Unstable build feedback thread

[JavaWho]

@tynan Same colony new graph and I am building the ship, almost have all the materials may be off tomorrow, maybe the next day but I am excited to see the new ship build and continue to experience what it takes to build it in 1.0.  Dev mode 4x speed is awesome

[Tynan]

Thanks for the ongoing feedback everyone.

Still looking forward to seeing those Ramp-up graphs!

New build, still lots to do.

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Remove some redundant verb labels we added by accident.
Adjust raid points curve.
More research adjustments.
Made techprofs more common as quest rewards.
Move sterile materials and television earlier in the prerequisites.
Research rebalance: Increase simple research bench to 75% speed factor. Slower research skill gain. Double research costs of everything including and beyond multi-analyzer. Increase research costs of electricity, microelectronics, geothermal, long range mineral scanner.
Faction goodwill shifts faster.
Wounding rebalance: -Adjust the artificial chance of avoiding limb removal due to damage overkill. Make it damage def-dependent, so cuts and bites are great at limb removal while bullets are less so. -Reduce blunt stun duration 3.5 -> 2. -Rebalance and review other wounding code.
Quest balance adjustments.
Language data update.
Ranged attacks default to 0.5 stopping power instead of 0.
Increase shotgun penetration to 0.14. Fix typo.Adjust door health and speed. Debuff vanometric power cell slightly.

[Yoshida Keiji]

Upgrade the trade window with an additional list identical to the Animal tab that has the following columns:

* Bond
* Slaughter
* Medical care

By including a 4th category: "Marked for sale", so that the ones ticked in green appear in trade windows...

I usually play in harsh biomes so my livestock is usually small...but playing in Tropical Forest... my animals are mass breeding and this is very chaotic...

[Griggers]

Hey I noticed that since the research tree changes (gun turret no longer after Microelectronics) in 1.0U you no longer get the comms console on a rich explorer scenario at the start. Was this intentional?
When starting a sea ice scenario in B18 this was necessary as you needed a bulk goods trader within the first season (maybe 2 if lucky with wild animals) to buy steel (for hydroponics) before food ran out. This way it seems to me that sea ice is now impossible with this scenario(unmodified).
In B18 you needed to research: hydroponics -> electric smelting
In 1.0U you need: microelectronics -> batteries -> hydroponics -> electric smelting

I have never tried with a normal crashlanded scenario as I'm not a fan of killing 2 pawns to survive.

[Bowman]

Just finished my NB run that I've been playing at for a couple of weeks now. First of all, despite the constant updates my game never got broken or seriously messed up. Very fun experience to test like this, much appreciated.

Now a few comments specifically on building the ship and starting up the reactor:

- Ship research has been rebalanced since I went through it, can't comment on how it is now. Was possible but a bit of a chore when I did it. Had 2 hi-tech research stations going on.
- Building the ship was mostly ok. Gold and Uranium are really tight resources though. I mostly only traded and mined for it myself. Got very lucky with a uranium meteor next to my base so only gold was an issue - the only gold deposit the scanner found was very far away, and I only had 4 fields on surface level that I had found. Had to buy gold a few times for advanced component construction.
- The advanced component cost on the caskets feels punishing... It was 4 per now, I seem to remember 5 at some point earlier? I think 3 would be a better value - I basically left behind some people because I didn't feel like grinding adv. components any more.
- I could add ship components (like more caskets) during the reactor startup phase, but then once it was started up it felt anticlimactic - I couldn't add anything to the ship any more - no building was possible for some reason and I didn't know how to switch the reactor off to add things, doesn't seem like there's a function. If this is intended a good warning about not being able to add to the ship after startup would help, and maybe stop people from adding during startup already - it's weird that this was stopped by the final activation.
- Raids during the startup felt cool, but were all somewhat underpowered. At the level I was at (Cassandra Rough) I never had serious issues, all were underarmed and small compared to the raids I had gotten before. I had about 10 shooters (15 cols total) with miniguns, sniper rifles and charge weapons, mostly full flak gear. Most raids were about 10 raiders, with clubs, swords and pistols, with a single bolt-action thrown in. I wasn't really challenged. Had a single scyther drop on me as one raid. The frequency feels great but they just weren't very challenging (I may regret saying this...). By the end I moved all my shooters out and didn't bother getting cover even - that shouldn't be like that. My raids before had sniper rifles in them, never saw a single one in the reactor phase. I am used to better weapons on raiders from the past but with the changes to durability I guess you don't want people to get too much nice loot...
- Raid diversity was pretty cool. Forced me to deal with them flexibly.
- Raids stopping when the reactor is charged up was anticlimactic. It would seem cooler to keep them coming until launch happened.

All in all very cool experience. The weak final raids were a bit of a let-down, maybe add in a more serious one every 5 days or so.

[mcduff]

Research rebalance: Increase simple research bench to 75% speed factor. Slower research skill gain. Double research costs of everything including and beyond multi-analyzer. Increase research costs of electricity, microelectronics, geothermal, long range mineral scanner.
Faction goodwill shifts faster.

This feels like it will help a lot! The first game I had took me ages to get the basics then I totally rattled through all the late game research and deconstructed all my research benches because there was nothing left.

[Kittamaru]

my dogs are still exploding on IED traps https://i.imgur.com/oW8J33r.jpg

This can't be intended behaviour, right?

... for some reason, this made me laugh out loud at work... just, the thought of it...

[Rulin]

Tynan can you pls show us an example of the "ramp-up" graph? I and many other players have problems finding it.
When I open the history tab with dev mode enabled, it looks the same.

[Syrchalis]

Research rebalance: Increase simple research bench to 75% speed factor. Slower research skill gain. Double research costs of everything including and beyond multi-analyzer. Increase research costs of electricity, microelectronics, geothermal, long range mineral scanner.
Faction goodwill shifts faster.

Hm, going to be interesting testing this out, since it's pretty much exactly what I suggested. If it's not good I'll feel very stupid.

[Kirby23590]

Sniper turret now consumes Uranium instead of steel.

Hmmm...

I dunno but i think making it consume Uranium is rarer and expensive for the sniper turret.

Making the sniper turret when it requires uranium for barrel changes means it's not even worth it for players as they will stick with the autocannon turrets or mini-turrets.

Maybe changing it to comsume plasteel or components would make it alright.

[Syrchalis]

First impression of the research changes: Playing my jungle colony, small hills, huge river, randy extreme. Having to research electricity after already having it as new arrivals is funny. Speed felt alright, but I have to admit I have (and had) a very skilled researcher. Either way, it felt pretty decent at 60% already, so I can only assume with a worse researcher at 75% it's still good.

Points for high-end research looks more in line with what I would expect now, was really low beforehand.

Tree sowing work is awful. I patched it to be 4000 instead and that feels okay. Probably 6000 would be bearable too. But 12000 just makes me never want to deal with trees ever, not even with a 20 plants skill, industrious, neurotic, bionics-enhanced pawn.

[iamomnivore]

Researching seems really fast at higher levels. Cassandra blessed me with a level 11 burning passion researcher with a level 16 researcher who isn't good for much else. She turns the crank on the research table at remarkable speed. In no time I'm researching tech I have no intention of using for several quadrums at least.

Yeah, running into the same problem. :\ This effect is zapping a little bit of fun from the "curve" feeling.

[EvadableMoxie]

Some stories from my last 2 colonies. Both Cassandra Extreme, Crash Landed, No Mods.

The first one was started right before the update that re-added slowdown to armor.  For this colony I tried out a mostly melee force with a couple of ranged.  I rushed for smithing and platemail and my defense was basically a 1 tile wide hallway with doors on either side.  The enemy would go through and hit traps, then at the end be met with my melee where they'd be killed 3 on 1.  The doors also let me ambush any pawns that stayed in the hall.  The ranged picked them off as they approached, and then stood 1 tile behind the melee at the end of the hall so they could further firepower down on the enemy.   It worked really well, and it let me forgo ever building turrets or an actual killbox, which was a new experience on extreme difficulty.

What ultimately killed the colony however, was an all sapper raid.  Something like 12 enemies strong with nothing just grenades and molotovs.  These guys had no problem grenading their own men, and as a result I did win, but I took so many losses it was over.

Once the armor slowdown patch hit, I also decided next playthrough to just go straight for flak.  I'm not even sure plate is an increase in defense when it comes to sharp, it seems like it's actually weaker against bullets but better against blunt and fire.

Anyway, the play-through wasn't really memorable otherwise except for one specific event.  I sent 3 pawns off to a item stash.  They were ambushed by 3 pirates. No problem, I had 2 melee with longswords and a ranged with an assault rifle all in plate versus 3 naked pirates with pistols and knives.  Needless to say, I won, but Karo took a tiny little stab. Of course I brought medicine and had someone with medical so no big deal.

Then I get the infection notice.  Well, it's Extreme, so I kind of expected it.  Karo is 26 years old, no other health issues, and I have medicine and a doctor. No problem, I keep going.  Then she get's the plague. And not only does she get the plague, so does the doctor on the caravan. Now I'm in a lot of trouble but I'm only a few hours out from the stash so I push forward. It's unguarded, so I grab my healing serums and head back to camp. 

Then Karo get's food poisoning.  This was because I was using Jelly to feed the caravan and I rolled the 2% food poison chance.  And now that food poison multiplies blood filtration by 0.6, Karo was pretty screwed.  This was incredibly frustrating for me. I couldn't control that there was an ambush, and even though I defeated it nearly flawlessly, I was punished for a single tiny stab wound.  Then I had the plague on a pawn already sick and on the doctor so his treatment quality would suffer. There was nothing I could do here since illness is purely a random event with no warning.  The food poisoning I learned my lesson with, but at the time I hadn't realized it had been changed to have a blood filtration penalty. The problem is I could have just rolled food poisoning even on pemmican or a survival meal.  This is the type of stuff that really makes me hesitant to ever send caravans out.

So anyway, next game, I'm melee heavy again.  This time only party by choice.  I get a quest for a masterwork assault rifle item cache and it's too good to pass up so I send an expendable pawn I just recruited after it.  It's guarded by 3 geckos, which he kills, but he dies to an infection from the fight.  Once he's immobile, before he dies, I have him settle a new colony, so I can send a pawn to collect the rifle. Being able to create a temporary camp instead of a full on colony would have been useful here.

Later, I go on another quest for a techproof core, 2 healing serums, and a power armor helmet. It's just a trade for 4 assault shotguns. 2.5 days there, 2.5 days back. What could possibly go wrong?

What went wrong as my only shooter, the wielder of the masterwork assault rifle, get's the plague.  Yup, it happened to me in two playthroughs in a row.  He dies as a result, and thus begins the downward spiral of my colony.  We manage to survive 2 sieges despite not having anyone with shooting above 5, but we finally lose to a poison ship that decided 9 mechs including an inferno cannon Centipede was a fair fight.  I actually did win, miraculously, thanks to one pawn who managed to down 4 lancers single handedly with her longsword, but I lost my best melee in the process and I lost a pawn to a bug where a burn became permanent and instantly killed them. I'm so banged up a know the next raid will end me.  Also, I lost half my research when today's patch changed the numbers, so I'm just going to restart.

td;dr observations from those playthroughs:

I think I'm just going to ignore platemail.  I didn't really miss it last playthrough, and 1400 for a dead end research into a tech you can substitute with another tech that costs half as much is a hard sell. Maybe now that it's a lot harder to get to flak, I might change my mind and decide it's worth it.  Or, the increased research costs might make me think it's even more important to skip platemail.  I don't know, I guess I'll see next play-through.

Deadly diseases hitting pawns who are in caravans is really frustrating. There's basically nothing you can do about it and in most cases it's going to cost you the pawn.

Food poisoning being 60% blood filtration mean it's a death sentence if a pawn with a deadly disease happens to get food poisoning. While you can reduce food poison chance, you can never really eliminate it, which is a frustrating way to lose a pawn. I'd honestly rather have the old food poisoning that totally disabled the pawn back.

I don't allow pawns to ever eat Jelly now, because I have no way of knowing they don't have a hidden plague or malaria that will kill them if they get food poisoning. Maybe I'm a bit too paranoid.

All grenade raiders are nasty. Like, really nasty.  The AI will grenade it's own troops, but it doesn't matter because they don't need to survive or even win the fight. They just need to take a few good pawns away from you to have a victory.  That said, it counters the super heavy melee defense strategies really well, so maybe they need to be that deadly.

The techproof core I got from that trade request gave me IEDs, which wasn't a technology I ever used.  The fact that it's a completely random tech means it's far more likely to be something you don't particularly need rather than something you do. That doesn't make me all that excited when I see one as a quest reward.

History Graph on the latest colony:

[MoronicCinamun]

So, 2 things:
-I built a trade beacon blue-print to get the radius, then built a wall to be my warehouse that perfectly encapsulates the radius, thus the beacon was built after. For some reason it's not letting me place a roof in a 5-tile area shaped like a plus over the beacon (see pic), despite the description saying "can be placed indoors". Luckily my goods that aren't under that unroofed plus are still considered "indoors (unroofed 5)" so they aren't actually breaking down. Kind of sucks though because of the temperature reg, now that room is perpetually ambient. Also, the option to place a zone around the beacon still included that unroofed zone, I shrunk that section away just to be safe (also a great feature putting it on the zone like that!)

-I guess because I updated in unstable, I (as a colony start) no longer have electronics and microelectrions researched, but both are 2/3rds the way done, while my machining research was redacted with 700/1000 points. Guess updating the costs mid-colony kind of "broke" some stuff 
"sorry boss, we don't know how to build AC, but here's a solar panel!"

Glad to see the constant work though, I'm truly hono(u)red to see my shotgun feedback incorporated!

[attachment deleted due to age]

[mcduff]

All grenade raiders are nasty. Like, really nasty.  The AI will grenade it's own troops, but it doesn't matter because they don't need to survive or even win the fight. They just need to take a few good pawns away from you to have a victory.  That said, it counters the super heavy melee defense strategies really well, so maybe they need to be that deadly.

This definitely feels ridiculous. Watching people send a kamikazee swarm towards you that's half-dead by the time they reach you because they're just grenading their way through everything without caring which of their own people they murder on the way feels bad for all kinds of reasons.