[1.0] Strategy Mode: Rimworld as a strategy game

Started by Greep, August 03, 2018, 06:52:13 AM

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Greep

Strategy Mode

Hey you!  Are you doing any of the following?:

-Limiting your wealth to reduce raids
-Calling caravans on speed dial
-Randomly letting pawns die to reset adaptation
-Worrying about silly things like whether bionics count towards raids or not (they don't ;))
-Executing pawns with bad traits
-Foregoing combat animals, again for raid reasons
-Completely foregoing caravans without drop pods for many reasons.

If so, this may be the mod for you!  Ideally, this will just be the mod for experienced players who mostly want a "vanilla balance" but without all the weird metagaming that it entails if you want to play "strategically".

Currently this only changes the raid system to get rid of the huge amount of bizarre metagaming that many players find themselves doing to stop raids from spiraling out of control.  If all you want to do is limit raids in your own specific way using the built in system, you can download this mod instead:
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=42721.0

The system in strategy mode wipes out the hundreds of relevant lines of code and replaces it with this simple formula:

Ticks^1.1/25000
Divide by 8 if a caravan.
Divide by 3.5 if a site.
Multiply this by your difficulty factor.

That's it.  No adaptation/wealth/pawn influence etc.  You are free to utilize your environment to the max to do your best to win.

Currently this is unfair on extreme biomes (this will be changed). Additionally, because most players downloading this will be very experienced, "rough" is the new "extreme".  If you've ever played XCOM-Long war, think of that when choosing an appropriate difficulty setting.

The raid system is a very small part of what this mod will become, but this is a good first step.  Much of the future focus will be on caravans, security buildings, etc.

Suggestions for changes you want here are absolutely welcome.  Still pretty WIP, so only available as a zip attachment on the forums, below.



[attachment deleted due to age]
1.0 Mods: Raid size limiter:
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=42721.0

MineTortoise:
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=42792.0
HELLO!

(WIPish)Strategy Mode: The experienced player's "vanilla"
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=43044.0

Copperwire

I am game.  While your at it, think you could make one that deals with the distortions in sale prices?

Greep

#2
Yep, but it's all going in here baby, not a separate mod.  Splitting up mods can make sense in some cases, but I think in a balance mod it should all go in one.

Options to turn thing on/off will be in xml or in game options, though, I'm just not going to start out bothering with that.

Regarding sales prices, I'm not sure the best way to go around doing that, so I'm just going to brain dump a bit here.  My thoughts on economy in general are:

-Remove all general item sell multipliers, but tweak item quality percents and influence on market value so good crafters aren't ludicrously profitable as a result, as well as increasing skill needed to level up for this reason and increase work to make things so you need many good crafters.

-Remove tainted and gun sell modifiers and simply make armor and guns material wise cheap to make but worth less in general.  Remove a ton of research techs so you can try and race the raider progression so you have a reasons to build said guns rather then just picking up drops.  I think this is something that works well in 1.0 but wouldn't in b18:  In 1.0, raiders tend not to even wear power armor, and you can make guns like charge lances that don't even drop.

-Remove called caravans to cut down on tedium and double orbital trader stock.  Alternatively, quadruple calle caravan stock and relation cost.

Extreme exploit reduction is also on the menu, so I'm thinking of having killed caravans drop no items.  I'd like a better way to handle that, but as the 400 changes to how insecta are aggroed has shown (and it's still buggy), determining whether the player actually meant to harm something is pretty hard as this is a very complex game!

That's all I got now.
1.0 Mods: Raid size limiter:
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=42721.0

MineTortoise:
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=42792.0
HELLO!

(WIPish)Strategy Mode: The experienced player's "vanilla"
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=43044.0

dyslexier

Made an account to let you know how much this was needed, quality mod.

Madman666

So currently it just ties raids only to time spent playing*difficulty chosen? Not really my cup of tea :P But i like the idea of making raids more rewarding via weapon price restoration and removing tainted cost reduction. I might implement those changes for my game.

Greep

Yeah the granularity of what you can turn on and off wil just be whole systems.  So if you're looking for a hardcore long war type experience you can leave it all on.  If you just like parts of it you can take what you like.  So it'll eventually look like:

<TimeBasedRaids>OFF</TimeBasedRaid>
<EconomyRework>ON<EconomyRework>

etc.

This will stack correctly with RaidLimiter when it's done (I will simply not run my code if the xml flag is set here)
1.0 Mods: Raid size limiter:
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=42721.0

MineTortoise:
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=42792.0
HELLO!

(WIPish)Strategy Mode: The experienced player's "vanilla"
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=43044.0

NiftyAxolotl

On fixing Caravan exploits: if the caravan is significantly harmed for any reason, just have the owner of the caravan refuse to send another for 8 days per colonist or muffalo lost. Not fatal, but painful enough that I would actually take action to protect a caravan if I could. This would also be a welcome source of 2v1 fights, which are fun.

Madman666

Quote from: NiftyAxolotl on August 04, 2018, 01:07:29 AM
On fixing Caravan exploits: if the caravan is significantly harmed for any reason, just have the owner of the caravan refuse to send another for 8 days per colonist or muffalo lost. Not fatal, but painful enough that I would actually take action to protect a caravan if I could. This would also be a welcome source of 2v1 fights, which are fun.

So if it gets mangled by manhunters, you ll curse you day and rage quit, cause you got year's worth of cooldown now. IMO the better punishment for player attacking the caravan is applying a modifier to relation increase with that faction. So each time you kill a caravan from a faction, raising relations with it will become much harder, until it will be virtually impossible to mend relations.

Greep

#8
Well, one issue with these routes is that currently caravans carry goods disproportionate by a long shot to the amount of relation it costs to summon a caravan.  You can kill an exotic caravan, then launch all the stuff as gifts for essentially 1000 relation I think. It seems better then to just take the cheap way and just stop players from being allowed to loot the caravans. 

I guess if I felt like doing a lot of work I'd try to make it so you become a permanent enemy if you unforbid the items dropped, stealing it essentially, but that might be difficult.  Haven't done a whole lot of crazy modding yet.

In any case, not a top priority item.  If something a really obvious exploit it's not going to be worked on for a while.
1.0 Mods: Raid size limiter:
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=42721.0

MineTortoise:
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=42792.0
HELLO!

(WIPish)Strategy Mode: The experienced player's "vanilla"
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=43044.0

Madman666

#9
Letting stuff lie there forever rotting, isn't a nice idea as well. Feels like a cheap patch for an oversight. Dunno what to offer you, since usually caravan looting already punishing enough - bumps your wealth, makes for one more enemy = next raids s tougher. Completely disabling it this way feels wrong since, you know, profiteering, betrayal and pragmaticism are a thing.

The nice thing to do would be to introduce a temporary cooldown on relations change, so they ll hate you for some time, before gifting and releasing prisoners becomes possible again. And applying a multplier to how much relations you get via those means (again with a cooldown proablly), so it ll be much harder to get them to like you again for a decent time, before their hatred wears off.

Greep

#10
Well it's not completely disabling it:  You can just become permanent enemies for a crapton of stuff :)

Edit: that idea in general is probably good, though.  It's kinda weird that if you have a lot of stuff lying around, you can basically summon infinite allies by transport pod gifting.  I might do that one game just to show some silly screenshots in the 1.0 thread :3
1.0 Mods: Raid size limiter:
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=42721.0

MineTortoise:
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=42792.0
HELLO!

(WIPish)Strategy Mode: The experienced player's "vanilla"
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=43044.0

Madman666

Quote from: Greep on August 04, 2018, 06:30:59 AM
Well it's not completely disabling it:  You can just become permanent enemies for a crapton of stuff :)

Its more or less locking out part of the game in exchange for some randomely generated items. This just doesn't feel like a right game design choice for me :P

Madman666

Quote from: Greep on August 04, 2018, 06:30:59 AM
It's kinda weird that if you have a lot of stuff lying around, you can basically summon infinite allies by transport pod gifting.  I might do that one game just to show some silly screenshots in the 1.0 thread :3

Just don't make Tynan nerf military aid again. Cause the fact that if you have a lot of shit - you can call crapton of allies is actually logical. You have money - you have friends. You re poor - no one likes the hobo. Its more or less the same as just hiring mercs to do the fighting for you. You don't like fighting and do like economic part - become rich, make friends and convince them to fight fot you.

Greep

Hah alright.  I'm not even sure that would work well, though it's pretty funny that it's even possible.

That said, I'm surprised you don't like the timed raid points system:  That's the most friendly way of completely abolishing wealth's influence on raids. 
1.0 Mods: Raid size limiter:
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=42721.0

MineTortoise:
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=42792.0
HELLO!

(WIPish)Strategy Mode: The experienced player's "vanilla"
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=43044.0

Madman666

I don't like timers in general as a concept :P Despite my frequent gripe about raids and all that, i am actually reasonably content with raids rising with wealth. What i don't like a lot in 1.0 is that i need to turn my whole base into one friggin killbox and permanently cram everyone into a tin can, which looks like more of a penal colony of uber strict regime, than a city. And i guess i still don't particularly like world events scale with colony map wealth, cause its stupid. Otherwise - quite fine with it actually.