Unstable build feedback thread

[Madman666]

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.

I tried On a serious note I am actually not against building roofs and even having different kinds of roofs (defensive, transparent etc.) as long as building materials won't suddenly get unfairly harder to get (wood *cough-cough*). At this point i'll just be watching and taking notes, to work on my own little rebalance mod, to tailor end version to my liking without upsetting a single soul.

[Sirinox]

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

I don't think there is a need for that. I had plenty 'drop on top' raids in 1.0, and it wasn't too bad. It's just:
- you get pawns out of dangerous places
- you accept some inavitable destruction and let attackers destroy some stuff, better stuff than pawns
- you clear out smaller groups if they were divided by walls, possibly with melee and flanking
- you lock open doors leading outside and lure attackers out
- you kill them and rebuild.

It is not that bad nor cheating, it just needs tactics.

[Dashthechinchilla]

As far as difficulty in 1.0, I find randy rough is still my sweet spot. I can relax slightly (I play for fun after all) but it is still a challenge. I have to think about what I am doing, but I don't feel like the game is constantly trying to murder me.

There are definitely more raids, so I need to work on that side of my skills.

[Oblitus]

Got a melee raid. They were so set on destroying my watermills that I was able to shoot them like sitting ducks.

[iamomnivore]

This is quite an annoying QoL UI thing: I like to generate full planets, which takes a while. When I click on a tile and the stats about the tile come up in the box, it has a cross in the top right, which subconsciously leads me to press the Esc key to close it. But this destroys the world and means I have to wait through generating the world all over again. Could Esc first close this box? It takes a while to generate a planet, so I don't think you even need Esc to reverse that. But if you keep it in, I think Esc should prioritise closing the stats box for the tile (since it has a x sign).

EDIT: Alternatively, keep the last generated world in memory so if the seed is the same it will just use that rather than regenerating it.

A small graphical thing on the world view (when selecting a site): if you click on different areas of the Earth, the Sun moves around, and most of the background stars stay in the same place. But some of the stars close to the Sun change positions weirdly. Is this intended?

This must be a bug. v1964: Just tested a 100% map game. Upon entry, the world map was already generated and ready to go from the scenario UI. Left to menu, entered game again. Regenerated. It's loaded and immediately available anytime I go to the World tab, now. What version are you running? Any mods?

[iamomnivore]

It would be nice if chocolate didn't literally grow on trees, but that you just get beans and you need to cook them into chocolate. I know that's leaving out some steps, but plenty of things are simplified in this game.

Where would the beans come from? Suggestions? The tree thing seems to provide this well but, an adjustment to tree sowing is certainly necessary to making this viable.

[robno]

This is quite an annoying QoL UI thing: I like to generate full planets, which takes a while. When I click on a tile and the stats about the tile come up in the box, it has a cross in the top right, which subconsciously leads me to press the Esc key to close it. But this destroys the world and means I have to wait through generating the world all over again. Could Esc first close this box? It takes a while to generate a planet, so I don't think you even need Esc to reverse that. But if you keep it in, I think Esc should prioritise closing the stats box for the tile (since it has a x sign).

EDIT: Alternatively, keep the last generated world in memory so if the seed is the same it will just use that rather than regenerating it.

A small graphical thing on the world view (when selecting a site): if you click on different areas of the Earth, the Sun moves around, and most of the background stars stay in the same place. But some of the stars close to the Sun change positions weirdly. Is this intended?

This must be a bug. v1964: Just tested a 100% map game. Upon entry, the world map was already generated and ready to go from the scenario UI. Left to menu, entered game again. Regenerated. It's loaded and immediately available anytime I go to the World tab, now. What version are you running? Any mods?

No mods, running v1964 (64 bit). Are you talking about once you've started a game? I'm talking about when you are selecting a start location. What do you mean the world map was already generated and ready to go from the scenario UI? With mine, you choose the storyteller, then choose the seed, then click 'Generate' and it takes ages to generate it. When you see the world, and press escape, you go back to the 'Create world' dialog and have to click 'Generate' again, and it takes ages.

[Rulin]

Sry, I am a bit late with my ramp-up graph (attachment, v1962).
It took me a while to realize, that I had to start a new colony. 
This is from a day 48 naked (and afraid) scenario with Cassandra Storyteller on Builder difficulty.

I usually play phoebie chillout - medium or builder, because I don't like to be roflstomped by huge raids or manhunter events. But this aspect seemed to have improved, so I might increase the difficulty on my next playthrough.
Maybe it will be interesting to see my defences get tested a bit more frequently.

In case it might be of interest. I've also added screens of my first 1.0 play"through" up until version 1959.
It's on phoebie-builder difficulty, 328 days old.
https://imgur.com/S0C3uoo

As you can see in the last screen on the right,
https://imgur.com/OgJOS5H (with history graph)
I've played around a bit with techniques how to slow down enemies, since burnt wooden floor meta got balanced. The swamp tiles you can see there are placed via cheat, just to see how effective a slow tunnel is.
Not that I need a perfect defence on this scenario, but it is still fun to theorycraft in this way while playing.

I also often "roleplay" the way I approach building my base. This helps alot to immerse yourself in the story that unfolds in front of you.
To me this often means bigger (more humane) and prettier rooms than necesary, themed rooms (the [color] room, chicken barn, dog house, panic room/bunker, hospital, vet station...)

Btw, it would be great to assign "hospital" animal sleeping spots, like you do with hospital beds.
Animals already go to a high quality bed when they are hurt, but these are often not the ones I placed in a clean room that's designed for surgery.
On the other hand, maybe I should stop putting them in bedrooms... (mostly because of bonded animals)

Also while I am at it, allow me another quick suggestion:
It would be great to use the Z or Y-key to mine (harvest) stone and ores instead of L. It is a key you already use to harvest plants.
So why not streamlining the controls here to some extend? Imo you can also reach it better with your left hand, especially people with qwertz keyboards.

Thanks for listening!

[attachment deleted due to age]

[Chairein]

I'm really enjoying the changes in 1.0 and have been playing the game for the past three days straight (I'm usually not that much a gamer).
I think the different aspects / mechanics come well together. However, I've been thinking the social aspect / influence on the overall game could be improved. As I've seen it being mentioned, I thought I share my thoughts on it as well:

Earlier today I've been chatting with a friend who just bought the game yesterday and we were exchanging stories. One of his pawns is constantly at a minor break risk because he keeps getting rejected (lol). I looked at my own game, where my lone starter guy had rescued / recruited a fellow dude and realised: heh, with those two being straight males I dodged the rebuffed mood "bullet" for now. But there's nothing equivalent happening in my story...
My dudes have become best bros (opinion +100). I think it would be cool if there was another mood buff / penalty where people's friendships are taken into consideration in a positive way. Just a minor thing, but spending time with your friends could boost it and there could be a mood penalty when someone hasn't talked to their friends in a while. Might also be cool to have a social / antisocial trait. Like people getting a buff / penalty when they're in the same room as / get to talk to other folks.
Like, right now my colony has grown to four (two males, two females). Three of them get along really well, but their mood doesn't reflect that. The only thing I get is one of my dudes suffering from the endless rebuffed mood spiral of doom and his best friend doesn't even cheer him up. :/

[Broken Reality]

Waterproof cables are unable to be built over with bridges and can only be placed in shallow water. If you have to use them for water mills or geo on the other side of the river this can be rather limiting.

Also is the threat level of Ancient Dangers as intended (two openings after the fix to things not spawning) I have had 2 centipede and 2-3 scyther/lancer (I forget exact makeup) and last night with one centipede, 4 scythers and 2 lancers. If this is the level of threat intended that's ok just means you need good gear or a good setup probably both. Though centipedes with inferno cannons will destroy everything in and AD if you fight them as they seem to be leashed to the AD. Luckily when I did it I opened up a section of wall away from the cryocaskets or all that would be gone.

As for social impacts I've always thought some of them odd. You married someone +30 opinion, they lose a nose -40 lets divorce. For stranded shipwrecked people on a dangerous planet full of people trying to kill and capture them they sure are picky and fussy.

As to tribals having less backgrounds that screw you please don't make tribals as bad as crashlanded, I'm guessing and going off other people that crashlanded pawns have the most player designed backgrounds. It can be really hard getting 3 pawns that have the 4 or 5 skills you need to start a colony. This is a decent part of why I play tribal, it is easier to get decent pawns who can fight and be reasonable at some skills.

Also wanderer joins event could we get the ability to refuse them? It is our colony after all. I understand you don't want people seeing the stats of pawns being chased by pirates or asking for rescue but surely we should get some agency with people asking to join, ok not asking just joining and picking a bed.

[Serenity]

Where would the beans come from? Suggestions? The tree thing seems to provide this well but, an adjustment to tree sowing is certainly necessary to making this viable.

From the tree of course. Just like in reality. So instead of chocolate you get beans and those could then be directly cooked into chocolate for simplicity.

[Talys]

[...]
This is the existing design; there's mood penaties for things like banishing or executing your own colonists, especially if they have relationships. We could push this aspect harder and design more around this, but it's just a matter of development time, really.

Not sure if you noticed it, but the "gifting" mechanism you introduced with the revamped faction relation system allows a way of not having any mood penalties for getting rid of colonists - probably just an oversight that you should either not be able to "gift" pawns itself or include a mood penalty.

Original post (with more details & steps to reproduce it) in the Bug Report section: https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=42480.0

[Emulsion]

I discovered a minor typo:
In the description  of wake-up it says: "...repeated use will produce and addiction...

[Oblitus]

[...]
This is the existing design; there's mood penaties for things like banishing or executing your own colonists, especially if they have relationships. We could push this aspect harder and design more around this, but it's just a matter of development time, really.

Not sure if you noticed it, but the "gifting" mechanism you introduced with the revamped faction relation system allows a way of not having any mood penalties for getting rid of colonists - probably just an oversight that you should either not be able to "gift" pawns itself or include a mood penalty.

Original post (with more details & steps to reproduce it) in the Bug Report section: https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=42480.0

Actually, this should be a feature. Rather than exiling pawns to nowhere drop them in friendly factions.

[mndfreeze]

Idk if the tree sowing time was increased because people were abusing chocolate or what, but if that's the case please make it just those trees that take forever.  Wood should not be something you struggle so much for even on arid playthroughs.