Unstable build feedback thread

[Teleblaster18]

The term "prosthetic" has a bit of a game mechanics meaning too, though. It denotes a certain tech level of artificial parts. Prosthetic -> Bionic -> Archotech. Hence the choice of prosthetic. It makes all the parts of each tier group together nicely on lists.

Point taken on all counts, and I thought it was exactly that: an attempt to normalize categories. I've just never heard hearts referred to as prosthetic, before - only as "artificial".  I thought it worth mentioning. 

[Greep]

This is friggin hilarious to watch tho.

I just beat a siege while half my dudes were killing the other half.

[attachment deleted due to age]

[Tynan]

Teleblaster I know what you mean about some "unbalanced" strategies being fun. This is valid in a SP game, for sure.

Some strats are worse than others this way. E.g. killboxes were never that bad; it's still kind of interesting to build and maintain something like that. But door-cheesing a thrumbo, or building a single door in a field with a roof so raiders attack it and get crushed really doesn't seem as fun, it seems meaningless.

DF really pushes the "unbalanced and it's fun" angle. E.g. a built-up dwarf fort is nearly invincible, it really only gets destroyed if the player does something destabilizing out of boredom, or if some imba "building destroyer"-tagged mega-creature attacks and murders every dwarf in one swipe.

I think there should be room to do goofy weird crazy things, but it shouldn't and cannot be "extreme mode". It's really several different games using the same mechanics.

Peaceful is for building and the joy of creating.

Medium-ish is for playing around with challenges and telling stories.

Extreme mode really is for playing the optimization game. There is no room for anything non-optimal; there cannot be in a mode designed to push the player's optimization ability.

[5thHorseman]

It'd be really useful from my point of view to hear just more straight up play stories. A lot of this discussion seems to resolve around people criticizing changes based on their guesses about what my expectations or intent was for those changes. It's just not that productive, and I don't have time to explain every detail of every experiment I'm running, every plan we've got backlogged, and so on.

That is totally understandable and even reasonable, however there is a problem with this: Rimworld is a strategy and tactics game, so coming up with strategies is a huge part of the game. And using tactics to implement those strategies is a huge part of the game. And having those strategies thwarted and making stuff up on the fly is a huge - and hugely dangerous - part of a game where you don't have decent strategies and you don't implement them with solid tactics. You can't come up with strategies without theorycrafting, and you can't implement a strategy you don't have. If someone can't think of a good strategy, they're more likely to complain about it than go into a double-digit hours game knowing that they're going to get their asses handed to them at some point.

I may be in a fairly unique position of being a player who knows most of the mechanics of the game, but has no real good strategies as I've not played as much as most forum goers. I've played maybe a dozen games total, and each and every one of them* ended the same way: Raiders who were far better equipped than anything I'd seen before came in and wiped me out, usually in open combat and I'm not sure what I could have done (outside of being better prepared) to stop it.

My latest run (and the only run I've done on 1.0 so far) I had a nice base between 5 mountains. I had walled off 3 of the entrances and set up turrets on the 4th and 5th, and traps. The last guys to attack were like 4 tribals with bows and we took them out no problem. Then bandits showed up, about 8-10 of them vs my 9-person colony. 3 of their guys had grenades - 2 frag and 1 EMP. The EMP guy took out one turret and the other (with 2 of my guys hiding behind the sand bags) went to a frag grenade. At that point all that was stopping them was 3 of my shooters with brand new LMGs I'd just built, and those shooters had killed - up to this point - only 1 or 2 of their guys. I concentrated fire on the fraggers and got them before they killed anybody else, then turned to the shooters, and right when I thought maybe it'd be okay to pull out the melee guys to mop them up the bandits decided to run.

In addition to the two who died to the grenade (maybe grenades, I'm not sure) one more died in a hospital bed a bit later. This weeded my colony down to just 6 people and - assuming I have time to rebuild before the next attack - I don't see how they'll survive a similar assault. I won't speculate, though, as that's theorycrafting.

*Except that one crazy Randy run where a band of wild turkeys took me out right after a raid. They took me out by knocking down the door to the med bay where my only pawn still capable of walking was hiding with everybody else in hospital beds. They murdered him and then left because nobody was walking around anymore. And then a heat wave started and with the door open, everybody died of heat stroke.

[Greep]

I do agree with 5th horseman, you're going to theorycraft a lot no matter what, and sometimes that isn't bad if the reasoning is sound.  For instance, I know from experience that changes to the LRMS, both increased frequency and now with plasteel and uranium, would have no effect whatsoever on it's viability.  I don't need playtesting to know this, I've got a few hundred hours of knowing why I don't use it, and they don't have much to do with frequency or mineral type.

So I built it anyways in my current game and wasn't disappointed when none of the mineral scans were worth pursuing.

Same with caravans, I didn't need to play this update much to know that raid caravans and many events are still just too risky.  I only managed to get the A.I. component for the ship because it was 11 grizzly bears so I just sent a single dude with bionic legs to swipe it and run his ass off.

The reason 2+ man caravans are too risky is that you just can't split your fort, so many things can go wrong.  If your caravan fails you risk losing enough colonists to lose the game outright.  If you get raided with most of your colony gone, the same.  And usually if you're on mission that requires more than one guy, you need to bring 12, which just can't be done.

[Boboid]

Obviously context is everything and it's entirely possible that I'd agree with your risk assignment regarding LRMS/Caravans in general if I were to look at your colony's situation at any given time but my experience with the LRMS is still really positive.

Especially when playing Cass there's a distinct rhythm to major threats. Randy not so much but.. that's part of the reason I don't particularly like him.

So long as it's not winter and you haven't set up in a ridiculously mountainous region(or at least have good access to roads) most caravans are only a few days round trip and can easily slot into the time between major events back home. The most expensive part of LRMS scanner sites is typically the upkeep of the pack animals as you typically need a lot of them to grab everything. Fewer animals work just fine however, you'll just be leaving some resources behind.

It's also worth pointing out that you can always shore up your defenses before sending out caravans. If you couldn't have handled the last raid with 1-2 fewer people then you're really riding the razor's edge when it comes to defense.

Often the risk can be as small as 1 pawn with mediocre skills and a few pack animals, for 3-5 days, to get ~450 plasteel. Often that's worthwhile in my games. By and large the things those pawns would otherwise be doing are less profitable.

A fear of critical failure preventing you from obtaining resources which themselves can be used to prevent critical failure is quite a conservative approach.
Greed is sometimes good

[zizard]

Story about a mechanoid drop pod raid, 1st of Decembary, 5502, Day 160, Cassandra Extreme, Naked Brutality, A Rimworld Whose Name We Never Looked Up, The Rim, Galaxy, Milky Way, Universe.

8 lancers and 3 scythers dropped into the base (lovingly (at least 3 times a night) called home by 11 colonists) right next to the autocannon, which was quickly destroyed. The autocannon did not drop any materials upon exploding. The entire structure was vaporised. This was unusual, but I am only a humble colonist, who does not draw conclusions nor theorise about such things.

The lancer variant of mechanoodle have a weapon called a "charge lance". It's massive armour penetration and damage meant that fighting against it was a complete lottery, and 100% armour was only slightly better than being nude. It was so much fun to fight that we now call it the "casino lance". Thankfully, our extremely skilled very neurotic too smart gourmand intellectual tactician positioned all of us behind cover, then waited until the fight was over. This gallant inaction resulted in no deaths on our side, thanks to the RNG gods. Nothing else could have saved us today. We played optimally.

I hope you enjoy this rimworld story as much as I enjoyed telling it.

[Mehni]

I don't think cheese is bad. I consider "look at how much smarter I am by going back and forth between doors for 30 hours" a fun part of the game, whereas I enjoy the storytelling and social aspects a lot less.

Someone who enjoys the storytelling and social aspects a lot more might enjoy cheese because it makes combat easier and allows them to focus more on the parts of the game they do enjoy.

There's a lot of talk about nerfing certain strategies to encourage more varied play, but in terms of pawn to pawn combat I've felt somewhat limited since previous cheese tactics don't work. I had to savescum considerably to try out new strategies but all I found was that if you fight "fair" in RimWorld you are going to end up losing.

[Awe]

Almost 5505. 2 cents about multiple groupped raids(like 3-group sappers, or mech drop across entire map) - very annoying and boring to deal. Issue orders at each flank, watch few seconds, pause and again new orders at every flank just to not miss something weird like doomsday/tripple rocket.

[Teleblaster18]

Teleblaster I know what you mean about some "unbalanced" strategies being fun. This is valid in a SP game, for sure.

Some strats are worse than others this way. E.g. killboxes were never that bad; it's still kind of interesting to build and maintain something like that. But door-cheesing a thrumbo, or building a single door in a field with a roof so raiders attack it and get crushed really doesn't seem as fun, it seems meaningless.

DF really pushes the "unbalanced and it's fun" angle. E.g. a built-up dwarf fort is nearly invincible, it really only gets destroyed if the player does something destabilizing out of boredom, or if some imba "building destroyer"-tagged mega-creature attacks and murders every dwarf in one swipe.

I think there should be room to do goofy weird crazy things, but it shouldn't and cannot be "extreme mode". It's really several different games using the same mechanics.

Peaceful is for building and the joy of creating.

Medium-ish is for playing around with challenges and telling stories.

Extreme mode really is for playing the optimization game. There is no room for anything non-optimal; there cannot be in a mode designed to push the player's optimization ability.

Thanks for taking the time to directly address those issues, and why optimization from a vantage point of "most-difficult-to-least-difficult" game experiences has to occur.   

In closing, though:  on *any* skill level/storyteller combination,  I'm really, really okay with the idea of putting in 400 hours on a single colony, getting it running like clockwork, and having it getting wiped off the map by a single Antigrainalope.  Should one ever exist, of course.

[YokoZar]

Started a naked brutality scenario on medium, first few days were going well and got myself pretty situated.

I didn't have any obvious places to build defenses so I put a shelf outside behind a building wall - my plan was to attack with the bow around the corner and then switch to a club when they got close.  I put two deadfall traps around the edge too, and was pretty happy with this setup.

Then a racooon went mad and I proceeded to run around in a circle around my fortification, only to discover that the racoon can't trigger the deadfall traps.  I then ran inside and waited for the racoon to pass out.  This was before the door hp change, so not sure if it would work now (he put about 3 hits on the door before giving up).

[East]

I sometimes wonder if my reporting is causing serious problems with the update of the rimworld.

I watch the broadcast today. Many of the streamers that have easily spacecrafted on the B18 are now wandering in early games.

But the patch content is focused on preventing cheese strategy. And concentrate on the plate armor that nobody uses. On the forum, people continue to inject usefulness about armor, but broadcasters do not use anyone. There is not enough resources and time in real play. Temperature control may not be available.

Developers want to make and use weapons and equipment, but most people get weapon and cloths from enemy. Restricted recruitment conditions make it difficult to obtain elite(The figure for making plate armor is craft 8 ) production staff. And there is not enough time and resources to make it. Why they do not have resources and time is because they can not progress to the mid-level, and good weapon, good armor is needed to get to the middle. It is a contradiction.

The same is true for the World Map. World map is risk. Most people I see broadcast do not start on the road. The river starts. They like to start in the mountains or hill. The surrounding area is surrounded by many hills. It only takes a couple of days to get to the nearest event, so the risk increases, and when they experience the risk, they give up next time. I have never seen them refugee quests. No matter how clear or less the threat is, the risks do not outweigh the non-progressing world map events.

The patches are based on the theory of temperate forests, but the actual play varies from ice sheet to desert. Also, there are many villages near only  base is pirates or tribes.

Here in the forum people and I seem to play the best. Easily commerce, do events in a matter of days, minimize risks, but what you feel while watching the broadcasts is that the balance of the game is so difficult that everyone else is still dead in food poisoning with raid.

My posting is to prevent the weakening of the physical strength of the door, to clarify the events of the world map and to increase the profit. It is also said to weaken the centipede's strength. Because I watched the broadcast destroyed the world.

I feel that the game patch content is spaced from the actual game. So, you have to check the broadcast for a while.

For reference, some Rim World Streamers have a huge amount of play time. They are skilled rimworld gamers. Even such people are not doing well.

In this way, Rim World will be a very difficult and difficult game.

[Ser Kitteh]

Glitch:

When rescuing an incap refugee, if one of the colonists decides to GTFO'd while the other is carrying the refugee to the safety, the refugee is "lost" but the person rescuing them still joins the refugee.

Also, if possible to make the whole "rescue refugee and GTFO'd ASAP" tactic, let us choose the method to leave. It appears to me the rescue randomly choose the direction in which to leave the map, very frustrating if said direction is filled with ambushing raiders.

[Scavenger]

...

Please, please, just tell me your experiences and your suggestions for changes to make - but criticizing my thought process is meaningless because you don't know what my thought process is and it's not practical for me to constantly update everyone on it. To assume my thought process and then criticize that assumed entity is just yelling at clouds.

I'd like to get this thread back on track and end the side discussions. Please make posts that are directly experience based, not assuming others' thought processes, and not responding to arguments with arguments. Other posts may be deleted.

I do want to reaffirm that overall this thread is very useful. Thanks to all those who participate, especially writing nice play stories. The process continues to run well.

Haha, your patience is admirable with people that just love to argue or complain, and repetitively at that. I have never seen a game dev spend even half as much time responding to individuals and take all of the input into account like this, Thanks and keep on keepin on!

[Polder]

Quick play report:

Started an extreme Phoebe game with the 3 colonist start. After a season I got a destroy outpost mission and decided to go for it. I sent all three colonists, and picked up a good autopistol on the way from a friendly town. There were 5 enemies and I thought that I could do if I just managed to kill three enemies and made the remaining two flee. Except that the last two kept fighting and my already wounded colonists just could not handle any more fighting. I did not make any major mistakes during the battle, but the AI did make some poor decisions.