Unstable build feedback thread

[Syrchalis]

"Removed bridges research."

Well for me that came in just handy. I am living next to a river and bridges were very low priority for me because I had only two colonists and other stuff is badly needed in research. So now I can build a bridge and research other stuff.

[Wanderer_joins]

About the end-game sequence: fun, extreme.

I've just launched the ship, i've documented the 15 last days, 1.0.1953 (playthrough started 1.0.1936)

Visual summary:



So it was extreme, but this intense fight for survival in the last days is what justifies to bother for various quests for antigrain warheads, power beam and orbital bombardment targeter. Even uranium lumps are not to be neglected.

In a nutshell, 1.0 has added a mid game and an end game. We could also say a pre-early game if you choose the NB scenario.

I've not much to say since i think it was extreme, but balanced. I did the quests to get precious items, and bought what i could over the years, it turned out it was really useful.

Your army of bionic pawns with good armors will not be wasted. I think many pawns survived thanks to the new armor system, limbs were lost, they got bruises and deep injuries, but in the chaos only one died.

Raids were varied, challenges real, and i think if you go underprepared for the ship start-up, it can be brutal for the colony.

For comparison, B18 with a tribal start in tropical swamp, also cassandra extreme permadeath. Wealth was similar, mood was better in 1.0 (but i think i neglected the swampy base), ship sequence more interesting in 1.0, i had fewer deaths in B18 but early version of sappers was brutal in 1.0 and there was more drop pod raids (whereas almost inexistent in B18).

[Detoxii]

So far I have put in about 30 hours since the update and have quite a few bits of information I would like to share.

I have started two colonies, the first was extreme Randy Naked Brutality and that lasted about an hour. The only reason this even lasted an hour is I had a cave insect hive that was keeping me safe for the early days. Eventually an infection occurred and that was it. I really like the new scenario but it is brutal and I don't have a problem with that, good job.

My newer play through is on Randy hard and this one I have a lot to talk about. First and foremost I always played on either Cassandra or Randy Extreme and now I feel that it is too difficult to stay alive. On the topic of medical, I have noticed that fighting infections with Healroot does not seem to be cutting it. I'm using at least a 10+skill in medicine colonist with hospital beds/vitals monitor and usually the infection outdoes the healroot. I am unsure if this is by design, as in B18 I easily fought off infections with Healroot, but of course there were a HELL of a lot more infections in B18 than in 1.0. Also my medical people are nowhere near as diligent about treating people as they were before. After a raid I can go 2 days without people getting treated. They have no issues patching up prisoners on the spot, but seem to ignore each other unless it is really serious. Lighter wounds that are bleeding, but will go away natually seem to be ignored. I have my priorities set for my doctors as 1 for doctoring, 2 for patient, and like 4 for bed rest, but they seem to get in a hospital bed right away and ignore everyone else. I attached a screenshot of my priorities and if possible, I could attach a post-raid screenshot of the hospital. In B18 I never had this issue and doctors would take care of it right away.

I really do like the change of making traders not buying simple-lavish meals, and allowing for packaged survival meals to be purchased. This really has a huge change on my gameplay as back in B18 I just sold fine meals that were leftover and massively overproduced food without ever producing packaged meals. I like this simply because the packaged meals take a lot longer to make, and give far more experience. It's almost like specializing in what you need at the time instead of just throwing tons of one product out and I like that level of micromanagement and detail. I realize I could use bill limits to automate this for me, but I don't.

Next up is an issue I have had for a long time, since Alpha 16. I really dislike the battery system overloading or whatever it is called and blowing out huge holes in your base. Every playthrough I do now consists of going from wood fired generators to geothermal and never investing in batteries. I direct power everything just to skip that event entirely. I am unsure how to address this because logically it makes sense that this event would occur, and the only thing I can think of is some kind of breaker box system or circuit breakers as some mods have tackled this already. I can't really provide more input other than I just avoid them entirely, and this works very well for me, but feels wasteful.

One of the biggest complaints and issues for me is the lack of being able to repair anything. I can think of a few ways to balance this out somewhat but it really does bother me that my current colony, of 13-15 people, all have to have new power armor made every 30-50 days. I realize I could make flak items to substitute for power armor, but it is leaps better than flak at this point. I miss the mending mod but only want items from colonists repaired and not changing over dead mans apparel like mending does. Perhaps lowering the quality of the item being repaired by 1-2 levels once repaired would balance this out, aka masterwork down to good-excellent if repaired. I just lost my masterwork power armor pride and joy on my brawler, who I would not let her take it off until it actually fell apart off of her body, you could say I was attached. I even sent her out against a raid with it at 2.9% and yes, it did disintegrate in combat, but at least it did not go to waste. We could even have the repairing requirement take a long time, with some resource cost. Also I realize degrading quality is just delaying the inevitable but this is how I operate in real life, fix it until it is beyond repair and make use of what you have. To me this idea fits into this type of scenario very well being stranded on a planet without much.

Since I cannot think of anything more off the top of my head, the last change I really really like are the changes to workspeed in general. Research is way faster, construction is way faster, even making drugs is super fast. Plantwork has seen a lot of slowdown compared to before but I prefer that as growing was so difficult to level up without just telling a colonist to sow an area over and over and keep replacing everything. Clothing is the biggest and favorite change to me so far. My 20 crafter without any workspeed traits can produce a Thrumbofur button down shirt or pants in legit 2-3 seconds on 3x speed. Crafting was always so tedious before and now it feels very improved with how their skills affect the speed. Also, as I have noticed people pointing out before, Cocoa does seems pretty inferior. I like the recreational side of it, but its price is so low. Doing either drugs or Devilstrand seems far more lucrative. Also, big fan of metal tile having more use now, as I almost never made flooring out of it before.

Thanks again for such an amazing game. I came to this from Gnomoria and was heartbroken too see the developer had to give up the project. This game has far more detail on things like combat, but both games had a pretty high amount of micromanagement and made me really think and plan which draws me in a lot .

[attachment deleted due to age]

[Greep]

Tynan, do you want us to start a new colony after each patch? Or continue playing our old colony? I've been starting a new one each patch to avoid carrying over bugs from the previous patch, but with the rate of patching I'm not even getting through a season before starting over.

I've played a colony through 5 patches, just roll with it.  The bugs are pretty minor, and a lot of balance issues only becoming apparent later in the game so you might be limiting your feedback by restarting

[Zombull]

New blue color on berry bushes makes them much harder to see.

[Mjtaylor194]

I've come across a pretty "cheesy" tactic while playing that I thought you might want to address. If you use the claim tool and claim the ruins and walls on the map, it confuses the enemy ai completely. They will walk right by your base to go hammer on a random wall. This is even more effective if you claim the insect's glow pods, now that the insects don't attack the colony when attacked by raiders.

(Loving the changes so far, thanks Tynan.)

[Greep]

Interestingly, the trainwreck continues.  I think so many people have died so quickly and so consistently to every raid, the storytellers' long term/short term rampup are basically zero, so it's all wealth which is rapidcaly falling.  Two more raids occur, the first about 5 centipedes and a few lancers.  I blow all three doomsdays I have on them and wipe them out.  Another drop pod occurs, this time with only a few lancers that I get to walk into the few remaining functional cannons I have.

Many colonists have negative mood even after catharsis, so I send them on caravan (one of them dies to a tribal with a shiv, they're pretty much all on death's door), maybe I can limp along to victory by playing peekaboo and letting other dudes fight each other    Not really, but you make a fort last to the ship and you can't not play it out.

A called caravan arrives, I gift them steel because I can't even use it to re-arm the cannons in time between murderous breaks.



[attachment deleted due to age]

[Perq]

I have some more stuff... you guessed it - caravans!

What I've noticed is that every caravan member contributes to total carry weight (this includes prisoners). What is kinda weird tho, is that downed members also contribute to that limit.
You can end up with 8 man caravan, from which 1 colonist is not downed, 4 are downed colonists and 3 downed prisoners. Yet, this single dudes can carry as much as 8 people... I'd say that downed pawns should not only not contribute to carry weight, but they should take some (but not all their weight - that would be too brutal). Say, 10-15kg, thematically explaining it as them being dragged on the ground.

I think it could add a little more of we need to stay here until he can walk, which adds some story telling but also makes you consider if you want to drag downed people around. More dramatic choices to leave them behind, and so on.

[Admiral Obvious]

I have some more stuff... you guessed it - caravans!

What I've noticed is that every caravan member contributes to total carry weight (this includes prisoners). What is kinda weird tho, is that downed members also contribute to that limit.
You can end up with 8 man caravan, from which 1 colonist is not downed, 4 are downed colonists and 3 downed prisoners. Yet, this single dudes can carry as much as 8 people... I'd say that downed pawns should not only not contribute to carry weight, but they should take some (but not all their weight - that would be too brutal). Say, 10-15kg, thematically explaining it as them being dragged on the ground.

I think it could add a little more of we need to stay here until he can walk, which adds some story telling but also makes you consider if you want to drag downed people around. More dramatic choices to leave them behind, and so on.

I prefer it this way honestly. That way a character with the wimp trait can't suddenly stop the caravan from moving because he got a spot of food poisoning.

[etoon]

I need to throw my hat in with the people saying the incapacitated quests simply aren't worth it. I've yet to see one not guarded or bait for an ambush. A couple of examples. I got a quest for someone who happened to be the wife of a colonist. About a year and a half into Pheobe rough. The note said to expect a ring of turrets. I took three colonists planning to make a hole in the ring and get out. I was greeted by the ring and a incendiary mortar. It wouldn't have been a problem except she died of her wounds before I could get to her. Maybe if I brought more colonists I could have brought down the turrets in time but that would have left the colony woefully understaffed. (I had 8 colonists.)

The next example is a tribal start with Pheobe medium. Its about half a year in when I get a quest saying there might be danger. I'm doing ok so I figure I'd give it a try. I only have five colonists so I send the two I can spare. That evening I get a flash storm right next to my camp. It hits my fields in two spots and right next to my storage building. I had to write off the fields and focus on the storage building otherwise my whole camp would have gone up. (I was just starting to put up stone walls.) Then when the caravan arrives it turns out to be an ambush from the edge of the map. I think there were six tribals. I managed to get one away.

An unguarded pawn should be the rule, not the exception, early on. You've got to take enough food and medicine, which can leave your base vulnerable, for a pawn that might not be worth it. The ambushes and guards make that effort not worth it no matter how good the pawn is early game. The only time I try them now is when the pawn is somehow related to one of my colonists. And even then they might die before I can deal with the guards. Maybe make their wounds less severe?

[Greep]

It actually ends up being worse if you try and it's a relationship, although it's somewhat buggy.  If you ignore the quest, you get -18 for failed to save them.  If you try and fail, you get -18 for failing to save, and -20 for them dying, for two seasons, which is so bad you may as well execute/banish them.  At least this is how it worked in early 1.0, not sure if that's changed.

[bbqftw]

A feedback about caravan - the manual rest button doesn't appear to actually force colonists to rest. It seems like there is a given period during the day when colonists on caravan will rest. However, what this results in is if your caravan 'desyncs' from this timer, you end up wasting a full day sitting around with pissed off tired pawns until night arrives. It also results in increased food expenditure.

It is a pity that in both movement and in other aspects it seems design direction is opting for more clunky control of pawns.

[Greep]

Just so people don't think I'm kidding, here's the last two days, approaching T-5days.  I only built one crypto for the ship because I was lazy, now I know it was because I was optimistic 

[attachment deleted due to age]

[Jovlo]

I'm probably not the first to suggest this, but could melee fighters please get an "attack at will" button, just like shooters have a "fire at will" button?
I love how melee is now actually useful and use melee ambushes to deal with long range shooting raiders, but If I turn my back on them for 5 seconds, I often find them just standing there next to a raider corpse while a valid next target is shooting at them from 4 squares away.


Some play stories now:
I'm playing on Randy Medium with a tribal start.
148 days in and with 18 colonists, I haven't built a single turret (haven't done that since I started playing late A15), and only 3/4th of my colony is walled off.
The large gap is defended with sandbags and wall pillars, which you can reach by walking along long pieces of wall on either sides with (plasteel) doors that can be used for ambushes.
My 3 attack rhinoceroses (and slowly breeding more) really come in handy.
There is a smaller gap where the river leaves my colony through a cave, which is booby trapped and leads to a defendable position within my base.

There's only been 1 sapper raid that I remember, which could be because of my lack of walls?
I didn't build turrets because I couldn't get much steel at first.
To my surprise, I noticed that I could survive well (with some save scumming to learn from my mistakes, I'll admit) and I love not having a killbox.
Then again, I haven't faced many mechanoids yet.

I also love how caravanning is now often worth it, getting you those rare items that were introduced in B18.
Because of this, I can give/grow my poor colonist Ophelia who Randy seems to hate a new leg, arm, ear and eye.
I also love that prosthetics are researchable.
Rescue mission were still too risky when my colony started (right after the build that made watermills bigger) and I haven't tried them since.

Tynan, I don't believe perfection is possible, but you're getting close. 

[Greep]

Several more raids, ran out of mortal shells and launchers, so dudes are just coming in at full force.  At this point the fort is just completely overrun so I'm hiding out in the wilderness, everyone's addicted to luci, some tribals are picking off the last of the cannons and some spare dogs, buffalo has food poisoning, I think paine is catatonic.

Edit: this is hilarious.  I'm surviving on some packaged survival meals from a previous siege 

[attachment deleted due to age]