Unstable build feedback thread

[NiftyAxolotl]

I agree. I'm trying to make it more worthwhile to keep animals for things other than defense or hauling.

I totally agree with the goal, once upon a time I did a ton of analysis and balancing to try to make the farming case viable (several alphas ago), but it's hard as hell to actually get all the balance points working. Especially given how straightforward hunting is, and how manhunter packs deliver mass meat/leather. It's hard for raising animals to compete with that without being ridiculous in other ways.

Makes sense. But if domestic animals can't compete with maddened rhino meat, then... don't make them try? Give them reasons to exist that don't have easy substitutes. Hauling, combat, and Boomalopes' chemfuel work this way.
- There's a B18 mod that adds Chocolate Bunnies. Hilarious and unique. Doesn't matter if it's inefficient.
- Nuzzling feels like a random, incidental effect. Instead of a random colonist, pets should only nuzzle their master. That way, I'd feel like I have control over it and be motivated to get a pet for each colonist.
- Playing with a pet could be a recreation source.
- Milk and eggs are just substitutes for meat right now. If they (or chocolate or insect jelly) were required for lavish meals, they would have a distinct, specific purpose.
- If woollen furniture had a comfort bonus, then wool wouldn't just be a substitute for mid-tier leathers.

Alternately, you could let farms stay weak at high difficulty, but some QoL would make it more fun for lower difficulties:
- Assigning animals to multiple zones would be nice.
- An estimate of nutrition needs would be nice, especially on maps with winter.
- Managing unfertilized versus healthy/ruined fertilized eggs is clunky. Ruined fertilized eggs should transmute into unfertilized to simplify things.

Edit: Wow, you guys are trolling hard on raid progression. What is so hard to get about 1) civil discussions, and 2) having lots of expensive stuff in a bad neighborhood attracts thieves?

[Greep]

Storyteller: Randy
Difficulty: Savage
Biome/hilliness: Temperate forest/mountainous
Commitment mode: Nope
Current colony age (days):  305
Hours played in the last 2 days: 8
Complete mod list: Progress renderer


Is there something going on with the number of resources mined by drill? Like with the chemfuel a few builds ago? I'm getting a ridiculously low amount of uranium and plasteel. It already killed my uranium supplies. If that's intended, it's too little to maintain uranium slugs. I already invested research into the tech, materials into the scanner and drills, spending time drilling, fighting the occasional infestations (which also consumes the durability of the turrets), and presumably getting stronger events for possessing the resources  I don't feel like this amount it's worth all of that.

Edit: Oh, do I have to start a new game too? I think I started this game after chemfuel became unobtainable by deep drill.

Nah this was changed in the defs to those amounts.  I'm guessing it was in response to bbq's gigantic uranium piles and xeonovadan suggesting plasteel still felt abundant.  Which might even be correct for people with extreme levels of experience.  But that looks way too harsh for a normal player.

[Teleblaster18]

I agree. I'm trying to make it more worthwhile to keep animals for things other than defense or hauling.

I totally agree with the goal, once upon a time I did a ton of analysis and balancing to try to make the farming case viable (several alphas ago), but it's hard as hell to actually get all the balance points working. Especially given how straightforward hunting is, and how manhunter packs deliver mass meat/leather. It's hard for raising animals to compete with that without being ridiculous in other ways.

Makes sense. But if domestic animals can't compete with maddened rhino meat, then... don't make them try? Give them reasons to exist that don't have easy substitutes. Hauling, combat, and Boomalopes' chemfuel work this way.
- There's a B18 mod that adds Chocolate Bunnies. Hilarious and unique. Doesn't matter if it's inefficient.
- Nuzzling feels like a random, incidental effect. Maybe instead of a random colonist, pets should only nuzzle their master. That way, I'd feel like I have control over it and be motivated to get a pet for each colonist.
- Playing with a pet could be a recreation source.
- Milk and eggs are just substitutes for meat right now. If they (or chocolate or insect jelly) were required for lavish meals, they would have a distinct, specific purpose.
- If woollen furniture had a comfort bonus, then wool wouldn't just be a substitute for mid-tier leathers.

Alternately, you could let farms stay weak at high difficulty, but some QoL would make it more fun for lower difficulties:
- Assigning animals to multiple zones would be nice.
- An estimate of nutrition needs would be nice, especially on maps with winter.
- Managing unfertilized versus healthy/ruined fertilized eggs is clunky. Ruined fertilized eggs should transmute into unfertilized to simplify things.

As someone who always builds a big farm, you raise some interesting points.

I have to be honest:  I am not the sort of player who goes in for min/maxing efficiency.  I build a large farm every time, because given the circumstances, that's the sort of thing I'd expect a colony to do to help its survival. 

With all of that being said:  now that animals have to be maintained, would it be simpler to just increase the meat/leather yield on tamed animals exclusively to make a farm more viable?  They're eating cultivated hay, manufactured kibble, and being tended to when injured or sick.  I'd expect a domesticated animal who's being better fed, sheltered and cared for than it's wild counterpart to be bigger, stronger and healthier as a result.

Whether or not any change happens, I'm still going to try for a large farm in every game, even if it's a net loss of effort.  It's a pain in the ass, but honestly - it's one of the things that makes the game cool.

[SchizoidCrow]

For me, the thing with animals, at least for me, is that they have a certain level of maintenance attached to them. If Randy gives me a cow, I could keep it and milk it, but then I'll have to make a barn, assign allowed areas, assign an animal handler, plant hay for the inevitable winter/toxic fallout/wildfire, regulate the temperature of the barn for seasonal changes and cold snaps/heat waves, tend it when it gets the plague, make sure its safe during events, tend it when I forget to do that, feed it by hand because a warg bit its legs off, euthanize it because I don't have animal prosthetics to replace its limbs, and so on; or I could butcher it, get some meat now and plant a field of rice instead of hay. If I'm going to go that far out my way to keep an animal, it better contributes in a meaningful way, hence defense, hauling, and caravanning.

The Rim is inherently hostile for domestic animals. It's hard for me to justify investing resources into them when I'm constantly being assaulted and always desperate for more defense, productivity, and quality of life. It's the same reason I avoid long caravan trips.

Nah this was changed in the defs to those amounts.  I'm guessing it was in response to bbq's gigantic uranium piles and xeonovadan suggesting plasteel still felt abundant.  Which might even be correct for people with extreme levels of experience.  But that looks way too harsh for a normal player.

I see. Thank you.

Edit: I mean... by the time I need uranium to maintain turrets I usually have a strong enough economy that I can just do this: . I'll have my miners go into caravans instead, it's just not ideal to have colonists away. The change would probably affect more during the mid-game where I'd accept the few scraps of material; late-game is a matter of convenience.

[Thane]

Storyteller: Randy Random
Difficulty: Rough
Biome/hilliness: Caravaning. Forest, Desert, Boreal Forest etc.
Commitment mode: Sorta scummy, Tribal Start
Current colony age (days): It's dead (See wealth graph below)
Hours played in the last 2 days: 6-8?
Complete mod list: Core.

Spent 4 in game years caravanning. Setup a base for a year, Travel for a season, etc. My goal was to make it to the crashed ship, which was unfortunately in an extreme desert. Didn't quite make it...

Anyway. The core game feels really good now. Used to need Combat extended to make the guns feel powerful. Much better on that front. Still immersion breaking that tribes can get all the guns they need in one year yet tribal raids don't really have any.

Minor issues:
Table debuff. Still don't get it after all this time considering you can't put tables everywhere.
   
Can't specify food consumption during caravans. Should be able to ration food to stretch it out by a bit (This actually killed me as my pack animals consumed all my rations very rapidly leading to a starvation spiral).

Major Issues
Wools seem pointless in the current system. They don't provide much heat/cold and have terrible protection. It's so bad that my tribesmen preferred old leather tribal wear over new button down shirts and pants. This only changed once I had flak pants and leather shirts.

Enemy bases sometimes seem incredibly ill-prepared for the climate they are in. For instance you would expect that an outpost ina hostile environment would be kitted to actually reasonably live there. The fortifications are pretty nice, but their living zones are pretty terrible. For example, a faction I attacked in a rather inhospitable desert only had unrefrigerated simple meals and no crops. Like what? How are they living there? Bit of an immersion breaker.

Potential Exploits:
Heaters and other furniture can be used to transport large quantities of material cheaply. Heaters for example weigh 6kg, but can be broken down into near 40 steel which would take up 20kg normally. This makes it really easy to bring enough mats along to start up. Sure there's waste, but if you are traveling waste like that is inconsequential.

Also sieges seem to give up way too easily once you have a mortar. Get one good hit and they charge your fort. Sometimes they didn't even get their mortars set before they would charge.


[attachment deleted due to age]

[seerdecker]

I found out why my colonists no longer start with extremely low expectations on game start. The floor wealth is now counted for every tile on the map that isn't fogged.

this.wealthBuildings += this.wealthFloorsOnly;

So, it's no longer possible to add wealth to rooms through the floor without increasing the building wealth. That fixes the exploit.

Also, it removes the one sense of progression I had in the game. My main source of fun was to slowly improve the base by converting the floor into silver and gold tiles. It took a long time, but it was fun to try to survive during the process.

Reading the code, I see that everything meaningful counts toward wealth. Pawns, items, buildings, floors, even corpses apparently. It seems to me there's no point on working to accumulate wealth anymore. Having legendary sculptures, nice furniture and beautiful floors work against you. They increase the raid size, and also increase expectations, while not increasing the colonist mood enough to compensate.

I don't know what the solution is. I do feel that tying wealth to the difficulty is not fun. It adds perverse incentives. When players sabotage their own weapons, taint their own armors, in order to work around the wealth counter, something's not right.

Perhaps the difficulty could be induced by other means. E.g., the player could defy other factions, progressively wiping out the evil pirates, while facing increasingly challenging odds. That yields a tangible goal for the player (improve the world!) while not unduly penalizing the accumulation of wealth.

My hope is that the floor change gets reverted. Yes, it's an exploit, but it gives a sense of progression which is currently lacking in the game.

With that said, I like Rimworld a lot. Best of luck with the continued development.

[bbqftw]

The final holdout of "progression without stronger raids" is research. So I have a feeling we'll see that loophole close.

[East]

Storyteller: Cassandra Classic
Difficulty: Merciless struggle
Biome/hilliness: Tundra, Flat
Commitment mode: yes
Current colony age (days): 420
Hours played in the last 2 days: may be 15~20
Complete mod list: HugsLib, No Froced Slowdown, Numbers, Display Radius[1.0], Easy Speedup, Allow Tool

Scenario : Naked Brutality
Status: Escape to space.
Game version : 0.19.1987

I tried to play the game with low property.
Under 200,000 it was easy.

When you expel a person A, the rescue mission continues to reveal that person A.
Only person A has more than four missions to rescue.

I think deep drill nerf was necessary. Plasteel is now a 'real' precious resource.

The floor and the body made it very difficult to manage the property. In particular, floors are very expensive value compared to effects. I think you should either increase the effectiveness of the floors or make it less expensive.

Allies get up in bed for self-treatment.

Social fighting has become very dangerous. Teeth ... Too bad. It leaves injuries worse than bullets.

The drop to the base during the unstable period has been balanced. However, the bugs from the mountains seem to be out of control. It comes out too much.

[attachment deleted due to age]

[Broken Reality]

Storyteller: Cassandra Classic
Difficulty: Merciless struggle
Biome/hilliness: temperate forest, large hills
Commitment mode: yes
Current colony age (days): 40
Hours played in the last 2 days: 7
Complete mod list:

So now you no longer start the game with extremely low expectations as you are about 3-4k over the 10k wealth limit for it. Tried starting two colonies one crashlanded the other tribal and both had a fairly large amount of property wealth without doing anything at all. Claiming all the visible structures on the  map didn't seem to effect the wealth so it seems you already own all the ruins and have the wealth penalty for them.

Not sure if intended.

[Greep]

Storyteller: Randy
Difficulty: Merciless
Biome/hilliness: Sea Ice
Commitment mode: Yes
Current colony age (days): ~900 (last update was actually ~840)
Hours played in the last 2 days: ~10
Complete mod list: None

Only one more year of Sea Ice.  I think it's fair to say at this point, the map is basically conquered: in the last 2 years and with giving no care to raid size, no cannons were lost despite drop pods, nobody died except one guy I wanted to die, and I've got 12k steel, 1k uranium, 1k plasteel, 6k raid points, and multiple orbital strike targeters to handle extreme edge cases.  It took 15 years to get to this point, so I think it's fine that the player reaches a cozy end game at some point.  Graphs and upper/lower fort below.  I'll play this out some more just to see what happens when I start spamming gold statues and goofing around.  In any case, summing thoughts:

-I've said all I have to say about the raid formula.  Suffice to say there's ways I could even more severely game it that I haven't shown so that it would be easy to beat merciless if it's raid factor was 5 and not 2.2, but there's just no point in discussing it, as ultimately people who play "that kind of game" are just going to mod it if nothing is done about it.  I just find it odd that so much care and attention is spent nerfing and buffing various things when metagaming raids trumps everything.

-LRMS is very unreliable when you have only one of them and very powerful when you have more than one.  I noticed bulk trader ships cut their steel in half and this did not slow me down the slightest later on.  I would never start using it outside of sea ice now that I've done like 50 lumps, but it's an effective way to have infinite metals on other maps eventually.  Which is good.  But maybe there should be some sort of failsafe so the player doesn't go over a year with no lumps.

-Sniper turrets are surprisingly costly when you use a lot of them, I think this is because they seem to use the full 40 uranium to reload any time.  I ended up having to turn them off in the back whenever raids were weak, and mostly just turning them on to crush centipides.  Feels fine, though, they allow for a killbox limited only by economy and not size.

-Animals and EMP IEDs are extremely effective during drop pod attacks.  You can simply spam EMP IED traps everywhere in your base at a certain point in the late game and you can nullify about half of those attacks, and the ones you can't you can simply selectively release only a few sacrificial doggies to distract while keeping the rest alive.  I don't think this needs to be changed, drop pods need some sort of counter.

-Stone is crazily abundant thanks to trade ships on maps where it shouldn't be.  Once I could buy bulk traders out, I was getting like 5k stone per year.  Needless to say, you can see how I'm finishing up by expanding crazily, building a better killtrap, and just completely surrounding my turrets in traps all in the span of one year.

-Bigger and more expansive walls just make things very easy, particularly rings of walls, to the point where only drop pods, ships, and overwhelming raids were a threat.  Once you can mortar everything to death, that's the go to strategy.  As mentioned earlier, this might make sea ice the easiest "post end-game" map due to the movement speed.  There's no easy solution to this since removing area of effect attacks makes raid undoable after a certain point.  The only "real" solution requires dev time, and it's adding "bigger bads" that count for 2k+ raid points rather than bigger clumps.

-I never realized just how much I hate infestations till I found a map that cannot ever spawn them

-As many players better than I have echoed, it just makes no sense to put your pawns in any real danger since there's so many ways you don't need to, and high end power armor is the only real protection.  Mostly, I was using charge lances to outrange while using decoys, emps, turrets and traps to make sure I was never really shot at.  I guess it's essentially door peeking in drag only you can't retreat and lose everything if you screw up.  Eventually I planned to gear up everyone in inspired power armor and just nuke everything to pieces with miniguns, but I've yet to get to that point.

[attachment deleted due to age]

[bbqftw]

cassandra/merci / noob biome/ COMMITTED/ year 5 / too many / vanilla

240x bug infestation. Whenever I pan over to the main battlefield, screen almost freezes. I feel like having spiders die on down would help performance somewhat. Though it would still be problematic - I could tell when insects had aggro'd by a 5-second long freeze.


Woke at dawn to do battle, slaughtered insects for 10 hr straight, many walls destroyed, friendlies called.

Spoils of war:

And all this for what? Next infestation of 300 insects, which my computer will of course struggle with.

The march to 20k continues:



Get me off this planet.

[anitram]

Continuing my game, now on almost 500 days (Phoebe, base builder, temperate forest, no mods).

28 pawns and 6 dogs, farm animals + growing + hunting everything, but they eat like pigs. Winter is near its end, my stores are empty, occasional hare shows up. Pawns are on a brink of starvation. Manhunter pack appears, 13 arctic wolves, giving me just enough food to survive until the animals respawn and rice grows.

Had this event been changed to give tainted meat, this would have been the end of my colony. So please don't change it. 

I had another siege, I seriously don't know how to deal with those, so I again pulled all the pawns and sent them to direct combat. Damage was minor, but can a lack of tactics be a tactic?

[Wintersdark]

No. Just no. The event is fine as it is. Differing risk levels based on animal and differing levels of rewards as well. As others have said it is the last event that has a decent reward sometimes for taking the risk. You don't have to fight manhunters, they can be totally ignored. but you can take a risk and get a reward. I don't want to fight mechanoids if I can at all help it the risk v reward of confronting them is really bad. Manhunter packs sometimes I want to take the risk other raids are risk with little reward for overcoming them and I only fight them because you are forced to.

I'm with this fellow.

I really enjoy the temptation with manhunter packs.  Do I step out, try to fight them off?  If I'm successful, I can net a lot of meat and leather.  However, I'm exposing my colonists to teeth and horns, and even if you're reasonably well outfitted angry hordes of animals can do substantial damage if you're careless/overconfident/unlucky.

[Koek]

I had another siege, I seriously don't know how to deal with those

If you have mortars researched and built, just drop a few shells on them when they arrive. This triggers them to storm your walls making it a normal raid.
You could also send your fastest pawn with a long range weapon to try and get the same result. Be sure to keep that pawn at max range though, for he will be swarmed.

[bbqftw]

Just some notes about quality of life thingies -

Allow force hauling stuff outside a colonist's restricted zone.

Also, would be nice to have toggleable setting if colonist is about to attack something while undrafted. It is kind of annoying to see your colonist walked 30+ tiles outside his restrict zone to attempt to solo beat 10 insects to death.