Unstable build feedback thread

[AkraSiA]

Hi, first post. Here's my experience playing naked brutality on cass expert:

Most of my playtime in Rimworld is using a naked start with nothing scenario (although, as tribal and with a huskie), so it's cool that it's now an official mode. It's nice being able to build beds day 1! I've noticed I've been having a lot more success on 1.0. Most of my colonies will, without loading autosaves if something bad happens, make it to the unkillable stage and I generally only lose now if I misplay hard or get the plague. Other than getting the plague in boreal forest 25% of the time, I feel like this version of Rimworld is actually pretty easy. I would want expert to be harder, honestly. I'm a pro gamer , so I assume expert is targeted towards me. I want more challenge! And less plague, at least for the first year on this mode.

This is my most recent playthrough that just ended. I made it over a year. I'm restarting because my starting colonist got headshot due to my lazy micro. I play on boreal forest 20/60 growing season 60-80% of the time and generally don't research anything the first year. At the time of this screenshot, I only have like smithing and microelectronics researched and haven't smithed anything. Generally, my strategy is to focus on food, housing, establishing good vibes and leveling up medicine on my starting pawn with prisoners. Then I build defenses. By the time I start researching anything, it's well into mid-late game and my colony is basically unkillable short of an unlucky drop pod of brawling maniacs. Having stonecutting and beds in this mode already make research a luxury, you can always find good weapons on raiders. Durability for weapons someday? I think a gun only lasting for a year's worth of fights without maintenance would be cool. If durability was something you dealt with constantly, it would be annoying, but yearly for guns and more often for baseball bats would be fine.

In terms of ramp and difficulty: earlygame 1-person raids were fine and it got pretty hard with the first multi-person raids. After those, the bigger person raids were extremely easy. If the previous build on my custom naked-tribal-cass-expert scenario was 5/10 difficulty throughout, the game now is 4/10 early, 7/10 mid, 2/10 "later". From the time of my screenshot to the next year, the game plays itself in all of my previous longer runs.

Also, I defeated all most of the raids without any funnels or walls. Peeking doors from the middle fridge-stockpile building was generally good enough. I was extremely lazy with my defenses and still could just out-micro the enemy most fights to take hardly any damage. To fix this, I would add more enemies more quickly (especially on expert), maybe give them pet animals or an early sniper, or a higher ratio of melee enemies. Enemies should also be less interested in starting fires and more interested in beating down doors. If I'm 1v5 against 5 pirates with guns, I could micro a level 3 shooter with a short bow to make them flee 95% of the time because they will turn away to ignite stuff instead of beating down the wooden door.

Album of graphs: https://imgur.com/a/RBKblh1

Sidenote: the last screenshot is generally the kind of character I start this mode with, with neurotic and jealous as the extra traits and 75% on the leg and 80ish% on the hand. Significant damage to the leg is fun because they're slow at first but can still get a bionic leg later. I've seen Disnof and other good streamers rerolling a million times for way overpowered 50 year old 10-in-everything colonists with three great traits and still having a tough time, so I think the starter colonist can be anything and the game will be relatively difficult on expert every time. Maybe it should be slower to learn skills in general, because with fast learner I am tearing it up.

Summary: Expert is easier. Enemy AI makes them too easy to kill with door micro – they should bang on the doors more – and research is unnecessary on expert if you use raiders' weapons, because you already have the needed techs. Having a good cook is more important than a researcher until late-late game. If your map has trees, it's not necessary to ever research anything, to be honest.

Overall, I like all the changes. The gameplay is much better, and the game is noticeably improved by the update. Great job!


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[Oblitus]

Man, I want details!

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[protobeard]

Context:
Cassandra Extreme, Crashlanded, Temperate Forest, small hills (40/60 growing days), coast + small road + river.
Some stories from a recent colony (1961-1962), up to day ~50. Told in approximate order.

Deer Bounty
Deer no longer revenge! So much meat to be had!

I get it, it's winter, aka, I didn't realize I was playing Frostpunk
End of the first fall in the colony -> Volanic Winter -> Cold Snap -> Solar Flare within the span of 3 days. I went from 2C to -20 C. I first walled off my bedrooms and built 4 heaters (that plus torches in the rooms kept everyone reasonably warm). Just as I got that set up and working I had to quick build 5 campfires so no one got frostbite while sleeping.

A Couple "Normal" Raids
I built a traditional killbox to see if they still worked at all. The answer is kinda, sometimes. Raiders split up and generally avoided coming into the killbox opening, preferring to beat on my slate walls. Fair amount of waiting to see where they would come through, taking position, and killing them. I doubt I'll build a killbox again without a true choke point on my map, though my defensive tactics remain about the same (pop in and out of doors, spread out, etc.. Nothing special.).

The new split raids are interesting, especially the ones that flee as separate groups. Normal defensive tactics seem to work fine on these raids.

All Melee Sapper Raid, aka, How I Learned to let go and Love the Chain Shotgun
I got lucky and was able ti purchase a chain shotgun from a combat trader around day 20. Then, around day 35, I got my first sapper raid.
They sapped through a door in the side of my base, and came through one at a time (around 10 in the raid I think). I had positioned one guy with chain shotgun in a nearby door + several others furhter away with pistols and survival rifles shooting to get the impact deduff. Chain shotgun guy pretty much murdered the entire raid as they came through, took a pistol shot and slowed down, and slowly walked toward their death at the hands of a chain shotgun.

This is the chain shotgun I always wanted. Okay, yes, it felt OP for this specific raid in an incredibly satifying way, but nearly useless in all my other raids.

The Little Siege that Couldn't
I was able to pick off around half of the raiders in a siege using a couple guys with survivial rifles before anyone tried firing back. Raiders attacked the colony, and I killed one more to make them flee. Raid over before they built a mortar.

A Centipede Wrecked Me, aka, Two Shots to the Heart
A poison ship landed near the bottom corner of the map, and me with no mortars and only two rifles. I built some close up fortificatoins (parallel lines of walls with small bunkers at the far end), put my short range guys there, hide my pacifist with a couple alpaca behind a hill. amd opened the ship up from distance with my two survival rifle pawns.

One melee scyther, one inferno cannon, one charge blaster. Melee scyther charged in, and I was able to kill it behind the bunkers with my two shotgun pawns. Meanwhile, the charge blaster centipede shot two colonists through the heart in about two seconds, with < 10% hit chance on both shots. It then proceeded to down one of my guys with a survival rifle, and my pacifist when I tried to rescue. Yeah, the inferno guy and melee scyther caused some chaos, but I was essentially wrecked by a single mech (vs my 7 colonists + 4 animals).

Game over.

I saved scummed this to try a different strategy against mechs: same fortifications, but this time I brought emp grenades (which I've never used before). This time I got 2 melee scythers, and 3-4 lancers. EMP grenades were basically useless until I was able to (with several injuries) kill the melee guys. Then EMPs kept the lancers out of commission until I was able to kill them. I'm not chalking this win up to my strategy -- I think I would have been killed again if there had been a charge blaster centipede this time around.

Thoughts

• Centipedes with charge blasters seem too strong. Long range, apparently amazing accuracy, and one shot colonists (with good clothes but no armor yet). I was able to "win" my save scum raid with twice the number of mechs b/c I didn't get one of these. They just feel insanely strong. Or maybe I just got really unlucky.
• It takes a long time to get to armor research
• Tree sowing seems totally useless (I tried it a previous colony, and the map had regrown trees by the time I was able to sow a 10x10 field of poplars with a lvl 10 grower)

[BlackSmokeDMax]

I'm getting a colonist died debuf when the colonist was captured.

While still on screen?

If not, I think it is possible the colonist died after being captured and leaving the screen.

[giltirn]

300+ hours of joy and I save-scummed all the way. Some see this as an invalid play-style but I personally don't see why someone would invest 10s of hours into building something that can get flushed down the drain on an unlucky diceroll. Of course I also don't understand gamblers, it strikes me as a similar phenomenon. Horses for courses and all that. I see no reason to change how the game is presented after all this time.

[Oblitus]

A raid. One raider insulted other's facial hair (both females). Social fight, one killed another. Not that I have anything against it...

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[jchavezriva]

I just did a test spawning 10 megaspiders and shooting them with a doomsday launcher.

Only one was killed, not a single one downed besides taht one.

The one that died had no missing parts or vital organs destroyed, so it was one of those cases in which an enemy dies out of no displayed reason.
Luck, in other words.

Are they meant to be this strong? Test was done on Hard.

[Arq]

A few observations and remarks from a bit more play:

-Healroot is not killed by cold.
-It appears that tainted items cannot be used to fulfill trade quests.  That's fine, but it would have been nice to have that in the quest description to save me the walk.
-Psychic ship pulses affect colony animals.  I'm sure that's intended but I was caught by surprise when my two rhinos turned on me just after starting the mech fight.  That was a colony wipe.
-Colony animals can have a mental break while already manhunter.  Learned that after one of the pulsed rhinos killed its master and renewed manhunter.
-Manhunting colony animals will attack each other.  After downing my four pawns, my two rhinos turned on each other, just to make the wipe extra-complete.
-After savescumming that wipe, the pulse happened again.  This time I managed to flee to my base only to learn that manhunting colony animals can use colony doors.  I think that should be disabled.  Do they obey forbidden doors when manhunting?  At least I survived that one.
-Wimps are very annoying in cold weather (well, even more-so).  They will seek safe temperature just barely before reaching their pain threshold, rarely with enough time to actually save themselves.
-Once the handler is downed, released animals will disengage and insist on fleeing.  It doesn't end well for them, since they tend to be tangled up in the middle of the enemy at that point and run in circles eating bullets.

[IndustryStandard]

I want to weigh in on the doors and temperatures thing. I have two heaters together that can't heat 3 smallish rooms at all. It's 7F inside them.

https://i.imgur.com/yrmLMRB.png

It definitely should not be 7F inside these bedrooms with two heaters at 74 and 76F

[Greep]

Looks like you've got vents leaking to outside, which pretty much instantly will drain your temp.

Also, infestation A.I.feels pretty inconsistent.  The hives were spread out all over the place, and I was able to attack some the groups separately.

However, while the insects did not join in attacks when in rooms that were far apart, insects did all go aggro when one hive was attacked far away.  Ended up surprising me and nearly blew up all of my cannons (got one, which blew up:()

Could just be something the player needs to learn, but it really caught me off guard.

[IndustryStandard]

Oh, that photo was badly timed. I will wait until the temp is down to 3F again and see if that happens again.

[JavaWho]

@tynan New ship graphics are absolutely great.  I cannot show a ramp up graph on this map as I started it prior to it being available.  Curious would you rather hear about the ship defense or see graphs of a new colony? 

Also ... I noticed on caravan missions, when i clicked on the items the traders would purchase, all the drugs were listed except joints.  I brought a few joints on the caravan and the traders did purchase them though they are not listed had I known for sure i would have brought a lot more to sell.  Can we add them into the list?

[Omega731]

Sorry if this was discussed before but trying to keep up tabs on this topic is difficult considering i can only test every few days.


but i am having alot of issues with taming in this build. i constantly get whole herds going ragemode while taming animals which do not give the prompt about taming risk.  is this a flat risk now no mater the creature? this is on builder difficulty btw.

[Oblitus]

And this is why covering shooters with melee does not work. It is a friendly fire. Both pawns are in touch range. And it is not a first time.

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[Greep]

Some very confused sappers   Hyper intelligent sappers would just obsolete overhead mountain bases, so I'm not complaining, but looks like they just dig randomly if they can't find a plausible entrance.

Edit: actually they finally wise up and found a way to bypass the traps, chopped a dudes arm off.

Also, I have no idea what happened in the third pic.  Dan, my level 17 cook, was crushed to death by falling rocks...

but... there's some obvious support just 4 tiles north.

First death due to a bug 



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