Unstable build feedback thread

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

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FleshEater

Okay, I've got a colony of three, two of which are cannibals.  It's cold.  There is not much food outside of human meat.

Previously my cannibals would eat human meat before standard meals.  With version 1 that no longer seems to happen - my flesh eaters have suddenly become vegetarians and will eat rice dishes in preference of juicy, raw human flesh.

My poor non-cannibal has nothing left after those human-meat eaters turned veterinarians finish the job (he seems to sleep in and is the last up for breakfast - probably all the nightmares about his companions keep him up to the wee hours).

I don't like this change.  Please let the cannibals favor raw human flesh over cooked rice meals again.
Please.

...it rubs the lotion into the skin or else it gets the hose again.

Koek

Quote from: FleshEater on July 22, 2018, 10:29:11 AM
my flesh eaters have suddenly become vegetarians and will eat rice dishes in preference of juicy, raw human flesh.

Perhaps it is the raw vs cooked which makes them go for prepared rice dishes instead of human meat.

Jstank

#3482
I always play on Randy Random Extreme Naked brutality TRIBAL START!!!!.

I know I love pain.


This time my map was a short winter map with a grower who knows what he is doing.

-Food was no problem this time because my grower was good.
-Security wasn't too bad. I got my walls and trap maze up pretty early because I wasn't concerned with food.
-My second colonists (wander join) was pretty good at mining. They also got married so I didn't have any issues with poor moods. I also have a decent cook so food poisoning didn't hurt me.

FOOD POISONING - If you don't have a good cook you can pretty much guarantee that your playthrough is 100X more sluggish. Getting poisoning on every meal really makes things difficult, you can't accumulate wealth, so your pretty much just stuck until you get a good cook. Randy will just ignore you for months to years because you have no wealth.  Food poisoning is really obnoxious on naked brutality.

ANYWHO...

-Randy kept throwing me space refugees. The problem with space refugees is that they are part of a faction now. This makes it so that I really don't want to capture them because they will make the factions angry. I try to rescue them but they never want to join. When they leave they hit my trap maze and die immediately.

-It now takes a looong time to take a prisoner. On my other playthrough it took me 2 or so months to get a recruit. It is tough to grow a colony now.

-On my other playthroughs, I started on an island, which made going to do the quests easier. On those playthroughs, I actually did a lot of the quests as opposed to ignoring them! This one I am not, so the quests are just too far away to be feasible with only two colonists. I would really suggest making it so that your colony wealth can also determine how far away the object is! Honestly, if you want players to do the quests they should really be closer to home.

- The raids have not been too bad. I could handle them except for the one. I got the southern raiders to route easily enough, but the northern raiders decided to bust through my northern door during their route (which they hadn't gotten through before the route.) My plan was to let him bust through the northern door and exit through the southern door, but once the raider got through the door he proceeded to set fire to everything. My weapons consisted of a club and a poor survival rifle. His weapon was a good smg and he had a flack vest. I decided to let him burn through my wood walls. He got to my food stockpile. When he finally left my colony was all but decimated. Good thing he didn't come for the door I was hiding in or that would have been it.

-I built 2 research benches because both my colonists don't research. I am now 60 days in and the only research I have is stone cutting. I have only 2 colonists.

-The cold: Tribals not having warm clothing options at the beginning of the game really makes things difficult. It seems I can never chop enough wood to keep a fire going and also cook food at the same time. I have to babysit them in the winter time or they will wander off very far and get frost bit. I really wish tribals had some sort of coat to craft at the beginning of the game. Not as good as a parka but at least something to keep them safe from the winter. It is really tough for me to start in cold environments with naked brutality for that reason.

-My trap maze would have been more effective if I could place traps adjacent but I think that the change is ok. It seems to be just as effective even if I have to manually fight off the raiders just a little more. Otherwise, I'll just make the trap maze twice as big to compensate.

-I have learned that if you want to make money as a tribe go for selling either phycite tea or smoke joints. In one season I made 1000 silver just from making and selling the tea. It does cost wood.

-I learned that growing and cooking for a starting colonist is essential! If you don't have those two skills the game isn't very fun.

-The big hump for me is getting through electricity research. Even with a good researcher, it takes me FOREVER to get to electricity. Until then I am bogged down with making pemican so that in the winter my food doesn't rot. This puts a huge strain on the wood resources around my base, and those get quickly depleted. It gets harder and harder to find enough wood to cook with. I know you have been decreasing the time it takes to plant a tree, and I do appreciate that tribals get that research. But planting trees is still not very viable. I would just put that back to how it was before. It won't give a buff to outlanders, because they really don't need the trees anyway, but to start a tree farm within the first year would be huge to a tribe. + It would be lore friendly because a tribe is supposed to be one with the environment. Please consider making planting trees a thing again.

-I see no noticeable difference in hunting, with the exception that mega-sloth is off the menu. It is way too dangerous to hunt them, I just ignore them. Otherwise, the other animals don't bother me. I assume that these animals always had a 2% chance to enrage and I just didn't notice it. Printing that out on the wildlife tab just ensures that I understand the mechanic. Good change!

-Weapons: I pick weapons up from raiders. I pretty much ignore the forge because by the time I would be able to make a great bow or long sword I already have survival rifles revolvers, and pistols.

-Changes I would suggest based on my many many playthroughs of this scenario

-lower tribal weapon research so I can hold my own against outlander firepower. I would put great bows on the very left at something like 100 research, and make a primitive forge with low research cost for long swords. This will make it so that great bow long sword get used more.

-Add a tribal coat for winter, please.

-I would really suggest making it so that your colony wealth can also determine how far away the quest object is!

-Have colonist recruitment difficulty scale with colony wealth while also considering the population target.

-The electricity issue for tribals would be helped by making a tree showing a lot more viable. That way I don't have to spend all my days walking further and further for my wood to keep up with heating, cooling, and cooking.

Oh and I forgot to add one more thing. As a tribe it is so very hard to maintain relations with others without a coms console. I always end up being not friends with everyone by years end. If I could do somthing like send smoke signals to other tribes, would be nice!


The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

             - Bernard of Clairvaux

Madman666

Quote from: Jstank on July 22, 2018, 11:17:28 AM
-I would really suggest making it so that your colony wealth can also determine how far away the quest object is!

Couldn't disagree more with this. So that when raids get especially dangerous due to same wealth increase, you ll have to send your people out for longer, cause they'll have more world map tiles to cover. So there will be more chance for pirates to attack your weakened colony. Do you really think thats a good idea?

Broken Reality

With regards to turrets on my past couple of playthroughs and my current one. Turrets for me are in a hard spot to use. My main use for them now is sapper deterrent. Using mass turrets is just not feasible for me. The reload costs make mass turreting too costly considering that killboxes no longer work (by the time you build one, research turrets etc most raids seem to be sappers and drop pods so mass turrets have no use) and you need to get raider to get close enough and not outrange the small turrets. Raiders often just mindlessly bash on walls rather than cone in and attack especially on scattered raids. I've only really used turrets a few times in 1.0 as I've not found a use for them, maybe when I get a colony with 300k+ wealth then I'll need them to help with fight.

My best answer to this is to always give them access to my base so they have something to attack / burn and then ambush them from doorways (my base design revolves around this idea). Even so on a base with no exterior walls I've had enemies break though to a bedroom rather than walk 20 tiles to walk to a corridor to my crops and this was a normal raid not sappers.  So instead I have to fight using my colonists far more putting them at much higher risk (especially recent patches with increased one shot chances).

I used to use trap corridors, which I stopped using in 1.0 due to killbox  and raid changes, though I did still use them at times to protect corners where i didn't want raider gathering or on sapper paths, now that is gone as you can't cover the spots due to the exclusion zone so the only use traps have to me now is for opening ancient dangers as a tribe and this change just doubled the work needed to do that tactic.

I'm not sure what your defensive vision is for bases Tynan. It seems it's not killboxes (turreted or colonists with guns, I used to do hybrid) nor trap mazes. Colonists standing and fighting behind sandbags with a few turrets scattered around the base? But that just got hit by increased one shots and reduced healing times.

Last night I just planted a large crop of devilstrand, it took ages, I'm on year round growing and there is still a good chance I'll only get to harvest 50% or less. If I was on 30 day then my only option to grow devilstrand would be a greenhouse otherwise you would never harvest any. The time it takes to get is too long compared to leather if they are to be equivalent and it has a skill and research requirement and leather you only need a dude with a gun. Yes you can controllably get devilstrand but it isn't always easy or time efficient to get. As noted in my latest colony started last night I'm just planting devilstrand and all of my colonists are already in top end leather and I have more in storage (admittedly not dusters as they are wearing plate). Maybe allow devilstrand to be used in flak armour to make an upgraded version over using cotton? (devilstrand kind of feels like organic kevlar)


Lanilor

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.

So far I got 5 (?) mini turrets and 2 mortars from salvaging item stashes and prison camps in around half a year. Not sure if this is intended, but you can clain an uninstall them when the enemy pawns are down and they lost power. I don't like big turret complexes, so I did not invest in researching them, but this way a got a few to just support fighting. And when also gathering other stuff from the incident maps (especially meat and leather), building a drop pot launcher there and sending everything home is quite efficient.

For fighting: The first 2 I got were destroyed quickly in the first raid I had them (was a melee raid). They didn't feel like doing much in the meaning of dealing damage, but they were a nice distraction and the loss of them may have prevented a bigger fire on the fields, so they lived for their value.

I got an infestation triggered on an area of 5 cells overhead mountain. I knew this is possible now, but I didn't expect that at all. The time until they appeared way long enough to even evacuate the slowest pawn. I think it lost all its surprise factor, which removes annoying situations like when it appears in a bedroom and instakills the single pawn in there. So that is the good part but it also is less dangerous. The amount of insects was quite high, although indoor fighting gives enough chokepoints to have an easy time with melee only enemies. My only problem was that 2 of my 5 colonists decided to get a mental break mid fight and walked into the swarm, otherwise it would probably have ended with just minor injuries. So in this case there were 2 colonists downed but nothing dead or lost besides a refinery that was destroyed from a spawned hive.
I'm always missing a "leather" from butchering insects. This is probaly nothing new for you, but they could yield a chitin shell that can be crafted into a niche armor type for more variety. (Or just crafted into plate armor with niche stats like high blunt resistance or a plate armor that doesn't slow so much).

mcduff

I still think making flak out of Stuff rather than specifically cotton and steel would be a good thing, and might make the devilstrand balance less problematic? Devilstrand-plasteel flak items would be nice, and also fit a bit more into the lore than power armor.

iamomnivore

#3487
Quote from: Tynan on July 22, 2018, 05:11:01 AM
Hunting stealth: Made a new stat called "Hunting stealth" based on Animals and Shooting skills. It affects the chance of a hunted animal going manhunter. Added Animals as a relevant skill to Hunting.

This is amazing. The animal handler skill I was barely putting to use, in this run, just gained so much value. And, I'll take any way to reduce that revenge chance, now! D: Have to say, I love this kind of skill-blending and adding subtle complexity. Yum.

Quote from: Tynan on July 22, 2018, 05:11:01 AM
-Debuff devilstrand so it's in line with good leathers. -Wood does not deteriorate. -Reduce ship part health. -Reduce tree sow time. -Remove wild megascarabs since they can't eat plants anyway.

Not sure I understand this move. Nearly all of my colonies skip Devilstrand, as it is. The growing effort is immense and hunting down some high-revenge animals is actually not that bad, once a colony has few decent shooters. Sure, the leather can take a while to build up (especially bear) but, not nearly so long as it takes to produce Devilstrand, IMHO. Just my two cents, from recent experiences. I'll give more feedback after seeing more of the hunting stealth impact.

Quote from: NeverPire on July 21, 2018, 04:48:10 PM
Quote from: Zombull on July 21, 2018, 04:13:49 PM
Tynan please reconsider the "rotting because outdoors" thing even when the items are safely protected by a roof. I don't know what problem you were trying to solve by going that route but it's silly and just damned annoying.
I agree. In the real life, a porch roof or even any roof is enough to protect items from the weather.
The lack of walls don't affect the quality of items stored.
Only extremes temperatures could damaged outdoors items, and only the most temperature sensitive.

I guess you have designed this to prevent a too simple kind of storage. But don't forget that this unclosed storage is already really weak against stealing and wild animals foraging and so doesn't need to be nerfed, at least in my opinion. I was using it extensively until the 1.0 and it was really usefull to store wood, hay and other ressources coming in large quantities.

This is not at all true. I left some garden shears out on my back (covered) porch. A while later, they're rusted, faded, and quite unhappy with me. Had to oil those suckers.

This element has actually forced me to consider shelves and better storage options, since it became a thing. This kind of consideration feels good. Shelves were too easily neglected (and mitigated in their purpose) already. Perhaps, the levels of degradation from "outdoors" could be specific to biome and the impact it could have (more humid, blowing sands, etc.)

Trallhatt

Quote from: iamomnivore on July 22, 2018, 12:20:16 PM
This is not at all true. I left some garden shears out on my back (covered) porch. A while later, they're rusted and quite unhappy with me. Had to oil those suckers. You must not own your own house ;)

Yeah i'd say very, very few items can handle being outside and not turn to crap. Clothing outside or weapons outside (i have experience with both) - it turns to absolute trash and it doesn't take that long either, doesn't take a genius to figure out what moist does, for example.

Jstank

Quote from: Madman666 on July 22, 2018, 11:50:00 AM
Quote from: Jstank on July 22, 2018, 11:17:28 AM
-I would really suggest making it so that your colony wealth can also determine how far away the quest object is!

Couldn't disagree more with this. So that when raids get especially dangerous due to same wealth increase, you ll have to send your people out for longer, cause they'll have more world map tiles to cover. So there will be more chance for pirates to attack your weakened colony. Do you really think that's a good idea?

My point isn't to make your trip further, but have my trip closer by. I don't want your stuff to spawn further away. I just want the things, in the beginning, to be a bit closer with the max distance where it is currently.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

             - Bernard of Clairvaux

Madman666

#3490
If you say so. But isn't they relatively close by already? Its rarely more than a day or two away, which is infinitely better than it was when caravanning was first introduced. At least i usually get refugees and quests in like 1-2 days of travel.

Instead of making trips shorter, i d rather make diseases much less probable. Because it seems like it procs way too much. If you travel for more than a day, you really risk getting someone plagued.

mcduff

Traps still seem to be pretty effective, which is good.

Question: has hay been accidentally removed from the things animals eat? I'm in winter at the moment and even with a stockpile full of hay in my barn, all my alpacas are going down with malnutrition.

Broken Reality

#3492
Quote from: mcduff on July 22, 2018, 01:00:08 PM
Traps still seem to be pretty effective, which is good.

Question: has hay been accidentally removed from the things animals eat? I'm in winter at the moment and even with a stockpile full of hay in my barn, all my alpacas are going down with malnutrition.

In what context are traps still effective? Trap mazes? defending corners or turrets? You can put 4 traps next to the two new large turrets now rather than 12 (these numbers are different if you sandbag turrets first). That's a big loss is coverage and all it does to trap mazes is make them longer if you want to use them or have less traps.

erdrik

Quote from: Tynan on July 22, 2018, 05:11:01 AM
-Wood does not deteriorate.
At all?
Is there a reason it can't be "deteriorates outdoors, unless under a roof"?