Unstable build feedback thread

[Syrchalis]

I'm pretty sure that is what happens. Might need enough space for them to spawn there, but I'm not sure, could be that 1 tile is enough. That's why it's pretty bad if you get an open area under a mountain that is connected to the map edge.

[Teleblaster18]

Storyteller: Cassandra Classic
Difficulty: Rough
Biome/hilliness:  Boreal Forest (Permanent Summer) - Flat
Commitment mode: No
Current colony age: 390 days
Hours played in the last 2 days: 20+
Complete mod list: None

Debug Graphs/Notes for v.1990

-Very difficult evening of gameplay;  sent out a caravan of 2 colonists, which left me at 6 colonists guarding the fort.  Three raids occurred; the first of which was a Sapper Raid that required an Animal Meat Shield, and killed off 70% of my animal hauling force.  I've got them all in the freezer, awaiting burial.

The second raid happened very soon after: a Siege of about 25, where three Pirates were toting Doomsday Launchers.  My longest ranged gun was a single Sniper Rifle.  This one was difficult enough that I savescummed for over an hour, avoiding colonist deaths.  I finally defeated the raid, with one colonist downed, and several others badly hurt.

The third raid was another Sapper raid, about the same strength (25).  This time, my caravan had returned home, and I was able to mass my forces around the perimeter of the base, and essentially pick them off, one by one.  5 colonists wounded, two seriously.

-I figured out the workaround for the profusion of Mental Breaks that my colonists were experiencing; I got them off Nutrient Paste (and the -4 debuff), and went all-in with Lavish Meals (+12).  That +16 swing changed things fairly significantly...breaks are far less common, although I don't know if I can sustain Lavish Meals for too much longer (Kibble supply is competing heavily for the meat). 

After some considered thought about the issue, it might not be a bad design decision to a) require a small amount of research for the NPD (300, perhaps) before it can be unlocked, and return the "Ate Awful Meal" debuff to -3. It was critical to have the NPD in the early part of the game, where food supply was low, cooking skills poor, and food poisoning is a constant threat;  assigning a full-time cook or two would slow down other areas that are critical to getting into mid-game as soon as possible.

With that being said, the NPD -4 debuff isn't much greater than the old -3, of course...but when that additional point is combined with other new debuffs (soaking wet, for instance), those extra debuffs have a substantially greater effect on gameplay.


-One last consideration:  there's often a critical period after a battle, where the colony is scrambling to heal the wounded, and Mental Breaks occur very frequently; it's possible to have one or more pawns who are giving or receiving critical medical care to experience breaks, because they're a) in pain, b) tired, c) hungry, and d) recreation deprived.

I think that a temporary mood buff for winning the battle is in order.  Something along the lines of "We drove them off! +10 for 24 hours".  I can attest that most after-battle 24 hour periods have been a genuine shit-parade, and I don't believe it's through bad micro or bad triaging decisions.  Something along these lines would prevent a second raid that comes right on the heels of the first raid from turning into a catastrophe.  Just a thought...

Graphs from tonight:

[Tynan]

New build!

No major changes this time, just small balance tweaks and bugfixes.

Thank for all offering play stories and related feedback!

[Ser Kitteh]

Sometimes I wonder if you're being super vague so you don't spawn another 10 pages of theorycrafting Tynan lol

Anyway actual stuff to note:

On barrel changes, I don't mind them all that much but it seems to me that even with all jobs done, I have to manually order pawns to shove more steel in em'. It'd be nice to have something akin to the drop pod's fuel tank where pawns will only haul after after a certain threshold has been met.

[BlueMarble007]

Hi devs! Quick question: why is 'Look everywhere'/'Look in stockpile X' only available for Do Until You Have X and not for Do Forever and Do X Times? And why isn't it available at all for Butchery (and, I presume, other such tasks)? Is this temporary, or a bug?

[Trallhatt]

Sometimes I wonder if you're being super vague so you don't spawn another 10 pages of theorycrafting Tynan lol

Have you ever written changelogs? It requires more effort than what it is usually worth imo, better to spend it on fixing stuff.

[Ser Kitteh]

Probably! But hey, what do I know?

World map is a mess. It can be better:

1. Button to return to home base instead of needlessly looking for them when you're looking at the world map.

2. Being able to see what factions are friendly and what aren't, showing relations by hovering over them.

3. Big icons to notify what settlement needs what quests. It's inconvenient to go through messages in the history tab. Also would be nice if we can pin em' too.

4. Destroying a raider outpost has a 3 day limit. Destroying a raider base has a 1 day limit. I think it would be better to just remove them entirely. I beat them, and if I want to spend a season hauling all that steel I should be able to.

5. We can forage food but why not set up a temporary camp and hunt some wild animals? It would actually be very useful for tribals. It's also historically accurate, going away for a week to hunt for food.

6. Item stashes and destroying outposts are IMO the funnest quests. Why not an ancient danger quest too?

[Jpagano]

Finished up my save game - launched the ship at about 390 days, with 13/14 pawns surviving (15 if you count one that only lasted a few days). Used the extra pod for a pet dog.

Cass Rough - Crash Landed, 30/30 Temp Forest, Large Hills, Caves, Permadeath.

Took a bit of time with this, so it spans across several versions (file created on 7/9/18). I did accidentally start on Cass medium, changed it to rough when I realized - I think that may have broken my debug graph? It seems abnormally flat after day 80ish, not sure why else it might be.

Rerolled for a bit, started with Cave (high Shooting, good Social/Melee, decent Construction), Jenni (good Research/Medical), and Novak (night owl cook, good Shooting, acceptable Growing). First pawn had chemical interest, but it only came up a couple times. Didn't realize until I started that I had overlooked the 1st & 2nd pawn both missing dumb labor; used a bit of additional micro to handle it until I rescued a 4th pawn.

I set up camp in the shadow of a hill/cave system near a patch of fertile soil. I relied on walls and my pawns for early-mid game defense; several of the pawns I picked up along the way had decent shooting or melee stats. I eventually set up a line of traps at the "main" entrance to the base, which generally softened most targets to the point that I could handle them without many losses.

I went on most caravan expeditions after recruiting an early Muffalo, often just sending Cave for trading (outfitted with a good long-range weapon and eventually power claws). Later started sending 2-3x pawns, when I had to pod out a medic to patch him up. Caravan rewards were pretty generous, including several healer serums, a large number of Glitter meds, 2x resurrection serums (both used on Novak, I think Lancers both times). Got a few of the specialty weapons (e.g. orbitals), which were useful during the ship charge-up period.

I like having an early researcher, unlocking things like geothermal/fabrication/etc. earlier is nice. Ground drills made a huge difference - found 2x plasteel deposits, along with a uranium and gold deposit. Eventually ended up with so much plasteel, I ended up crafting a couple sets of plate armor (not too far off of power armor, much more HP, probably not worth it).

I scavenged 2x mortars from a siege, and eventually built 3x more - even if they're inaccurate, I found just landing a couple shots can make a huge difference, and a full volley can immediately end sieges. Over the course of the game, I had a few ships (first one being relatively early, the centipede was difficult but not insurmountable) and several infestation events (one especially tough, tried to leave a sealed off area alone, but colder temperatures caused the swarm to try to break through every night in the winter; managed to handle it with a combination of IEDs as they broke through & a defensive melee position).

Over time I upgraded security, especially as I started to see more mech raids; I expanded the trap hallway a bit, and dug out the hill a bit to make room for a (sort-of?) kill box area, really just a corner turn into 3 (eventually 6) mini-turrets. I later built 2x slug turrets further south, so they'd be in range just before the corner turn - I found them to be very effective, especially against centipedes. I prioritized Charge Lances and melee weapons - I found melee to be very effective, especially against groups of melee pawns or large numbers of insects. As I reached the point where I was able to get all of my combatants into power armor, I figured it made more sense to build the ship and escape, as I was running out of things to fortify/improve.

The ship sequence was fun/challenging, but not too bad at all - I had saved up 2x orbitals, along with several shock lances for doomsday rockets (picked up while caravaning). I lost one of my recruited pawns during a large mech raid, but it was my own carelessness - I ran him out to a small cover area to throw an EMP grenade, rather than having him use a safer autodoor. I had one close call with mech drop pods, but it was more so because I didn't realize chem fuel could explode when hit by stray shots - I had about 500 in my main stash area, where most of them had dropped. Ended up having to rescue one of them, but I luckily had an uninstalled firefoam in the stash area.

I like many of the changes you've made, and appreciate what you're doing here with feedback. I also appreciate your stance on e.g. creating drama/how the game should be played. It's difficult to balance, but I think the most memorable gameplay moments are the harrowing, intense micro situations. If everything was predictable/doable without making "mistakes," it seems like it would kind of defeat the purpose of the game. I remember older versions feeling a bit more forgiving, and I'd often feel like the game became a bit of a slog.

Feedback/Suggestions:
-Variety begins to feel limited over time, but to be fair game length is still great by comparison to other titles; it might just be a function of the long play time. Perhaps more small and/or relatively meaningless events could help this? I'm not sure, as it seemed to be mostly down to raids starting to become formulaic
-I think more faction/settlement interaction could help "flesh out" the world quite a bit. As is, a caravan trip is often worthwhile, but feels like typically "occupy 1-3 pawns for a few days, return with x silver in goods." There isn't much reason to e.g. interact with pirate bases, or create a second colony (other than as a temporary camp for e.g. hunting/medical, which isn't very intuitive). Maybe travel events, similar to FTL? Especially if they incentivize changing your travel plans and/or force you to reroute.
-The ambushes from manhunter animals felt a little silly. Following the last suggestion, maybe it could be repackaged as an event involving the item that berserks all animals? Maybe increase player agency by making it an event that you can choose to dodge: i.e., notification on map of artifact discovered, you can try to recover it, chance of activating it instead. Could really add flavor to the world with e.g., finding it in a "destroyed/overrun base" of sorts.
-Perhaps different end-game goals could help other play styles feel "worthwhile"? I know many people don't like ending the game with the ship - without another goal, it seems inevitable that you end up hoarding resources, which attracts larger and larger raids. Perhaps something involving other hostile factions?
-Regarding enemy variety, I think it would be neat to have a few other rare enemy types that "break the rules," in the same way that a Thrumbo isn't comparable to an average animal. Maybe a flying mechanoid, or "stealth"/invisible raiders?
-I wonder if sometimes we have too much information on enemy pawns. I think many of the "cheese" tactics and/or formulaic approaches to handling raids/sieges/etc. would be way more difficult to use if you couldn't actually see what a pawn was doing (e.g., "attacking plasteel miniturret"), or even having complete map vision. That would be a huge change though, not sure how you'd balance it.
-Maybe you could encourage more pawn combat with small/realistic changes to behavior? It always seemed silly to me that prone positions aren't a thing - they'd fit right into the melee vs. ranged dynamic with a delay to go from prone -> standing, and give a useful buff to defending pawns. It'd be nice to see raiders use this as well, especially in sieges (or when attacking raider outposts - the way they blindly charge you right now feels a little exploitable).

[attachment deleted due to age]

[Tass237]

I come bearing data from builds of yore!
Cassandra, Rough, No Mods
20/40 Boreal Forest, Flat
~ Commitment mode (self imposed, so I can make separate saves for each new build)
I have played at least 14 hours in the past 2-3 days. (although my play on build 1980 isn't represented in the data below)

First, my Graphs:
Wealth: https://i.imgur.com/ZjimjZT.png
Population: https://i.imgur.com/3Iy6QdU.png
Mood: https://i.imgur.com/lRl47Mr.png
Debug: https://i.imgur.com/thfebqc.png

I have enjoyed the new traps. I thought they were a bit expensive at 40 materials, but when they reduced to 35, I was happier. I find them helpful, but not (at least the way I use them) huge game-changers. IEDs on the other hand are huge game changers for me, especially in certain mass-raids like those chasing a new colonist. However, both traps and IEDs are only useful on certain opponents. Mechanoids mostly ignore my IEDs, Scythers zipping past them too fast to be caught in the explosion, or Centipedes tanking them to little effect. Scythers are reasonably affected by the traps though, so there is still some use there. Here is my trap setup, with traps and a few IEDs selected to highlight them:
My main killbox: https://i.imgur.com/8nDq6SL.png
Smaller alternate killbox: https://i.imgur.com/pfTl284.png

I like all the new art that I've seen, and I would throw my vote behind keeping/bringing back the new art for components. I have not yet seen any art I dislike.

I am reasonably happy with the spawn rate of trees and the availability of wood, and I have never bothered to sow trees. I did research tree sowing, but haven't needed to plant one yet. I selectively choose which trees to chop though, only targeting trees with 90% growth or higher.

I'm not very good at taking extensive notes on events throughout my gameplay, so I'm sorry I don't have a play-by-play story for my graphs. Here is an overview picture of my base:
Base Overview: https://i.imgur.com/brYyRXE.png

[5thHorseman]

1. Button to return to home base instead of needlessly looking for them when you're looking at the world map.

Click "World Map" again Click it twice to return to map mode centered on your colony.

[Madman666]

4. Destroying a raider outpost has a 3 day limit. Destroying a raider base has a 1 day limit. I think it would be better to just remove them entirely. I beat them, and if I want to spend a season hauling all that steel I should be able to.

5. We can forage food but why not set up a temporary camp and hunt some wild animals? It would actually be very useful for tribals. It's also historically accurate, going away for a week to hunt for food.

This. We shouldn't be just driven out of the temporary map after some time. We cleared it, so we should be able to gather stuff, patch our people up and then leave when we finish. Not when this arbitrary time is up.

Also - a big + for temporary camps being a thing. The mod that adds it is one of the most popular mods. Surely there is a place for such a good addition in core game.

[crystalc]

... I spot a giant wave of every single squirrel, raccoon, rat, boomrat, and boomalope on the map converging on that exact spot. They all enter the killzone, run through the traps and trigger them.

My first thought was manhunter pack or that one psychic effect causing everything to go manhunter. I hadn't gotten an alert...

This is normal.  I see there is snow in your screenshot there.  All the viable/devourable grass on the map has been eaten or covered in snow, except inside your walls. Therefor, all the animals on the map are pathing toward the last remaining food on the map.  That may or may not be your crops and/or your harvested food laying on the ground.

[Vito1189]

One cuestion:
does anyone know when the version 1.0 will be stable?

[giltirn]

Apparently settling too close to a nearby settlement strains relationships with their faction. This may explain why I keep getting faction relation drops without any interaction with them. I did not see any indication of this on the map when I was choosing a site; perhaps I missed something? Or if this does not exist perhaps it could be added?

[Lanilor]

One cuestion:
does anyone know when the version 1.0 will be stable?

No one knows this. It's done when it's done.

Apparently settling too close to a nearby settlement strains relationships with their faction. This may explain why I keep getting faction relation drops without any interaction with them. I did not see any indication of this on the map when I was choosing a site; perhaps I missed something? Or if this does not exist perhaps it could be added?

It exists and you should get a message when you try to settle too close to a faction base. At least in the start, I'm not sure if you also get the message when doing that later with caravaning somewhere and trying to settle. You lose more relation the closer you settle to a base until 5 tiles away I think.
You also lose relation with the rough factions on a fixed interval. There now is a nice and a rough outlander and tribal npc faction each. You see them on the faction tab as "rough outlander union" and "savage tribe".