Unstable build feedback thread

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

Previous topic - Next topic

DariusWolfe

Quote- Make doors close more slowly (wood/steel at 200 ticks for example), allowing all but the slowest weapons shots in the interim.  Leave opening speed the same so it doesn't bleed base efficiency.  Maybe autodoors can be faster, giving a little boost to using them.

Late to the party (my work week doesn't leave time to play) but I'd ask that if you're considering solutions like this one, please keep in mind that door closing speed is important not only for defenses, but for heat transfer. I already use an air-lock and double-thick walls for my freezer, but even with that, it's still noticeably cooler in my kitchen and butchery areas than the rest of the colony, and door heat transfer is the only likely cause of this. Making the doors close slower will have an (adverse) effect on freezer usage that punishes people who don't even use cheesy strats.

Syrchalis

#1501
Quote from: Tynan on July 04, 2018, 04:07:03 AM
Peaceful is for building and the joy of creating.

Medium-ish is for playing around with challenges and telling stories.

Extreme mode really is for playing the optimization game. There is no room for anything non-optimal; there cannot be in a mode designed to push the player's optimization ability.
I think this is fun. I'll try my best to tell my story on this. I usually play on Rough or Intense. Rough if I want a challenge while playing something sub-optimal. E.g. rule: max 4 colonists. Intense is my go-to difficulty if playing a relaxing game, while not constricting myself by artificial rules to make it harder or disabling/not using mods that make the game easier. I also play on intense if I want a difficult challenge when I try sub-optimal things. Extreme I play when I want a real challenge where I have to optimize. I try to avoid using cheese or mods that make the game significantly easier in this case, just because the whole reason I play extreme is for the challenge.

And I really think extreme should not be the "goal" of players to beat, rather intense should be. It should be the merciless evil difficulty that's unfair and you have to be unfair and CHEESY to beat it.

I love to compare it to Starcraft 2 in design. When playing versus AI there is many difficulties. "Insane" is the highest and the AI plays about as good as the average player. But there is three higher difficulties only available in custom games: Cheater. The AI literally cheats. It gets resources and has vision where it shouldn't. The way to beat this difficulty is to exploit the AI's weaknesses. Like harassment (destroying the workers of the AI). This is a normal tactic in PvP but vs. AI it's cheesy because the AI is very bad at dealing with it. And I think this is fine. The AI cheats, so you "cheat" (cheese) as well.

That being said, I still prefer the old difficulty terms. I've gotten used to the new ones now, but they just feel meaningless and non-descriptive compared to the old ones. There is also the novelty effect of the old terms that sets Rimworld apart from basically every other game.
For mod support visit the steam pages of my mods, Github or if necessary, write me a PM on Discord. Usually you will find the best help in #troubleshooting in the RimWorld discord.

Bones

When you visit a city sometimes the 'days of food' increase a little bit and when you leave it goes back to normal. It can be misleading.

jamaicancastle

Quote from: Teleblaster18 on July 04, 2018, 03:39:55 AM
That's not really my point...the difficulty of combat is kind of irrelevant to me, in the context of this game.

My secondary point (and a distant second) is that "cheese" can have a place in this game, IMO...where it categorically doesn't in a game that absolutely requires razor-sharp balance (a competitive RTS like COH2).  Many experienced players already forgo those methods, and there's absolutely nothing compelling them to use them.  I'm an experienced player, and in some games I use them, sometimes I don't.  I don't feel guilty in the least when I do. It entirely depends on my mood, and what I want my game experience to be.

My real point is that I feel that the focus on combat is somewhat dominating the stage, and that there's far less discussion and emphasis at the moment of other gameplay elements which make the combat worthwhile in the first place.

That's all.
I have to echo this sentiment. It's very disheartening to see that pretty much all the balancing and feedback revolves around "difficulty = raids" and almost nothing else. I wouldn't mind the game being tough, but regardless of difficulty, I've never enjoyed raids. At best they're a temporary roadblock I have to get past to get back to the actual interesting parts of the game. The relative crudeness of the AI doesn't help, but I think my main problem with them is that they take me out of the story of the game too much. They don't happen because of or in the context of some ongoing narrative; they're just generic villains dropped from the sky (sometimes literally) to make my life more difficult.

(Long-term, I suspect my best option is just to write my own storyteller, which I might do. But despite looking through the class several times I still don't understand how they really work. One day.)

Quote from: 5thHorseman on July 04, 2018, 04:16:32 AM
Rimworld is a strategy and tactics game, so coming up with strategies is a huge part of the game. And using tactics to implement those strategies is a huge part of the game.
I suppose this makes sense if you come into it from the perspective of a strategy game. And I'd be happy to talk about perceived flaws in it from that direction. But what sold me personally on RW was the idea of it as a storytelling engine. I feel like that idea has lost prominence in recent updates in favor of more and more raids, and I find myself apathetic towards the game as a result.

Tynan

#1504
Quote from: DariusWolfe on July 04, 2018, 06:53:42 AM
Quote- Make doors close more slowly (wood/steel at 200 ticks for example), allowing all but the slowest weapons shots in the interim.  Leave opening speed the same so it doesn't bleed base efficiency.  Maybe autodoors can be faster, giving a little boost to using them.

Late to the party (my work week doesn't leave time to play) but I'd ask that if you're considering solutions like this one, please keep in mind that door closing speed is important not only for defenses, but for heat transfer. I already use an air-lock and double-thick walls for my freezer, but even with that, it's still noticeably cooler in my kitchen and butchery areas than the rest of the colony, and door heat transfer is the only likely cause of this. Making the doors close slower will have an (adverse) effect on freezer usage that punishes people who don't even use cheesy strats.

It's a good point, the good thing is that there's another knob to turn that can easily nullify that effect. I can just reduce the speed of heat transfer through open doors in exact inverse proportion to the increase in door open time.

Quote from: jamaicancastle on July 04, 2018, 07:39:37 AM
Quote from: Teleblaster18 on July 04, 2018, 03:39:55 AM
That's not really my point...the difficulty of combat is kind of irrelevant to me, in the context of this game.

My secondary point (and a distant second) is that "cheese" can have a place in this game, IMO...where it categorically doesn't in a game that absolutely requires razor-sharp balance (a competitive RTS like COH2).  Many experienced players already forgo those methods, and there's absolutely nothing compelling them to use them.  I'm an experienced player, and in some games I use them, sometimes I don't.  I don't feel guilty in the least when I do. It entirely depends on my mood, and what I want my game experience to be.

My real point is that I feel that the focus on combat is somewhat dominating the stage, and that there's far less discussion and emphasis at the moment of other gameplay elements which make the combat worthwhile in the first place.

That's all.
I have to echo this sentiment. It's very disheartening to see that pretty much all the balancing and feedback revolves around "difficulty = raids" and almost nothing else. I wouldn't mind the game being tough, but regardless of difficulty, I've never enjoyed raids. At best they're a temporary roadblock I have to get past to get back to the actual interesting parts of the game. The relative crudeness of the AI doesn't help, but I think my main problem with them is that they take me out of the story of the game too much. They don't happen because of or in the context of some ongoing narrative; they're just generic villains dropped from the sky (sometimes literally) to make my life more difficult.

(Long-term, I suspect my best option is just to write my own storyteller, which I might do. But despite looking through the class several times I still don't understand how they really work. One day.)

Quote from: 5thHorseman on July 04, 2018, 04:16:32 AM
Rimworld is a strategy and tactics game, so coming up with strategies is a huge part of the game. And using tactics to implement those strategies is a huge part of the game.
I suppose this makes sense if you come into it from the perspective of a strategy game. And I'd be happy to talk about perceived flaws in it from that direction. But what sold me personally on RW was the idea of it as a storytelling engine. I feel like that idea has lost prominence in recent updates in favor of more and more raids, and I find myself apathetic towards the game as a result.

I agree; I've been specifically working to try to reduce the centralness of the raids, by adding some challenges and opportunities in other areas and dialing down the raids to compensate. Just so everyone knows, raids have a lot less pawns than they used to, and the game may move further in this direction. We just end up talking about raids a lot because they are somewhat of a focal point.
Tynan Sylvester - @TynanSylvester - Tynan's Blog

Kubouch

I just recalled a situation from Sunday (i.e. a few updates back, I think .1951). I started Rich Explorer scenario and got a fox Horatio as a starting pet. Because my starting colonist (and all subsequent newcomers) didn't have enough Animal skill (fox needs 6 IIRC), Horatio eventually untamed itself back into the wilderness and I was sad. Wouldn't it make sense to limit the random starting pet to only those animals you can actually keep? How could Horatio become my pet if I don't have enough skill to handle it in the first place?

MerlinEngine

#1506
Eh, cheesy tactic, hooking up four heaters to the ancient danger building, then letting a useless colonist and potentially hostile sleepers turn to toast and take the loot. Even if you can't do that, just putting a few wooden walls inside the sleeper chamber will usually start a pawn killing fire, since they tend to set it on fire, thereby ether killing themselves from heat or the flames. I have not tried it on a mechanoid yet, but it has worked against humans. I am thinking of surrounding a future colony with a "firewall", basically, a hull chamber that is maintained at high temperatures and has several layers of wall to force any attacker to remain in the heat for a while. Or maybe build flood chambers with vents that can release heat into various divided sections of such a defense.

I might be reaching into territory that isn't related to 1.0 per say, but I think it might be relevant as I did not encounter a similar set of circumstances before. What happened was that my characters were somewhat battered from a few wildlife-related problems and food poisoning when a cold snap and a solar flare happened minutes from each other. My colony was rather spread out into several buildings around a mountain, which made a communal fire unhelpful. Temperatures decreased rapidly, and had I not demolished the chicken house and a few other buildings to make dozens of campfires, the colony would have suffered casualties, and even with that, it was a very close shave. Thing is, days before, a flash storm trashed much of my nearby forest, and my injured and sick characters were in no position to slowly walk any distance in -20 degrees. I survived the experience, but the thing is, it was played on a low difficulty to test colony construction in relative peace, and I am not sure a less experienced would have survived. I really enjoyed dealing with the situation, as I like these sort of challenges, but I have to question if a cold snap and a solar flare should happen in low difficulty minutes from one another.

Now that food poisoning is much stronger and happens due to poor kitchen cleaning, it is somewhat distracting to have to manually tell someone to specifically clean the kitchen every few minutes. I prefer not to have cleaning high on my general priorities because my home area tends to be quite large. If I could have a character specifically assigned to clean just one area, it would simplify the situation.

Syrchalis

Quote from: Tynan on July 04, 2018, 07:42:02 AM
I agree; I've been specifically working to try to reduce the centralness of the raids, by adding some challenges and opportunities in other areas and dialing down the raids to compensate. Just so everyone knows, raids have a lot less pawns than they used to, and the game may move further in this direction. We just end up talking about raids a lot because they are somewhat of a focal point.
Noticed and appreciated. In A17 I had a rather wealthy colony and I kept getting attacked by massive raids. Like 50+ tribals. That was really tedious to play against. Not necessarily difficult, just tedious, so much dead bodies, items on the ground and just the shear mass of pawns on the map.
For mod support visit the steam pages of my mods, Github or if necessary, write me a PM on Discord. Usually you will find the best help in #troubleshooting in the RimWorld discord.

Jibbles

Not sure if others have this minor issue, but I deal with it a lot so it's bugging me. 

Can the drop weapon option be moved into ui icon button, like near the draft and fire at will toggle? Or maybe decrease the right click box to the pawns chest or something? I'm clicking away from their bodies such as on a door, and above their heads tho the box still pops up when I simply just want them to move.

Dashthechinchilla

I have had some repeated early game combat action I wanted to talk about. Armor has definitely become more essential. The problem is that basic armor is a bit difficult to come by before the point where you have had a few raids already. On crash landed, you get some but making more is a way off. On tribal you have none except masks. It might be useful at this point to make metal masks or integrate something like the grass armor from tribal essentials. For other starts, it becomes a race to plate armor research like we used to race for turrets.

Tynan

New update. Various changes.

Note that the changelog is in reverse chronological order if some changes seem contradictory.

---

Remove the "they learned your trap locations" mechanics since nobody ever noticed them anyway. Reworked them to "they're smart, they can avoid your turrets and some of your traps".
Refactor FactionTacticalMemory and changed remember chance from 20% to 100%.
Adjust storyteller descriptions.
Caravan.Resting -> NightResting to make its meaning clear.
beCarriedByCaravanIfSick now defaults to true
Sick caravan members now rest in the best available bed when the caravan is not moving. Sick caravan members can now be carried by other pawns.
Tech level research penalty maxes at industrial level, this makes final research projects a lot easier. Rebalanced research projects. Removed Bridges research project.
Rearrange research and remove some dependencies. Adjusted some research prices. Properly format research XML.
Adjust difficulties descriptions.
Recolor berries object to have a more generalized purple color.
Fix berry bush positioning in cell.
Made a bunch of internal classes public.
Tending interval now depends on how many doctors there are in the caravan. Caravan members needing immediate treatment are now treated first.
Made sure that all site parts can always generate at least 1 enemy.
Caravan pawns no longer use JoyKinds they're bored of.
Tynan Sylvester - @TynanSylvester - Tynan's Blog

Seeker89

Quote from: Syrchalis on July 04, 2018, 08:50:43 AM
Quote from: Tynan on July 04, 2018, 07:42:02 AM
I agree; I've been specifically working to try to reduce the centralness of the raids, by adding some challenges and opportunities in other areas and dialing down the raids to compensate. Just so everyone knows, raids have a lot less pawns than they used to, and the game may move further in this direction. We just end up talking about raids a lot because they are somewhat of a focal point.

Noticed and appreciated. In A17 I had a rather wealthy colony and I kept getting attacked by massive raids. Like 50+ tribals. That was really tedious to play against. Not necessarily difficult, just tedious, so much dead bodies, items on the ground and just the shear mass of pawns on the map.

I agree. it's more tedious with raids for the clean up, repair on higher raids. When I can spend days just cleaning up the bodies, clothes are now useless. so the only real thing is weapons and random items, it doesn't really feel useful. don't forget the mood debuffs.

What would be nice would be scavengers... a group of pawns whoms sole reason in the game is to come in and remove the bodies. Historically I believe there was groups of armies around to take the dead home, and scavenge.   

Mehni


SpoonBender

#1513
About killboxes: Last week I posted that walls and killboxes were pretty much useless. After playing some more I reverted back to building them. They still solve a lot of problems for you.
- normal raids
- wild animals and manhunter packs
- mechanoid raids
- sieges, they decide to attack your colony after taking just a little damage from mortars or long range rifles.

The only thing is that you have to prepare for other threats as well, being sappers and drop pods. I keep more space between the walls and the buildings and build more defensive lines throughout my base. I have never used much turrets, because I like my pawns to do the damage. So I haven't tried the auto-cannons yet. In my next base I will use more space between my buildings to make firing lanes for the auto-cannons.

In my last run I've had this insane sapper raid. Five guys with doomsday rocket launchers walked into my base, 8 guys with frag grenades and then some. I was sure it was all over, but thanks to well placed defenses and some intense melee combat I managed to limit the damage. Three brawlers with good armour, shield belts and plasteel longswords cut them down really fast. None of the doomsday rocket launchers had managed to fire a shot, so I had 5 of them laying around. The next tribal raid was over with just one shot: 24 dead 12 downed.

So I'd say that walls and killboxes are still pretty strong, but you can't solely rely on them anymore and have to be much more creative in setting up your defenses. Which is a good thing.

BTW We should have mechanoid melee sapper raids. A bunch of scythers rushing through a gap in the wall would be my ultimate nightmare.

Edit, forgot to mention: In the screenshot, if you look closely you can see the centre pillar of the bedroom buildings is actually a door, which I usually forbid. But in close combat they are useful to make your escape or relocate quickly to better firing positions. I also use a Borg-like base structure of 17x17 blocks to create firing lanes and multiple cover positions for my pawns. This worked out pretty well for me.

Edit 2: About cocoa, as you can see I've tried a rather large cocoa plantation, but found the profits are rather lackluster compared to the labour. I think planting potatoes or corn is more profitable. It's nice to have some cocoa for your own consumption, but for trade it doesn't seem worthwhile.

[attachment deleted due to age]

ashaffee

When I first played this game and finally thought I was good enough to do extreme since my brain loves optimization I did research on youtube. Someone spawned in a max level raid on their trap maze with endless turrets at the end with a kill box in a mountain. Basically put it in my head that wow this game isn't possible on this difficulty without that strategy. So I got discouraged and deleted my playthrough on a small hill map thinking I was 100% doomed.

So I can understand trying to weaken these cheesy tactics so the first research people do doesn't define their "only" game play experience.  It took me like 100 hours later of gameplay to realize this was a lie and unfun experience compared to trading shots in bunkered doors. I tried no wall off combat but that was micromanagement to the extreme. It felt like having to play chess where each player could move 5 pieces at a time, forcing me to think way too much just for 1 battle.

My favorite method is still bunkered doors. Only thing that has changed is I made the layers thicker and micromanage a huge amount more to give myself the same door strength I am use to having just microing to close them all.

Im starting up a new game today since that experience started to feel really stale for me and going to go for mini kill box rooms since personally I want to make a 100% optimized base but I don't want to be required to move every pawn every few seconds to live.

Wall bunkers where cool to me hide a few shooters behind the door and a shield belt walks out and opens it for them. Move 1 pawn into line of sight to engage a small strike force and risk everyone in that sight dying, nothing was too safe about it. Sure you can cheese manhunter packs/thrumbros with it but eh it felt fun still.

I really really want to start a game on extreme and attempt the strategy you envision as none cheesy. I have no clue what that is anymore.