Unstable build feedback thread

[Aerial]

If animals are going to count significantly toward raid size, maybe there needs to be strict distinction between utility animals and war animals so it's clear whether your offensive/defensive capabilities have been increased. 

On the other hand, maybe it's okay to let people build their Muffalo Mob or Alpaca Strike Force and steamroll the enemy at the cost of major animal husbandry and upkeep.  I don't see why that gameplay needs to be eliminated, or even balanced against.  Those who find it cheesy don't have to play that way.

[mastertea]

there'snt much provided to really "analyze" if the 8 yorkshire really "make" a 19 pirates raid "turn into" a 31 one
since the 2 raids' types can be fundamentally different, the 19 might 've been sapper or raid with doomsday, while the 31 one might 've been "just a normal pirate raid with "normal" weapons", then there's the increase in wealth during the gap, etc. etc.

The 31 raid had a doomsday weapon and a tri rocket luncher. I know cause thats the reason my game ended.

[Razzoriel]

there'snt much provided to really "analyze" if the 8 yorkshire really "make" a 19 pirates raid "turn into" a 31 one
since the 2 raids' types can be fundamentally different, the 19 might 've been sapper or raid with doomsday, while the 31 one might 've been "just a normal pirate raid with "normal" weapons", then there's the increase in wealth during the gap, etc. etc.

The 31 raid had a doomsday weapon and a tri rocket luncher. I know cause thats the reason my game ended.

Maybe you should have a psychic lance ready for those guys. Insanity Lance on tri-launcher = raid gone.

[Aerial]

there'snt much provided to really "analyze" if the 8 yorkshire really "make" a 19 pirates raid "turn into" a 31 one
since the 2 raids' types can be fundamentally different, the 19 might 've been sapper or raid with doomsday, while the 31 one might 've been "just a normal pirate raid with "normal" weapons", then there's the increase in wealth during the gap, etc. etc.

The 31 raid had a doomsday weapon and a tri rocket luncher. I know cause thats the reason my game ended.

Maybe you should have a psychic lance ready for those guys. Insanity Lance on tri-launcher = raid gone.

I really hope the game isn't intend to work like this, i.e. "if you happen to have the *one* good counter to X event, you live, otherwise, your colony is gone". 

[Lanilor]

I'm now ~40 days in a new naked survival start, cassandra extreme, tropical forest flat, non-violent colonist start.

I planned to defeat the first raid with tamed animals, since my colonist had a decent skill in that, but taiming and training on top of the other duties was too slow to get some animals and train them in obedience. So for the first raid I had to bunker my pawn in his hut and wait/repain/rebuild until the raider gave up. I lost the furniture outside but not much worth.
Some time after that a space refugee escape pod came, so I thought I get a second colonist, but after healing him he decided to walk away so I had to capture and recruit him later.
For the next raid I decided to switch to traps (game version from yesterday). 2 raiders came and started to burn my crops, then after that they decided to walk in my trap corridor. One got downed, the other ran away after that. I extended the traps a bit and defended a second raid (tribal, again 1 downed, 1 dead, 2 ran away) and a few mad animals with it.
Later I got 2 more escape pods, 1 was a pirate who ran away before I could "rescue" him, the other was a second non-violent pawn I rescued and he joined my colony. Shortly after that I recruited one of the prisoners. So far with the last version.
After the patch I mostly focused to building a stone house and walling my crops in, so that the next raid doesn't burn them down again. I defended 2 raids and a manhunter pack of huskies with traps, more to that later. Otherwise I finally got a colonist that was not non-violent, so I could hunt for meat and leather. I only used manual hunting so far since there were only agressive animals and I wanted to not get surprised by a revenge when my pawn shoots from too close.

Recruitment:
The resitant seems fair and logical. The escape pod guy had ~5 and 50% difficulty, the stronger raider (not sure if pirate or outlander) had ~15 and 66% difficulty. I still have him and he is at 7.4 resistance now, although I stopped talking to him for a week or so to focus on other work.
One weird thing is that when I capure my own colonist after a mental break, he also has resistance and difficulty but I can just release him and don't need to recruit. Maybe remove the recruit option from prisoners with the player faction.
I miss the stat for peaceful arrest chance on the stat window. Was it intended to hide it?

Traps:
I mainly use wood traps since I'm in a forest and they deal 50 damage (30 before). Although the increased damage had no effect on the small sample size of my game. Before the update I needed 3 traps for a human to down/kill him and after the update it were still 3. It is more that the trap often hits an arm/ear/eye, destroys it anyway and the pawn moves on. A trap could hit more parts but with less damage as an alternative.
I feel 40 wood for a single use is on on forests, but on other biomes it is quite expensive. It's basicly 120 wood to kill a raider. Steel isn't worth it since there are so many other uses for steel and it would probably still need ~3 traps because if the above stated stuff. Steel traps would benefit and balace the investment from the mentioned change to deal damage to more parts. At the moment they deal 100 damage which is mostly overkill.
Stone traps deal 60 damage and the cost is more reasonable since there are a lot of chunks on the map and deep drilling later gives them indefinitely. The problem with stone traps is that they take a long time to build. It was not a huge problem before the changes since rearming existed, now it has way more impact. I have not tried enough of them to say it is too much, just that it has more impact now.
Until now the traps where really effective to a point where I didn't need to fight at all. (In this case I also can't fight at all until recently, so it is good and needed). In a normal game, it might be a too safe way to get through the early game. The first sapper- or droppod raid will change that of cause and I fear that in my current game and try to prepare for it.

IEDs:
What I really like about the cost changes, is that the builder now only has to walk once to the blueprint. It was really time intensive to spread IEDs around the map on important positions. Now with them costing the same as firering a mortar shell, I will spread IEDs even more around the map. They have not much downside in just staying there but the huge advantage of being more precise than firering a mortar. The precision of mortars is an issue when not using many. One or two mortars early are basicly useless while later spamming a lot can shredder a raid. I would like to see that single mortars still have a good use altough I have no good idea how to archive that and not make mortar spam op.

Devilstrand:
I wanted to try and rush devilstrand the game, but it is simply not possible to research much early on naked start. I think the increased cost may be enough to make it a decent investment and an impactful decision on other starts, but I have not tested it. I may do that later if I'm motivated.

Random stuff:
- I had a few cases where my colonist was outside to chop wood, but then he decides to feed a prisoner, takes the meal out of his inventory and starts to walk back. The main annoyance here is that I can't order him to carry wood on the way back, since he would drop the meal and someone else will later waste time to get it or it rots. The same is basicly when they want to eat for themselfes and happens quite a lot after fighting a raid and undrafting: They instantly take the meal out of their inventory and want to eat on spot (and get the without table debuff) instead of just carrying some drop from the raiders home and take their meal there. Improving the opportunistic hauling here might be a lot of work. I would even be happy when they just don't get their meal out or can out it back in so I can manual force them to carry something without dropping the meal.
- On a side note to that, feeding a founded prisoner is doctoring, so even if my doctor doesn't do warden work (as in the example above), he still does that stuff above and wants to feed the prisoner. So I basicly have to remove his doctor work so he can mine or plant cut somewhere outside without walking back often while the cook/warden next to the prison just chills on his stove.
- I really wish there was an alternative system to give works based on all colonists. So instead of "who is the first whose priority allows to do warden work now", it could be "who is near the target and allowed to skip his main work for short side work". This would also help on flickering switches a lot, since it's basicly a random pawn who just happended to finish his current work so the workgiver can run, gets the flick job even if he is far away, and not the guy crafting on the bench next to it.
- The force option in the rightclick menu for doing a job should be possible even when the work is disallowed in the work panel (of cause not if he can't do the work at all). I currently give most colonists priority "4" on flick to be able to manually command the right pawn to flick a bench. The infotext for him not being assigned to the job could stay as a warning that it may be inefficient.
- Colonist still walk to a field, plant one crop and then decide to go sleeping or something. I know it's hard to improve this with adding good enough foresight, just wanted to say this. As someone who cares a lot about efficiency on the colonists jobs, this is quite annoying sometimes.
- A similar thing is when a colonist plants a field or mines an ore and he stops before the last plant (at a few % or the ore hp). I would like a "this zone is almost done, so I finish it before doing my need stuff".
- Job queueing is a blessing. It helps on the problems above to manually command it. Although it is quite tedious to do that a lot to sow the last plants of a zone or just force to plant an important zone or clean an important room. For these works a "sow this zone" or "clean this room" option on rightclick would be really helpful where it makes sense and is not that complicated.
- I miss consistency in force jobs in general. When I force a pawn to work on a tailor bench, he works there like crazy for hours until he almost starves, while force mining he doesn't even finish to mine that block and stops after a certain time. He could at least mine the complete block or add a "mine this continuous designated area". (I know there is a mod that helps with some of this, but I think it is a helpful enough thing to add to the base game. Even for the players who don't micro often. And on higher difficulties efficiency is really important, especially early.)

Graphs attached and a timelapse again since you liked it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WrcJ492M_I

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[Angelin01]

I have a save that was running on version 1972, slightly modded. Tried loading on 1973 and all entities are stuck spamming the logs with

Code Select Expand

System.MissingFieldException: Field 'RimWorld.JobDefOf.RearmTrap' not found. even after removing all traps from the save.

Full log is here: https://git.io/fN8rS

I know saves can break between these versions, but since it is probably related to the last update I thought I'd post it here, see if it's a possible problem going forward.

[spidermonk]

I have the same error, it's not related to saves, it happens on the start of the application, before you load any game.

[Crow_T]

Regarding trap error spam, as mentioned before it will go away if you dev-mode destroy the traps that were built before the update, you can tell which ones by selecting them, they won't show options. You have to pause the game to stop the spam first.

[Angelin01]

Regarding trap error spam, as mentioned before it will go away if you dev-mode destroy the traps that were built before the update, you can tell which ones by selecting them, they won't show options. You have to pause the game to stop the spam first.

Found problem, see edit.

As stated in my post, my problem happens AFTER removing all traps. It is most likely an issue with a mod instead of just a version switch problem. I'll investigate more, there's no need to worry about it.

Edit: For any with the same problem, in my case it's caused by the mod "While You're Up" most likely not being updated yet. Disabling it should fix it for now.

[Madman666]

Well there goes trapped hallway tactic along with any usefulness traps had. Trap damage was already mostly enough to destroy nearly any body part when made from stone and absolutely any if made from steel\plasteel. Now to overkill someone's ear or toe several times over we pay 40 materials, which is heaps worse than even turret maintenance. At least a turret usually manages to kill some people before barrel change is needed.

[EvadableMoxie]

Well there goes trapped hallway tactic along with any usefulness traps had. Trap damage was already mostly enough to destroy nearly any body part when made from stone and absolutely any if made from steel\plasteel. Now to overkill someone's ear or toe several times over we pay 40 materials, which is heaps worse than even turret maintenance. At least a turret usually manages to kill some people before barrel change is needed.

It still works to a limited degree with wood in forest biomes since they now do almost as much damage as steel traps did, but that still just means the best biomes in the game got better and every other biome got worse. That's on top of that already being true with tree planting being nerfed for some reason.

[jchavezriva]

This.

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[zizard]

You mean cheese tactics other than keeping yourself poor to limit raid size? I'd define that as a cheese tactic, personally.

Could you perhaps provide some gameplay examples in 1.0 of people playing and consistently beating Cassandra Extreme? Or at least provide even some anecdotal evidence to back this up?  How many hours of Cassandra extreme have you played in 1.0? How many times have you escaped? What strategies did you use to be able to do that consistently?

All of them, so, like, 100 hours?  And never had anything unwinnable, using a mountain base killbox and micro. Plus there's cheese that makes door abuse look tame.

[Syrchalis]

I actually like the trap changes. I don't think 40 is low enough of a cost for one-use traps, but 30 might be the magic number. I might mod it to test it out.

Either way, I did play with the new traps, so this is no theory crafting - and they certainly felt far more deadly. Before this change even my steel traps were a joke and that's why I didn't use them. 70 steel for something that barely wounds someone? Bad. But now my marble stone traps hurt so bad, they gave a boar 3 deadly bleeding wounds, instantly downing it. That's more what I imagine from a stone or better trap.

So usefulness: Definitely there. Cost? MAYBE too high, but definitely not much. Testing 30 materials now.

The exclusion zone is also fine for me. I think putting down a crapload of traps so they are worthwhile is dumb. I rather have big exclusion zones but deadly traps than weak traps that are only good if spammed.

[erdrik]

... Now to overkill someone's ear or toe several times over we pay 40 materials, which is heaps worse than even turret maintenance. ...

That sounds more like a problem that can be fixed by tweeking the likelihood of which body parts the trap would hit.
Dead fall traps would not have the same kind of "misses" as a gun or even a melee weapon so it would make sense to me that it should have modified chances at hitting specific parts of the body.
For example, a bear trap(if it existed in the game) should have a significantly increased chance to hit legs and feet, since it would be a hilariously rare situation for it to hit a victims ear.