Unstable build feedback thread

Started by Tynan, June 16, 2018, 11:10:34 PM

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Lanilor

Quote from: Greep on July 22, 2018, 08:14:43 AM
Well getting devilstrand to grow on cold biomes is nearly impossible without a greenhouse.  It isn't just the grow rate + eclipses: one cold snap and it's all gone.  I think it's better to balance devilstrand on biomes where it's sane to try and grow it  ::)
Yep. Cold biomes also have other advantages (on top of meaning to be harder than temperate forest) and I think it is good that biomes have a different way to play and feel different.

Seeling the changes to devilstrand ingame now, I think they were a bit extreme. But I guess it was intended to see the reactions and impact of it.
I would maybe go with 110% sharp armor and 280% heat armor to push it a bit more to the armor against fire. Also make them less spamable e.g. with a bit increased sow time.

Oh, being on that it is a bit weird that the plant has a flammability of 100% when it yields highly fire resistant fibers. (Could be explained with that they need to be refined or something of cause). It also makes sense from a balancing perspective though, because otherwise there is no/less danger of raiders bruning down outside fields.

alxddd

Quote from: Tynan on July 21, 2018, 10:25:07 PM
@Injured Muffalo - You can turn off room stats, it's a toggle in the lower right of the screen. Must have turned it on by accident at some point.

for some reason the T key acts as a toggle for room stats so this could've been what happened. seems inconsistent with the other hotkeys and annoyingly I hit it all the time.

mndfreeze

Devilstrand is 38.86 real grow days on a standard soil tile.  Thats more then half a year. Add to the fact that you have to research it first, on top of everything else when you just crash to the planet.. food. survival, inital base, etc I think you have to seriously put effort forth to really crank it out by the end of year 1 in your average non-year round biome.  That was kind of my point, it takes some serious planning and effort compared to just hunting some megasloths as they wander in, or bears, or elephants, or rhino's or whatever the uber leather of your region of choice is.  On top of that most (all?) biomes seem to get at least SOME animal with 'elite' leather.  Deviltrand however can't just grow on any ole tile.

I just feel it was actually in a fine place before.  It's something to put effort towards, but not SO great that its worth rushing every single time at the sacrifice of something else.  Hell sometimes I never even research it.  Other times it just worked out really well for that play through and I really utilized it.  THe same however could be said about Thrumbo fur, or rhino hide. 

On my arid playthrough I had a tribe decked out in all rhino hide on day 2..  This was before the adjustment to hunting of course, but deviltrand should definitely be in a more elite category of protection compared to the ease of hunting some common animals.   

Thrumbo are at least super dangerous, even later on if they get on you.  Part of the reason door tricks and stuff got messed with, everyone gamed the system becaus they were such a risk for getting your entire arm or leg bitten off lolol.

In regards to leather chance, so far almost every map I've played in 1.0 (not all of them, but the more common ones) have alllwwaays had a fair amount of big game with good leather on a fairly regular basis until the times of year come around they normally leave, like the dead of winter for borreal (then replaced by bears and wolves anyway) or summer in the desert.

Even Ice sheets have polar bears.

Jstank

Hey Tynan, it seems that this sort of rapid-fire development in the final stretch here is going pretty well. I like how there are changes that come with immediate feedback, and if you take a misstep that doesn't make sense to the community the bad ideas can be immediately walked back. Do you think that doing development this way is viable? How do you think it is going so far? I don't think I have ever seen a developer do a project quite like this.

Keep up the great work! The ability to take feedback and implement it so quickly is why this game is so successful compared to those dastardly AAA guys! I'm looking at you EA!  :o
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

             - Bernard of Clairvaux

Tynan

Quote from: Greep on July 22, 2018, 07:23:54 AM
Further investigation:  Dude on steam was indeed using mods and wasn't exaggerating about the raid sizes.  It struck me that there may not even be a raid limiter mod, so I guess I know what I'm doing when this branch gets a bit more stable.

In any case:  I do think it'd be a good idea if medium on b18 at least translates to medium on 1.0.  Which I don't think it quite does at the moment.

So he was using a mod that pumps wealth/enemies? How did he get 20 enemies per colonist exactly?

What do you mean about a raid limiter mod?

Doesn't medium generally match the old Some Challenge (or maybe slightly tougher)? That is the general target. Though of course we're not chained to the old levels or anything.

Quote from: Jstank on July 22, 2018, 08:36:53 AM
Hey Tynan, it seems that this sort of rapid-fire development in the final stretch here is going pretty well. I like how there are changes that come with immediate feedback, and if you take a misstep that doesn't make sense to the community the bad ideas can be immediately walked back. Do you think that doing development this way is viable? How do you think it is going so far? I don't think I have ever seen a developer do a project quite like this.

Keep up the great work! The ability to take feedback and implement it so quickly is why this game is so successful compared to those dastardly AAA guys! I'm looking at you EA!  :o

Seems to be working fine, you can judge for yourself! Kind of stressful over here, I will step back and evaluate this process more when I have time. Likely the big downside is the possibility of making changes on obsolete/incomplete/poorly-developed feedback. Feedback takes time; people need to adapt to changes, develop strategies, and have many experiences to compare. So doing things in short cycles isn't all upside by any means. Plus there's loss aversion, but I'm pretty used to that.

I think I will put devilstrand up a bit, but maybe not as much as before.

Anyway, this isn't a terrible discussion or anything but I'd really love to hear some more play stories.

I'm interested in how turrets are these days, in terms of effectiveness, accessibility, usefulness, cost/benefit. Note they were made cheaper not long ago. I haven't seen much mass turret use and I'd have expected to see more.
Tynan Sylvester - @TynanSylvester - Tynan's Blog

Crow_T

Just theorycrafting here, but giving leather items some move/work speed penalty for the weight (eg  workspeed -5% for a jacket, -10% for a duster), as well as better cold insulation, and give devilstrand a better heat tolerance, could be a good compromise. Devilstrand would be the ideal daily wear while still having good protection material, hence making the effort to obtain it worth it.
(regarding dead man's apparel)
"I think, at the very least, the buff should go away for jackets so long as you're wearing the former owner's skin as a shirt."
-Condaddy20

Syrchalis

I honestly think devilstrand should just have something unique about it. It doesn't need to be as good as before the nerf, because I mostly didn't even get it when it was stronger. Now it feels obsolete.

My last 5-10 playthroughs I avoided devilstrand most of the time, while in B18 and before I grew it nearly all the time. This is partly because of how good some easily attainable leather is, and partly because of how much effort has to be put into the crop. (And partly because I added a few plants of my own design and they take up my fields and are more valuable - these plants are mostly coffee and strawberries, the latter isn't something I added but you can make a drink out of it, so I value berries over rice/corn etc.).

I love playing in boreal forest, which makes devilstrand very hard to grow. My priority is getting enough energy for one sunlamp and growing mostly food, but also cotton and healroot. To get any reasonable amount of devilstrand you need an entire sunlamps radius. And that just is way too much effort.

The problem here is that - even before the nerfs - devilstrand clothing did not feel as good as I thought it should. Real armor is far more valuable and much easier to obtain. I mean even hyperweave can feel pretty lackluster sometimes. That's why I think if devilstrand gave other non-armor related bonuses it might take a special place and become something useful. It could boost movement or work speed, it could give immunity to fire, it could grant toxicity resistance... etc.. Or armor related: It could give a flat damage reduction on top of it's armor, making it super strong against weak attacks (e.g. machine pistol, squirrels etc.) while staying reasonably weak against high damage attacks (sniper shots).
For mod support visit the steam pages of my mods, Github or if necessary, write me a PM on Discord. Usually you will find the best help in #troubleshooting in the RimWorld discord.

Greep

#3472
Quote from: Tynan on July 22, 2018, 08:43:54 AM
Quote from: Greep on July 22, 2018, 07:23:54 AM
Further investigation:  Dude on steam was indeed using mods and wasn't exaggerating about the raid sizes.  It struck me that there may not even be a raid limiter mod, so I guess I know what I'm doing when this branch gets a bit more stable.

In any case:  I do think it'd be a good idea if medium on b18 at least translates to medium on 1.0.  Which I don't think it quite does at the moment.

So he was using a mod that pumps wealth/enemies? How did he get 20 enemies per colonist exactly?

What do you mean about a raid limiter mod?

Doesn't medium generally match the old Some Challenge (or maybe slightly tougher)? That is the general target. Though of course we're not chained to the old levels or anything.

Wealth yeah.  As for matching difficuty, maybe raid point wise I'm sure (easier earlier, but harder later), but a lot of people on steam rely on killbox type strategies which just completely fall apart if you can't adapt well to 1.0's sappers/drop pods.  It's really not that hard, you just need to do some shenanigans to get enemies lured to your turrets or build more turrets around your base, but I think some people don't really care for raids at all and don't want to do any significant work on medium.

As for a raid limiter mod, I just mean making a straight up hard cap with an xml setting, and maybe flags for disabling certain raid types.  I know a lot of people wouldn't mind playing with raids being capped at 2k for instance, and some people just don't want to deal with drop pods even if they're fine with sappers/ships/etc.  I personally wouldn't use it, though.
1.0 Mods: Raid size limiter:
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=42721.0

MineTortoise:
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=42792.0
HELLO!

(WIPish)Strategy Mode: The experienced player's "vanilla"
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=43044.0

Azrael_Itaru

I'm trying to understand the thought process here. Because one person said they were swimming in devilstrand, it needed a nerf? I opened up my game this morning to see I could no longer make a new field -- went to the research screen and saw it's requirement had been doubled from 500 to 1000. So it takes longer to research, requires half a year to grow and a really good grower (10+ skill) to sow, but it needs to be on par with leathers that anyone with a peashooter can eventually obtain?

Getting tons of it to outfit an entire colony is only viable in tropical rainforests or temperate forests with year-round growing. Otherwise it's almost not possible to even grow outside of a greenhouse. Greenhouses have been made more expensive with the power usage of sun lamps being increased, meaning you need to feed more steel and more components into more power producers to be able to sustain it. And on colder biomes, greenhouses tend to need to be geared more towards food and medicine...and on top of that, greenhouses are susceptible to solar flares, which can kill your entire crop if it's during the wrong season or the storyteller decides to stack it with a cold snap.

I'm not quite sure why it needed to be nerfed. Especially when armor keeps getting more and more important to have...

Koek

Passive cooler: I'm watching a pawn refueling a passive cooler, but the description still says "will run out and vanish after a couple of days"

Also a small suggestion: A toggle button on allowing refueling of the coolers would be nice. This way you don't have to build and remove them every time there is a heatwave.
Or just have them actually vanish like they used too. No preference here.

Cheers :)

Syrchalis

Quote from: Tynan on July 22, 2018, 08:43:54 AM
I'm interested in how turrets are these days, in terms of effectiveness, accessibility, usefulness, cost/benefit. Note they were made cheaper not long ago. I haven't seen much mass turret use and I'd have expected to see more.
Turrets are not used by me mostly. I do however spread mini turrets around my base to make sappers go where I want them to...
For mod support visit the steam pages of my mods, Github or if necessary, write me a PM on Discord. Usually you will find the best help in #troubleshooting in the RimWorld discord.

Greep

#3476
Not going to get a writeup till tomorrow, but I've been playing on a flat arid shrubland, and miniturrets are a lot more useable than they were, I didn't even research cannons till year two.  That said, I also ended up building a trap corridor to help cut down on maintenance, and they are still 100% replaced by cannons by year 2 (which isn't necessarily a bad thing).

They really blow up fast, though.  Had a raider mob of about 5 dudes just completely take out four turrets.  It was right in the beginning, but since turrets are cheap I was able to recover.  80 hp feels pretty darned fragile.  With 100 you kind of feel safe repairing them in battle, at 80 you're pretty close to having them blow up in your face already.
1.0 Mods: Raid size limiter:
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=42721.0

MineTortoise:
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=42792.0
HELLO!

(WIPish)Strategy Mode: The experienced player's "vanilla"
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=43044.0

East

#3477
Turrets are not cheap. Most basic turrets also require 60 steel to charge once. Thinking about charging It has become impossible to operate on a large scale as before.(b18) Unless you change the charging system, it will be difficult to use on a large scale. But it's right. The large-scale operation of the turret was not fun with the trap spam.

I was under tremendous steel pressure to operate three autocannons.
If I use spam turrets, I will not be able to supply steel.

Remember deep drill mining speed nerf. steel is really needed for almost everything.

Also, turret weapon reliability is low because it stops because there are no ammunition during combat. However, after the battle, no matter how much ammunition remains in the charge, it can not be recharged because the fixed charge cost is consumed.

Arq

I lost my notes from my play last night when my PC hanged (I think some hardware is going bad), but I'll put down what I can remember:

v1971 Cassie Rough, Tundra 10/60

- On day 6 I had 10(!) cats join my colony of 3.  Seemed a little excessive.  Needless to say, I wasn't prepared to grow food for them and cats are useless anyway, so I built a table and butchered them ASAP.
- The wildlife on tundra is a bit lush.  There is almost always a herd of muffalo or ibex or elk to hunt.  It doesn't seem to match the tundra description and I felt the shortage of leather/meat added something to tundra.
- Animal migrations pass very quickly.  Even acting immediately, hunters often fail to get something.
- Thanks for increasing the tree lifespan.  That fixed my issue with trees never reaching maturity on tundras.  However, I think that trees are just a bit too dense now.  Although pawns have to walk further to chop than in a forest, it doesn't feel like there is any sort of scarcity.  I could have a few woodfired generators if I wanted them.
- I feel forced to rush batteries at the start of wood-scarce maps because wind is so unreliable (and half-a-day without heat or warms clothes is to be avoided).  I use a generator on wooded maps but on wood-scarce maps wind is all I can afford at the start.  Of course, if the tundra/shrubland vegetation stays at the new, higher level then this point doesn't apply to them (but probably still to ice/desert).
- I had a pawn die to infection for unclear reasons.  They were going to pull through by a few percent, but mysteriously died instead.  Infection was already at extreme and their other wounds were only getting better, so I couldn't figure out why it happened.
- I find myself rushing microelectronics solely for the orbital trade beacon.  It feels like this might be better as its own tech under electricity.  Local trade doesn't deal in everything, so it can be hard to liquidate items or buy stuff otherwise.  (There's a big bump in my colony wealth from when I was awarded a masterwork plasteel hospital bed.  I tried to caravan it away but they wouldn't buy.)
- The 'bonded animal death' thought lasts quite a while.  Much longer than 'colonist died,' but I haven't had a 'friend died' lately to compare it to that.
- Haven't had a lot of it to work with this game yet, but scar pain felt a little excessive a few patches ago (don't recall any changes mentioned).  A pawn with a scar spends the rest of their life with -5 mood (I've never been lucky enough to have a scarred masochist), which I find much more significant than the efficiency loss of the wound.  Obviously we only count extreme scars (most wounds never scar), but still it seems like they might acclimatize to the pain (if only for mood, even if not for downed-by-pain).  I've been trying to be less picky with pawns, as you've suggested, but it definitely factors in.
- Debug graph below.  One pawn killed.  The refugee and one other pawn abducted during a refugee-chased event.  You'll note that there was a 40-day period with no raids and few other threats, which got a bit dull.

[attachment deleted due to age]

Greep

#3479
Quote from: East on July 22, 2018, 09:44:19 AMHowever, after the battle, no matter how much ammunition remains in the charge, it can not be recharged because the fixed charge cost is consumed.

Yeah this really is awkward.  You can of have to play this guessing game of how much turret fire you have left for the next raid, I usually re-arm at about 30% ammo left.

Edit: I'd also say that, unless you're playing an "idealish map" a 100% turret strategy is probably unworkable.  Probably a bit too punishing on very hard maps.  So the question is whether you think that's fine and people should use a trap/turret combination on these maps.  if not, turret maintenance is probably still a bit too high.
1.0 Mods: Raid size limiter:
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=42721.0

MineTortoise:
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=42792.0
HELLO!

(WIPish)Strategy Mode: The experienced player's "vanilla"
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=43044.0