Unstable build feedback thread

[robno]

I noticed that it's a bit hard to tell you've selected 'Merciless mode' as the colour of the inner selection circle is quite a dark brown. Maybe it should be made red to match the text colour and outer selection circle.

[Jibbles]

FYI main design purpose of flagstone is for pre-generated roads.

I personally use them everywhere anybody walks outside. Never really thought they were way too expensive though it does seem odd that they cost what tiles cost yet are uglier. I guess they lay faster which is the benefit.

So if not flagstone, what is the intended outside flooring solution? And what is the intended method for preventing trees from growing under wind farms? I always use flagstone for that because solar panels don't fit perfectly nor do you really need that many solar panels per turbine. I know I could just throw wood flooring everywhere (assuming I'm not in a desert or ice sheet) but let's assume I don't want to.

I'd assume concrete/paved tile would be intended for paths outside. Like you, I don't want to lay down wood for paths cause it's weird in most bases.  I've noticed the stats long ago but figured it was oversight or busy on other things. It makes sense now why they yield no resources (I rebuild a lot). But concrete is another source for draining steel so I'm hesitant with it now in 1.0. You know, that concrete texture looks noice in stony colors 🤞 

[erdrik]

...  Speaking of, after playing the game a bit with the new meat models, something just feels off about them still.  I honestly think they should return to their original design and colors.. Don't fix what isn't broken right?  ...

It was broken. I did not like the old meat textures. They looked like non descript chunks of ... blob.
The old meat textures were apart of a number of textures that were noticeably off from from everything else. Especially with the new improved textures that are getting added. I like the new meat textures, please don't revert them.

I hope the rock chunks, and most trees also get changed in the future.
(Specifically for trees, I think they need to be dual texture entities. One texture for the trunk on ground layer, and one texture for the leaves one layer up. I don't like how a rock chunk placed directly north of a tree is drawn on top of the tree's leaves. It looks weird.)

[fecalfrown]

I see that you've returned to the original component / advanced component models! Personally I'm really happy about that.  Speaking of, after playing the game a bit with the new meat models, something just feels off about them still.  I honestly think they should return to their original design and colors.. Don't fix what isn't broken right? I guess it just comes down to personal opinion. A lot of us fell in love with the original art style of the game so changing everything drastically might be off-putting to some. I think the leathers and cloths, medicines, armor & weapon visual changes are all great however. Keep up the great work! Love this game

Something to add:

On my recent play through I have just about everything researched. Jungle biome, 13+ colonists. I have about 40+ elephant tusks 10+ thumbro horns sitting in storage and I haven't encountered a single exotic trader this entire play through. Bulk goods and weapon dealers only so far, with the occasional visitor with little to buy from. Not sure if this is intended, a bug, or just a bad roll of the dice.

Regarding the lack of exotic traders: I'm personally OK with this level of randomness because it kind of forces you to caravan out in order to dump some inventory for useful items (since friendly bases will trade for exotics).

[SchizoidCrow]

Storyteller: Randy.
Difficulty: Survival Struggle.
Biome/hilliness:  Tropical Rainforest with Large Hills.
Commitment mode: Nope.
Current colony age: 209
Hours played in the last 2 days: ~10, maybe? I don't keep track of time.
Complete mod list: None.



Okay. Uranium slug cannons are terrifying. I found a deep deposit and several veins of uranium throughout the map, so I could actually maintain a couple of them. And... yeah, they go BOOM real nice. The rate of fire is slower than I expected when I saw that the barrel must be changed every 40 shots, so it's fairly expensive but also fairly efficient. There only have been a couple of raids since I have them and so far they seem like a worthy investment, though it's definitely not a turret I would spam.

One of the raids I had was really a poison ship. It was my first encounter with a big group of mechanoids. Lancers are certainly okay if they have support from centipedes and scythers, it's just by themselves that they feel underwhelming, but it seems like a good compromise to me.

- Still annoyed at the amount of overhead mountain needed to trigger infestations. I expanded a little bit to have a second freezer and I accidentally left two tiles with an overhead mountain. It took less than a week to spawn one. It feels like I'm being punished for a really minor thing.

- I'm noticing that colonists do not rearm the full durability of the barrel of turrets, they just put whichever amount of stuff they carry.  I'm not a fan of that. I do wish they would fill them up completely, even if it takes them several trips.

- The long-range mineral scanner has been a complete waste of time so far. It hasn't done anything since I build it (three quadrums more or less, It's hard to keep track of time when it's permanent summer and I don't get notices for changing seasons). I think it wasn't being used too much due to research being prioritized. Now that I don't need any more research it should be used more, but half a quadrum has passed and still nothing. I really wish the scanner would give me some feedback, like a percentage of completion until it finds something, or an estimated time remaining. Something.

- Since you're talking about flagstone. There's literally no reason to use it over stone tiles, like... ever. It cost the same, it doesn't yield when deconstructing and it doesn't provide beauty. It's just slightly faster to build. So by building them 1) I'm not saving any resources. 2) I'm wasting the resources if I decide to expand in that direction. 3) I don't get the beauty in areas that colonists will probably frequent. If it can slow or avoid a mood debuff for the unsightly environment then it is useful. 4) The extra time needed to build stone tiles also trains construction skill, so the waiting is actually better long-term.

If I get into a situation where I need to build floor fast regardless of its beauty, then I'm going to use wood. If I don't have wood or flammability is a problem, then it's concrete. If I don't have steel, then I rather build half of the place out of stone tiles, or directly save the blocks for other stuff.

[crystalc]

Storyteller: Cassandra
Difficulty: Rough
Biome/hilliness: Temperate Flat w/River
Commitment mode: (yes/no) No
Current colony age (days): 440
Hours played in the last 2 days: 7
Complete mod list: N/A

In the latest couple five or ten (?) patches I have had more food poisonings than I have had all early game, It's weird.  I can understand the Insect Jelly being dubious, and berries, but I don't understand how my level 15 cooks made multiple poisoned lavish meals.  Is it cleanliness?  The poisoning said something about the cook having an insufficiently high level.  I think i'm going to zone one of my cleaners to only ever be in the rec room, dining/kitchen, freezer, and his bedroom area and see how that goes. (the cooks can't get higher than level 15, but they also don't have a burning passion for it, so seems fair.)

At this point I'm late enough in the game I'm just chilling waiting for more plasteel and advanced components.  Plasteel feels very scarce now.  The mechs that attack never give me enough plasteel, and buying out plasteel from traders leaves enough for only one or two plasteel using things.  The ship parts are tough. (I see caskets don't require plasteel, hurrah!)  Definitely not enough for power armor Marine Armor.  I like the increased need for uranium! (and gold)

I love the new item stacks!  I love the new Healroot!  The meat is great!  The components are Weird, but I will accept!  Did the leather change...?  The ends look bare.  I also thought the plate steel was okay before, but you reverted that. 

Incendiary Shells look too much like wood.  Rotate 90 degrees to be upright?

I hate the silver. The silver is bad.  Could you make them into straight stacks of coins maybe?  Tall stacks in piles like skyscapers are visually pleasing.  Maybe make it into bars for full stack of 500?  heck, could we smelt the silver into bars to make it fit into larger stacks? (...mod idea i guess, not really gameplay useful.)

The "Doctor Care/ No Medicine" icon is now undersized compared to the other Medical Icons, and still uses the previous Herbal look.

I send my people on caravans a lot now, to sell things (because there are never enough traders to take my dusters) to fulfill trade requests ( like, three times. Everyone wants such weird things. the component/steel/plasteel necessary to make some gun requests make them non-viable occasionally.
Best one was the 27 something bowler hats.) and to go kill raiders for awesome loots.  The worst thing about it now is that I have to re-designate bedrooms and lovers into double beds when my people get back.  Is there a way people could keep their bedrooms until they do a permanent settlement, instead of losing them when leaving or using their bedrolls?

The infestations... I hate.  I'm in a completely flat area, aside for one place I spider mined to look for more minerals, and it spawns like 90 bugs.  Twice.  I'm trying to fill it in with walls now, its horrible.  The deep drill infestations are fine but the, like, 30 hives are way too much.

Can flagstone cost slightly less?  I like using it for paths, and surrounding my conduits that go to far off thermal generators, but it now costs the same as bricks.  It already provides less beauty.

Are colonists moods not supposed to change when they sleep?  My poor ascetic has a lovely comfortable bed, and a just dull enough bedroom, but his mood "Minor Break" warning notification stays all night even when his mood bar pointer shows that his mood should be rising to 60%+  It seems like having comfortable beds is useless if they never get use the mood buff from +10 "resting on clouds of heaven."

Speaking of beds I wish my peeps would prioritize the Legendary/Masterwork Hospital beds instead of going to the nearest Hospital bed.  The good bed is within two spaces of the Legendary, but they'll go to that good bed every time. (I switched it so the better beds are closer to the door after seeing this too many times.)

Thank you for the awesome game!

[Nynzal]

I see that you've returned to the original component / advanced component models! Personally I'm really happy about that.  Speaking of, after playing the game a bit with the new meat models, something just feels off about them still.  I honestly think they should return to their original design and colors.. Don't fix what isn't broken right?

I strongly disagree, the overall direction of the art changes are great: Stronger colors, much clearer what that stuff is supposed to be. The old components are not as good, the new ones were my favorite art change so far. Although the meat is not as great as the components, it goes in the same direction, only the color is not as strong.

Difficulty: Randy Survival Struggle (now classified as "Savage")
Commitment mode: Yes
Biome: Mountainous Boreal Forest
Time: 3,5 years
Mods: custom hair styles collection
time last days: 17h

Even in naked brutality, I managed to aquire colonists and stuff relativly fast for my usual games, probably because it is not the highest difficulty.
Only one colonist died so far: he got the plague on an item stash quest reltively early in the game. This was kinda frustrating because I had no way of saving that one - no bedrolls and no medicine.
When it comes to armor, I usually skip the research for flak armor to get faster to the more important stuff like turrets, because in the cold biomes a flak jacket with 15°C cold isolation prevents the colonists from going outside for a longer time. The option to choose the material makes them not a good option - the insulation does not have to be as good, just better than that according to material. Also, why is the vest armor 115% against sharp, jacket only 46% on the same quality level in addition to the fact that the jackets extended cover are only the arms.
So far all the Prisoners were easy to recruit, breaking resistance did not take long and after that a piece of cake.
Also, I noticed that a pawn with the kind trait went on an insulting spree.

When I tried to install a bionic leg on a pawn, the pawn chose the worst medical bed, although an excellent hospital bed was available. I didnt notice and obviously the surgery failed and the leg was wasted. Frustrating that such a hightech piece is gone.

Raid sizes with that many colonists were suprisingly small - my colony was never in real danger.
The latest ship part spawned one centipede, one scyther, 3 lancers - good cover and assault rifles were enough to take them down without a downed pawn. Maybe thats good for this difficulty level.
Infestations bring more trouble, but I think I am prepared with a melee frontline and 3 tiles wide hallways to give enough room to shoot. No need for animals or turrets under the mountain.

All in all this run feels like I wanted: some threats that require good planning and execution but not as unforgiving that I cant enjoy building a base and creating a new glitterworld - who needs to escape if the place is already good?

Just a quick question at the end: what is the milestone to unlock "merciless" now that I clicked on the button to unlock it? ^^

[attachment deleted due to age]

[mcduff]

Difficulty: Phoebe Medium
Commitment mode: No
Biome: Temperate Forest Large Hills
(Continuation of last colony)

I had a bit of a fubar. I was reworking the greenhouse/freezer layout and got a cold snap just before winter. I didn't notice that I'd left a wall open and so lost a bunch of corn and devilstrand. This put my food really low. I could hunt meat for the colonists but my animals were getting severely malnourished without vegetables.

I had a bunch of silver and other things to trade so I called in a bulk goods trader, but they didn't have any food. I got an orbital bulk goods trader but they only had a bit of rice. Just wondering what the situation is supposed to be with food being available to buy from traders if you end up running short?

Also, on the textures, I think the new meat model is good, and the old component model is more visually distinctive, so what you've ended up with in the current build is a good thing, IMO.

[protobeard]

Storyteller: Cassandra
Difficulty: Rough
Biome/hilliness: Temperate Forest, Large Hills
Commitment mode: No -- I play in the style of commitment mode, but do not turn it on in.
Current colony age (days): 229
Hours played in the last 2 days: ~ 8
Complete mod list: No mods
Version: 1.0.1970 - 1.0.1980
Scenario: Tribal

Since this is a long running colony I'm just going to highlight a couple stories as well as some things I noticed throughout that might be worth thinking about.

I tried Rough difficulty instead of Extreme this time around because I wanted to try out drop pods (I almost never caravan in any form when playing on extreme). Generally raid strength seemed fine for Rough difficulty (much easier than extreme, but still some hairy moments). I lost one colonist during my play, but thankfully had a resurrection serum for him. I was able to defend my base pretty much exclusively with walls/doors/sandbags. I built a couple of the new turrets around day 200 but have not yet seen them fire. I have not yet found any uranium, so haven't built a sniper turret.

Since this is a fairly old colony, I should mention that I normally play on speed 3, and haven't seen any lag to speak of so far, with ~15 colonists and ~20 animals. In B18 I tended not to play colonies much past the 150 day mark due to lag. So I'm definitely seeing improved performance in 1.0.

Drop Podding
Not as painful as caravaning, but still painful. This was my first ever colony trying out drop pods, and I feel like I missed something obvious about them. I'll give one experience (my first) to illustrate, but my subsequent attempts went pretty much the same way:

• 3 people caravan to fill a trade request
• All three went to extreme break risk loading things up
• One went into a daze, other two just got into the pods. After coming out of daze, the third got into the pods, before they were full. So all three colonists loading the pods stopped about halfway through the process. Not clear how to prevent this.
• With everyone in my colony set to haul, only one person at a time would keep filling the pods after the initial 3 people got inside.
• Guys inside near starved to death, one went to 76% malnutrition before the pods got loaded
• Launch!
• Turn in quest!
• Trade! Oh wait, I get a 14% price penalty because my negotiator is starving...
• Oh wait, caravan can't move...be great if there was a warning for this before I launched the pods and created a non-functional caravan...
• Drop pod a muffalo onto them - now the caravan can move, but I don't have enough food to get home
• Send the caravan towards home, drop pod them some food when they get about halfway back

I'm not sure if I'm just not seeing these things in the UI, or missing something fundemental about drop podding, but it would be great if:

• You could see the carrying capacity of the caravan that will be created from a drop pod along with the drop pod load capacity (or the capacity these pods would add to an existing caravan).
• There was a warning that you are going to create an immobile caravan.
• There was some way to edit the contents of a pod without everything in the entire pod barfing onto the ground around it. So, for example, I could swap out jade for food when I realize my caravan wont be able to move if I launch. I reloaded my save after canceling my pod loading the first time and getting a giant item barf explosion.
• Pawns set to get in drop pods got in last -- *after* loading everything.
• Pawns did not starve themselves/go into exhaustion while loading the pods
• There was a way to add a pod to a launch group after the fact.
• There was a way to remove a pod from a launch group after the fact.

Basically, it would be great if the experience was a little more forgiving and polished. I'll probably drop pod again as long as I'm playing on the lower difficulties, but as cool as it is in theory, it's a bit painful in practice.

The Escape Addict

• I gave a pawn some yayo to help his mood, and he got addicted immediately. Don't do drugs kids.
• A short time later he went on a wake up binge -- he walked directly past the 20 wake up in a shelf in my dinning room to go halfway across the map to pick up some forbidden flake. Seems like it should be a psychite binge/flake binge?
• Once he ran out of flake, he came back to the wake up. And got addicted, of course.
• I arrested him, because I'm not dealing with a double addicted pawn who is currently ODing on wake up
• I set him to reduce resistance, but *not* to recruit. The idea being I would keep him in jail throughout his recovery from addiction.
• My warden, with an inspiration, goes and talks to him - and recruits him. Seems like a bug.
• So I have to arrest him again, and this time during the arrest he resists, so I have to beat him up
• I can then capture him, but see the warning about angering his faction -- which is my faction. Seems like another bug.

Possible Bugs/Things to Look At

• Traps: I don't generally use them a lot, but with the change to make them disposable I built a few to try it out. They triggered, and I pretty much forgot to replace them. I didn't make a trap corridor or anything, so it was easy to forget where I put them. I'd prefer if traps were "refillable" like campfires/turrets and could toggle whether to fill them or not.
• The /10 in bills is slightly misaligned in bills, causing text to overlap. Honestly, this just looks like a programming error where the "/10" text is drawn before the quantity of an item is known, so overlap occurs with enough items.
• "Finished" messages (such as toxic fallout finishing) aren't stored in the messages tab
• Caravan arrived/returned messages aren't in the messages tab
• Warg has min animal skill of 1, wild boar is 3 -- seems backwards.
• Space traders droped their cargo pods into my chimney, a 4 square unroofed hole in my freezer. Not really a big deal, but a weird place for them to pick to deliver items.
• I kept a 100% difficulty prisoner with 50 resistance just to see what would happen. After spending months lowering his resistance, he joined on the first recruitment attempt with a 6.3% chance. Seems like either a bug, or I don't know what prisoner recruit difficulty acctually means. I assumed a 100% prisoner would never be recruitied.
• I equiped a pyro with a incendiary laucher -- got message "hunter lacks ranged weapon". Very glad he wont hunt, but the message could be clearer (it's good enough, but could be better)
• I have a lvl 19 crafter -- even when crafting 100% of the time, it seems like he loses more skill than he gains while hauling materials to the bench from close by (< 20 cells). I don't think this is *actually* true, but it feels bad when I can literally watch his skill decay so quickly.
• Manhunting packs still 100% attack doors. I'm not sure why the tooltip says they dont -- that has never been true since I started in A16. 21 manhunting polar bears eat through a door very quickly when they all attack it at once. I honestly am not sure whether the attacking doors should be fixed or not, but it seems like at the very least the in game help shouldn't give false information to new players.

[attachment deleted due to age]

[jchavezriva]

Storyteller: Randy
Difficulty: The second to the last (Sorry but its name changes all the time, cant tell which one is anymore)
Biome/hilliness: Boreal Forest / Mountanious
Commitment mode: yes, alt+f4-ing like a pussy but with an autosave of 0,5 days to not ruin entirely the purpose of permadeath
Current colony age (days): Almost 300
Hours played in the last 2 days: 8 aprox
Complete mod list: None

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I wanted to let you know that wild men have an extremely high chance of dying on downed. I beat one using just fists and he died in 3 consecutive attemps. He even got his arm destroyed and removed! I was not even shooting or using sharp weapons, only attacking with fists and meleeing with a gun...

[topace3000]

I see that you've returned to the original component / advanced component models! Personally I'm really happy about that.  Speaking of, after playing the game a bit with the new meat models, something just feels off about them still.  I honestly think they should return to their original design and colors.. Don't fix what isn't broken right?

I strongly disagree, the overall direction of the art changes are great: Stronger colors, much clearer what that stuff is supposed to be. The old components are not as good, the new ones were my favorite art change so far. Although the meat is not as great as the components, it goes in the same direction, only the color is not as strong.

I also preferred the new components.  They had a more unique look and stood out a bit more.

[Blue_J]

Storyteller: Randy
Difficulty: Medium
Biome/hilliness: Temperate Forest/Flat
Commitment mode: no
Current colony age (days): ~270
Hours played in the last 2 days: >12. I was crashing hard this weekend, okay?
Complete mod list: None

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Been experiencing what seems like a really large number of "zzzt" events. Hasn't been so bad because I'm largely relying on geothermal power this time around and only have two batteries, but it's still been happening once every quadrum or two. My feelings about the event (and the lack of circuit breakers) notwithstanding, the disincentive to use renewables seems pretty harsh.

I've also been having a bit of an interface issue: Selecting growing zones full of mature plants is nearly impossible. The first click selects the individual plant, the second selects all growing zones on the screen. It makes turning off sowing in your healroot patch because winter is coming kind of a chore.

Other than that, the playthrough has been going okay. Been experimenting with an almost turretless defense strategy because the map is metal-poor and I can only import so much. My current setup is a perimeter wall with numerous sally ports and fortifications so that I can hit the enemy from range then fall back. The effectiveness of this strat has been getting worse as the enemy attacks get larger and my perimeter wall size grows. I probably need to thicken the perimeter wall and make more internal defensive zones, but I'm running out of stone. The main benefit of doing it this way is that you kill enemies before they hit your traps so that you keep your material cost low. In theory it would also allow your to break up their siege attacks and make them rush you before they get through the wall, but I haven't been able to make this work well yet.

One thing I've noticed  with the changes to spike traps is that there is a strong incentive to "shuffle" the traps after an attack. I know that enemies remember the locations of traps, but I'm not sure what exactly that means under the hood: Whether they remember a specific location as containing a trap or the trap object specifically. Either way, though, now that you have to rebuild traps every time, it is definitely to your advantage to move them around if a raid triggers a large number of them.

[erdrik]

...
I also preferred the new components.  They had a more unique look and stood out a bit more.

^ Same.
I liked the new component textures

[Greep]

4 years in:  unstoppable swarms of 18+ centipedes over and over, to the point where I just got bored and essentially gave up.

Sniper turrets + killbox = easy solution to centipedes. I launched ship under pressure of 15-20 centipedes almost every day. 1 deep uranium deposit provide more than enough mats to rearm turrets.

Yeah I was mostly just seeing how much ignoring metagaming affected the game:  turns out it's the majority of the game's skill atm lol.  That's disappointing.  It was a little shocking seeing the game go from basically no raid size at all to literally 10 times that in the same time span.

As for sniper turrets, I actually am kind of interested to see how an extreme sniper turret strategy would work out.  Not just deep drilling but, considering how much steel I got from LRMS sites if I targetted uranium instead I could have made a ridiculous amount of them.

[Tass237]

At least as of build 1978, this is a minor issue.
Because rescued friendly pawns wait until they are fully healed, it would be nice if we could have a few "operation" options for them. I'm not interested in removing any limbs or organs, (maybe give them a peg-leg? I don't know if it allows that or not currently) mostly I would like to be able to administer drugs to them. I had some traders get into a social fight, to the point that one got downed. I rescued him, and realized that he has an addiction to smokeleaf. He dropped a few joints when he went down, so I hoped I could administer those to keep him happy until he healed up and left, but I couldn't order that. I foresee this being a lot more dangerous if he was addicted to Luciferium, instead, and I couldn't treat his addiction. Mostly, I would like to be able to administer drugs to the addicted pawns that I rescue, to keep them from going into withdrawal while healing up.