Some random b19 feedback now that I've sunk my teeth into it a bit

[Shurp]

OK, so unsurprisingly I got killed on Naked Brutality.  Question: what is the secret to surviving the initial raid?  You can only get off two shots with a shortbow, and the knife the first raider comes with is more dangerous than a wooden club... Is a slate club a better choice?  Or should I have mined some steel and made a knife of my own?

[Yoshida Keiji]

Don't fight and live for another day. Specially if you hit the raider twice with a bow, let the enemy bleed to unconsciousness.

[giltirn]

OK, so unsurprisingly I got killed on Naked Brutality.  Question: what is the secret to surviving the initial raid?  You can only get off two shots with a shortbow, and the knife the first raider comes with is more dangerous than a wooden club... Is a slate club a better choice?  Or should I have mined some steel and made a knife of my own?

I find door micro or traps a good way of surviving the first raid. Of course you are SOL if your guy doesn't have a high enough crafting skill to make a bow or traps (this was the case for my current game); I had to hope and pray with a wooden club - and reload a couple of times! If you don't like savescumming you're probably going to end up repeating the first month several times.

[Shurp]

From what I hear traps are now extra-deadly, so I'll try that next time I go for naked brutality.  In the meanwhile, I've started a regular Crashlanded game, and I've noticed the raids are much easier now.  Which is good, because I see a looooong research tree before I get anywhere near turrets.  So it's no longer a catastrophe when one of my pawns is hiding in her room and another is a Wimp who gets downed by one bullet.  My other two pawns could still handle the one raider shooting and the other one wandering around uselessly with a knife.

[Limdood]

Since there is already a thread started, I'll post my observations about B19 as well.

First off, i play using some mods.  Most notably, no skill decay, increased stack sizes, hospitality, and rimfridge.

I'll start with impressions, which may be my experience, or perception, and may not actually be true.  Most notably:

- research feels WAY WAY slower.  I'm aware that cleanliness affects it now, but only with upwards of 4 reasearch stations, and having several pawns working at near max research speed, does current research feel roughly on par with B18 research using 1 skilled pawn.  This is a difference not explained by a 10% difference in speed either way for cleanliness.  If research was slowed down, I missed reading that patch note.  That being said, while it is frustrating to want to get a dozen different research projects done, each taking a long time, its also a cool thing to have to decide.  Certainly I felt often in B18 that i could knock certain projects out in a couple hours, or even larger projects in 1 day of 2-3 researchers going to town...i no longer feel like i can super-speed through a project in B19

- raids feel numerous as heck.  under both Cassandra and Randy, medium and the next harder difficulty, raids seem extremely numerous, and back-to-back raids seem common.  I feel like i'm getting raided FAR more often than in B18.  That being said, this one is also both good and bad...Sometimes i'll feel like i'm in a good spot and a raid will happen (or I'll accept a refugee) and then i'm immediately blasted by another huge raid and my prep feels sorely lacking...its frustrating....but its also pretty cool, and keeps the excitement higher than B18 and earlier's occasional half-a-year-no-raids feel.

And now onto my thoughts on confirmed game mechanics changes:

-speaking of refugees, the refugee raids are noticeably larger than other raids, which is now evident due to the raid composition being listed.  They're significantly more dangerous.  I understand that it is offset by getting a guaranteed pawn AND getting a guaranteed "attack immediately" raid, but its also made worse by not knowing if that pawn will be a triple-addict pyromaniac AND having to scurry to get that pawn safely tucked away, or equipped in time for the raid (that being said, I heartily appreciate the increased time between refugee entry and raid)

-I love the new raid types.  I love that multiple groups have different "flee" triggers.  I dislike that multiple group raids only show one of the groups on the raid notification.

- I like the new traps.  I like that the increased damage and resource efficiency was balanced (somewhat) by reduced space efficiency (no adjacent traps anymore).  They feel more deadly, which a trap should...no more centipedes triggering a dozen steel traps without going down, or a pawn triggering 6 (and then capturing a legless, armless pawn).

- I like the animal skill decay.  It keeps trainers sharp.  I like the boars not being haulers (which i know several people dislike), and cougars are now.  I can see several of the OP's points though.  Without colony manager mod, chasing animals to train, especially in non-arid, non-forest biomes is a nightmare.  It can take in-game HOURS to trek across the map in the snow or rainforest, chasing down Pongo to renew his hauling training.  I also dislike being stuck with a starting bonded pet (though i noticed they are no longer ALWAYS bonded), as its often hard to enclose an early base, and after saving my starting yorkie from a fox and a lynx hunting it twice, the 3rd lynx got it...in 2 hits, despite me having pawns near, armed, and ready to immediately answer the threat and attempting to do so the moment the notification hit.  Also think its ridiculous to start with a high animal skill requirement "pet" that i can't train or keep tamed, that I somehow might also be bonded with?  I disagree with the OP that training an early pet is tough on food (except in no-vegetation biomes).  A few berry/agave plants harvested covers training early, and with only 1 starting pet (or even 3 on tribal), its not a serious imposition.

- speaking of losing pets to preds despite the warning...THANK YOU FOR ADDING HUNTING WARNINGS!

- I love the new hunter stealth mechanic and animal revenge chances.  No longer does it feel like every deer hunting trip risks imminent death for my entire colony from Bambi manhunters - and even when hunting bears or cougars, i can make informed choices to minimize my risk.  Animal skill factoring in is pretty cool too.

- the leather breakdown is awesome.  still not sure exactly how the individual leather's heat and cold insulation values affect each individual item of clothing (on that, and only that, do i wish the old heat/cold insulation percentages still existed), but even if i don't know the exact numbers, I can still make an informed decision on which leather to use for value/protection/insulation, and they're all different enough to MATTER.  I'd love to see meat get some similar love....just in terms of clutter reduction.  There is no longer a difference between gazelle, deer, elk, caribou, or ibex ram leather....but each of them still somehow need their own meat type (that being said, the meat is a minor annoyance at most, while the leather change is a HUGE bonus in my eyes).

- I removed a lot of mods from my list for B19....stack merger is gone, bridge mod is gone, bionics crafting mod is gone, MINIATURIZATION! (uninstallable benches) and a few more that i can't remember...because, you know, i deleted them.  I don't think more needs to be said...i used to use mods for those features.  I liked the features enough to seek out and use mods.  Now i don't have to.  yay!

- Wild man is cool...though i hate that the wild man hunts my colonist for food.  That even alone has ended 3 separate naked brutality attempts on games where my poor naked surgery patient didn't have high animal skill to tame, couldn't risk the huge revenge chance hunting, and apparently also couldn't leave the wild man alone, cuz he'd hunt and kill me.  I finally resorted to leaving my bedroom/stockroom door open so the wild man could eat my meals...

I like the way caravans load and move on roads now.  I played a couple games using only the vanilla caravan mechanic and still used caravans WAY WAY more often than i did in B18.  I also attacked enemy outposts FAR more than i used to, since i could now get a feel for how many enemies I'd face (previously, there's no way in hell i'd send half my colony out for a 4 day round trip to attack a pirate base that MIGHT not even be beatable by the force i sent!).  I eventually grabbed a mod that allows me to further reduce caravan travel speed (i settled on 1.5x speed) and modify the effect of roads by type (I kept dirt roads at 0.5x travel time, and the better roads reduce it on a curve down to 0.25x travel time for asphalt highways)....so yes, I still modded that, but it was far far better than B18 even unmodded.  One caravan complaint: despite the new streamlined packing of caravans, i noticed that BEFORE my pawns start loading everything on the animals that now follow them around (yay!), one guy darts all over my base "tagging" each animal and colonist that will join the caravan.  I understand that it probably adds flavor....a "hey we're going for a trip" interaction, but it uses a LOT of time on big caravans, and every other task in the game is automatically "known" by each pawn, and they get around to doing it all by themselves.  Even animals move to zones without colonist interaction.

- I actually like the new trade requests.  I have had a few i WOULDN'T fulfill, but i have not yet noticed one i COULDN'T fulfill.  Getting faction relationship for them is nice, and knowing the value of the request and compensation is great too.

- with faction relations, i like the new ally standing.  I like the separation into 5 different faction types.  I found that maintaining high relations with everyone isn't particularly hard.  I might be hardER on some extreme biomes, but i think it would still be entirely doable without too much effort overall.  I think the rewards for peace talks are very high, OR there needs to be a "progress" outcome, rather than just success, no change, failure.  I like the peace talks both flavor-wise and for the social experience, but the instant 60+ faction boost feels too much.  I'd prefer less extreme changes and more common peace talks.  That being said, downloading a simple mod to double the number of factions put the whole thing into a preferable balance for me.  With 8 dynamic factions (2 of each type) in addition to the pirates, it was a lot harder to maintain alliances and remove hostilities.

- I noticed my animals WAKE UP and move in the middle of the night when changed their allowed zones because i had a raid that was going to path through their grazing zones.  I hated losing animals in B18 because a raid happened to come at night and my muffalos were sleeping and could not be made to relocate by any means.

-reworked armor allows me to utilize melee.  I can make a couple tank pawns in steel plate armor (or heavy fur dusters and clothes before i get armor) and have a reasonable chance of giving a ranged opponent a really bad day.  almost every armor and clothing has a MUCH higher sharp defense than blunt as well, making blunt weapons less likely to be resisted, on top of the new stun chance.  high base damage on many melee weapons also gives them great armor penetration.  They tend to not get resisted when swung (where the armor pen mechanic makes assault rifles and machine pistols less effective than they were in B18, due to the low individual shot damage (and thus low armor pen) being outright resisted, rather than being the go-to way to pain-down enemies)

General observations not super specific to B19, but i'm noticing particularly much in B19:

- the doormat mod isn't updated yet.  My colonists spend an excessive amount of time cleaning, or hating their environment.  My bases seem completely filthy all the time, even when i don't let animals free roam.

- Scars are atrociously bad.  I notice myself turning pawns away because they have more than one scar, despite good traits and/or skills.  Scars quickly hit the "medium" pain threshold and cause an ironic "when will it end" -10 mood pain debuff.  It seems even more noticeable this patch for some reason.  It might be the minor mood breaks are more likely to cause mood spirals in the base (dazes and hide in room last long enough to malnourish and exhaust, outlasting catharsis and freezing the mood in extreme break range when the pawn immediately goes to sleep after the break.  Insult sprees cause serious, long lasting mood penalties throughout the colony, leading to more mood breaks.  They also lead to fights, which lead to pain or scars (which lead to pain), which leads to low mood and mood breaks again).  Scars causing pain bugs me.  Scars causing pain higher than "little" really gets to me.  Again, its not specific to this patch, but as the mood breaks get harder to damage control (it seems like drafting and running from an insulter no longer works) and more social (insulting sprees vs. dazes), permanent mood penalties really start to hurt.

[Drewski]

I disagree with the OP that training an early pet is tough on food (except in no-vegetation biomes).  A few berry/agave plants harvested covers training early, and with only 1 starting pet (or even 3 on tribal), its not a serious imposition.

- I actually like the new trade requests.  I have had a few i WOULDN'T fulfill, but i have not yet noticed one i COULDN'T fulfill.  Getting faction relationship for them is nice, and knowing the value of the request and compensation is great too.

I dunno, man, I went back and counted berries to see if maybe I was imagining things. Of course I was just giving my highly-subjective impressions from playing at the time, as are you. I counted a little more than 30 berries every couple of days for training a husky. Made into simple meals, that's about half of your crashlanders' combined food budget! If they use rice, that's what, 15 tiles of rice on normal soil to train a husky? Seems like a lot to me even looking at the actual numbers.

And don't get me wrong - I love the randomness of the trade quests. When I said "charmingly ridiculous" that wasn't by any means negative feedback. Trade quests to me are fairly low-risk, so I love that they may be weird or useless, or may be sudden motivation to craft en masse. I do find it odd that they never seem to ask for pemmican or grain, but it's not something that bothers me, as such.

(I'm also questioning my own impression of needing a good cooking skill. Next time I start with low cooking I'm'a try using pemmican to train it. Never occurred to me before, but I saw a passing comment to that effect.)

[bbqftw]

With respect to scars, the best move is to exile pawns as soon as they get permanent mood altering injuries.

If you would autoreject a pessimist, you should autoreject someone with painscar.

[fecalfrown]

With respect to scars, the best move is to exile pawns as soon as they get permanent mood altering injuries.

If you would autoreject a pessimist, you should autoreject someone with painscar.

Not really true. A pessimist can only be corrected with a joywire, which is undesirable. A good pawn with a painscar can be fixed by replacing the affected part with a bionic, or luciferum.

[bbqftw]

Both of which either directly increase pawn value, or indirctly as you need to dedicate an economy to produce luciferium.


I would replace legs, but legs have high combat utility. Rest not so much.

View it as a temporary loss to avoid a permanent burden. Why accept bad pawns when the game will deliver you good ones? The major mistake most rimworld players make is being impatient.

The game rewards you for never getting rich with good pawns. The game punishes you for getting rich quickly with bad pawns.

This was emphasized even more in b19 rework to raid formula, as per pawn contribution now represents a significant part of raid point total.

[Drewski]

Now you know my pain

That'd be great, if you could ever come up with a savegame from *just before* the problem occurs. I'd really appreciate it.

Here we go. This isn't -quite- on the nose, but White is on forced-priority to treat Fedosia and on his way. Before he gets to her, a couple patients get into the hospital and she gets up to treat one, letting White go on to other tasks. She's on priority one patient and doctor and currently bleeding, but in no immediate danger. If you use dev mode to cut her until she -is- in immediate danger before this happens, she immediately gets up to harvest devilstrand. :/

http://www.filedropper.com/thearistocratsmedtest