Alpha 18 unstable test build is released

[Crow_T]

AWESOME! I look forward to more pain and suffering, destruction and rebuilding. 

It looks like EMP mortars no longer exist, do the antigrain ones replace them in some way?

Re-read the OP. Vanilla mortars work like CR/CE mortars now, which makes far more sense. It's the shell that does the stuff, not the tube.

as per the OP:

-Artillery works differently now. There is one type of mortar, which can fire any type of shell, with each shell creating a different effect. The shells are explosive, incendiary, firefoam, and antigrain (a special high-tech warhead).

No mention of EMP shells, hence my question about what the antigrain shells are.

[Dr. Z]

Me going through the patchnotes being like: "yep...swamp biomes...nice...orbital bombardment targeter...insulting spree...seems like...WAIT A SECOND!"

But seriously, some amazing changes and new modding possibility just like we are used to. Looks like I'll be sinking into RimWorld again for some time.

[Bakar]

YYYESSS FINALLLY!!!!

[Trblz42]

AWESOME! I look forward to more pain and suffering, destruction and rebuilding. 

It looks like EMP mortars no longer exist, do the antigrain ones replace them in some way?

Re-read the OP. Vanilla mortars work like CR/CE mortars now, which makes far more sense. It's the shell that does the stuff, not the tube.

as per the OP:

-Artillery works differently now. There is one type of mortar, which can fire any type of shell, with each shell creating a different effect. The shells are explosive, incendiary, firefoam, and antigrain (a special high-tech warhead).

No mention of EMP shells, hence my question about what the antigrain shells are.

Check https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ak5jMleBK4 on what these antigrain shells are. And yes, EMP shells are still part of this beta

[SpaceDorf]

Just got a 41 Thrumbo Animal Migration and only half a dozen, half dead pawns ... 

The new message sounds are quite nice.

Oh also some weird error in the combat log .. which I attached.
I have the same bug for three different dead attackers.

[attachment deleted by admin: too old]

[BetaSpectre]

I think murderous rage should be more selective against the colonist/prisoner with the lowest social rankings. Like going postal would have an employee attack his ex-boss. Just not a fan of random when it comes to having a colonist trying to murder another. Like how the old event caused a defector to be randomly chosen in the colony.

An overhaul of the inventory system would be great like allowing colonists to function as they do in bandit camp raids the same as they function on the normal map allowing them to hold onto items with the pick up option displayed. Having a med kit on the frontline makes a difference compared to dragging a colonist back home, then hauling a kit from the stockpiles.

In the case of mental break issues, being better able to select which meals and where to eat them would get rid of some table eating issues, and allow for just over all better control. It's not like it can't be done either.

[wobarch]

I really like the new things for the rooms and the poker table.
Tornados are looking great and dangerous! (Are there any solid blocks that can resist a tornado? [There should, or at least give a chance to resists - to make a panic tornado room.]
Also cool with the sleeping bags, was missing that before and had to use a mod for it. Interesting solution, that tribe people have no beds, but the sleeping bags, while normal colonys got no sleeping bags from beginning, is good for me.
The animals still seem to be feed with meals, what was my biggest concern and problem for longetime farming/chickens), https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?action=profile;area=showposts;u=78771

But besides that, looking like a great update! Also the new plants are making a huge difference! (even if swamps looking a bit crowded)

Thank you again!

[TheMeInTeam]

I really like the new things for the rooms and the poker table.
Tornados are looking great and dangerous! (Are there any solid blocks that can resist a tornado? [There should, or at least give a chance to resists - to make a panic tornado room.]
Also cool with the sleeping bags, was missing that before and had to use a mod for it. Interesting solution, that tribe people have no beds, but the sleeping bags, while normal colonys got no sleeping bags from beginning, is good for me.
The animals still seem to be feed with meals, what was my biggest concern and problem for longetime farming/chickens), https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?action=profile;area=showposts;u=78771

But besides that, looking like a great update! Also the new plants are making a huge difference! (even if swamps looking a bit crowded)

Thank you again!

If tornadoes do not have viable counterplay they are a net detriment to the game.  Maybe we'll find they have some.  Are they biome/terrain constrained?

[Albion]

Not sure if working as intended or an oversight but there is no way to buy advanced components from any trader.
No trader will generate it in his stock. I hoped there would be at least a chance to buy some overpriced ones from the exotic goods trader or possibly the bulk goods trader. It'll take forever to craft them all on my own. Apart from possible world events giving me adv. components it therefore will take quite a while or quite a few component assemblies to craft all the advanced components required to fully build a spaceship.

EDIT: Also I just noticed that the psychic emanator ship part does not spawn any AI persona core anymore. Is this correct too?
Kind of sad since I had a mod that changed that AI persona core to a malicious AI persona core which had to be reprogrammed first to turn it into a normal persona core.
It was also a great way to get a persona core without having to buy it.

EDIT2: I think this is definitly a bug/oversight: The charge rifle is missing the "weapon bulk" stat. All guns seem to have it except for the poor charge rifle.

[wyoian]

Haven't tested this by running it for a few years yet, but because of the "temperate zone" and even without that zone, on cold cold worlds the caravan travel times have been increased during "summer" dramatically. Before a flat tile that hit 45 F during summer wouldn't take 19H to traverse. Is this intended?

[Malpractice]

I love the new colonist creation interface.  Team skills is a great way to reduce mental math, especially with bigger starts like Tribal. Two notes:

1) It is not correctly updating information on team skills.  When I loaded my first team, it was incorrect, and my team as a whole only had one fire and very low scores.  Randomizing individual members also seems to mess it up.  A member seems to have his data added correctly when you swap them in or out.

2) It would be very nice if we could reduce our team size down to a value below the maximum number (temporarily).  For instance, in the Tribal Scenario I'd love to boot 4 guys off the selected team and then gradually assemble it one at a time.  Or on a later stage I might want to take a guy off and say, "where am I without Sparkles?" without having to fill it in immediately.  Doing so would let the "team values" be genuine to what I know I'm keeping.  This would massively increase the utility of this new interface for me.

[wyoian]

With tribal start, we no longer start with bed tech. But we don't spawn with cloth to make bedrolls. Should the tribal start be updated to start with some cloth or hide? or I guess we can use any hide so we just must butcher before we can have beds. Feels weird but sort of makes sense. Changes day 1 priorities.

[Yoshida Keiji]

I don't give a shit about the Team stats. I play with the first ones that appear on screen without randomizing to "cheesy" formations, makes more challenge. The only reason I would randomize colonists is if I'm theming my game, for example, making a nordic colony in the poles and making all characters pale skinned, although this isn't really true in real life, or making all my colonists dark skinned for extreme hot biomes.

I would love to see the "Tile Selection" when choosing where to land in the world, have the option to search for random locations with a Biome preference. I was choosing random spot and rolled like hundreds of times and could not hit any of the "new" biomes and had to manually search for them. So if I want Tropical swamp biome, have the option to set that as a landing spot preference setting, so that every time I press on select random location, it will only show me map spots of that particular biome.

The swampy biomes are really fantastic idea to break those perfectly squared shaped based as you no longer can just blueprint a straight wall anymore, pushes players to other tactics as funneling with a sort of killbox entrance, not really my style. I hate the killbox concept.

The new sleeping bags are awesome but needs some work, because your tribals can already build wooden walls and doors, so its kinda odd that they can't make beds, so the first structures shouldn't be of wood either, need more rudimentary set ups, the tech tree is definitely not properly sorted chronologically.

Allow us to dig foxholes as a defense structure, make basic stick fences, feather tents...and then go for wooden walls.

[Albion]

Unstable A18: The gift that keeps on giving.

After playing around with the antigrain IED I tried out the orbital targeted power beam. My reaction: "Holy **** this is awesome!"
In my opinion there still is no way a satilite network stays completly operational while the civilization below crumbles to dust but who am I to complain? Low orbit energy cannons are cool.

Also, dormant insect hives: Great feature. It doesn't really add much to the game except atmosphere when entering a new map but I love it.

I would like to see mushrooms growable in hydroponics or plantable in growing zones. A lot of mountain colonies would appreciate this but I guess there will be at least one mod allowing this on day 1 of final A18 release.

Mod/tech talk:
I also love the new damageWorkers since I always wanted to create a new kind of melee weapon capable of invoking a custom HeDiff but with certain conditions etc. Now I can freely play around with this by creating my own custom damageWorker. I love it.
The way melee works now is an improvement in general I think. It's interesting to see these kind of updates from a programmer/modder/developer perspective since I started modding 3 months ago. Before I only saw the consumer/player side.

I still have a long way to go though in regards to patching my mod to A18. I crunshed though quite a bit in the last 2 hours but the error list is still quite long. Will have to finish it after halloween though. I'm excited for the final release of a stable A18 version though. There are a lot of new possibilities to mod and I will enjoy playing a new colony with all the new features.

[Rafe009]

I noticed that tornadoes cut through natural rock walls like they are butter. I understand the need for Tornadoes to be a structural threat to brick and other unnatural walls but it seems a little strange that a few tornadoes might essentially take apart a mountain in the period of a few years - thousands of years sure.