Why are quest estimates never accurate?

[Lexa]

Ok picture this, low wealth colony, 5 pawns, 40k wealth on Accipiter Hysteric (Rimmsenal Storyteller Pack) Merciless.

I get a quest to host 6 prisoners for 5 days and im told to expect a raid of 7 people every day. Ok, sounds rough but ill give it a shot. Immedantely after accepting: Siege: 12 people, 4 hours later: sappers, 10 people. 1 hours later again, sappers  11 people.

Aaaand my colony is in ruins with no survivors. Geee thanks ill just avoid accepting any quests at all in the future, this is bullshit.

[Tynan]

It's not about the number of individuals, but the power level. Some types of enemies are more powerful than others. E.g. 7 mercenary gunners may be replaced by 14 scavengers or anything in between.

[Lexa]

How am i supposed to fend off 33 people with 5 though? Esp if i dont have any significant gear advantage on account of being early game.

My perimeter wall counted for nothing because it was blasted full of holes after the first and second raids and neither did my backup chokepoints in the base itself because after those raids my pawns were wounded enough to go down after a few punches.

Im mostly curious as to why they come in so frequent? I've accepted this quest mostly because of the comparatively long time between raids to let me heal up...
I reloaded a few times now and i always get 3 raids on the first day already. I got a mod to modify raid behaviour (makes raids cost resources for the faction thats attacking, recoup by having raiders escape) so maybe thats breaking the quest.

[Lexa]

a few dozen reloads later i must conclude that this is impossible to beat, no matter what i try, no matter how hard, nothing short of dev moding avoids my base burning down and all my pawns dying. I consistently get 25-30 enemy pawns on the first day, then again on the second day. Neither the 7 pawns nor the 24 hours between raids estimate is accurate. I dont even have time to make meals for the prisoners between the raids, nevermind healing.

I implore you, if thats the storytelling you want the game to have then give raiders different goals from just "exterminate". They're here for the prisoners right? Why then will they set fire to everything as soon my walls are breached?

[LWM]

I would love to see more logic options for raiders in the "steal, burn, pillage, but leave before dying" category.  I also recognize that AI logic is HARD.

OP - your colonists could always flee the map?  "Oh, shoot, we took a stupid contract....let's bail."  "Yeah, we'll last a little longer that way.  Until the Empire finds us."

[B@R5uk]

...dont even have time to make meals for the prisoners between the raids, nevermind healing...

I know, you got bigger problems now, but why not to build NPD into prisoner room? That saves a lot of work to cook and to haul food for them. Especially since wardens haul food one by one. The NPD saves resources too and since prisoners do not produce anything you do not need make them happy very much.

[Tynan]

Can I ask which mods you're running, and which difficult you're on?

With 5 people, I would expect threats to be about 1/3 the size you're describing.

Sometimes mods induce wealth inflation which badly throws off the difficulty of the game.

[Lexa]

and which difficult you're on?

Accipiter Hysteric (Rimmsenal Storyteller Pack) Merciless.

Accipitier supposedly "helps" you when you're low wealth and once you're setup (eg, wealthy) sends in the hurt "mercilessy". Is 40k wealthy? I dont really have much of anything yet.

Can I ask which mods you're running

Some notable ones:

NPC Bonus: Modifies raid building, if i understood right it increases how many points a invidual raider may use...? I've increased this by 20% for outlanders. Im using it precisely to avoid whats happening here, getting overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Fewer but stronger raiders is much more fun to deal with, especially when you're not using a killbox.

Faction Resources: Modifies raid building. This one limits how big a raid from a faction can be based on how the previous raids outcomes: Each raid costs the attacking faction ressources, pawns that escape refund their value. Maximum pool for a faction scales with your wealth level and the points regenerate over time.

Glitternet & Rimatomics: These definitely would increase wealth massively (and give tools to deal with such) but i dont have the tech for it yet.

To recap, i have 5 pawns, some of which are crippled (one has a steel arm, another a peg leg, others are missing toes and fingers) and one which is incapable of violence, but i have a alapaca (untrained) & a Husky (fully trained) which i use to bodyblock and meele raiders. Total Colony wealth according the graph is 39.262,7.

This is my pawns living condition since dev moding away the last few raids.

[Tynan]

Okay, well with a custom storyteller and a variety of mods any of which may be broken, unbalanced, or wealth-inflating it seems clear the issue is somewhere in your mods.

RimWorld is a very complex game, and especially when you're messing with incident/raid/points/difficulty/storyteller mechanics it's hard to test, obscure, and very hard to balance. So a lot of mods will mess this up completely, or they might break when combined in ways the creator didn't expect.

As a simple example, it's possible the quest estimates are inaccurate because some mods are inflating the threats after the quest is generated, but not feeding that info back into the quest itself. So it reports the vanilla threat, but the mods give you a crazy modified threat.

I'll tell you that what you're describing wouldn't happen in vanilla.

[Lexa]

I see, apologies for wasting your time. I just was getting so damn frustated.

As a simple example, it's possible the quest estimates are inaccurate because some mods are inflating the threats after the quest is generated, but not feeding that info back into the quest itself. So it reports the vanilla threat, but the mods give you a crazy modified threat.

Ill bring this up with those two mods creators, thanks!

[Bozobub]

It's not a bad idea to notify the mods' creators but don't hold your breath; as Tynan notes, this kind of issue is hard enough to diagnose with just a few mods, much less a long list, such as yours, and no one is paid to write/maintain mods ^^' .  Good luck, nonetheless.