The balancing process

[Oblitus]

Sure, *realistically* if you have power armor you shouldn't be hurt by clubs and rabbits, but that's not engaging in a balance sense, and as stated the balance of the game is way more important than power armor. That kind of progression system works in an rpg, but I'm pretty sure it's not really in the spirit of Rimworld.

Why? We already have a spectrum of enemies from tribals with sticks and stones to pirates of all sorts to AI-controlled mechanoids. It is enough to make a progression. But currently game just have no progression. They all are just differently flavored, but generally the same. When tribals and mechanoids are on the same danger level something is wrong. When a rat can force a walking tank with a minigun to stop shooting and moving just by getting into melee it is absurd. When you actually prefer to fight said walking tank rather than a dozen rats...

[MoronicCinamun]

So I know this has been mentioned before, and kudos to you guys doing the code digging, you're the real MVPs: melee still feels odd to me, still  better than before at least.
So, here are my observations + questions. Also let me know if I'm wrong about anything, with the constantly changing nature of the Unstable it's highly likely something I say either isn't or soon won't be applicable anymore.

• People keep bringing up the fact that Mechanoids get insta-killed by stabbing weapons, and boy does that sound dirty and exploitative. I sure hope this gets fixed, not sure how though. The complex solution would be to just give the mech's more "internals", maybe something like external plating and internal plating, no idea. 


• It appears the melee weapons are getting slightly more fleshed out, like I noticed the last time I checked that knives and swords have a shorter cooldown with a slash than a stab, which is nice. But at the moment I am very confused about the long blades: the Spear has a higher listed dps than the longsword (and is arguably even better than that with the aforementioned stab exploits), and yet still requires less material, work, and skill to make, so what is the longsword meant for? It just feels like an expensive bastard (pun-intended) that's not really better than anything, just a bad jack-of-all-trades


• For those code diggers/makers: how exactly do the melee attacks decided "what attack" to use (i.e. stab, slash, bash, etc.)? A good chunk of the melee seems kind of balanced on that, which is probably a part of why the spear's listed DPS is higher, it has less possible attacks which keeps the average higher. The worst is when a pawn will punch with the offhand while using a melee weapon, like just why? Maybe the chance of that could go down with higher skill or something, or it should just be removed?

I think maybe the melee weapons could be further tweaked into having niches, at least as far as the long blades go: it might be better to have the spear be stronger, but slower, a good choice for "stabbing through armor", while the long sword swings faster in a way it has more or about even dps (this is how it used to work isn't it? It's been awhile since I've played vanilla-stable). The Ikwa feels like a worse gladius as it probably should, but maybe it could be handled in a similar manner: Ikwa is primarily stabbing and thus is better at that, but the gladius has more speed/versatility.

The only other possible balancing factor I can think of is giving the sword-types (gladius + longsword) a bonus to melee dodge chance, to represent them being used to "parry" and whatnot, which is pretty much what the sword was made for after all; if you wanted to hack down a foe with one fell swoop, you'd grab an axe or polearm of some sort.

Also minor request w/ argument: some kind of 2-handed hammer with the "long blades" research (guess you'd have to change the name XD) would be great, and would probably make the balancing easier; a large reason why maces aren't used much is because they're "basic", they're just not at the same tier of a longsword or spear, introducing a smashing weapon that is at that tier could make that dicthonomy of sharp = good against flesh/ blunt = good against armor very clear cut and established; for example I read one player's testimony who said overall longswords were still better against armor than a mace, where maces really shine is when used en masse to keep foes "stun locked", which doesn't exactly seem like you were going for as tweaks keep getting made to make armor more vulnerable to blunts yet still the sword and spear come out on top.

Well that's enough for now, keep up the good work, this unstable truly is a massive improvment!

[bbqftw]

People keep bringing up the fact that Mechanoids get insta-killed by stabbing weapons, and boy does that sound dirty and exploitative. I sure hope this gets fixed, not sure how though. The complex solution would be to just give the mech's more "internals", maybe something like external plating and internal plating, no idea.

yeah anything that makes melee not a joke option sounds pretty exploitative to me! (seriously there's like 1-2 other niches where melee isn't a terribly suboptimal choice)

Pre-shield belts regime you are dealing with significant risks (even after, brawling scythers is subjecting yourself to super high variance of the limb losing variety), since HCB and inferno cannons both have warmups of <2s ticks, which means you need reasonable EMP or LoS control to not eat a downing / fatal full HCB volley (generally 6-10 x 15 damage shots) at point blank range.

Even then, there are stronger ways to deal with centipedes. So everyone will just default to those (hint: they are a bit boring). At least right now you can take higher variance in melee for faster kill speed.

but that is the beauty of this forum, you can write whatever you want on balance without the knowledge to back it up

[DariusWolfe]

yeah anything that makes melee not a joke option sounds pretty exploitative to me!
...
but that is the beauty of this forum, you can write whatever you want on balance without the knowledge to back it up

See, your first line is truth to me. Your last line is not, but it's also kind of irrelevant to my purposes. It's not how balanced or not it is that bugs me. It's the fact that it's intended to be balanced. (melee vs ranged, that is, and only firearms, really; you're not going to be using bows in melee range.) Tynan's going to make choices I disagree with, this just happens to be one of them; So with that in mind I have to accept that and try to give feedback that helps with his goals, while continuing to make my stance (I mean, sure, as one of what, thousands of players?) clear. He'll either keep it in mind as a representative opinion, or he won't; either way, I'll try to give him useful data, same as you.

[ChiefBigFeather]

In my b18 experience, the biggest balance issue was not traps vs animals vs turrets, it was about caravaning vs no caravaning.
This regards risk management for raids/deseases as well as economic questions of wether it wouldn't be better to just produce wealth. In b18 it was usually better not to go.

This might of course be entirely a result of playstyle (I like to defend with pawns).

I hope this has been looked into or is being looked into.

[mcduff]

In my b18 experience, the biggest balance issue was not traps vs animals vs turrets, it was about caravaning vs no caravaning.
This regards risk management for raids/deseases as well as economic questions of wether it wouldn't be better to just produce wealth. In b18 it was usually better not to go.

This might of course be entirely a result of playstyle (I like to defend with pawns).

I hope this has been looked into or is being looked into.

This is a really big thing IMO. The game can push you towards being a pawn-focused, down and dirty brawling match with lots of urban warfare, or it can push you towards trying to use caravans and spreading outside of the confines of your starter map, but it can't really do both.

[Eterm]

In my b18 experience, the biggest balance issue was not traps vs animals vs turrets, it was about caravaning vs no caravaning.
This regards risk management for raids/deseases as well as economic questions of wether it wouldn't be better to just produce wealth. In b18 it was usually better not to go.

This might of course be entirely a result of playstyle (I like to defend with pawns).

I hope this has been looked into or is being looked into.

Bedrolls, foraging and fairly cheap drop-podding has made caravanning reasonably easy now. You can send them out without too much gear and if a caravan gets into trouble you can drop-pod them food and meds to get them out of trouble. The foraging system means it's much easier to send pack animals without having to send them with half their carry capacity in kibble.

[bbqftw]

The fact that caravan manual resting is pretty broken and joy management is practically nonexistent makes caravans feel clunky and Russian roulette ish on higher difficulties, where you choose between wasting 10+ meals because your pawns didn't actually rest or you enter encounters at the edge of major break because recreation is low and they are tired

[ChiefBigFeather]

Bedrolls, foraging and fairly cheap drop-podding has made caravanning reasonably easy now. You can send them out without too much gear and if a caravan gets into trouble you can drop-pod them food and meds to get them out of trouble. The foraging system means it's much easier to send pack animals without having to send them with half their carry capacity in kibble.

My comment was not really about the people going on the caravan, it is more about the weakened defense back home when you take your best shooters.

I think the foraging system is not the best idea. Food management was one of the fun challenges of caravaning. The unfun being mentioned by bbqftw.

[zizard]

Yes funnily one of the more reliable methods of caravan mood management is enforcing minor breaks on the road and then doing the important stuff with catharsis.

[zoranac]

I'm not sure if it's been mentioned, but why not have both dodge chance and damage reduction on armour? That way you can have light armour have high dodge, heavy armour have high damage reduction, and late game armour have both.