Unstable build feedback thread

[Syrchalis]

Important is that one takes into account what the mods do. If one is just using QoL mods it's probably not really going to affect one's view, but content-heavy mods certainly do. I use a lot of mods, many of which I updated just for myself (e.g. More Furniture) but I never forget what they do and take that into account when I give feedback here.

They can even be an invaluable tool. E.g. I modded tree sowing work to be a third of what vanilla is and it feels pretty good.

[iamomnivore]

Serious issue here.

Refugees escaping from pirates are still arriving with extremely low walk speeds sometimes.

This makes it impossible to save them. People who arrives to the colony by outrunning raiders by who knows how much time should be fit for such a stunt...

Yeah, this is a problem for me, too. I hate to change the pawn generation with this (since anyone could escape, given enough time.) Maybe, these raids should have a longer delay relative to the speed of the pawn? Easily explained by the refugee not being noticed, and getting a far lead, even at such slow speed.

[iamomnivore]

QoL thing:
Can the ground type (Soil etc.) be displayed even in the architect tab? It's sometimes quite hard to easily tell where rich soil is etc. and when designating growing zones or even planning buildings it would be helpful to see. I suggest moving the left-hand white text above the architect window temporarily (and therefore shrinking the inventory display area temporarily).

Seconded. This has been bothersome since I've been playing (quite a while.) I'd say it's a top 5 annoyance. Implementing something like Robno suggests would be ... Kreygasm.

[iamomnivore]

And young tend to have neither skills nor passions.

Wanderer joins... Why we can't reject them again? Now I've got mood penalty, just what I need with the overpowered psychic drone.

This particular wanderer might as well just join graveyard instead of your colony. Its ridiculous how game just keep sending trash pawns your way.

Simply calling something "ridicuous" is no better than "atrocious". This isn't usable feedback, it's just venting, which is prohibited here by rule 2. You're welcome to criticize but please say something meaningful, actionable, discussable.

As for the point, handling flawed useless people is part of the game. RimWorld is not intended to be an RTS. If you want a game where every unit is a fungible optimized robot, there are some great RTSs I can recommend. However, if you want a game with dynamic characters and generated story, that means some of the characters will be more useful than others, and some will be worse than useless, just as people are in stories. It means many of the problems you face will come from inside your group, not outside, just as in stories. In truth I'd like to turn RW more in this direction, because as we've discussed here, external attacks are still far too big a part of the game. There average pawn in this game really should be worse than they are, and many more should be entirely useless (and I mean actually useless, not, "he can only research and art" useless).

I'm completely for this. With one exception, if the external combats are heavily reduced: Allow us to "Declare War" on factions. Or, to send out a challenge to the surrounding bandits (like the ones that hit caravans.) It'd be something like, "Your kind will not be tolerated. We will seek to destroy you." And boom, they feel a need to attack more often. Love what you're doing. Love everything you've said, here. Story it up. o7

[iamomnivore]

Internal attacks, hmm. Like a powder keg with a long fuse just waiting to explode.
Reminds me of the times when I had social fights at the most inopportune times before a raid leaving two guys heavily crippled. Or the times when I had colonists being stoned on smokeleaf making them useless in a fight. (Also brings me to forbid smokeleaf from being a social drug )

Something that truly would bring drama would be to have a would be colonist "sell out" your colony by sabotaging doors and turrets quietly before a raid. Or poisoning the food in the colony leaving all your colonists with food poisoning. A helluva drama that. Also spreading catty rumors making your colonists hate each other .

Edit: Also why not have a event where you get a trader event only for it be uncovered as being pirates when you send out a negotiator? Two choices, your negotiator or your stuff!

Duuude. Great idea. It would be painful but, with enough advance warning (subtly,) it shouldn't ruin too many games. One should be able to notice that they get along with few or none of the colonists, start frequent fights, or frequently enter violent mental states. Also, anyone paying attention could notice the flicking of switches. Would be amazing storytelling, as long as we have a chance to catch it and banish or imprison the fool. Then, maybe you could even have a chance to sell them off to the faction they were trying to sabotage for. Or even threaten that you'll kill their pawn, for a chance to stop the raid (or trade for a peaceful resolution to that single event.) XD

[iamomnivore]

I think tree sowing time change is not good.
It's terribly long, and even pawns with high Plants skill will take long.
Honestly, it only made living in biomes with almost no trees annoying.

I was also thinking, why pine trees can't grow in cold temperature at all?
I thought they can grow in places with cold temperature.(like Russia or Canada)

They survive the cold quite well (better than many trees) but, they still stop growing in the winters.

[Madman666]

Keep the drama level low please... Well no, its not low already, so keep it in check instead. Or at least make it optional. I already imagine some bastard flicking your power off, then a bunch of raiders drop on you and here you are rolling colonists again.

[Serenity]

As for the point, handling flawed useless people is part of the game.

Flawed? Sure. Pawns having negative traits you have to work around is perfectly fine. They have other skills to compensate that. But pawns being inherently useless should be very rare. At least if the game punishes you with stronger raids for that pawn merely existing. If the number of pawns determines enemy strength they are a liability.
Same with "incapable of violence". Of course realistically a good number of your colonists could fall under that heading. But the way raids and combat work, they can become too much of a liability at some point. Even if you'd like to keep them around for other reasons.

It's something different if a pawn becomes useless. I watched a stream where a character suffered a spinal injury and was bedridden for years. That was cool. He was lovingly cared for by his tribe for years in the hopes that one day they could find a bionic spine for him. And then died of some disease

[iamomnivore]

The Social penalties for doing immoral actions should be made more severe, Tynan. Right now, killing someones friend, butchering them and *eating them* is all not as bad as being a little ugly. Even in a place like the Rimworld thats very illogical.

If doing all those 3 would cause atleast -40 in colony-relation, this would make having psychopathes also be a possible hazard of them being seen as an outcast, then the 'Human hat factory' money meta will become a little less preferable.

I'll second this, from experience in the last two patches (the first times I started butchering people, eating their meat, and using them for clothes -- I've moved to tribal and phew, those man-steaks help.) The penalties are strong but, I've been able to just work on past them. That does feel a little weird.

[iamomnivore]

Anyway, let's please move on from the meta-discussion. This thread is for discussing play experiences with the 1.0 unstable build, not open-ended suggestions or ideas for major direction changes in the game. Off-topic posts may be removed.

It is caused by 1.0 experience directly. Changes in this build made the game more punishing for taking non-optimal decisions. Can't really tell for current build (made a new game and only played a year after reworking the ramp-up), and so far it is okay (2:1 from latest raids is fine by me), but I have to be pressed hard to take a take a pawn with major health issues or without a passion for combat, and should be truly desperate to take non-violent one. Late game raids are way too hard to afford to have pawns who can't fight well.

You are trying to make it a story generator, but you are achieving the opposite - the less you are attached the better it is played. Being merciless, manipulative asshole pays off greatly.

Which difficulty is this specifically?

Generally, if you want breathing space to play around with story stuff you should play Medium or maybe Rough. The harder modes are designed to punish non-optimal play; there's no way to have a hard difficulty that also allows free role-play since hard inherently demands an optimal response to each situation, thus removing freedom.

I've tried lots of things to try to nudge players towards the appropriate difficulty for their play goals but it seems to be a really hard problem. I've got some ideas for doing this better, though.

Medium. Note, that I've played on "Intense" before 1.0. The problem is not in difficulty but in core design. On medium I'll get 40 scythers falling on my head bypassing all possible defences, on hard I'll get 60. It doesn't matter. The problem is not in number, but in "bypassing all possible defenses" part. And even more straight up raids - there is a point when you WILL be overwhelmed by sheer numbers. On lower difficulties, it would be later, but it would be. The game has, by design, more offense than you can possibly have defence. And 1.0 is progressively stripping player of any defensive tactics. The game is, let's admit it, cheating. Almost all mechanics punishing player has no effect on enemies. And when you are losing against cheater - it's not a good story. It's okay to be challenged. It's okay to be punished for mistakes. It's okay to take losses for your incompetence. But playing rimworld is like playing chess with a pigeon. It knocks the pieces over, craps on the board, and claims victory.

I'd suggest the possibility of building sturdier roofs. "Reinforced Roofing" Could help insulate and also provide a type of defense, against dropping on your head. Maybe anything in a drop pod, that goes through these roofs (and maybe even include a chance they try to go through overhead mountain and simply die) takes a heavy attack from the roof or a standard damage across the entire body? Just a thought that preserves the current system and allows an option, player-driven & additional effort /resources no less, to reduce the threat here. The roof tiles get destroyed and must be replaced. Make 'em expensive. <3

[Madman666]

Why not make roofs cost stuff also? Its rather weird seeing pawns whip out endless roof tiles out of their dimensional pockets. And make them expensive too. Otherwise its no fun.

[iamomnivore]

I'd like to offer some feedback about the utility of pawns. I play Cassandra extreme exclusively; I love the new naked brutality scenario. I estimate that the ratio of useful pawns is about 10% (a very rough estimate). The usefulness of pawns have increased in 1.0 by virtue of there being more positive traits: fast learner, great memory, indoorman, etc. I think it's a good thing.

At extreme difficulty, there's little room of margin for debuffs. Pain and traits like depressive/neurotic/staggeringly ugly make pawns a liability because they are more likely to break or cause others to break. Breaks tend to compound, and the resulting morale loss spiral endangers the whole colony. This incites me to be conservative when it comes to pawn recruitment.

If pawns are made more acutely useless, then it becomes more important to avoid the bad ones. In that case, I would recruit a pawn with zero passion as long as they're healthy and reliable. Likewise, if I'm stuck with a bad pawn (wanderer join), then I'll pay whatever cost I have to pay to get rid of them. Increasing the penalty for doing makes the game more difficult but ultimately it doesn't change my incentive of removing a crippling liability.

In summary: at higher difficulties, the severity of the negative traits is significantly increased, and this affects the perceived usefulness of pawns.

"Extreme", no?

Showing more information on pawns (at least in the higher difficulties with little room for error) doesn't hurt but, there are quite a few ways to offset these mood penalties and if used properly will keep those pawns from breaking, every other day. It's still going to be difficult but, welcome to Hard+.

[iamomnivore]

Why not make roofs cost stuff also? Its rather weird seeing pawns whip out endless roof tiles out of their dimensional pockets. And make them expensive too. Otherwise its no fun.

Dimensional Pockets! HAH! Madman, you crack me up all the time. :thumbsup:

Secondly, I'll join this camp. Nice idea, Madman -- Expensive simple roof tiles sarcasm aside.

[Jpagano]

I'm also a fan of the "humanity" idea. What if it were implemented as a goal, rather than an active/ongoing (i.e. moodlet) buff?

For example, perhaps it could have some sort of impact on the end-game/ending - such as, given that your colony has fallen to brutal cannibalism/hat making, the A.I. that contacts you early perceives your colony as a threat that must be stopped, and either actively makes the end much more difficult, and/or just flat-out gives you a "bad ending" sort of result. In the latter case, maybe attach a silly steam achievement to the positive ending, problem solved. People who still want to play the game as a sort of unending RTS could effectively ignore it if they chose to, but it would serve as an additional goalpost for anyone looking to emphasize the story aspect of the game.

If you think it should have ongoing impacts, maybe it could have more of an effect on faction relations (and/or involve spacers in some way)? If your colony is full of brutal cannibals, it might not effect your colonists per se, but I could see your reputation having more of an effect than a binary trades vs. raids. I could see an "allied" faction being more hesitant to send traders/quests/aid out of fear.

In either case, it could be interesting if the "humanity" stat was less visible/more vague. On the one hand, I really appreciate how all the stat breakdowns are right there in front of you for nuanced things such as blood filtration - on the other, having humanity as a vague/longer-term stat might make it easier to implement in a reasonable way that doesn't just end with it being another branch of the pawn optimization tree. Perhaps it could be graphed in a similar way to colony wealth, but things that effect it might have enough variance that it can't be accurately predicted?


As far as experiences go - playing on Cassandra Rough, about 1.5 years into a 30/30 small hills map, so far it's felt easier than previous games - raids seem to finally be picking up, but they're still usually pretty small, to the point that I haven't even felt the need to set up turrets.

The raid AI does seem to be slightly better than I remember - I seem to recall previously just setting up an obvious base "entrance" with some valuables near an open door & a pathway filled with traps/turrets, but raiders seem to like splitting up into groups and trying to break through walls on the other sides of the colony instead of blindly running through the traps. So far I've just sent out small teams of 2x snipers and a couple melee guys to take potshots and lure these groups into bad positions - just luring them into the traps doesn't seem to work, and I think I like that, it feels more realistic/less "tower defense"-ish.

[Tynan]

One thing to bear in mind regarding pawn usefulness: I'll always try to keep the game balanced. So if difficulty was added to one area by making more pawns with problems (or other internal colony/survival challenges), difficulty would be removed from other areas (e.g. toning down raids).

It's not about just making the game harder by adding more pawn selection challenges, it's about shifting the difficulty that's there from massive raid defense towards internal management.

All that said, I've no concrete plans to change anything on this soon, there's a lot more immediate things to solve for 1.0.