Alpha 18 unstable test build is released

Started by Tynan, October 24, 2017, 01:45:47 AM

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corestandeven

Quote from: East on October 30, 2017, 04:51:26 PM
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!

I find this a depressing and concerning read as these are my criticisms of A17 now. Rimworld is one of those games which, like many other strategy and survival games to be fair, hasn't cracked the problem of a rather boring anti-climax late game. Collecting vast amount of a certain rare resource, and having little to no high tech technologies or events to make it gathering those resources easier, just drags out the late game.

Randomly digging rock formations, or building countless deep drilling sites, in the hope of stumbling upon some uranium (which is not easy to see compared with other resources) is not fun or an exciting way to end. At least have a high tech research item where the player can either scan into rock formations to see uranium, have the ability to identify if there is uranium down below rather than the random way you find out now, or have the long range scanner specifically set for finding uranium and 'lumps of resource' missions that have the resource. After all players have the high tech needed to build a space ship, but havent got the technology to scan rock formations or under the surface? Doesnt seem likely in the sci fi setting the game is based in.

Solving the late game curse is something few games get right, so i appreciate it is a tough nut to crack. However having some new threat or event late game would be more interesting that just waiting to gather enough resources, especially when the game makes it difficult to obtain the quantities needed, so it is bit disappointing to hear A18 (so far at least) doesnt address this.

mcgnarman

I'm digging A18 so far. I haven't noticed any bugs and the way the new events work into the system is pretty nice. Since some of them are harmless, it's nice instead of every time an event happens you go "oh shit". I really like the new caravan quests but haven't completed them all yet.

Also the new tech tree is soooo much slower, but I kind of like that too....

PhantomFav

#242
Hey Tynan I had the problem with the tantrum too. A key protection wall wasn't built in time because my builder pawn were too busy repairing furnitures with 290/300 hit points...

But I have a solution without the repristination of the repair button! You can simply change the priority in the building task. Now the pawns, between building a new wall and repair an old one, chose the repairing task, but it will be more functional if the priority were changed.
This because we have the button "Forbid" on building walls, but not on the damaged one. So, if there are walls in construction, and a repair is needed, we can forbid the construction, and the builder pawns can go on their repair task without hesitation.

What do you think about this?

Awe

Just finished a18 playthru. Rich Explorer, Randy/Extreme. Round-year winter, but not extreme, only -10 -20 C. Leave planet by building ship for 23 colonists at 5505(~300 days). Dig uranium and gold only at starting map(400x400).

Imho, construction cost of adv. components is too high, both in resources and time. Small colonies what cant support 3-5 miners and 3-5 decent crafters will suffer.

About new mental states - all is manageable, except murderous one - game doesnt allow you to arrest murderer. -_-

Sadly, didnt get quests for new serums and orbital weaponry. Just some with bionic parts, legendary/mastercrafts and of course a lot of useless legless pawns 10 days away from my base(where they successfully died).

Yoshida Keiji

Quote from: Yoshida Keiji on October 31, 2017, 06:19:28 AM
Quote from: MarvinKosh on October 30, 2017, 11:05:05 AM
Quote from: Yoshida Keiji on October 30, 2017, 06:14:57 AM
Quote from: MarvinKosh on October 29, 2017, 05:50:14 AM
Pause the game, use the growing zone tool (you cannot grow on mud or swamp either) and drag it out. Then you can use the planning tool to decide where your buildings should be, then you can get rid of the growing zone(s).

Have you tried this yourself?

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.

I think what I need is an extra "Toggle" option that shows all "buildable areas".

Marshy soil only has the 'Light' and 'GrowSoil' affordances, however you can add the ability to build walls on it ('Heavy' affordance) by laying concrete first. So, by using the concrete floor tool, I guess you can ultimately find out what you can and can't put walls on.

Thanks for this, so far I have never used concrete or paved tile. The ability to build on them is exclusive to A18 or has been possible since earlier Alphas?

I just found out that wood works too as foundations of walls, cheaper than concrete in Tropical Swamp.

East

#245
I really like mortars.
The mortar update seems to be very good.

But one thing is that it is not easy to change the shell. The pawn uses the loaded shell and then put in new shells.

For example, you may want to fire an EMP shell when a mechanoid forces come into play. However, after wasting a loaded explosive shell, I have to wait for 30 seconds and I will shoot an emp shell. Do you want to turn off fire? Once you have wasted a loaded explosive shell, you have to wait 30 seconds. I think this is something wrong design.

The mortar needs a way to extract the loaded shell.

Quazimojojojo

Quote from: PhantomFav on November 03, 2017, 03:39:35 AM
Hey Tynan I had the problem with the tantrum too. A key protection wall wasn't built in time because my builder pawn were too busy repairing furnitures with 290/300 hit points...

But I have a solution without the repristination of the repair button! You can simply change the priority in the building task. Now the pawns, between building a new wall and repair an old one, chose the repairing task, but it will be more functional if the priority were changed.
This because we have the button "Forbid" on building walls, but not on the damaged one. So, if there are walls in construction, and a repair is needed, we can forbid the construction, and the builder pawns can go on their repair task without hesitation.

What do you think about this?

I just want to second this. As much as I want the repair button back, this is the next best thing. Either that or allowing a way to forbid repair jobs without forbidding all use of an object (which I can only imagine is a much more complex coding task than re-arranging a priority list).
Having my builders break off from what I want them to build to go fix that one bit of wall someone accidentally shot while hunting, or repairing damaged walls before patching holes, is at best annoying. At worst it gets colonies killed by manhunter packs because you didn't force the pawn to work on every individual tile of new wall.

Mods that change that specific aspect of the game are one of the few I ever use, because every single change you've made since I joined has improved the game, except for this. Please, PLEASE, change the priority list, or put the repair job back.

Yoshida Keiji

Quote from: TheMeInTeam on November 01, 2017, 09:35:10 AM
Quote from: Yoshida Keiji on November 01, 2017, 09:01:13 AM
I just had the "new blight" and I didn't like it. It feels like it was reduced to a "manhunting turtle" level threat, just cut out a few plants and you are safe.

The "old Blight" enriched the game. If you had zero food stored and you get Blighted, then you deserve to succumb. But even then, you can sort to berries, hunting and even a rice plantation in rich soil can prevent your colony to die from malnutrition. And those are the easy options, any player could just go caravan 1 tile away from the colony or just turn into cannibalism...or even go the closest friendly faction to buy food. Or a lucky caravan visit, they almost always have pemmican.

This "new Blight" seems to go against your own direction, you want players to go out and explore the World, Blight was a good excuse for that, and settle other peripheral outposts. Without it, the "new Blight" is almost nothing, and now nobody has to "leave" the map and can stay there. While with the "old Blight" player ingeniousness was key to survival. And all this assuming the worst case scenario of a player without any food stored. Because if you had some, a normal rice plantation can release you from taking any hard measures.

Rollback to the "old Blight".

No thanks.  Overgrowing protected you with "old blight", except it had no grace period so it could decide to screw you early without real counterplay.  That is not a legit problem with "new blight".  New blight could be made to spread a little faster but insta-resource loss with no counterplay sucks.  I've said this many times in this thread already but the core gameplay of Rimworld is to punish the unprepared + control mistakes.

When you prepare to the max ability the game allows and still get screwed over, Rimworld is subverting it's own design.  It'd be like having a raid type where no matter what you do, when the raid decides to run away some of your stuff disappears no matter where it is.

You know, I took the time to re-read all the entire thread to specifically read each post and pay close attention to your comments but none of yours convince me at all. Your angle is: Every challenge must have a counter. And I don't see why that has to be so. You also make references to real life scenarios, and this is what makes your opinion even weaker. In real life, we have lots of Natural Disasters and while we have agencies to send emergency warnings...there's no real effective way to completely save ourselves and everything we care of completely.

No matter how good weather forecasts post-Tetsuya Fujita technologies we may currently have, Natural Disasters WILL cause devastating effects, and we just can't completely "fix" them as problems.

At least in Japan I think it was a year or two ago that we first saw tornados, where-areas such disasters were only heard from America mostly. We had a Tsunami in Fukushima which regardless of Tsunami-Walls long built ago (to a low deficient height to the point they were useless) on a city that had same disasters in the past could not prevent the next one. If a meteor strikes from orbit, I think only in movies we see a nation launching a missile to destroy it into small pieces for a reduced impact/damage. I can agree that Tornados do signal their forming so giving players a heads-up is acceptable. Volcanic eruptions may not always be 100% predictable. This was experienced three years ago here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Mount_Ontake_eruption

We can't play a game that often hints to real life scenarios (despite being hardcore sci-fi) and expect an "Avengers" team come up and patch everything back to normal, safe and sound.

Tornados may take some casualties, just like in real life without people having much chances to escape. Only in game you can wake up a sleeping dude to run away, while in RL the dreamer may just go to "heaven" on a "windy climb".

I have seen most of your initial responses relate to tornados and the latest ones addressing Blight. And I still don't see why the "old" one was so terrifying to you, it's not that we would lose all the plantation like a Cold Snap hitting before growing season is about to expire, by dropping to -10C on the same day.

You just can't prevent natural disasters 100%.

Bozobub

Thing is, real-world tornadoes don't eat their way through EVERYTHING, including mountains!  You certainly can prepare in some way for just about *any* real-life natural disaster, beyond dinosaur-killer asteroids and similar mega-disasters, but these tornadoes?  Nope!  Literally NO preparation is possible or effective, period, and that simply does not reflect reality or common sense.  It also completely negates all user agency.

Before you argue, remember that in tornado-prone areas, there are LOTS of measures taken to mitigate the risk:  storm cellars, warning networks, and so on.  Asserting that there's nothing you can do is complete bullshit.
Thanks, belgord!

Yoshida Keiji

It has already been suggested to create basement shelters, z-levels and I didn't oppose such ideas.

Klitri

You don't have to add in a whole Z-Level system to simulate storm cellars... You could just create an object (Like a crpytopod) that acts as a storm cellar and shows a list of people inside the shelter. Maybe even add a way to store supplies in this "basement." It doesn't HAVE to be Z-Levels.

MoronicCinamun

So maybe this isn't "helpful" feedback but I am loving all the new tribal content: if anything is done right, it's giving them some love. (still rough with having to research beds and do more for your guns and stuff, but oh well it's more entertaining).

Something I really need an answer for though that so far no one anywhere (in all 5 threads across the internet) has seemed to answer correctly: what is this "weapon melee bulk" stat? Some have speculated it has to do with attack speed like the description seems to hint, but that seems to be a lie as a bow with 100% has a melee cooldown of 1.6 seconds, while a wooden club at 50% "bulk" is also still 1.6 seconds. Also seems weird that mentions firing but still appears on melee weapons.
Also, it's pretty cool how melee weapons have different attacks (reminds me of my runescape-filled childhood), but I'm just curious, do every one of these attacks happen "at once" when the pawn attacks, or does it cycle through them or pick randomly or what?


SBP

The tornado as currently implemented seems a bit cartoony (no, I'm not just salty because one sucked up all my hay and my fuel boomalopes starved to death and exploded). I'd rather have high winds as a weather type effecting the whole map, which can damage plants / wooden walls / roofs. Tornado could then be an extreme version of that, which also damages stone walls and other exposed buildings. Maybe take mountains and wind direction into account so some areas are shielded.

I really like the idea of a future update adding a single 'underground' level as a half-way compromise to full-on Dwarf Fortress style z-levels. Infestations would be a constant threat and cave-ins would happen if you don't build supports, which would also destroy things on the surface. The reward would be more storage space and hurricane shelters. I guess it could get tricky in terms of combat and the implementation of the 'stairs' or 'ladder' buildings for pawns to go up and down.

Crow_T

As mentioned already having overhead mountain block or deflect tornadoes makes a lot of sense. To balance mountain bases once again having a rock chunk (say 2x3 or 2x2, or random sizes) fall somewhere, most likely on a non-colonist item but rarely on a colonist, could be fair (and the code to do this already exists in some form). Or even have a tremor event that shakes multiple rocks loose. Am I a masochist? Maybe, but it seems better to have hard events that players can disable than being too easy.
(regarding dead man's apparel)
"I think, at the very least, the buff should go away for jackets so long as you're wearing the former owner's skin as a shirt."
-Condaddy20

Calahan

@ All - I've just had to move/delete another loads of posts for being off-topic or posted here rather than in the correct subforum. Namely bugs and suggestions. So if you posted in this thread and can no longer see your post then it's due to one of the former.