Unstable build feedback thread

[bbqftw]

Thank you for the more detailed response.

I must admit, I don't understand why your pawn died to disease considering you clearly have good medicine and penoxycyline. Perhaps you just had a bad run? I know it sucks, but hey, these things happen. Death is expected on the Rim, and while it totally sucks you were very well prepared when tragedy struck, you have a good story to tell.

A caravan needs 4 men minimum is quite untrue however. If you're just selling to nearby colonies, 1 man and 1 pack animal is good enough, provided said trader has good enough Medicine and is a good fighter. I've sent single man rescue missions just fine, with only outposts being a noticeable exception. Sleeping mechanoids are very easy to circumvent by just rescuing the refugee and GTFOing out of there.

Pack animals are needed when you collect silver based rewards for your quests. 2500 silver weights quite a lot. The idea that pack animals are slow is well, untrue. If you had to haul 500 silver with you, it's better to have a pack animal then doing it by yourself. It's why 1.0 shows that weight limit. The more stuff you have, the slower you are. That's why pack animals are great. They're not "slow" as long as you don't bring a pregnant animal.

As for base defense, traps, turrets, mortars, IEDs, really the game gives you enough options to defend yourself. You can also request help from allies if you're really hurting. You have the tools to make caravans work, use them! Or you know, just recruit more people.

Caravaning in 1.o is the best experience so far in RW. Barring a few issues, it's the most noob friendly it's ever gonna get.

EDIT: This was all done on Cassandra Intense.

I will say that these considerations only tend to apply when you've stabilized. Things like having redundant doctors, raid scaling such that you don't need all hands on deck, are things that are typically only enjoyed in an already won position.

When playing desperate start (so far been 'enjoying' the treat of NB/extr on 1.0), it is not immediately obvious that you can even afford to recruit pawns the normal way, you are relying on rescues instant join and maybe the generosity of the storyteller. Both are RNG, but both also don't burn 20-30+ meals for questionable return.

Keep in mind that a large proportion of 'crashland tech' pawns are typically low utility (one of the advantages of the tribal pool is relative paucity of horrendously incapable pawns), with a large fraction being negative utility- this issue is further accentuated with rescue quests since you're taking risks and losing time to secure pawns that on average will be bad.

[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.

Now i understand why Tynan dont like theoretics. 1 operation at 4lvl unpassioned pawn give him ~1100 xp. To level 2->10  in such rates you need like 50 medicines. Costly, but not problem even at first year, if you have 8lvl farmer and dont play extreme biomes. Also, FYI, leveling 1 fires is faster than 2 fires, because his first operation give him under 4k of xp and you can do second which lead to 6-7-8k(depend on current lvl) of xp per day.

So, without any number check and based on wild guesses I've only mistaken by 40%. I'd say my point still stands. Far too tedious and quite expensive. You have to manage operation bills on daily basis, then supervise it execution to make sure that medicine is only used for only operation (unless this is changed if you set to no meds you can't operate), feed that prisoners...

Thank you for the more detailed response.

I must admit, I don't understand why your pawn died to disease considering you clearly have good medicine and penoxycyline. Perhaps you just had a bad run? I know it sucks, but hey, these things happen. Death is expected on the Rim, and while it totally sucks you were very well prepared when tragedy struck, you have a good story to tell.

A caravan needs 4 men minimum is quite untrue however. If you're just selling to nearby colonies, 1 man and 1 pack animal is good enough, provided said trader has good enough Medicine and is a good fighter. I've sent single man rescue missions just fine, with only outposts being a noticeable exception. Sleeping mechanoids are very easy to circumvent by just rescuing the refugee and GTFOing out of there.

Pack animals are needed when you collect silver based rewards for your quests. 2500 silver weights quite a lot. The idea that pack animals are slow is well, untrue. If you had to haul 500 silver with you, it's better to have a pack animal then doing it by yourself. It's why 1.0 shows that weight limit. The more stuff you have, the slower you are. That's why pack animals are great. They're not "slow" as long as you don't bring a pregnant animal.

As for base defense, traps, turrets, mortars, IEDs, really the game gives you enough options to defend yourself. You can also request help from allies if you're really hurting. You have the tools to make caravans work, use them! Or you know, just recruit more people.

Caravaning in 1.o is the best experience so far in RW. Barring a few issues, it's the most noob friendly it's ever gonna get.

Too much random. Last time I had three pawns, two good (12 and 15 skill) shooters with good assault rifles and one awful one with minigun (who was also a doctor). Met a single hostile outlander with a shotgun. He just walked close under all that fire and shot my doctor in heart. Strangest part - it ended well. But with 1500+ hours in rimworld, I've learned one thing: if something can go wrong, it will. And caravan has way too many things that can go wrong. They can work, sure, but... They just not worth it. Too risky, unless you play with expendable pawns or have some serious mod-added tech.

[Greep]

If you seriously aren't doing caravanning at all you're missing out.  You don't need a mod for expendable pawns, you just use your crappy ones to do suicide runs.  Less pawns: low visibility.  I've got a gourmand pyromaniac with psychite addiction (large) that I just recruited.  Gave him some flake and trade goods and shoved him into the big wide world.  If he dies, oh well, smaller raids because I have less wealth   .  Once you get allies through gifts and trading you just make them come to you (I've got two outlander allies on my randy extreme currently).

What I think anyone can agree on is that caravaning isn't remotely newbie friendly, though, and that events which require escorts (known threats) are only really doable with extreme expendability, like animal swarm builds.

[MikeLemmer]

The new animal-fleeing mechanics and no-ranged-in-melee may require some tweaking. I just lost a colonist on my 2nd day to a panther; despite 2 people shooting at it, it kept attacking my colonist until she died (due to hunting her) and then immediately fled without eating anything once she was dead. It fled for a couple seconds, then immediately approached my colonists again in an attempt to eat the Packaged Survival Meal she dropped.

It would be nice to scare off a predator from eating someone with a good injury instead of having to fight it to the death.

[Ser Kitteh]

Isn't a good chunk of Rimworld random though? It's a part of the game design to tell interesting stories. Caravans have become super friendly, and I just strongly disagree they're not worth it.

Considering that most new players will choose Crashlanded, the argument for tribals or SS or NB doesn't matter all that much because you knew what you signed up for. You know it's gonna be harder. No one is forcing you to caravan. If you think you can't do it well, don't.

"If something can go wrong, it will" is true for a lot of RW. They are worth it in 1.0 for the rewards, that is my opinion. You can argue that refugees aren't worth it, and well that's fair enough. But you took that chance, you made that decision. Current 1.0 seems to have issue with recruitment chances, something I expect Tynan will patch quick enough.

You can take steps to minimise danger but you know, somethings you roll a 1 and that's fine. Did your doctor have a vest for instance? I honestly can't tell because I don't know your experience. For all I know you've caravaned 20 times when 1.0 launched or you've caravaned like 4 times.

It would be nice to know if you have suggestions on how to make it worth it rather than just saying "it's not worth it" over and over. For incapacitated refugees, one suggestion I've heard before is that they have some rare loot on them (Glittermeds, charge rifles, gold, adv. components) regardless of how useful or not they are. That alone would make caravans more enticing.

[bbqftw]

Listing the skills of the incap refugee would help.

[MikeLemmer]

Also, there seems to be a bug where a pet will continue "escorting" their Master while they're sleeping? I had a dog that refused to eat or sleep while their Master was sleeping, but immediately ate/slept after she did some Recreation (dismissing her pet in the process).

[JavaWho]

With over 2400 hours into Rimworld throughout several versions I have decided to post my thoughts and opinions on unstable 1.0.  Remember no matter my opinion I love this game.

1.  The new graphics are brilliant.  Love the new coms console, mechanoids new look, beds and more, but, I do not like the new vitals monitor, it appears a plopped down square, the original one had far more detail.

2.  Doors, yes the cover effectiveness needed to be nerfed, but down to 5% I think we have swung the pendulum from one extreme to the other, moderation is key.  I feel the same with the health on the doors, moderation.

3.  I absolutely love sapper raids not retreating and that tribals have a means to dig through the walls.

4.  I love the added wildlife tab and especially love the fact that random attacks from animals hunting pawns is not part of the tab.  Surprises are great.

5.  I am enjoying the lancers/scythers.  I do feel the centipedes still need a bit of work.  I personally liked them being slow, gave me time to regroup for the heavy armor they now have but also understand why some might want them sped up.

6.  The new cannons are great, wish they were movable. 

7.  Changing clothing and armor is far to slow and I think this should be modified.

8.  I do not know if volcanic winter chance was upped, but it seems it has been, and i like this.

9.  I like the rain gives a debuff for being wet, with this said I also think one type of jacket/duster or parka should prevent this in the rain.

10. I like that raids are now unpredictable where they will attack and that they will attack at 2 or more points of your base.

11. Not being able to shoot in melee range .. this would seem optimal with long range weapons but with short range weapons such as a shot gun it is disappointing.

12.  I like some of the new traits in game, quick sleeper is fantastic.  Name changes from "tunneler" go "indoorsy" meh

13.  I like the new infestation animation and the fact that the drills can produce an infestation.  The audio for infestations is off the charts, love it.

14. Floors .. I have always felt if you spend a great deal of time making stone tiles it should be a +2 beauty factor and the flagstone which takes less time a +1.  I also noticed burned wood floors was upped from 59% to 93%, as it needed to be changed i am happy but again, moderation.

15. Passive coolers and torches, have no option to not refuel them.  This I feel is a need.  When you have to buy wood on the ice sheet "no more trees under roof zones"  the auto fuel takes all your hard earned silver.

16. The missions are now worth doing, the benefits are finally outweighing the dangers of doing them.

17.  I am a person whom like to pick my tile when moving a colony.  If i do this via transport pod I literally have to count the tiles by hand before setting the caravan so i can pick the type of map i wish to go to.  An auto counter would be nice and maybe an icon that can be set to recall this is where I am going.

18.  New bionics crafting is a nice addition.

Now with all of this said, i have traveled a colony from the ice sheet and am approximately 17 tiles from the ship and looking forward to seeing the defenses at the ship in 1.0.  Again, this is just my thoughts and opinion.

[XelNigma]

Seeing that the hydroponics got a graphic upgrade I was hoping they were also changed to have their own light source so I dont need them AND a sunlamp.  But sadly I still need a sunlamp... Meaning I dont need a hydroponics basin because the ground will work and gives me access to more crops while costing less power and with out fear to lose my crops when I have a power outage.

Its still a "noob trap" building as new players wound't immediately think to just box in a growzone with a sun lamp and farm from the soil rather than building this thing.

[Greep]

Dear lord.  Was in the middle of trading with my two allied factions and all of a sudden this massive shootout occurs.  Apparently civil outlanders are at war with the rough outlanders :/

[attachment deleted due to age]

[TheMeInTeam]

Isn't a good chunk of Rimworld random though?

Much less than most think.  This includes caravan maneuvers actually.  I'd argue that while planning around RNG is reasonable, outcome shouldn't completely ignore skill in interacting with said RNG.

I would also argue that caravans don't actually possess that kind of non-agency RNG however.  For example depending on what you carry on the pawn, 1 man pawns are viable and can actually bust turret-defended incapped refugees, make some deliveries, or even break outposts if you have really good stuff.

I love the added wildlife tab and especially love the fact that random attacks from animals hunting pawns is not part of the tab.  Surprises are great.

It's a problem in the game, albeit a partially alleviated one.  I've yet to see rationale otherwise that allows it to be an internally consistent feature of Rimworld.  If you click on an animal hunting, you can see what it's hunting. 

Hiding this information is no more "surprise" than neglecting to provide information about any arbitrarily selected event that does give notification.  It's also asymmetric; stuff the game does routinely notify is less threatening.  Manually hunting predators on some manually determined routine is a rote-input alpha strategy.  That's not a good place for anything, based on Tynan's own rationale in the balance thread.  Even basic tasks like feeding your pawns and keeping them warm have more practical variety.

In other words, "surprises are great" is proving too much, or rather using this justification implies most of the rest of the game isn't doing well.  There must be a reason this particular pawn killing surprise is better than others for internal consistency - both for Rimworld and in the framework of an argument supporting it.  I've yet to see one.

Its still a "noob trap" building as new players wound't immediately think to just box in a growzone with a sun lamp and farm from the soil rather than building this thing.

Right now hydroponics are only attractive on biomes without ordinary soil...but I'm not sure this is a bad place for them.  I'm a bit disappointed in how trees were balanced.  Gating them off on extremely slow plant times is a bit heavy-handed and doesn't make sense next to the normal growing system.  Maybe the idea was to make the wood shortage felt on desert variants, ice sheet, and sea ice a persistent problem, but this largely is only felt on the desert biomes (growing trees was not viable on the other two even before).  On friendly biomes this is offset by how vegetation regrows so quickly - infinite wood is easier than ever there.  All in all I'm not sure if it's better, it certainly makes desert tribal harder but doesn't seem to change much on balance aside from that in 1.0.

I also disagree that hydroponics are a "noob trap" beyond research for them.  In contrast to some other things, the numbers available in game suggest that hydroponics are a bad value compared to normal growing unless you don't have enough soil.  Perhaps the description of hydroponics could benefit from this, or better we can optionally have stuff that isn't researched greyed but still available in the menus with stats.

[Boboid]

Now i understand why Tynan dont like theoretics

Do you perhaps think it's because people can't or refuse to do math, don't know how to test their theories, let their feelings do their thinking for them,are about as observant as quails, and stubbornly refuse to change their minds about their aforementioned feelings irrespective of the level of objectivity surrounding the subject?

Its still a "noob trap" building as new players wound't immediately think to just box in a growzone with a sun lamp and farm from the soil rather than building this thing.

Context is everything. Perhaps in an all-year-round growing area with infinite soil and the ability to defend it irrespective of location it might be true that some colonies would benefit from such a setup.
Lets do some math shall we?

A sun lamp covers 101 tiles,consumes 2900 power between the hours of 6 and 18. It's effectively on half the time. Ignoring the nature of battery efficiency and the variance in power generation we can assume it uses 1450 constantly. Assuming standard soil it has a grow density of 1-1, 1 tile = 100% growth and all 101 tiles are used.

Hydroponics consume 70 power and 16 of them can be placed within a sun lamp without forcing pawns to clamber over them slowing movement speed.  This totals 1120 power all day long.
Hydroponics however have 280% fertility per tile, assuming a 100% fertility sensitivity crop like Rice then each hydroponics has a true density of 2.8. 16x4x2.8 = 179.2. This is 77% more grow space.

So in reality a sun lamp with hydroponics uses 77% more power (1450->2570) and yields 77% more growing space(101->179.2)
If you use an 18 basin setup these numbers shift a little bit into hydroponics favor.
---
Assuming a situation where you don't have soil in exactly the place you want to grow your crops hydroponics are just fine.
It's true that a solar flare lasts long enough to kill your crops in their basins but that's simply a cost intrinsic to being able to relocate your growing zones to wherever you would like. Under a mountain, in the middle of a desert, ect.

It should also be noted at this point that if you're in an environment that doesn't require temperature control then sun lamps almost pointless whereas hydroponics continue to increase your field density at the cost of power.

[Razzoriel]

Seeing that the hydroponics got a graphic upgrade I was hoping they were also changed to have their own light source so I dont need them AND a sunlamp.  But sadly I still need a sunlamp... Meaning I dont need a hydroponics basin because the ground will work and gives me access to more crops while costing less power and with out fear to lose my crops when I have a power outage.

Its still a "noob trap" building as new players wound't immediately think to just box in a growzone with a sun lamp and farm from the soil rather than building this thing.

Aren't hydroponics much more fertile than fertile ground itself, and by extension choosing where to plant it, means you can go underground and make your own small farm in caves?

[bbqftw]

Now i understand why Tynan dont like theoretics

Do you perhaps think it's because people can't or refuse to do math, don't know how to test their theories, let their feelings do their thinking for them,are about as observant as quails, and stubbornly refuse to change their minds about their aforementioned feelings irrespective of the level of objectivity surrounding the subject?

Its still a "noob trap" building as new players wound't immediately think to just box in a growzone with a sun lamp and farm from the soil rather than building this thing.

Context is everything. Perhaps in an all-year-round growing area with infinite soil and the ability to defend it irrespective of location it might be true that some colonies would benefit from such a setup.
Lets do some math shall we?

A sun lamp covers 101 tiles,consumes 2900 power between the hours of 6 and 18. It's effectively on half the time. Ignoring the nature of battery efficiency and the variance in power generation we can assume it uses 1450 constantly. Assuming standard soil it has a grow density of 1-1, 1 tile = 100% growth and all 101 tiles are used.

Hydroponics consume 70 power and 16 of them can be placed within a sun lamp without forcing pawns to clamber over them slowing movement speed.  This totals 1120 power all day long.
Hydroponics however have 280% fertility per tile, assuming a 100% fertility sensitivity crop like Rice then each hydroponics has a true density of 2.8. 16x4x2.8 = 179.2. This is 77% more grow space.

So in reality a sun lamp with hydroponics uses 77% more power (1450->2570) and yields 77% more growing space(101->179.2)
If you use an 18 basin setup these numbers shift a little bit into hydroponics favor.
---
Assuming a situation where you don't have soil in exactly the place you want to grow your crops hydroponics are just fine.
It's true that a solar flare lasts long enough to kill your crops in their basins but that's simply a cost intrinsic to being able to relocate your growing zones to wherever you would like. Under a mountain, in the middle of a desert, ect.

It should also be noted at this point that if you're in an environment that doesn't require temperature control then sun lamps almost pointless whereas hydroponics continue to increase your field density at the cost of power.

The general argument against hydroponics comes from component investment which is relevant unless you've already stabilized a winning position.

There's also the consideration of rice labor costs.

The reason theorycraft is often frowned upon is because most theorycraft is bad or ignores relevant factors.

[TheMeInTeam]

So in reality a sun lamp with hydroponics uses 77% more power (1450->2570) and yields 77% more growing space(101->179.2)
If you use an 18 basin setup these numbers shift a little bit into hydroponics favor.

In addition to power, you have pretty disparate resource costs to set up between the two, more maintenance (more breakdowns from more electronics), and more vulnerability to events hurting them (crops can be saved via hasty campfire, no recourse for solar flare killing crops in hydroponics though).  You have to actually research hydroponics too.

None of this makes hydroponics worthless, but it does mean that on maps where you have enough 100% or better quality soil available, indoor growing with soil is a better deal than hydroponics.

But given the design of difficulty between biomes making hydroponics a bad deal compared to soil is a reasonable tradeoff.