Guide to mastery of the game

[TheMeInTeam]

I think you and I have very different definitions of the word exploit. Just because there are no rules to break, doesn't mean that any strategy is "legitimate". For instance, breaking items on purpose to reduce wealth value is not something anyone would do for any reason except to adjust some numbers. It's spreadsheet strategy. You act purely to adjust the value of an item, without touching any other aspect of the game. Changing the item's value in the game files would be the exact same action in my eyes - you're just taking the long way around.
Call it a loophole instead of a exploit if you want, but it's definitely not strategy.

To make this case there must be some coherent way to draw a line between what is "exploit/loophole" and what isn't one.

For actions that are within the game's rules, the case made is almost always incoherent and arbitrary.  Every once in a while in games a strategy is so degenerate it trivializes the experience, but in most cases someone sees a tactic they don't like and calls it an exploit without using any standards (not even in the framework of own thought).

[AileTheAlien]

there must be some coherent way to draw a line between what is "exploit/loophole" and what isn't one.

There's many ways to draw this distinction, but none of them will be "correct", since it's a definition that changes from person to person. If a player views what's been codified in the game systems as correct, then damaging items to reduce raid power is legitimate. If another player places value heavily on narrative and in-universe behaviour of their colonists, then damaging items in this way is cheating. Authorial intent can also matter. I'm currently reading Tynan's game-design book; Between that book and what he's written elsewhere, I feel that purposefully damaging items to affect raiders would be viewed as cheating. On the other hand, the game is balanced in a way that raids often result in a dead colony, rather than raiders running off with one or two slaves (which is what I feel is intended); When that happens, the only choice is to enable dev mode and "cheat" (but follow authorial intent), or to let yet another colony die to raiders (and follow what's been coded into the game).

[bbqftw]

Tynan created these degenerate incentives by tying all threat scaling to wealth.

The game is intended such that the player is blind to this degenerate incentive, and plays without knowledge of it.

In other communities, not knowing the core mechanics of the game is also known as "being bad".

If threats were time based, we could talk about interesting optimization. What's the fastest way to grow your economy? What's the best labor optimization routes? What's the best way to deal with pawns with poor traits (with time scaling there's now an incentive to work around bad pawns instead of speed 3ing to next raid)?

There's a lot more diversity to this strategy than "how do I maximize my utility/wealth ratio", but right now it doesn't matter past early game.

PS NB is calibrated such that taking a single hit gives a significant risk of death, so is any strategy that allows you to consistently flawlessly beat the first 5-6 encounters also a similar level of gamey/cheat?

[BLACK_FR]

@zizard
Did you check your "bait with food" strategy? Because boomalopes kinda makes it much more harder, you can't just kill them with the roof crash.
@AileTheAlien
I disagree about your idea that narrative and in-universe behaviour point of view will consider damaging your stuff as cheating. As I said before in this thread: "if you crashed on the world where you are constantly attacked because of shiny new things that you own it makes perfect sense to make them not new and shiny. More than that, it will be weird not to do so, like it's weird to not use seat belts when you are driving your car"
If you think "from pawn-view narrative" you can't just import your out-of-game knowledge that damaging your own stuff is stupid. If you live in a Rimworld universe where raiders are attracted to new shiny stuff then NOT damaging your stuff is stupid. And I'm speaking form strictly narrative perspective (because it's huge part of fun).
That's the reason why I put reasonable efforts in attempt to change mechanic where health of item don't affect utility of item. Not only because it's bad balance but also because it makes bad narrative.

For discussion about "no crop start"
It just occured to me why you can't theoretically win with that restriction. Reason is toxic fallout where there are literally no animals on the map. Without crops you can't make enough food storage to survive that.

[5thHorseman]

There are dozens of ways to make game harder (you can disable trade caravans for example or arbitrary forbid some useful thing). Idea is to find ways to make game more challenging and fun. Like disable all starting research or add another raid scaling factor based on time or something else.

I have a beta version of my Golgafrinchams mod if you'd like to give it a whirl. It comes with 2 scenarios that boil down to the basic crash landed scenario and the basic Naked Brutality scenario. I just ran the crash landed one and completed it with a win, and am happy to say the total lack of starting tech was a factor for longer than I'd even hoped it would be.

I would very much call it a way, though, to add difficulty AND an interesting change to the game.

It's beta because while it totally works, it's very basic. Literally all it does is removes all the tech nodes and gives the 2 scenarios so you don't have to edit the default ones.

[zizard]

@zizard
Did you check your "bait with food" strategy? Because boomalopes kinda makes it much more harder, you can't just kill them with the roof crash.

I am a theorist, not an experimentalist. Theoretically you can outrange boomalope explosion with roof construction range.

[AileTheAlien]

you can't just import your out-of-game knowledge that damaging your own stuff

First, I don't view damaging items as bad because of my out-of-game views; My colonists are living in a desperate world where such waste would be unthinkable. Second, you're actually breaking your own rules here, since the relation of raider strength to colony wealth is never explained in the game - that's out-of-character knowledge. Either way, you seem to have missed my main point, that there's no one "correct" way to play the game, since it varies by player, since you're still trying to argue that everyone follow your proscibed way of playing. I also disagree with what you claim is a good story - if a colony was being harassed by raiders for their wealth of items, the easier solution would be to just stockpile them outside, with a big sign that says something like "Don't fight us - take what you want!". The game actually (sort-of) allows for this; Raiders will sometimes steal items and leave the map, if you don't fight them, and keep them outside your main base.

[BLACK_FR]

@5thHorseman
I remember your topic about tech nodes. It's basically removes passive cooler, 400 relevant research points. And if you get hit by heat wave you just have to move to the new place or just wait it out in caravan. Since I have restriction on moving it's basically "when heat wave hits make caravan, lose 1-2 days and continue". Not very challenging but interesting idea.
Can you share link to it?

@zizard
Anyway if you get hit by toxic fallout you just die because you have no crops and no animals to hunt.

@AileTheAlien
Did you read my example? Imagine that you got into world where new shiny things attract attackers who want to kill you for real every few months. And where items work just fine if they are battered. Just imagine that from the point of view of pawn. In that case NOT to batter your items is just stupid. And your ransom idea is just flat out unreasonable, if you ever tried it you would unerstand why. They often would attack you anyway and on desperate world you don't have anything that you can give.
Second, you strawman my point. All your game knowledge is out-of-character, I didn't say that you can't use your game knowledge. I just said that for narrative purposes you have to abandon your stereotypes from real world and percieve game mechanics as physical rules.
Then you again strawman me by saying that I argue that everyone should play optimally. I just created guide how to do it if somebody wants to improve his skills at game. You can choose not to, I can't care less.

[5thHorseman]

@5thHorseman
I remember your topic about tech nodes. It's basically removes passive cooler, 400 relevant research points. And if you get hit by heat wave you just have to move to the new place or just wait it out in caravan. Since I have restriction on moving it's basically "when heat wave hits make caravan, lose 1-2 days and continue". Not very challenging but interesting idea.
Can you share link to it?

I don't have a link but I'll give you one when I do.

I've survived a few heat waves without coolers or moving (one ended when my pawn was lying on the ground at 99% heat stroke) so you *can* survive. And no, it's not like doubling the difficulty or anything but considering most of your strategies fall outside of what I find "fun" it's going to be difficult to suggest ways to make it both harder and still interesting.

[5thHorseman]

Here's the link. It's not on Steam or anything just my personal site.

Golgafrinchams_beta.zip

[TheMeInTeam]

There's many ways to draw this distinction, but none of them will be "correct", since it's a definition that changes from person to person.

The problem isn't that it changes person to person.  The problem is that the same person defines it differently depending on mechanic.  In other words, nearly everyone who claims strategies within the rules are "exploitative" goes on to violate the same standards they just used when considering other aspects of the game.

If a player rejects X tactic for Y reason, but accepts Z tactic despite Y reason, that player's argumentative position is not coherent.  Exploit discussion is rife with this problem.

If a player views what's been codified in the game systems as correct, then damaging items to reduce raid power is legitimate. If another player places value heavily on narrative and in-universe behaviour of their colonists, then damaging items in this way is cheating. Authorial intent can also matter. I'm currently reading Tynan's game-design book; Between that book and what he's written elsewhere, I feel that purposefully damaging items to affect raiders would be viewed as cheating.

I won't assume anybody else's intention, but viewing that particular action as "cheating" would be intellectually dishonest.  At best that choice implies intentional fake difficulty.

That's not to say people shouldn't play how they want to play - good players often place additional restrictions on themselves beyond game rules for extra challenge, a change of pace, or to explore mechanics that are otherwise too niche to see regular use.

But "cheating" in this sense is *only* possible in regards to those made-up rules.  It's objectively false in terms of playing the game normally.

On the other hand, the game is balanced in a way that raids often result in a dead colony, rather than raiders running off with one or two slaves (which is what I feel is intended); When that happens, the only choice is to enable dev mode and "cheat" (but follow authorial intent), or to let yet another colony die to raiders (and follow what's been coded into the game).

I'd rather play the game that is there, as opposed to the game that is allegedly there or the game I/others think the developer might have been going for.  The rules and mechanics define the game, not our feelings about them.

In other communities, not knowing the core mechanics of the game is also known as "being bad".

I'm not sure this is 100% fair.  You and I are both well acquainted with at least one other community where the game straight up hides the functionality of core mechanics, and I can think of a second off hand...both allegedly strategy games too.  I'm not a fan of blaming players for developer mistakes, even if experienced players do eventually learn the hidden mechanics.

[fritzgryphon]

Can we all agree that deliberately degrading items to reduce threat points is a lot of unfun micro, and the developer never intended to encourage it?

Like how it used to be possible to punch your own pawns to reduce the adaptation curve.  That got fixed, I hope this will too.

[TheMeInTeam]

Can we all agree that deliberately degrading items to reduce threat points is a lot of unfun micro, and the developer never intended to encourage it?

Like how it used to be possible to punch your own pawns to reduce the adaptation curve.  That got fixed, I hope this will too.

Won't agree to all of that, no.  Wealth scaling was deliberately implemented this way and the incentives that creates are obvious.  It'd be disingenuous to create this system with its cost scaling, then expect players not to do devalue items to limit threat scaling.  For games in general, if a developer doesn't want degenerate behavior the game shouldn't have degenerate incentives and try to hide them.  That's a shortcut attempting to dupe casual players at best.

There are lots of "by design" things that require more rote-inputs-per-player-time than beating furniture down and not repairing, and even more where you're punished for leaving it to the game (auto vs draft hunting, hauling practices, even fire fighting).

By any definition you use to constrain anticipation of "unfun micro", you will find that this is *not* a serious contender for it and that by-design mechanics require more of your defined "unfun micro".

[fritzgryphon]

So, if a player doesn't punch every corn, component or bed, it would be sub-optimal play?  And this mechanic is a deliberate, intended and fun part of the game's design?

To each his own, I guess. 

[bbqftw]

 I don't think sure full price masterwork items / high end weps / archotech all being noobtraps in many cases is also intended.

The fundamental issue with wealth scaling is it turns the game into calculating optimal utility:wealth ratios. This is absurdified in the case of degradation, but this mechanic invalidates so many parts of the game.

Incidentally, drop pod raids kill degraded structures pretty fast too.