Unstable build feedback thread

[Syrchalis]

Small intermittent feedback:
Playing on Temperate Forest, Cassandra Hard, Large Hills, River.

First of all: It's beautiful. Large hills with a river just makes for the most amazing landscape ever, just watching my colony makes me happy, because it feels like in a mountain forest. My previous game on a flat map was much less nice and my save file got too corrupted so I had to start over.

It's 1st of Fall and I have only 4 colonists. Usually I have more by now, however colony seems much more manageable with fewer colonists, mostly because some tasks, particularly crafting apparel take less time. I really enjoy playing with 4-6 colonists and I'm happy the colony doesn't immediately shoot up to like 8 or so, in B18 it certainly felt that way. On the same page I don't like how I spend a huge amount of time in speed 3 (or even 4).

My game keeps crashing in 64bit mode during loading a savegame, probably due to mods - I have pretty much 75% of all 1.0 mods installed, I just can't live without certain ones. In 32bit there doesn't seem to be a problem.

[East]

long range scanner VS Deep drill

[research]

long range scanner : 700

Deep drill : Multi-analyzer + deep drilling + ground penetration Scanner : 7700

[Wait time or Find time]
long range scanner : 18 day
Deep drill : 3~5 Day

[Amount of mining]
long range scanner : I did a direct mining test with debug. At each point, the following minerals were obtained.
4200 silver , 768 ura , 420gold , 4477 silver , 455 pla

Deep drill : one point 35 x 4 = 120~140
If you find more than 6 squares based on uranium, equally mined.

[Risk]

long :
2.1 Day x2 , 1 Day x2 , 2 Day x2 , 1.6 Day x2 , 1 Day x2

During the above travel time, you must bring out the colonists.  There are risks to food and transport animals and dwellings during the mining hours and risks to disease.

The probability that an enemy will appear in a mining area (1~2 sycther)

Because of the size of the caravan, you should be prepared to attack the radar.

Deep :
drill now comes with bugs.

[Can Long Range Compete With Deep Drills?]

High gain of deep drill. Long range has a waiting time of 18 days, so research figures can be ignored.
If it is a problem of consuming resources, it is a good idea to make a village of mining town.
Long range can not be used for Nomadic play.

In fact, long-range events are not the only problem. It is better not to do other World Map events that do not have unique rewards.

For example, a refugee rescue event. We can not see his stats and it is difficult to predict what the risks are. This is because there is no defense facility at all.

I think they should change more attractive and visible.
http://www.rimworldcomics.com/post/154136199665
This comic shows why it should be predictable.

[DariusWolfe]

So, really not digging faction the new faction relationships system. It seems completely bizarre to me that the only reliable way to get a good relationship with someone is to constantly have lots of money, and either give it or spend it. For sub-zero relationship, I can gain relationship quickly simply by not being a monster when they attack me, and relying upon pure RNG for how many pawns aren't downed; but as soon as they're no longer attacking me, gaining faction is crazy difficult, especially as I tend to operate on a low margin of cash flow. Most of my deals with visitors or traders, or when I go to trade with others, are below 500-1000 silver. So that's 2 points max, if I'm understanding the system right.

Brief aside: How does this work, exactly? Is the number cumulative? If I trade 499-worth, then later trade 1, do I get the relationship gain, or is it only on a per-transaction basis? Is it the worth of the goods going both ways? So if I trade 500-worth of goods, but also buy 500-worth, is that one, or two? What about if I trade the goods, Accept, then trade again to buy goods?

Either way, it just seems not even a little bit worth while to do a trade, gain 6 points, then by the time I get back to my base, it drops by 10 to -4. The relationship decay mechanic is... kind of the worst, on top of money being the primary means of gaining relationship. I could see it dropping by 10 points after a set period of time of no interaction, but dropping on what appears to be a schedule has literally made me not want to bother trying at all; Might as well have everyone be hostile, so I have my pick of incoming pawns, and I can reliably keep myself at neutral relationships just by sending them home intact.

Overall enjoying 1.0, but this is the change that is hands-down not even a little bit fun for me.

Also really hesitant about the no-ranged-in-melee thing. It's non-sensical from a fiction standpoint, and really feels overbalanced. Melee *should* be really situational, as it is in real life; There's a reason why we don't use swords and pikes anymore as part of real warfare. I'm not arguing for nerfing it entirely because once you get into close enough range, the melee weapon is going to be very, very strong against the ranged weapon, but having the ranged weapon be completely useless is... just not a good change. I've argued before for a sort of mechanic where melee attacks would interrupt ranged attacks, which would advantage melee considerably, disadvantage longer ranged weapons the most, but would give shorter ranged weapons (like the much-mentioned shotguns and pistols) a good overall utility in close range, given how badly outclassed they are in most ranged conflicts.

[Wildfire628]

It's now impossible to shoot in melee.

It's an interesting change, but ultimately only serves to punish those who can't/don't micromanage effectively. Once a melee character gets into range there are only a few ways to effectively get back into shooting range. A couple changes that might ease this would be to remove the movement "stagger" on misses(maybe even dodges too) and/or separate long barrel and short barrel weapons with short barrel having no dead zone. Either way, I think the change could be entirely bypassed by a rebalance of touch range accuracy (assuming you have the time at this stage anyway).

[Scavenger]

Oh yeah, and I would also greatly prefer having the old difficulty lingo back! The standard medium and hard are no fun.

[Madman666]

Don't go comparing the game to real life warfare. Only good use of melee is to block shooters from shooting. If you go making parralels between life and game, you ll have way too many things to complain about, that make no sense of whatsoever. You try to shoot in melee - you get your hand chopped off, so instead you re forced to use fists, pistol handles, stocks and the like. Allowing shots in melee just pretty much disables said melee from the balance standpoint.

Because why would anyone ever use a gladius or a knife, when you can use a shotgun, which rapes people at mid-to-close range and will also be able to rape people at touch range?

[Yoshida Keiji]

I can't craft Plate Armor, pawn takes all resource materials to the bench but nothing happens.

[RyanRim]

Well, just started raw vanilla. Impossible nearly, with the naked start. Got a raid with Randy in 3 days, and seems the raid mechanics improved a lot and got flanked in.

Got to wait for most mods being optimized for 1.0 before jumping in. My suggestion to many people as well.

[Scavenger]

Don't go comparing the game to real life warfare. Only good use of melee is to block shooters from shooting. If you go making parralels between life and game, you ll have way too many things to complain about, that make no sense of whatsoever. You try to shoot in melee - you get your hand chopped off, so instead you re forced to use fists, pistol handles, stocks and the like. Allowing shots in melee just pretty much disables said melee from the balance standpoint.

Because why would anyone ever use a gladius or a knife, when you can use a shotgun, which rapes people at mid-to-close range and will also be able to rape people at touch range?

Again, not with accuracy penalties, or touch range accuracy as wildfire calls it. That would help draw things to a much better balance in melee.

And I think getting your hand chopped off is quite a exaggeration.. This game does a great job of making many things realistic, realism doesn't always balance well with gameplay, but often enough that you can make it work. And if you try using a knife against a pistol, you're going to have a bad time haha. Even if you are in such close range you are actually grappling your opponent, you can wield a pistol relatively effectively. All you have to do is pointed at them, while a knife generally requires a swing of the arm.

[Scavenger]

There is a huge difference between allowing shots in melee, and only having 20% accuracy in melee.

[Madman666]

Yep. IRL you just get lead for breakfast attacking someone wielding a pistol with a knife. And thats boring as hell. The point of melee in RW was always that you could shut up someone with a pistol or a rifle when you ambush them, minimizing incoming damage to some bruises, instead of several horrible holes in your pawn's body. If the enemy will still be able to pump you full of holes point-blank even with your accuracy penalty - I and every other sane person will prefer to stay in cover, to maximise chances of avoiding damage at all. Melee would be effective only for AI which doesn't care for its pawns, while for player melee would be a risky waste of pawns. I really don't want that to be in the game.

And hey... usually in RW shots have like 1-5% to hit with a firearm (cover, range, etc). Now imagine having 20% hitchance. Compared to having to use fists\stocks 20% chance to land a shotgun shot into someone is huge change, making melee completely useless compared to it disabling your ranged weapon completely. It won't be balanced out fine and dandy even by a much more severe aim penalty.

[Boboid]

So, really not digging faction the new faction relationships system.

Playing on Cass/hard/desert(30/60)/river/transhumanists only, day 345 and I have to say - You and I are having a very different faction relations experience.

I'm allied with both the outlander factions and there's a 0% chance of me ever losing that despite the fact I'm constantly calling them for caravan requests. I'm neutral with both tribes mostly because their caravans are slightly worse and the only settlements of theirs nearby are 2-3x farther away than the outlander towns.

I gave both outlander factions a chunky gift of silver as soon as I had it spare knowing that I'd be able to use their caravans to create wealth as well as steel/plasteel/neurotomine. Selling excess precious metals generated by the LRMS as well as outpost missions. Obviously being able to constantly sell excess trade goods is really useful.

Also really hesitant about the no-ranged-in-melee thing. It's non-sensical from a fiction standpoint, and really feels overbalanced. Melee *should* be really situational, as it is in real life; There's a reason why we don't use swords and pikes anymore as part of real warfare.

I really dislike the "Realism to justify mechanical changes" argument because it's so often completely irrelevant but just to humor it for a moment - it's worth noting that AFAIK most military forces in the world still arm their soldiers with knives. And not just because they're useful tools.

I've argued before for a sort of mechanic where melee attacks would interrupt ranged attacks, which would advantage melee considerably, disadvantage longer ranged weapons the most, but would give shorter ranged weapons (like the much-mentioned shotguns and pistols) a good overall utility in close range, given how badly outclassed they are in most ranged conflicts.

This more or less existed for a while and the result was that guns kicked the shit out of melee weapons in melee almost 100% of the time. Being able to fire a 18 damage shotgun at the same rate someone could swing a 10-18 damage mace in melee just didn't work out in favour of the mace most of the time.
Moreover that system can be wildly inconsistent based on factors like when during the windup of a gunshot the melee attack lands and how that is handled mechanically. If the shot is reset then a sufficiently high attack rate precludes ever being able to fire even a quick firing gun. Shivs literally did this for a while. If the shot is paused then can the player cancel that order or is the pawn effectively stunned? Ect ect.

Additionally the player and the AI didn't interact with that system even remotely similarly. Players would  always choose to manually fire in melee combat and the AI almost never opted to.

Also when a player is using melee weapons it's incredibly frustrating to see an AI pawn get a shot off in melee for any reason. I've run a melee-only colony in 1.0 and god damn there's nothing worse than seeing a chain shotgun on the horizon knowing that no matter what you do that bastard is probably going to fire. In melee range, bypassing the personal shields you laboriously crafted and traded for.

I really like the deadzone change. Mechanically it's completely consistent. You always know what's going to happen. You can deal with it various ways. It's taken literally all the frustration and guesswork out of the melee/ranged interaction.
It's also made shield-bearing-melee-sapper-raids fairly terrifying but.. that's a nice change of pace from completely trivial

[Tynan]

Regarding melee, bear in mind that the ranged weapons are also melee weapons. They'll hit people with gun butts, poke them with barrels, etc. Stats about this are even output on the stats card.

If we need to balance ranged weapons in melee, we'll be balancing the melee verbs of those weapons.

Enemies have always been prevented from shooting while in melee. We removed that for a few days and people were quite disturbed when their melee dude got shot in the face by a sniper he was beating on. So now it's symmetrical, not a trap for noobs (e.g. you don't need to use an unintuitive "shoot him in melee" direct r-click command - this also reduces micromanagement), and a lot easier to balance since the melee and ranged numbers are totally separate for each weapon.

I suspect there may be some balance to do going forward. That said, even with low DPS there are great uses for melee fighters. E.g. have one engage the enemy in melee and let a friend shoot him in the side of the head with a shotgun. Combined arms (just try not to miss too badly).

A sword will lose against a gun at range; a gun will lose against a sword in melee. I think it makes so much sense I'd almost call it an invariant; we'll balance the rest of the system around that.

[Madman666]

I really like the deadzone change. Mechanically it's completely consistent. You always know what's going to happen. You can deal with it various ways. It's taken literally all the frustration and guesswork out of the melee/ranged interaction.
It's also made shield-bearing-melee-sapper-raids fairly terrifying but.. that's a nice change of pace from completely trivial

I can't say those shielded melee waves were ever trivial, but I sure agree with the rest of your post. Its a signature advantage of melee in RW - to force stop use of ranged weapons. In early game thats often your only chance to beat a force otherwise vastly outmatching your own in firepower.

A sword will lose against a gun at range; a gun will lose against a sword in melee. I think it makes so much sense I'd almost call it an invariant; we'll balance the rest of the system around that.

Three cheers for Tynan.

[Syrchalis]

Oh yeah, and I would also greatly prefer having the old difficulty lingo back! The standard medium and hard are no fun.

I second that, it was far more fitting. The current adjectives are just too general and will tell, especially a new player, not much.

"Some challenge" or "Rough" are incredibly clear in what difficulty level they mean, especially since Rimworld does a rather good job of delivering the difficulty that you expect. When I started out in A15 I immediately picked the right difficulty for me and had lots of fun.