Unstable build feedback thread

[Eterm]

Adjusted population/storyteller tunings.

Was this tuned up? I don't often play tribal [medium] or randy so perhaps it's an effect of that but I started a new game today and got to 8 colonists within the first season despite letting 2 drop-podded ones die.

This might just be a Randy thing of course?

By the way I noticed Ibex Buck / Doe has the new 'standard' 2%, but  'Buck / Doe' don't have any manhunter chance, they're pretty much the only large animal in temperate that won't manhunter you now making hunting a lot more deadly. It feels odd that a deer won't attack you but an alpaca will!

I'm happy by some of the changes, it was unbalanced before especially for megasloths (best meat, best leather and no manhunter chance!) but a few more animals to hunt safely (hares?) would be good.

And lastly, perhaps this is better in the suggestions forum, but a "flee to base (bedroom?)" would be a really good option. Currently fleeing is more likely to end them up back in the corner where they kite but don't fight back, while "fight" just ends them up in melee. A "flee to base" would let them flee home which could lead the manhunters back past traps which is a better story  and lets the pawns do their thing without micromanagement. ( Currently I've resorted to drafting to hunt megasloths which feels a bit too gamey).

[EvadableMoxie]

its funny that if you play the game in the non 'terrible way' (according to dev), just how many mechanics turn into noobtraps. Even high-risk high reward lines are typically frowned upon with such modes especially after midgame, to say nothing of low reward high risk lines.

I get that sense with latest prisoner recruitment change too. Opportunity cost evaluations just don't seem to factor into the scalings, and many false choices continue to be introduced.

Here's a fun case in point:

Got my first aid from an ally event.  I was ready to funnel the enemy into my killbox but my allies ran out to meet them. Now, if I was on commitment mode I would have let my allies die then let the survivors of the enemy raid die in my kill box.  Risk free. It's the optimal strategy.

But, since I figured I can reload if it goes to shit anyway, I decided to join my allies on the glorious field of battle and this happened:



A massive 2v1 faction battle in the forest! How cool is that!?

I think players need more incentive to take risks, and ways to mitigate risks so that when we talk about risks, it's the risk of something bad but recoverable happening, not risks of your entire colony being gone.  Setting the player up to fail via randomness just makes the player averse to doing that thing the next time.  Rewarding them for it makes them do it more and creates better stories in the long run.

[Madman666]

Can't agree more. This is quite an epic battleground you've shown. It was really quite a big change, that now friendlies also don't have a cap on raid strength. In b18 this would be totally impossible.

[Broken Reality]

So in this new playthrough. Got two guys with chemical interest and a raid drops a few drugs, come go juice and wake up. Next day one guy goes on a wake up binge, instantly addicted. Next day he binges again, big overdose, instant brain damage of 50%. Next day other chemical interest guy goes on a go juice binge, instant addiction once again. Now both of these guys were happy, not even close to a minor break risk. Chemical interest is just so frustrating to play with on a colonist. It is worse than pyromaniac in my eyes. At least pyro generally doesn't hurt the pawn and they can still be useful.

What's worse is chemical interest effectively stop you from making money via making drugs so you are stuck with making art. To make drugs you really just need someone high enough skill to grow psychoid. For art you need an artist. You will already have a grower so that's not really a constraining factor.

The frequency of drug binges the moment a happy pawn saw drugs is too much. Daily drug binges for happy pawns just sapped the fun out of this colony. Apart from arresting the pawns daily what other counterplay is there to this trait? I may as well just execute or exile these pawns now due to them now needing to beat their addictions.

While writing this I went back in to the game, two days passed and now the pawn addicted to wake up is now binging on psychite. Every other day they are bingeing it is just way too frequent.

Saying never have drugs in the colony is like saying never build anything flammable or store anything flammable if you have a pyro in the colony.

Edit:- the pawn addicted to wake up has now died not because of an overdose the cause of death is listed as "wake up addiction" I have never had a pawn die of addiction before. So he went on a psychoid binge and died of wake up addiction. This obviously sent the husky bonded to him on a rampage.

The only thing I can do now if I have chemical interest colonists is to keep them in combat stance while someone else burns any drugs dropped. So now I need to have a campfire going on a wood starved map as I am a long way off getting cremation. None of this was fun, challenging or engaging. I don't feel like a fun story happened he just took drugs everyday till he died.

[giltirn]

Chemical interest is just so frustrating to play with on a colonist. It is worse than pyromaniac in my eyes. At least pyro generally doesn't hurt the pawn and they can still be useful.

Agreed. Pyros can be easily handled with a little micro; irritating but not the end of the world. But a chemical interest pawn is a massive liability, not just in terms of lost income but also in the high likelihood of addiction and the very long term mood effects of weaning them off. The only valid strategy is to manually wall off all drugs, which allows keeping some around for emergencies but precludes drug production for money, and even then they will always end up finding some drug dropped by a dead raider. Chemical interest is one of the reasons why I avoid any event with random pawns (world-event downed rescue, fleeing from pirates, etc); I ignore all but drop-pod pawns or downed raiders where I can see the stats beforehand.

[Broken Reality]

Chemical interest is just so frustrating to play with on a colonist. It is worse than pyromaniac in my eyes. At least pyro generally doesn't hurt the pawn and they can still be useful.

Agreed. Pyros can be easily handled with a little micro; irritating but not the end of the world. But a chemical interest pawn is a massive liability, not just in terms of lost income but also in the high likelihood of addiction and the very long term mood effects of weaning them off. The only valid strategy is to manually wall off all drugs, which allows keeping some around for emergencies but precludes drug production for money, and even then they will always end up finding some drug dropped by a dead raider. Chemical interest is one of the reasons why I avoid any event with random pawns (world-event downed rescue, fleeing from pirates, etc); I ignore all but drop-pod pawns or downed raiders where I can see the stats beforehand.

Or they wander off to the nearest insect hive and get downed so you can't play on cave maps or you have to kill all hives the moment you get a chemical interest pawn. I can't think of another trait that is as detrimental and inhibiting as chemical interest.

If they went on drug binges when their mood was low ie minor break risk it would be one thing but these are pawns that are at high happiness having daily of bi-daily mental breaks.

[EvadableMoxie]

My new favorite things to do with the bodies of my enemies: Sending them home.

[giltirn]

Or they wander off to the nearest insect hive and get downed so you can't play on cave maps or you have to kill all hives the moment you get a chemical interest pawn. I can't think of another trait that is as detrimental and inhibiting as chemical interest.

Can't wander anywhere if they are made into comfy hats.

[bbqftw]

Results of recent changes to body part health. Here are the new things that now one-hit kill you. All scenarios assume no Tough trait unless explicitly noted. All of these scenarios were directly observed in dev mode tests unless stated otherwise.

Main change is neck, which HP now falls to 20, with 2/20 being the baseline for 0% part efficiency (aka fatality).
Heart also took an HP nerf, to 15, as well as liver. Both are 15 now, I believe both used to be 20.

Neck one-hit protection also appears to be removed, that said, it doesn't really matter that much since its HP is so low now and it doesn't require to be one-shot to kill anyways due to aforementioned 2/20 being fatal.

For mechs:

* Tough CLance unmitigated neck shot now fatal.
* Mitigated charge lance heart shot and liver shot now fatal (yep, charge lance can kill through legendary power armor-protected torso vitals now. For a shot hitting these organs, this will happen about 25% of the time even against 200% sharps protection)
* Unmitigated heavy charge blaster liver and heart shot now fatal

Some main takeaways:

For common armored situation (a clean ~100 sharps protection with common duster/vest) vs charge lance, you will see approximately 2-2.5x more one-hit-kill scenarios (based on brain, neck, unmitigated stomach, liver, heart hit chances which are all one hit kills now, vs brain, neck, unmitigated stomach in previous patch version).

Power armored shootouts vs lancers will also see a lot more deaths, 3x more assuming ~140 sharps protection. (any brain shot / unmitigated neck vs brain / unmitigated neck / mitigated heart / mitigated liver being the available one-hit-kill probability, someone else can crunch the numbers more accurately)

Facing centipede without significant armor (flak vest or power armor) will now result in about 2.7x more one-hit-kills.

For everything else:

* Unmitigated BAR neck shot now fatal.
* Unmitigated sniper neck shot now fatal (not explicitly tested)
* Unmitigated poor+ pump shotgun neck shot now fatal.
* Unmitigated poor+ chain shotgun neck hit now fatal

* Unmitigated shotgun, chain shotgun, BAR heart shots now fatal.
* Unmitigated shotgun, chain shotgun, BAR liver shots now fatal.

Not fully tested, but a bunch of tribal stuff also becomes one hit kill:

* Unmitigated greatbow liver and heart shots now fatal.

Didn't exhaustively include masterwork / legendary variants - but things like unmitigated masterwork greatbow one hit kill on neck now.

I guess not enough pawns were dying! Not enough stories told.

[Boboid]

On the subject of chemical interest/fascination - Have to agree that it's definitely a " Critical failure " for pawn generation.
The fact that you have little to no control over their actions and the fact that their actions run the gamut from obnoxious to fatal means that even if they're not strictly speaking worse than not having the pawn at all, they feel that way.

For context - if they were on a no-drug policy and that gave them a -12 mood debuff (The same as Depressive) instead - I'd still occasionally keep someone with chemical interest/fascination.

* Unmitigated good+ pump shotgun neck shot now fatal.
* Unmitigated poor+ chain shotgun neck hit now fatal

Chain and pump shotguns do identical damage per shot and damage/AP penalties only apply to Awful ranged weapons. Bonuses don't start until Masterwork. Unmitigated Poor+ pump shots to the neck should be fatal too.

[bbqftw]

you are right, for both chain shotgun and pump shotgun its poor+, will revise

[Broken Reality]

On the subject of chemical interest/fascination - Have to agree that it's definitely a " Critical failure " for pawn generation.
The fact that you have little to no control over their actions and the fact that their actions run the gamut from obnoxious to fatal means that even if they're not strictly speaking worse than not having the pawn at all, they feel that way.

For context - if they were on a no-drug policy and that gave them a -12 mood debuff (The same as Depressive) instead - I'd still occasionally keep someone with chemical interest/fascination.

Yeah if there was some way other than making sure no drugs ever are left accessible it would be one thing, but daily mental breaks with two pawns with chem interest is a bit much. I wouldn't mind if you had to keep their mood above minor break risk to avoid it, then I would feel like I had some control over things rather than as it is now a totally happy pawn just goes off and kills themselves for no reason. I don't think any other trait is as costly on pawn time, health and ability for your colony to make silver.

[Kalre]

It is always now a Triabal, outlander and Pirate enemy faction ? Tried rerolling maps but it always ended up the same, tribal runs are super boring now, day 60 still at 5 colonist and starting to get overwhelmed, also the Random chance for people to just die even with no 0 hp body parts its just dumb and un fun.

[Broken Reality]

-Rename Char ITab to Story.

Not sure this makes sense. Their skills/traits are not a pawns story. I liked "character" or "char" if those are no good then "skills" or "traits" would be better than "story" in my opinion.

[EvadableMoxie]

Reducing HP of vital areas to increase the frequency of getting one-shot is moving in the wrong direction. All that will do is encourage people not to risk their pawns and find more cheesy strategies.  I don't understand why that was done. I felt like the direction was moving more toward not arbitrarily punishing you for having the audacity to actually use your pawns. Now, I'm not so sure.

In other news, did a long range mineral scanner Silver site. 4128 silver, no threats.  I used 4 pods, 2 there 2 back, which had just enough space to get what I needed there.  So I traded 310 steel and 5 components for 4128 silver.  It was a big iffy though, I got sort of lucky they didn't mental break.  To ensure they didn't, I would have had to use another pod of materials to give them a nice little set up. I might do that in the future.

I tried to use the silver for goodwill but even a pod of 1000 silver was apparently worth 0 goodwill according to the tooltip, and the option to give silver as a gift wasn't on the comms console.  Not sure what that's about.  I'm requesting an exotic good trader from my ally, hopefully I get some good stuff, and any left over I'll try to gift.