New Player... Killed on the Fifth Day

[Jibbles]

You'll learn from mistakes. Just saying,  you could've handled the situation. Sounds familiar? (FTL)  Yeah, it's lame that infestations attack you  if harmed by other things but you can disable them if it bothers you to the point of not wanting to play.

[w1zard]

You'll learn from mistakes. Just saying,  you could've handled the situation. Sounds familiar? (FTL)  Yeah, it's lame that infestations attack you  if harmed by other things but you can disable them if it bothers you to the point of not wanting to play.

Did you even read my OP?

It wasn't an event or a mistake on my part.  Some dufus visitor stumbled into an insect nest on the other side of the map on his way out, insects proceeded to travel all the way across the entire map to attack my colony.  This was 5 days in so I barely had any defenses (just some sandbags). It was an ironman run so I couldn't reload.

There was nothing I could do and no way I could have won.  I tried to have my two shooters at the sandbags while my melee guy held them off but the three megaspiders downed him pretty fast.  The other two colonists I retreated inside and tried the door trick, but all I had was wooden walls and doors and the spiders tore those down pretty fast.

[Yeol]

W1zard, Rimworld is not a game of winning or loosing. It's a game about living tales, adventures, stories. You had one, a short one, but it clearly moved you. In Rimworld your pawns will almost always "loose", but YOU can tell the tale. I had to restart 5 times to get a game that goes beyond a season. Look in the "Stories" section, and read my 4 very short stories.

Don't consider the end of your colony as loosing, but as one new story to tell. Start another (random) colony, and try again your best to keep them alive. Probably another turn of faith will cause again mayhem and defeat. But that's part of the fun and the callenge. ;-)

[Skryabin]

It wasn't an event or a mistake on my part.  Some dufus visitor stumbled into an insect nest on the other side of the map on his way out, insects proceeded to travel all the way across the entire map to attack my colony.  This was 5 days in so I barely had any defenses (just some sandbags). It was an ironman run so I couldn't reload.

There was nothing I could do and no way I could have won.  I tried to have my two shooters at the sandbags while my melee guy held them off but the three megaspiders downed him pretty fast.  The other two colonists I retreated inside and tried the door trick, but all I had was wooden walls and doors and the spiders tore those down pretty fast.

Very existing story! Sounds like fun to me. The experience in Rimworld is amazing. The meaning is not to win, but to live through and deal with whatever comes towards your way. You may think it is mechanics problem or a bug. But on other hand it might be a cruel joke of some genetic engineer, who gave megaspiders the ability to feel human flesh for miles when they are disturbed (don't forget, they are genetically-engineered giant insectoids). Depends on how you look at it 

[w1zard]

W1zard, Rimworld is not a game of winning or loosing. It's a game about living tales, adventures, stories. You had one, a short one, but it clearly moved you. In Rimworld your pawns will almost always "loose", but YOU can tell the tale. I had to restart 5 times to get a game that goes beyond a season. Look in the "Stories" section, and read my 4 very short stories.

Don't consider the end of your colony as loosing, but as one new story to tell. Start another (random) colony, and try again your best to keep them alive. Probably another turn of faith will cause again mayhem and defeat. But that's part of the fun and the callenge. ;-)

It isn't about the fact that my colony was destroyed and I lost.  I'm perfectly fine with that happening.  It's about the fact that my colony was destroyed and I lost through no fault of my own, because of basically a glitch.  That isn't a good "story", that isn't an "adventure", and it isn't fun.

I get that I only had 5 days into the game and I didn't lose much time, I can just start another game.  But I shouldn't have to.  The first "try" on any game is supposed to be a magical experience of discovery in which you learn the mechanics and how the game works.  I specifically chose one of the easier settings for that reason.  The fact that this happened on my first game really doesn't endear me to it as a whole and kind of puts a bad taste in my mouth.

Like I said this kind of stuff drives me up the wall in any game, not just rimworld.  I had to stop playing X-COM for awhile for the same reason.

[Jibbles]

I did read your post.  Considering it was your first game, it's really hard to take your word that nothing could be done about it, as in defeating them. Totally understand you didn't like the situation, how the bugs came after you cause of the visitors.  That's just how Ai is for now and it's why I threw in the disable infestation option.

[EvadableMoxie]

There was nothing I could do and no way I could have won. 

There is sort of an ongoing debate about this...

People on one side feel you should never lose unless you actually made a mistake that created the loss.  They believe if you play perfectly you should always win. For these players, it's a skill game and skilled play should be rewarded.

People on the other side feel events beyond the player's control should be able to lead to a gameover, to make the game less predictable.  For these players, it's just about story and they don't particularly care how the story ends.

I come down in the first camp, personally, but it's a pretty big split and a heated debate.

For future reference: You can seal off the cave to prevent the AI from pathing into it. Have multiple doors in and out of buildings to abuse the AI by making them run back and forth between them as you pop in and out.  And finally, you can always form a caravan and just ditch your colony, although at that point generally you might as well start over.

[w1zard]

People on one side feel you should never lose unless you actually made a mistake that created the loss.  They believe if you play perfectly you should always win. For these players, it's a skill game and skilled play should be rewarded.

People on the other side feel events beyond the player's control should be able to lead to a gameover, to make the game less predictable.  For these players, it's just about story and they don't particularly care how the story ends.

I come down in the first camp, personally, but it's a pretty big split and a heated debate.

I am personally in the first camp myself too.  At no point should a player be put into a situation where no matter how perfectly they play they lose.  Because at that point, whenever that situation or combination of situations arises it would be better to just save yourself the time and restart the game instead of play it out.

For future reference: You can seal off the cave to prevent the AI from pathing into it. Have multiple doors in and out of buildings to abuse the AI by making them run back and forth between them as you pop in and out.  And finally, you can always form a caravan and just ditch your colony, although at that point generally you might as well start over.

I tried having my shooters pop in and out of my base doors to shoot the megaspiders, but the spiders just tore down the doors and walls.  I only had wood stuff, it was day 5 and I was trying to get some stone blocks.

What really infuriates me was that it wasn't even my fault.  I did nothing wrong, I purposely stayed away from the nests so I wouldn't provoke them.  Hell, it wasn't even an event that caused it, I could accept that.  No it was just bad AI behavior triggering a counter-intuitive/bugged mechanic.

[Yeol]

W1zard, today it were the insects, tomorrow it's an infection, a lucky headshot or a meteorite. You will never be able to control it all. When playing Randy on a more difficult level, you have to expect extreme odd against you, and to loose it all, although you did everything to try and turn the odds around.

If you don't like the randomness in a game, play Cassandra or Pheoby. They will throw challenges at you at the level of the state and development of your base. More a game where you control the pace and the challenges thrown at you. It's more predictable, less extremes; maybe more your style of Rimworld.

[Kubouch]

• Your are playing an unstable build of an unfinished game. Almost every day, there is a new version adding more features, balancing old ones, fixing bugs and breaking random things. There is a huge amount of known issues which have not been addressed yet. It might not be a stupid mechanic, as you said, but simply an oversight or an issue waiting to be fixed.
• I agree that a random dude angering bugs on the opposite side of a map leading to them attacking your colony is bad. They should maybe have some finite aggro range. You can report it in the Bugs section, make a Suggestion or raise your voice in the Unstable build of 1.0 available topic. The devs are responsive and it will get looked into if you make an effort with your report.
• Now you know that bugs are dangerous. Pick a map without them and choose a lower difficulty, for starters. Make it 6 days the next time.

[mndfreeze]

Not sure why everyone feels they need to "explain" how Rimworld is "supposed" to be played.  I'd be just as pissed if I was in his situation and I'm a long time player.  Bad pathing is bad pathing and bad AI is bad AI, it's not story nor an intended, planned event.  It's just something that hasn't been addressed because most of you a) like being gluttons for punishment, aka the DF "fun" vibe. or b) have figured out after failing that same way how to get around it so you instead of thinking his complaint is legitimate you think he should also get around it, like you did.

Bugs should not run across an entire map to attack your base just because a random npc wandered into them.  They should go hostile to that faction only. 

[Ser Kitteh]

Yeah it sucks, but you know what, it's a game. Live and let learn. That's the best way to enjoy Rimworld IMO.

Also, it's early access. Any sort of bug that ruins my game, well, that's why you shouldn't play ironman on an early access that game (even though it's certainly possible!)

[erdrik]

What were your starting colonist's stats?
I don't want to sound like that person who just comes in and says "Lol, Git Gud", but killing the Hives on a cave map with nothing but the starting colonists(before even building the first shelter) is exactly what I did in my last run.

I would really like to see how you did this without abusing AI pathing in some way or using door shenanigans.  Granted, my colonists weren't great in combat, 4 and a 5 in shooting and last one had an 8 in melee.  Not particularly amazing, but not totally incompetent either.
...

I already said how I did it. The only thing I forgot to mention was that I started with a pet dog, so I technically had two tanks. Gave the brawler the armor, set myself up in a defensible position(inside the entrance to the cave where the bugs would be more included to attack the tanks first), shot at the bugs from a distance to engage, the dog aggroed on the now incoming bugs, sent the tank in with the dog.

It helped in this case that there was only 1 Mega Spider, and 2 or 3 of the littler ones.
But even against a group of Mega Spiders, baiting and kiting is still do able.

Im not saying the situation itself was fair. The trader that visited you should have avoided the hive, and the hive should not have aggroed against you when the trader died. (infact in a previous game I played I had at least 3 raids attack a cave hive on the map and get slaughtered, and the hive never aggroed against me. Im certain what happened to you is a bug related to friendlies getting killed by the hive) But the idea that it was "unwinnable" just isn't so. I, and others, have been in unwinnable situations and what you described doesn't really sound unwinnable.

One think I can think of is: How close was the hive when they aggroed to you? were they on the other side of the map? a few tiles away? did they need to go through a maze of tunnels to get to you?
I mean the difficulty would drastically increase if the hive was close enough to be on you before your pawns can react properly..

[Teleblaster18]

Hey, w1zard -

Give yourself a chance with the game.  Here's what I mean:

This game has a pretty steep learning curve, and it really doesn't coddle you.  Set your expectations of yourself appropriately - don't expect to know how to handle every situation right off the bat.  A big part of this game is knowing how to use the tools that you have to counter threats.  You seem intelligent, and in this game, intelligence alone can't get you through - you need to have experience, too...and that's something that nobody has, starting out.

My best advice is this: do not play "Commitment Mode/Ironman" right off the bat.  Save constantly, and when you get wiped or really, really banged up: reload that exact same scenario and play it again.  If you get wiped again?  Play it again, trying a different approach.  You'll find that soon enough, you'll develop an effective counter to the scenario.



I'm going to bore you with a personal anecdote where I encountered what I believed to be a "no-win" scenario.

Early on in one of my games, I sent a single colonist on a caravan for a quest reward.  This guy had mediocre shooting skills, no armor, and was equipped with a Short Bow.  It was risky to send him, and I knew it.

When I got to the Quest Reward map, the reward was being guarded by 3 sleeping Mechanoids.  Bad news.  They're faster, outrange me, do more damage.  One of them would likely be death...fighting three of them is certain death.  There's no way to win that.  I tried for an hour to fight them, and every time, the result was the same every time: RIP colonist, and very quickly.

The map did have some abandoned ancient structures on it, though...and plenty of wood, and some of those buildings were made out of steel.  Good news:  I can disassemble those steel buildings, make Deadfall traps out of that steel, and make more traps out of the wood.  Scythers don't do well against traps.  Can I use one of those abandoned structures to help me?  Sure...I can set up an ad-hoc trap maze inside one of the larger ones.  Can I bait these asshole Mechs through the trap maze?  I think I can...

That's exactly what I did.  It probably took two hours of trial, error, and reloading to figure out a way to beat a seemingly impossible scenario...but I beat them, and learned valuable lessons in the process.



I'm not going to tell you that you could beat what the game threw at you:  that would be presumptuous and condescending, and I have no idea what your actual tactical situation was.  What I would tell you, under all circumstances, are two things: 

1) Give yourself the opportunity to learn, and try new things.  This means no Permadeath when you're starting to learn the game.  Reload often.  Getting wiped without learning a) why, and b) how to counter is absolutely counter-productive.

2) Don't go crazy on the difficulty level, right out of the gate.  There's an old saying, often attributed to the Germans: "Go slow now, go fast later".  I played on Phoebe/Some Challenge for well over 100 hours before I felt I could (and should) increase the difficulty level.

Regarding borked or wonky game mechanics?  I don't think that you'll find an abundance of them, even in the 1.0 unstable build.  There are some, to be sure: 1.0 is very much a work in progress, and balancing is still going on as of right now.  There are other game behaviors where things will try to kill you for no good reason, and these are very much intentional...and I think that your experience with an Insect Hive falls into this category. 

With all of that being said:

Get back on the horse.  There are very, very few games that I can think of which are still worthwhile to play after 1,000 hours.  This is one of them.

Enjoy yourself!

[Injured Muffalo]

There was nothing I could do and no way I could have won.  I tried to have my two shooters at the sandbags while my melee guy held them off but the three megaspiders downed him pretty fast.  The other two colonists I retreated inside and tried the door trick, but all I had was wooden walls and doors and the spiders tore those down pretty fast.

Well, it wasn't reasonable. Sorry about all the patronizing assholes, what can you do, people are like that. As for what you could have done, here it is:

You have no defenses, allies, supplies, animals, anything and can't easily kill the insects. Your two choices are to do the door peeking, which can save some time and give you insect meat/remove the threat, but the cost of that is a lot of micromanagement and risk. You need a guy to repair the door while it is being attacked, a guy to shoot at insects, and you need to not get hurt or it slows everything down. The third guy either shoots or stays the hell out of it in a quiet corner. If you get hurt, you need to know how to set a medical tending spot or self tend if possible. And since this is rimworld, you need to micromanage where the door repair guy goes when the door is fully repaired and where your other people wander when they go out of draft mode by themselves. By the way, no resources are needed to repair, so you can do it under siege.

The second and probably more realistic way out of this is to wait until the insects fall asleep. They do that around 22:00 like your own animals. They won't attack your door unless you show yourself retreating through it. They will walk back to their hive and forget about you. All you need to do that is draft everyone and sit around all day. Forbid the door and your people will wander around inside, sleep on the floor, et cetera. Is this fun? Answer: no. But it is just a way out.