The balancing process

[Tynan]

Since the purpose of this thread was to share your insight on why you made the choices you did for the changes in 1.0. What was your reasoning behind making food poisoning crippling? Since 1 bad meal could potentially end the rich traveler scenario or brutal naked.

As Alenerel said, it was simply ignored by players. People didn't register, people told no stories, made no effort to prevent it.

Now it makes a difference, so it can introduce unmistakable story elements (e.g. our soldier couldn't fight the rabbits because of food poisoning he got because Johnny's an incompetent cook).

Food poisoning is affected by cook skill as well as the kitchen cleanliness.

We're going to make the game report the reason for food poisoning, because people don't seem to be registering that it is mostly controllable. E.g. people have their butcher next to their cook, spraying blood everywhere, then complain about bad food. Needs to be made more obvious what's happening.

[Madman666]

Still don't you think, that disabling a colonist with "max 10% consciousness" penalty for whole day is a bit much for not having a great cook or failing to force people to clean a kitchen? I mean you can't always micromanage, so cook cleans the kitchen first, then starts his job. Often you ll learn that your kitchen is dirty only when people are KOd already. And i assume cooking skill plays the most important part in it, so even if the kitchen is clean, if you didn't get a good cook at the start, or lost him along the way - you're kinda doomed.

All it will result in - early game, when its most brutal - it will be even more unforgiving. Mid to late game when you have decent number of people - it ll be less significant, because you won't get your entire colony disabled and couple cases out of 13-16 people isn't something to mull over, so it will be once again ignored. So please consider either making it non-incapacitating problem, or at least let us treat it at initial stage, preventing a KO.

[TheMeInTeam]

Since the purpose of this thread was to share your insight on why you made the choices you did for the changes in 1.0. What was your reasoning behind making food poisoning crippling? Since 1 bad meal could potentially end the rich traveler scenario or brutal naked.

As Alenerel said, it was simply ignored by players. People didn't register, people told no stories, made no effort to prevent it.

Now it makes a difference, so it can introduce unmistakable story elements (e.g. our soldier couldn't fight the rabbits because of food poisoning he got because Johnny's an incompetent cook).

Food poisoning is affected by cook skill as well as the kitchen cleanliness.

We're going to make the game report the reason for food poisoning, because people don't seem to be registering that it is mostly controllable. E.g. people have their butcher next to their cook, spraying blood everywhere, then complain about bad food. Needs to be made more obvious what's happening.

Rolling a 6 skill cook, making a small room with campfire + wooden flooring and micromanaging to clean this before cooking = still got food poisoned 2x in first 15 days.  That's completely oppressive, the only kind-of equivalent % work shutdown that shows up this early is a fast disease proc of plague or malaria, and for one pawn starts that's game over.  And even those can be countered by making an early luciferium run, food poisoning powers through even that! 

I suppose making passive coolers require 4 construction means lacking that can be instant "flee the map or game over" too, but I'm not particularly keen on hard stat limitations like that for this reason.  It narrows the number of "non-ideal" pawns you can realistically use without risking RNG game over.

Players that ignored extended periods of 50% consciousness on previous patch were leaving a lot of work on the table.  You're not getting a lot of talk about scar procs from animals in the first 5 days, but that doesn't mean they need to apply -80% manipulation for a day or something :p.

[Syrchalis]

Now it makes a difference, so it can introduce unmistakable story elements.

We're going to make the game report the reason for food poisoning, because people don't seem to be registering that it is mostly controllable. E.g. people have their butcher next to their cook, spraying blood everywhere, then complain about bad food. Needs to be made more obvious what's happening.

So the main reason for the change is that it doesn't create memorable experiences?

I don't think the problem here is that the cause isn't obvious enough (that is definitely an issue, but the main problems are above that). Simply put, avoiding the awful debuff of food poisoning is too difficult, too tedious or not enough in control of the player. Micro-cleaning the kitchen every time is very annoying and not a fun gameplay element. Having a good cook is either time-consuming if you reroll, or if you are the type of player who just takes a random bunch of guys then it's random.

In different words: Even if you knew what the problem was, you probably couldn't fix it, because micro-ing your cook to clean is not easy and annoying and having a good cook is something you don't really have agency over.

The other problem is the debuff itself. Maybe make it so the affected pawn is out (max 10% consciousness) for a few hours (6), and as the food poisoning wears down his consciousness raises gradually again to 100%. This way the pawn is completely out for a relevant time (especially if some other event happens simultaneously) and not that useful for a while afterwards.

Another way to address it would be to make it work like a disease instead. As in, a single bad meal would poison an entire stack (like it is now) but with a much higher chance. So 1 poisoned meal in a stack of 10 wouldn't give a 10% chance but maybe a 50% chance for each meal to poison pawns - in other words "infecting" the other meals. Once eaten it would take a few hours before the effects show up and suddenly you have 3-4 pawns who are out for a few hours and will be significantly impaired afterwards.

The story aspect here is that a few pawns suddenly drop unconscious wherever they are 2-3 hours after eating and need rescue, while being unavailable for a short time as well.

The last thing that is required is a counter for the player to use. E.g. you could make affected food emit barely visible green particles and every food item gets a new interaction option "throw away" which deletes it, so the player can get rid of poisoned meals. Then it's fine to leave the sources a bad cook and a dirty kitchen, because even then the player can do something about it. It doesn't make a good cook or clean kitchen worthless though, because you don't have to watch for bad food all the time.

[Divvy]

I think a Fallout-like damage threshold system would serve Rimworld the best.

Some of the problems with straight up %-based reduction are squirrels scratching pawns to death through power armor, each additional % being more valuable than the last, and all weapons being equally effective against armor.

DT-system also has problems, but I have a few solutions in mind to solve those problems. The biggest problem is infinite invulnerability. If your enemy has no weapon that overcomes your DT, you're invulnerable in that battle no matter what. Some solutions other games have posed are a minimum damage percentage that always passes armor ( Fallout New Vegas ) or critical hits bypassing armor ( Fallout 1, 2 and Tactics ). The problem with the former is, again, throwing pine cones at power armor will eventually kill the pawn. The problem with the latter is the unreliability of armor and sudden instant kills. There were so many times in Fallout games where a minigun would do 0dmg to power armor a few times in a row and then suddenly instakill the player with an armor bypassing crit doing ludicrous 800dmg to a 150hp character. It's not a fun mechanic.

I propose a system of limited invulnerability where armor takes damage at a highly accelerated pace compared to current Rimworld. It should be viable to wear down heavy armor with continuous fire enough to allow smaller caliber firearms and lighter melee attacks to partially pass through. Let's say you have 15DT armor and you're shot with a 11dmg revolver. No damage passes through, but once you've hit enough times to bring the durability down to 50%, the armor would only have 7.5DT left and the revolver would be doing 3.5dmg per hit. There could also be a system in place that would increase durability damage to armor considerably if the attack penetrates the armor. A hole in an armor is certainly more problematic than a dent. This would allow softening up high armor targets with sniper rifles and charge lances before the lighter caliber firearms move in for the kill.

One problem this creates is losing armor durability too quickly, and the hassle of constantly replacing armor. As a solution I would propose an armor repair system, something with a low QoL impact. Armor should never be able to repair to full condition though, so there should be some permanent damage as well. For example, 50% durability loss would reduce the armor's maximum repairable condition by 5%. This would keep the long-term wear and tear Rimworld currently has, while facilitating short-term dismantling of heavy armor in combat. This may cause a problem with procuring good condition enemy power armor too easily, so there may be a need to adjust enemy power armor wear and tear to compensate.

This would make power armor much more powerful than it currently is. There should be a limit to how much power armor is available to avoid all pawns having power armor in the endgame. I think that currently the plasteel economy works pretty well up until the point ground penetrating scanners are available. Plasteel is rare and expensive and you have to make real choices where to apply it. After the scanners though, the availability of plasteel skyrockets and it's easy to procure thousands of units in short order. I would propose a considerable nerf to plasteel availability from drilling. This would slow down power armor appropriation considerably.

However, eventually the player could still be able to field too much power armor. To address this I would propose power armor to consume a fuel source. Uranium fits well thematically and is appropriately rare and expensive. This might be balanced so that it's mechanically similar to Luciferum. You'd typically be able to have a couple of pawns on Luciferum without worrying too much about it running out, as long as you go around with Caravans and buy all the Luciferum you can find. Similarly, there should be just enough Uranium to field a maximum of two power armors consistently. The repair cost for power armor might also be fairly steep, as an additional way to curb power armor prevalence.

[ashaffee]

Yes I do agree that buffing food poisoning would make for more interesting stories. Although I do believe the way it currently is just feels rng grief that can stack with the normal storytellers rng grief for unwinnable scenarios. I like the alternative if it was a huge loss in consciousness that slowly increased instead. Their for you had a strong motivation to keep drugs in your colony like wake-up to counterplay those moments but risk addiction if you don't solve the underlying problem.

[TheMeInTeam]

Yes I do agree that buffing food poisoning would make for more interesting stories. Although I do believe the way it currently is just feels rng grief that can stack with the normal storytellers rng grief for unwinnable scenarios. I like the alternative if it was a huge loss in consciousness that slowly increased instead. Their for you had a strong motivation to keep drugs in your colony like wake-up to counterplay those moments but risk addiction if you don't solve the underlying problem.

It'd have to be reworked.  Right now it's a x .1 multiplier on consciousness.  This allows it to drop you without killing the pawn outright, but it also means that if you take a drug that gives 50% more consciousness, you will have a consciousness value of 15% and still be face first on the floor during "major" food poisoning cycle.

If you make it additive, food poisoning can become even more lethal.

It's a tough spot to balance.  Compared to reality it's super common, and mirrors severity only rarely seen.  The main problem is that for several of the starting scenarios you don't have a way to avoid it.  Make wooden or flagstone floors, keep the room 100% clean, put nothing but the stove in this room...still poisoned, still losing a ton of work time.  Worse still, it appears that with cooking values < 5 making a simple meal gives a higher proc rate than eating raw food, which is awkward.

Crash landed can power out nutrient paste, but the one man scenarios don't have the manpower for this.  The question remains: what other skill/task is this asymmetric in terms of potential to survive?  Should any stat be so vital to early progression?

[Madman666]

Best and most simple way to handle food poisoning would be to just allow us to tend to it, either speeding up recovery several times with a good quality tend, or just supressing the major stage, thats drops your guys flat, leaving 50% counsciousness penalty there. If you absolutely must make it so harsh - at least give us other means to fight it, than babysitting your people in the kitchen or rolling stats into oblivion at the start of the game to get non-crippled, non-addicted, non-half incapable cook. Medicine is quite a valuable resource, so it would be a fair trade off.

[drumad]

For food poisoning, adding an alternative to simple meals at the start of the game could work, with less nutritional efficiency but with no risk of food poisoning, no requirement for mixed ingredients, and available at a campfire.
Similar to how meat is often cooked for much longer in v.hot countries or in countries where food QC isn't reliable; a lot of the nutrition goes (and in my opinion, it's not as tasty) but it's probably safer.
Then you would want to set-up a good kitchen and a safe cook but would have an alternative if that wasn't possible.

[Boboid]

Food poisoning is affected by cook skill as well as the kitchen cleanliness.

We're going to make the game report the reason for food poisoning, because people don't seem to be registering that it is mostly controllable. E.g. people have their butcher next to their cook, spraying blood everywhere, then complain about bad food. Needs to be made more obvious what's happening.

Is there a piece of interface that I'm completely failing to see that communicates the chance of food poisoning as a result of kitchen cleanliness?

Medical beds for example communicate the infection chance multiplier from the room they're located in but as far as I can tell Stoves don't.
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Also.. I put my stoves and butcher tables in my hallways which are gigantic.. as a result each piece of dirt/blood ect has a relatively small (bordering on non-existent) impact on the overall cleanliness of the room.
Given that there's no indication that cleanliness has an impact on food poisoning that certainly explains why I've never noticed any correlation. Food poisoning still(to me) seems like it briefly affects a colony until someone gets 6+ cooking skill and is then forever irrelevant.

[DariusWolfe]

Is there a piece of interface that I'm completely failing to see that communicates the chance of food poisoning as a result of kitchen cleanliness?

There is now, at least as of this latest build.

I've rarely had food poisoning even with moderately low cooking, so long as I've made an effort to keep the kitchen clean. Once you get to smithing you can use metal floors which give a small bonus to cleanliness. Small rooms are also easier to keep clean; Your large hallways reduces the impact of each individual bit of dirt or blood, but it also vastly increases the number of tiles which can be dirty or bloody, and the amount of work necessary to keep it clean. A small kitchen, separate from your butcher's table with clean floors is your best bet to avoid food poisoning.

[Boboid]

There is now, at least as of this latest build.

Is there? Really? Because I've just triple checked that I'm fully up to date and there's no piece of interface that I can see on stove or room description that displays this.
You apparently now get a reason given for why someone got food poisoning on the event when it appears but that's not what I'm talking about at all.
Could you please point me to a piece of interface that directly shows the correlation between food poisoning and cleanliness?

Small rooms are also easier to keep clean; Your large hallways reduces the impact of each individual bit of dirt or blood, but it also vastly increases the number of tiles which can be dirty or bloody, and the amount of work necessary to keep it clean. A small kitchen, separate from your butcher's table with clean floors is your best bet to avoid food poisoning.

Kind of? My stove and butcher table are literally in the main thoroughfare of my entire colony which gets the most foot traffic and I haven't had food poisoning be a problem for quite literally hundreds of days. The blood generated from butchery is totally negligible.

In a 6x6 room(36area) 1 piece of dirt adds -0.14 to the cleanliness scale.
In my 196 area hallway each piece of dirt adds -0.04.

It literally takes 3.5x more dirt to reach the same level of filth and that also means that the effect of any one filth-generating-event is massively diluted. It's been literally years since I've had a food poisoning event with a mediocre 8-12 skill cook (Transhumanist colony, no passions)

[Divinorium]

Other changes relate to that too. For example, armor is now a chance-of-damage-cancel instead of a damage reduction. This means there are less wounds, but the wounds you get are significant. But, medicine is spent per wound, so this reduces time and medicine spend tending wounds, which on the econ side makes straight-up combat more viable. It also means that if you can get some really awesome armor, sending melee fighters to actually fight should be more viable since there's a real good chance you can win without getting hurt, as opposed to previous builds where you might win but you'd have a bunch of damage-reduced (but still bleeding) wounds - possibly on your eyes or brain.

Sorry if it was already answered but i'm curious how more powerful weapons like sniper rifle will enter in this math. It will be even more binary in the  realm of if it hits is a kill, if it miss you wasted time?

[Kalre]

I dont know if this is the place, probably is, but, there was any reason something like Dubs Hygiene Mod was never implemented to vanilla game ? I mean, its a colony simulator kind off, no bathrooms and other hygiene needs seemed like a must for me , i had hope till the last minute for the to be added to the final version of the game

[cultist]

As Alenerel said, it was simply ignored by players. People didn't register, people told no stories, made no effort to prevent it.

Now it makes a difference, so it can introduce unmistakable story elements (e.g. our soldier couldn't fight the rabbits because of food poisoning he got because Johnny's an incompetent cook).

I don't disagree that food poisoning is a somewhat forgettable "event", but I think you may be falling into the same trap as most devs who make games with "survival" elements. Every major change towards higher difficulty only affects the early game and does little to nothing to increase the end-game challenge.

Food poisoning isn't an issue when you have a high skilled dedicated cook with sterile floors and 3 pawns with nothing better to do than clean the base all day. It's an issue when all you have are 3 pawns eating berries off the floor. Co-incidentally, this is also the point in the game where having a pawn out of commission for an entire day is a major problem.

Does the latter scenario create interesting stories? Possibly. If you get attacked or desperately need the sick pawn for some reason (maybe he's the only doctor) there's story potential. Otherwise, you just lose that pawn for about a day.
I actually find the current version of food poisoning more interesting at its core. Because the pawn is still mobile, they're going to slowly drag themselves across your base, vomiting and possibly mental breaking (I have yet to experience berserk + food poisoning but it sounds hilarious) all over the place.

To me, that opens up a lot more story potential than simply confining them to a bed for a set amount of time.