Alpha 18 unstable test build is released

[Julia]

-Tornado
-Targeted tantrum. Go to destroy a single, specific, randomly-chosen, valuable item or building.
-Slaughterer. Slaughter random colony animal(s) periodically.
----Murderous rage. Hunt down a specific colonist or prisoner (randomly chosen) and attempt to kill them by melee attack. Uses melee weapon or fists, as equipped. Keep attacking until the target is dead.
----Run wild. The pawn basically starts acting like an animal. You can tame him to try to get him to rejoin.
-Tantrum. Go around randomly smashing furniture, buildings, and damageable items.

I really dislike features that cannot be prevented in some way, they make the game annoying.

It's a type of feature that can be summarized as 'Kill random thing for no reason' - digital suffering? Strongly against.

These features are contenders for the <axing>, I know Tynan has never removed anything people were against on the forums. These features will annoy, game is about fun.

There's no point being on the edge, guarding your own stuff, in a game that is supposed to be fun.

[Berownie]

different types of ammo for artillery? how about a seed bomb to replant grass and trees?

[CthulhuPakabol]

-Tornado
-Targeted tantrum. Go to destroy a single, specific, randomly-chosen, valuable item or building.
-Slaughterer. Slaughter random colony animal(s) periodically.
----Murderous rage. Hunt down a specific colonist or prisoner (randomly chosen) and attempt to kill them by melee attack. Uses melee weapon or fists, as equipped. Keep attacking until the target is dead.
----Run wild. The pawn basically starts acting like an animal. You can tame him to try to get him to rejoin.
-Tantrum. Go around randomly smashing furniture, buildings, and damageable items.

I really dislike features that cannot be prevented in some way, they make the game annoying.

It's a type of feature that can be summarized as 'Kill random thing for no reason' - digital suffering? Strongly against.

These features are contenders for the <axing>, I know Tynan has never removed anything people were against on the forums. These features will annoy, game is about fun.

There's no point being on the edge, guarding your own stuff, in a game that is supposed to be fun.

The most fun thing about this game is dealing with often unfair adversity and being on edge about defending what's yours. If anything, I'm glad he's introducing features that increase difficulty and unpredictability.

[Dashthechinchilla]

I am sorry but the naming of the locations of the world, though neat, makes no sense to me, to the point of being immersion breaking.
Aren't Rimworld's supposed to be wild planets? why do they have their own versions of Royal Geographical Society? Who names those places?.

Naming should be AFTER you have visited to those places, via caravaning or flying above them with drop pods.

locals will have names for places, even if they aren't on a map, or even universally agreed upon. We just have the advantage of floating above the world looking at it.

And how did you know from them how did they named that? If it is true, every encampment should have its naming for all the landscape in the world, meaning multiple names for every thing on the map.
I would rather have a discovery mechanics in which you have to move to a place to name it.

BTW Making stuff up to explain situations is something humanity does pretty well.

The same way you know the name of the factions or the cities. The same way that you know major details of the terrain when you select a site. The same way you know a shoddy revolver at 80% has a certain damage and accuracy when you click on it. The same way that your pawns do what you tell them to do instead of what they want.

[stretch611]

-Tornado
-Targeted tantrum. Go to destroy a single, specific, randomly-chosen, valuable item or building.
-Slaughterer. Slaughter random colony animal(s) periodically.
----Murderous rage. Hunt down a specific colonist or prisoner (randomly chosen) and attempt to kill them by melee attack. Uses melee weapon or fists, as equipped. Keep attacking until the target is dead.
----Run wild. The pawn basically starts acting like an animal. You can tame him to try to get him to rejoin.
-Tantrum. Go around randomly smashing furniture, buildings, and damageable items.

I really dislike features that cannot be prevented in some way, they make the game annoying.

It's a type of feature that can be summarized as 'Kill random thing for no reason' - digital suffering? Strongly against.

These features are contenders for the <axing>, I know Tynan has never removed anything people were against on the forums. These features will annoy, game is about fun.

There's no point being on the edge, guarding your own stuff, in a game that is supposed to be fun.

I agree, I personally don't care for random killing for no reason. I can deal with tantrums and/or "running wild."

Maybe having murderous rages and slaughtering should be a new personality trait or only something done by psychopaths. It would be a real downside for psychopaths. Right now the psychopath trait is a huge positive for not caring about death and dead bodies; the current penalties are negligible.

[freemapa]

The same way you know the name of the factions or the cities. The same way that you know major details of the terrain when you select a site. The same way you know a shoddy revolver at 80% has a certain damage and accuracy when you click on it. The same way that your pawns do what you tell them to do instead of what they want.

The same way all your colonists can be sleeping and a pirate can appear on the edge of the map and you are instantly aware that he has a Green Thumb and was a Bone Collector as a child.

[Lori1979]

few feedback points (I saw someone else mention it as well): I don't like the new "wood floor" look, the old one was much better. The new sounds are IMO horrible, the old sounds were just fine. Speaking of sound: the sound of the Revolver is way too loud, the gun either needs to be removed altogether (why do we even need another weapon? We had so many already), or the sound has to be cut down in volume bigtime

[Snafu_RW]

WRT alerts I would say keep the GQ siren for instant (red) response; demote the horn to 'needs action soon' (yellow) response as it dooesn't 'sound' that immediate, just a warning (presumably like the foghorn it's intended to emulate?)

Balancing.. I'm not sure. Raids & manhunter /packs/ require instant response (as does fire) & merit the GQ siren. Psychic ship over poison ship yes, but the urgency will depend upon the biome & how well-equipped/prepared the pawns are.. The horn has it's place as an alert, but its not currently placed well IMO. If (eg) an 'animal hunting colonist' alert was added, that would be a useful horn warning IMO

Further details should be left for DEV balancing ofc

[ShadowTani]

-Tornado
-Targeted tantrum. Go to destroy a single, specific, randomly-chosen, valuable item or building.
-Slaughterer. Slaughter random colony animal(s) periodically.
----Murderous rage. Hunt down a specific colonist or prisoner (randomly chosen) and attempt to kill them by melee attack. Uses melee weapon or fists, as equipped. Keep attacking until the target is dead.
----Run wild. The pawn basically starts acting like an animal. You can tame him to try to get him to rejoin.
-Tantrum. Go around randomly smashing furniture, buildings, and damageable items.

I really dislike features that cannot be prevented in some way, they make the game annoying.

It's a type of feature that can be summarized as 'Kill random thing for no reason' - digital suffering? Strongly against.

These features are contenders for the <axing>, I know Tynan has never removed anything people were against on the forums. These features will annoy, game is about fun.

There's no point being on the edge, guarding your own stuff, in a game that is supposed to be fun.

I would agree to this in regards to targeted tantrum, murderous rage, and slaughterer; those are just too harsh at times. It's basically a rush to arrest the fuckers when it happens, which I wouldn't have minded if we actually had more forewarning (like a few seconds delay of "Pawn has broken down into a murderous rage and is looking for someone to target..." kinda thing) and non-lethal means of dealing with rebellious colonists. Either way, if you don't succeed in catching up to them before they hit their target.. definitively more frustrating than fun. *sigh* At the moment there really isn't too much that separate them and the instant traitor event that got axed many alpha's ago. I was then, and now, not entirely on-board with axing this altogether as I prefer that things are built on and improved rather than removed, but I also think it's better to not have them than keep them in their current state.

The randomized tantrum is reasonable enough though, just send someone after them to repair and you usually avoid stuff breaking, easy with the new queuing feature. It essentially makes you chose between risking stuff getting destroyed or take a second pawn (or more) off their schedule. A bit of micro in an otherwise heavily macro environment isn't too bad when it happens rarely.

The run wild situation can be harsh if it happens in the earlier game, but it's actually a really funny and clever one; unlike the killer ones you don't lose anything permanently, it just takes a bit more effort getting things back on track than usual.

The tornado I got a hate-love relationship with so far. In one way it's a potentially interesting event, but at the same time it doesn't feel fleshed out enough at the moment, like how basically nothing happens if it goes through fire (it would be more satisfying if flames could as an example in close proximity around it get "pulled" (ake ignite) towards the tiles next to it, while tiles it crosses would get extinguished, but also have the potential to throw sparks around that could ignite flameable things it landed on). Also, even if I'm happy that it no longer can tear apart mountains (and I say that as someone who mainly colonize flatland, lol) there are still things that seems weird when they get shredded by it, like stone chunks and similar sturdy things (some things may perhaps take damage, but shouldn't get destroyed - i.e. left with 1 HP). Stone and metal deadfall traps is another example that would be better off getting triggered instead of destroyed altogether - resetting a bunch of deadfall traps are a lot of work in itself really, but not nearly as infuriating as having an entire row going poff. So yeah, I basically would like to see the tornado improved and have better interaction with the world, other than that it's not a bad event.

[Yoshida Keiji]

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".

[Klitri]

The internet is so frickin annoying do you read what you type people ... ?

I particularly enjoyed the Alpha 18 release, I thought it was exactly the direction Rimworld should have taken and I have no doubt that it will hype the community here for awhile.

I'm going to go enjoy playing it now while the community mumbles and cries with useless questions and meandering concerns about things that were added such as slaughtering mental breaks and other very good yet hardly appreciated features.

[Daguest]

About the banishing colonist feature. I like that sending him/her butt naked will yield more negative thought than sending him/her away with clothing. But so far, it's -3for sending him away with clothes (more clothing and weapons doesn't change that), and -5 for sending him/her to die (essentially). So, basically, the colonists care more about banishing someone than letting someone else die.

Maybe swap the penalty, or make it higher for sending them to die ?

Also, can we have a "humane" way to deal with useless sheriff colonists, like the ability to send them to another colony ?

Also, something else, I had tons of caravan requests and whatnot right at the start of the game. Like literally day 2. Now that I'm established, and my food is more than the initial survival meal, I barely have any caravan requests, if at all.
Essentially, I had request I couldn't hope to accomplish when I struggled to do anything, but now that I start to get bored because my colonist are idle, and everything is done in the colony, I don't have them.

[PhantomFav]

-A loaded Mortar can't be loaded with another type of shell; you have to fire the loaded shell before load another type (what a waste of shells).
-Explosive, incendiary, EMP and Firefoam shells are still useless (too imprecise aim and 30 seconds of reloading are too much!!).
-Antigrain shells are great but too expensive.

[TheMeInTeam]

The most fun thing about this game is dealing with often unfair adversity and being on edge about defending what's yours. If anything, I'm glad he's introducing features that increase difficulty and unpredictability.

Let's set aside that most of these awful breaks actually do have agency and are thus not examples of pure RNG punishment (you can usually just arrest the really bad breaks, beating them down with fists if they berserk when you attempt it).

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.

Let me say that one more time, because it's really important and even Tynan loses track of it sometimes.  Because that counterplay exists, the player's choices matter.

Mechanics that damage the player without counterplay (or kill outright, though there are not many recent examples) mimic the effects of a player making a mistake without the player actually making a mistake.  That's bullcrap, it adds nothing to the decision process of the game, and it equalizes outcome variance from skill.  Mechanics that do this are not respectable mechanics, they are mechanics in need of a rework. 

Deleting pawns at random or suddenly turning factions hostile at random is a direct counter-design to bothering to have a good doctor + medicine, micromanaging to defend well, or creating a fire-resistant base. 

The internet is so frickin annoying do you read what you type people ... ?

I particularly enjoyed the Alpha 18 release, I thought it was exactly the direction Rimworld should have taken and I have no doubt that it will hype the community here for awhile.

I'm going to go enjoy playing it now while the community mumbles and cries with useless questions and meandering concerns about things that were added such as slaughtering mental breaks and other very good yet hardly appreciated features.

Talking down on arguments while offering absolutely no discussion or attempts to address the points made is intellectually rude.  If you feel other people are mistaken, it should be possible to come up with self-consistent reasoning for why they are mistaken.

"I'm right and you guys are annoying with useless questions and meandering concerns so you're wrong" doesn't even qualify as reasoning.

[RemingtonRyder]

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.