Unstable build feedback thread

[Boboid]

Just my 2 cents worth of gameplay story since I've finally something moderately interesting and different.
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Decided in a brief moment of insanity to try a Naked Brutality, Transhumanist-only game in a desert, 30/60 growing period, average temp of 12.3 (-4C-29C) (Cass, rough/hard when the change was made).

Early game:
First few months were fairly expectedly brutal but manageable so long as I kept my one colonist inside her tiny room every time an Ostrich or similar decided to take exception to me attempting to shoot it to death with a short bow. More than a few times I was forced to hide inside and repair the door until the manhunting status wore off. The risk of infection was simply too great to be less cautious.
Obtained clothing(Parka included) during my first winter when an escape pod landed nearby with a filthy body-purist in it who clearly deserved death by exposure in the desert and being eaten by megascarabs >.>

Only one point required a piece of divine intervention *coughcheatingcough* when a "pack" of manhunting chickens (one rooster) happened to appear just as my only colonist was rendered incapacitated by food poisoning... from eating raw ostrich for about the 80th time in a row, wood being something of a premium.

Pure luck lead to about my.. 4th? wanderer being a Transhumanist on day 30(Up to this point I'd banished every one as they weren't transhumanists).
Two Revolvers were obtained from banished wanderers ( Quite the stroke of luck frankly as they're reasonable all-purpose weapons) made the transition from naked insanity to standard rimworld fairly smooth.

Checking most incapacitated refugees since it generally required less than a day round trip due to flat desert and a nearby road.
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Mid-game:
Rushed up to Gunsmithing pausing only to get Batteries along the way, made two bolt-action rifles and some flak vests/pants. Obtained 2 more transhumanists ( One via incapacitated refugee(day51), one via a raid(105-111) during my 2nd year and with that finally had the manpower to really build up a proper base and eventually a wall.

Went straight to Autocannons (After double checking the new armor system and their stats) and well.. They're certainly expensive but you get what you pay for. I was actually ridiculously impressed with the Autocannon as in practice they have few -if any- serious flaws.

https://imgur.com/a/NvBxehI

Image is a little old but shows the basic situation.
My setup is deliberately open but in spite of that the autocannon fairly trivially crushes most opposition. It would certainly be a different story on a higher difficulty but as it stands at 28,000 wealth that thing is going to require a serious fiasco to be overwhelmed. Wealth was admittedly low due to the general lack of manpower and emphasis on researching.

General plan from here on out is to progress towards Bionics and see if the wealth buildup from doing so becomes overwhelming due to artificially low population count.. I don't think it will however because of -surprisingly- autocannons.
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Autocannon rambling:

I expected the 2-steel-per-shot maintenance on the Autocannon to be prohibitive but after another 40 days worth of raids I can't say that it is. To be perfectly frank given the fragility of mini turrets, their short range, tendency to explode, and general lack of lethality I'm not sure I'd ever go back to using mini turrets personally unless it's in some ridiculously contrived murder-zone.

Autocannons aren't even particularly expensive to replace if they're somehow destroyed, given that they drop half the materials used to construct them irrespective of their barrel status. If their barrels require replacing at the time of destruction then you're really only paying 120 steel and 3 components.
Sure there's a bit of manpower involved in smelting the slag and creating the components but ultimately it's just not a huge deal.

They're tough as nails when made out of just steel so using them to absorb incoming fire is not only practical it's downright silly not to. Given that plasteel versions have an extra 755 health I imagine I'll be using those whenever possible in the future.

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Armor system:
First impressions weren't great but that was mostly down to how currently there's almost no in-game description of how the new mechanics actually work. 
Assuming that the system works as follows:

1. We subtract AP from AR.
2. We generate a random number from 0-100.
   2a. If it's over the AR, the damage applies directly.
   2b. If it's under AR but over AR/2, damage is diminished. This means:
      2b1. Damage amount reduced by 50% (rounded random; if this round to zero we treat it as a deflect).
      2b2. If damage is sharp, it converts to blunt.
   2c. If it's under AR/2, damage is deflected entirely.

I'm fine with this system, it's fairly robust and moderately intuitive (Someone in high quality clothes might mitigate a shotgun blast or machine pistol but not a bolt-action rifle) but I can see how people would make ridiculously inaccurate assumptions based on the current description of mechanics in-game.

The only description currently is under a weapon's Armor Penetration stat and it doesn't accurately communicate the entire mechanic, only (1.).

There's an entire discussion to be had about how transparent game mechanics should be for various audiences but I think everyone can agree that misinformation is probably worse than no information and the current description of armor/armor penetration is bordering on misinformation.

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On the subject of lackluster tooltips (Though it's nothing to do with changes in 1.0)- Ranged Cooldown, Warmup, and Trigger Happy/Careful Shooter, aren't very clear.

Trigger Happy/Careful Shooter refer to Aiming Time which is Warmup on a gun's statistics(Insofar as I can tell)
Warmup doesn't have a description at all.
Aiming Time isn't listed on weapons - only Pawns and it's not very clear which stat it's interacting with when comparing guns.

For example a Trigger Happy pawn with a Revolver only shaves 0.15s off the normally 1.68s firing time. (~8.9%)
That same pawn with a Minigun however shaves a whopping 1.55s off the 4.8s firing time. (~32%)

But how would a person know that from looking at any of the descriptions of the mechanics?
I know that the process is Warmup+Cooldown and Trigger Happy reduces Warmup but the only reason I know that is testing.
_{I hope I'm not coming across as a condescending asshole here :/}


Anyway that's it for now, will hopefully have some information about late game robo-colonist-colonies next.

[JavaWho]

This visual glitch happened in 1.0 today and it appears to be 34x34 tiles wide on most of the squares  ... link posted, not sure how to post a pic https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/943950251198249493/31366AE9364C17B88C56D86611C850CABD674BC7/

[Serina]

TL;DR: The difficulty of the second poison ship event felt right to me, maybe even a little easier than my first poison ship.
First poison ship - 2 centipedes, 1 scyther (around 42k colony wealth) against 5 colonists with steel clubs, a bolt action rifle and one revolver.
Outcome: 3 dead pets - 2 wargs and a panther. No colonist death.


Second poison ship - 4 lancers and 1 inferno canon centipede (62.4k colony wealth) against my team below.
Outcome: 1 dead colonist.



(Naked Brutality - Phoebe - Hard)
This is my second poison ship event, didn't really think about taking notes of the first one, but here's the second.

My team and their equipment:

Kent: Steel club, Steel simple helm, Flak vest, Bluefur parka, Flak pants. His main job is to carry downed colonists to safety and tend to them since he's my highest doctor (medical 11).

Serina: Assault rifle, Steel advanced helm, synthread pants and shirt, power armor. My best shooter w/ 16 in shooting. I had her targeting the centipede.

Cedric: Steel longsword, Steel advanced helm, t-shirt, Flak vest, Bluefur parka, Shield belt, Flak pants. With 13  in melee and super-immune + tough traits, he's my favorite melee/tank colonist right now. I've grown quite attached to him.

Michelle: Bolt-action rifle, Steel simple helm, Heavy fur tribalwear, Bluefur parka. 12 in shooting, Cedric's wife. Pretty much the only things that stand out about her.

Yoshi: Steel club, Steel advanced helm, Flak vest, Bluefur parka, Flak pants. He only has 7 in melee, I brought him as back up EMP grenade thrower in case something happened to Loreen.

Blanca: Heavy smg, Steel simple helm, Flak vest, Bluefur parka, Flak pants. Trigger-happy with only 6 in shooting. Saved refugee. I wouldn't have accepted her into the colony if she wasn't Michelle's mother. Another shooter doesn't hurt I suppose but she's not very good at much else.

Mitsuya: Chain shotgun, Steel simple helm, Bluefur parka, Flak pants. Only 6 in shooting but skilled in social and intellectual. She joined the colony after I rescued her from an ancient danger. Abrasive Cannibal.

Loreen: EMP grenades, Steel simple helm, Bluefur parka, Flak pants. Was in the same ancient danger as Mitsuya, also joined the colony after I healed her up. Unfortunately, she's a body purist gourmand. She helped Kent cook meals though, which was good.

Maid: Bluefur tribalwear, Muffalo wool parka. Her job is to carry downed colonists/pets back to safety before they bleed out. She's not good at combat.

Pets: Shadow the timber wolf and Chaos the panther. They are good boys and have served the colony well thus far.

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https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1423782309
Start of the fight - built some granite walls for cover. I wish I had constructed cover for Loreen and Mitsuya.
I guess I figured I didn't mind if I lost them during the battle. I shot the ancient ship with Serina and out pops 4 lancers and 1 centipede with an inferno canon. I targeted the centipede with Cedric and Serina. Mitsuya bravely tanked the centipede's inferno canon with her face while Loreen used her EMP grenades on the group. Michelle and Blanca target the lone lancer to the right.


https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1423787635
Loreen's death, Shadow carried off - Loreen successfully stunned the mob of lancers with the centipede but she got gunned down by the lone lancer. First shot was to her torso, the second destroyed her heart. Rip Loreen. You did well. Yoshi runs over and picks up Loreen's dropped EMP grenades and stuns the lone lancer to the right.
Chaos and Shadow work together to take out a lancer (I told you they are good boys) while Serina and Cedric continue working on the centipede.
Unfortunately the stun wears off and a lancer downs Shadow. Chaos finishes off the lancer that downed his wolf friend and starts attacking the next lancer. By this time, their stun immunity wore off so Yoshi was able to stun the group once again, allowing Maid time to run over and rescue Shadow away to safety.


https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1423821614
Centipede down - Mitsuya, Cedric and Serina spam everything they have on the centipede and it eventually succumbs to a crack.


https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1423825408
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1423827491
Last lancer and Last hit - Chaos bravely charged at the remaining lancer. Cedric came over for the kill steal.

I tried to attach the photos, but I exceeded the maximum total size.

Thoughts: I'm very proud of Shadow and Chaos. I think I will try to buy/tame other attack animals from now on and allow these two good boys to retire. Time to patch up my colonists and haul these mech bodies back to base. ^.^


[attachment deleted due to age]

[Rockchecker]

I had an escape pod drop containing a person who was faction-aligned. I rescued her and patched her up, and she started leaving as soon as she was able to walk. However, she was still badly hurt, so her movement speed was very low. She ended up going berserk near the edge of the map due to minor starvation kicking in on top of all her pain. She tried to beat a tortoise to death with her bare fists, died, and I lost faction rep.

Suggestion: It would be great if people rescued from escape pods would wait until they are fully healed before trying to leave the map.

[Teleblaster18]

This visual glitch happened in 1.0 today and it appears to be 34x34 tiles wide on most of the squares  ... link posted, not sure how to post a pic https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/943950251198249493/31366AE9364C17B88C56D86611C850CABD674BC7/

I posted a similar glitch last night;  the glitch disappeared this afternoon, testing it with a save game from the exact point where I noticed it.  I'm guessing the latest update today somehow addressed it, but that's only a guess.

[Revshawn]

I'm really sorry Ty! You simply patch the game so quickly that I don't have time to test every feature in the game! I've got this thing where I'll always do the butt naked start, so it takes me a lot of time to get my colonies off the ground! I really want to give this 3 tiered armor system a try though. I'll post my thoughts in the next day or so if I get a chance to give it a rollthrough tomorrow. Depends on how tired I am after work. ^_^

[Revshawn]

I had an escape pod drop containing a person who was faction-aligned. I rescued her and patched her up, and she started leaving as soon as she was able to walk. However, she was still badly hurt, so her movement speed was very low. She ended up going berserk near the edge of the map due to minor starvation kicking in on top of all her pain. She tried to beat a tortoise to death with her bare fists, died, and I lost faction rep.

Suggestion: It would be great if people rescued from escape pods would wait until they are fully healed before trying to leave the map.

Another victim from the mighty tortoise. Clearly one of this game's finest contributions. I love watching colonists try to punch through the armored shell and get a finger bit off. XD! It's hilarious. Please never change this.

[Injured Muffalo]

Random interface comment: The ellipses after items which can be built from more than one material seem pointless to me. Everyone who plays sees the menu when building anyway, and the ellipsis to imply it could be made from other materials just seems to clutter and get in the way.

Yes it is trivial, but it bugged me.

[Greep]

Haven't been able to test the autocannons much, randy's sent literally nothing for half a year, and then pretty much everything but a standard raid.  I think I'll have to do cassandra for future playtesting, but I suppose someone has to test randy once or twice xD

One interesting tidbit, a psychic ship enraged nearby animals, and the animals then attacked the mechanoids.  Not sure that's happened in previous versions. 

Additionally, not sure if it's something that you want fixed for 1.0 but it's worth mentioning that the "leesh" method for doing early psychic ships still works:  Snipe the ship, run away, and hit the mechanoids as they walk back for a free shot.  Tedious, but effective for the first ship.

Edit:  Pyromanics.  I feel these still aren't in a good state for release.  So far I've had one singular pyro go nuts 5 times this year, and just now he's gone pyro twice in the same day.  No mood problems, he's happy even -___-  The story behind this was pretty funny, though.  He went pyro, proposed to another colonist, and then went pyro again a few hours later.  Guess he's pretty hot.

[attachment deleted due to age]

[JavaWho]

I posted a similar glitch last night;  the glitch disappeared this afternoon, testing it with a save game from the exact point where I noticed it.  I'm guessing the latest update today somehow addressed it, but that's only a guess.

I logged out of steam, restarted the game and it seemed to fix it currently.  Good to know I am not going mad ... thank you

[IndustryStandard]

Okay three issues with newest

1. I had someone become catatonic, a week later, she got up from bed, walked a few feet, and then was back in bed for several days catatonic again. She had the catharsis mood boost and everything. Very annoying.

2.  When a colonist goes on a walk, can they be made to not path into rivers? Kind of annoying to get the mood debuff because the moron decides to walk in a river.

3. We got a mission to rescue one of my colonists mother, I lost faction relations when she died, seems really unfair that they would give a crap or blame us for that.

[Greep]

Had a manhunter deer pack which was fully repelled on randy extreme by 5 autocannons and a miniturret, which exploded.  Usually can't quite beat manhunter packs at that stage with turrets so on extreme so that's different.  I think this actually has less to do with the cannon firepower, so much as the lowered power requirements.  Pretty easy to spam turrets when a single geothermal vent supplies all of them.

It does feel like however you balance it, autocannons are either a replacement for miniturrets, or end up being just not worth it.  Currently they're better than miniturrets, so I think it's now always build all autoturrets after you can afford them.  I can confirm as a user posted above, that because they're quite tanky, you can even put one or two ahead to just take hits and maybe later on make it plasteel.

They are initially weaker than miniturrets, however, which probably explains why one of the users above said they were bad even after the update.  But their tankiness imo makes them superior in the long run.

One interesting note:  Because they're quite tanky and actually useful now, it makes sense to just spam them everywhere rather than worry about explosions, so it will probably just end up being one giant ball of death.  With miniturrets, you can only fit so much in an area due to explosive death, but with the cannons, even though they're 3x3, you can just fill most of the area with them.

Edit: 4th pyro attack in two weeks.  Just banishing him.

[Teleblaster18]

I posted a similar glitch last night;  the glitch disappeared this afternoon, testing it with a save game from the exact point where I noticed it.  I'm guessing the latest update today somehow addressed it, but that's only a guess.

I logged out of steam, restarted the game and it seemed to fix it currently.  Good to know I am not going mad ... thank you

Glad it worked...you're quite welcome.  And in turn, thank you Tynan.

[NiftyAxolotl]

(Previously: https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=41766.msg413243#msg413243)
I'm nearly at the end of the second summer on this run. I just realized that the Volcanic Winter that had started in early Decembary is still going. Over 40 days! My crops are coming in, but I think too slowly for me to prepare for the coming winter. All of my muffalos lost their obedience training, and two scyther raids have shredded my boar corp. I may be able to get my muffalos back into fighting discipline, but this takes a lot of colonist time during harvest season, and doesn't even guarantee colonist safety since I have to let the training lapse for so long. I almost never do caravans, but I think I'll use my otherwise idle muffalos to sell some trash for grains. This feels difficult, but fair. There are a lot of ways this colony could go wrong, but I have options.

Here's my summary for animal swarm strategies on 1.0:
- Animals on permanent summer maps are cheap. Animals on colder maps are expensive. Herbivores on very cold maps are probably not viable at all.
- If you can train a lot of animals for release, combat becomes trivial. If you can't, then the animals are still helpful, but combat remains dangerous.
- Alpacas are an outlier in terms of power. Tame, herbivorous, releasable, and woolly.

[Ardshael]

I've made it to the hidden ship to discover there are only 18 cryopods. Nooooo!!! I refuse to leave a pawn behind (other than the several incapacitated ones). I hadn't researched any ship items yet so I set up a base.

Now, I'm not sure if this is a bug or designed but my wealth is at zero. Considering the strength of my crew, any raids, poison ships, etc that have been sent are a piece of cake to take out. Additionally, visitors have taken pity on me because "I'm having such a hard time" so they give me gifts. Perhaps setting up a base here should count towards wealth so the events scale and I won't receive gifts.



https://www.screencast.com/t/7FisLrv9OVyh