Balance issues

[Nerond]

Hello there,

I must say I'm really glad I played this game. I don't remember any other 'survival' giving me so much satisfaction when playing. I've read that the next version is going to be 1.0, so I don't expect a lot of new features, hell, they are not needed. The game has everything it needs in my opinion. But I though I'd share my thoughts about what I'm feeling is a bit of unfair and could be fixed. I'll try to be as specific as possible. Most of these are balance issues with game.

1.Shooting exp. The greater gain while attacking only dangerous targets is great idea against farming, but why is it always the same? Single pistol shot provides same exp as a sniper rifle, even though it shoots multiple times faster than it. Sniper takes time to aim, it should be pretty equalized, like when a weapon with cooldown 2 sec gives 100 exp, then 3 sec cooldown weapon should provide 150 exp per single shot.

2.Careful shooter vs trigger happy. It's a bit weird, in the end careful shooter sounds like the one you would prefer to have, instead of someone getting PEW PEW frenzy. But it's the opposite, careful shooter is more of an early boost, but as the shooting skill goes up and shooter gets bionic eyes it's getting better and better for trigger happy and at some point it excels careful shooter just by flat speed. I even did some testing and same level(12) shooters with bionic eyes and sniper rifles on max possible range hiding behind wall cover, and TH won 4 out of 5 times(once he just destroyed CS's cover). And max range with SR is pretty much worst case for TH, the closer we are in range the better for him. I know it's not a big data for 5 tests, but it pretty much sums up my experience with shooting. Which also needs to be accounted is that trigger happy gets much more XP, as he shoots more often. Maybe it also should be taken into account? If someone shoots slower it doesn't mean he's not learning, he's aiming all the time, so he could get more XP per shoot as well.

3.Trade abuses. There are several things which can be just farmed to abuse trade system, worst of it is art I think. I know it's supposed to be income source, but it's just too much for a great quality items. You pretty much buy everything you can with money for making artsy stuff. Same goes for human leather, why is it or items made with it so expensive? It should be worse than any animal skin, as it should be just 'gross' to use for everyone, and because it's so common. I also heard chemfuel is somehow abusive to trade, but I didn't try it. There should be some mechanic preventing abusing like this, either price rebalancing or a limiting factor, like market overflow? 'Wtf dude, we have more hats made by your colony than there are people on this planet, we don't want it anymore/we won't pay you as much for it'. I understand a lore could be like 'there are rich psychopath glitterworld people wanting it and human leather stuff is banned good, though exceptionally valuable because of that', but it's too abusive.

4.Power user hotkeys. I've seen Tynan post about getting to final 1.0 rimworld and that it would possibly discourage non-power users because of more complexity. But hotkeys are not visible, so they don't complicate stuff. There are tab, action hotkeys or next/prev colonist. I ask particularly for colonist details tabs hotkeys(maybe I'm blind but I couldn't find it). I select a colonist and want to instantly check his health, it's good, he's not the one with bad eyes, does he have a good quality sniper rifle?[checks gear], ok great, we're ready for a raid. It's minor but I'd be happy with possibility to switch between those tabs quickly with hotkeys.

5.Difficulty. This one depends on the game direction. I feel it should be like more "it's not if your colony will fall but when", so no matter what you do, while currently you can pretty much play indefinitely, raids and other events just get bigger, but nothing is like going to cripple your colony when you have XX colonists with power armos, rifles and turret killboxes, full hospital with great medic and turrets everywhere against possible infestations. But it's just my point of view, maybe the game is supposed to be played like that, not hardcore like to kill you sooner or later.

[sick puppy]

1) agreed. shooters need to get xp over time, not per shot/burst
2) cant say i agree. i like it the way it is right now. if i have a careful shooter with both bad skills in melee and shooting and i dont wanna make him melee, i usually give him a sniper rifle. works pretty well.
3) cant say that stuff is abuse, just play on higher difficulty and your problem doesnt exist anymore
art symbolizes all kinds of sellable crafts i believe. it also makes it easier for people to figure out what to do when they wanna produce tradable goods. i had a hard ass time finding out for myself that tuques are the way to go, until i noticed how much better selling art is, even if the quality is bad. imagine i didnt notice. i wouldve done all the calculations with excel. (should i sell clothes or furniture? maybe technical objects? maybe billards/chess tables? should i spend time producing higher quality material for them or just spam cotton? should i maybe buy hyperweave, make it into tuques or armchairs and then sell it? is thrumbofur worth a lot if i sell it as a tuque? et cetera)
not sure about chemfuel, but if i keep lotsa muffalo and sell their fur it also brings me a lot of money, or if i hunt the map empty, butcher the creatures and sell them like that. used to bring me a whole load of money in no time. or selling rocks, steel and so on after bandit camps, resource caches and world map raids. generally making prices (and weights) more realistic would be nice tho. meat is a commodity in most places. why is it the same price here as rice and corn? seems a bit weird.
4) i like me some customizable hotkeys. "." and "," being important ones is unacceptable for me. ideally everything is around the wasd board. by the way: treecutting with "y" is pretty good on germanic and similar keyboards. tried that out recently after i've seen a youtuber comment on it. put my keyboard on german(germany) everytime rimworld starts. never looked back since. (except maybe that i want more and customizable hotkeys)
5) pretty sure lower difficulties arent supposed to kill anybody but inexperienced players and rarely if rng screws you over hard. i think only the higher difficulties are supposed to kill at some point in the game. afterall, raid strength is not only based on wealth but difficulty aswell.

otherwise
+1

[AileTheAlien]

The exp gain for slower guns seems like a pretty good change.

[BetaSpectre]

Exp gain for shooting would be best if practicing on non moving objects levels your exp to say level 5, while live shooting does more IMO.

Trigger happy is always going to be more useful, though take out a sniper rifle in halo and spend 5 seconds aiming at anything, you'll find that sometimes just firing a gun can be more useful. Though Careful shooter was nerfed with the updates.

I think really high quality art selling OFFWORLD would make sense, it'd be a rare import and really well done. The merchants would WANT MORE of it to resell for even more so that means giving you good deals to keep you alive don't you think?

With the right set up you can actually survive basically forever, I've had one game last for over 20 years. Now a days I don't have that much spare time for just one save before something updates. Kill boxes, OP weapons like launchers, and gimmicks to funnel raiders. Early game getting walls up, mid game turrets, late game mortars, orbital strikes, rockets etc.

Massive use of slag, sandbags, and chunks. They incur movement penalties and if it covers your base like 6 layers all around except for a killbox front then only sieges would be of a concern, but a fast lategame player can alpha strike the siegers with your own mortars.

It is odd that human leather is valuable though, if anything selling it should incur faction relation penalties.