Unstable build feedback thread

[Tynan]

The Social penalties for doing immoral actions should be made more severe, Tynan. Right now, killing someones friend, butchering them and *eating them* is all not as bad as being a little ugly. Even in a place like the Rimworld thats very illogical.

If doing all those 3 would cause atleast -40 in colony-relation, this would make having psychopathes also be a possible hazard of them being seen as an outcast, then the 'Human hat factory' money meta will become a little less preferable.

It's a good point, I should review the balance of the opinion system, it's been a while since it saw some love.

[Oblitus]

Anyway, let's please move on from the meta-discussion. This thread is for discussing play experiences with the 1.0 unstable build, not open-ended suggestions or ideas for major direction changes in the game. Off-topic posts may be removed.

It is caused by 1.0 experience directly. Changes in this build made the game more punishing for taking non-optimal decisions. Can't really tell for current build (made a new game and only played a year after reworking the ramp-up), and so far it is okay (2:1 from latest raids is fine by me), but I have to be pressed hard to take a take a pawn with major health issues or without a passion for combat, and should be truly desperate to take non-violent one. Late game raids are way too hard to afford to have pawns who can't fight well.

You are trying to make it a story generator, but you are achieving the opposite - the less you are attached the better it is played. Being merciless, manipulative asshole pays off greatly.

[Tynan]

Anyway, let's please move on from the meta-discussion. This thread is for discussing play experiences with the 1.0 unstable build, not open-ended suggestions or ideas for major direction changes in the game. Off-topic posts may be removed.

It is caused by 1.0 experience directly. Changes in this build made the game more punishing for taking non-optimal decisions. Can't really tell for current build (made a new game and only played a year after reworking the ramp-up), and so far it is okay (2:1 from latest raids is fine by me), but I have to be pressed hard to take a take a pawn with major health issues or without a passion for combat, and should be truly desperate to take non-violent one. Late game raids are way too hard to afford to have pawns who can't fight well.

You are trying to make it a story generator, but you are achieving the opposite - the less you are attached the better it is played. Being merciless, manipulative asshole pays off greatly.

Which difficulty is this specifically?

Generally, if you want breathing space to play around with story stuff you should play Medium or maybe Rough. The harder modes are designed to punish non-optimal play; there's no way to have a hard difficulty that also allows free role-play since hard inherently demands an optimal response to each situation, thus removing freedom.

I've tried lots of things to try to nudge players towards the appropriate difficulty for their play goals but it seems to be a really hard problem. I've got some ideas for doing this better, though.

[NagashUD]

Is it possible to get the predator message alert a bit earlier ? i usually get the message when the predator is already on my pawn ...

If i am not wrong, it should warn you when predator is in 60 tiles away now. The only exception is if some predator that was standing literally near your guy when he decided he's hungry. Then you get immediate alert. Well if the target is not armored and has ranged weapon your guy is usually a toast anyway in that case.

Hmmm well, i don't know for the 60 tiles, i only got the messages way too late; so maybe it's just bad luck :/

[Oblitus]

Anyway, let's please move on from the meta-discussion. This thread is for discussing play experiences with the 1.0 unstable build, not open-ended suggestions or ideas for major direction changes in the game. Off-topic posts may be removed.

It is caused by 1.0 experience directly. Changes in this build made the game more punishing for taking non-optimal decisions. Can't really tell for current build (made a new game and only played a year after reworking the ramp-up), and so far it is okay (2:1 from latest raids is fine by me), but I have to be pressed hard to take a take a pawn with major health issues or without a passion for combat, and should be truly desperate to take non-violent one. Late game raids are way too hard to afford to have pawns who can't fight well.

You are trying to make it a story generator, but you are achieving the opposite - the less you are attached the better it is played. Being merciless, manipulative asshole pays off greatly.

Which difficulty is this specifically?

Generally, if you want breathing space to play around with story stuff you should play Medium or maybe Rough. The harder modes are designed to punish non-optimal play; there's no way to have a hard difficulty that also allows free role-play since hard inherently demands an optimal response to each situation, thus removing freedom.

I've tried lots of things to try to nudge players towards the appropriate difficulty for their play goals but it seems to be a really hard problem. I've got some ideas for doing this better, though.

Medium. Note, that I've played on "Intense" before 1.0. The problem is not in difficulty but in core design. On medium I'll get 40 scythers falling on my head bypassing all possible defences, on hard I'll get 60. It doesn't matter. The problem is not in number, but in "bypassing all possible defenses" part. And even more straight up raids - there is a point when you WILL be overwhelmed by sheer numbers. On lower difficulties, it would be later, but it would be. The game has, by design, more offense than you can possibly have defence. And 1.0 is progressively stripping player of any defensive tactics. The game is, let's admit it, cheating. Almost all mechanics punishing player has no effect on enemies. And when you are losing against cheater - it's not a good story. It's okay to be challenged. It's okay to be punished for mistakes. It's okay to take losses for your incompetence. But playing rimworld is like playing chess with a pigeon. It knocks the pieces over, craps on the board, and claims victory.

[Galvenox]

So yeah, my pawns can't attack or hunt in .1964 either. They just stand there. I'll make a bug report because I see other stuff there, but not specifically attacking outright or hunting, though I'm willing to bet the pawns' inability to put out fires might be related.

This has to be mods or a version/save issue. A new game results in unbroken hunting/attacking. Bleh.

if you had RunAndGun installed and now it all works without it, that was the issue. I figured it was for me and already let the mod author know about it.

[Lanilor]

The Social penalties for doing immoral actions should be made more severe, Tynan. Right now, killing someones friend, butchering them and *eating them* is all not as bad as being a little ugly. Even in a place like the Rimworld thats very illogical.

If doing all those 3 would cause atleast -40 in colony-relation, this would make having psychopathes also be a possible hazard of them being seen as an outcast, then the 'Human hat factory' money meta will become a little less preferable.

How I value this ingame is mostly about how long the penality stays. Last game I had a normal guy butchering all raiders, because the -30 mood for a week wasn't that huge. A week is quickly over and if he gets a menthal break in that time, it's over quickly and give +40, so everything will be fine now.
I think the idea with the "humanity" for a long-term stat is quite nice as a compensate for short mood debuffs. I think just making the penality time really long doesn't fit. Having a time limit works for a lot, but for these humanity-things an enduring value that changes through events and has an impact somewhere sounds good. I just remember the game overlord vaguely where something like that existed.

For the pawn thing: I take most of the pawns I get until I have "enough" colonists (as in I like small colonies and my old laptop likes it too). So even a guy that has one or two passions is still really useful. I don't need anyone to have passions in half of the skills, he never has time to do everyting at all.
I recognized passions and traits decide mostly if I keep someone. I like how traits really make a pawn individual and this could still be a bit more impactful. The values are in the right range, it's just that pawns with only 2 traits lack some of this individuality, especially if they are more generic. One tait more for everyone maybe. Or everyone has a core-trait that defines a lot (like pyro, psychopath, neurotic, night-owl, ...) and several smaller side traits (like depressive, hard worker, ...)

I've tried lots of things to try to nudge players towards the appropriate difficulty for their play goals but it seems to be a really hard problem. I've got some ideas for doing this better, though.

I've seen that "problem" quite often. Some players just want to play on the highest difficulty, with the biggest map size, with the highest [whatever number]. I guess it's kinda a psychological thing to want to be part of the best. I've heard people saying extreme is so hard, I need a mod that makes it easier, because lowering the difficulty seems out of their mind or whatever.

[Roolo]

So yeah, my pawns can't attack or hunt in .1964 either. They just stand there. I'll make a bug report because I see other stuff there, but not specifically attacking outright or hunting, though I'm willing to bet the pawns' inability to put out fires might be related.

This has to be mods or a version/save issue. A new game results in unbroken hunting/attacking. Bleh.

if you had RunAndGun installed and now it all works without it, that was the issue. I figured it was for me and already let the mod author know about it.

Apparently, one of the latest builds broke RunAndGun. I just fixed it. If you download version 1.0.1 of RunAndGun things should be fine again.

[robno]

This is quite an annoying QoL UI thing: I like to generate full planets, which takes a while. When I click on a tile and the stats about the tile come up in the box, it has a cross in the top right, which subconsciously leads me to press the Esc key to close it. But this destroys the world and means I have to wait through generating the world all over again. Could Esc first close this box? It takes a while to generate a planet, so I don't think you even need Esc to reverse that. But if you keep it in, I think Esc should prioritise closing the stats box for the tile (since it has a x sign).

EDIT: Alternatively, keep the last generated world in memory so if the seed is the same it will just use that rather than regenerating it.

A small graphical thing on the world view (when selecting a site): if you click on different areas of the Earth, the Sun moves around, and most of the background stars stay in the same place. But some of the stars close to the Sun change positions weirdly. Is this intended?

[dogthinker]

This is the existing design; there's mood penaties for things like banishing or executing your own colonists, especially if they have relationships. We could push this aspect harder and design more around this, but it's just a matter of development time, really.

I was thinking about more of some sort of positive feedback loop, the happy carrot in contrast to the sadness stick.

Anyway, let's please move on from the meta-discussion. This thread is for discussing play experiences with the 1.0 unstable build.

Which difficulty is this specifically?

Generally, if you want breathing space to play around with story stuff you should play Medium or maybe Rough. The harder modes are designed to punish non-optimal play; there's no way to have a hard difficulty that also allows free role-play since hard inherently demands an optimal response to each situation, thus removing freedom.

I've tried lots of things to try to nudge players towards the appropriate difficulty for their play goals but it seems to be a really hard problem. I've got some ideas for doing this better, though.

So far, I don't think the game is too hard in 1.0. I play for story, thus sub-optimally, but with randy extreme / hardcore, no mods. Some things seem markedly easier than the last time I played. For example, my perception is that disease seems to be far less of a problem to me. Against plague I used one or two meds on each colonist until I was sure they were going to be fine, then switched to herbal. Even the colonist that had a heart-attack while plague infected pulled through, which really surprised me. This is even without hospital beds etc. Is there some luck/hidden stats involved? I noticed that one of my colonists healed much quicker than the others, but I couldn't figure out why.

[Ser Kitteh]

Quickie: Tynan, once upon a time, you made a thread regarding animals in combat. Will there be any features implemented to make them more useful?

On the whole, treating pawns:

I sympathise with Tynan's position of wanting to players to care for pawns instead of expandable statblocks. Much of it has to do with violence being such an integral part of Rimworld (and really, games in general). I don't pretend to have solutions to this issue, but here are some random ideas I've had in mind since forever:

1. Raids are the biggest threats to colonies, this is a given. So, why not be able to bribe them to go away? It's TECHNICALLY in the game in regards to "leave valuables outside and hope the raiders take them and go away". But even something as "give X silver to go away" would be enough, IMO. At least a once in a while thing. Maybe even before every single raid.

2. How many a post has r/rimworld made about being able to capture an enemy leader but not being able to do anything about it? If killed, there could be a "reset" in which raids stop appearing. Maybe a month or two. If captured, the raiders will agree to stop attacking for X amount of time. If trying to rescue, raiders may decide to save the leader again or decide to elect a new one.

3. On world maps: give a chance for pawns to sneak by a possible encounter. This should be impossible with a train of 10 muffalos but a single runner or maybe two should be able to avoid them. How about threatening them to back off? Maybe a combination of player weapons and/or shooting/melee skill?

4. The destruction of a pirate faction base should probably also "reset" or "freeze" this raid timer. Perhaps even an equivalent for mechanoids.

5. We have an artefact that if activated, makes animals go crazy. Why not an equivalent for calming them? This would create a non-violent solution to the manhunter event. Maybe an ability to calm them via Animal skill? Surely my level 15 handler should have the skill to calm down a raging bear after all.

This has probably crossed into the realm of "move this to the suggestion thread" but it's quite clear that veteran players do in fact treat pawns as expandable. It's not a problem for most, but as this clashes with Tynan's vision, it's a handful of ideas that I can offer. Not a dev, not a programmer, just one guy's opinion on the matter.

[Madman666]

Quite solid opinion actually. Bribing raids and letting them buy out captured leaders\pawns from you also would be a nice addition. They can offer you money for a kidnapped pawn - should be possible for us as well. At least if we re talking about tribes\outlanders (pirates probably don't give a crap about their own people).

On the topic of making player care for his pawns - if this is a real goal of the game - it has a ton of stuff, that makes it real hard to afford to like a pawn. Its way too brutal to establish this kind of connections. Earlier you could be somewhat safe towards lategame making your defense as solid as you can. This time with increased drop pod\sapper raids you're never safe. And thus - you learn to treat your colonists as workforce, preferably expendable one.

[5thHorseman]

Perhaps build a cycle into the game that rewards the colony's ability to sustain its weaker members, such that keeping them going becomes an end in itself.

This is the existing design; there's mood penaties for things like banishing or executing your own colonists, especially if they have relationships. We could push this aspect harder and design more around this, but it's just a matter of development time, really.

Not penalties. Rewards. We need a reason to take those 12 cats who are going to eat us out of house and home, instead of turning them into dinner for the dogs we're keeping because they're actually useful but breed like rabbits so we slaughter their young and turn them into kibble.

[Syrchalis]

This is the existing design; there's mood penaties for things like banishing or executing your own colonists, especially if they have relationships. We could push this aspect harder and design more around this, but it's just a matter of development time, really.

From my experiences in 1.0 it's not that big of a deal to banish a bad colonist or avoid them in the first place. You can pass up on wanderers/chased refugees, let escape pod people die, they have either no effect on your colonists or it's a minor one.

Don't get me wrong I think making the debuffs more severe will not solve the issue. It might be a good idea regardless, to help with the issue, but not solve it. I'm saying this based on my experience in 1.0. If the banished debuff was harder, lasted longer etc. it wouldn't make me think twice if I really want to get rid of someone.

Punishing is generally not the way to get players to do something, rather make it attractive to care for someone handicapped. For example give a mood buff to everyone if you have a person over the age of 50 with an ailment like "frail" or "bad back" in the colony. The more severe the debuff and the more that colonist has, and the more colonists of this type you have, the bigger the mood buff.

One could even give a global work speed buff to all pawns. Nothing insane, but maybe 5-10%.

[Ser Kitteh]

I too have banished many a useless colonist. Making a debuff be real bad and last a long time however, will not solve the issue. It will make players go "our colonists barely know the pyromaniac, drug addicted, convent child/sheriff, why would they care?!"

I agree with the above post of carrot over beatings. If my village decided to care for a kid or an old person, we'd probably feel very good of ourselves. That won't stop players shoving them in the nearest cryptopod though.