POLL: Alpha4e difficulty

[K.LINE]

Voted Easy

Notes:
Cassandra Classic - Med map 275x275 if that matters

Day 15 - 1 Raider [Pistol]
Day 20 - 1 Raider [Molotov]
Day 32 - 5 Raiders [4 Pistols, 1 Frag Grenade]
Day 36 - 6 Raiders [4 Pistols, 1 Molotov, 1 Frag Grenade]
Day 47 - 5 Raiders [1 T-9 Launcher, 1 L-15 LMG, 1 R-4, 2 Molotov]
Day 50 - 10 Raiders [8 Pistols, 1 Lee-Enfield, 1 Pump Shotgun]
Day 66 - 1 Centipede [Inferno Cannon] (easily taken down with melee attacks, as it will continuously run away when being attacked)

So far pretty easy, no deaths, no incapacitated in any fights. Currently have 6 colonists. Will keep playing and let you know how the difficulty ramps up from here.

[mrofa]

Im not sure if im just so unlucy but story teller keep spawning electricy blow incident preety often like each 3-4 days and this is like my 8 game alredy.
Anyways difficulity is pretty decent to a point, around day 102-110 where if your lucky you get 5-8 canepids if not you get around 30 raiders in which almost always 4-7 of them got miniguns, which only one of my colony survived ( didnt get many tribals yet)
But dont worry tyn i died 10 days later on yet another squieerls insanity wave

So i would vote Normal for moutain colony and hard but beatable (sometimes) for open colonies.

[DaNewb]

I really hope you don't keep making this game easier, personally this version is just to easy for me and can become quite boring once you set up a proper defense.  I think many people that are posting about the difficulty are forgetting about a few things or just doing some things massively wrong, at least in terms of the way things seem to be calculated for raid strength.

I really hope this game does not get easier but yet gets a bit more difficult and down the road i really hope the game evolves like you have stated where it adapts and changes so the player must also adapt and change their tactics and strategies.

A few notes for people before you post about how "hard" the game is:
1) Don't build turrets, again i repeat do not build turrets.  They increase the raid strength and the effect they have in battle is not worth how little they actually do in combat and in many cases later in the game they get out ranged and destroyed without even doing anything.
2) It appears the game is now also keeping track of wealth, which means everyone has to stop hoarding supplies and making extras of everything.  If you don't need it, don't build it.  If you don't need it don't produce it.  Separate bedrooms or even just multiple rooms in general is all cosmetic at this point and only increases wealth and raid difficulty.
3) There are so many examples of good base defenses on these forums for simply kill boxes, setup a simple area that forces the enemies to enter a killzone where they have no cover whatsoever while you are sitting behind stone and walls.  Or some killboxes are littered with stone and slag so the enemies literally cannot fire back.
4) Mechanoids are extremely slow, just outrange them with even a single character with an m24 and move back after every few shots when the mechanoid is in range and stops to shoot.  Don't sit and wait for them go out into the open field and fight them.

I don't want to sound dissapointed i just really would hate to see this game turn in to many other games lately that appeal to the casual gamers and are just far to easy.  Being comfortable in a game for me leads to boring quite quickly.

Quickly what i do to start a game: I either dig a 10x15 or 10x20 room into a mountain or build the same sized building next to a mountain and put everything in one room, benches and workshops against the walls one corner is turned into a 3x3 prisoner cell, and the other wall space is used for colonist beds as need.  The middle area is used for a table and chairs and stockpiles.  The spacious interior outweighs the sharing a bedroom penalty, and that is literally all the space you need period.  Set up a killbox at the entrance, and unguarded external geothermal generators are currently ignored by enemies so if they are across the map who cares.  Set up a beacon ASAP and trade for one or two decent weapons and it is gg.  This is just my opinion but i hope others consider my advice above before just trying once or twice and saying the game is to hard.  Remeber only build what is nessecary and don't stockpile anything that is not 100% needed.  Don't mine metal just to mine it.  Good Luck!

EDIT: I just want make sure it is noted i am not trying to "bash" anyone. I am just simply saying for a gamer that pays attention to the methods the game uses and creates a strategy or tactic based on that method it is just to easy whereas someone that wants to build a good looking colony might seriously struggle.  There are easier storytellers for that reason! I want a game that literally noone can last forever, or maybe 1% can at most.  It should be a true struggle to survive and people should be striving to just last a few days longer then their last play through!

[mrofa]

But this is a story about colonists not cave trolls.

[Abadayos]

But this is a story about colonists not cave trolls.

Um...colonists as a rule in the past have eked out their existence in any way possible. Some lived in cave systems, others in jungles, others savannas and other grasslands. Which ever was close to a clean water source and plentiful food source (least for the more successful ones).

I would say, looking at it logically, if your forced to settle a hostile land in hostile times, the smartest thing would be to hole up in an easily defensible position with easy access to the essentials like food, water etc. In this case digging into a mountain makes perfect sense as it makes for 1 point of entry that can be sealed off should the need arise. One entry point makes defending what you have and your friends/loved ones much easier rather than having to defend farm land over several square kilometers.

Being able ot set up fast, easy and effective defenses would be the most important thing, thus the mountain entrance is best  for that reason, at least initially, then you can go off and wall off an area, make your kill zone and such. However remember making a singly entry way in your wall is exactly the same thing as having a single entry way into a mountain, it's a funnel.

Also in game terms I have found if I have 90%+ of my settlement in a mountain, I do not have anywhere near as many 'oh shit pirates just drop podded behind my walls away from my turrets and there are 20 of them!' type situations. 9/10 they are outside the wall system and thus funneled into the kill zone and dispatched...or they blow through the wall and kill me. Either way it ends up being fun.

[Mattk50]

I think its still a bit too easy considering a few factors. First of all, i dont use killboxes because they're boring and i have a feeling the AI will smarten up one day and try to go through walls if past raids all die in this one zone because i forgot to read the patch notes. So my base is a pretty open defense style but even without killboxes i can still fend off every raid so far without any losses.

Additionally, we have more options for defense, specifically to call in allies now. I've never had to do that despite having plenty of extra good will and allies ready to call in for support.

[DaNewb]

Thank you so much! I thought people would rip me apart for my post, i am happy to see others that share the same opinion! Ramp up the difficulty and tell people that think it is to hard to simply play on an easier difficulty setting.  Normal in some old games was terribly hard for most players, they would first have to play the easier difficulties to get good enough to play normal and so on.  I'm just happy I'm not alone in my thought process.

[K.LINE]

I'm on day 115 and having no problems at all, even time to clean mostly all of my base as well as laying wood flooring down everywhere, while still easily maintaining food and other materials (except metal which I haven't really been hauling since its farther from my home base).

The screenshot kind of compressed the sides in a little so it looks squished and I boosted the brightness on the screenshot cause it was super dark but here's what I've been doing in 4e


I do have a few blasting charges set up but I haven't used any against enemies, I built them more as a fall back if I started getting rocked but it hasn't happened yet.

This is on Cassandra Classic though and I have been playing the game for a few alpha builds and know what I'm doing (for the most part) in terms of base and character setups.

[Mattk50]

dem mods. blasting charges got removed you cheater!

Anyways, i'm now at the point on my map where i have so much metal that i have covered the entire open world surrounding my base with turrets just everywhere in the desert. While mechanoids outrange them individually, their AI often leads them into the range of multiple turrets and at least half of every mechanoid raid is destroyed by turrets, this is expensive but i make enough food to continually export it and import metal if i need to. Additionally, i have two allies with 100 goodwill so even if a mega raid came i could just call in double military support. Even then, i have an internal fallback point inside my base behind multiple powered doors that acts as both another storage room and a last-stand graveyard for raiders. Im essentially invincible right now. kinda boring and i dont even use the huge walls and funnels most people do.

[mrofa]

My damn rich colony


Stats


Trying to thin out few of enemies before they attack (got only 6 colonists)


No mods including blasing charges or royal bed ;p

I will survive this but most of colony will burn to the ground since i wasnt able to make it full from stone and one or 2 guys will die, that always happens like that, or when they dont die they are incaped and i dont have anyware to put them since most of colony is in flames

[K.LINE]

Haha well yeah I used the mods provided (except royal beds). I haven't updated any mods I have used in the past yet for alpha 4. Again I haven't used them offensively or for mining.

[Mattk50]

Screenshot of the colony i mentioned earlier with turrets everywhere and stuff:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16970274/Screenshots/RimWorld462Win%202014-06-05%2000-31-45-58.png

edit: a moment after posting this, a 15 pirate raid drop podded right into the center of my base to try to cause some havoc. I lost some walls and two turrets, but nobody died. Security success! love that event btw.

[K.LINE]

How do you have trees growing like you do? Is that from the fertilizer pump? Haven't used it yet since I use hydroponics mainly.

Also just a quick suggestion with the crematorium you should put some walls/roof around it. I was playing earlier and some rain messed with mine (although I don't remember it doing any damage) since I didn't think it needed to be indoors.

Nice setup btw

[Mattk50]

click any growing area and change the setting to grow oak trees.

the crematorium sparks off sometimes, i may build a little shed around it but fired extinguish pretty easily so i usually dont worry about it. as long as its not a battery outside or something rain wont cause catastrophic damage!

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16970274/Screenshots/RimWorld462Win%202014-06-05%2001-12-06-24.png
Soi havent gotten any psychotic animals or slave ships during this. Is it possible some events are bugged ty? or are those events just disabled in classic cassandra

[K.LINE]

I've had slave ships come by but not any psychotic waves yet (day 144)

I've only had 1 centipede attack though, which was early on. Is anyone else getting that low of an encounter rate on Cassandra Classic?