Alpha 18 unstable test build is released

[Wanderer_joins]

0.18.1704
Crashlanded scenario
Cassandra Extreme
Cold bog, 20 days growing period
Standard map size
400 days in

Tornados: I had 5 so far, the first 4 didn't make any significant damage. The Last one destroyed my ship under construction... It was pretty bad RNG. But overall diminishing the frequency of tornodos will make them really rare. Maybe a larger area of effect with less damage per tile? Because my plasteel/ uranium ship structural beams and reactor were destroyed while my granite walls were just fine. And i don't know how this event scales up on larger maps (if it does).

Quests:  I got an AI core early which i declined, the second one in jugust 5506 (if you want to rush the ship, don't decline an AI core!). The quest in itself was slightly strange, with iguanas appearing out of the blue (what about pod?).
Mech serums are balanced, they are rare and you have 101 ways to be crippled/ killed in rimworld.
As of today, my colonists have 2 orbital power beam targeter and 1 antigrain mortar shell, ready for the end game.

Ship requirements: I finished the research with one bench in 5506 and got the tech core subpersona core quest in decembrary 5505. So it was a good timing, i don't know if it was RNG or triggered based on your research.
The bottleneck for my 13 men colony was the manpower to craft the advanced components which is rather an underwhelming task. So i sent two guys on a year round trip to salvage components from the landed ship, they came back before my crafters had made it on the components.
I heard about rare uranium, but i got plenty of it in quests, trade offers, one meteorite with uranium, and as said East, uranium turrets.

End game: The Landed ship is engaging and makes this end game feels complete. Following the same idea building the ship could be more spicy. We have the new special items which can help us fight larger raids in the end game. Maybe something similar to the energy signature could trigger an end game sequence when you decide to build the ship.

[Bozobub]

THIS is what I wantedL  Sweet, sweet, QoL and bogfixes...

[Yoshida Keiji]

I actually did a bunch of specific work on how pawns are generated to try to balance out the "incapable of" chances to something reasonable. Wintersdark, it really sounds like you got unlucky. Though also bear in mind:

-You don't have to recruit everyone
-Even non-violent colonists can be useful as bullet sponges or distractions in a fight

Thanks for the ongoing feedback!

... I don't believe you... My first Incapacitated refugee event got me...: A character who is already addicted to Luciferium, is Incapable of Violence, has Chemical interest and is also Abrasive. Normally I would leave him to die, but because of testing A18 unstable, I'm taking him with me back home.

I also don't understand the logic/mechanics here. His combat log is empty and lore wise we don't get to know why he is incapacitated: He tried to milk a cow and the bull saw his red pants and charged him? And how exactly did he managed to contact me via comms?

[Ser Kitteh]

Okay so, there's an old bug that's still in the game.

When another settlement asks for "X amount of Y", you can't drop pod it to them. Choco just ask for 6 armor vest, I load them up in the drop pod and I send the pod flying, but because of the lack of colonists, the deal was not made. Mind, Choco was a quadrum journey away and their reward was a legendary plasteel simple helmet.

I bet a lot of players would get really annoyed at that, just finding out that they NEED to send a colonist with the stuff inside to "fulfill trade offer". What's wrong just drop podding it to the settlement and have it fulfilled then? Imagine if it was permadeath. That's what NPC colonies do.

Yeah so, that needs fixing: fulfilling trade offers without the need to send in a colonist because "the contents get lost" despite the fact you send the stuff right into the middle of their settlement.

[MoronicCinamun]

aaaaand how do you expect the reward to get to you without a colonist to bring it back?

[Ser Kitteh]

aaaaand how do you expect the reward to get to you without a colonist to bring it back?

They drop pod the reward onto the base. Friendly colonies do that everytime you "destroy X outpost". Not sure about tribals.

Like, have you ever even done these types of quests?

[Dashthechinchilla]

aaaaand how do you expect the reward to get to you without a colonist to bring it back?

They drop pod the reward onto the base. Friendly colonies do that everytime you "destroy X outpost". Not sure about tribals.

Like, have you ever even done these types of quests?

That might be ok for advanced factions, but that wouldn't have worked for my quest to deliver 9 parkas for a uranium turret to tribals (which I didn't realize would be that heavy).

[Ser Kitteh]

Fair enough. In that case, the tribals can send back the reward like maybe X days later? I think that's an alright workaround but I can ignore their sudden use of drop pods if that was the case.

It's not a matter of rewards mind. It's a matter of "I literally rain down 1000 corn into your village how the hell are your contents 'lost' anyway?!"

It's a programming issue and one I hope gets fixed soon.

[East]

Yeah so, that needs fixing: fulfilling trade offers without the need to send in a colonist because "the contents get lost" despite the fact you send the stuff right into the middle of their settlement.

I think the intention of the developer is 'go to the world map'. 'Go out and suffer.' I expect there will be no change. However, I think that it is only a problem that the world map movement is not interesting because there is no interaction especially with the movement.

[Ser Kitteh]

The big problem with these "send 1000 corn to Whateverstan" is the fact that MUFFALOS AND COLONISTS EAT THE CORN.

You can't choose what they eat. It doesn't even matter if you send them with 30 Fine Meals on them, the journey takes 10 days to and fro. The pack animals eats what is most "nutritious" which means all that hay you've been carrying goes utterly unused. And here are quests that tell players to send a product that the Colonists themselves eat.

Smarter Food Selection has been brought up a lot in the community, and it's a fine mod, but stuff like this should very much be vanilla. I don't understand why pack animals need food either when they can just graze.

[Bozobub]

The big problem with these "send 1000 corn to Whateverstan" is the fact that MUFFALOS AND COLONISTS EAT THE CORN.

You can't choose what they eat. It doesn't even matter if you send them with 30 Fine Meals on them, the journey takes 10 days to and fro. The pack animals eats what is most "nutritious" which means all that hay you've been carrying goes utterly unused. And here are quests that tell players to send a product that the Colonists themselves eat.

Smarter Food Selection has been brought up a lot in the community, and it's a fine mod, but stuff like this should very much be vanilla. I don't understand why pack animals need food either when they can just graze.

I actually agree with your main point here but making pack animals forage for the bulk of their nutrition slows down any caravan.  You'd be lucky to see 1/3-2/3 normal speed, IRL.  What you do is feed them very nutritious fodder during the travel day, then let them graze for bulk fiber (also very important for ruminants, or they get colicky) during the evenings, while hobbled or staked out in an area.  If they had to graze for all of their nutrition, you'd be lucky to achieve a 4-hour travel day.

[Ser Kitteh]

The big problem with these "send 1000 corn to Whateverstan" is the fact that MUFFALOS AND COLONISTS EAT THE CORN.

You can't choose what they eat. It doesn't even matter if you send them with 30 Fine Meals on them, the journey takes 10 days to and fro. The pack animals eats what is most "nutritious" which means all that hay you've been carrying goes utterly unused. And here are quests that tell players to send a product that the Colonists themselves eat.

Smarter Food Selection has been brought up a lot in the community, and it's a fine mod, but stuff like this should very much be vanilla. I don't understand why pack animals need food either when they can just graze.

I actually agree with your main point here but making pack animals forage for the bulk of their nutrition slows down any caravan.  You'd be lucky to see 1/3-2/3 normal speed, IRL.  What you do is feed them very nutritious fodder during the travel day, then let them graze for bulk fiber (also very important for ruminants, or they get colicky) during the evenings, while hobbled or staked out in an area.  If they had to graze for all of their nutrition, you'd be lucky to achieve a 4-hour travel day.

Or they could just graze when colonists stop to rest. No neee to make it super complex.

Btw, how does stealthiness work? Is high stealthy better than low stealthy?

[Yoshida Keiji]

My last caravan had stealthiness of 0.9. I prematurely assumed the range being from 0.0 to 1.0 and my caravan being bad at it since it was composed of 3 colonists, 3 wild boars and... 3 elephants (they are pack animals now and can carry 140kg). Elephants are big and noisy. I don't know if it was a bug or not but on the return from an incapacitated refugee, I got one caravan encounter, 1 manhunter ambush and 3 raid ambushes,...all ambushes happened exactly on the same world tile...with exactly the same map layout. All hostiles seemed difficulty adjusted accordingly to my caravan overall strength,...but the ambushes themselves kept pushing back my caravan to that same time which delayed the return to base. But it was still good to get some extra pemmican (although I was carrying enough for 3 - 4 more journeys) and some jade that I mined from the mini-map.

But "officially", we don't have the range value to determine if we are efficiently stealthy of not.

[East]

The planning mode of the world map tells only the travel time between two points and does not give a straight line distance. I think it is necessary to tell straight distance in order to predict the amount of fuel needed when using transporter.

[Calahan]

@ All - Once again I've had to move a load of posts to their correct place on the forum. Can anyone who thinks about posting in this thread please take a moment to read the OP first, and then respect Tynan's request to post bugs and suggestions in their respective forums and NOT here. Both Tynan and myself have emphasised this repeatedly in this thread now and yet it continues to happen. It's getting very tiring.

Please only post feedback specific to things that are new in A18; long-standing issues, suggestions and discussions should not be posted here please.

To report bugs: A bug is when the game isn't working as designed. If you find a bug, please report it in the Bugs forum, following the instructions in the How To Report A Bug thread. Much appreciated - public bug reports are essential!

And in specific relation to bug reports, if you want them to be addressed then they need to be posted in the bugs forum. NOT here. Not only because the bug forum is the correct place for them, but also because the bug forum is methodically checked to (hopefully) ensure no bug reports slip through the net and go unchecked or unnoticed. Which is not the case for anywhere else on the forums, including this thread. So if you post a bug anywhere other than the bug forum then you instantly reduce or even remove the chance of the devs seeing it.

Which is why I will once again request people to please post bugs in the bugs forum, and not here.