Unstable build feedback thread

[mcduff]

Traps still seem to be pretty effective, which is good.

Question: has hay been accidentally removed from the things animals eat? I'm in winter at the moment and even with a stockpile full of hay in my barn, all my alpacas are going down with malnutrition.

In what context are traps still effective? Trap mazes? defending corners or turrets? You can put 4 traps next to the two new large turrets now rather than 12 (these numbers are different if you sandbag turrets first). That's a big loss is coverage and all it does to trap mazes is make them longer if you want to use them or have less traps.

I'm playing on medium, I have a single switchback with some traps set at the entrance to my base, that seems to soften up manhunter packs and raids enough based on the last 3 events I got. Can't speak to those who play at higher difficulties.

[Syrchalis]

Hello Tynan,
Is there any possibility that more Tribal background stories will be created for version 1.0? I play tribal colonies a whole lot and I'd really like to see a non-unique Tribal backstory or three that gives a bonus to animals.

I would like to see that too. There are soooo many spacer stories but so few tribal ones. Not necessarily animal focused, just... more content in that regard. It really is somewhat annoying if you constantly get people with the exact same background.

[Broken Reality]

Continuing my tribal , cass, rough, temp forest, large hills year round growing.

I decided to continue with growing the devilstrand as it was already planted. At 80% grown, roughly, a toxic fallout happens. Now it's all gone and this is the biggest weakness of devilstrand is actually getting a crop grown without cold snaps, toxic fallout or something else wiping it out and you  are virtually guaranteed one of these events will happen.

Still struggling for prisoners to recruit from raids as most raids have no survivors and i have 9 colonists  - on raider, two chased refugees and one escape pod. Once resistance is broken recruiting is very fast however if you want to break resistance efficiently then you have to micromanage your warden otherwise you will miss chat opportunities and when you have a prisoner with 45 resistance and it goes down at most by 1.5 per chat thats a long time if you miss one chat per day as you will if left to their own devices due to timings and sleep patterns. So either you have a grumpy warden who has to keep getting woken up or you take days longer to recruit someone.

On the topic of tribal backgrounds I would love to see a bit more variety. When rolling colonists from tribes it is easy to get people good at melee but hard for shooting as the background that gives shooting is bad at everything else for example. This makes tribal colonies melee heavy and recruiting tribals from raids often exacerbates things. With the need for colonists to fight much greater now I highly value combat skills on my colonists and is one of the reasons I do tribal starts.

[Arq]

Got a corrupted save today.  I saved while a caravan was unloading at base and there was still a muffalo to unload (may or may not be unrelated to corruption).  The dev console popped up with a bunch of xml errors.  A short time later, as another caravan was arriving at a site (and generating the encounter, IIRC), I got a CTD.  Loading the corrupted save throws a bunch of errors but ultimately finishes with just loading the world map and no colony (it appears on the map, but no way to load it).  I have one of my caravans that I can still interact with, but that's it.

Error files and corrupted save attached.  If I can reproduce it, I'll try to get a save closer to the crash and update this post.

[attachment deleted due to age]

[KalkiKrosah]

Hello Tynan,
Is there any possibility that more Tribal background stories will be created for version 1.0? I play tribal colonies a whole lot and I'd really like to see a non-unique Tribal backstory or three that gives a bonus to animals.

I would like to see that too. There are soooo many spacer stories but so few tribal ones. Not necessarily animal focused, just... more content in that regard. It really is somewhat annoying if you constantly get people with the exact same background.

I haven't done a real count but there's approximately 30 tribal back stories that aren't uniquely tied to a specific named pawn. That's both child and adult. Spacer has nearly 100 for child back stories alone. I'd like to see tribals get some more depth added to their story line. I'd even be willing to write up some of those stories if need be.

[Polder]

Turrets could require ammunition to operate rather than requiring barrel changes.

[NiftyAxolotl]

My Tribal Animal Swarm succumbed to attrition. Dang. The raid size really picked up. My wealth was at 160k and it was 5505. I think I remember one of the patch notes mentioning animals counting for more raid points - if that's what happened, then mission accomplished.

I am trying again on a less wintery map. I expect that animals will be better with the feed problems reduced. I'll also rethink my total lack of defenses.

Turrets would benefit from costing ammunition to use rather than requiring a barrel change.

A Hopper with steel in it?

If I get far enough, I'll try some sacrificial turrets out in front to soften up raids. Since components are cheaper now, this might be economically viable.

[Koek]

Short story.

I roll a tribe on Cassandra/rough, even take the time to roll an undergrounder/researcher so I can start up a full time researcher asap, which I got going day 3 iirc. Later on I got a new pawn which became a parttime researcher, to speed it up a bit.

I got beds and clothing, got airconditioning and batteries up and beelined towards gunsmithing so I can produce some decent guns.
Although the raids have been giving me a few decent weapons I thought taking this research route was not the worst.
I had an easy raid of about 6 or 7 guys with molotovs and grenades, which I ended with just 2 guys easily outmaneuvering them in the open.
One of them had EMP nades which seemed useful for the encounter which made me post this story

Some time later a psychic ship landed which contained 1 scyther and 2 lancers. Seems I was waay undergeared for this encounter, because I lost 4 of my 7 pawns, all of which died in 1 shot. The lancers never missed.
Should I have gone for plate armor or even rush flak and have enough gear for all my pawns laying around for just this kind of encounter? What would the chances have been if I had at least wooden plate up on all my pawns?
Should I have neglected electricity and went for flak armor and better guns first?

I had this encounter 1 day after I got my first homemade bolt-action rifle which I made asap after getting the research done. My pawns were wearing alpaca dusters, warmasks and leather clothing. Yes, I know, not the best to fight mechanoids, but I had no other choice.

I'm not complaining, just asking if this is what a tribe should expect on cass/rough?

Anyways, GG and good night.

[Crow_T]

Some time later a psychic ship landed which contained 1 scyther and 2 lancers. Seems I was waay undergeared for this encounter, because I lost 4 of my 7 pawns, all of which died in 1 shot. The lancers never missed.
Should I have gone for plate armor or even rush flak and have enough gear for all my pawns laying around for just this kind of encounter? What would the chances have been if I had at least wooden plate up on all my pawns?
Should I have neglected electricity and went for flak armor and better guns first?

What kind of cover were you behind when engaging the mechs? When I get a ship I'll sometimes build a mini bunker a distance away before I crack it open (use stone). Also traps destroy scythers, baiting them into traps is pretty effective.

[syterth]

I really love the idea of the naked and alone start; HOWEVER, my current attempts (Cass/Rough) have been completely unsuccessful. The very first raid brings a pawn that wins every time. I've tried stressing melee, I've tried stressing short bow. Each time I lose the slugfest.

I'm not sure what my suggested solution would be...Increase the chances for a wanderer or an escape pod? That doesn't seem quite right. The problem really seems to be in the effectiveness of the opponent. Or perhaps the lack of effectiveness in my one pawn.

I've tried a tribal start a few times now, as well, also Cass/Rough. Range weapons seem to have lost effectiveness, or perhaps, guns have become a bit more effective compared to lesser weapons. I'll be trying more tribal starts. Perhaps I'm doing something I shouldn't. I'm less concerned here. I probably did something silly.

Definitely put some think time into the naked and alone start, though. I want that to be awesome, but if it is always a First Raid and Done scenario, then why bother?

[Lanilor]

Definitely put some think time into the naked and alone start, though. I want that to be awesome, but if it is always a First Raid and Done scenario, then why bother?

Yep, I like that start too and have only played it in this version. You can outplay the first raider with stepping in and out of your door. Otherwise a few traps work too or a house with 2 doors where you switch between walking out of them to attack him. Even waiting it out works. I currently try a naked strart with a non-violent guy and for the first raid I just hid in a wood hut and "waited" it out until he gave up.

[syterth]

Will they not automatically set fire to everything? I've just assumed they would set my hut on fire or beat the door down. So I've just saddled up and gone for broke. I'll give that a try, though.

[Greep]

~2 years into my current game (flat, arid shrublands, randy extreme)

General idea behind this was to see if completely flat maps could handle the new security system.  They can, pretty easily if you use a trap corridor I might add, I didn't even trade for steel on account of some setbacks, so this could very well work on tundra even.  I've actually had a much easier time so far than going full on turret in my temperate small hills game, having 0 deaths so far beyond leighton the wonder dog, who finally became a fried molotov corn dog.

Some highlights so far:

-Early game was a bit rough.  Most of this having to build everything out of stone on a flat map, so 90% of my time was cutting stone and building walls.  Had to involve colonists in battle a lot before I fully got a good killbox going.  While i lucked out with no one dying, pretty much everyone had a crippling injury.

-In the early-midgame game, deadfalls deal with around 80% of all non-ship threats completely, which really really cut down on turret maintenance.  The ~2000 steel investment in traps probably payed for itself already by now.  Very early on, I just couldn't get enough due to the whole stone wall time sink.

-Raid frequency seems to be up on randy a lot.  Or it was just randy being randy.  Hard to say!

-Only had two "crisis" situations so far.  In one case a group of raiders with a smokepop belt got through the trap corridor and my turrets wouldn't fire, so they completely wiped them out.  This was so early in the game that I didn't even have raider dropped weapons, so I ended up having to beat them to death with my bare fists and a rifle.

In the other case, tribal sappers broke into the side of my main building before I could build an expansion perimeter wall around it. On the bright side, they immediately went into stealing shit mode.  On the bad side, I didn't realize they could steal buildings, holy crap, is that new?!  They took my multi-analyzer dangit! 

Worse, they also stole my entire stash of regular meds while one of my colonists got the plague.  Luckily I had a glitterworld medicine lying around somewhere else so between that and herbal I was able to get immunity before death, though.  Also lost my chess set which takes like 3 entire days to rebuild when it's made of stone.  yeesh.

-The slower research makes dealing with permanent injuries without bionics a little harsher.  2 years in and I still don't have bionics and several of my colonists have eyes shot out.  My researcher did take a break for a while when I didn't even realize my analayzer was gone and research had stopped.

-Barracks are now great with the new disturbed sleep nerf!  Initially i still have awful bedrooms, but eventually I moved into my extremely impressive uber room.  Some colonists have their own room of course (depressives, ascetics)

-As said in an earlier post: scaled called friendlies were a bit too useful, as well as rescuing friendlies providing extremely high faction regain.

-Current fort below.  Original size was just from the main storage expanded west.  Then expanded north on year 1 end, then expanded east to cover my back entrance.

Edit: A note on prisoners.  Overall prisoner recruitment is actually easier than b18 after the most recent change.  Except for the first one or two prisoners, who normally always have very low recruitment times anyways.  I personally had no shortage of people as I opened the AD the second I had a trap corridor set up.

Edit: Also, high gender psychic drones feel like they come too early.  Luckily I had a bunch of drugs, but -30 at the end of year 1 was a bit of a shock

[attachment deleted due to age]

[Koek]

What kind of cover were you behind when engaging the mechs? When I get a ship I'll sometimes build a mini bunker a distance away before I crack it open (use stone). Also traps destroy scythers, baiting them into traps is pretty effective.

I got lucky on the scyther. I focus fired him and it never got close. I used the EMP nades to try and stun one of the lancers, which got 1 shot off killing one of my pawns, before it got stunned. The second lancer got a few shots in, also 1 shot kills and none missed (at this point I decided GG), before I switched my EMP nade thrower to stun him while my remaining pawns focussed on the first lancer.

As cover I used a wall which was already close, a rock wall and some chunks.
Could and should I have prepared better by building some traps and defences first? Absolutely. But my question is more about their chance to 1 shot and how getting better armor would have increased my chances overall.
Also I'd like to know if my research progression could have been better to get that armor, neglecting the ease of electricity and perhaps even complex clothes so I could have gone either full plate or even flak armour.

I understand playing Cass/rough has quite a steep curve at the moment, so rolling a full time researcher is a must when playing a tribe. Perhaps even roll a parttime researcher on top of that to get to the must have science asap.

I'm a bit mixed on this 1 shot kill stuff. I like the risk, but good pawns are too hard to replace, especially this early in a run.
Since 1.0 I'm getting way less prisoners as well, since most raiders tend to die instead of going down it seems, so replacements are even harder to get. I was surpised to get 2 prisoners from the last raid to be honest, both which were actually acceptable to recruit. (I had my eyes set on that useless chemical interest guy hauling and cleaning while stoned all day)

Even though I insist on playing on rough, some thoughts on balance and fairness seem to be in order here.

[JohnLG]

I really love the idea of the naked and alone start; HOWEVER, my current attempts (Cass/Rough) have been completely unsuccessful. The very first raid brings a pawn that wins every time. I've tried stressing melee, I've tried stressing short bow. Each time I lose the slugfest.

I'm not sure what my suggested solution would be...Increase the chances for a wanderer or an escape pod? That doesn't seem quite right. The problem really seems to be in the effectiveness of the opponent. Or perhaps the lack of effectiveness in my one pawn.

I've tried a tribal start a few times now, as well, also Cass/Rough. Range weapons seem to have lost effectiveness, or perhaps, guns have become a bit more effective compared to lesser weapons. I'll be trying more tribal starts. Perhaps I'm doing something I shouldn't. I'm less concerned here. I probably did something silly.

Definitely put some think time into the naked and alone start, though. I want that to be awesome, but if it is always a First Raid and Done scenario, then why bother?

At least the first raid comes pretty quick so you can try again without losing too much time.  I don't think there's any reasonable way to make that scenario more reliable to start with.  It's certainly the most inherently unfair start, as it should be.