Unstable build feedback thread

[Syrchalis]

I see people complain about centipedes but they are not an issue in my case. I have fought one so far and it was kinda like a tank, it only had 1 support melee bot that my 4 melee fighters could handle and then my 7 shooters took it down. I now have 2 good LMG's which I imagine will do ok against them (before I took it down using pistols and bolt actions pretty much).

For me centipedes feel fine. They only get really annoying if there is lots of them 10+ and they have many inferno cannons.

My nightmare really are lancers with scythers. You want to run from scythers but you have to stay in cover because lancers are going to blast everyone's brain out if you're not.

[Emulsion]

I'm playing Phoebe hard, Tropical year-round growing, mountainous, now in Septober '04 with 9 Pawns and wealth around 150000.
I've been playing Rimworld for around 550 hours prior to 1.0, mostly A16 and A17 and now I got hooked again.
Started this colony a few builds ago, so I don't know if all of my impressions are still valid.

Here are some of my experiences in no particular order:

-I liked the downscaling of caravan-threats a lot, haven't done caracaning again in the latest build when they were buffed again but that's probably a good thing, they seemed almost a little too easy a build ago but at least I could finally venture out to do some quests without that being almost certain a death sentence.

-I really approve to Rescuees not bleeding out anymore, had the father of one of my colonists die while I was fighting 2vs2 against a Lancer and a Scyther and being occupied in not getting my colonists killed some builds ago.

-I've built a mountain base and got the expression it is really strong, since I had some drop pod raids landing outside thanks to my thick roof. Haven't had any infestations up to this point but maybe Phoebe is just nice to me, I'm not in need of these ;-)

-I had some labradors join some time ago, 3 females and one male and they are breeding like rabbits. I really was lucky to get 3 females I guess but I don't know if it's intended this way. Right now I've got 21 of them despite losing two to some enraged Rhinoceroses.
In this regard: I decided to euthanize one beceause it had lost it's jaw and I didn't want to feed it all the time. The doctoring colonist now got the -5 for killing a colony animal. I liked the change, that slaughtering doesn't get this debuff anymore but maybe that should be true for euthanising too since she really did it in a kind way, drugging the dog and anesthesizing it beforehand to give it some nice last hours ;-)

-I'd really like being able of installing prosthetics on animals, at least some wooden or simple stuff.

-I'd really like being able to replace or reconstruct shattered noses, I think this "disfigured" relations debuff is really annoying. In my opinion at least lovers and probably other disfigured members should be less superficial and possibly some long time friends too. Could be interesting for storytelling if not everybody would instantly like them less. Right now it's just something I can neither avoid (maybe with better helmets, of course) nor counterplay.
One of my disfigured Pawns built every piece of furniture and presented them with qhite a lot artistic excellent beds so they should really be more thankful to him ;-)

-Thanks for the ability of crafting bionics!

-I was very disappointed to see that sarcophagi don't show the buried colonists name anymore, it just says "Containing human corpse". The art is also not related in any way to the dead colonist but that could be just bad luck, I remember from A17 that it mostly would be but not always. Please at least bring back the name on the sarcophagi. I only have one so maybe there just went something really wrong in the process of burying after freezing the corpse for a day or so.

-I've got 3 researchers (one also handler, one grower and one cleaner which all share their work with some other Pawns) and mostly only one would research for a few hours a day and the speed feels okay to me.

-Handling really does need dedicated Pawns, I got 3 handlers with also other jobs and nearly all the time at least one is training one of the dogs or the two rats I got (One from the beginning and another one I tamed to get a partner for him, of course slaughtering all the children). For me it feels a little too much time spent for my Pawns but again my dog population is kind of getting out of hand so that could be the cause.

-I read about puppies drinking a lot of alcohol but in my playthrough not one did, which isn't a bad thing of course.
My rat did and got a carcinoma which I was able to extract and now suffers cirrhosis, I like that a lot! Nothing more hilarious than geting the message "Hernan is no longer incapable of walking" and looking at him seeing he's extremely alcohol tolerant, hungover and massively drunk. Looking at him, while he was crawling around my base and vomitting all over the place made me really laugh.
So in my opinion it's a good thing that animals can drink alcohol but not every single one of them should. What I'm experiencing seems balanced and makes good stories.

-I feel as addiction at a whole got less frequent. I have joints, beer and psychite tea for joy for everyone set and until now no Pawn got a tolerance. I think in A17 it was more common but maybe that is related to the changes to recreation so they don't smoke a joint every free minute which is a good thing.
In this regards I'd like to set a time when there are specific drugs allowed so that my pawns only smoke before going to bed so they can walk and work properly during the day and relax in the evening.

-Recreation seems fine and like a nice change to me, I got chess, billiards, poker, hoseshoes pin and drugs. I think it was already adapted but maybe make them more likely to get outside when they feel like "tombed underground". Don't really have any issues with this debuff despite most of the people are working indoors most of the day. Only my depressive one really minds and wants to get drafted outside every few days ;-)

-Please give us some kind of dedicated cleaning area and/or like it was suggested somewhere "opportunistic cleaning", it takes such a lot of time in a big bases and it's really not necessary to clean the whole home area everyday just to ensure they clean the kitchen as well (which I floored with terile tiles and despite that it can't be cleaner than -0.11, I don't know if that's WAD. I also took out every part of furniture, cleaned every tile and reinstalled averything. Made it a little better but the last bits of dirt won't go away. That's not really bothering me but I wanted to mention it anyway. My butcher table is also in the kitchen, if that makes a difference.)

-The only Uranium I saw was from drop pods (43 pieces) but maybe that'll change once I start deep drilling and LRMSing but I think at least some of the traders should sell it. Could be bad luck of course that they weren't.

-One last thing: At one point when I had 5 Pawns I decided to switch the difficulty to very hard (I really prefered the old terms) and almost instantly got a raid from a mixed group of Scythers and Lancers (8 in total), my builder got one shotted and I decided to reload and keep playing on hard. The event triggered and on this difficulty it was 3 manhunting panthers, which is a huge difference. Maybe it was really RNG coming into play and I didn't try it out again but if the difficulty curve really is that steep, I feel like there is something missing in between.


I really like the changes and QoL features you implemented and I want to say a big THANK YOU for this amazing game which is my most played title ever.
Also, thanks for your dedication to this game and your responses on feedback, very much appreciated!
I'd be sad if the development of RW really stopped but at the same time I'd be excited to see what you come up with next :-)

[Boboid]

I see people complain about centipedes but they are not an issue in my case. I have fought one so far and it was kinda like a tank, it only had 1 support melee bot that my 4 melee fighters could handle and then my 7 shooters took it down. I now have 2 good LMG's which I imagine will do ok against them (before I took it down using pistols and bolt actions pretty much).

For me centipedes feel fine. They only get really annoying if there is lots of them 10+ and they have many inferno cannons.

My nightmare really are lancers with scythers. You want to run from scythers but you have to stay in cover because lancers are going to blast everyone's brain out if you're not.

Quick note on inferno cannons - Heat armor does actually prevent pawns from being lit on fire in addition to reducing the likelihood of being damaged by said fire if they are set alight.
Additionally - Shield belts are an excellent counter to inferno cannons, AFAIK colonists can't be set alight while a shield belt is active and Inferno cannons don't do particularly large amounts of damage. A single shield belt can tank multiple inferno cannons without breaking.
Shield belts aren't particularly expensive to make anymore either so it might be worth keeping a few on hand just for centipedes. They handle Lancer fire moderately well too although coordinated volleys can be an issue and anyone with a broken shield will need to get out of there in a hurry.

[Lanilor]

I'm getting hit hard by the rng-god of inspirations. Sure there is a lot luck involved and there should be, but it's borderline dumb and the final one hit topped it: In the first 2 years I only got trade inspirations. I could at least ue them, but getting 30 or 50 silver out of an inspiration feels really limited. After that I got a recruitment inspiration ... without prisoners and in the 8 days lasting, I also didn't get any, so useless. Then I got another inspired traide mid-winter, so probably useless this time and now finally a work frenzy inspiration ... but on the guy being away on a quest caravan.

I also finally got a spit raid from two melee tribespeople groups. I think they chould start happen much earlier, but I have no idea if it's liked to wealth, time or something else. And after killing half of the first group there was the usual message of "tribepeople are fleeing" which is irritating, because only that one group was fleeing and the other not. Maybe just "part of them are fleeing" would make it clearer that there still are raiders trying to burn your base.

[Yoshida Keiji]

Let's talk about "Inspirations".

I think Tynan should revert it to previous versions. As of now, Inspirations are only triggered to pawns based on their skills that have a "Passion" to it, be it either Interested or Burning (Flame x1 or x2). This is because some people "complained", that Inspirations on skills of no Passion were a waste...This is debatable, because there's basically two types of players:

* The Cheesy player who at game start "re-rolls" dozens of times until he/she gets the "Dream Team".
* The Hardcore player who plays with the first five without "re-rolls" and would at least consider swamping with the "Left Behind" but no re-rolls.


In my opinion, the "Wasted Inspiration" is a complain that comes from the "Cheesy Players". Because if you play without re-rolls... it doesn't really matter which skill an inspiration triggers on, as in if it happens on a non-passion skill is not necessarily a bad thing. For example, if your first five characters are all of them bad at Cooking...and you suddenly get a Cooking Inspiration in one of them... it instantly becomes a "great opportunity" to rise one of your pawns as your "main cooker"...

To me Inspirations are great opportunities to help grow a pawn in an area he is deficient at, and placing Inspirations on skills that already have a Passion...is kind of REDUNDANT...as either with or without the Inspiration event, he/she will still upgrade their skill levels... due to learning at 100% or 150%.

Inspirations should be triggered on skills without Passions in which their learning speed is only 35%...now giving inspirations a "true" feature to the game.

Re-roll back to previous version, please.

[Madman666]

Yeah, of course. Inspired surgery is definitely better to have on your one-eyed hunter, who barely knows anything about medicine. Since obviously its way better, if he cuts off patient's leg, not destroys a brain outright.

If you so called Hardcore Players like to suffer through a play with 3 colonists with disabled hauling, or a bucket of addictions, berserking after a first couple days of play and thus telling a no doubt very interesting and dramatic story - thats fine. Everybody plays the way they like. But please don't go suggesting turning a flawed mechanic into even more flawed one, just because it suits your own playstyle. Leave us, filthy casuals, a game we can have fun with.

[Syrchalis]

Are you sure? I modified my inspirations def and while doing so I had a look at it. It only said in there they have to have 3 skill in the area (e.g. 3 medical for surgery inspiration).

I honestly would like inspirations to be a bit more controllable. Please read carefully, I said "a bit". Like, the longer a pawn goes without dipping into minor break risk the bigger his chance for an inspiration gets. Just an example. I don't want inspirations to lose their value or randomness, just have a tiny bit more agency in their appearance.

[Boboid]

Let's talk about "Inspirations".

Well this will be entertaining.

I think Tynan should revert it to previous versions. As of now, Inspirations are only triggered to pawns based on their skills that have a "Passion" to it, be it either Interested or Burning (Flame x1 or x2). This is because some people "complained", that Inspirations on skills of no Passion were a waste...This is debatable, because there's basically two types of players:

* The Cheesy player who at game start "re-rolls" dozens of times until he/she gets the "Dream Team".
* The Hardcore player who plays with the first five without "re-rolls" and would at least consider swamping with the "Left Behind" but no re-rolls.

There are other kinds of players that fit all along that spectrum. Only a Sith deals in absolutes

In my opinion, the "Wasted Inspiration" is a complain that comes from the "Cheesy Players". Because if you play without re-rolls... it doesn't really matter which skill an inspiration triggers on, as in if it happens on a non-passion skill is not necessarily a bad thing. For example, if your first five characters are all of them bad at Cooking...and you suddenly get a Cooking Inspiration in one of them... it instantly becomes a "great opportunity" to rise one of your pawns as your "main cooker"...

Well for starters cooking inspirations don't exist, and secondly that's not at all how they function.

To me Inspirations are great opportunities to help grow a pawn in an area he is deficient at, and placing Inspirations on skills that already have a Passion...is kind of REDUNDANT...as either with or without the Inspiration event, he/she will still upgrade their skill levels... due to learning at 100% or 150%.

Go Frenzy, Shoot Frenzy, Inspired Creativity, Inspired Recruitment, Inspired Recruitment, and Inspired Surgery are the current inspirations. It's important to note that none of those make your colonist better at a task in the long term.
In fact I think you've misunderstood what they do in general. Inspired Creativity, recruitment, and surgery are all 1-off events that make your colonist do something once better than they usually would.
In fact, that's always what inspirations have done. They've never made your colonist better at something in the long term. You can rollback the system all you want, it'll still be as it is now

The previous system simply gave colonists bonuses almost at random - the main issues were Surgery and Creativity.
A pawn with 0 crafting/art/construction skill could get Inspired Creativity - They'd create an item that was 2 levels better than they usually would. Unfortunately they'd usually produce something Awful so the entire bonus resulted in a Normal quality item. Whoopie do. That's a waste. Objectively. Nobody was rewarded for that system - Not even your theoretical "hardcore" non-cheese" player.

The same applies to surgery - Someone who's incompetent at medicine could get a surgery inspiration. They're now 10x less likely to botch their next operation - The trouble is that if they had a 50% chance of botching it because they have 2 medicine skill then that 5% chance to botch the operation might still be worse than just using someone who was actually competent in the first place.
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It's at this point I should really mention that you can still get inspirations on people with garbage skill in the relevant category. Someone with 4 medicine skill can get a surgery inspiration.
The only difference is that now that person is more likely to get a surgery inspiration if they have a passion for it. Increasing the likelihood of the system doing anything useful at all.

Exactly what you claim to want can still happen - Someone with a passion for construction and 3 construction skill can get an inspiration. Good luck making it useful

[5thHorseman]

I think inspirations should trigger on skills in which the pawns are high leveled, regardless of if they're passionate or not. Then they'll always be useful. Well unless you get inspired trading and no traders show up, but that always happens.

But what do I know. I'm a filthy casual who doens't even change the colors of his words.

[Madman666]

Well in fact if you have allied factions - you can just call up a trader. Since it lasts for 8 days - they'll make it in time and you can make a bit of profit. And if you re extremely lucky - you get an orbital trader during that time and make a real nice profit. Though if inspired trade happens on lvl 4 pawn, when you already have lvl 15, it remains completely and utterly useless. If it were me i d make inspirations require at least 10 in skill. Probably will mod it to work like that.

[Syrchalis]

Well in fact if you have allied factions - you can just call up a trader. Since it lasts for 8 days - they'll make it in time and you can make a bit of profit. And if you re extremely lucky - you get an orbital trader during that time and make a real nice profit. Though if inspired trade happens on lvl 4 pawn, when you already have lvl 15, it remains completely and utterly useless. If it were me i d make inspirations require at least 10 in skill. Probably will mod it to work like that.

I actually modded inspirations to require 10 skill. Would actually be nice if they simply target the highest skill pawn... (or with the highest stat - meaning the 14 social guy could have higher trade price improvement than the 16 social guy due to reasons... e.g. missing body parts or bionics)

[Kraehe]

How are you playing - just to grow indefinitely?

Not sure if it helps (if not please just delete my post) but i play since Alpha 5 or 6, have over 1000 hours in Rimworld but never build the spaceship to leave. I just want a big colony and see how long it can survive. Flying away never interested me.

[JavaWho]

@tynan ... For many of us the thrills of Rimworld is not the so called win "build a ship", travel to the existing ship and defending it is quite fun, but the thrill comes in building the biggest baddest base you can and see how long you can keep it alive.  See how much you can take on before Rimworld destroys you.   

If this is playing and building indefinitely then i guess that is how many of us play and that we want to shows you designed a great game.

There is talk of many cheesy things people do, such as take advantage of the way doors were but people can choose to play the way that makes them happy, the way they enjoy.

Personally i think someone playing on extreme keeping their colony wealth under 50k with 9 or under colonists on a 6-12 year old colony is not extreme at all.  It plays like some challenge even though they are on extreme and cheesy.

Keeping dead animals in the freezer not butchered so it does not count as wealth with meat and leather is cheesy.

Keeping dirt floors in the bedrooms and putting in nothing but a bed and planting lilies on the dirt to cause the beauty and though they will never grow the beauty buff is there and it causes no wealth and keeps the colonist happy and the raids extremely low key is also cheesy.

I could go on and on but many of us love to build our extreme mega colonies and play this game to it's full potential.  We love getting wiped out and doing it bigger and better but the new mechanoid changes are making this hard for us to do.  No colony is endless, Rimworld eventually always takes us down somehow but it is nice to be able to build big to watch the big fall.

[Tynan]

New build!

Thanks for all the info ongoing, especially from our newest first-post heroes.

One note - there is a new factor in the history graphs tab called Ramp-Up. This is a balancing factor that's only displayed in dev mode. It would be really good if anyone who plays a year+ game could screenshot this graph and post it here. Thank you.

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The change list is here for reference but discussion should please focus on experiences you're having in actual play. Thanks.

Refactor GetsPermanent HediffComp, centralized the tunables, and re-tuned it.
Fix: Some tools have null label and id.
Terrain-based attacks now have a constant chance to be chosen (instead of weighting by other attacks damage). Terrain-based attacks can now be used no more than once per 20 seconds.
Added dev mode-only ramp-up history recorder to help balance. Renamed some files to match their classes.
Remove some useless XML data.
Balanced up orbital bombardment and power beam targeters. Reworked bombardment targeter so the explosions come predictably instead of in random timings.
Remove unused weapon bulk stat.
Infestations are a bit tougher.
Anti-grain explosions have special huge damage and armor penetration.
Increase explosion armor penetration and damage.
Sniper turret now consumes uranium instead of steel.
Buff lavish meal mood impact.
Fix: Steel slag chunk smelting yields wrong count.
Fix: Every Thing lists a spurious accuracy stat.
Redesigned threat points ramp-up system so it should actually do something now. Defined the tuning per-storyteller in XML.
Fix: Debug output in CheckSpring.
Added tools debug output.
Melee attacks which deal higher damage are now much more likely to be chosen in melee combat.
Changed animal fleeing behavior. Player animals no longer flee from enemies on sight, so they can fight back. Animals now only flee from ranged weapons.
The prey search radius is now exactly the same as spawned food search radius to avoid situations where a predator is running past a spawned meat and hunts an animal.
Fix: Hives don't spawn initial insects.
Fix: Breath motes don't work.
Made sure that only pawns who can open doors close them.
Hives no longer die in winter.
Fix: Peace talks success letter doesn't mention all gifts.
Fix: Destroy bandit camp quest doesn't mention all rewards in the letter.
Changed predator hunting animal message to match the letter.
Increased predator hunt warning distance to 60 cells (we now send a message if it's hunting a colony animal).

[Lanilor]

@tynan ... For many of us the thrills of Rimworld is not the so called win "build a ship", travel to the existing ship and defending it is quite fun, but the thrill comes in building the biggest baddest base you can and see how long you can keep it alive.

You should be careful with assuming how others play. You can talk a lot from your perspective but "many" people also play completely different and "many" people don't play for getting the biggest base with a bunch of mods and stackign everything possible.

And people will always say "my strategy is not cheese while others are". I have clearly seen enough of these arguments in the discord and it doesn't archive anything. Objectively both is cheese or may not. That depends on how the game is inteded to be and not how someone thinks there playstyle is right.

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I'm currently in a situation in my game where I feel lack of some content. My base is working, colonists have somewhat decent equipment and there is now a gap between getting everything going and being strong enough to go for the ship. I don't like just building more because I can.

At this point the colony should get more into exploring the world, doing quests, clearing camps, mining lrms sites. I would like to see the curve for world event stuff a bit moved so less in the first year and a bit more afterwards. I got too many good quests early that gave me way too much advantages and not it feels more boring. The game or the told story should have something like chapters, maybe even supported by research or triggering events (a bit like in age of empires where you advance into the next era but not that fixed). It's just an on-the-fly idea and may have potential for a nice mod if it's too special for the core game. For example:

Chapter/Year 1: Start and survive against nature (like mad animals, get enough food, shelter, ...)
Chapter/Year 2: Other factions get in touch with you, more raids, trading, ...
Chapter/Year 3: You have a decent base and start exporing the world for more valuable quest items, mining sites, ...
Chapter/Year 4: Becoming a powerful faction like the other on the planet. So have allies, fight strong raids, ...
Chapter/Year 5: Go for the ship

The game is already a bit like that. It's just that really good quest offers can let you jump really far ahead. I don't remember the day but my first quest (maybe day 9) gave me a megascreen tv and an excellent lmg. I could finishe the quest a quadrum later but still then the rewards were insane. They were nice but also destroyed a lot of the fun in progression.