Unstable build feedback thread

[Syrchalis]

Hey I really really like all the changes for 1.0 It's coming up well unfortunately there is a major bug in the game and that's the pshychite tea which I cannot craft on the crafting spot or the drug bench. (Yes, I've researched it)

It's in the stove now.

[rdshen]

It seems like corn is on a 25 day growing period atm, but if I'm not mistaken the info says 11.

The actual growing period is two times longer than declared since real days have not only day but also the night when plants won't grow. Also, low temperature is also a factor, as well as insolation that depends on altitude (you can notice that on polar bases solar power generators need much more time to go on full power).

Gotcha, never noticed that. Does seem a little unclear but makes sense w/ reasoning

Edit: Does 1 day equate to 12 hours 100% growth? That would make sense as to how real time relates to given. Since I think a 12 hour day is only far enough from the poles, and even then there's a ramp up and down every single day.

[zizard]

I noticed that pawns will now do almost anything to avoid buildings under construction. This makes pawn take the long way around, for example when making double doors and the pawn decides to construct the far door first. It also makes it annoying to construct things from a particular side, as drafting and moving to the other side can make them take a huge detour. If the idea is to prevent pawns from having to change path drastically as a wall is completed, I would suggest at least letting them path through doors under construction.

I also noticed some inconsistent behaviour with cancelling vs deconstructing frames under construction. Both are instant, but cancelling returns all resources but deconstruct only some.

Still been having a really tedious time against centipedes. I don't even want to fight scythers or lancers either, but they die instantly to traps so it's less annoying.

[kreig]

Just finished my first complete playthrough of 1.0, so here's my (rather long) feedback (as well as a little play-by-play of the final stage for your enjoyment at the end of the post)


Version: 1.0.1954 - 1.0.1957 no mods
Scenario: Cassandra Hard, Rich Explorer
Map: Standard size, temperate forest, large hills, huge river, growing season year round
Permadeath: No (partially to make sure I can try to reproduce occuring bugs, partially to make sure I actually get to the end)
Play time this run: 1d 2h 16m 33s
Play time in total: 934 hours (since A16 iirc)


Some things I liked:
- the many new ways raiders can enter the map (standard, scattered pods, different directions, ...)
- the new caravan menu.
- bedrolls now have a use for non-tribals (caravans)
- assigning workers to tasks, opportunistic hauling, implementation of QoL mods in general
- the new armor system (more on that below)
- the map seemed to contain all possible kinds of deep drill resources which was not necessarily the case when I played in the past

Some things I think are fair:
- Deep drilling infestations. They never did any real damage to my colony but it posed a nice extra challenge from time to time.
- Rearming turrets as late-game steel sink - I never got to build up huge amounts of steel thanks to that. Don't know if I'm 100% convinced the current state is balanced because I was REALLY hurting for steel in the latter parts of the game (despite deep drills running)
- Animal training decay. I barely noticed it in my run since I had a pawn that was barely good for anything else besides being a dedicated handler.


--- General thoughts ---

The first thing I noticed was how powerful the water mill is. Its production is independent of weather conditions (wind, solar) or resources (wood, chemfuel) - similar to geothermal (which I love), but easier to obtain. Even with the size increase and minimum distance between mills, they provided the majority of my power. It IS map dependent though, I guess. I specifically chose a river map to try them out.

An early sapper raid did not flee but I see that this got fixed.

To make up for the increased raider death chance (= less recruits) I took more chances in rescuing incapacitated refugees (which was a quest type that was plentiful - I think it got reduced/rebalanced a little with the most recent builds?). Seems fine.

Visiting traders: I got my first visit from a trading caravan after 53 days which seems a long time. I did not encounter any non-bulk goods trader until day 155 which was a bit annoying. Did I just get unlucky?

Mental break: Insulting spree - the focus on one "victim" makes it rather easy to draft the victim and micro them away from the breaking person. Not saying it should be harsher, just that it usually doesn't do more than a single insult.

Item quality rework: I don't mind it. I got 3 legendary items (1 double bed, 1 assault rifle, 1 grand sculpture) and a few masterworks thanks to some inspired creativity events. Certainly makes the label fit better.

Romance: Not a single romance happened! I mean, there was a dude and his fiancée that got married, but no new lovers, nothing. Might just have been random chance, but I personally like when relationships develop inside my colony. Not that my colonists didn't try, I did witness hurt feelings due to rebuffs from time to time.

Armor rework: Hell yeah! I didn't think I would like it this much, but it made combat really different from how I was used to it (i.e. range is king, don't use pawns if possible). I picked up 3 pawns with good melee (2 brawlers) early on, outfitted them with flak stuff and went to town whenever I could. Admittedly, in the later stages of the game it became too risky to run them into big groups (probably because I didn't bother with power armor/shield belts at that point) but they were still invaluable in keeping raiders off my ranged pawns.

Ship launch warmup: HOLY SHIT! Did I ever enjoy that. Constant pressure, trying to stave off attack after attack, using up everything in my arsenal. It makes the ship launch meaningful, not just the old "oh I guess I have tons of resources, lets build a ship, why not" (to be fair though,  I don't think I've ever played so straight towards the ship launch - might have been different if I had built up a huge wealthy stable colony first)

Also, since you specifically asked for feedback on Scythers: in my opinion they are scary but fair. My (armored) melee pawns were able to go toe-to-toe with them early on, while later in the game superior concentrated firepower prevented them from coming close (most of the time). On a similar note, my brawler pawns totally wrecked Lancers (sometimes even one shotting them right off the bat) which seems strong but fair, since you first have to close the distance. In general, I like the split between Scyther and Lancer - makes for more tactical possibilities, the old Scythers were just too scary to engage in melee)


--- Strategies employed & dealing with raids ---

I built no dedicated killbox nor did I wall in my whole base. Basically, I used the huge river as a "soft wall" and placed 2 autocannon turrets and 2 sniper turrets (when they got added) at the strategic opening. Raiders would path towards the bridge within range of the turrets and get gunned down (or get gunned down while slooowly crawling through the river)

Apropos sniper turret: that thing is viscious, but holy crap do not place friendly pawns in its line of fire - so many shot off limbs (and the occasional insta-death which prompted reloading a save)

I tried to preemptively weaken raids by outranging them, sneaking melee pawns behind them, or drawing them into my turrets.

My base layout also seemed to confuse sappers. Since it wasn't completely walled in, they pathed to the open spot where my turrets were waiting. Not really INTO the turrets but they always targeted a rock formation at the edge of the turret range which meant i could use my pawns to attack them and draw them in. It would have been much easier for them to break the single-width stone wall around my backyard where little protection was posted. But imo sappers are meant to punish killbox/turtle style plays and since I kept my base mainly open (worse against other threats, e.g. manhunter packs) I don't feel bad about them losing their bite against my base - they were still challenging since they didn't just blindly run in like other raid types.

Thankfully I did not get any sieges until the last stage of the game (ship engine powering up). Since I didn't use mortars (decided to use my limited steel resources elsewhere) I was always forced to engage before they set up and my heaviest injuries were obtained during the assault on the first siege team (I used doomsday rocket launchers on the later sieges)

I got a single manhunter event in this run (or maybe two? Don't remember the early game too well) which was really good for me because my base setup wouldn't have handled these too well. The one I rember was 20 panthers but at this point I had enough firepower and my bridge-choke to fend them off.

I only had a few animals of each type (pigs for hauling, boars for added melee capabilities, alpacas for clothing, boomalopes for chemfuel, timber wolves 'cause why not) and since my run only lasted for about 3 years, they never got the chance to multiply like crazy.


--- Quests ---

The item stash rewards seem lucrative. I mainly did them in the early to mid game, later on I got more complacent and risk-averse.

Caravan requests: Didn't do any, mainly because of my rather isolated location on the world map (would not have been impossible, just a bit too inconvenient for my personal tastes). The rewards are tempting though.

Peace talks: Haven't done these in my whole Rimworld "career". At some point, when raids get big I usually capture enough pawns to return some for goodwill. Never felt the need to let my pawns leave the safety of my base for these.

I liked the new "AI core location" quest where you have to pay a friendly faction to get the location. It really made me work towards earning goodwill with them (here buddy, have 200 joints as a gift on top of that trade! It's totally because I like you so much, not because I really really want that core)


--- Nitpicks/Wishlist ---
- I built overhanging roofs around my buildings so colonists don't get wet when moving from building to building in rain. Unfortunately this gives them the "Darkness" debuff which doesn't really make sense to me. A roofed porch is still bright in daylight. Maybe calculate darkness on how many overhanging roof tiles there are (unless it generates unneccesary high CPU load)?
- Medical condition "Waist: Cut Off" doesn't seem to do anything? I imagine if my waist got cut off my legs wouldn't work anymore.
- Trading menu: I would like it if the game remembers which items I had intended to trade when switching from trade to gift mode and back
- Infestation emerging sound is quite loud and keeps playing while paused - even while completely zoomed out (or did that change with the most recent builds?)
- I would love stone bridges, mainly so I don't have to deal with them when they are burning.
- Assigning doctors to medical tasks would be great; e.g. I only want my most skilled doctor to treat plague victims without having to micro them all the time.
- Animals leave the map during heat waves. Seems reasonable, but the repopulation felt really slow.
- "Mad animals: $ANIMAL" notification now redundant, e.g. it says "Mad hares: Hare" or "Mad squirrels: Squirrel"
- When a water mill gets destroyed, its power conduits will still show in the "power grid view" for some time (dunno what it's actually called - you know, when you build a power conduit and all power conduits are highlighted)



_____________________________________________________________
Since I chronicled the events leading up to the ship launch I will include them in my post. Read on if you like, or don't.

T-15d: 19 hardened colonists want to get off this hellhole of a rimworld. The ship is built, the reactor starts to power up. The calm before the storm begins.
T-14d: Siege raid (the first this run): lots of injuries & 3 colonists downed since i dont have mortars and have to storm their position preemptively. Miraculously, no deaths.
T-13d: Toxic Fallout (the first this run as well): are you kidding me? Constant raids incoming and I can't really leave the base? Thankfully my larder is well stocked and my grazers won't die from a little exposure.
T-12d: Mechanoid raid (centipedes, lancers, scythers): My trusty marksman/crafter Crab dies in the firefight but since he was staggeringly ugly, most colonists dont take it too hard ('rival died'). Injuries all around. Thank god for capable doctors and a good supply of medicine.
T-11d: Mechanoid raid (centipedes only): turrets and long range rifles get them done but I'm hurting for steel to rearm my turrets.
T-10: Mechanoid raid: 6 scythers and 1 lancer drop on top of my bedrooms - 2 pigs lost, 2 colonists downed, more injured
T-9d: Sapper raid. This one was reeeaaally nasty (I reloaded a save several times until I finally worked out how to best deal with them). Had to use my only doomsday launcher but salvaged one from them plus a triple rocket launcher. 1 downed colonist.
T-8.3d: Psychic drone (male): Just what I needed. My 4 steel deep drills are running full time to replace the turret barrels. Thankfully they are within my base and roofed (toxic fallout still ongoing)
T-8d: 3-way sapper raid. The comparatively small sizes of the respective groups made this manageable. Still, 3 pigs/boars lost, 1 colonist downed
T-7.3d: most of the remaining pigs have contracted the flu; let's hope I don't need them too badly in the next raid
T-7.2d: toxic fallout has settled - the first positive thing since starting the reactor. I use the brief respite to finally replace one colonists missing kidney (harvested from a downed raider - not the best decision since the mood penalty puts a strain on my colony)
T-7d: Another siege (with 2 related people): 1 colonist downed. 1 doomsday rocket launcher salvaged (used psychic shock lance). Several nasty injuries, but I manage to scare off the raiders before I have to kill the relatives.
T-6.5: First animals wander back on the map. My food stores look very strained. 60 emergency survival meals are still there though.
T-5.9: My greedy drilling finally woke some insects: 1 stray piglet gets killed and my trusty timber wolf Slinker gets his second eye shot out in the crossfire poor Slinker. The pigs get to feast on the insect corpses (they've been terribly hungry during the fallout)
T-5.4: An exotic goods trader stops by. I use the opportunity to acquire a psychic shock and psychic insanity lance as well as a bionic leg. Bowman, my finest marksman (equipped with a legendary assault rifle) receives the leg as well as the archotech eye I found earlier. Raiders tremble!
T-5: Mechanoid raid: 6 scythers drop on top of me. The trade caravan 'helps' by igniting my base with molotovs... Brittany, prime sow and beloved bonded animal gets brutally cut to pieces alongside a bonded wolf. The brawlers and remaining pigs sustain a few cuts and bruises. First rice harvest since the fallout settles is brought in. Food supply should be secure.
T-4: Another deep drill infestation pops up and is quickly handled (1 injured). As the last insect bites the dust a sapper raid appears. Their doomsday rocket launcher critically misfires and wreaks havoc in the ranks of the invaders. Only minor injuries on my part. That could have gone sooo wrong. phew
T-3.6: Another sapper raid immediately follows. A psychic insanity lance takes out their doomsday rocket launcher bearer. My sniper turrets kill a wolf and shoot off its handler's shoulder... goddamnit. Besides that, injuries of varying degree.
T-3.4: A pirate merchant in orbit. Time to get rid of all the collected raider's weapons and buy another doomsday rocket launcher. Also, time for some muscle parasites (5 colonists) :/. 3 barrel changes clean out my steel stockpile
T-2.5: Another siege, close to my base. I pull no punches and immediately wreck their shit with a well placed doomsday rocket. Not a single injury received on my end. I capture one attacker to get her bionic eye and my 2 bloodlusty(bloodlusting?) pawns get some enjoyment from finishing off the rest of the downed attackers. While the rest of the colony is teetering on the brink of mental collapse, those two are happy as can get.
T-1.1: a 2-way raid. The gloves are off, I pull out the orbital bombardement targeter I found in the ancient danger and incinerate the bigger group (so, so satisfying - never used one before in my runs because I was "saving it for later"). The smaller group eats a doomsday rocket and my traps and turrets finish them off (my rocket wielder gets caught out in the open though and gets downed by a melee pawn - nothing  too serious tahnkfully). A clumsy pawn springs one of our own traps - light injuries taken.
T-19h: we're getting close!! Another siege: I use my last doomsday rocket launcher to deal with the encampment and a few well placed sniper shots convince the rest to tuck tail and run.
15. Septober 5503, 12:00 - It is finally time! The reactor is ready, the sensors are polished to a mirror sheen, the AI is happily rattling off launch parameters. Time to load my colonists into the cryptosleep pods.
I gather my 18 surviving colonists at Crabs' grave to say a final farewell. What a crazy final stretch. Off to the stars we go.

(I actually had to reload twice during those last minutes because pawns kept breaking just as I was about to load them into the pods)

[Greep]

I'm curious, has anyone who's actually done the ship sequence lost?  It looks like even though it's insanely hard either people just barely make it with most of their colony dead or suffer a couple losses while doing so. Maybe this is a case of people not posting when their ship gets blown up? 

Or maybe players who do launch the ship are just experienced enough because newer players won't choose a difficulty that allows them to survive long enough to gather the materials to build it?  Because I find it weird given how hard it is that seemingly nobody's gotten completely crushed.

[Serina]

https://imgur.com/a/vGRplAS

New game on phoebe extra hard NB with two pawns.
Lasted only 8 days because I decided to test out the new thrumbo speed buff (5.5 c/s).
Became manhunter after the first shot. Tried to use the usual technique of kiting over chunks, didn't work out so well.
Before the speed buff, I was able to hunt thrumbos using only short bows + kite technique throughout my 1.0 playthroughs.
I personally like this change because it felt like the thrumbos were way too easy to hunt and made the first month on NB much easier after you kill the first one.
Thrumbo fur parka + silver for the meat and horn pretty much set me up for the first winter in my other playthroughs. Lesson learned though. Early game thrumbos are scary once again.

[Sirsir]

Did Thrumbos get an armor buff recently? Last fight like half the shots bounced off of them...

[jchavezriva]

Noticed that simple meals are supposed to be made of one ingredient according to its description.

But in reality, it can work with 2 ingredients of different types. I saw a simple meal being cooked with potatoes and meat. 3 potates and 7 meat if im not wrong.

[Arq]

Really been enjoying the unstable build so far.  A few quick remarks:

- Hydroponics, the crematorium, and the advanced research bench (but not the basic bench) cannot be un/reinstalled like most production things can now.  I'm probably missing a few in there, too.  I'm not sure if this is intended (for some particular reason) or just an oversight.
- I've had an issue with pets (mostly my labradors) going nuts every time I have beer in storage.  They chug it hard and I often have a puppy blacked-out on the stockpile floor, even when there is perfectly good food in the freezer (which is usually closer to them).  I recall this was a thing in 0.18 and before (which I modded out), but it's really a hassle to have to allocate special stockpiles and zones just to keep them out of the stuff.
- Research feels a little fast.  It takes no-time to blast to whatever tech in the tree you want, at least for industrial-tech factions.  (Well, at least it was fast until everyone refused to do it because "research is a long-term task."  Some bug happening there.)
- Water mills are very strong.  I'm not sure what the right offset is to put watermills in line.  Maybe they should give less power and/or have a larger interference range?  It seems silly to hassle with solar/wind when hydro is so easy and consistent.

EDIT: a couple more I thought of just after posting.
- I am finding the quests much more compelling than before.  It would be nice to have the current quests listed somewhere so that you don't have to click around sites on the worldmap to find them.  Also, it might be nice to list the faction relation changes for completing quests or when performing trades.
- Drug binges last quite awhile.  One of my pawns decided to go for psychite tea (or whichever drug comes in tea form) and, thanks to the energy boost, continued to consume one every hour or two for 24hrs before finally settling down.  This was for a chemical interest pawn, not a normal mental break.

[cactusmeat]

1.0.1956
Custom Tribal (no starting pets or weapons)
Pheobe Hard, world seed: Eternal sadness. Temperate forest, Mountainous, no river. Year round growing.
I won't change difficulty while playing, but there isn't an option to lock it in so...

Granite and marble, as is tradition. (granite for defense, marble for beauty bonus). Not sure why I would settle any other place.
   No rich soil anywhere close to the center of the map. Guess I'm role-playing dwarves. 4 of my people are miners apparently. 4 of them are also Indoorsmen. I did not plan this.
   I only mined where there's thin rock roof. Built a complex of several rooms against the mountain. May dig deeper later, but for now, efficiency with crops and hunting is key. Stonecutting is the first research.
Having 2 researchers is pretty useful also.
   I noticed that when you tell a person to prioritize hauling something to a tile where you want the floor smoothed they queue that up if they are able to construct.
   Nothing unusual happens for some time.
   Day 45. first sapper raid. None of them have grenades or molotovs. I pick off 2 melee users who are at the front of the pack with greatbows and send 2 tamed alpacas against the shotgunner. Three died and the rest were routed.
   Day 56 psychic ship. After trying to build walls 2 tiles from the ship to try to encase it in a fiery inferno  the mechs appeared, I had never tried that before. I won't ever try it again. Billy got shot.  We waited 2 days for him to heal up.
   I sent 5 people to fight a scyther and a centipede and miraculously nobody died or was seriously injured in any way. Besides Tali who was bleeding 473% and had 5 hours to live. Luckily they could walk back to the hospital fast enough. As soon as they were tended I forced them to clean the trail of blood they left through the base as punishment for being shot 6 times by the same volley. Centipedes are dicks.
   Day 62 refugee, young female. I say ok. She says me no fight. Ugh. Quickly dispatch the tribesmen on her tail, suffering one lost limb and almost a lost colonist. (two pilas to the chest leaving it at 1 hp)
   Day 74: combo and reflex set out to trade 42 war veils for power armor and crafting neurotrainer. Now that my colonists are level 12 and 14 crafting because of fulfilling this request, it's less of a reward than I first thought. I just hope nothing big happens without ¼ of my colonists gone.
   Day 77: tribal sappers. Caravan isn't back yet. Their 9 vs my 5. but I have boars. Even though they avoided traps greatbows are great and I killed one before they were in range. They got billy in the leg as we retreated behind the scattered deadfall traps. Turns out humans avoid them. 4 boars killed 2 of them as we pelted the others. 3 died, 3 fled, 3 captured. One boar lost its spine. We had pork in celebration.
   Of course the one I want to recruit gets the infection. The other two were enough that their faction is neutral upon their release.
   Caravan makes it back in time to get the plague at home. Nobody dies. Only herbal medicine used.   Everybody has wooden plate armor now. It's very good, mainly because my crafters are so good.
   New build, 1958 now. Played a bunch without writing much. Did some caravan stuff. Ambushed by a single hen. Hilarious. A total of 3 psychic ships hit this colony. We had a refugee event coincide with the most recent one. The raiders made short work of the mechs, and when I went to kill the ship it sent animals at us. 3 rhinos 4 muffalos and some smaller things. We took more damage and more infections from that than the raiders (who were well armed with assault rifles, machine pistols, flak gear, go juice, and a rocket launcher they wasted on the scythers)
   Year two summary: One downed pawn became a prisoner, toxic fallout forced us inside, and with less work somehow my people were happy enough to inspire themselves for recruitment and a masterwork royal granite bed (which took 5000 work to make).
   One raid had 3 separate forces converge on us, but they didn't all reach combat range at the same time, so I dealt with each pack in order and suffered no losses after taking out the doomsday rocket guy.
   Bianca and Combo were to be wed in the coming weeks and we still hadn't recruited the prisoner from last raid. I noticed he had no jaw, and 2 not so great traits, no combat skills. We trained up some medicine by installing and reinstalling his kidney. I goofed and after a couple of times doing that we took out both his kidneys before putting one back in. No less than 2 seconds after I realize this had happened one of my huskies hauled his corpse away.
   Caravan quests brought a total of 5 resurrector mech serums to this colony. We have 12 people now, year 3, 150k wealth. Only used one melee pawn, bought a shield belt for him quite early. I think for my play style, 10 ranged to 1 melee will work. I had been supplementing his skills with battle boars... Needs more testing though. Even the pawn I used for melee had decent shooting skills.
   I avoided provoking thrumbos, because I was already wealthy. I play the game much differently now that I know that wealth affects the raids' difficulty. I wish I could test things without bias of previous knowledge.
   2 different times huskies joined the colony. I'd tamed alpacas, wild boars, muffalo for base defence and as pack animals. There was a point where I had about 50 animals and 12 colonists.
   Autocannon turrets are great. Not sure if they are truly necessary on phoebe/hard, for the stage I was at.
It might just be a feeling but does making a full perimeter wall increase the chances of sappers/sieges?
   Just felt like the colony was set and it would be a year or two of grinding research and quests, fending off the occasional raid and relaxing until the ship is done. The hard/exciting gameplay is gone already. Either I have to up the difficulty or change storytellers or both.
   Caravans and quests feel much better now. I contracted no diseases, lost no pawns in 2 years of sending out 2 or 3 man groups. Had 3 ambushes, all were 1 raider/animal... not sure that is what it's supposed to be.
   Final thoughts: it is super weird that to harvest cocoa from trees you chop it down and collect chocolate bars ... I feel there are steps missing. Is the bark made of chocolate squares? How does it not melt in 60 degree weather?
        Using ressurector mech serums isn't obvious, didn't say how to in the item description. time is of the essence with that so having it be clearer would be good for new players.
         What is the threshold for inspired creativity? i had a pawn with 5 construction 2 crafting and 0 art get it, no passions, wasn't assigned to those tasks. Seems odd to me.


[attachment deleted due to age]

[robno]

https://imgur.com/a/vGRplAS

New game on phoebe extra hard NB with two pawns.
Lasted only 8 days because I decided to test out the new thrumbo speed buff (5.5 c/s).
Became manhunter after the first shot. Tried to use the usual technique of kiting over chunks, didn't work out so well.
Before the speed buff, I was able to hunt thrumbos using only short bows + kite technique throughout my 1.0 playthroughs.
I personally like this change because it felt like the thrumbos were way too easy to hunt and made the first month on NB much easier after you kill the first one.
Thrumbo fur parka + silver for the meat and horn pretty much set me up for the first winter in my other playthroughs. Lesson learned though. Early game thrumbos are scary once again.

I like how you always name one of the pawns after yourself!

[Grimelord82]

I have resurrected a pawn 33 days after sarcophagus burial. He was rotting and missing the top half of his head due to Lancer fire. He rezzed in perfect health, minus total blindness. I agree the interface for that and the healing serum is weird, but I like the items a lot.
Sapper the Resurrected now has two bionic eyes.

Great story, Cactus. Mech ships don't tolerate anything within about 6 tiles of them.

[Serina]

I like how you always name one of the pawns after yourself!

I try to name all the new recruits myself as well, rarely do they keep the names they spawned with. It helps me feel more attached to my colony so losses are a bit more devastating.

I have resurrected a pawn 33 days after sarcophagus burial. He was rotting and missing the top half of his head due to Lancer fire. He rezzed in perfect health, minus total blindness. I agree the interface for that and the healing serum is weird, but I like the items a lot.
Sapper the Resurrected now has two bionic eyes.

I've never used a resurrector mech serum and thought you couldn't use it on rotting corpses, only fresh ones, according to the description. That's pretty cool Sapper was able to revive with his head intact. I wonder if the serum is working as intended.

Did Thrumbos get an armor buff recently? Last fight like half the shots bounced off of them...

I'm not sure, I only remember reading about increased speed on thrumbos.

[Boboid]

Did Thrumbos get an armor buff recently? Last fight like half the shots bounced off of them...

Yes they got armor when the new armor system was introduced. You can see for yourself on their information page ( assuming they're alive ). They've got 60 sharp, 40 blunt, 30 heat. They did however lose some hitpoints when this armor was added. They're roughly as tough as they were before but now they get fewer injuries making them a bit more manageable if tamed.

Noticed that simple meals are supposed to be made of one ingredient according to its description.
But in reality, it can work with 2 ingredients of different types. I saw a simple meal being cooked with potatoes and meat. 3 potates and 7 meat if im not wrong.

Simple meals don't actually require 1 ingredient, they just require 0.5 nutrition worth of raw food, irrespective of the source, you could make a simple meal out of 10 different ingredients, though colonists prefer to use 1 whenever possible. Their description does say one ingredient however.

I've never used a resurrector mech serum and thought you couldn't use it on rotting corpses, only fresh ones, according to the description. That's pretty cool Sapper was able to revive with his head intact. I wonder if the serum is working as intended.

The resurrector serum says "Outcomes are better when the mechanites are administered to a fresher body. Well-preserved bodies can be resurrected , even long after death".
You can resurrect bodies so long as they're merely Rotten, not Dessicated.

Depending on the environment that the corpse is left in it can last a surprising amount of time in the Rotten state. And they won't rot at all if frozen.
I'm not totally sure what would happen if you buried someone in a sarcophagus in a freezer, I -think- the game handles it correctly and the corpse is preserved but I haven't tested it personally. I have vague memories of digging up graves in polar environments and discovering they were still fresh.

---
Little bit of Sniper Turret feedback -
Can't say I'm a huge fan of them overall as they're simultaneously not very effective vs raiders while also being gross overkill due to the shape of their damage output. Mostly they're inaccurate vs raiders at long range while being only marginally more accurate than the Autocannon at the range most weapons engage at. For the most part autocannons outperform sniper turrets vs people even when they're in power armor in my experience.

Any autocannon shot that hits is going to to extreme damage, probably destroying whatever it hits. The same is true of the sniper turret except.. the autocannon fires 3x as many shots and is actually more accurate due to the quantity of shots fired.
Both turrets are similarly efficient in terms of damage-to-steel ratios but in terms of actual combat performance the autocannon fairs considerably better. Additionally the Sniper turret requires more plasteel to construct and is therefore a bit more expensive to replace. Not in terms of raw value but in terms of availability.
So vs people and even large animals I'm not impressed with the sniper turret.

Vs Centipedes it's considerably better. Their large size and gigantic health-per-part almost completely remove the aforementioned disadvantages. Additionally the sniper turret has enough AP to never be affected by the centipedes whopping 80% sharp armor. There's also no soft targets for the sniper rifle's damage potential to be wasted on.
Still, overall Autocannons are still an effective solution to centipedes. Very effective frankly.
If I was struggling to deal with centipedes my first thought would be to add more autocannons, not add sniper turrets.
There's also the nature of how the extra range plays out. You can't afford to stand in front of either kind of turret - they're simply too lethal, one stray shot is all it takes to kill a friendly - and the sniper turret exacerbates the issue. You can easily fight in tandem with an Autocannon if you're using virtually any kind of weapon, even short range weapons like shotguns at least prop up your damage output when enemies start to close.

Sniper turrets however.. Well you can't put them behind your autocannons unless you put them directly behind them and that's not super practical due to explosion potential and firing angles can sometimes result in friendly fire fiascos. You can stand directly behind them but then.. well would you be better off with autocannons? Probably in my experience.

I haven't tried exclusively using sniper turrets yet, it's next on my list. Perhaps the experience is different when I'm playing exclusively to the sniper turret's strengths. I'm not optimistic though.

[Wanderer_joins]

Vs Centipedes it's considerably better. Their large size and gigantic health-per-part almost completely remove the aforementioned disadvantages. Additionally the sniper turret has enough AP to never be affected by the centipedes whopping 80% sharp armor. There's also no soft targets for the sniper rifle's damage potential to be wasted on.
Still, overall Autocannons are still an effective solution to centipedes. Very effective frankly.
If I was struggling to deal with centipedes my first thought would be to add more autocannons, not add sniper turrets.

I've used autocannons only against centipedes, i think anything smaller is a waste of steel. And they were really helpful to shorten the fight against swarms of centipedes.

I deemed their upkeep just right.

Sniper turrets, well: 200 steel a barrel for 40 shots vs 180 a barrel for 90 shots for the autocannon. Their upkeep is off the chart, even end game, unless you're swimming in steel, which i wasn't even year 8 with dedicated drillers with bionic arms.

All in all, sniper turrets are better, but relatively, autocannons are in the sweet spot against centipedes. Anything smaller doesn't justifies the waste of steel imo. Maybe to justify the higher AP a sniper turret barrel could be half steel/ half plasteel. It would be 100 steel/ 100 plasteel and would be worth it  since when you fight centipedes, you end up having disproportionately more plasteel than steel.

Edit: btw i'd also like to be able to manufacture barrels. It's not really safe or handy to bring 180 steel on the frontline to change a barrel during the fight. Prebuilt barrels like mortar shells would help