Unstable build feedback thread

[thuban]

    Storyteller: Cassandra
    Difficulty: Challenge
    Biome/hilliness: Temperate Forest, Mountainous, Caves
    Commitment mode: yes

After mining next to my base, insect appears. Ok.
But even if then, I don't continue to mine here, the same even occurs again a few time later : new insect. They even attack my base after being hurt (all of them !) It seems a bit unfair to see the same event twice even if I stop mining.

[Jibbles]

On the recent change to what we can see about enemies intentions, I would prefer to see raiders' and manhunters' intended targets/actions as for me that's part of the fun, seeing what they're going to do and trying to prepare for it.  Now I just sit and wait when a raid starts, which is boring. 

I dislike the change.  I like watching them prepare. I like to see what they're doing. I prefer to see the ridiculous shots that hit or miss a pawn in real time rather than a log. Ultimately the AI can be dumb and I like to make sense of what they're doing.

You can name almost any game. They accurately clue you in what AI is doing through visual cues, text, anything. Prepare to make similar approaches or this just downgrades game quality IMO. It's one of those changes where I throw my arms up and say just remove their tabs while we're at it. Guess it's done an attempt prevent cheese (no clue really) but this is the wrong approach in current state.

[Teleblaster18]

Storyteller: Cassandra Classic
Difficulty: Rough
Biome/hilliness:  Temperate Forest (Permanent Summer) - Flat
Commitment mode: No
Current colony age: 447 days
Hours played in the last 2 days: 20+
Complete mod list: None
v.1982

Game Notes/Graphs:

-I played the majority of the evening on 1x Speed for a change, and found it enjoyable.  I accomplished a great deal of building, and finally got a bunch of base streamlining projects done that have been delayed.

-Of note: I recieved another trade request for 54 Cowboy Hats in exchange for 3 Resurrector serums, which makes this the third time that Resurrector serums have been offered this game.  This makes me very happy: they've proven to be necessary.

Graphs:

[Roolo]

Storyteller: Cassandra
Difficulty: Rough
Biome/hilliness: Tropical rainforest/small hills
Commitment mode: no
Time played last 2 days: 8 hours.

Overall impressions: Really good. I'm a player since late A16, and during the earlier versions I enjoyed the first few years of the colony, but got bored after a while when I got everything set up, and started modding afterwards. The mid/late game is much more interesting than it was, and I´m finally motivated enough to go for the ship sequence (almost there now). I'm not going to give a complete play story, just some thoughts and suggestions.

- Robbing caravans is too rewarding. I have a suggestion to solve this:
You attack the caravan, and the following may happen:
A message pops up: "After Bob attacked the caravan, he is surprised to see Banastra, a member of the caravan, pulling out an orbital beam targeter. Banastra yells "Stop with what you're doing or I will blow up all of us!". The player can choose: "stop attacking" or "you're bluffing". If the first option is chosen, the caravan will leave immediately without fighting, if the player attacks anyway he'll know what's going to happen. Picking the second option will give some nice firework for sure (or maybe not, if he was really bluffing). In any case, you'll lose reputation, so the "stop attacking" option won't be a get out of jail for free card.
- Drop pods need some more work. Has been brought up by other players so I'm not going to repeat their suggestions.
- The calculation of how many days of food you have for your caravan needs to be more transparent and improved. Especially when you have meat eaters in your caravan, things are sometimes really strange. Sometimes adding meals to the caravan decreased the days of food somehow, which seems like a bug to me. Just knowing what's going on would definitely help.
- It would be nice if when you arrive at your destination you are presented a dialog with: "Bobs caravan has arrived at the bandit camp" with the two options: "engage" or "rest before engaging". I've had collapses due to exhaustion multiple times because I arrived at my destination at the wrong time. After your pawns are rested you'd get the option to engage again, or to wait longer.
- Please add a warning to the caravan confirm button when you forgot to add medicine and/or bedrolls.
- Manhunter events were too frequent in my game. After a while my fridge was stocked with dead animals, making hunting/animal breeding (for meat) completely redundant.
- The last few raids were all mechanoids/manhunters. Could have been pure RNG, but it was just something I noticed. I'm allied/neutral with all factions, so maybe that influences the chances of getting non-raider attacks.
- It would be nice if there is a tribal evil faction, so you still get tribal raids after you befriend every tribal faction.

[Tynan]

I have to say, I am very much not a fan of the now silent infections

FYI the silent infection thing is a bug, it'll be fixed.

[Madman666]

- Manhunter events were too frequent in my game. After a while my fridge was stocked with dead animals, making hunting/animal breeding (for meat) completely redundant.

Well animal breeding for meat purposes wasn't really that viable even without manhunters. Just too long gestation times, too low meat count, while food consumption is way too high. Add to that animal diseases draining your meds and you'll get a massive waste of time. Especially when compared to hunting.

Also it might be a random quirk of your particular run, i didn't get that much manhunters as to fill my freezer with corpses. They come occasionally and we celebrate by gorging on lavish meals for a quadrum, then its more or less veggy diet again.

Glad to hear that infections without a warning wasn't an intended change.

[Koek]

I have to say, I am very much not a fan of the now silent infections

FYI the silent infection thing is a bug, it'll be fixed.

There seem to be a few more silent events. Are these related? I've seen a few electrical breakdowns without a warning.

[Wanderer_joins]

Storyteller: Cassandra, Crashlanded
Difficulty: Merciless
Biome/hilliness: Tropical rainforest, Flat
Commitment mode: yes
Playtime: ~32 hours, 6 years in game to the ship reactor startup

* quests: quests are more consistent now, i get a more variety of items. I got 4 resurrection serum, well spread out in time (1+2+1), 4 orbital bombardment targeters, 2 tornado generators, 2-3 healer mech serum, the chemfuel generator and psychic soother. Trade offers were also really worth it most of the time, the legendary shield belt and masterwork marine armor are precious items who can rarely been declined. There was still some weird offer, notably late game which no longer make much sense.

* caravaning: playing on tropical rainforest there was no problem with grazing periods. I used elephants (~12) as pack animals and auxillary defense, there were really useful notably to carry 1 ton+ uranium, which is always a pain to put in pods.

* ambushes seems really weak on merciless compared to threats in your base or even in the quests sites. I've been ambushes by one single guys vs 3-4 colonists and packs animals several times.

*QoL changes:
-i'd like to see a crop zone selecting rich soil only. I also think it'd be useful for new players, since a rule of thumb is a decent size rich soil patch is largely enough to feed your colony. It should be more transparent before the grow ridiculous large crops.
- i also would like hotkeys, to unforbid or mine you've to go in architect -> orders to unlock the hotkeys (u) and (l).
- a cut blight crops could be nice also, the challenge should be missing the blight reproducing, not missing visually a blight crop tile
- while caravaning and on temp maps it would be nice if colonist could use medicine in inventories ( a mod like smart medicine does that) instead of having to look in each individual inventories for the medicines, that's by far the most frequent micro one has to do after an ambush or if you get sick on a temp map

* One of the rule i gave to myself in this playthrough was to rescue all relatives (accept chased refugee and go for incapped relative quests). It is always a challenge to save relatives who are enemies. You can use a psychic shock lance, but there is a risk to have a burn scar and most important an active fire in your brain, which will end up burning the pawn to death! I think the brain scar is enough of a challenge, you've to use luci or a healer mech serum, which is a high enough cost for saving a pawn.

* adaptation seems fine, i started up the reactor, got nearly wiped out after the first two raids (8000 pts machs + outlanders), i didn't think of the magic items... which were incredibly useful after that, but the following raids were manageable.

* I think for my next run i'll keep this '360 rule', whatever happens the reactor must be ready day 360, it seems to be the good time frame since there are down times in the second half of the run when research is done, caravaning is low intensity (and i did most of the quests). I don't mean there should be more quests, they are balanced now, it's just there could be something else/ more to flesh out the late game, i think it was 'only' 32 hours for 6 years because i used speed 4 during these downtimes. Their is not much to micro once your colony is established, the social system runs in the background and there is not much you can do to prevent affairs, social fights etc...

[Roolo]

- Manhunter events were too frequent in my game. After a while my fridge was stocked with dead animals, making hunting/animal breeding (for meat) completely redundant.

Well animal breeding for meat purposes wasn't really that viable even without manhunters. Just too long gestation times, too low meat count, while food consumption is way too high. Add to that animal diseases draining your meds and you'll get a massive waste of time. Especially when compared to hunting.
[..]

On very grassy maps, like the tropical rainforest on which my playtrough took place, if found having like 10+ pigs, 5-ish cows, 10+ chickens and some alpacas to be a nice additional source of food leather and other animal products, but indeed not something to depend on entirely. They fed themselves with only grass and raider corpses, so the only overhead was only some food used for training, and the training time of course. It's probably a different story on the maps with a lot of winter where you have to feed the animals regularly. I enjoyed having some livestock pondering about, until I kept having megasloth-, bear-, elephant, and rino raids totally stocking up my fridge, making my lifestock somewhat redundant. It could indeed just be lucky RNG, but I'm not making conclusions in general: it's just what I experienced.

Edit: About the meds needed for animals. I don't think that was really a point for me. It was actually a good way to give my doctors some extra training, and when I couldn't miss the meds, I just slaughtered the animal. Bonding doesn't really happen for the 0% wildness animals if you don't train them, so it's very often not a problem to just slaughter them when problems occur.

Another edit: Also, I found letting raiders slaughter my animals instead of doing it myself to be a good way to distract them while I'm blowing them up. Especially pigs breed like crazy, making it a viable tactic IMO. Good that we don't have animal charity organisations on Rimworld .

[Koek]

Yea, a little frustration here but, do mechanoids really need to destroy some bodypart with every hit? I don't really like being forced to use cheese tactics.

I'm in a bunker, but every time I open the doors to get some shots in somebody loses a limb.
This is getting annoying pretty fast.

This isn't story telling, this is lame.

Cheers

[LustrousWolf]

Yea, a little frustration here but, do mechanoids really need to destroy some bodypart with every hit? I don't really like being forced to use cheese tactics.

I'm in a bunker, but every time I open the doors to get some shots in somebody loses a limb.
This is getting annoying pretty fast.

This isn't story telling, this is lame.

Cheers

Sorry to say this but I feel like you may be new to the game? Try making armor and cover (sandbags, walls, doors, chunks) for your pawns it is very good at saving their lives, especially their limbs too. The only times I have lost limbs to mechs in 1.0 is when I personally made a mistake. I feel like mechs are at a good point in 1.0 unstable, maybe a little too easy still in my opinion now as melee is good viable tactic in dealing with mechs (in small numbers) emp nades are also a very big help in dealing with mechs. The biggest threat in the game for me is ants still. They always seem to be what set my colony back.
Also mechs are supposed to be devastating enemies to fight, they are robots from space!
Although I do feel like mechs should be stronger than ant armies

[Koek]

Sorry to say this but I feel like you may be new to the game? Try making armor and cover (sandbags, walls, doors, chunks) for your pawns it is very good at saving their lives, especially their limbs too. The only times I have lost limbs to mechs in 1.0 is when I personally made a mistake. I feel like mechs are at a good point in 1.0 unstable, maybe a little too easy still in my opinion now as melee is good viable tactic in dealing with mechs (in small numbers) emp nades are also a very big help in dealing with mechs. The biggest threat in the game for me is ants still. They always seem to be what set my colony back.
Also mechs are supposed to be devastating enemies to fight, they are robots from space!
Although I do feel like mechs should be stronger than ant armies

Armor > hyperweave button shirts, hyperweave or devilstrand dusters, flak pants, flak vests, war masks + marine helmets when I can afford them. Everything good or higher quality.
Cover > sandbags + granite doors/walls, small + medium gun turrets.
Cheese > doorpeeking
Emp grenades > yes
New > no

Perhaps it is me just being cursed with shitty rng and bad luck, but the last few mech raids I lost bodyparts. Now this isn't THAT big a deal since I can put some bionic parts in, but it just feels I get hit more than I should using the setup I use and when I get hit it's some bodypart gone.

Normal raids don't stand a chance atm. I'm not in a mountain so bugs are not an issue. Just the mechanoids, shooting off limbs and intestines every raid.

I lost a colonist to getting storytold straight in the heart with a greatbow yesterday and although I didn't like the loss I felt it being part of this story. The mechs are just a bit too OP I feel even though they are robots from space.

I would expect these results playing on extreme or something, not on rough with a solid defensive setup.
Maybe I'll try a killbox from now on or just start gifting everything I don't immediately need to stay poor and get smaller, more manageable raids; tactics I tried to avoid till now.

My main frustration is just, fun draining rappidly if this is how it's meant to be.

edit: Cheers

[Greep]

Yeah the armor system is a bit weird.  I just made a legendary marine armor and wow is it astronomically better than everything else.  It's like an invincibility shield that lasts until it's armor duration is lowered.  But a "good" power armor? Meh.  And plate? Yuck.

I honestly feel like joywiring my crafters so they get more inspirations.

[LustrousWolf]

Sorry to say this but I feel like you may be new to the game? Try making armor and cover (sandbags, walls, doors, chunks) for your pawns it is very good at saving their lives, especially their limbs too. The only times I have lost limbs to mechs in 1.0 is when I personally made a mistake. I feel like mechs are at a good point in 1.0 unstable, maybe a little too easy still in my opinion now as melee is good viable tactic in dealing with mechs (in small numbers) emp nades are also a very big help in dealing with mechs. The biggest threat in the game for me is ants still. They always seem to be what set my colony back.
Also mechs are supposed to be devastating enemies to fight, they are robots from space!
Although I do feel like mechs should be stronger than ant armies

Armor > hyperweave button shirts, hyperweave or devilstrand dusters, flak pants, flak vests, war masks + marine helmets when I can afford them. Everything good or higher quality.
Cover > sandbags + granite doors/walls, small + medium gun turrets.
Cheese > doorpeeking
Emp grenades > yes
New > no

Perhaps it is me just being cursed with shitty rng and bad luck, but the last few mech raids I lost bodyparts. Now this isn't THAT big a deal since I can put some bionic parts in, but it just feels I get hit more than I should using the setup I use and when I get hit it's some bodypart gone.

Normal raids don't stand a chance atm. I'm not in a mountain so bugs are not an issue. Just the mechanoids, shooting off limbs and intestines every raid.

I lost a colonist to getting storytold straight in the heart with a greatbow yesterday and although I didn't like the loss I felt it being part of this story. The mechs are just a bit too OP I feel even though they are robots from space.

I would expect these results playing on extreme or something, not on rough with a solid defensive setup.
Maybe I'll try a killbox from now on or just start gifting everything I don't immediately need to stay poor and get smaller, more manageable raids; tactics I tried to avoid till now.

My main frustration is just, fun draining rappidly if this is how it's meant to be.

Ive never used hyperweave for clothing. By the time I have built the ship or caravaned to it to escape I have only got around enough hyperweave for one duster, so then I tend to just make cowboy hats with it and sell them. I tend to have thrumbofur or devilstrand clothing near end game. For armor I tend to go with flak armor (not flak jacket because dusters are much better) and end game I will get the power helmets, already escaped before I can make power armor.

Also, not sure how your pawns loose limbs with those kinds of clothing matieral and armor in one shot, are you sure they are not getting shot in the same place twice by a lancer? Because lancers tend to be the reason your pawns will lose limbs, but a few updates ago they do less damage and fire faster now I think? So they are less of a problem now for losing limbs, just gotta take them off the battlefield as the limb goes red in the health tab so another shot does not shoot it off Or maybe you do just tend to have bad rng haha

I think door peeking will always be a part of rimworld, especially when tough raids start to come and they over run your defences, thats just how rimworld tends to get, unless you can somehow surround the enemies that will be my main tactic in making them flee, as they will not have cover from all sides and go down pretty easily then.

I am not in mountains either anymore but bugs still spawn out of tiny mountains roofs no where near my base and cause more problems than mechs

Also, as Tynan said, this game is about loss and recovery, and you will have to learn about how to deal with your now limbless pawn

[Koek]

@LustrousWolf

Doorpeeking is not a bother tbh and ofcourse I get pawns who got hit off the battlefield straight into my hospital. I'm just a bit salty about getting shafted by every mech raid today I guess. I just needed to let off some steam and get my frustration flowing, hoping for some feedback.
Your feedback is appreciated and you are right on most things. Ofcourse I don't ALWAYS have such bad luck, but today is just miraculously bad for some reason. I blame the new armor mechanics

I'm playing rough and I expect some difficulty. Maybe I should try extreme a few times, maybe it'll make me go back to rough with a few sighs of relief

Perhaps I should just deal with how the game works and, for example, stop treating some things as cheesing like staying poor(ish) to have a bit easier raids.

Anyways, thanks for the replies. I need to find a new kidney somewhere and get some bionic legs going.

Cheers