Guide to mastery of the game

Started by BLACK_FR, October 19, 2018, 10:42:52 AM

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BLACK_FR

My interest in game is a challenge. From the beginning I started to play on maximum difficulty that I could manage (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=41992) and very soon even hardest difficulty wasn't enough (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=45664). I think that current balance is making game too easy for skillfull players but as final version 1.0 was released there is no point to whine about it.
So this guide is designed to improve skill for any player on any difficulty. Because all of this techniques were known to Tynan before release (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=45723) it means that there are no exploits here, all mechanics were tested and are working as intended.

For myself I will start new run with all sane artificial difficulties that I could think of to make my game more challenging and fun at the same time. I hope that someone could implement balance changes that will make game actually challgenig for good players (there is my request for that person in mod section - https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=45867), but there are no replies to that yet. There are few mods in that direction that you can use (see below).

For now if you are interested in this type of game, here is list my list of artificial restrictions:
- I use Realistic Degradation and Quality Values mod for balance purposes (in this mod hp of weapons and apparel affect it's stats)
- I use EdB PrepareCarefully mod to create starting pawn. I create pawn with only backgroung "Abductee", with no traits, zero skills and no interests
- I forbid myself to get any other new colonists
- I start on custom merciless Naked Brutality start with Tribe Faction. No save/loading of course
- I start on flat temperate forest with 20-days growing period and average temperature about 0°С. Game considers it "permanent winter" but it's not really is
- I forbid myself to move to better biomes
- I disable all events that I consider "good" or "neutral" (neutral events make bad events appear less often) except for traders. I disable resource pod crash, psychic soothe, self-tame, ambrosia sprout, farm animal wander in, wanderer join, transport pod crash, chased refugee, thrumbos pass, meteorite impact, herd migration, wild man wanders in, ship chunk drop, visitor grougp, traveler group, man in black, aurora, trade request, bandit camp request, incapacitated refugee quest, prisoner rescue quest, peace talks, escape ship quest
- I restrict myself from certain actions that I wouldn't do in real life in same situations (like organ harvesting or releasing naked prisoner into freezing temperature)
- I consider current wealth mechanic regarding buildings and items as broken (even if Tynan don't think so) and don't reduce health of buildings OR items to prevent wealth generation (more of that below). I play as if it affects their utility
- My goal is to launch ship with my starting colonist

If you can think of other ways to make game more challenging without making it less interesting - tell me. I understand that I can make it more challenging by tinkering with stats like research speed, learning speed or market value of all items. But I don't think that it makes game more interesting.

All relevant mechanics could be divided into several topics. They are written for merciless naked brutality with one pawn only, you can ajust it if your conditions are better.
Wealth and threats
Main mechanic of the game. You can check your wealth on history-statistics tabs. For threat strength it uses those numbers with number of building wealth divided by two (I will call it raid wealth). It counts all items with value on the maps, all structures (except unclaimed walls) and all floors (ancient ruins floors give you starting building wealth that you see on this tab).
When you are below 14k raid wealth you always have lowest threat possible, from 14k to 400k you add about 15 raid points for 1k wealth (you can check exact formula in this discussion https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=43894, this number is for merciless difficulty with no deaths and injuries, it is lower otherwise), one raider is "cost" 30-60 points.
So you can ignore wealth until you hit 14k raid wealth threshold and then start to manage it.
1. Get health of all items and buildings low. All items efficiency is not dependent on their health (icluding weapons and armor). So you should let items deteriorate before putting them in the storage. That way you remove almost all wealth from them. Same goes for buildings. You should melee attack them a little (not too much because of zzzt events). It works especially good with art, you can get sculptures basically for free and always have +15 mood buff in the room for beauty, buff for impressive room and VERY fast recreation source.
You can play easily using only this method alone.
2. Get rid of all unneeded stuff. You should save only those items that you are using or that are needed in case of emergency. Best way to do it is to sell it (you always need money) if it isworth something or let it deteriorate into oblivion if it doesn't. Always destroy unused weapons, 20% sell multiplier makes them unsuitable for selling. You can uninstall all the flooring on the map and use it to make art (which you can sell or damage and leave for yourself).
3. Don't have too much silver. You can always invest it into medicine, neutroamine, components or improve relations. If you invest in items don't forget about first advice.
4. In the late game you can use dead-man armor. Mood is not an issue then and 10% wealth multiplier is pretty good.
5. Be very picky about new pawns. They give big leap in wealth (more wealth - bigger leap).

Raids/threats
1. Design your base so that you can be completely indoors if needed (including acces to food storage and bedrooms). Stay indoors when manhunter pack comes in. It's easiest way to deal with it.
2. For starting raids you need just a few steel traps. Open one door when raid starts, put trap near it and wait while raider will come unto it and die. If he is incapacitated strip him (to sell apparel later), finish him and haul him to dumping zone. Close the door, make new trap and you are good. When you need to move your traps, don't reinstall them, use unistall-install to avoid 0.4% chance to die on it yourself.
3. When your raids will become bigger make outer wall with doors every 15-20 spaces with "trap entrance" which is corridor filled with traps.
4. For later game you can make some turrets to help the defense. They are especially needed if raiders avoid trap defense. Make sure that you make walls between them to avoid chain reaction if one of them explodes and put sandbags before them to make some cover. Also remove all possible cover for enemies.
5. Have some animals for fighting purposes, they will be needed for drop pods raids.
6. If you have access to belt shield you can use 1 of your pawns as running bait while other pawns shoot baited target.
7. Train your shooting. For that go hunting regularly.
8. Train your melee. For that you can go melee hunting for animals that usually leave only bruisers (like bucks or alpacas).
9. Use ally help using comm console for hard raids. That way you are basically trade silver for temporary firepower which is good deal with hard raids.
10. Have at least one long-range weapon like bolt rifle or sniper rifle. You will need them in sieges and versus mechanoids (you should kite mechanoids to you trap entrance).
11. At bare minimum make vests and advanced helmets for pawns protection.
12. It's good idea to research and have at hand go-juice for hard raids. Risk of addiction is worth it.

Disease prevention
It's most dangerous threat in early game. So you should start the game with that in mind.
1. Gather all healroot near the base (~25 is enough). Create and delete stockpiles to take gathered medicine with you.
2. Buy some normal medicine asap.
3. Capture prisoner and start training your medical skill performing surgeries on him (install and remove denture or peg leg). If you have 0 skill at the beginning just beat your prisoner by hands and then tend to him to get minimum necessary skill for surgeries. Get your 4k xp every day, train skill to 11-12 than release your test subject.
4. Research normal beds as your first research project.
5. Research drug table and penoxycyline next. After that you should  be under penoxycyline all the time.
6. Make some pemmican so you are not worried about cooking food when disease hits.
7. If you got plague or malaria or sleeping sickness before you got penoxycyline follow this protocol: you should be all the time in the bed, getting up only for eating (if you are ravenously hungry it slows immunity gain) and treating yourself. For treatments use best medicine first (while you have best manipulation). See how good you treatment was and decide if you want to make new treatment 3 hours early or not. Be aware about stages of disease, don't be incapacitated out of bed.

Food, rest and mood management
1. Always watch for your pawns mood. They should never be in risk of break, combined with orther threats that can be deadly.
2. Deal with all basic needs to remove mood debuffs. Keep you recreation at maximum. If your pawn go to threshold of mental break send him to work in the room to get him some comfort and beauty bonuses.
3. Make some psychite tea for emergency mood buff.
4. Make some art (see wealth management section) to have +15 mood from beauty, mood buff from room statand source for very fast recreation.
5. If you have cooking skill make fine meals (you have to go hunting anyway).
6. You can "trade" mood for extra food. Just forbid all the food and eat when you have ~1% of  hunger bar. That way you can save up to 40% of food by the cost of temporary mood debuff. It's relevant in the early game, but too micro-management intensive for mid-late game.
7. You can "trade" mood for extra working time. Just set schedule for work only and go to bed when you have ~1% of rest bar. That way you work up to 40% more by the cost of temporary mood debuff. It's relevant in the early game, but too micro-management intensive for mid-late game.
8. You can draft/undraft pawns to change there chosed mood recreation method to choose best one without tolerances (or reset any other activity you want).

Other tips:
- If you play with transport pods enabled than you should strip falling survivors, their apparel is quite valuable
- If you acquired greandes you can destroy all unneeded stuff with them. Works well for corpses after raids, you don't ever need smelter or crematorium
- You can also get rid of them by creating caravan, dumping all trash when it moves and immediately going back (works well if you have cargo animals)
- You can also use grenades to damage your artifacts that can't deteriorate to reduce their wealth contribution
- You should give your colonists hats with social buff to increase their relationship
- If you are in a dire situation with food (for example you run out of it during toxic fallout) you can wait it in caravan. Just create it to nearby location and then immediately stop for better food foraging
Guide to mastery of the game - https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=46290
If you have idea how make merciless naked brutality run more challenging and fun - tell me

bbqftw

#1
Moodwise and pricewise, properly tattered apparel is better than dead man's. Also raiders never have thrumbo and rarely have hyper. So its more convenient to ruin the dusters than kill a prisoner while wearing them..

Vs manhunter

Since manhunter have tendency to congregate outside your walls close to your pawns, you can use an open door firetrap to kill them. The open door vents, but not efficiently, so temperatures in such a place can rise >200 C. and you do not need to set many tiles on fire to deal with it. This is your answer to "killing 20 elephants with one guy".

One day I hope to apply this trap to humanoids, since instant kill only rolls on damage.

You can also you this behavior to kill them over deepwater. Since animals can only break doors when it explicitly disrupts a path, they do just loiter on opposite shore while you kill them. Map dependent though.

A windmill can also be used as effective vanilla embrasure (not tested on 1.0)

for shoot xp farming, I suggest culling an infestation to manageable amount and periodically clearing it and harvesting the spawned jelly. This is in my opinion the best income source in game, obviously gift most of it since there is very little to profitably invest wealth into

BLACK_FR

#2
Regarding tattered armor. When it get hit it loses hp. If you have properly tattered apparel you are risking to be without armor altogether after few hits. But you are right, now when hp of armor is irrelevant tattered apparel can be good alternative to dead-man armor. And I meant power-armor mainly, because it sure is good but adds a lot of wealth.
Regarding manhunter packs. Why even bother with them? You just go inside your base and wait it out, researching or doing other stuff. No need to interact with them at all.
Regarding infestations. For the first few years I have none of them, they start to arrive only in late-game, when income is not a big issue. My problem with "manageable amount" is that if you control it then it's fine. But if you get hit by few incidents so you don't have time to keep them manageable then they can become real threat again. And my general strategy is to keep threats at minimum.
Guide to mastery of the game - https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=46290
If you have idea how make merciless naked brutality run more challenging and fun - tell me

fritzgryphon

#3
Good stuff.  I wish optimal techniques like this were stickied, or on the wiki, because it's so easy to forget them while playing.

I found this funny:

Quote
- I restrict myself from certain actions that I wouldn't do in real life in same situations (like butchering humans or organ harvesting)

and

Quote3.  Capture prisoner and start training your medical skill performing surgeries on him (install and remove denture or peg leg). If you have 0 skill at the beginning just beat your prisoner by hands and then tend to him to get minimum necessary skill for surgeries. Get your 4k xp every day, train skill to 11-12 than release your test subject.

Organ transplants, no.  Mengele, yes.   ;)


BLACK_FR

#4
Quote from: fritzgryphon on October 19, 2018, 02:22:15 PM
Organ transplants, no.  Mengele, yes.   ;)

To be fair it's not quite Mengele. You are training on attackers that were going to kill or enslave you. If it is ok to kill those attackers then it should be ok to train on them with no permanent damage and releasing them afterwards. Harsh conditions require harsh moral and I think that this moral is appropriate.
Guide to mastery of the game - https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=46290
If you have idea how make merciless naked brutality run more challenging and fun - tell me

Scavenger

"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth." - Oscar Wilde

TheMeInTeam

Quote from: BLACK_FR on October 19, 2018, 02:53:57 PM
Quote from: fritzgryphon on October 19, 2018, 02:22:15 PM
Organ transplants, no.  Mengele, yes.   ;)

To be fair it's not quite Mengele. You are training on attackers that were going to kill or enslave you. If it is ok to kill those attackers then it should be ok to train on them with no permanent damage and releasing them afterwards. Harsh conditions require harsh morale and I think that this morale is appropriate.

You're thinking of morals.  Morale is what you get when you burn everyone to death for fun or something.

BLACK_FR

Quote from: TheMeInTeam on October 19, 2018, 03:19:28 PM
You're thinking of morals.  Morale is what you get when you burn everyone to death for fun or something.

You are right, I meant moral of course. When you are writing in foreign language sometimes missteps like that happen.
Guide to mastery of the game - https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=46290
If you have idea how make merciless naked brutality run more challenging and fun - tell me

TheMeInTeam

Quote from: BLACK_FR on October 19, 2018, 03:32:41 PM
Quote from: TheMeInTeam on October 19, 2018, 03:19:28 PM
You're thinking of morals.  Morale is what you get when you burn everyone to death for fun or something.

You are right, I meant moral of course. When you are writing in foreign language sometimes missteps like that happen.

Fair enough, I was at least as interested in helping to foist the proper way of fire onto heathens as I was in any actual grammatical correction.

bbqftw

yeah I agree at super low pop there is very little point killing manhunters

Shurp

Quote from: BLACK_FR on October 19, 2018, 10:42:52 AM
If you can think of other ways to make game more challenging without making it less interesting - tell me.

Start on a Tundra or Ice Sheet hex instead of Temperate Forest.  This forces you to invest in large electricity projects to farm indoors, which in turn attracts much more dangerous raids.  And the lack of wood handicaps you early on.

Also, stop intentionally degrading your stuff.  Pretend that damaged equipment doesn't work as well as good equipment.  (I have no idea why this was removed; damaged solar panels used to produce less power in previous versions, right?)
If you give an annoying colonist a parka before banishing him to the ice sheet you'll only get a -3 penalty instead of -5.

And don't forget that the pirates chasing a refugee are often better recruits than the refugee is.

5thHorseman

Quote from: Shurp on October 19, 2018, 09:52:18 PM
stop intentionally degrading your stuff.

He doesn't. He just lists it as a way to make the game easier.

Quote from: BLACK_FR on October 19, 2018, 10:42:52 AM
- I consider current wealth mechanic regarding buildings as broken (even if Tynan don't think so) and don't reduce health of buildings to prevent wealth (more of that below)
Toolboxifier - Soil Clarifier
I never got how pawns in the game could have such insanely bad reactions to such mundane things.
Then I came to the forums.

BLACK_FR

#12
Quote from: bbqftw on October 19, 2018, 09:18:20 PM
yeah I agree at super low pop there is very little point killing manhunters

Actually I think it's even more important for big populations because packs are bigger. Imagine that you were sieged but if you stay indoors siege will do no damage and go away after day or too. Isn't that better than fight them? You just need to make your base certain way.

Quote from: Shurp on October 19, 2018, 09:52:18 PM
Start on a Tundra or Ice Sheet hex instead of Temperate Forest.  This forces you to invest in large electricity projects to farm indoors, which in turn attracts much more dangerous raids.  And the lack of wood handicaps you early on.

I thought about it. But there is no way to survive with naked brutality tribal start on Ice Sheet. Remember, you won't have electricity for a long time, you won't even have clothes for a long time. My other restrictions made it impossible to play Ice Sheet. If I want to face challenges of Ice Sheet I have to abandon some of my other restrictions, those challenges can't be combined. They are both can be interesting but for now Tribal NB is more interesting for me, I want challenges that are compatible with that.
Guide to mastery of the game - https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=46290
If you have idea how make merciless naked brutality run more challenging and fun - tell me

vzoxz0

You modify our opening so much I wouldn't even call your gamestyle "naked brutality". Giving minor interest to all likes is a huge advantage for any colonist. Likewise a naked brutality game on Tribal is much easier than the original one. You've nerfed the difficulty significantly and pretend you're some Merciless Master.

cultist

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.