Unstable build feedback thread

[Scavenger]

Scavenger - Never intended to prevent killboxes, they're an interesting and valid strategy, but they shouldn't be the only strategy is all.

Oh, I know! You just Nerf them, which you have done. It just seems that, while not the end-all-be-all every game, they seem to almost always be included.

Don't get me wrong, I think you should have a small one(some form of trap path) to some degree to soften them up a little before they get to you. But I mostly see ones that are like 3+ layer switch backs, which I think is a bit much lol. Every time I see the screen shots it just reminds me of a tower defense game.

Like that huge 2V1 battle in the field another guy linked not long back, that looked incredible! I love things like that, though I know they are hard to balance. It would be lovely if there were more chances to do that(have new battlefields you have to adjust to each time you fight, and just use the terrain as best you can with minimal preparation, perhaps just sand bags, if that), in my experience those are almost only ever seen during Caravan ambushes. Those kind of fights add another great strategy layer to the already fluid and strategic style of combat this game has!

[Koek]

Visitors and traders choose less annoying spots to hang out.

How about you make us choose where they can hang out using something alike the marriage spot? Less hassle for you to program (I think) and gives us more direct control.

One more thing to do here is that it costs the faction caravan spot recipe. They will not be able to easily change the upper operating point and prevent abuse.

And you need a dismiss feature to send the faction caravan out immediately.

Preventing abuse seems fair, but I'm not really concerned about that. I'd just love to designate a small part of my base for visitors to hang out but nothing as complicated as the hospitality mod. Just me wanting to control where visitors can go, just like I treat visitors in my own home.

A dismiss feature sounds handy though.

[Anniebenlen]

Some feedback regarding putting watermills behind research.  At first I was disappointed to read that, but then as I played I realized it I actually prefer it that way.  When they were available from the start I found myself only willing to settle on tiles with a largish river since they were just that good at the start, now they are still good but not a must have (understand I'm an old woman and I do play like one, so I like my gameplay on the easy side).

Rivers have the drawback of costing resources to bridge, and now the watermills seem like a decent counterbalance to that fact.  Put them in the same column as solar seems fair to me as well.

[Bingo]

I'm not 100% sure, but didn't graves show the buried corpse's name in a previous Alpha / Beta? It's just "Contains: human corpse" now, which seems weird, especially for buried colonists

[Lanilor]

Scavenger - Never intended to prevent killboxes, they're an interesting and valid strategy, but they shouldn't be the only strategy is all.

Oh, I know! You just Nerf them, which you have done. It just seems that, while not the end-all-be-all every game, they seem to almost always be included.

Don't get me wrong, I think you should have a small one(some form of trap path) to some degree to soften them up a little before they get to you. But I mostly see ones that are like 3+ layer switch backs, which I think is a bit much lol. Every time I see the screen shots it just reminds me of a tower defense game.

That is what I think too. You rarely see "a bit" killbox. You see the people who just don't use them or the ones who play tower defence and never fight otherwise. I think killboxed should be useful in some cases and bad in other. So the optimal strategy is to adapt. Part of that is already done with melee raids. Fighting them in the open is hard since you get overrun really quick while at a chokepoint it is almost no challenge.

Regarding the centipedes: I never had problems with them in 1.0, I even think they are easier than in b18. They only tank a lot and live but I actually think that is a good way if it's not too much. They are slow but *if* they reach you, you are in trouble. Which is btw a good thing to the point above because they aren't just easily killable in killboxes and I guess part of the "too hard" reports come from that.

I noticed raider in general now have worse quality apparel and weapons. In early 1.0 there were occasional raiders with full excellent gear and now most of them wear some poor junk or even only 1 or 2 cloth pieces. I think this is good in general but the earlier version was nice diversity. Maybe add a new raid type "elite group" where there are only a few raiders but really well equipped and skilled. And modified that they die in downed or something like that so you can't just salvage them for the good equipment.

Btw: Thanks for reading and implementing a lot of my suggestions. I was happy to see the change with the visitor location after getting annoyed by it yesterday.

[East]

But centipede was patched yesterday. Now it's B18 HP. We need more time to confirm the centipede.

[dogthinker]

Bug: "Mental break: Jailbreaker". Pawn incited a prisoner to jailbreak, then ran off to hide in their room. Cool event. However, the pawn did NOT get the catharthis buff (which is a nightmare after hiding in their room, as they were exhausted, recreation deprived, and malnourished, for about -40... So an extreme mental break seems almost inevitable (except I think I'll dev mode a happiness buff equivalent to catharthis, since this feels like a bug.) Guessing this might be something to do with the fact this mental break 'double dips' through two break types instead of just one?

It was a very thematic break, I liked it a lot. I'm currently on a new colony as the one of the recent updates broke my save a bit too much. Randy/extreme naked start, currently with two extremely poorly equipped colonists trying desperately to house and feed themselves and two prisoners in a hot jungle environment. 17 days in and they haven't even started cooking (both have 0 cook). No food, everyone's starving... Makes sense she'd try to get rid of the prisoners one way or another. But Alyas was having none of it. Of course, now things have gone from bad to worse - there's a crazed Boomalope knocking on the door. Or maybe that's good news? Blood-rare Boomalope steaks will be on the menu tonight, I think...

EDIT:
p.s. this is the wrong place for this but... REALLY easy (I suspect) QoL improvement. Growing zones currently have a 'allow sowing' checkbox. Could we also have a 'allow harvesting' checkbox. This would massively reduce the micromanagement around farming (especially wood harvesting - you might notice in my screenshot that the entire area around the house is a growing zone (with sowing off), that's so the grower automatically harvests the trees when they hit 100%, and not before. But I have to frequently delete and recreate this zone, when I want the grower to focus on planting in the 'real' growing zones.)

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[NagashUD]

Hmmm i wanted to save a colonist from raiders, until i realized early game is impossible on harder difficulties (playing with tribes); enemies skill is average of 10 shooting/melee with steel helmets and flak jackets/vest (not sure if it's due to the last updates, but enemies raids are way more hard) **Phoebe hard**

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[Prince Kasta]

My caravan was ambushed by one pirate, which was laughable.
I stopped laughing when I realized that my guys spawned on top of an insect hive, this really needs to not happen.

[Tynan]

I'm not 100% sure, but didn't graves show the buried corpse's name in a previous Alpha / Beta? It's just "Contains: human corpse" now, which seems weird, especially for buried colonists

It's just a bug, we're gonna fix it but more critical stuff comes first.

[EdgarDruin]

I just wanted to bring up an issue that has been mentioned many times, but I'll chime in again with the same comment.

I find the chemical and pyro traits completely frustrating.  There is no story I enjoy here.

You don't manage this story, you can't change it, you can't improve the outcome, you just wait for them to do their annoying thing and then clean up the mess.  (Perhaps that is the intent?)

I've let both types in while testing 1.0 and every single time it has been nothing but annoying.  Pyros start fires regardless of how you manage them and as long as it isn't during a raid, you're probably fine.

Mine decided the best time to start a fire was during a raid and the best thing to light on fire was chemfuel in my best warehouse.  He survived, at least until I banished him, everything else in the warehouse, bionics included, did not.

He was in perfect health, high morale, everything in the colony going great.  Perhaps if it was my mistake, I'd let him become unhappy, stuck him in a room that was ugly, his dog died, I could see it coming, maybe that might be interesting.  "Oh, I have to watch closely, he might start a fire."  That's a story that I might find interesting. 

But right now, it is not a story I enjoy.  It's a 100% chance that something bad will happen eventually and there is no way to mitigate that chance.  It's not enjoyable, and as soon as 1.0 is final, I'll be back to ignoring colonists with this trait again.

Chemical interest / fascination.  Again, not a story I enjoy.  Just a 100% chance of them finding and abusing drugs after you put time and effort into including them in the colony.  In my latest game, wake-up was the drug of choice, dropped from raiders and taken before I could clean it up.  Addicted on the first hit every time.  I cleaned up what I thought was all of it, missed a dropped forbidden stash that dropped off a raider that died near the edge of the map and she found it again and again, first hit, addicted.

Both times she was perfectly health and in great spirits, but hey, why not, lets go find random drugs, take them and suffer.  There is no enjoyable story here, just a 100% chance off a bad outcome.  Again, if it was something I played some part in, maybe.  "Oh, my mistake, I let her stay unhappy for too long, of course she went and found drugs ..."

But it's not that, so again, same thing.  Once 1.0 is final, I would see no reason to keep any colonist with the Chemical trait.

I guess while writing and editing this, I found my own answer.  Perhaps the intent is you don't get to manage these stories, you always get the bad outcome and have to deal with it.  You have no input, you can't change it, you only get to pick up the pieces.  It's a pretty negative and annoying story if that's the case.

[Emulsion]

Grammatical error in shoot frenzy message:

"Her shoot more accurately for the next 8 days"

[dogthinker]

1) Clicked to world map, got out of memory error then this. Game then crashed (failed to save) during a save-and-quit. This is running the x64 version, so it's a bit unexpected. Possibly a new memory leak in the latest patch?

2) Play experience: Toxic Fallout might be a bit extreme for tiny colonies. Day 21, only 2 colonists, still foraging for food. That's why I was clicking to the world map - I was about to have them pick up whatever they could carry, and rebuild on a neighbouring hex, to escape the fallout. But the game crash has a silver lining - as it failed to save, time has reverted to prior to the toxic fallout starting.

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[Koek]

I find the chemical and pyro traits completely frustrating.  There is no story I enjoy here.

I do agree on this. If both these traits were managable in some way, like pyro only burning stuff on a mental break or when he has not seen a fire in a long time, which could be solved by always having a campfire going or something like this, I would actually consider recruiting them.
For the chemical traits, perhaps putting them on a schedule AND keeping their mood up could mitigate the binging somehow. Or have the binging as a mental break only, with a higher chance than normal to break.

As it is now I simply patch them up and kick them out, unless I need an emergency organ or something.

I do love the story aspect of this game, but like you said, some things just don't add to it especially when you already know the outcome.

[Sirinox]

Chemical interest / fascination.  Again, not a story I enjoy.  Just a 100% chance of them finding and abusing drugs after you put time and effort into including them in the colony.  In my latest game, wake-up was the drug of choice, dropped from raiders and taken before I could clean it up.  Addicted on the first hit every time.

It's strange, wake-up shouldn't be addictive on the first hit unless something changed. It should be safe to use it once in 3 days, as in B18. In one 1.0 colony I had a drug policy with 1 wake-up per 3 days for my crafters to boost them up a bit and had no issue with that. Never had anyone, chemical fascinated or not, addicted to it after one use (unlike go-juice or yayo).

Both times she was perfectly health and in great spirits, but hey, why not, lets go find random drugs, take them and suffer. Again, if it was something I played some part in, maybe.  "Oh, my mistake, I let her stay unhappy for too long, of course she went and found drugs ..."

That's a story that can happen with any colonist on low mood. That one on the other hand is fascinated with chemical sources of enjoyment, it's part of his personality, unlike normal pawns he just wants it, anytime, not just when he is stressed.
It's a negative trait, it means it has some risks going with it if you accept the pawn, it's a trade-off. Pawn being depressing, or abrasive, or slothful don't depend on your decisions either, other than your decision to allow them in and try to go with it or send away.

I guess while writing and editing this, I found my own answer.  Perhaps the intent is you don't get to manage these stories, you always get the bad outcome and have to deal with it.  You have no input, you can't change it, you only get to pick up the pieces.  It's a pretty negative and annoying story if that's the case.

How come no input? Arrest them, beat them, kill them.