Unstable build feedback thread

[EvadableMoxie]

Storyteller: Cassandra
Difficulty: Merciless
Scenario: Crash landed
Biome/hilliness: Extreme Desert, Flat
Commitment mode: Yes
Current colony age (days): 72
Hours played in the last 2 days: 20ish
Complete mod list: Prepare Carefully (but not used in this run)

Started up a merciless run in an Extreme Desert for a change of pace.  I rolled a decent starting set of pawns.  No one with medical passion, but all pawns were capable of it and my highest was a 5 which is acceptable. Also no one with intellectual but I did have a Too Smart pawn that wasn't restricted from it, so I figured worst case I'd be okay.

Near the middle of the map was some stone with stoney soil around a ruin, so I settled there and planted potatoes immediately, while my builder stripped down all the ruins for stone and my cook hauled everything in.  We get a wind turbine and AC up before any heat waves but I'm still concerned about what happens if we get one and then the wind refuses to blow, so I save all my starting wood in case I need a passive cooler.

Two of my pawns become lovers, which was helpful for saving space and for the mood boost. Unfortunately, i'm down to 2 days worth of food rations, no visitors or traders have come by with food, and the only wildlife on the map, 2 iguanas, were hunted awhile ago.  We're going to starve unless action is taken and so my cook, who has decent shooting skill, takes one of the remaining rations and heads west toward the milder part of the desert in hopes of getting food.

Meanwhile, I expand my base using stone from the ruins and begin cutting more.  I'm also trying to get batteries researched but it's slow going. 

My cook arrives at the location and there is a herd of Gazelle there who promptly get taken down by his bolt action.  I butcher them on the spot with a butcher spot and get about 200+ meat which is taken back to the colony.  This provides enough food to last the colony until the potatoes are ready to harvest, and now we're stable.  A thumbo wanders in and gets dispatched after a lot of door peeking and now I have enough thumbofur to craft a duster. My best crafter is only a 5, so I hold off on that for the moment.

As I'm working on getting a freezer built, the colony is raided.  The raiders are killed easily but one survives who is a Tough, Trigger Happy, Quick sleeper with 11 crafting, intellect passion, good shooting and construction and no major health issues.  I quickly convert my main room into a prison temporarily while building a cell for her, because this pawn rivals my starters.

Shortly thereafter I get an escape pod with a marginal pawn. They're okay at mining which I could kind of use to free up my starting pawn with mining, but they decide to leave after being patched up and I don't feel like adding an extra prisoner to feed so I let them go.

Base expansion continues as I build additional storage and get private bedrooms built using stone I'm now cutting from chunks on the map.  The raider, Engie, joins the colony and crafts the Thumbofur duster into good quality.  70% sharp resistance, pretty damn good for this early.

Shortly after that, I get a incap'd refugee quest.  I usually ignore these, but it's Engie's husband and I know if I don't do it I'm going to get hit with both the husband died and the didn't help mood debuffs which will make Engie useless.  Considering how good of a pawn she is I really want to avoid that.  The site is guarded by 2 turrets and 1 enemy.  With my bolt action the turrets are a non-issue, so 1 enemy should be doable.  I give Engie the duster and my starting Flak and advanced helmet and she goes off to save her husband.

She manages to take out the guard without being hit and saves him.  As a bonus, there were two batteries which I claim and uninstall to bring back with me, saving me from having to research them. Engine's Husband, Xaiver turns out to be not bad.  He has intellect passion and Too Smart, so I've found my researcher.  The only downside is Psychic Hypersensitivity, so I make a mental note to pick up a foil helmet. 

Engine gets hit with food poisoning from raw potatoes on her way back, and Xavier is still too hurt to walk so their caravan slows to a halt and they won't have enough food to make it.  I send another pawn out to meet up with them with more food, and the three of them make it back a few days later without any further incidents.

I decide to start doing research hard at this point while pausing expansion to keep my wealth low while I push research. Engine and Xavier are set up on alternative shifts on the research bench.  I get Solar Power, Smithing, Machining, Gunsmithing and Flak, and then push into Microelectronics and Multi-Analyzer.

Two of my pawns are sent out with my starting silver and the thumbo horn to the nearest neutral outlander to get Plasteel for the multi-analyzer (I had the gold already) and advanced components for fabrication.  The pasteel is easy enough but there's no advanced components for sale.  After dropping off the pasteel back at the colony they head out again to another base and trade the rest of my silver for 3 advanced components.

Meanwhile, we get another Thumbo but the duster only ends up being normal quality.  Still not too bad.  We got a trade offer for 4 dusters for an infinite chemreactor which was fullfilled.  Not a huge deal but not bad.  My two starting pawns got married then got divorced.  I'm currently half-way through researching fabrication.  Three of my pawns have come down with the plague and my best doctor is still a 5.  They got 70+ treats on all three though, and this is the first time I've touched my starting meds, so I'm not worried. I'm not sure exactly what my next move is.  Wealth is at 30k which is making me nervous, I'd prefer to be close to 25k or even 20k.  i'm not exactly sure why it seems higher than usual.  Maybe the thumbo dusters. I'm going to need to focus on increasing my combat power, although doing that will just raise my wealth even more.



[attachment deleted due to age]

[Greep]

I didn't mean it as an insult so much as a joke.  It's hard to keep track of thousands of changes, so I just thought it was a funny oversight.  I guess I'll just use a more boring tone.  It was off topic I guess, though.

[Polder]

Relying on nutrient paste as main meal while also producing survival rations for caravans results in a lot of micromanagement since pawns will immediately take a survival ration into their inventory. So I have to watch the survival ration production like a hawk to immediately forbid any that are produced, and often having to persuade the cook to drop the ration he just produced.

Why isn't there a meal schedule like there is for drugs? It would be nice to control what pawns are allowed to eat, and what they are allowed to take into their inventory.

[Awe]

In any case I do like using inspirations on power armor.  Putting cyborgs in machine armor is weird and awesome.

Legendary lances are too good to waste inspirations to armors. 45 damage with 67 ap - potential torso one-shots on any humanoids. Excellent power armor is more than enough to have decent protection. 

[mlzovozlm]

Relying on nutrient paste as main meal while also producing survival rations for caravans results in a lot of micromanagement since pawns will immediately take a survival ration into their inventory. So I have to watch the survival ration production like a hawk to immediately forbid any that are produced, and often having to persuade the cook to drop the ration he just produced.

Why isn't there a meal schedule like there is for drugs? It would be nice to control what pawns are allowed to eat, and what they are allowed to take into their inventory.

what i often do is to make a stockpile specifically for it, if i need 200 SPM, i put exclusive 20-tile stockpile, the pawns tend to throw produces all over the place, & you need to have haulers/doggies or manually merge them or wait for them to fill the stacks later

any new produce put on a forbidden stack become forbidden, so limit the stockpile zone to force them to put it at the right place, less micro-ing

[Awe]

Relying on nutrient paste as main meal while also producing survival rations for caravans results in a lot of micromanagement since pawns will immediately take a survival ration into their inventory. So I have to watch the survival ration production like a hawk to immediately forbid any that are produced, and often having to persuade the cook to drop the ration he just produced.

Why isn't there a meal schedule like there is for drugs? It would be nice to control what pawns are allowed to eat, and what they are allowed to take into their inventory.

what i often do is to make a stockpile specifically for it, if i need 200 SPM, i put exclusive 20-tile stockpile, the pawns tend to throw produces all over the place, & you need to have haulers/doggies or manually merge them or wait for them to fill the stacks later

any new produce put on a forbidden stack become forbidden, so limit the stockpile zone to force them to put it at the right place, less micro-ing

Why not just exclude(via zoning) stockpile with SPM for anyone except cook and set cooking bill to deliver to that stockpile? Or place SPM stockpile near fine meals, so pawns just prefer fine meals over SPMs. Also never understand that NPD scrooging. At the point when you can spare some pawns from main base to caravan trips you already must have steady food supplies.

[Awe]

WOW.  Check out that market value.  Cyborgs are hot.

Sigh. Pawn - 20k, legendary lance - 4k, good power armor set - 5k, some devilstrand clothes - 1k. Total 30k just at one pawn. 10-15 pawns and you fly above 500k like rocket.

[attachment deleted due to age]

[bbqftw]

PPPS all IED costs doubled  hahahahaha what a meme get funpoliced @greep

.  Muh sapper control.  Pity about the raid cap, I was about to let seriously let myself go just right now.  It's 20k cap, but that's just to stop computers from frying I guess.

I like the evolution of IEDs:

"
-People aren't using IEDS, time to lower their cost by ~1/3 by removing the component.
-Oh noes people are using IEDs!  double it!
"

It's like that "I am a strategic geniu- OH NO!" meme.

This derisive analysis is missing information. IEDs are much more powerful than before (larger explosion, 100% trigger chance, no explosion delay), plus the removal of a need for 2 hauling trips to construct each one saves a ton of colonist labor. Of course I'll be watching play and change it again if needed, but this seemed like a better solution than reducing the explosion radius to match a single mortar shell (I'd rather tools be big and satisfying and a bit pricey, than cheap and weak and spammy).

The derisive tone in this message is both unconstructive and against the rules (rule 2: derisive tone as well as rule 1: personal insult). Remember that when you write here you're writing messages that I will read. I am a human. Derision and implied insults like this are both wearing on me personally as well as pointlessly dragging the conversation from "let's collaborate to make a better game" to "let's recreationally insult this game, what an idiot Tynan is, haha". That's why it's poisonous to the conversation and against the rules. If you see a change you disagree with, first actually play it to get some experience with it (because you may not understand it in context), and second write your experiences and thoughts on it constructively. Engaging in experience-free sniggering may seem fun, but it is rulebreaking, off-topic, and useless and that's why you were warned for this post.

and what exactly was the use rate of IEDs by strong players in b18?

Ill just state several things regarding IEDs based on how they are typically used (in both observed streamer and my own play):

* it is faulty to relate their utility in most cases to either k*radius or k*radius^2 because enemy force concentration doesn't similarly scale up.

* since you cannot remote detonate IEDs you are looking at even more restricted uses (comparing to deadfalls you missed out if you don't hit multiple targets, my threshold is about 4+ to beat simple coverbaiting with deadfalls). Is IED use against sappers considered undesirable? Is it considered an exclusive tool against classic 'unsmart' raids (the classic types + assaulting siege)?

I will say that there are very effective enclosed IED setups out there, however they use very counterintuitive methods to achieve properly timed detonation and furthermore are only usable in killbox esque setups that guarantee the necessary enemy concentration.

And if they get revealed, the foundations of such play are in jeopardy. Come to think of it, there's a lot of interesting rimworld strategies floating around the internet in form of unlisted videos..

It is interesting you tell Greep to play the patch. Two things:

1. In the interesting of not wasting your time, you may not want to test things that on face seem grossly suboptimal (not everyone likes throwing away colonies with 10+ hour play time). You said it yourself, reloading is terrible way to play. Unfortunately, that precludes comprehensive testing.

2. Experience allows us the ability of simulating game states without playing them out. He has hours of experience evaluating the resource cost and utility of IEDs. If he fails, his win chance drops dramatically.

In other words I would trust greeps judgement over current state of IEDs vs you, whereas I am assuming you don't exactly have the time to grind merciless attempts in various biomes.

I'd also caution using streamers as a route to see efficient play. Their purpose is generally to entertain, not to improve, and there is also selection bias in that we tend to watch people that reinforce our view.

Most streamers feel elated for defeating a raid while taking many casualties. Someone with the attitude for learning will be unsatisfied with the raiders taking a single unnecessary shot.

[Awe]

@Tynan, what changed in building priceing so much? +30% to base wealth after 1.0->0.19 upgrade.

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[alxddd]

Storyteller: Phoebe
Difficulty: Rough
Biome/hilliness: Temperate Forest/Mountainous (2C to 24C) 40/60 day Growing Period
Commitment mode: Yes
Current colony age (days): 373 days
Hours played in the last 2 days: 20+ (been home sick in bed. perfect for testing)
Complete mod list: Conduit Deconstruct

graphs and screenshots - https://imgur.com/a/0mMZqbo

Let me just start with two requests - 1. Please bring back the new art for components, meat, et al. It made sense, it was not too hard to see, it was a refreshing addition that make the current components look like nonsense (no offense), and the current raw meat look more like a pile of kibble, or cooked meat, or literal feces. Raw meat is bright red. and 2. Can you just make Rimworld run by default in 64-bit so I don't have to make those extra clicks when opening it? Bury the 32-bit in the right click menu of Steam.

Every game I plan on having a story to tell at the end of it, but 373 days into my colony I realize the kinds of notes I take are more Things I Noticed and less, How We Lost Colonist A. I would like if in the History Graphs there was a way to look at significant events. I know you can hover over the little pink dots, but a little more would be nice to look back on a long colony like this. So forgive me if this is a little all over the place.

This is one of the the longest colonies I've had, and definitely the most stable I've had in a long time. Early on I felt like I had trouble balancing everything that I wanted my 3 colonists to do. I think this was partially a product of digging into a mountainside, although all of the bedrooms were against the mountain, not in it. But it was a good sort of feeling of always catching up and trying to get to a certain point but never quite getting there. It was a fun early game because of this, especially when early game can often feel routine after playing so much of one game (440 hours and counting).

I've felt inclined to do things that I've never done before in this game, which I feel is because every option is feasible in different situations more than they used to be. For example, I completely skipped over wind turbines, which is usually my go to, and actually relied on chemfuel for awhile in the early game, and still turn them on in the winters now. I also actually used the nutrient paste dispenser, especially early on.

On Caravans:

- There's definitely something to be done regarding clothes and caravanning. I'd like to see some kind of warning for if your colonists might suffer from hypothermia when caravanning with insufficiently warm clothes. Similarly, I tried to save a fallen refugee in the winter, but when I got there she was naked. I waited for her to be able to walk so as not to slow down the caravan, but almost immediately upon departure she fell again because she was naked. I brought clothes for her but there is no way to give them to her. We ended up being so slowed down so much that she died of hypothermia. I noticed later on in the game that when you transport pod somewhere all of the things you've transported fall onto the ground so you have access to them. I'm not sure if this is the solution to accessing more clothes while caravanning, but it would be nice to be able to clothe the refugees with clothes that you bring for them, otherwise saving refugees in the winter in the early-mid game is just impossible.

- We need either some kind of portable recreation to travel with, or to have recreation needs eliminated while traveling. Maybe you can make horseshoes, the hoop game, and the cards from the poker table all able to be added to a caravan to meet these needs. That feels more immersive than getting rid of the need. Or beer and smokeleaf could be adjusted to give just enough recreation to suffice on the road.

- I would also love if caravans that are less than, say, 0.5 days away from their destination (or even just if they're that close to home) push past their regular curfew and get home in the middle of the night. It's so frustrating to see half of your colony set of camp for the night 0.2 days away from home.

- Item requests have occasionally been useful, but mostly ignorable. Too often the risk is not worth the reward. I think when you're having to send the colonists away for days, and risking injury or death, it doesn't feel worth it when it's something you can just make. It's only the serums and AI cores that really feel like you want to take the risk, or when there's a colonist to gain. (I'm all for recruiting most colonists regardless of abilites (to a point) so saving a lot of them has been really fun.) Also raiding enemy bases for the silver does feel worth it because silver can be whatever you need it to be, plus dropping into their bases in drop pods is a blast. I also like the caravan requests, although in the midgame it became apparent to me that I'm unsure of if you can fulfill trade requests via pods or if you have to go to it yourself. If you can't already, podding those would be a great addition to the later game.

I had a great experience where a bulk trader helped me fight off a pirate raid, which was really fun. I was able to maneuver around them and work together and they didn't get mad at me for anything. It was super fun. They had one person shatter her spine in the fight though and they left her behind. I thought maybe the AI should not leave anyone behind and be designed to pick her up and take her with them just because they're not heartless monsters, but since they didn't I kept her in my makeshift hospital at the time and fed her and cheered her up. I realized pretty quickly that she was not healing at all and so she just stayed in that bed for maybe longer than a year. I was happy to keep her fed until we were able to buy or make a new spine sometime in the late game, but then one day she just got up and left! Is this a bug, or an act of God?

On Raids:

- Raid variety has felt really good. As you can see by the screen shot, I've gone without walls and with three (really four) access points to my base so I've been pretty vulnerable and without a killbox. It's only been in this later part of the game I've started doing some walling off as I prepare for the ship raids. I had one raid where three different raid groups landed in three difference clusters around the map and all attacked at once, but fled separately. That was one of the most fun raids I've ever had - fighting on three fronts and realising they weren't all going to flee together was really great. I haven't had any tribal raids because they've been neutral towards me (or more recently allied) so I can't speak to those. I've had a few infestations as you might imagine and they've been pretty scary but feel balanced. I think with the new combat system and how injuries are working it's making these infestations feel less overwhelming because you aren't as scared of losing a colonist. I also like that the deep drilling infestations are much smaller (and I think more aggressive?) because it gives you another type of infestation to fight off and it also gives you that positive feedback because you should be able to fight it off pretty easily (until one hits you at a bad time).

- Have you made death on downing more likely with raiders in the last week or two? It feels like it's so hard to capture downed raiders now. I'm not one to build these 30-50 people huge colonies, but I did feel like it was hard or impossible to keep up my warden's social skills without ever having anyone in my prison.

On Transport Pods:

- I thought that transport pods were straight up broken until I realized that you could build the loaders so that they attach. Maybe this could be made clearer when building them? I also don't understand the "Select previous in launch group" buttons for the loaders. What is it meant to achieve? This is unclear.

- Loading transport pods is also somewhat broken. It feels like it behaves a lot like caravans used to, where it works if you're loading multiple colonists, but if there's just one of them it takes them forever to load and they end up starving and passing out from exhaustion. Colonists should maybe follow their work/recreation/sleep schedule while loading pods so in order to avoid this. I also know other colonists can help load but they don't seem to prioritize it and it doesn't seem to work properly unless you're transporting multiple colonists at a time.

- When you're shooting transport pods filled with colonists and alpacas or whatever into the world, I'd like to see a how much weight they'd be able to carry once they land and become a caravan. I send my trader out to trade with a nearby settlement and he was immediately immobile. It would nice if you could see Weight of Pods (which you currently can see), Weight of Items, Carry Weight, or something like that.

On Building:

- I would like to see the minimum range for the Autocannon and Uranium Slug Turrents when building them.

- I would like to see electricity required as a stat when building something that requires electricity

- just like you can't overlap watermills within their in-water range, maybe you shouldn't be able to build bridges there too, for logical consistency.

- the tailoring bench was destroyed along with many other things in an Infestation. Everything automatically queued to be rebuilt except for the tailoring bench, and it is definitely in the home zone. I would also love to see the same bills already there when a bench is auto-rebuilt, but I'm not sure if that's possible. I think maybe it actually was like that for the brewery, but not for the drug lab.

On Tailoring, Clothes and Assignments:

- How do colonists decide what to wear? I customize it quite a bit, but if I allow dusters and parkas they don't switch with the change in temperature, whether it's winter to summer or a cold snap/heat wave. Would be nice if they made that change themselves.

- I love the way I can fine tune the tailoring bench and clothing assignments. I can set up each article of clothing I want them to wear to be made until we have (# of colonists), include equipped, only between 60-100%, and have them remove any clothing at 51%. That way by the time their clothes are tattered, they should have a replacement ready for them.

- That being said I would love to be able to do this with weapons and with food and drugs if possible. Setting up the workbenches to be the same would be easy enough, and then just adding a couple of columns to the Assign tab would mean that you could manage what food, drugs, and weapons are equipped at all times. It feels like such a natural fit for the game and UI I can't believe it's not already there.

--

I felt a lot of struggle to keep up with cooking this game. With a full freezer adjacent to the kitchen, autodoors, two stoves, two night cooks and a day cook, I was having trouble feeding 12 colonists at times. I really don't understand what was going wrong as I've never had this problem before, but it feels a little ridiculous to need 1/4 of your colony to be cooking full time in order to survive.

Also on food, I don't know if it's just the biome but I had so much wildlife to hunt at all times it felt like I almost could've gone without growing. It was just a constant flow of animals to hunt.

Wild tree regrowth seems really good, at least in the Temperate Forest. Not too fast to be spammed but not too slow to feel like it's not worth building in the forest.

I had a pretty hilarious situation play out with a couple of dead colonists. I was saving them in the freezer, hoping to find myself some resurrection serum. It turns out those are way harder to find than I thought. Because I had earned 3 early in the game I thought maybe they were more frequent. I haven't seen one since. Anyway, after a very long time with their bodies in my second freezer I decided to give up and bury them in a sarcophagus as they should be. But I noticed something odd - they were missing their heads. I'm pretty sure my dogs ate their bodies while I wasn't paying attention - which is hilarious. I also noticed that my colonists didn't get a Colonist Left Unburied debuff. Intentional?

I was definitely getting notifications even yesterday of colonists that weren't in my colony getting sick, as well as my log tells me I've lost 8 colonists but I only remember losing 5. I also had a colonist rescue mission for a colonist the game told me was previously in my colony, but I definitely hadn't seen her before.

The midgame feels good, but the late midgame/early late game starts to feel like a bit of a slog. It might just be me though, it just feels a bit like I want to be where I'm going already as opposed to liking the process of getting there. I know that's super vague and probably unhelpful but it's how it's feeling right now. Just for reference I'm still researching the last couple of ship building requirements and am trying to push through to late game.

The need for gold to make advanced components is difficult but probably necessary, but advanced components has definitely been what's been holding me up. I'm not sure if it's for the better or not but it does seem like something that should be at least a little bit hard to come by so if that's the goal, it's working. I haven't hit the depletion of steel everyone's been talking about yet due to deep drilling, and I also follow the ABC's of Rimworld - Always Buy Components - so that hasn't really been a problem for me either.

I'm not really sure what to make of the long range scanner as it still hasn't done anything for me yet. I get that it's a use for your researcher after all researching is done, which is great. I just haven't seen any results despite having two colonists set for nothing but researching for a long time now.

Please include the Conduit Deconstruct in the game. I wasn't using any mods for most of this run, but this one's near essential if you want to do any cleaning up of your mess of cables in the late game. It's maybe the only mod I see now as still being missing from the base game.

That's all I can put together from memory and notes so far. I'll be trying to take flight next and will report back with my late game feelings when I do.

Also, I just wanted to link to this long suggestion list which I think is really, really good for everyone who hasn't seen it.
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=43150.msg425141#msg425141

Edit: I just had an allied faction fall to neutral because a wild wolf went revenge on them while their caravan was hanging around my base, and their goodwill fell to -30.
Update: Twice in one visit.

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[Bolgfred]

It is interesting you tell Greep to play the patch. Two things:

1. In the interesting of not wasting your time, you may not want to test things that on face seem grossly suboptimal (not everyone likes throwing away colonies with 10+ hour play time). You said it yourself, reloading is terrible way to play. Unfortunately, that precludes comprehensive testing.

2. Experience allows us the ability of simulating game states without playing them out. He has hours of experience evaluating the resource cost and utility of IEDs. If he fails, his win chance drops dramatically.

In other words I would trust greeps judgement over current state of IEDs vs you, whereas I am assuming you don't exactly have the time to grind merciless attempts in various biomes.

I'd also caution using streamers as a route to see efficient play. Their purpose is generally to entertain, not to improve, and there is also selection bias in that we tend to watch people that reinforce our view.

Most streamers feel elated for defeating a raid while taking many casualties. Someone with the attitude for learning will be unsatisfied with the raiders taking a single unnecessary shot.

You know that you completely missed his point? e.g. The first sentence "This derisive analysis is missing information"

Furthermore this sounds like you have a personal problem with someone elses behaviour. Might better send a private message instead of writing literature in an unrelated topic.
Thank you.

[Broken Reality]

IED's were changed again? Something I never use and wouldn't know to try due to changes because we don't know the changes and I don't have the statistic of everything noted down. Tynan I would honestly love to know what your base design vision is. What meta you are aiming for. Because killboxes are gone, apparently enclosed bases aren't your desired design either.

I tried an open base design with kill corridors for sniper turrets. My own people have a high risk of getting shot by my own turrets and manhunter packs are now a much greater threat, especially as they reliably break down doors when multiple manhunters attack a door once each (even one no one has gone through manhunters still just randomly attack doors). So that design is a bust.

Turrets and IED need you to concentrate the enemies to get effective fields of fire. It seems all your changes are going against concentrated fire and fixed defences (both staples of historical and modern combat).

As it is I could post the same story each day of how my colony starts out the same, without any experimentation, but my reports would never include IED, turret or traps in that case. I tried them several times throughout this process and without knowing that something changed I'm hardly likely to try them again. They all feel pretty useless with current raid types and prevalence. I get you dislike theorycrafting that happens on posting notes but I'm not someone that dives in to the files to look for changes nor do I have a list of values for items.  I want to test things. Also how are we to know if something is a bug or intended behaviour? Maybe you wanted to not have infections send a letter how were we to know for example.

Edit:- from my past few colonies I hate the trader/visitor gifting it is way too much. First colony - 3 visitors/traders - first 11 glitterworld meds, next two left 700+ total silver (I had just bought advanced components off of one of them essentially making them free). Second colony  - 51 plasteel, 700+ silver. Now this is at the start of the game when I already have - crops planted, store room, food being cooked, bedrooms, no colonists ill or injured. Oh and 11 glitterworld on day 2 or 3 makes you effectively immune to the first few diseases and infections even with no doctor. This is not fun. I you want this in to help new players or something then keep it to the lower difficulties not in hard and higher.

another not fun thing from past few playthroughs is infestations happening on large and small hills maps because you mined out 2 tiles of overhead mountain near your base. I'm not exaggerating it was literally 2 tiles in a storeroom. I don't tunnel in to hills as I don't want infestations (I'm totally fine with them if i was playing a mountain map or even digging in to large hills). Getting a 7 or 8 hive infestation just because of 2 tiles is stupid. I shouldn't have to keep checking for even the tiniest bit of overhead mountain near my base and then filling any in with walls.

PS I didn't have known about the larger explosion, 100% trigger chance, no explosion delay for IED's till you posted in reply to Greep. Now I may try them out.

[rdshen]

Storyteller: Cass
Difficulty: Whatever Rough is currently called
Biome/hilliness: Taiga, Small
Commitment mode: Yes
Current colony age: 4-5 yrs?
Hours played in the last 2 days: ~4?
Complete mod list: None

A. and what exactly was the use rate of IEDs by strong players in b18?

B. Ill just state several things regarding IEDs based on how they are typically used (in both observed streamer and my own play):
* it is faulty to relate their utility in most cases to either k*radius or k*radius^2 because enemy force concentration doesn't similarly scale up.
* since you cannot remote detonate IEDs you are looking at even more restricted uses (comparing to deadfalls you missed out if you don't hit multiple targets, my threshold is about 4+ to beat simple coverbaiting with deadfalls). Is IED use against sappers considered undesirable? Is it considered an exclusive tool against classic 'unsmart' raids (the classic types + assaulting siege)?

C. I will say that there are very effective enclosed IED setups out there, however they use very counterintuitive methods to achieve properly timed detonation and furthermore are only usable in killbox esque setups that guarantee the necessary enemy concentration.
And if they get revealed, the foundations of such play are in jeopardy.

D. It is interesting you tell Greep to play the patch. Two things:
1. In the interesting of not wasting your time, you may not want to test things that on face seem grossly suboptimal (not everyone likes throwing away colonies with 10+ hour play time). You said it yourself, reloading is terrible way to play. Unfortunately, that precludes comprehensive testing.
2. Experience allows us the ability of simulating game states without playing them out. He has hours of experience evaluating the resource cost and utility of IEDs. If he fails, his win chance drops dramatically.

E. In other words I would trust greeps judgement over current state of IEDs vs you, whereas I am assuming you don't exactly have the time to grind merciless attempts in various biomes.

(letters added for organization)

A. What would you do with that information? What non-snarky purpose do you have to open with that?

B. My experience differs. I'm usually able to land at least couple people in a well-placed IED. Where are you getting 4+ hits to compare to a deadfall? If you look naively at resource costs I guess, but there's more to it than that. If there's a big raid and two people walk over my IED I've done more damage than a two traps would, from one trigger. I've also caused some sort of interaction with the world from the explosion. Bombs can knock down roofs, set fires, set off chem-fuel. What's more I'm likely to hit more than 2 anyway if the raid behaves the way raids do.

C. I'm usually able to use IEDs well enough without kill-boxes. They usually end up replacing my most successful traps. Then again I don't play the highest difficulty where I can only get by with boring/easy to execute cheese strats like kill-boxes or door abuse.

D1. There's a reason he asks for many play reports. It's so he can get the comprehensive testing over people playing the game the way it was meant to be played and in many configurations. If you're providing 10,000 trials from the same colony or test scenario, that isn't as valuable as 100 trials from different colonies under different difficulties being run by different brains.
D2. Not even going to touch this one. It's dripping with arrogance and probably the main reason I wrote this post.

E. Don't underestimate what five years of consumer feedback over the course of a long period of time and many balancing configurations can provide. Also, why is merciless specifically relevant here? Merciless is meant to be unfair, and demands the use of boring cheese strats that are more optimal than tactical strategies. If you balance around Merciless the game is going to be poorly balanced very quickly.


People play this game on the highest difficulty when they can't get by on it without easy to execute cheese strategies and/or save scumming. Then they come out and say it's in one way or another an ego thing.

[bbqftw]

No one implied your opinions were useless because you don't play on merciless. You did that to yourself.

Show your setups. I am happy to learn.

PS I was referring specifically to tynan having better things to do than masochistic grinding runs on merciless, but that this means he has a gap of practical experience with those that do. And that this should not be dismissed.

[Squiggle]

Storyteller: Phoebe
Difficulty: Medium
Biome/hilliness: Temperate forest, flat, river (year round growing)
Commitment mode: No
Colony age: 100 days
Hours played in the last 2 days: 4
No mods.

Me: newbie; playing his second real game (after his first got blocked by a bug). Still learning mechanics so toned down the difficulty.

Started with three great colonists:
Rissa: Apprentice oracle and Casket builder who does: cooking, medical, intellectual pursuits
"Rock & Hoe": Caveworld tender and Geologist: mining and agriculture specialist
"Bridge-it": Medieval slave and Hiveworld drone: shooting, construction, mining and plants with a great memory

Things started well enough; a few attacks by singles of which were were able to add a colonist or two. Some mad animals, but everything was easy to deal with. Mostly the struggle was trying to get to electrification and refrigeration. Colony got basically working and then got 3 rescue events and a outpost attack in a row. So formed up my 3 best shots, gave them my 3 best weapons, which wasn't much to write home about, and off they set off to save the world. They took minor injuries the first fight but saved a pacifist. Second fight was with all melee attackers and I had to save scum as I didn't really appreciate how melee vs ranged combat worked nor how fast they were and how slow my pawns were (I think at least one had food poisoning). Second attempt I cut down trees, hauled rocks and set up about 8 traps. We were untouched, will be placing traps every time now if I see melee defenders. Rescued a third colonist and got another joiner back at base, which managed to fend of a manhunter pack mainly through well placed traps.

Finally not long after the saviours arrived home the brother of one of my main colonists showed up asking for protection, we were happy to offer it and easily held off the bandits with the full crew. Now all of a sudden we were a large colony and though I'd anticipated the influx we struggled a bit with rooms and food. It was a diverse crew, but only one 80 year pawn had shooting above 10 and similarly only one with melee above 10, in fact most had combat skills much lower. We could build a colony, but could we defend it?

After an intense amount of building and figuring out everyone's best priorities and things were sailing along smoothly until I noticed some power outages. What's this? My solar panel is broken? Wait, so is my manufacturing table? Why did no one tell me about this? I checked my component levels, yup, all out. We were going to need to find a source of components and fast. Turned off as much as possible to reduce electric draw and looked around the map - not a single ship chunk or visible deposit to be mined. So we tamed a few more muffalos and alpacas and headed out to the nearest friendly outlanders. We packed basically all my food supplies, healing root, old clothes, and drugs; anything we could make more of. Plus my colonists were in good moods and one had a trade inspiration. Caravan was a success ending up with 38 components and a sniper rifle, but I was annoyed that no one would purchase my healroot, simple meals or tainted clothes, I couldn't even give it away as gifts!

Things kept going smoothly, and we completed a second component run before my base became fully operational, fully powered with a geothermal station and enclosed except for a bridge entrance and another ugly walk through a muddy pond. Survived a sizeable pack of manhunter raccoons even though they decided to attack a door. We still haven't found any components on the map, but I'm working towards a fabrication bench since we seem to have a lot of steel available instead, but it's a tightrope walk to save up enough for that (thanks to rimworld wiki for details) and keep everything running and powered.

First drop pod pirate raid hit, was only 5 guys and outside the base, some decent guns but nothing too scary. But when they decided to attack all of a sudden there was 4 more attackers I hadn't noticed... an additional raid, without warning? My team hid in the bunker across from our one heavily trapped bridge that led across the river into my base and fared well enough after I got over my initial surprise. Half the attackers started fleeing after a few casualties, so it definitely seemed to be two raids.

Finally started building the fabrication bench and it turns out it needs 2 advanced components - of which I have none. So I set out on another caravan journey with a couple stops, but no one else has them either. Hrm. I've built a comms console so maybe I'll get lucky with a passing spacecaft. Grabbed 35 more components while I could, and second shield belt, still annoyed the they refuse to buy some of my goods, and it's time to start prepping for the second winter. Might focus on an indoor grow-op of devilstrand while I wait?

Colony mental health has been good, not too many fights, despite 12 people in size with a few neurotics and depressives. I have a bunch of kind colonists and very few hotheads and everyone eats fine meals when they don't inexplicably eat pemmican.

Minor gripes:
Not getting notices for things I think I should.
Not being able to trade simple meals, herbal medicine, or tainted clothes on my caravan trips.
My first orbital trade seemed very awkward, it seems like I need to redesign my base to make that work (I have multiple stockpiles near where the items are used/made plus a catchall).

I have a ton of first-timer feedback that I will include elsewhere.

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