Unstable build feedback thread

Started by Tynan, June 16, 2018, 11:10:34 PM

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fritzgryphon

#1410
Really liking the new armor system.

In previous builds, armored pawns would accumulate tons of weak-damaging hits, get minor bleeding, in a predictable and gradual fashion.
I felt that there was no risk with committing them; could just soak up bullets and slices, then withdraw them when they were too hurt.

The new way feels like there's more jeopardy, and even a little more logical (RL armor never covers completely, or evenly, and weapon strike obliquity randomizes the effect of hits).  Blunt conversion is nice too.  A pawn with power armor won't likely be cut by a sword, but can still get knocked out.

The sound and gfx are also really clear if the hit was stopped by armor, or bypassed/penetrated it.  It was a fun surprise to see a pawn survive a lance hit to the heart with crush damage within an inch of his life, because he was wearing two layers of flak and a devilstrand shirt.

I mean, anyone could argue how random the system should be, but it was way too predictable before. 

Is there a description of the deflect chance somewhere?  https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=41839.45


RemingtonRyder

Honestly, bbqftw, I would just post your findings and let Tynan decide what needs to be done.

Personally, I try not to underestimate animals, whether they're manhunting or not. But when I expect the animal to put up a fight, I have a few colonists with ranged weapons standing behind at least two colonists with melee weapons, depending on the size of the animal. A cautious response may not win any awards for bravery, but it beats what I've seen some players do.

I wouldn't call that micromanagement. Far from it. If you play a city simulator and there are disasters that can happen, you prepare for them, don't you? And you take the appropriate action, don't you? RimWorld allows you to draft colonists to deal with problems which go beyond what the AI can handle, so I consider that to be only a logical response.

bbqftw

#1412
Quote from: tiagocc0 on July 03, 2018, 11:37:48 AM
Quote from: bbqftw on July 03, 2018, 11:32:03 AMmelee to be a crappy deal

Quote from: bbqftw on July 03, 2018, 11:32:03 AMTynans fantasy land

Quote from: bbqftw on July 03, 2018, 11:32:03 AMno bearing in serious game discussion.

You are not helping your case here.
of the 4 players I know that grind NB/extreme starts, none seriously employ melee in any decisive scenario. This is even past the point you have access to blue meds, so we're talking even past the point infection is a probable death sentence.

Have you considered why this is? One possibility is that they are all unreasonable and that your game understanding surpasses theirs. Do you view this a particularly high % scenario?

Typically when someone better than me says I am playing inefficiently, I listen. When someone recommends odd strategies, I give it a dev test try.

I think verdict from tests and experiences is pretty clear.

ison

Quote from: Perq on July 03, 2018, 09:43:23 AM
People who are literally dying (bleeding) or slowly dying (infections) needs to have highest priority here over, say, pack animals and whatnot. This process should also be a little faster, imo (especially when there are 4 doctors in the caravan for total of 7 people in it).

Good point, this system needed some tweaks. We have made the following changes:

  • Caravan tending interval now depends on how many doctors there are
  • Overall tending while caravaning is now a bit faster
  • Pawns needing immediate treatment are now treated first

Bones

Quote from: bbqftw on July 03, 2018, 11:55:02 AMof the 4 players I know that grind NB/extreme starts, none seriously employ melee in any decisive scenario. This is even past the point you have access to blue meds, so we're talking even past the point infection is a probable death sentence.

Have you considered why this is? One possibility is that they are all unreasonable and that your game understanding surpasses theirs. Do you view this a particularly high % scenario.

Typically when someone better than me says I am playing inefficiently, I listen. When someone recommends odd strategies, I give it a dev test try.

I think verdict from tests and experiences is pretty clear.

Right, why not talk like this instead of saying things like that in the other post?

Why be aggressive like that and talk about 'serious game discussion'?

Why talk like that to Tynan in his forum full of people that admire him and loves the game?

I don't care what you found out, the way you are saying it is wrong, that is not how we should approach people here in the forum, much less the owner of the company.

You are better than me, of course you are. Will I ever be as good as you, probably never.
Does that mean that you can talk like you were doing? No.


Zoolder

Did some testing of my own and kill boxes are still effective, don't know what everyone is saying. Sappers are still an issue, but feel no different from previous versions. It`s still a massacre when a raid enters a killbox, and with a thick enough perimeter you can respond to any sappers in time to at least hold them off before you can fully respond. Only thing that has really changed noticeably is upkeep cost for turrets, and in my opinion they weren't what made killboxes good and you can do fine with just one colonist and MAYBE a turret to distract anyone who may get there before you.

In my personal opinion, we can't really "fix" killboxes without spamming sappers and sieges every raid, which will lower variety. We just need to accept the fact it will always be a thing and you can't really balance it without making the game less fun for others who don't enjoy that strategy. You're doing the right thing with more versatile raids dropping in and stuff.

ChJees

I'm all for lowering the sapper raid frequency. Felt ridiculous that literally every raid was a sapper raid. And the occasional siege which is trivial to deal with.

When every raid is of the same type it become predictable. Predictable is boring.

Oblitus

#1417
Quote from: Tynan on July 03, 2018, 09:15:58 AM
Quote from: Sirsir on July 03, 2018, 09:07:58 AM
Different people want different things. The 'chaos and insecurity' thing is great for roguelikes, but AFAIC this game has far too much of a time investment to die 'just cuz'

Serious question: What difficulty are you on and why not just lower it?
Difficulty does not change mechanics. The game would throw all the same crap on you, just less of it. Manhunting rabbits would still be able to kick down your cardboard doors and chew through foil armor. Drop pods falling from the clear sky would still make your defenses useless. Any scratch still puts your pawn in a deadly risk. Your pawns still can't hit a barn wall from within the barn. Bows still can outrange most firearms.

You want to make a story generator, but currently, all stories are the same. You play unless game decides to throw on you something that you have no way to deal with, and you know that you are deliberately deprived of said way to make you suffer. Those are not good stories.

You are trying to force players into melee, but melee will never be a viable strategy in Rimworld. If you use melee, you've already lost your fight. It's only matter of RNG when your pawn will be crippled or dead.

Greep

Quote from: bbqftw on July 03, 2018, 10:49:16 AM
You deride micro-y fights yet that is the few ways you can differentiate mediocre from good players. Its the difference between beating a 3v5 2nd raid with some damage, to no damage with risky plays, to no damage with safe plays, to no damage with safe plays and no pathing manipulation. There is less of this vs manhunter, but it is there.

What is your envisioned fair fight on extreme fighting outnumbered? Trading shots behind low cover like typical player does? When things like doomsday / trip / AoE CC mechanisms are in play? The existence of certain threats is such that the only correct play is never to allow them to interact.

What experience, or trusted playtest experience do you have to assess that this intended fair playstyle is indeed effective?

I will make a quick example about risk assessment.

Take an encounter with killing a solitary beaver. Around 2% chance per attack (maybe more) to permanent eye scratch, non trivial infection chance. Do you imagine meleeing this fearsome beaverial scourge to be an acceptable option? Show me a player who consistently takes this risks like this on extreme and I will show you a player that lives or dies based on his die rolls alone. I could flip coins at this point for a similar experience.

I think the intention is that if there's a way to reliably take 0 damage from a threat, that should be changed, and if it becomes too hard as a result, the threat should be reduced so you can handle that threat.  Otherwise there's not really much tension.

That said, it's crazy hard to balance multiple playstyles.  For instance, my working playthrough on extreme is utilizing everything the game has to offer: uses turrets, has dudes with shield belts and melee, charged rifles, non-violents repairing turrets in battle, sandbags instead of the usual walls so I can build turrets all around and have some places where the cannons don't kill my own guys.

And it's a glorius bloodbath that is an evergrowing trainwreck that keeps growing in power.  Half my guys are bionic in some way due to limbs flying off, 12 people have died, two have brain scars one of which is on luciferium and the other will be when I can get a decent supply, over 15 cannons have been wrecked from various causes. But I've also got even more cannons, mortars, 20+ colonists since I'm accepting everyone.  Just had a 54 wave of tribals that ran amok through the whole base and it was a lot of fun, some cannons were wrecked, some mortars damaged a dozen tribals.

I think this is the way extreme should be personally.  Eventually one of the threats might grow large enough to topple everything, or maybe I'll blast off the planet.

But then there's also people who don't want to play with turrets, or don't want to play on economic heavy maps that can support massing them, or don't want to use deadfalls in the beginning, or play on naked brutality.  Like some people find turrets and cannons boring even outside of a killbox or just don't want the incessent dirlling for thousands of steel. 

This is kind of why I don't really think extreme is needed anymore, as removing it gives a lot of leeway for fun playstyles and if you want more difficulty you can play on harder biomes.  I notice not many players are playing on extreme desert or ice sheet this update or sea ice, and I think it's because many of the expereinced players still want to win on extreme, and it's almost impossible now on those biomes.
1.0 Mods: Raid size limiter:
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=42721.0

MineTortoise:
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=42792.0
HELLO!

(WIPish)Strategy Mode: The experienced player's "vanilla"
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=43044.0

ashaffee

#1419
A response to the 4 players you know that do NB/extreme. I've been grinding out playthroughs on it and tribal every other patch he has made. I use melee in a lot of cases. Melee is 100% the best method vs centipedes. Melee is extremely good vs man hunter packs (strategy is a two thick wall with 2 doors with melee person standing on second door to force animals to attack 1 at a time). Also use melee if my target got cover.

As for infections I never actually wait till the end of the fight to heal my damaged pawns. They leave mid fight to get patched up sometimes. I rarely let any colonist ever go down and if they do they are immediately rescued and patched up.

The only real issue is the difficulty level of this unstable 1.0 has dramatically shifted every couple of days. So to make 100% claims on Tyron theory crafting is kinda bs. Since he is probably testing a version we haven't seen just yet.


I will say though I actually never thought of door manipulation as cheesy or exploitation or boring. Option two was kill box and that is boring. Option 3 was open field battle but in fights with 1 : 2.5 leads your guys to get trapped in a room and door jumping anyway unless you designed a complex flanking base.


In the end the nerf to doors has created more boring microing on my end as I am attempting to self correct this issue. I have to manually remember to open/close normally useless doors. Then afterword I have to revert to kill box strategy after doors have broken which is less fun but really effective for small trickles.


I say the statement "have to" because I haven't figured out how to effectively do it differently. But nerfing door strategy hasn't in my eyes opened any cool new fun ways of combat. Even with corner popping/flanking. I need a safety spot to actually rescue and heal downed people so they don't get infections. With a lot more micro I am figuring this out but this isn't a step in a good direction and a huge hurt to lower difficulties too.

lauri7x3

some things i noticed:
-caravans now stop way outside my base
    -that makes buying food of them nearly impossible, because it drops to the ground and all animals imediatly swarm to it to eat it
-pls reenable auto-strip when burning bodies

(-still think, every missions on another tile are not worth the risk)

Sangerwolf

Getting a weird bug now where all my plants are dying because of poison.

RemingtonRyder

Quote from: Sangerwolf on July 03, 2018, 01:04:01 PM
Getting a weird bug now where all my plants are dying because of poison.

Sounds like poison ship. That wouldn't be a bug, unless it's a cloaked poison ship, which would just be Tynan being evil. ;)

bbqftw

#1423
Quote from: ashaffee on July 03, 2018, 12:53:21 PM
A response to the 4 players you know that do NB/extreme. I've been grinding out playthroughs on it and tribal every other patch he has made. I use melee in a lot of cases. Melee is 100% the best method vs centipedes. Melee is extremely good vs man hunter packs (strategy is a two thick wall with 2 doors with melee person standing on second door to force animals to attack 1 at a time). Also use melee if my target got cover.

As for infections I never actually wait till the end of the fight to heal my damaged pawns. They leave mid fight to get patched up sometimes. I rarely let any colonist ever go down and if they do they are immediately rescued and patched up.

The only real issue is the difficulty level of this unstable 1.0 has dramatically shifted every couple of days. So to make 100% claims on Tyron theory crafting is kinda bs. Since he is probably testing a version we haven't seen just yet.


I will say though I actually never thought of door manipulation as cheesy or exploitation or boring. Option two was kill box and that is boring. Option 3 was open field battle but in fights with 1 : 2.5 leads your guys to get trapped in a room and door jumping anyway unless you designed a complex flanking base.


In the end the nerf to doors has created more boring microing on my end as I am attempting to self correct this issue. I have to manually remember to open/close normally useless doors. Then afterword I have to revert to kill box strategy after doors have broken which is less fun but really effective for small trickles.


I say the statement "have to" because I haven't figured out how to effectively do it differently. But nerfing door strategy hasn't in my eyes opened any cool new fun ways of combat. Even with corner popping/flanking. I need a safety spot to actually rescue and heal downed people so they don't get infections. With a lot more micro I am figuring this out but this isn't a step in a good direction and a huge hurt to lower difficulties too.

In the door melee situation you describe which funnels melee accessibility to one tile, I have noticed situations where enemy AI pawnstacks multiple units into a single pile, allowing 4+ to simultaneously attack a unit.

This doesn't happen all the time, but if it happens you end up with extreme damage spikes.

Have you not experienced this? Does the door tile prevent the pawn stacking?


Sangerwolf

Hh derp... You're right there is a poison ship right next to me that i didn't even notice. =/