Alpha4f difficulty

[Ruin]

I made it to day 140 and change on Casssandra.  The only non-vanilla mods I was using were "medical bed" and "embrasures".  The AI dropped 25+ centipedes onto my 10 colonists.  I immediately saved as this seemed like an impossible challenge.  So, I tried to beat it several times and could never get them all down.  This seems like overkill to me.  I think the problem is the colony wealth calculation.  I had the following stats:

Colony Wealth: 119675
Colony Wealth (Items): 101180
Colony Wealth (Buildings): 18495
Colony Strength: 11.6 (10 colonists and 4 turrets; One could argue that I should have built a million turrets but, they are useless in a solar storm so, I tend not to use them heavily.)
Enemy Raids: 26

Now, the items part is obviously driving my wealth.  But, I don't know the details of the formula.  Sure, I had some large stockpiles of food, metal, stone blocks, etc.  But, mainly, I had a million weapons from past raids that I had nothing to do with.  Food, metal and bricks don't make me capable of fighting off a larger force.  The combat traders don't show up enough (and when they do show up they are too poor) to remove the weapons dropped by previous raiders.  Are weapons that are not equipped counted?  If so, should you limit that formula to the number of weapons your colonists could possibly equip? Or, should you give us a way to convert weapons to raw materials (something like the "workplaces" mod) so they don't count against us?  Alternatively, maybe a different set of story tellers for those that want to try and play a longer game?  Just dropping an utterly unbeatable force (and I did try to beat them ... maybe I just used bad tactics) seems quite unsatisfying to me.  There has to be a better way to handle this than a sudden ramp up to the death drop.

[Leffa]

I voted in Normal - a challenge, but nothing crazy

Everything was ok in my game, and had defeated the mechanoids all waves of raiders ... But I was beaten on day 172 , when a psychotic outbreak affected all Muffalos they were invading my base, killing all my colonists, one by one. .. I stay really frustrated by dying stupidly for a wave of Muffalos, as had survived the attacks of the so feared mechanoids...

It's all... Sorry for my bad english

[Col_Jessep]

Alternatively, maybe a different set of story tellers for those that want to try and play a longer game?  Just dropping an utterly unbeatable force (and I did try to beat them ... maybe I just used bad tactics) seems quite unsatisfying to me.  There has to be a better way to handle this than a sudden ramp up to the death drop.

This so much!
I like longer games. 100 days is just for warming up. I want to be able to build a giant base with lots of unnecessary rooms and furniture for decoration. Right now if you stockpile food and resources, build large rooms with lots of furniture and collect weapons and manufactured goods for trade you are hurting yourself. You know you will get punished during the next raider attack. However, if you build a minimal base and delete stockpiles that you no longer need your chances of success go up.

Sorry, but that makes no sense in my opinion. The goal of every comparable game is to grow and prosper. Dwarf Fortress will give you more dwarfs if your fortress is more valuable. Prison Architect allows you to house more inmates, make more money, improve and expand. RimWorld gives you nothing and kicks you in the nuts.

I like a challenge, I really do, but I find it extremely frustrating to know that no matter how well I play, it will all be for nothing because the storyteller will just drop more enemies on me more frequently until my colony perishes. Up until Alpha 3 I was able to decide how long I want to keep playing - if I played my cards right. Now the storyteller decides at an arbitrary point to kill me. Why?

What is wrong with allowing me to manage my colony for as long as I want?

[Tynan]

Dwarf Fortress does bring greater attacks if you have greater wealth. That's why the enemies are there - to steal your stuff.

I do understand your annoyance with the concept, if you get the sense that you're being punished for succeeding. This is an inherent problem with every adaptive difficulty system in games.

What alternatives can you suggest? The system used to cue off strength - colonist count, weaponry, turrets - but that concept came under lots of criticism as well. I suppose we could make a completely non-adaptive storyteller who just ramps up according to a fixed schedule, but that will match very few players. Almost everyone will be either way ahead or left in the dust. So what else is there? I'm really curious if you have a solution I haven't thought or heard of yet.

[SSS]

Dwarf Fortress does bring greater attacks if you have greater wealth. That's why the enemies are there - to steal your stuff.

I do understand your annoyance with the concept, if you get the sense that you're being punished for succeeding. This is an inherent problem with every adaptive difficulty system in games.

What alternatives can you suggest? The system used to cue off strength - colonist count, weaponry, turrets - but that concept came under lots of criticism as well. I suppose we could make a completely non-adaptive storyteller who just ramps up according to a fixed schedule, but that will match very few players. Almost everyone will be either way ahead or left in the dust. So what else is there? I'm really curious if you have a solution I haven't thought or heard of yet.

I don't think the difficulty itself is the problem, but the "win mindset". Rim World is meant to produce stories, but many people are just playing it in the sense of any other game. A game that is meant to beat you after so long might seem counter-intuitive to some. (Thank you for clarifying that, btw- I didn't even realize that myself.)

This is somewhat intensified by the current lack of an endgame. People are expecting to be able to meet the demands of a larger colony, since expansion is all there is to do currently. An update that explains that you're meant to die (for now) after x days would probably be more beneficial than endless tinkering with the difficulty.

[Pirx Danford]

Well right now the ever increasing attacks are the only challenge to overcome.
After a while it appears pointless to keep struggling just for struggles sake, but of course this is true at this time.
I am sure when there is an endgame or maybe even different endgames it will become clear that the challenges thrown in the path to victory may very well result in game over if there is a weakness, so if one manages to keep the game going one even can win at the end.

Having said this, after playing on Cassandra Classic for over 100 days I must admit that one psychotic wave of boomrats was the death of my base and I had to load an older save game where I did a first-strike on all boomrats on the map... just so a wave of raiders could attack instead.
Thankfully the raiders were not prepared for a melee brawl at my entrance doors, so I coped and killed nearly all of them.

But after day 100 its wave after wave... my base is full of dirt and I cant erect defenses and my cook is constantly behind on preparing meals...

Maybe the storyteller should also evaluate the overall happiness and cleanliness of the base to check if a prolonged break after yet another attack might be a good idea, at least it could wait to let me collect all the weapons scattered about.

Still - I must admit the balance is very good.
When 4 centipedes arrived I thought I was done for, but with some advanced strategies like sniping the one with the minigun off while they were preparing the attack and then doing a constant attack from 4 good cover spots by switching out damaged pawns I managed to win even as it was a close call.
To win like this yields great satisfaction and makes for a very enjoyable game.

Hopefully I'll find some time to let my folks work on the base though... its slowly becoming a game of viscera cleanup detail ;-)

[Tynan]

Thanks Pirx.

I am hoping to get a proper endgame into the Alpha5 or Alpha6. This will be the one where you build a ship to escape the planet.

After that I'm looking at doing less combat by adding more stuff to build and customize in the base. It is a combat-heavy game because it's so light on other content.

[StorymasterQ]

I am hoping to get a proper endgame into the Alpha5 or Alpha6. This will be the one where you build a ship to escape the planet.

o_O
This.

[Nasikabatrachus]

In Dwarf Fortress, wealth is a measure of a lot of little things which all provide their own sorts of benefit. Wealth objects mean better decorations, more valuable trade goods, better weapons and armor, happier dwarves, etcetera. Right now in Rimworld there's not a lot that wealth can actually do except draw more raiders, and if you play like I do then it's kind of boring most of the time. 50 days is a long time, but that's when I start to get interesting raids, if I even do get those.

Instead of a single-factor approach, I would suggest a multi-part solution. For a start, let raid power/size be related to colony strength again as at least a secondary factor, because underproducing wealth fools the storytellers too easily. Then, add elements which allow accumulated wealth to open up possibilities as well as create sources of conflict. Use more resources as bargaining chips in diplomacy, and let hostile factions demand various resources appropriate to their type as tribute. Make simple story events to correlate with increasing wealth which implicitly invite conflict, like an appeal for shelter by a runaway slaveâ€"i.e. from a pirate factionâ€" who might become part of the colony if you accept them. This is aside from more obvious long-term wealth goals like buying spaceship parts off of traders with lots of silver.

Overall, I think wealth should invite enemies to tear you down, while strength should be the barometer they use to figure out how to do it.

[haint]

I'm not entirely certain that one of the mods I'm using hasn't wacked things out a bit, but none state that they affect raids.  But, at around day 80 of my new colony, set to Cassandra Classic, I'd seen about 5 or 6 raids of ~300 enemies.  The great, game-lagging mobs of cave people were easy to chew up in my 10-killbox long maze of blasting charges that opened up into an arch of turrets and colonists behind sandbags.  So was the psychic wave of 18 or so muffalo.  The 309 space pirates (the number in the last raid, thanks for the lifeform scanner in Miscellaneous mod Haplo) were another story.  Especially with the Project Armory mod (by Evul, thanks, great mod), since they were packing RPG-7s and automatics and several laser/energy weapon varieties.  And I only had 15 colonists, lol.  The turrets stayed alive for about 0.5 seconds, and my colonists for about a second or so longer.  So yeah... kinda difficult? IDK it was fun while it lasted.

[Duskprowler]

Dwarf Fortress does bring greater attacks if you have greater wealth. That's why the enemies are there - to steal your stuff.

I do understand your annoyance with the concept, if you get the sense that you're being punished for succeeding. This is an inherent problem with every adaptive difficulty system in games.

What alternatives can you suggest? The system used to cue off strength - colonist count, weaponry, turrets - but that concept came under lots of criticism as well. I suppose we could make a completely non-adaptive storyteller who just ramps up according to a fixed schedule, but that will match very few players. Almost everyone will be either way ahead or left in the dust. So what else is there? I'm really curious if you have a solution I haven't thought or heard of yet.

In my experience the best games are ones that adapt themselves to fit the individual users preferences. Of course there are limits to this but the closer you can come to it the better the game.

My recommendation would be to to have multiple variations of the story teller. The 'classic' ones you keep as is but also make one for longer duration colonies for those who like to play that way but want more then Phoebe Friendly. Like a 'balanced', 'Cassandra Balanced'. The balanced ones would determine raid strength from a base of colony defense and add on to that based on how well you handled the last raid. If the last raid did not kill anyone or do any damage then the storyteller ups the raid strength of the next one.

This keeps going until a lot of damage is done or one or more colonists is killed. Then it backs off again for a length of time depending on how much damage it did. If little damage was done then the backing off is slight if half the colony burns down and half the colonists get killed then it backs off a lot and a long enough time to give the player time to recover.

I would also love to see raiders with different objectives. Classic raiders would be there to loot and if they were too tough for you then you could back off and each surviving raider would make for your stockpile and loot a certain amount of resources from your colony. cannibals would attack until they killed one colonist (or prisoner) for each surviving cannibal and leave with the bodies. Invaders would be there to kill you off and take over your colony.

I think both of these things would help greatly with the enjoyably of the game although I know you have a lot of improvements you are working on I highly recommend adding balanced story tellers or something like it as soon as possible so players can play longer games.

I just thought of another alternative. As you are already into modding maybe you can make the storytellers modable so that the modding community could experiment and test different storytellers to find ones players like. This would allow many different storytellers to take shape and also take the work load off of you in having to try and balance out the storytellers as well as save you having to update the game just to try and fix a storyteller balance issue.

[nuschler22]

This game at this difficulty level (basic Cassandra) is way too frustrating.  I absolutely can't stand that this AI will stop at nothing to kill off your colony.  I'm about done with the game. 

I don't understand the purpose of the game, I suppose.  Day 97 and the game is over because I get hordes of raiders and insane animals?  I haven't researched half of the items.  I haven't built half the things I want to build.  I don't have time to repair yet alone build anything between events.  And this is with multiple reloads of my saves.

I hope this gets changed.  This is supposed to be a game where you build your colony.  Not inevitably die.  This game has gone the wrong direction and lost me if that's where we are headed.

[frosty840]

This game at this difficulty level (basic Cassandra) is way too frustrating.  I absolutely can't stand that this AI will stop at nothing to kill off your colony.  I'm about done with the game. 

I don't understand the purpose of the game, I suppose.  Day 97 and the game is over because I get hordes of raiders and insane animals?  I haven't researched half of the items.  I haven't built half the things I want to build.  I don't have time to repair yet alone build anything between events.  And this is with multiple reloads of my saves.

I hope this gets changed.  This is supposed to be a game where you build your colony.  Not inevitably die.  This game has gone the wrong direction and lost me if that's where we are headed.

As has been said elsewhere in the thread, there's no "end" in the current version of the game, which is why the game inevitably kills you in the current version. Tynan replied a few posts ago that he hopes to get the "end" of the game (putting together a ship to escape the planet) into the next version of the game (or the one after that). After that, I suspect the way the game works will change quite significantly.

At the moment, though, the game kills you after a relatively short period of time to encourage you to begin a new colony so you can try and experiment with new strategies.

[DeMatt]

This game at this difficulty level (basic Cassandra) is way too frustrating.  I absolutely can't stand that this AI will stop at nothing to kill off your colony.  I'm about done with the game. 

I don't understand the purpose of the game, I suppose.  Day 97 and the game is over because I get hordes of raiders and insane animals?  I haven't researched half of the items.  I haven't built half the things I want to build.  I don't have time to repair yet alone build anything between events.  And this is with multiple reloads of my saves.

I hope this gets changed.  This is supposed to be a game where you build your colony.  Not inevitably die.  This game has gone the wrong direction and lost me if that's where we are headed.

Just for shits and giggles, I played a game without messing with my work priorities (everybody had everything, left on "Auto Priorities"), and I was able to finish all my research by day 86.

I suspect that you are overreaching yourself.  You only need 15 squares of crops per colonist;  each colonist wants one 5x6 bedroom;  you only need one of each production facility.  And your initial three colonists don't even need that for the first week or two.

And if the "get off-planet before the natives eat you" thesis is still too much for you, don't play on Cassandra Classic.  That's what Phoebe Friendly is for.

[Col_Jessep]

Dwarf Fortress does bring greater attacks if you have greater wealth. That's why the enemies are there - to steal your stuff.

True and it makes sense to increase the attackers strength with colony size. But DF will also make new dwarfs join your colony based on how rich you are. This leads to an interesting balance of getting enough new dwarfs to recruit soldiers and stronger opposition.

In RimWorld you got this 10-12 colonist cap. The trouble is the only way to compensate for lack of more fighters is to build turrets once you reach the cap. And the only way to keep the upper hand in the "more turrets, more raiders" spiral is to build a silly amount of turrets.

I do understand your annoyance with the concept, if you get the sense that you're being punished for succeeding. This is an inherent problem with every adaptive difficulty system in games.

What alternatives can you suggest? The system used to cue off strength - colonist count, weaponry, turrets - but that concept came under lots of criticism as well. I suppose we could make a completely non-adaptive storyteller who just ramps up according to a fixed schedule, but that will match very few players. Almost everyone will be either way ahead or left in the dust. So what else is there? I'm really curious if you have a solution I haven't thought or heard of yet.

I'll collect some ideas tonight and see if I can come up with alternative ideas. One idea that comes to mind at this second is to have a storyteller who "asks" the player how he is doing. That way the player can request a break, keep the storyteller going at the same pace or even increase the difficulty. You can call her Adaptive Amanda or something... =D

I would recommend not to use an arbitrary time to start killing the player off. Increasing difficulty over time is fine but sending new "clean-up crews" until the colony ceases to twitch, rolls over and dies is not imo.