Unstable build feedback thread

[NiftyAxolotl]

(The same Cassandra Intense Tribal animal swarm on a 30/60 growing days Boreal Forest. Septober '03)

I don't tame new animals anymore; the ones I have keep reproducing. The Muffalo Mob got up to 63 animals before I said "enough" and started slaughtering down to a more sustainable* 50. My seven colonists still spend most of their time feeding this horde, but I've been climbing the tech tree and getting some efficiency improvements. I tried a Nutrient Paste Dispenser as a faster alternative to kibble, but it apparently doesn't do that. I dissembled it. Anyway, I've got 600 nutrition stored for this coming winter, plus a greenhouse on fertile soil for year-round vegetables. Food is no longer a risk - just a time sink.

Raids are just not threatening**. Seven scythers? A fifteen-man siege? Puh-lease. Now that my melees have shield belts and flak vests, they can lead the stampede without any real risk, and then either duck out and let the Mob do the work or slice up the machine gunner in the back. My base has (stolen) mortars, but no perimeter wall, traps, turrets, or even sandbags. I had made rows early on out of stone and slag chunks, and have never had cause to upgrade. I hired an elite mercenary squad of alpacas, and I expect them to eventually displace half of the other animals.

Having so many muffalos isn't just invalidating combat - I have more wool and bluefur (and other leathers) than I know what to do with. All my colonists are wearing heavy fur from the megasloths that I kill on sight. Every trader who visits walks away with an empty coin-purse and pallets upon pallets of leather. Even if I had the spare colonist time, there's no point crafting or sculpting anything to trade. Nobody can pay for it anyway.

I did maybe 5 or 6 quick caravans just to clear stockpile space. I sent my non-violent negotiator, a melee bodyguard, and three muffalos. It was profitable and safe. Very small events like three mad chickens or two weak pirates. Now that the outlander union is allied with me, I've been calling them on the comm console. I have done zero other over-world quests. There's just nothing that I really need.

*Possible balancing lever: my herd consumes all the grass so quickly that I have to feed some of them year-round. If grass were less nutritious, I would have to lower my population cap, but someone with a more reasonable herd would be unaffected.
**As long as raiders stand their ground while shooting, they will always be trampled by the Mob. If they kite away and scatter, it might be a different story. At least I would need to focus more on faster animals that are trained for release, rather than lumbering simpletons.

[ticket]

The changes since B18 are awesome!

Some things I've notice while playing the new updates:

- The rate of decrease in faction relations vs. the ability to improve them felt too heavily biased towards decay. It would be great to get better bonuses from gifts/trading with factions.

- I find myself having to spend a lot of time forbidding items I just created which I want to save for later use (e.g. disallow pawns from consuming packaged survival meal immediately). Is it possible to just have an option to forbid them upon the item being deposited somewhere after its creation?

- In a recent changelog, I noticed there was more incentive for doctoring pawns to not let someone bleed to death while doing other things, which is fantastic. However, I still have to continually remind my doctor pawns to not start resting/eating/feeding other healing pawns while there are unpatched pawns. It would be great if priority 1 doc meant that they would do doctoring before doing any form of rest/feeding. Maybe that's just my inner hypochondriac coming out though.

[Madman666]

With decent amount of herbal meds and a few prisoners a whole colony can learn 10 doctoring in 10-15 days, even pawns without any passion in it.

10 in medicine without a passion in couple weeks for several people sounds like sleeptalk, sorry. Unless i guess the only thing your people do all day is treat something.

[Serina]

(The same Cassandra Intense Tribal animal swarm on a 30/60 growing days Boreal Forest. Septober '03)

I don't tame new animals anymore; the ones I have keep reproducing. The Muffalo Mob got up to 63 animals before I said "enough" and started slaughtering down to a more sustainable* 50. My seven colonists still spend most of their time feeding this horde, but I've been climbing the tech tree and getting some efficiency improvements. I tried a Nutrient Paste Dispenser as a faster alternative to kibble, but it apparently doesn't do that. I dissembled it. Anyway, I've got 600 nutrition stored for this coming winter, plus a greenhouse on fertile soil for year-round vegetables. Food is no longer a risk - just a time sink.

Raids are just not threatening**. Seven scythers? A fifteen-man siege? Puh-lease. Now that my melees have shield belts and flak vests, they can lead the stampede without any real risk, and then either duck out and let the Mob do the work or slice up the machine gunner in the back. My base has (stolen) mortars, but no perimeter wall, traps, turrets, or even sandbags. I had made rows early on out of stone and slag chunks, and have never had cause to upgrade. I hired an elite mercenary squad of alpacas, and I expect them to eventually displace half of the other animals.

Having so many muffalos isn't just invalidating combat - I have more wool and bluefur (and other leathers) than I know what to do with. All my colonists are wearing heavy fur from the megasloths that I kill on sight. Every trader who visits walks away with an empty coin-purse and pallets upon pallets of leather. Even if I had the spare colonist time, there's no point crafting or sculpting anything to trade. Nobody can pay for it anyway.

I did maybe 5 or 6 quick caravans just to clear stockpile space. I sent my non-violent negotiator, a melee bodyguard, and three muffalos. It was profitable and safe. Very small events like three mad chickens or two weak pirates. Now that the outlander union is allied with me, I've been calling them on the comm console. I have done zero other over-world quests. There's just nothing that I really need.

*Possible balancing lever: my herd consumes all the grass so quickly that I have to feed some of them year-round. If grass were less nutritious, I would have to lower my population cap, but someone with a more reasonable herd would be unaffected.
**As long as raiders stand their ground while shooting, they will always be trampled by the Mob. If they kite away and scatter, it might be a different story. At least I would need to focus more on faster animals that are trained for release, rather than lumbering simpletons.

You are awesome and I love your posts about your animal mobs/strike forces, very entertaining to read. I normally only play on tundra but you make me want to play on a different biome to try to sustain the same amount of animals.

[Awe]

10 in medicine without a passion in couple weeks for several people sounds like sleeptalk, sorry. Unless i guess the only thing your people do all day is treat something.

You just dont know that to do. You dont need to treat something. You need exactly to install and uninstall peg leg to prisoner. 1 operation gives full daily cap of exp for 2 fires, 2 operations for 1 fire, a bit more for unpassioned but if you need a decent doctor you must do it instead of whining about rimworld cruelty.

[Madman666]

Ah, the old peg leg cheese. Well that explains it.

[Greep]

(The same Cassandra Intense Tribal animal swarm on a 30/60 growing days Boreal Forest. Septober '03)

I don't tame new animals anymore; the ones I have keep reproducing. The Muffalo Mob got up to 63 animals before I said "enough" and started slaughtering down to a more sustainable* 50. My seven colonists still spend most of their time feeding this horde, but I've been climbing the tech tree and getting some efficiency improvements. I tried a Nutrient Paste Dispenser as a faster alternative to kibble, but it apparently doesn't do that. I dissembled it. Anyway, I've got 600 nutrition stored for this coming winter, plus a greenhouse on fertile soil for year-round vegetables. Food is no longer a risk - just a time sink.

Raids are just not threatening**. Seven scythers? A fifteen-man siege? Puh-lease. Now that my melees have shield belts and flak vests, they can lead the stampede without any real risk, and then either duck out and let the Mob do the work or slice up the machine gunner in the back. My base has (stolen) mortars, but no perimeter wall, traps, turrets, or even sandbags. I had made rows early on out of stone and slag chunks, and have never had cause to upgrade. I hired an elite mercenary squad of alpacas, and I expect them to eventually displace half of the other animals.

Having so many muffalos isn't just invalidating combat - I have more wool and bluefur (and other leathers) than I know what to do with. All my colonists are wearing heavy fur from the megasloths that I kill on sight. Every trader who visits walks away with an empty coin-purse and pallets upon pallets of leather. Even if I had the spare colonist time, there's no point crafting or sculpting anything to trade. Nobody can pay for it anyway.

I did maybe 5 or 6 quick caravans just to clear stockpile space. I sent my non-violent negotiator, a melee bodyguard, and three muffalos. It was profitable and safe. Very small events like three mad chickens or two weak pirates. Now that the outlander union is allied with me, I've been calling them on the comm console. I have done zero other over-world quests. There's just nothing that I really need.

*Possible balancing lever: my herd consumes all the grass so quickly that I have to feed some of them year-round. If grass were less nutritious, I would have to lower my population cap, but someone with a more reasonable herd would be unaffected.
**As long as raiders stand their ground while shooting, they will always be trampled by the Mob. If they kite away and scatter, it might be a different story. At least I would need to focus more on faster animals that are trained for release, rather than lumbering simpletons.

Yeah animal swarms are fun   Still, this is intense, I wonder how this would hold up on extreme or when the inferno cannons and doomsday launchers start showing up.

How are you feeding them all on boreal anyways?  Human kibble?

[Tass237]

Story from play.

Build  .1949
Cassandra Rough (Hard)
seed: stork
Flat Temperate Forest
Started a colony with a custom scenario that is basically the crashlanded scenario, but only two colonists.
Inna was a good hunter and miner, as well as an acceptable crafter and researcher.
Drew was an altruist, but a good builder, grower, and doctor.
Over the first 15 days, I had two wanderers join, both incapable of violence, one was Drew's brother Dex.
I ended my play session after 15 days.

Build .1951

Day 16. Inna, only colonist capable of violence, abducted by raiders. She had downed one, and the other two raiders were bleeding to death, but she went down with only bruises, and the raiders got her off the map before they downed to blood loss (raider carrying her was at Moderate Blood Loss when left the map).
All hope is not lost, because my prisoner from an earlier raid can do violence, if only I can recruit him.

Predators need to defend themselves better.
Had a pet panther that kept fleeing from 4 Manhunting rabbits, while non-violent colonists were hiding inside.

We get word of a refugee able to be rescued, but they are guarded by a ring of turrets. With no violence-capable colonists, we have to ignore it.

Day 25. Another raid, everyone hides in an ever-shrinking part of the burning house (doors have less HP because of build .1951, so it is harder to hold the house with door repairs, and the raiders set my wood walls on fire, but Freezer has stone walls already.  Panther dies in raid, and my pet cat has its spine shattered. Raiders break down the door to my prison cell, and my prisoner escapes. So much for him being my hope of defense. Eventually the raiders give up and leave. We put out the fires and start rebuilding. With no colonists capable of hunting, we butcher both the panther and the cat for meat.

Day 31. A new wanderer joins, and he is capable of violence, however he only has a 2 in Shooting. We give him our only gun, having sold the rest to a caravan in order to buy the panther.

Day 35. Had a group of "cows" join --> 2 Bulls. So much for the hope of milk.

Day 36. A Megasloth goes mad. Worried, we move everyone in the house except Adiemus, who can use a gun. Before everyone is even in position, we get a raid of 4 pirates. Move Adiemus indoors, and hope they fight each other. They take out the Megasloth, but one gets a leg torn off in the process. Adiemus is back outside to take a few shots, and kills one and injures another before going down. We have one of the non-voilent boys run out and rescue Adiemus while the raiders shoot at the bulls. Raiders decide to steal what they can and leave, running off with 476 Silver, and 14 components. One raider doesn't seem to be leaving with the rest, he sets my generator on fire, digs through 4 different wood doors in my base, then steals my billiards table. I had no idea that "steal what they can" meant they could decide to steal something they couldn't already reach.

Day 42. Get a quest to rescue a refugee named Fernand. His class is bodyguard, so we hope he is capable of violence. Adiemus and a bull head out to get him, only 1.7 days away, carrying 5.6 days of food.

Caravan is only 6 hours out when the base gets raided by tribespeople. I move colonists into the house, and the raiders club my remaining bull to death. I forgot to forbid one of the doors, so Drew goes outside and before I can get him back inside, he gets his head destroyed by a single club-stroke. During the raid, I get a quest that Inna is at a raider's camp and I could rescue her. After destroying or lighting on fire most of the base, the raiders give up and leave.

Before the raiders even make it off the map, an escape pod lands containing an 80-year-old man with bad artery blockage. He is capable of violence, so we go to rescue him. At this point we realize that Drew was our only doctor (others CAN but have 1 or less skill). We do our best to patch up the old man, but he gets an infection and eventually succumbs to it.

Day 44. Remaining two colonists at base come down with the Flu, and do their best to treat each other without meds (meds were burned by raiders, but at least we can avoid the self-tend penalty).  Dex gets out of bed and wanders around in a psychotic daze. While he wanders around, the other sick colonist hits his 1000th (44th) birthday, and gets the gift of a Bad Back, this combined with the Flu downs him while he was up getting food.

Later that day, Adiemus's caravan reaches the refugee Fernand, and sneakily rescues him from under the noses of 7 sleeping mechanoids. They begin their way back to the base.

Day 45. A local squirrel goes mad, and bites Dex until downed. Between malnutrition, flu, squirrel bites, and the resultant blood loss, he has taken too much and dies. The other colonist who was downed by bad back is losing the battle with the Flu.

Day 46. Adiemus's caravan is out of food, but is less than a day from base.
Also day 46, another raid shows up at the currently uninhabited base. Just one guy, but he starts going to town on my coolers, generator, butcher table, and dining room. Then he leaves with much of my food on fire.

Day 47. Caravan arrives back and I end my play session.

[Oblitus]

10 in medicine without a passion in couple weeks for several people sounds like sleeptalk, sorry. Unless i guess the only thing your people do all day is treat something.

You just dont know that to do. You dont need to treat something. You need exactly to install and uninstall peg leg to prisoner. 1 operation gives full daily cap of exp for 2 fires, 2 operations for 1 fire, a bit more for unpassioned but if you need a decent doctor you must do it instead of whining about rimworld cruelty.

To level from 2 to 10 you need 54000 experience. It is 13.5 days if you get 4000 every day. You can't really get overhead without 2 flames, so it is already more than you've stated.

If you get 4000 from 2 operations with 1 fires, you need 6 operations per day without passion. Or 81 operations in total. Which means that you need at least 3 prisoners and a solid stock of meds. I'd rather invest into drop pods.

[East]

It was updated and I enjoyed the game for a while.
The door was very weak. In the early game, when the pirates started attacking the door, they were instantly destroyed.
Even animal door attacks are threatening.

The enemy's reaction is really fast.
And the move locking in reloadtime was lengthened, which made control difficult.
Because it is possible to cancel the attack during the warm-up time, but it can not be canceled at the reload time and can not respond quickly to changes in the situation (for example, if the enemy approaches).
If you were trying to help a ranged weapon against melee, the result was totally the opposite. melee will avoid shooting at long distances and easily catch distances that do not move long reload time.


Personally, it is fun to have some balance between warm up and reload.

[Fritigern]

Hi, first time posting, wanted to leave some feedback from my experience playing with the development build.

Currently playing Cassandra/Hard with a standard start, though on the smallest map possible since I am currently playing on a non-gaming laptop. I've made it 5 years so far.

I will admit I've had to use the dev console at some points along my journey, but only to correct issues created by the daily patch cycle and I've always made sure it wasn't to get something for free. An example being that I was in the process of loading a transport pod with supplies one night and saved my game when I was done playing, and when I came back the next morning and a patch was released, it somehow caught my pawns up in a loop they couldn't break from. I can't explain their erratic behavior, maybe they were trying to load something that wasn't there anymore but no matter how many times I cancelled the load it would happen again, so I did a dev-instant load to sort that out and no problems since.

As much as I love the consistency of the water wheel power generation, I feel like it is still too reliable and safe. As you can (hopefully) see from my screenshot, I started out in a mountain that has a river bisecting it. This has given me an incredibly safe and reliable power supply with zero need for battery backups. I feel like there should be some output variation in the water wheel the same way there is in the wind turbine, though maybe with not with the same extremes. Changes from 1200 to 800 would have been enough in the early game to force me to either build more, or to prioritize battery research way sooner than I did.

Autocannons feel really great, and have since the first patch cycle. They have been really helpful in softening enemies as they come in by providing meaningful damage instead of just acting as a damage sponge like regular turrets always felt like. My only complaint is that they are downright scary to stand in front of when they are shooting. I've had several animals killed, limbs lost, and the occasional pawn death to missed shots that slam into the back of my fighters. I feel like their chance to stray off target and hit other things in their path is too high but maybe that's the point, or just a quirk of the combat at large.

Speaking of combat, and the armour and armour penetration system at large... it feels clunky in its current state, and poorly described to the player. I am pretty sure I have most of it understood, but armour percentage balloons so rapidly that it becomes confusing, with many pawns having over 100% armour rating. It feels bloated and wrong. Also, when you check a pawns overall armour rating, what does that even mean? Isn't it all limb and layer based calculations?

In a similar vein to the combat system I gotta say I really dislike the changes to the assault rifle. Not its damage, but its new, incredibly wimpy-feeling 2 round, slow firing burst. Granted this has less to do with clear cut gameplay and more to do with aesthetic taste, but the assault rifle really feels gutless and weak without its electric staccato sound. I don't care if you have to nerf the assault rifles numbers to make it all hash out behind the scenes damage-wise, but whatever you gotta do to bring back its 3-round burst is a must, otherwise I feel like I'd be looking for a mod to give its edge back.

Oh, and the charge rifle, it also feels and sounds less impressive than it once did, now that it shooting a 2 shot burst at a slow tempo. Can we experiment with giving it a more steady, drum-like firing rate? A steady beat of single shots with a low cooldown, something similar to the auto pistol. I think that'd be nice.

Mechanoids felt extremely, overwhelmingly strong early on in the patch cycle, especially when my colony was fresh. They are a bit less intimidating now that you have made some changes to them, but without restarting from the beginning I can't really say for certain how balanced they feel. The new enemy type (splitting up the scythers) is great, but I still feel like they could use some more variation. A new enemy type? A tunneling animal-like mech that can show up in your base that shoots fire instead of just the same boring insects all the time? I dunno, but that's clearly way beyond the scope of these current tests.

Can't really think of too much else to say. Overall I am very happy with the changes I am seeing with each patch, and 1.0 overall. Having lots of fun playing it, especially with the new caravan mechanics that just feel great across the board.

Oh and just for a bit of fun I'll share the unusual trade request I am working on fulfilling. A neutral tribe is offering me a legendary mini-gun in exchange for 99 short bows. I... guess that makes sense if you have lots of people who all need weapons? I'd settle for one gun shooting 99 bullets, personally, but that's their business.

[attachment deleted due to age]

[BlackSmokeDMax]

I haven't played that much 1.0 yet.
I like the new blueprints and sprites.
But I already don't like the new grave system, because I usually haul the enemy corpses to one of my stockpiles and strip them there and then bury them. (So the apparel isn't that far away from my base and is indoors.)
Now i have to switch the priority of my stockpile back and forth instead of "just" clicking bury.

Great point, wonder why that was changed.

[5thHorseman]

Ah, that rich temperate forest... Just look how much trees and grass it has!

My first (and only so far) 1.0 game is in exactly such a map, only without the rock resources either.

The I had a toxic fallout, and haven't recovered yet.

[Oblitus]

Some wildlife observations.

Wolf's intelligence is nerfed? Meh, we still have cougars to replace them. Arctic wolves still have advanced trainability, BTW.
Why are foxes carnivore? Foxes should be omnivores.
Pack of manhunting hares is still one of the most dangerous events in the game.
"Catch an animal to train it" is still one of the most popular games amongst handlers. Using their obedience training to make them listen is considered cheating.

[Madman666]

By the way, i wonder what brought on the huge door nerf. Are they made from paper now or something? The hp on them was already crap, aside from slow stone ones. Now any door that is not made from stone can be easily eaten by some mad bunnies. Funzies.