Unstable build feedback thread

[Tynan]

Please explain a bit more about this one:
- Death on downed chance for non colony humans now relates to population intent.

Does that mean raider death chance scales with the amount of people you have or with how close you are to your storyteller's population limit. On Randy you can have a lot of people, up to 50 correct?

And i d also like to know how much it actually does scale. Whats the chance for a raider to survive when you're at 13 colonists on Cassie? Since it does affect diplomacy part of the game.

I'm actually deliberately not giving exact figures on this because I want to avoid the prejudgment and theorycrafting. The experience is the important thing, and that's what I'm trying to get information about. So play the game and find out the experience for yourself! Even better, you'll be able to appreciate the experience instead of having your perception colored by a sort of changelist theorycrafted placebo effect.

[ReZpawner]

Damn, that door change is just atrocious, 140 hp on steel door is bad enough, but wood ones are just a decoration. 56 hp on a door. Like seriously. A bush (!) has twice as much hp. I am quite tempted to just wall myself in completely and only dig out a way outside when i need it.

I appreciate feedback, but just calling something "atrocious" is dragging down the constructive atmosphere here. There's no design content to this post. It's pure complaint and pure theorycrafting. Don't do this please.

Write about an experience you had, or some logical thoughts about why the design makes the game better or worse or how it could be changed, please. Simply having to change strategy doesn't mean the game is worse. Are the new strategies more or less interesting/cheesy/varied? Etc.

Above all, speak of experiences not theories. Reactions to changelists are not useful; experiences and thoughts based on experiences are.

And btw door HP relates to building material so if you want stronger ones use steel or plasteel.

Just thought I'd point out that you're dealing with a lot of people who aren't native English speakers. What one word means to someone in one country, may not mean the same in another. If it can be taken in a non-offensive way, that's probably the way it was intended.

So cheer up, Tynan, we all love you!

<3

P.S: I will still murder you in-game because you overpowered the damn mechanoids. Fair is fair.

[Tynan]

Hi, I have a quality of life suggestion. I've been playing tribal and I put down a game of Ur board, but for ages nobody used it and I didn't realise it needed chairs next to it (don't think this requirement is listed anywhere in game). I suggest showing faded chair outlines (like for the workstations) either side of the board, where the players would actually sit. I looked up the game of Ur and players should sit perpendicular to the length of the board, on either side.

Really good note, this sort of "well duh of course it needs fixing" stuff is useful too. It's not quite a bug, but close, and we'll definitely change it.

[Alenerel]

Small suggestion: lavish meals can help curing food poisoning if eaten when the pawn is hungry (to avoid exploit).

[Argonaut]

I have to agree that the door changes are a bit rough. Usually i would go for inner wooden and outer granite doors, but with the recent changes granite isn't worth it anymore with the slow opening and the reduced HP. Enemies destroy them way to fast soo i just resort to open hallways now. Later on when plasteel doors become available, i tend to use them for inner doors as before i would use them for outer as they would give me fast movement and provide enough time to move my paws into position before they got destroyed. Now it just feels like a waste of plasteel and im forced to use double doors and micromanage them by keeping the second "buffer" granite door open and close them before a raid.

Buffing the slower opening doors would be appreciated as they already have a drawback to using them. And maybe buff the plasteel door by a tiny bit as that is a harder to get material soo using them can get quite expensive.

Just my 2 cents

Edit: When i say granite doors i mean all stone block doors, just that granite is best soo i always use them

[Tynan]

Manhunter packs often attack specific doors during initial entry.

Mahunters will only attack doors if they see a pawn go through the door (unless there's a bug). Typically this happens when people are trying to have their colonists pop out to take potshots at the manhunters, which is intended to be non-viable as a strategy because it's micro-y and boring to execute and I don't want the game pushing players to engage boring activities. Making it less viable is a major motivator for the door HP change. Overall doors aren't supposed to be fortifications, they're more about prisoners, room edges, and temperature control than absorbing damage and controlling enemy movement.

That said I'm gonna look at the HP gap between steel and wood, 56hp wood and 140hp steel seems a bit stark.

[Oblitus]

After 100+ hours in 1.0, I suppose I can word my experience.

There is no feeling of progression. I can get best weapons, but I wouldn't feel powerful. I can craft power armors, but I wouldn't feel protected. I can set turrets, but I wouldn't feel defended. I can build thickest walls, but I would still feel totally exposed.

I always thought that Glitter Tech mod is stupidly overpowered. Now I'm seriously considering to use it because it actually offers things that would make a difference.

[Wanderer_joins]

Quick notes:

animals:
*we don't see bonded animals on trade screen, it may be on the to do list, but it's tedious to keep a list of bonded pets when we trade
*food preference: i'm ok with pets eating fine meals since they may look attractive, but i' don't think my dog would go for corn over fresh meat, maybe they could have a need threshold before going for veggies?

pawns control:
*we can mass assign pawns with shift click but only for "unrestricted" and "home zone". But i often have a semi-restricted zone "colony" and a "safe zone". The home zone is needed to set which building will be repaired and which zone will be cleaned, which includes unsafe external walls. It'd be nice to be able to mass assign pawns and animals to a given zone in one click (since i swap between "safe"  / "colony" after and before each raid)

berserk prisoners:
*iirc the last berserk prisoners who was 'accidently' killed gave a mood debuff to the colony for innocent prisoner died. I think had he simply punched a colonist first he would have been deemed guilty. What about considering berserk prisoners as guilty by default? Waiting to be punched doesn't add much.
*on the other hand a berserk colonist attacked friendlies without diplomatic penalty, i liked that, "don't mind, he's crazy".

quests:
*still on the end game, i got quests for a lump of plasteel, guarded by 40 tribespeople. Needless to say, the only incentive to go there would be to take prisoners, not to mine plasteel.
*same for an outpost, guarded by 24 priates for a prosthetic heart.

The scaling is a nice touch, but maybe the rewards could be related to the threat? In the end game i craft my own bionic parts, still orbital targeter/antigrain warheads and archotech parts are really attractive.

*i had a trade offer for ~2000 plainleather vs 6 antigrain warhead, it felt like a wild card for the end game sequence

After 8 years i've had 8 rez serum, 4 healer mechs, 10 antigrain warhead, 2 orbital targert and a few archotech parts. Maybe these high valuable rewards should not be totally rng, like at least you'd have to fight for 6 antigrain warheads

*refugee opportunity was unguarded, i think it's rng but still think it's unreasonable to have 5 mechs around a dying pawn

caravans:
*ambushes are less dangerous mid game with the down tuning of threats, new armor system and bionic parts
*still, doctoring seems weird, i got a pawn caught a disease in a caravan, sent a decent doctor with regular meds, assigned him to doctor, reformed caravan... tending quality turned out to be 23%. the only explanation i have is another shitty doctor not assigned to doctor did the treatment in the caravan. Maybe check for the the best available doctor first?
*still on disease, i hope bedrolls could boost immunity when you rest on the world map

*i like how we can select installed furnitures when we reform the caravan, it helped a lot not to lose valuable sculptures or vanometric power cells
*caravaning gives many trade opportunities, i simply control my wealth, have 500k colony and still can't trade for 1/3 of what's offered to me. but it's a good way to get gold and items

inspirations:
*this has been mentioned but some inspirations seem off with the pawns capabilities. maybe they should be somewhat tailored to the pawn

lost pawns:
*i've had a few pawns ran wild and kidnapped over the years, day ~525 still no news. Are they lost forever? I know the life expectancy of a wild man on my map isn't great but it would be fun to see them coming back years later, why not in a raid.

*i haven't have ransom demand, but maybe it's because i've made peace with the factions

diplomatic system:
*it seems the right balance to be friendly with neighbours. I don't have much difficulty keeping our relations at allies, selling tattered cloths
*friendlies are still desperately weak, i call them to fight mad rats or a few half dead mechs hanging out while my pawns go to rest. I'd be to buff them even at a significantly higher cost to call them

end game:
*with bionic parts and charge lances we eventually get over the curve to fight enemies home safely, it takes longer than in B18 but it fleshes out the mid game.
*it took 1 year to build the ship (30 caskets), i think requirements have been decreased since i finished it, but i also took advantage of this year to upgrade my base with uranium peripheral walls (2-3 lumps of uranium are enough now that it's no longer a precious material) and check how i could withstand the raids
*end game sequence: i'm waiting for the caravan to come home to warmup the reactor, we'll see what happens...

[East]

Mahunters will only attack doors if they see a pawn go through the door (unless there's a bug).

The first door that broke in the video is that, just as soon as the event is up, the colonist is brought right into the base.

I tried to control the coloinist through the internal zoning and it was a mistake. I made a mistake in setting the zone for one person. The door was immediately destroyed.

Do i need perfect play?

It does not mean that only wooden doors are weakened. Even the iron means that it has become a wooden gate. There is a difference between 56 and 140, but 140 is weak.

[Alenerel]

Manhunter packs often attack specific doors during initial entry.

Mahunters will only attack doors if they see a pawn go through the door (unless there's a bug). Typically this happens when people are trying to have their colonists pop out to take potshots at the manhunters, which is intended to be non-viable as a strategy because it's micro-y and boring to execute and I don't want the game pushing players to engage boring activities. Making it less viable is a major motivator for the door HP change. Overall doors aren't supposed to be fortifications, they're more about prisoners, room edges, and temperature control than absorbing damage and controlling enemy movement.

That said I'm gonna look at the HP gap between steel and wood, 56hp wood and 140hp steel seems a bit stark.

Tynan, I also have seen what hes reporting. I had my base surrounded by walls but with an open entrance to the north, but a manhunter pack of squirrels showed in the east and a A LOT of them started attacking the east door. All of my pawns were inside the walls and neither werent out or didnt go out.

After some time they decided to go to the north entrance, but it was after attacking that specific random door that luckily didnt break but was left at 4% lol. This was last week, idk if you changed something in the behavior after that.

[Tynan]

I'm taking a bug report for the manhunter door thing.

[Razzoriel]

I'm taking a bug report for the manhunter door thing.

Do you have any thoughts on your new armor calculations? Are you keeping that abomination, thinking on reverting, redesigning....

[Syrchalis]

Mahunters will only attack doors if they see a pawn go through the door (unless there's a bug). Typically this happens when people are trying to have their colonists pop out to take potshots at the manhunters, which is intended to be non-viable as a strategy because it's micro-y and boring to execute and I don't want the game pushing players to engage boring activities.

I honestly found this to be part of the fun actually. Maybe it's because I'm a Starcraft 2 or "RTS in general" player. Manhunter packs always felt very powerful to me (at least after the early game) I barely had weapons when I got attacked by EIGHT(!) megasloths. The micro is what allowed me to beat them, even though with bad injuries on most colonists. Without potshots I run one colonists out as bait, have him kite the animals and the others shoot. That is way more annoying.

There is no feeling of progression. I can get best weapons, but I wouldn't feel powerful. I can craft power armors, but I wouldn't feel protected.

With these two points I have to agree Tynan. It was better in B18, but even there it felt somewhat meh. In my recent tribal playthrough I had everyone with Greatbows. Since I had to make 30 for a caravan request I managed to get a masterwork and everyone else with excellent Greatbows (I of course only give the worst to the request). Now I forgot to upgrade my colonists weapons until I was nearly at the charge rifle. So I got a poison ship that spawned several scythers, I think 2 centipedes and 1-2 lancers. Greatbows have high damage and rather good armorpen (27% I think) and they obliterated the mechs. WITH FREAKING BOWS. It even felt like they were vastly out-damaging my previous colony which had more people and everyone had good machine pistols.

What I'm trying to say... the gap between early weapons and late weapons is rather tiny. Sure that has it's advantages too (tribals not being trivial enemies) but I think it's just too tiny. There is no point upgrading your weapons step-by-step. Especially since all weapon research can be rushed through in one go. Each takes small amounts of research only and they have basically the same pre-requisites (it's good to rush micro-electronics anyway for the 100% research speed). So basically if you start with tribal you go Greatbow -> LMG/Assaultrifle/Charge Weapons. Stuff inbetween gets used if you scavenge it, but rather pointless spending work/materials on it.

And armor... well get flak armor and advanced helmets, you're good to go. Available really early.

[East]

It is good to make the door less practical. But I need another alternative. There is no alternative now. sapper and base enemy drop and manhunter pack will absolutely depend on the door.

Even a fight with an early rabbit is dangerous. They are wounded and infected.

With good weapons and good armor, just fight and shed blood! Like a World Map battle! So I do not fight World Map until I have enough weapons and armor. It shows terrible infections and high loss rates.

Is not it fun to show different results depending on the control than just fighting with good weapons and armor?

This game is not an RTS game. Colonies die easily and can not be reproduced.
This is like running some kind of RPG or XCOM. The loss of each one is very large and the recovery of the wound is slow and dangerous.

I continue to report that the risk to the world map is great.

[Tynan]

I'm taking a bug report for the manhunter door thing.

Do you have any thoughts on your new armor calculations? Are you keeping that abomination, thinking on reverting, redesigning....

I'd have to hear some reason why, most people here seem to like it from what I can tell. Make sure you're aware of the latest changes since the unstable build.