Unstable build feedback thread

[Mystomex]

Storyteller: Cassandra
Difficulty: Medium, Naked Brutality
Biome: Temperate Forest, large hills, road, 30/60 days of growth.
Commitment mode: no
Hours played in the last 2 days: 6
Complete mod list: none

When I first saw the changes to the traps I thought it was a great idea.  A way to get rid of some of the massive amounts of stored resources.  But then i realized everything was setting off my traps, this turned into my single guy spending half a day, ever day rebuilding traps because a squirrel or llama set it off.  I no longer like the idea of the rebuild cost of the traps its too much wasted resources for nothing.  Perhaps a chance for the trap to break when triggered?  Or perhaps only a portion of the resources to repair the spring mechanisms? like 10 mats?  As it currently stands the resources required to build a trap rarely equals what it catches.  Just not a good trade off.

My guy ended up dying to something that has been bugging me for quite a few runs now, Hunting.  I have lost so many people to the hunted animal turning and attacking my pawn at bow range.  In some cases this makes sense (hunting a predator with a bow).  But when herbavores regularly attack the hunter after being shot 7 times and knock the hunter out it feels like I am being trolled.  I am a hunter in real life and I can count on a single hand how many times I have been attacked by a prey animal during the dozens of trips I have been on, its 0.  Thats because the second the rifle goes off every animal in a half mile radius scatters.  The way hunting works in rimworld feels like I am being trolled.  Its like every other animal ends up attacking my hunter, it really is not fun its tedious and trolly.  The vast majority of those animals should not have a single chance to attack the hunter, perhaps ONLY if they are in a large herd but even then that would be pushing it.

[MoronicCinamun]

I also want to give some feedback on bugs (the insect kind :p )

This map had a "natural" hive on it at the start, tended by 2 mega spiders and 1 spelopede. (see img)

The nest was in this cave, near that ruin where that big box plan is. On the left is a tunnel I made, digging down (my base is in the top left of the map), for faster travel, with a stone door of course.

Early raids would often go towards that door for whatever reason, even though they easily could run around the mountain, I guess they saw that the door was mine and decided to smash it. They invariably made a detour INTO the bug nest, perhaps because they're "hostile" and they were close? That ended many early raids without me having to fire a single shot; their were more corpses there that have since rotted away.

After a period of time for no reason I can tell, their nest dissipated, and thus so did their jelly, forcing them to prowl for food. I forget how the first megaspider died, later on a mass-melee-tribal raid stabbed the spelopede to death and beat the second mega spider unconscious; it eventually got up, but in an ironic twist starved to death during a toxic fallout: he may be immune, but his food sure wasn't!

It was pretty engaging, as they both protected and scared us. However, as someone else mentioned many of the random encounters that occur in the mountains also feature bug nests, which seem to more often than not be in the top area of the map (that might be my confirmation bias though). Once, my caravan was faced by a single manhunting snow hare... which spawned in the bug nest; it got eviscerated pretty fast and we immediately took off. Someone else mentioned their colonists spawning in such a nest, that would be nasty for sure. It also presents another balance problem: you can still claim the glow pod they seem to usually have, and when you reform the caravan you can take with you the pod and any jelly they have, seems slightly exploitative. So the generation of natural bug nests on caravan-related maps maybe could use some tweaks.

[JimmyAgnt007]

A few tiny things that ive noticed, pawns are taking more chocolate than they eat.  when they are done there is some extra that needs to be hauled back.

also, building chairs and wood floors, when the chair finishes it cancels the floor.

[Lanilor]

Storyteller: Cassandra
Difficulty: Survival
Biome/hilliness: Arid, flat
Commitment mode: no (for testing branches, commiting in the main game)
Current colony age (days): 101
Hours played in the last 2 days: ~20
Complete mod list: Progress Renderer, Simple Stockpile Presets, Single Plant Texture Patch

- I think infections are too boring now. They barely reduce stats (apart from the highest stage where they down) and with the efficiency reduction gone, they don't do much. It's now just the race between progress and immunity which is basicly "can my doctor do 38% tending quality on average".

- It's nice to see the enemies in a refugee chase dialog, but it doesn't make sense at all. If there is the roleplay-element with "he tells you a few things but has no time for more", there should be no way to magically know the exact composition of the enemies. (Apart from that it still doesn't make sense that he takes the time to tell useless information like his name but not important/distinctive information about himself that would higher his chance to get help. If I would be in that situation I would say, like, "hey, I'm really good with plants. Give me shelter and I will help on your farm.")

- Calling for aid from allies seems really strong. I was surprised how many friends came to help me. I don't think neccessary it is too strong, but more too cheap, since getting the spend relation back is quite easy, especialy with gifts.

Edit:
From the ally call, one of the friends got downed. I rescued him and he now went out of the map and I got 12 relation. So half of the cost. If 2 or more get downed, I can do this basicly for free.

Edit2:
When I take prisoners and heal them, as soon as they stand up, I get a prison break (within the next hours). But everytime before that when I check the debug display for their break chance, there is an mbt above 50 or 100. Happend a few times already and I'm starting to feel there is a bug, since it happens way too often to be luck.

[dogthinker]

Storyteller: Randy
Difficulty: Merciless
Biome/hilliness: Temperate, flat, road, river
Commitment mode: yes
Current colony age (days): 124
Hours played in the last 2 days: ~20

Generally having fun. The colony has made it through two winters now, and it's getting rich enough that it finally feels like I ought to wean the colony off the nutrient paste, to get rid of the -4 bad thought... But I've been really appreciating how food efficient (6 raw food per meal vs 10) it is using the dispensor. If there was a way to assign colonists to different meal types, I'd probably never stop using it.

The colony was vomit-city for a long time, when every colonist had gutworms, and I didn't even have herbal medicine. It was a bit monotonous having to regularly check the sleeping colonists so I could wake them to make them eat before they started starving. Perhaps pawns ought to wake themselves up when they're nearly out of nutrition, if food is available. (It was a fun problem to deal with, I just felt there was some unnecessary micromanagement.)

Hunting large animals feels a bit too easy now. With a bolt-action and reasonable animal skill, you can land enough hits that the animal is slowed enough not to actually be a threat, before it aggros. Taking on Thrumbos used to feel like a bit of a gamble/challenge in early game, now it's easy.

One of my colonists, Fitz, has 14 Social. He also has an arrow lodged in his brain (4/10 scar). Despite now only having 40% consciousness, and being barely able to walk, or talk, he continues to be a great trader (as talking is only 30% important for trading, unlike negotiation which has it at 90%). I'm not sure if this quirk of the stats is awesome, or ridiculous. Maybe the traders are intimidated by the arrow?

Peter the Human Computer recently had perhaps the derpiest mental break I've seen to date. The final straw was 'darkness'. He was doing recreational astronomy with a telescope at the time... Presumably he forgot to take the lens cap off.

While on the topic of mental breaks:
- Sad Wander still feels like the most dangerous mental break to me, even though it's 'minor'. Wandering aimlessly in a hail of gunfire feels more like an extreme level break than a minor one. I can't help but wonder if this one ought to be broken into a few versions, with pawns snapping out of the minor version if an enemy pawn opens fire. It also last so long, that if the pawn is sick you're pretty much forced to arrest them, so you can treat them. Which is fine, it makes sense. It doesn't feel 'minor' though.
- Both beserk and drug binges seem a bit too easy to deal with. Walling off the pawn or their target feels a bit cheap, but it's thematic (barricade them in/out.) Perhaps the pawn should be a bit more aggressive at smashing a path if it doesn't have a path to its target (perhaps even using 'deconstruct' instead of melee attacks, so you can't just repair your way past the event.)

Bug:
This error came up in the debug log. No mental break occurred. Looks like I missed out on an insulting spree. I can't think of anything weird that'd stop it (no recent fatalities, no blocked paths or anything like that.)

Code Select Expand

No target. This should have been checked in this mental state's worker.
Verse.Log:Error(String, Boolean) (at C:\Dev\RimWorld\Assets\Scripts\Verse\Utility\Debug\Log\Log.cs:78)
Verse.AI.MentalState_TargetedInsultingSpree:GetBeginLetterText() (at C:\Dev\RimWorld\Assets\Scripts\Verse\AI\MentalStates\MentalStates\InsultingSpree\MentalState_TargetedInsultingSpree.cs:74)
Verse.AI.MentalStateHandler:TryStartMentalState(MentalStateDef, String, Boolean, Boolean, Pawn, Boolean) (at C:\Dev\RimWorld\Assets\Scripts\Verse\AI\MentalStates\MentalStateHandler.cs:152)
Verse.AI.MentalBreakWorker:TryStart(Pawn, Thought, Boolean) (at C:\Dev\RimWorld\Assets\Scripts\Verse\AI\MentalStates\MentalBreakWorkers\MentalBreakWorker.cs:67)
Verse.AI.MentalBreaker:TryDoRandomMoodCausedMentalBreak() (at C:\Dev\RimWorld\Assets\Scripts\Verse\AI\MentalStates\MentalBreaker.cs:223)
Verse.AI.MentalBreaker:MentalBreakerTick() (at C:\Dev\RimWorld\Assets\Scripts\Verse\AI\MentalStates\MentalBreaker.cs:174)
Verse.AI.Pawn_MindState:MindStateTick() (at C:\Dev\RimWorld\Assets\Scripts\Verse\AI\Pawn_MindState.cs:315)
Verse.Pawn:Tick() (at C:\Dev\RimWorld\Assets\Scripts\Verse\Pawn\Pawn.cs:580)
Verse.TickList:Tick() (at C:\Dev\RimWorld\Assets\Scripts\Verse\Game\Ticking\TickList.cs:125)
Verse.TickManager:DoSingleTick() (at C:\Dev\RimWorld\Assets\Scripts\Verse\Game\Ticking\TickManager.cs:303)
Verse.TickManager:TickManagerUpdate() (at C:\Dev\RimWorld\Assets\Scripts\Verse\Game\Ticking\TickManager.cs:267)
Verse.Game:UpdatePlay() (at C:\Dev\RimWorld\Assets\Scripts\Verse\Game\Game.cs:512)
Verse.Root_Play:Update() (at C:\Dev\RimWorld\Assets\Scripts\Verse\Global\Root\Root_Play.cs:99)


Bug:
"StatRequest for null def" when clicking the (i) in the "Add Bill" list for various items in the Machining Table (for example, any shell type.) The info comes up correctly if you create the bill then click the (i) within the details.

[ticket]

Storyteller: Cass
Difficulty: Rough
Biome/hilliness: Temperate, mountains
Commitment mode: no
Current colony age (days): 23
Hours played in the last 2 days: ~8
No mods

Colony started with two female colonists and one male colonist. Elvira, who had a psychite addiction was the lover of the male colonist, Trumpet. While Elvira was walking around in a mental daze as a result of her withdrawals, her lover cheated on her with the other female colonist. -35 mood from psychite withdrawal, -20 mood (for 25 days!) from being cheated on. Needless to say, every other day she has an extreme mental break and tries to kill one of the two other colonists. Last night, Elvira snuck into her ex's bedroom at 2am to sow a potted plant then immediately snapped and tried to kill Trumpet in his sleep. The only thing giving Elvira happiness is building a limestone chessboard, which takes 803 work to complete (that seems pretty high for a chessboard, no?)

Edit: Trumpet just married his new girlfriend, and Elvira attended the wedding. Elvira got a +20 mood boost from attending it while still having the cheated on debuff. I'll take it, but I was expecting Elvira to go ape**** having to watch her ex get married only a week and a half after they broke up.

Also, a few comments on the new art:
- Thanks for fixing the meat cube issue.
- The component graphic is a little weird but isn't all bad. The spool of wire looks like a spool of thread.
- It's very hard to tell apart a healroot plant vs. a cut herbal medicine sitting on the ground outside.

Lastly, I had an issue when my colonist was drop-podding in on a 1977-build colony where he drop-podded in next to a mountain. In this case, the drop pod would disappear from view when falling over some areas of the mountain and then reappear. Has anyone else noticed this? 

[PleaseBro]

It makes 0 sense or me that weapons dropped by COLONISTS when they get downed are forbidden.....

[Koek]

It makes 0 sense or me that weapons dropped by COLONISTS when they get downed are forbidden.....

My guess would be to prevent any non drafted pawn walking into the line of fire to pick up that weapon.

[Namsan]

I'm going to give small feedback.
I started this playthrough from version 1970.

Storyteller: Cassandra
Difficulty: Rough, Lost tribes
Biome/hilliness:  Boreal Forest, Large hills
Commitment mode: yes
Current colony age: 113 days
Hours played in the last 2 days: 9 hours
Complete mod list: HugsLib, Allow Tool, [XND] Proper shotguns, Simple Stockpile presets, Simple bulk drugs, Simple bulk cooking, Incident Person stat, Numbers, Progress Renderer, Death rattle, Research Tree, Animal tab, Memorable Auroras, More faction interaction (this mod is added today)

I had relatively easy days in this colony so far. No colonists were killed yet, and gaining silver by selling tons of duster coats.

Early raids were somewhat menacing because my colonists only had great bows and recurve bows, but after gaining guns from research and raids, raids became not so hard.
Most menacing threats were, of course, mechanoids. lancers from poison ships were especially dangerous, because they stay in near poison ship, so my melee warriors can't reach into them without getting shot. My colonists eventually lost some limbs from them.

I realized calling for aid from friendly faction are so useful. They are numerous enough to destroy wounded mechanoids from poison ship. Their tactic is just blindly charging into enemies, so they are probably dumb, though.
It only cost -25 relation points, and I think it's too generous now.
How about separating "calling for aid" into "calling for aid (normal) "  and "calling for aid (strong)"?
"calling for aid (strong)" has same strength as current one but it will consume more relation points.

Caravan quests are generally good. Most quests have reasonable rewards. Enemy outposts now show how many people or turrets, so I can properly prepare before attack them.(Or don't prepare much if they have only two people)
I found some of trading quests are rather ridiculous (Why that outlander faction needs 52 short bows? I thought they are already using guns).

I think infections and diseases are easy in current build, but I don't know it's appropriate state or not. 
they are quite easy in controlled situation, but in uncontrolled (like badly raided) situation, they are probably still dangerous.

I liked new prisoner recruit mechanic. It was entirely RNG-based in B18, but it's changed to "Somewhat time-consuming but eventually you can recruit them"
It's very improved!

Deadfall trap change is overall good, but building stone traps consumes way too much time.
They only slightly more damage than wooden traps, so I think it's disproportionate.

Also, thanks for art change. Dreaded meat cubes became very nice meat steak.
I still don't like new visual of components, though. They are kinda hard to recognize, especially when there is only 1 component.

[attachment deleted due to age]

[Awe]

Storyteller: Cassandra
Difficulty: Survival struggle
Biome/hilliness: Arid, mountains
Commitment mode: yes
Current colony age (days): 340
Hours played in the last 2 days: ~15
Complete mod list: Core, HugsLib, Allow Tool, [KV] Force Do Job - 1.0, [KV] RimFridge - 1.0, Work Tab, Numbers, Deep Ore Identifier, Hand Me That Brick Lite, EdB Prepare Carefully

Phew. Not a full story. Just a little impression about ship launching. That was rough, but savescumming(reloadded like 6-7 times ^.^ ) save all 26 pawns!

Warning message before reactor windup was ignored(of course) and it was big mistake. Main part of the base was in the corner, deep under mountains, and killbox at the middle of map, which led to very long and frequent travels before and after each assault. But i managed to haul some meals and repair/rearming mats closer to killbox in one quiet day. Most of attacks was mechs in all kind of shape and forms. Only 2 or 3 human raids. And 2 last assaults was very easy - mixed mech drop at the base with only 2 centipedes + few lancers/scythers and very weak siege with like 20 or 30 mans.

Also, about last chance weaponry. Got only one tornado generator and one orbital bombardment device for entire 5 years. Most of quest rewards this run was nearly useless. Nerfed?

[attachment deleted due to age]

[Syrchalis]

Can we get a symbol on the boxes for which type of body part they are? The quality mod RJW has this feature.

https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=42913
I did it...

[SchizoidCrow]

Can we get several arrows pointing to each transport pod in this event? The description is very clear, which I appreciate, but the one arrow draws attention away from the other pods, someone could potentially get tunnel vision and miss the other ones. That almost happened to me before I started scanning the map.

Also, I'm seeing a few visual glitches. The corpses under the elephants freak out a bit when I zoom in and out.

[attachment deleted due to age]

[Serenity]

The only thing giving Elvira happiness is building a limestone chessboard, which takes 803 work to complete (that seems pretty high for a chessboard, no?)

Building stone objects always takes a long time. Beds, doors, tables, joy objects. Use wood if you want it to go fast

[Aszh]

Storyteller: Cassandra
Difficulty: Rough, Lost tribes
Biome/hilliness:  Temperate Forest, Mountainous, Dirt Road, Huge River
Commitment mode: no
Current colony age: 204 days
Hours played in the last 2 days: 10ish hours
Complete mod list: none

https://i.imgur.com/FvOC44j.jpg

I've played Rimworld for 1000+ hours and Infestation event is so tedious and unfun it makes me want to quit every time it happens.

When I was a young Rimworlder, my very first infestation was unexpected and kind of fun.  It was a few hives and a few bugs inside my base and I set up my colonists and dealt with it and it was a minor accomplishment.  Then it happened again, and I dealt with it again.  Then again.  By the 4th time I was bored and done with it.

In some huge colonies I've played in the past, with around 100 coloninsts, I've had over 1000 bugs spawn from one event.  Literally 1000.

The problem is that when it spawns, I know I'm going to be microing 30+ pawns and possibly animals, unpausing for 1 second, then microing them all again, then unpausing again, etc.  I'm going to be doing that for the next 1-2 hours IRL.  I don't have time for this shit, I'm supposed to be having fun here and this is the opposite of it.  Because of this, I always have infestations turned off. (turned them back on for now just because test version etc)

In the above screenshot, there are 29 colonists vs. NINETEEN hives.  Each hive produces 5+ bugs.  That's over 100 hyper-hostile, OP melee guys running through my base.  Now, I can probably set up a defense and ride it out, but they will destroy my stockpile, all of my colonists and animals will be dead or injured, and it will take me 2-3 hours IRL.  Tedious, boring, game-ending nonsense, either ending my game outright or just ending my will to play it.  I console killed them all.

Why does this event need to be so cataclysmic and game-ending?  This is by far the most dangerous event in the game, leaps and bounds above everything else.  Why is it not in line with other events, like raids?  Shit on this scale should happen ONCE per game, if at all.  This level of infestation is on the level of difficulty of the final spaceship rush.  Here are my suggestions to make Infestation not a total turd of an event.

1) Make 2-3 hives spawn across the map, but increase their reproductive rate by 500% (capped at some point like the poison wave from the mechanoid ship).  So the player has to go deal with it relatively quickly outside their base before it becomes the 100+ bug monstrosity.

2)  Have 2-3 hives spawn inside the player base, but make them only come with non-hostile drones and a few warrior insects, which are passive until attacked.  The drones will roam around your base in a small area looking for food.  When they find food, they take it back to the hives and turn it into jelly.  Whatever jelly isn't eaten by the bugs can be collected by the player.  If the drones can't find any food, then the warriors start attacking creatures in the environment in order to turn them into food.  If the player ever attacks the bugs, they all become hostile and all the 100+ megaspiders and whatnot come charging out of the hives.

It's a tradeoff.  You can feed the drones and let them make jelly for you, at the expense of whatever room(s) they spawned in basically becomes theirs and you need to then build around them.  Or, you can set up a prepared defense inside your base while keeping them occupied until you have time and inclination to deal with the 100+ bug monstrosity.  Or if you like the 2-3 hours of tedious microing, you can just attack them right away and deal with them right away, as it is currently.

You can also have the hive grow gradually as you feed it, so you have to choose when to deal with it before it becomes too big to handle.

3) Have a bunch of hives spawn inside the player base, but instead of spawning 100+ hostile bugs, they spawn 100+ non-hostile bugs that do nothing but run around and shit everywhere.  Just run around your base creating filth until you kill them all.  They would flee when attacked.  They would also mate with each other and reproduce fast, so if you don't get them all very quick you can expect more little ones.  They would produce no jelly and almost no meat.  It'd be more of a psychic-drone level event.

4) A series of events combining the above, culminating in the 100+ bug monstrosity swarm.  When you dig into the mountain, the game warns you that you might trigger a hive.  If you keep digging, then you get the filth swarm, which the game informs you is because of your digging.  If you keep digging after that, then you get the docile jelly-producers, which the game informs you is because of your digging.  If you keep digging after that, then you get the 100+ assrape monstrosity swarm.  If you *stop* digging, then future infestations never happen.  Also, bugs should never spawn in the same area twice, so you can sort of predict and prepare for where you might have to deal with them in the future.  If you beat the monstrosity swarm, then congratulations, you beat the bugs and they never return.

Until Infestation is vastly reworked, I'll go back to disabling it.

[attachment deleted due to age]

[Madman666]

Believe me 19 hives is still nothing... And you don't want to have hives multiply at x5 rate. Just nope.