Unstable build feedback thread

[Syrchalis]

So, I complained about inspirations before, but I didn't really understand how they exactly worked. Today I was making a modification to pyromaniacs so they get inspirations far more often. While doing that I was digging through Rimworld code and found how the randomness of inspirations works.

Let's just say... it's definitely better than complete randomness. Good mood = more inspirations. However, the message I'm getting isn't too good. To really achieve a lot of inspirations you need constantly very high mood. And there is really only two ways to achieve that in most situations:
Marriage or drugs.

So Tynan teaches us: Marriage or drugs = inspiration

[RawCode]

just got random gift from above

is such combination expected, it basically cancel each other?

[attachment deleted due to age]

[lowdegger]

I've just noticed that now when spaceship chunks land it no longer says that they have "landed" but that they have "impacted". "Impact" in the sense of collision is a noun and not a verb. It would make sense to call the machine parts you can mine "impacted machinery" but that is a different, though cognate, word meaning packed tightly together. Interestingly, the (incorrect) use of "impacted" to mean collided appears to be a back-formation from a figurative and abstract use of "impact" as a verb meaning to affect. In any case, I am thoroughly triggered by this piece of unfortunate diction in my favorite game of all time. 

[cactusmeat]

I noticed that the colonists don't receive a "Prisoner sold" mood modifier when using transport pods. I used a transport pod to send BOTH a prisoner and an unwanted colonist as a "gift" to a nearby settlement. It increased relations and caused an alliance but no one in my colony seemed to notice. There were absolutely no negative modifiers from the interaction, none for the prisoner, none for the colonist, and I wasn't checking psychopaths. Not sure if this is an intended feature, cheers! (Definitely on the latest build as of this post).

was the prisoner from the faction you sent it to? You're not selling them using transport pods because you gain nothing from it. Still strange nobody cares about shipping people off like this.

[RawCode]

first 100 days on randy merciless, no mods no cheats, temperate forest hills.

zergrush manhunter packs are fun, 20 labradors and 17 cows in single week, over 4k meat (that spoiled with extra large amount of warnings "item spoiled in storage" that pop up really fast)

also loot from raids addup and increase difficulty in passive manner, it's clear visible on double raid, killing everyone caused major spike in wealth.

Code Select Expand

<storyWatcher>
<statsRecord>
<numRaidsEnemy>11</numRaidsEnemy>
<numThreatsQueued>14</numThreatsQueued>
<colonistsKilled>5</colonistsKilled>
<greatestPopulation>9</greatestPopulation>
</statsRecord>
<watcherAdaptation>
<adaptDays>7.555555</adaptDays>
</watcherAdaptation>
<watcherPopAdaptation>
<adaptDays>10</adaptDays>
</watcherPopAdaptation>
</storyWatcher>

intentional "human sacrifices" do work and work really well, killing "bad" and useless colonists allows to keep adaptation and raid points at bay.

[attachment deleted due to age]

[Squiggle]

The story continues:

Storyteller: Phoebe
Difficulty: Medium
Biome/hilliness: Temperate forest, flat, river (year round growing)
Commitment mode: No
Colony age: 195ish days
Hours played in the last 2 days: 8+? (doh)
No mods.
Me: newbie.

Part I: https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=41766.msg425195#msg425195
Part II: https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=41766.msg426124#msg426124

The fallout ends a few days later, and there is much rejoicing and removal of roofing.

I decide to open up the ancient danger and prepare a defensive position: a couple of turrets and sandbags across the river from the danger. Fox, my main melee expert opens up the wall and I reveal a scyther and a lancer - not too scary, and the scyther goes down in a hail of fire. The lancer fires from inside and hits my boomalope that survived the fallout and now wandered into the middle of the firefight. BOOM! Now there is fire between us and I'm going to need a new breeder boomalope. The EMP grenadier tosses a grenade inside and the two melee charge in and finish it. That feels good.

I need to go to bed, so instead of playing safe I just have most of my ranged pawn go stamp out the fire while the 2 shielded melee open the pods. How bad can it be? 5 angry, well equipped cryo-people and a brush fire with most of my people in the open between them and my autoturrets make for a messy fight. The sleepy dude in the marine armour seems unstoppable, my smoke belts are exploding everywhere, but they have no melee and in the end Rissa, my silver plated (from a trade mission) brawler, and Fox with her thrombo horn take them down and the worst wounds are to my pride.

The focus now on the colony is research and figuring out how to not sprawl out in every direction while still meeting our needs. Time for some renos. A large group of panthers come in to criticize our redecorating, but the new sally ports work well, although I'm having trouble getting everyone to change into their combat gear in time.

Things are back to normal, I do a trade quest (Vanometric power cell for 5 adv components, free power seems to good to be true but I've been really trying hard to save up those components so I can switch to ship building... sigh), some Zzzts, but I've already researched how to minimize the damage using power switches. I actually have too much power now but no good ways of turning it off, will need to add that to the reno. Another trade request for 37 button down shirts... I don't yet have a expert crafter, but maybe my lacklustre pawns can improve on the job.

Then my first sapper raid hits. Two groups, same direction, the first close enough that it is a mad scramble to get people back into base and geared up. I forget entirely about the other group, while some visitors who were hanging out decide to charge into the first group, 2 vs 7. It's all over in seconds and there are fires from molotovs everywhere. At least it gave me a bit more time to get changed. The first group continues south and hits the main bridge defence and gets pretty mangled, some split off south for unknown reasons but run into traps, and I'm just congratulating myself when I notice there is a pirate in my base right behind me, one of my pacifists is already trying to serve them tea. Argh! I send my three melee pawns into close quarters fighting and split the rest into firefighting, mop up, and fire support for the brawlers. The pirates have other ideas and just start lighting everything on fire. So it turns into a dust up in the hallways while everything is burning down around them. I send in a nearby pacifist to open doors, take off roofs and fight fires and we manage to down the pirates, take 3 prisoners and put out the fires. No serious permanent injuries, just some missing fingers. Whew. The fire trashed a couple a rooms, but is easily repaired.

Set off on the shirt trade caravan and Granny had her 81st birthday and became Frail. Strange that other pawns don't celebrate their birthdays. I wonder if there are any bionics or serums for old age? On that note, I pick up 2 shooter serums on the way back which should help boost the combat readiness of the crew, but after the purchase I check out the Bios of my pawns and there really isn't a great candidate, everyone has slowly worked there way up to be pros and I don't want to waste it on skill decay. Not knowing what to do with all the tainted gear I took on the caravan, forgetting again that no one wants all this completely usable flak gear, I just dump it on the way back. Such a waste, can't even give it away. Getting worried about food again... so hard to know how much to plant.

When the caravan is halfway there the mechanoids drop pod in, scattered all over the map. Killed 3 chicks who were too little to keep up with the rest of animals running for the safezone while we gear up, but there's more where that came from. My sniper (and top constructor) is the first to engage a lancer and it almost immediately blows his left leg clean off. One of my original colonists. Gah. I'm panicked, not sure what to do, I move him into cover and try to figure out how to stop the bleeding, but there doesn't seem to be any of doing so (can't rescue until he is downed, can't treat until in a bed), eventually just having him drop his rifle for someone else, and have him ever so slowly and painfully one-legged hop to the hospital, blood spewing everywhere. Another scyther sneaks into the base from somewhere and colonists start dancing with him while Miney and his favourite chain shotgun keep the beat until the mech drops.

I get pirate outpost raid quest and wait for a couple prisoners to flip and then head out with 6 professional killers. The map is really small, a desert with just chunks for cover. I find the best corner to attack from, set up an animal area to keep the out of the way, and begin the assault. Things go according to plan, but 6 colonists vs 9 pirates makes me nervous without having decent defensive positions and only 1 set of marine armor. I'm not looking for fair fights with people's limbs and lives on the line. The charge lance wielding octogenarian sharpshooter and 2 shielded meleers are all nominated as MVPs.

Getting close to day 200, research is nearly done, I'm curious what it's going to take to build a ship to finally escape.


Gripes and suggestions summary:
- "At Ease" command for drafted pawns: hold your position but you can engage in eating, cloudwatching, tending to self or neighbours, etc.
   - Makes it easier when you are moving people into position while others are already there waiting

- Having some issues with excessive micro when getting geared up for combat, not sure what the UI fix would be, but when I switch colonists to their war loadout, then I want to have them drafted and going to a location after they get dressed. It's a lot of micromangement to switch the colonists outfits, wait for them to change, then notice that they are finished, draft and send to the right spot.
   - Maybe a change outfit button when colonist is selected (even when drafted). Then I could draft, queue an outfit change, queue location to move to.
   - I do like the outfit UI to change everyone at once, in my case each type of pawn has civvie clothes and battle clothes. Types are basically: melee, ranged, pacifist but I also have a hunter and grenadier subclasses of ranged.

- Moving pawns when they are close to each other is particularly challenging. Perhaps a modifier key (ctrl, etc) to force move to a position and bump the other person? (When you get bumped you move back along the path you came one space or the closest nearest space to that.)
   - Showing the final destinations of other pawns on the map might also help with coordinating everything. Ghosts of the pawns might even help with identifying who is going to be where?

- Would be nice if trade and caravan UIs remembered their current settings (so you can safely cancel, check out other info and return to the same place in the trade).
   - Add a button to clear all?

- More parties! (I would trade less mood boost per party for more parties).
   - Colonist birthday parties (at 10s of years?)
   - Celebrate outpost founding day
   - After major battles with few injuries

- Option to rescue/tend wounded before they are downed:
   - Tend: temporarily slow blood loss without permanent fixing?
   - Rescue: help pawn move to hospital

- The tainted mechanic is immersion breaking for me. I'd much rather have damage done to clothing from combat much higher and make clothing repairable and salvageable (time and resources sinks). Make damaged clothing sell for much less (and I assume it protects less well already). In real life I think there is a pretty steep dropoff, where secondhand clothing is fine if slightly worn (>90%) but once it has a couple of holes no one wants it.
   - Damaged clothing (at a certain % or at random) could have its maximum health reduced or even its quality.
   - This bothers me enough that I wouldn't ship with tainted still in the game (if it were up to me). It screams temporary hack (until a deeper mechanic and working economy is in place).

- Option to wait (and rest) before entering a map from a caravan so that you can be sure people are well rested/fed/recreationed/drugged and can plan assaults for night raids.
   - Counter raided while waiting!
   - Does darkness affect accuracy? Ninja raids!
   - I want night vision goggles (and they would be integrated into marine armor).

- Mineral scanners don't seem to do anything. Needs some sort of feedback or indication that something is going on. For example: square kilometeres searched. I've had a scanner for a long time but nothing has ever come up, but I don't know if that is because it is not being used enough. I'm not even sure how I'd make certain colonists scan versus research, so maybe change tuning to bills and allow for certain colonists to be selected.

- Multi-select which colonists are allowed to work on a bill would be nice. Sometimes hard to find a combination of skill requirements and work settings that gets the right people doing the right job.
   - The main problems come from different benches with similar skills. I want my best crafter to prioritize making X, but then make Y at a different bench, then Z. Not sure what the simplest UI would be for that. Perhaps a Priorities tab for colonists that shows all available tasks for them in ordered priority? You could flag a task with special priority which would move it to the top of it's group (i.e. first among equals).
   - Being able to view that and the Work UI at the same time would be nice so you could see how changing Work priorities changes your colonists task ordering.

[attachment deleted due to age]

[Aedaric]

Running version 2005 and the huskies are rarely completing a training attempt. I've watched two or three colonists spend several hours attempting to train my huskies and the huskies always move before they are given the complete or fail acknowledgement.

[RawCode]

just got tripple addiction prisoner from 30 people siege, managed to kill 19 and they flee.

[attachment deleted due to age]

[ScrapyardBob]

My suggestion for the floor wealth counts, even floors that were on the map at the start would be to introduce a new floor type for pre-existing structures.

- Crumbling stone
- Rusty steel flooring
- Rusty/Corroded steel wall

Give them a lower cost value and less resources returned.

[protobeard]

Death by a Thousand Cuts

Storyteller: Cassandra
Difficulty: Merciless
Scenario: Naked Brutality
Biome/hilliness: Arid Shrubland
Commitment mode: No, though I play in that style
Current colony age (days): ~20
Hours played in the last 2 days: ~8
Complete mod list: None

Just as things were getting stabilized a camel went mad. Zippy got off a few shots with her poor quality bow, but due to inexperience with the new door changes the camel muscled its way indoors. As I watched in horror, the camel bit Zippy in the shoulder, downing her. About 8 hours before she was going to bleed to death, Zippy gets up! She's at zero mood, but there's plenty of time for her to eat some berries from the floor and tend herself, right? Not quite... she gets food poisoning from the berries, vomits throughout her self treatment, and finally goes berserk. In her haze of camel bite and food poisoning induced rage, she attacks the 4 remaining chickens that joined the colony about a week prior (she'd been slowly slaughtering them as they starved to death in the corner). While Zippy is able to take out a couple chickens, she takes about 15 scratches and goes back down. Killed by her own chickens.

The Man in Black

Storyteller: Cassandra
Difficulty: Merciless
Scenario: Crashlanded
Biome/hilliness: Temperate Forest
Commitment mode: No, though I play in that style
Current colony age (days): ~40
Hours played in the last 2 days: ~8
Complete mod list: None

Nothing noteworthy early game -- I put up a few nice bedrooms and storage/dining rooms with about 2/3 of the storage built out of stone, but the freezer is still wood. Two of my colonists decided to get married, then immediately break up (seriously, the notifications came in at the exact same time: Propsal Accepted! Breakup!).

Of course immediately after I deconstruct the wooden freezer walls to upgrade them I get a raid with a molotov guy. My defenses are in shambles, and the raid goes about how you would expect -- the molotov guy lights the freezer on fire, as well as a bedroom, as well as all three of my colonists at various points. Finally we drive off the raid (with no deaths), but one of my two doctors can't move, and everyone is wounded. By the time I get the fires put out, everyone has infections. I'm able to get 2 of the three of infections treated before my doctor goes catatonic. So I've got one guy infected in such a way that he can't move, another infected and now catatonic, and a third infected who refuses to doctor at all. Infection lock -> certain death.

But no! A Man in Black appears to rescue me. He's even got good medical. Of course, he wants to change into the dogskin shirt that by some miracle didn't burn up in my storage room before treating anyone, but beggars can't be choosers. If my rescuer wants to change his shirt, let him. That being said, he isn't able to save anyone except the jerk who wont doctor, so really he's just the burial crew.

The Man in Black is kinda weird: his "sex" is "Man in Black." I assume there is a "Woman in Black" and that they suffer from psychic drones as appropriate. Just kinda a funny way to note the "in Black" origin. I was expecting it in the Backstory, but my Man in Black looks like a random wanderer.

I'm planning to keep going with this colony of now two; we'll see how it ends.

Initial Thoughts on New Door Behavior

• Theorycrafting: I want to like this b/c it's realistic, but I think I'm gonna hate it. A wall + doors used to be the best defense in rimworld. Now, not so much.
• First death: Died to a gazelle on day 4. The shame.
• Resurrect with dev mode and spawn a bunch of single person raids/animal insanity to try things out: Well, it's probably okay mid/late game where I can use the new behavior to lure a couple raiders inside a killbox trap (since raiders don't hold doors open). Early game is much harder.
• Further attempts: I'm not sure. I kinda like the idea, but the execution leaves something to be desired. I think my main issue is that it used to be possible to recover from a mistake during  micro on early raids (taking a hit from club man or whatever), now if I make a mistake the raiders/mad animals are in the base and it's likely GG. I'm sure I'll get better as I get used to how early I need to retreat now, but... meh.

• Early naked brutality is now much harder:
• one mistake in micro and raiders are in the base. (I know, git gud)
• one mistake in micro and ranged units are pretty much dead vs a melee unit. (I know, git gud)
• no longer safe to put anything outside by a door. A raider attacking a bench near a door is close enough to follow you back inside if you open the door. This doesn't seem terrible, just an adjustment.

• single mad animal events are much harder
• most animals are faster than humans now. Previously this meant you had to have an outbuilding to retreat into at a reasonable distance. Now you pretty much have to be inside all the time to be safe, since animals will always catch up and you can no longer shut doors in their faces.
• the animal AI around small buildings will often run around the corner. Peeking out to shoot frequently now means the animal gets inside. Previously, you could frequently get one shot at an animal as it came around a corner, then retreat. Now, taking almost any shot is suicide. Note: this is only really bad when you have a small building, as the animal will circle the building, staying close to the walls. Probably a non-issue later in the game, but early game this is painful.
• A short bow can fire one shot at an animal before you must retreat due to its short range/animal speed.

• A pawn outside the base is no longer even remotely safe, even if you have built outbuildings (see mad animal notes above).
• there are no longer "close calls" for anything chasing your pawn. Either you are obviously safe, or you're dead. (I know, git gud)
• A single melee hit on a pawn now ensures that raiders will enter the base. This is due to the interaction with various melee and door changes in 1.0 (slow down on melee hit + raiders entering doors means a pawn cannot ever get away if they get melee hit once)

Random notes from recent playthroughs

• I saw a 10 person siege, with 10 sniper rifles.
• Tried to fulfill a trade caravan for 8 normal jackets with a couple tainted (normal quality) jackets. Did not work -- which seems right to me, except nowhere in the UI does it explain why I can't fulfill the trade. It just gives me a message about needing 8 normal jackets, while I'm literally looking at a list of 8 normal jackets in the Items menu. I'd recommend changing the wording of the event to say something like "they want 8 non-tainted jackets."
• Incapable of violent pawn went berserk
• I saw a Tough Wimp in the pawn selection screen
• I keep forgetting where "smooth surface" is. I expect it to be in the structure menu, since it applies to walls now. It's also kinda a painful tool to use since (1) I can't just drag it quickly for floors now - I have to carefully drag to make sure it doesn't apply to the walls by the floor, and, (2) You can't smooth corners of rooms, which means it's frequently useless as a wall if I want to put power lines around a room. It would be great if the pawns could build the corner pieces of smooth just like normal walls (a great recent addition)
• A quick build button for transport pods on the UI when a transpod launcher is selected would be nice
• Greedy for impressive bedroom --> Run Wild. She's so fed up with not having a nice bedroom she decided to live without one entirely.

[dogthinker]

Randy, Merciless, flat temperate, commitment, no mods, 258 days, ~2 hours

Had some time to sit down an play again after a busy week. I can't say I'm enjoying centipedes at the moment, at all.

• Inferno - I've mentioned before, the 'pawn on fire' mechanic is really frustrating. The pawns choose absurd paths. In the hope of not having to play tower-defense, I tried a new strategy tonight - armouring up, and fighting them waist deep in the river. It didn't go so well. The pawns that tried this got 'stunlocked', permanently running around trying to put out their minor burns as the cendipedes showered them with fire. Ironically, the river actually made it worse, as the slow movement in the water caused them to take longer to find somewhere to put themselves out (even though they were already waist deep in water...)
• Heavy charge blaster - this feels far too random. I had my pawns spread out, behind brick walls and sandbags, with ceilings to get the dark bonus. In other words, the minimum chance of getting hit without resorting to cheesing the AI into not shooting at all.... Then fluke heart shots killed two colonists a few seconds apart, straight through power armour.

Honestly, it was 'not fun' enough to make me just stop playing.

I really don't want to play tower defense, and I don't want to cheese the AI into not firing back. I could bait them away with snipers and spend an hour or so of real time micromanaging that, but that's not fun, and feels like an exploit.

I enjoy a difficult game, and interesting losses, but I need to feel like I have an impact as a player. RNG heart shots and lemming like pawn behavior take that away from me.

I suggest:

• Pawns on fire probably shouldn't move, just beat out the fire on the spot. It's already enough that they're interrupted and hurt, and the terrain is on fire, imo. If they must move, make them move into cover, not out of it. I feel like the inferno is probably intended to counter fixed defenses (by setting them on fire), but as it's currently implemented, they're actually much more of a problem for dynamic defenses.
• Vital organs should be a bit less... Vital. Yeah, I know, hear me out on this... 0/15 heart? Give me a short (3h game time?) window of opportunity to pull them out to safety and operate / throw them in cryosleep. That'd be FUN to do in the middle of combat. I'd really enjoy having the dilemma of whether or not to make a difficult, urgent, rescue in the middle of a firefight. Trying but failing to save them in time would leave a much less bitter taste in the mouth than knowing that an unlucky dice roll was all it took to delete my colonist. In Rimworld, we have bionic organs and glitterworld meds -- lets put them to use

My suggestion for the floor wealth counts, even floors that were on the map at the start would be to introduce a new floor type for pre-existing structures.

- Crumbling stone
- Rusty steel flooring
- Rusty/Corroded steel wall

Give them a lower cost value and less resources returned.

I like this idea. I'd give them a zero value, but make them slightly ugly. That way they're still there as a source of resources and emergency shelter, but the player will want to claim and recycle them fairly early in the game.

[JaytheSage]

This isn't a bug, but can the transparency background for the top left category menu be made to fit the whole of the window, or maybe an option in the settings? Low priority, but I thought I would ask. Thanks for being awesome.

[DeadByBruise]

A bruise caused Ben to die

Cassandra, Savage, Arid Shrubland, no commitment (I never reloaded, no commitment because of unstable build), still playing (~400 in-game days in ~2 real time days now).
Mods: Incident person stats (to know if a pawn is worth rescuing), more vanilla turrets (for the military grade turret), more faction interaction, wall light (to light my hallways), ogrestack (so I don't need a 50x50 fridge), rimfridge (place fridges next to my cook for efficient cooking and in the dining room so pawns don't enter the fridge constantly), trading spot (to control where traders go), mad skills (the skill decay is too strong IMO, i set it to 30% of vanilla), while you're up.

I realy like B19 so far, here are some remarks.

• Mystical Shaman event: I send my caravan to the event to heal a nasty scar in the neck of one of my pawns, but instead it healed the disease (I believe it was the plague, not sure) of my elephant. I'd suggest that we can choose what pawn and what injury of this pawn gets healed.
• Hunter Lodge event: The generated map is too small for this event, the animals get to the other side quite fast. If you want to kill a decent amount of them you need to send half you colony. Also, if you're comfortable to send a caravan with such an amount of colonists, food probably isn't a main issue anymore. Furthermore, you almost need to build a fridge to keep all of the meat from rotting. This makes the event not worth it unless you really need the meat imo.
• Pirate fee demand: When you simply right click the notification, the event goes away and the pirates never attack you. This is a bug I guess?
• Pawns seem to die faster than before, whenever I get a prison break I almost always kill half of prisoners, this is very annoying since it takes quite long for some prisoners to get their resistance down. I almost have to drop my weapons and use bare fists in order not to kill them. I've also had a mad rat killing my colonist, well, not the rat itself, but my colonist (in full marine armor) was standing in beween a turret and the rat, he got 1-shot in the torso. This seems quite harsh, especially because he was wearing marine armor?
• As the title says, one of my colonists died of a bruise? I mean, it's Rimworld, but come on? Two of my colonists got into a fight due to one insulting the other. They both were wearing assault rifles and were melee'ing eachother, so its not like one of them had a sword or something like that. Just like that my main builder died, seems a bit off imo.
• The inferno cannon on centipedes is still very overpowered imo. If it hits one of your colonists he has like a 25% chance of dying because he runs towards the enemy, or because he never puts out the fire and goes down only to burn to death (sending another colonists to pick him up is extremely risky as he can, and probably will, also get hit by the inferno cannon). The hit radius of the cannon should be lowered imo, like 75% of their shots actually land because of the big blast radius. The only way of fighting them is to use snipers to stay out of their range, hit and run.
• It feels as if there is a tier of weapons missing. Something like extremely expensive glitterworld weapons that cannot be crafted but only be found when for example raiding pirate factions.
• Can we allow colonists to wear two weapons (maybe with a speed penalty)? This way you can use a sniper initially and when the enemy come close, switch weapon.
• The building order changed, so now my builder first builds all of the furniture inside before repairing my defenses, this is quite annoying. Maybe allow us to define a zone that the builder always should prioritize? This way we could put our defensive area in this zone and if something needs to be repaired or rebuild in this zone, he will do it before anything else.

[Tynan]

I just put up a quick build with some bug fixes. Thanks for the feedback everyone.

[Namsan]

• Can we allow colonists to wear two weapons (maybe with a speed penalty)? This way you can use a sniper initially and when the enemy come close, switch weapon.

I like sidearm idea.
I think limiting sidearms to only small weapons like machine pistol or knife can make the game more interesting.
Because these small weapons become obsolete when player got access to bigger weapons like rifles or long sword.