Alpha 18 unstable test build is released

[BlueWinds]

Taken to its logical conclusion, your position is incoherent.  For mechanics that *actually* lack agency, they are a net detriment to the game, straight up.  This game is about being prepared and responding correctly.  All but a few instances it dishes out have counterplay.  Because that counterplay exists, the player's choices matter.

Mental breaks do have "counterplay." Keep your pawns happy! The really bad breaks aren't "an enemy raid", they're "the enemy has broken through my defenses" - the mental break occurring is the failure state, not the challenge.

With that said, I haven't actually played A18 yet (unstable release is steam-only ). Have you actually been bitten by these new breaks, or is it just a theoretical concern? I'd rather hear stories about people's games than griping about "counterplay."

[TheMeInTeam]

Taken to its logical conclusion, your position is incoherent.  For mechanics that *actually* lack agency, they are a net detriment to the game, straight up.  This game is about being prepared and responding correctly.  All but a few instances it dishes out have counterplay.  Because that counterplay exists, the player's choices matter.

Mental breaks do have "counterplay." Keep your pawns happy! The really bad breaks aren't "an enemy raid", they're "the enemy has broken through my defenses" - the mental break occurring is the failure state, not the challenge.

With that said, I haven't actually played A18 yet (steam-only ). Have you actually been bitten by these new breaks, or is it just a theoretical concern? I'd rather hear stories about people's games than griping about "counterplay."

Please read my post more carefully.  I already said that these do not qualify as lacking agency (much earlier in this thread, I was under the mistaken impression that using fists to down your pawn caused a flat kill chance, but that isn't so, and certainly wasn't in the post you quoted.)

The non-agency bullcrap is stuff like "cargo pod falls on your pawn and kills him", "tornado spawns on top of your pawn and kills him instantly", or "tornado wipes out all vistors of a faction in one go, turning it hostile". 

There *are* some game event sequences that induce your alleged "failure state" without agency though, so having agency in handling said "failure state" is important.  Raiders breaching a wall is not comparable to that, because you can always block that.  You can *not* always block major mental breaks.  Too many relatives in enemy raids or pain from sensory mechanites etc for that.  The ability to arrest pawns (and down them if they berserk) is thus crucial to this mechanic having consistent agency.

It's strange to have tornadoes occurring during Clear weather. It should be at least Cloudy, preferably Dry/Rainy Thunderstorm.

They're strange in general, you can get them in locations/climates where they're borderline impossible in reality, they all act like F4/F5 tornadoes despite that the conditions to allow those are pretty rare, and they can do the IRL-impossible act of traversing "overhead mountains".

In game terms their only main issue is the possibility of them screwing you over really badly/killing people without the ability to react or prepare.  While this is rare, when it does happen it is literally no different from a rare "pawn spontaneously combusts" type event.

[MikeLemmer]

It's strange to see the tornado form during Clear weather; it should at least be Cloudy, preferably Dry/Rainy Thunderstorm.

Also, does the tornado have a delay between forming and touching down? That would give colonists a bit of time to get out of the way without nerfing the tornado too much.

[TheMeInTeam]

By the way, I'm strongly suspecting the base rate at which "intellectual" translates to actual research progress is different in A18 compared to A17.

The reason is different outcomes on benchmarks.  Advanced bench + analyzer on tribe was getting me deep drilling in 5502 and most/all ship techs by late 5503 in A17 (day/night shift, 1 bench), but even after building extra benches and having 4 people set to research I finished these 2 years later (excluding extra tech for comparison).

It's not a bad change per se', but worth noting in final patch notes if it's the case.

Unfortunately so long as uranium is so devastatingly bottlenecked this kind of slower research is nearly irrelevant; it's not like you'll actually get the resources fast enough for the slower research to matter unless you're very lucky.

[BlueWinds]

Please read my post more carefully.  I already said that these do not qualify as lacking agency (much earlier in this thread, I was under the mistaken impression that using fists to down your pawn caused a flat kill chance, but that isn't so, and certainly wasn't in the post you quoted.)

Please don't assume that because I disagree with you, I didn't understand you. It's rather condescending.

Do you have stories of A18 where these things occurred, and were unfun? I'd enjoy reading those.

[Dashthechinchilla]

I wanted to make a suggestion for the incapacitated world refugee event. Can you make it so they have an "incapacitated refugee " ailment that needs to be treated instead of an actual medical issue?  We don't need more maimed colonists, and the value of the refugees is random since they are from the same pool as chased by refugees.

[TheMeInTeam]

Please read my post more carefully.  I already said that these do not qualify as lacking agency (much earlier in this thread, I was under the mistaken impression that using fists to down your pawn caused a flat kill chance, but that isn't so, and certainly wasn't in the post you quoted.)

Please don't assume that because I disagree with you, I didn't understand you. It's rather condescending.

Do you have stories of A18 where these things occurred, and were unfun? I'd enjoy reading those.

But the reason I said you're mistaken is that we actually agree that the mental breaks have counterplay :p. 

Since you didn't address the outcomes I claimed actually don't have agency at all it's not clear where you're in disagreement with my position.

I wanted to make a suggestion for the incapacitated world refugee event. Can you make it so they have an "incapacitated refugee " ailment that needs to be treated instead of an actual medical issue?  We don't need more maimed colonists, and the value of the refugees is random since they are from the same pool as chased by refugees.

At minimum it would be nice if these events were at least consistently doable without drop pods.  It's bad enough that they don't have any legs lol, better bring medicine and hope you don't fail the surgery to give them some pegs.

It's kind of silly that the bigger attraction for these events isn't the target of the events, but rather that you might get resources you care to mine (unless you enable multiple colonies).

[PhantomFav]

This is Fabien:


He died because he tried to kill a deer.
He tried to kill a deer because he went berserk.
He went berserk because he slept on ground.
He slept on ground because he lacked of any construction capacity.

tl;dr
Every pawn needs to know how to unroll a bedroll, without any construction capacity This is such a simple task that every human being can do it!

[TheMeInTeam]

Not Fabien, he can't even stand up.  The incapables are admittedly a bit frustrating though :p.

[Karnayna]

Because the Growing zone tool will select "Marshy soil" as acceptable, but you cannot build anything on them. My problem is that it is not easily distinguishable to see marshy soil with all the shrubs or grass on them.

You can build on Marshy Soil, you just (at the moment anyway) have to build a floor on top of it first, Then you can place walls on top of that.

[East]

Once I escaped at Alpha 18.
There is a lot of talk about tornadoes, but there is no mention of late-stage resource balances during this feedback. So I want to talk more about that part.

Resources required for 10 people to escape.
185 advanced component
125 component
105 gold
4950 Steel
650 uranium
1550 plasteel

The first thing is that the late game is really long. it is considered that a time of about three times as much as that of a17 is required. But are there any events that only happen in late games? In areas where defenses have been completed, there is boredom. If tynan want to take a late game long, he should add a corresponding late game event. I just quietly put up the speed, release the keyboard waited for advanced component to complete.World map events have been added, but when you think about the risk, the only thing to do is the AI core.

This situation becomes worse when there is no uranium in the map. I did deep mining on two maps and could not find it. Eventually, it took us a tremendous amount of time (Waiting for uranium goods to arrive at the store) to buy uranium statue from the nearby village, which is 2 blocks away, for about 8,000 silver. At Alpha 17 , the amount uranium was small, but now we need a terrible amount. The figure above is called 650 Uranium, but it actually requires 1575 Uranium, including 5 Uranium in advanced components. If there was not even a village nearby, I would have taken 2-3 times longer to get the uranium.

Long range mineral radar has been added, but once every 30 days, you have to build a caravan and it's terrible if you arrive at jade or gold. And there are 11 x 35 = 385 resources, too little to compare to the risks. In other words, long range radar is not good.

I mean, if you want to lengthen the late game, add a late game event. Make the World Map Quest more interesting. Make it more necessary. Put more selection and management elements in the caravan. Extremely reduce travel time. Especially winter.

Now A18 late game is too boring!

[Ncates1234]

The new tornado event is rather a fun addition but damn is it full of lags.

That Purple/Pink flora doesn't quite fit in with the rest.

This Hi-Tech shell is a little bit too deadly from seeing one shell killing a whole pirate raid if you're lucky enough to hit it just right. I'd still prefer a shell type that is either: 3x as large as normal but significantly less damage; A more accurate shell, but can be weaker/smaller explosion radius.

Other than that I think some of the mental breaks are... Weird? The corpse on the table should probably be locked behind a psychopath trait. Don't see anyone digging a rotten corpse and bringing it to the table, even at the most rough of the times.

[TheMeInTeam]

I agree that the uranium crunch remains awful since you have little you can do about it that's consistently useful.  Even with the nerfs to research and tens of thousands of work into advanced components that you can't buy, uranium is still the typical bottleneck.

Edit: the sound tells are quite good.  I'm not partial to which represents which, A18 is an improvement over A17 because you get more distinction.

[dodo2]

Redesigned alert letter types and sounds to be more specific.

This is so nice of you, thank you! I run rimworld a lot in the background on normal or +1 speed, and its super nice to know if i can finish that youtube video or read that thread before i switch, or if i have to "oh my, oh my, oooh my, my precious colonists are under attack, time to help them out"-scramble to the battlefield.

thank you!

[YokoZar]

I mean, if you want to lengthen the late game, add a late game event. Make the World Map Quest more interesting. Make it more necessary. Put more selection and management elements in the caravan. Extremely reduce travel time. Especially winter.

I wanted to try the swamp biome, but the travel time is prohibitive since it's even worse than jungle.  Caravaning just isn't economical unless you're on arid shrubland.

One reason is probably the roads don't help as much as you'd think they do.  A road through the swamp/jungle still takes 5 times as long as a road through arid shrubland, which doesn't seem right.