POLL: Alpha4e difficulty

[Leffa]

Well, I read everyone's opinion. I agree that now the game is not impossible to survive, but I still think that mechanoids are too hard. Half of my eight settlers, died in an attack where 3 mechanoids fell inside my base. There was no time to protect them, or attacking near ... Weapon of mechanoids: 2 minigun and 1 fire of hell.

One change that I saw, is that by attacking the raiders and his run some desperate, and this decreases the chance of catching some raiders ...

In 140 days I was visited by two combat ships,1 Slave Ship  and 2 agricultural and industrial vessels.


My vote was "Really hard, but beatable"


One suggestion, only raiders humans can fall from the sky into his base, mechanoids only entering in the map. This would reduce the frustration of playing only 150 days... And mechanoids going to drop yours weapon...

Again, sorry for my poor english.

[Mattk50]

mechanoids dropping into your base? christ. Not sure i'd be able to survive that either, the best place to fight them is far from your base in the open field. Especially with the miniguns on them... i cant imagine winning that firefight. maybe if you just abandon your base when that happens you'd survive, everyone run for the hills!

[johntiger]

I haven't voted yet, outside that encounter everything was fine.
Got the game yesterday and tried two times on easy callie, which went fine.
This was the first proper game, so it's kinda normal to get your ass handed I think.

As for feedback on the centipedes, the worst offender seemed to be the inferno gun which kinda invalidates cover.
The inferno gun sets the ground ablaze, so the defenders have to find new cover, so my guys are more busy running for their lives compared to shooting back. Combine that with the huge range and reasonable reload of the inferno gun, it kinda means my guys never get the chance to open fire, because they spend all their time running away.

Right now the best idea I have is to fill a field with stone pillars spread out, and just place men behind them.

Just build a lot of cement tiles. Problem solved.

[Freya 'Tail' Fairwing]

I'm writing this having gotten a colony to day 51. It's still going strong, six colonists and a turret surviving quite well with very little impeding it. 7 raids have hit so far, with only the 7th, in which 4 pistol pirates and a molotov grenadier landed right next to my power plant, resulting in it being set on fire. I've seen none of the mechanoids yet. I think I got fairly fortunate with some of the raids I had though. Some could have really gone badly (I think the 3rd raid was 4 grenade grenadiers) but I was able to get 2 L-15's and a pila from a trade ship and they seem to be absolute lifesavers, especially the pila. I've also almost always been able to set up flanking opportunities thanks to an open design settlement, alleys, multiple exits to most buildings etc.

It's been pretty easy... So far.

I might update at 100 days.

[snlehton]

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.

When you play the game for the first time and you get wiped with two centipedes with absolutely no chance of survival just because you didn't do all the necessary steps you described, I'd say the game is quite broken.

It's no fun game if you need to know how the game works internally (turrets increase raid difficulty -> solution: don't build turrets). Every game gets easy once you figure out how it works and you use that for your advantage.

[Tynan]

Turrets also don't increase raid difficulty (at least, not any more than walls, stockpiles, beds, or anything else that adds to your wealth).

[Utterbob]

My only issue was with the timing of the first Mechanoid. I'd had 1 combat supplier since the start (pretty early comms. station), Lee-Enfield was the best they had (I didn't buy it, as it happens). Had a few raids, all but 1 tribal to this point so I had a few sticks... some with string, others with pointy bits. The one raid that was from the more advanced faction was all pistols.

So with 4 people, equipped with 3 pistols and a Lee-Enfield (and a best possible, by this stage, of 2/2) an incendiary one decided to show up! I survived because of the targeting mechanics, one guy was always closer than the others and always moving to avoid as many shots as possible. Even with the large splash I could dodge quite a few and those that hit didn't take, so the damage per hit was minimal (as was the wandering around in panic). Had it been one of the other two weapons I'm pretty sure that would have an instant game end!

However, that aside just about everything else is on the too easy side for me. The thing is, I find the more the game adds, the more you need space to incorporate it and therefore, the more you have think about creative defenses. The fact that there are very few production chains that require any significant amount of space at the moment is (in my opinion) what makes it easy (as opposed to any pressing need to tweak the Storyteller side).

Also, stone is still very accessible early and the AI's tendency to path around stone walls, over making any attempt to breach them, makes it a little too easy to control fights much to soon in the game. Not sure how that's fixable though! Maybe a little later (tech unlock wise) and a mob type that has the means to breach it within a reasonable time-frame in the late-game.

But enough drifting... overall, had a one off event that was extremely hard and had a 66% chance to be nearly unstoppable at the stage of the game. But if we assume that to be a 1-off then the overall difficulty is very easy.

[sparda666]

Turrets also don't increase raid difficulty (at least, not any more than walls, stockpiles, beds, or anything else that adds to your wealth).

This would imply that building a base inside a rock wall (i.e. using the cave walls instead of building walls) would artificially deflate your wealth?

[Tynan]

Turrets also don't increase raid difficulty (at least, not any more than walls, stockpiles, beds, or anything else that adds to your wealth).

This would imply that building a base inside a rock wall (i.e. using the cave walls instead of building walls) would artificially deflate your wealth?

That's true. Interesting point.

[dd0029]

Also, stone is still very accessible early and the AI's tendency to path around stone walls, over making any attempt to breach them, makes it a little too easy to control fights much to soon in the game. Not sure how that's fixable though! Maybe a little later (tech unlock wise) and a mob type that has the means to breach it within a reasonable time-frame in the late-game.

That's interesting. I'd been noticing that the attackers weren't taking my planned path. They seemed much more willing to try blasting/bashing in the sides of my kill box instead of coming through the "conveniently" open door. And with the reduced strength of stone walls, it's much more successful.

I think that I'd like to see some alternate events, challenges beyond getting attacked. Expand the blight to a plague. Make it be something that has to be researched in a certain time frame or most everyone dies. Better Power has that annoying mysterious object dropping. It could use something more than just being disassembled or waiting out the mostly harmless plasma storm, I'm not sure what though. Maybe some sort of invasive plant event where it overwhelms your base if you don't keep up with cutting it back or could require actually setting fires to burn it out. Something like that could be a real challenge if you get a particularly rainy period.

I'm okay with the pirates dropping down and attacking and even the mechanoids, but I think the on planet groups need to be neutral to begin with. Have some more robust interactions with them. We need to be able to influence them to join us, but they need to be able to influence us to join them. Say when a group comes to visit, we have a sweet place and one wants to stay and join. Or when they come, they bring some sweet company and one of our people decides the grass is greener over there and bails on us.

[Abadayos]

So just finished a game where I have a raid that I can survive...but have a tantrum spiral effect where everyone goes nuts. lasted 119 days or so on the difficulty listed here.

My thoughts:

After a few failed colony attempts at the 30-40 day mark I had a pretty decent understanding on how stuff comes so was able to adapt this time. That involved early comms and soem early weapon trading (only got another of the basic rifles you start with) and selling off excess weapons I didn't need. It resulted in some fun early fights in the 4th and 5th waves.

The fourth wave was a single minigun mech, he went down pretty easily I must admit. I just bum rushed him to 3-5 squares away then had everyone open up and had 1 guy standing opposite side (happened by chance to be the guy he had agro on) so the mech stayed put and my firing line just tore it apart. The AI kepts trying to get away from the melee dude, only to get into contact with my others and try to get away from them. To fix this I would suggest having them  go into melee if within 2-4 squares of hostiles otherwise their AI gets kind of wacky.

The last wave I had was around 12 raiders, maybe a few more, none with grenades. They hit me shortly after another raid so repairs hadn't been finished and food was low. Managed to drive them off, lost 2 people to them and 3 went nuts mid fight which made it interesting.

Now observations:

Only had 1 slave ship come in at around day 20ish when I didn't have anywhere near enough silver/trade goods to get anyone (bought the weapon and food that I ended up eating and not selling). I feel that the Slave ships are slightly too rare. They appear when you can't use them but when you want/need them they are never there.

Tree/Wood economy: It isn't really an economy due to the manpower required to make planks to sell vs just basic potato production or berries. More volume, faster and just as good to sell with the added bonus of being able ot be eaten. True boards and logs are amazingly useful for your colony, but as an economy item they seem pretty lack luster.

Mech Ai is easily exploitable by bum rushing into melee. No idea why, but whenever I stay at range I loose people in other colonies, this one (same version etc) if I run into close range they kind of just melt. Made having a shooting 12 guy with a minigun a real bad ass however with this tactic...having 3 like I did in the end and mech...or anything for that matter, go poof. Also jsut want to note...hunting with a minigun is frigging HILARIOUS! Everything but their target dies.

Trees. Everything else seems to eventually take over the map, teh berries, the big cactus and the agave plants. However once you cut down trees, your only future supply is what you plant yourself in the growth zones. Also the time it takes to grow them (20+ days) is a bit excessive for the amount of wood you get per tree when it's your only source. In my game I ended up having 5 rather large growth zones just for Oak Trees so I could do my building, repairs and testing.

Difficulty wise I found it challenging but beatable. If I adjust my tactics in my next game I feel I could last a bunch longer.

Suggestions is the mech AI weirdness, a glance into the economic value of wooden planks vs time invested in production and finally looking into why Slaver ships seem to be sooooo rare.

[dd0029]

looking into why Slaver ships seem to be sooooo rare.

My guess here is that there is a single or very limited event pool set and the slaver "competes" with the groups visiting and the single guy wandering. I've noticed since the factions got added, it's much harder to grow your colony without angering people.

[Abadayos]

looking into why Slaver ships seem to be sooooo rare.

My guess here is that there is a single or very limited event pool set and the slaver "competes" with the groups visiting and the single guy wandering. I've noticed since the factions got added, it's much harder to grow your colony without angering people.

I've been reading that the difficulties also have in built population limits, which would go far to explain why they show up early then never again later when your at or near teh pop cap.

The main issue with this is it makes the ingame trade 'economy' harder to use, however this may be intended. It makes buying and selling to the ships much more limited to weapons (selling excess), industry ship buying uranium and selling to farm ships. That's all you have. All the other good trades rely on Slaver ships that stop showing up due to possibly the population cap. Not so much an issue in Random Randy because of higher pop cap, but others it makes trade almost useless except to unload weapons. Then again I guess once you hit the pop cap you really don't need to trade as you are pretty much self sufficient or well on your way to be. However you will eventually use all the metal on the map and as trade is the only way to replenish it (aside from pods and mechs, but they are not common enough to be a reliable source). Mind you get it from the industrial ship but you get teh point.

A suggestion is this:

We have a comms station, why not able to request a Trade Deligation. A jack of all trades that you can request from other settlements your in contact with and have a certain standing with. They do the trade via the comm system somehow (tribals doing drop pods is weird but hey whatever). It can have a random selection of trade goods and weapons and able to buy slaves, but maybe not sell them, thus maintaining the pop cap but also having the other settlements have some interaction with your colony.

Another idea would be to have Trade Ships that are the same principle. Could ujust be an interplanetary trade skiff or from the moon or space base or whatever.

I'm rambling, it's 2am here so I'll stop but you get the idea I'm trying to unsuccessfully put across.

[Leffa]

One thing I forgot to mention, after this last updated, the Raiders is coming to attack us, have far superior skills ... I came to fight raiders with greater than 10/10 skills, while my not passed 3/3. This decreases the chances of melee attack.

[SSS]

Turrets also don't increase raid difficulty (at least, not any more than walls, stockpiles, beds, or anything else that adds to your wealth).

This would imply that building a base inside a rock wall (i.e. using the cave walls instead of building walls) would artificially deflate your wealth?

That's true. Interesting point.

Perhaps rock walls could be considered very ugly by colonists to compensate.

Even barring that, there seem to be too many advantages in cave dwelling. Single entry point. No drop-in raiders. Raiders won't attack rock walls. You can even expand to the edges of the map through a cave. It's rather OP compared to dwelling out in the open.