it is also interesting to play. recently i lost the best fort i had ever made and i had gotten some great people with some amazing skills. i got a lvl 13 armorer (every armor of his was a masterpiece, literally) and a lvl 10 (or even 11) macedwarf with 10 discipline (new mental / fear mechanic) and 10 dodge. i was digging too deeply and discovered a cavern, which was fine because nobody but a troll who was stuck in a pool was in it. 10-15 minutes later a forgotten beast appeared in the caren and fought the troll, he was gravely injured (the beast) and i send my squad of 6 to kill it off. somehow my squad was too far away and only my legendary maceman (lvl10 / 11) arrived, he fought quite well for a time bought suddenly he disappeared. i looked into the combat look and saw that the forgotten beast (consisting of "precious fire opals and breathing deadly poisin" which was blistering the eyes of every enemy) which had already ne foot, one arm complete arm and one hand (the other arm) missing bashed in the had of my legendary dwarve which i equipped with legendary armor. problem was i had forgotten to switch the setting of "overclothing uniform" to "replace clothing", meaning he didn't equip his masterwork steel helm because he already had a spidersilk hood, i never found him (he was thrown away duo to the force and must've fallen into hell (oh spoiler).

<--- bottom line, players do things wrong from time to time and getting hilariously punished for it is better in my opinion that a message popping p and saying "well what you did was just braindead, but we don't want you to be frustrated so we just helped you out now".

.....i just wanna have some !FUN! .

[Xerberus86]

Good points, Xerberus86. Pretty much what I was thinking. They could maybe even provide Tynan with a 'cheap' clean-up activity if the behemoths were maybe drawn to large quantities of unburied dead. The behemoth could spawn at the edge of the map, roam about eating corpses, and eventually setting it's eye(s) on the colony. I forget what they are called in Dwarf Fortress, but some of the most exhilarating moments in DF for me were when a legendary beast would appear. It usually meant annihilation, but there was always the distinct possibility you would be able to overcome it. I think that's what the mechanoids are supposed to be, but I think giving us a rare event like a behemoth attacking would be plain fun. Or I've just watched Pacific Rim too many times.

threads of dwarf fortress:
- dwarves (they have moods, can get suicidal, berserk or just butcher someone for creating an artifact)
- kobolds / baby snatchers  / thieves (stealthy ones)
- vampires (also inner thread duo to them being hidden and thus adding detective work for you)
- werebeasts (much like the current zombie mod for RW, dead dwarves are better here than alive ones which are bitten)
- goblin invasions
- undead invasions
- building destroyers (or the first tier of it, consisting of creatuers like trolls or cyclopses)
- flying creatures (goblin riding a huge bat for example)

... and now:

- semi-megabeasts (forgotten beasts i think are the semi-megabeats)
- megabeasts (stronger)
- titans (made out of x material, i originally thought they were easy cause my first titan i encountered was made out of mud but well...nevermind)

the example from my previous post is about a semi-megabeast / forgotten beast. those things are strong and have unique abilities. my dwarves couldn't kill it because everything that thing was attacked it breathes an toxic cloud that was blistering the whole body (and eyes) of my dwarves.

having strong entities like that which take a long time to bring down and roam the area for a longer time would add much !FUN! to the game. of course this would be no dragon or general fantasy-like creature but more of a robotic / mechanoid creature which was awoken by mining or some other events.

i only play with the TTM mod cause it adds real progression to the game coupled with some great mods and around 30 to 50 (30 normal, 22 text-basedc) events to the game. one of them it seems is an event that turns one of the colonists into an abomination like that:
http://de.tinypic.com/view.php?pic=x256r5&s=8

now THIS could be some kind of semi-megathread but i would go even further and add some more mechanoid / roboter-like stuff which i think a) finds better into the lategame than organics (for now) and b) is more in-sync with the rimworld lore-wise.

having a huge mechanoid, maybe a huge spider or in general insect-like robtic creature (mechanoids look like larves) and (not or, and ) maybe add a nano-cloud which would go around, collect materials and at the end it could spawn some enemies, sometimes some smaller and more in quantity and sometimes a large one. possibilities are endless and most of these things modders can provide but having some huge threat with different kind of attacks and some unique aspects like stronger building destroyer (or he slowly walks through build walls and destroys them by doing so) should require a dev-sided intervention .

[milon]

Alpha 7 is going to be so awesome.

So much +1!!!

Thar will be chaainsaw, garden hoe, katana and an axe ♫
♪ Baseball baaat, plastic rake, quitar and sharpened sax
pleease somebody send Tynan a very looooooooong faax ♪
♫ cuz the awesomeness of next alpha has been cranked up to the max!
Huzzaaah!
*does a jig on the table*
*tumbles down in very awkward manner and logs off the forums*

Shinzy, you're awesome!  Just don't put the ring on when you're falling off the table, k? 

[Garen]

im actually ok with the balance changes

its seems from the post that wealth is still important, but not so vital to raids. which makes perfect sense

you dont send 20+ well equipped raiders to deal with a base made by 3-5 people, even if it has top end security, they just argue over the loot and it would have to be split by 20+. think of how much food it would cost as well!

i just hope the devs dont dumb down the game, and just let people know there is no shame in changing the difficulty.

[Shinzy]

Shinzy, you're awesome!  Just don't put the ring on when you're falling off the table, k? 

Ha! thanks =P
But the mental image of a ring has been on ever since I fell off the heaven *cough* 8 years ago
it doesn't come off even with soap

Still you better be catching people if they fall off tables either way!
Anyway since I went totally offtopic here I'll have to do it with style!



Ehehehe

[Coenmcj]

Shinzy, you're awesome!  Just don't put the ring on when you're falling off the table, k? 

Ha! thanks =P
But the mental image of a ring has been on ever since I fell off the heaven *cough* 8 years ago
it doesn't come off even with soap

Still you better be catching people if they fall off tables either way!
Anyway since I went totally offtopic here I'll have to do it with style!



Ehehehe

Blackjack ain't got nothing on you and your GIF's
speaking of blackjack... we should probably get back on topic before the train arrives.

Doors are now lockable. Locked doors open for no one

Anyone thinking of some logic traps for colonists?... Or perhaps an easy way to keep the colonists from running to their doom.

[EscapeZeppelin]

"Factions now have bases represented on the map (though they don't do anything and won't soon - this is just to make the faction code make sense)"

Ooh, tell us more. I'm presuming that eventually other factions will have a permanent presence on the same map as our colony?

[Xerberus86]

"Factions now have bases represented on the map (though they don't do anything and won't soon - this is just to make the faction code make sense)"

Ooh, tell us more. I'm presuming that eventually other factions will have a permanent presence on the same map as our colony?

that would be indeed a great feature if you not only are a colonist but could become a raider / conquerer yourself. the problem is see with this kind of game and such feature is that it should be quite hard to implement to have another colony which evolves like the one from the player. one possible thing would be that there could be some pre-existing small colonies with which you could trade and ultimately if you wish fight with. its kinda odd that after reading this changelog note i remembered tynan saying something about he has planned something that would distinguish rimworld even more from other games similiar to dwarf fortress. if (and that is a big if) he would implement other colonies and factions on the same tactical map the player is and we would have the option to interact with them, go to war / fight with them, get them as allies or similiar then this would indeed be a huge feature.

we'll see how it will develope but i am very interesting in what he plans to do with those faction bases .

[ShootyFace]

Even if just for added detail to the world, I like the addition. Should we one day be able to take the fight TO the raiders .... that would be interesting. Lots to consider, though. How do your colonists get there, as everyone seems to be on foot? What happens to your base in the interim?

Whatever Tynan does with the factions in the future is something I'm very interested in, too. I'd love to see things fleshed out more in that respect, especially in regards to visiting factions. We should be able to sway their opinion of our colony when they are on site with gifts and simple conversation, even.

[SSS]

"Factions now have bases represented on the map (though they don't do anything and won't soon - this is just to make the faction code make sense)"

Ooh, tell us more. I'm presuming that eventually other factions will have a permanent presence on the same map as our colony?

that would be indeed a great feature if you not only are a colonist but could become a raider / conquerer yourself. the problem is see with this kind of game and such feature is that it should be quite hard to implement to have another colony which evolves like the one from the player. one possible thing would be that there could be some pre-existing small colonies with which you could trade and ultimately if you wish fight with. its kinda odd that after reading this changelog note i remembered tynan saying something about he has planned something that would distinguish rimworld even more from other games similiar to dwarf fortress. if (and that is a big if) he would implement other colonies and factions on the same tactical map the player is and we would have the option to interact with them, go to war / fight with them, get them as allies or similiar then this would indeed be a huge feature.

we'll see how it will develope but i am very interesting in what he plans to do with those faction bases .

When he says the map, I think he might mean the world map, as in your location choices on a given world. At some point in the far future, you might be able to choose a location that hosts a faction base, in addition to mountains/plains/the specific biome.