The balancing process

[TheMeInTeam]

Infection chance is a significant debuff to melee, even as other things buff it.  This game gravely penalizes taking damage and that directly nerfs any defensive setup where taking damage is a reasonable possibility.  On higher difficulties it's pretty skewed.

[Madman666]

I play mostly on intense or extreme. But i didn't find any mention anywhere, that this difficulty affects infection chance. As far as i know it only alters raid sizes, frequency and probability of bad events and diseases, lowers harvest sizes, also lowers or eliminates initial "Low expectation" moodlet. Unless wound infection counts as a disease "event" it shouldn't be affected by difficulty.

[draba]

Either you were lucky then, or i was unlucky, but pretty much every early game fight in B18 with bleeding injuries ended up with infections for me. And thats with herbal medicine treatment and me furiously cleaning the room to hold cleanliness high, since it affects the chance of infection.

Plague is just deadly without proper medicine... If you have a decent doc and plenty herbal medicine and micromanage treatments, so that it wasn't left unchecked at any point - its doable. However if its your doctor, who got the plague - you're more or less hosed. Even proper meds often won't be enough.

You were just unlucky, last time I played on Randy intense b18. Same experience as DariusWolfe, didn't bother getting hospital beds for years and only used herbal medicine.
Infections were very rare, even with backup doctors only having 5-ish medicine(neither infections nor diseases were a threat, always at least ~10% behind immunity).
The cases I did see were mostly captured raiders, seems like the time spent laying in the dirt and not getting any medicine are bad for wounds

[BlackSmokeDMax]

Either you were lucky then, or i was unlucky, but pretty much every early game fight in B18 with bleeding injuries ended up with infections for me. And thats with herbal medicine treatment and me furiously cleaning the room to hold cleanliness high, since it affects the chance of infection.

Plague is just deadly without proper medicine... If you have a decent doc and plenty herbal medicine and micromanage treatments, so that it wasn't left unchecked at any point - its doable. However if its your doctor, who got the plague - you're more or less hosed. Even proper meds often won't be enough.

You were just unlucky, last time I played on Randy intense b18. Same experience as DariusWolfe, didn't bother getting hospital beds for years and only used herbal medicine.
Infections were very rare, even with backup doctors only having 5-ish medicine(neither infections nor diseases were a threat, always at least ~10% behind immunity).
The cases I did see were mostly captured raiders, seems like the time spent laying in the dirt and not getting any medicine are bad for wounds

Anecdotally, I too have found the same, B18 wasn't too bad for infections for me. I have actually had worse luck with plague in early game. Nothing that I would consider too high though, just a couple bad games in a row. Luckily in one of those games I had a couple of super-immune pawns that mostly just shrugged it off.

[Madman666]

Well infections themselves aren't that bad really, its the fact how often they happen and that it disables a pawn from participating in combat and working is whats bad. Plague and malaria are downright nasty, but luckily they aren't nearly as frequent as infections.

[draba]

Well infections themselves aren't that bad really, its the fact how often they happen and that it disables a pawn from participating in combat and working is whats bad. Plague and malaria are downright nasty, but luckily they aren't nearly as frequent as infections.

I meant getting infections in the first place was already very rare for me, that way downtime is pretty small.
Getting pawns in almost immediately, only herbal, clean room but no sterile tiles/hospital beds, 5-15 doctors.
If conversion to blunt is meant to be a bit more than flavor infection chances on nasty cuts could go up IMO.

[Madman666]

Well, i don't know why exactly you guys don't get infections all the time, but my guys always do. Sometimes even in sterile hospitals even, hilariously enough. I don't really mind upped infection chances in 1.0, since i ll get my infections anyway. But I sure as hell don't want for bruises to be possible to get infected. Thats for sure.

[TheMeInTeam]

I play mostly on intense or extreme. But i didn't find any mention anywhere, that this difficulty affects infection chance. As far as i know it only alters raid sizes, frequency and probability of bad events and diseases, lowers harvest sizes, also lowers or eliminates initial "Low expectation" moodlet. Unless wound infection counts as a disease "event" it shouldn't be affected by difficulty.

Infection rate was increased globally regardless of difficulty.  On extreme, you have more enemies.  This disproportionately penalizes any defensive strategy where pawns take injuries that can cause infection.  Fighting "as intended" is a fool's errand resulting in inconsistent outcomes.

Simply put, with the addition of point blank gunshots in melee and increased infection rate, patch 1.0 nerfed melee, buffed the strongest defensive moves in the game (AI manipulation via doors), and left middling strategies like turrets and traps about as competitive as before, if a little pricier when scaling up.

[Madman666]

I know it was increased. We were talking about infections in B18, some seem to have way better luck with infections in that version than me. To the point they felt infection chance was too low. Dunno why anyone would think like that.

About other two things i kind of agree - in 1.0 direct confrontations should've become more forgiving, so as to encourage player to avoid using killboxes and walling up, at least that was the intention. But for now i don't really see it that way - it still incredibly deadly to try and take on raids without proper defensive set up. Maybe if you're all armored up - then yeah, possibly. But otherwise - screw that, i ll either use turrets or some other cheap ass tactic like dividing them and picking off one by one.

And yeah - melee is only for AI now, since it doesn't care about its pawns. I am not sending anyone into melee, when they can get a bullet in the face point blank. Not to mention suicidal grenadiers chuck nades right under you in close quarters now, which is complete and total bullshit

[ashaffee]

I feel like rate of infections/illnesses should scale with wealth and cap off. Early game it is really unforgiving and can cause scenarios that offer 0% chance of success. Late game yes it is deadly. Yes fighting any type of battle where your pawns can get injured is deadly but the great part of rimworld is that your colonist are suppose to die on higher difficultis. You are suppose to get set backs so you feel great when you climb out of the hole. Recruiting is balanced well enough that you can almost loose a colonist every season and still gain another one to take their place. Odds are you won't loose that many people and odds are if you invest in better jails and rescue quest you could even recruit more people.

In beta 18 I hit 20 colonist at one point on extreme and started feeling the need to banish and recruit as I found better people because I didn't like having more than 20 and I barely lost 1 person pure a year or two if even that. 

[Madman666]

I hope you're joking. Late game diseases disable 3\4 of your colony and you want to tie frequency to wealth factor? God, no.

[ashaffee]

I hope you're joking. Late game diseases disable 3\4 of your colony and you want to tie frequency to wealth factor? God, no.

You missed a key word. Cap off. If it capped off to the rate the game is at now the over all difficulty of the early game can be increased by raids and lowered by taking away illnesses.

[Madman666]

Yeah, I guess i did. Sorry about that. I guess that would be fine in that case, though i doubt such a mechanic to diseases will be added.

[RemingtonRyder]

On the one hand, infections are more of a problem when they appear in 1.0, but on the other hand they get tended quite promptly now that it's possible to tend before the current tend wears off. Tending slows down the progress of infection quite significantly.

[TheMeInTeam]

I know it was increased. We were talking about infections in B18, some seem to have way better luck with infections in that version than me. To the point they felt infection chance was too low. Dunno why anyone would think like that.

About other two things i kind of agree - in 1.0 direct confrontations should've become more forgiving, so as to encourage player to avoid using killboxes and walling up, at least that was the intention. But for now i don't really see it that way - it still incredibly deadly to try and take on raids without proper defensive set up. Maybe if you're all armored up - then yeah, possibly. But otherwise - screw that, i ll either use turrets or some other cheap ass tactic like dividing them and picking off one by one.

And yeah - melee is only for AI now, since it doesn't care about its pawns. I am not sending anyone into melee, when they can get a bullet in the face point blank. Not to mention suicidal grenadiers chuck nades right under you in close quarters now, which is complete and total bullshit

Centipedes and power armor are pretty cancerous to fight.  Like one power armor raider can walk through 10 steel deadfall traps and live strong.  Centipedes are even worse.  I hit it with > 100 revolver bullets before one centipede died, though of course not even half of those actually did damage.

Stuff shooting point blank has to go or melee is dead, far more dead than B18.  It's gone from a 3 strat to a 1 strat.  Player could always fire point blank in earlier patches, that should go too.  Right now point blank gunfire completely ruins the melee vs blunt gun damage trades up close.