How to bring the colonies out into the open again?

[erdrik]

One thing that would help is less farmable soil in mountains. Countries like Greece aren't farming powerhouses, because rock can't support crops very well.

In Rimworld farmable soil starts pretty much right outside the mountain. It doesn't feel like you're sacrificing something by landing in mountains. You still have plenty of soil, because farming in Rimworld -still- doesn't use all that much soil. Even in the desert it doesn't feel like you're pressured to build hydroponics to get more soil.

Areas close to mountains should have less soil and that soil should be mostly gravel.

I do like the idea of a soil disparity between biomes, but as Reviire said soil alone won't pull me out of a mountain.

hmmm... a thought occurs..

What if crops depleted the nutrients in soil after like one or two harvests?
Then the nutrients regrow over the course of like... I dunno half a year or maybe a whole year?
(just what ever is longer than it takes to deplete)
In that case, I feel like the abundance of flat land in plains and forests would allow open bases to cycle farm plots and make best use of soil. While the limited space of mountainous regions would limit this, sometimes leading to all available soil being infertile.

Imma put this in its own post..

[Serenity]

In Rimworld farmable soil starts pretty much right outside the mountain.

Heck, you can find farmable soil "inside" by uncovering open areas in what first looked to be mountains. At least those patches should be covered in gravel or low fertility soil.

[Pax_Empyrean]

I'll help you figure it out.

If someone takes mountainous start with the intention of making a mountain base, then obviously that's cheesing one's way to the mountainbase.
he made sure he'll get a mountainbase (probably with an all-year growing period to go with it), even though he didn't have to.

If he does this, then there is no logic in also complaining that the mountainbase is too good and that it must be nerfed.
Nobody's forcing you but your own desire to "cheat" by creating the best conditions you can think of for yourself.

Myself, instead of cheesing it, play random.
So there's something for everybody. Those who want an easy game and those who want a harder game and those who want random.


Also, infestations weren't around back in 2014 I think.

Oh for crying out loud, get over yourself.

What happens when a player randomly rolls a mountain start? The inherent advantages of dwarfing are still there and still a problem. What do you think about that, now that you're not distracting yourself with this ridiculous fixation you've got on how they've violated some idiotic standard of purity by not rolling random?

Wait, let me guess: you think it's not a problem that one strategy is far superior because players who don't want to make it easy for themselves can just decide not to do it, right? It's like you've got a fundamental disagreement with trying to balance things.

hmmm... a thought occurs..

What if crops depleted the nutrients in soil after like one or two harvests?
Then the nutrients regrow over the course of like... I dunno half a year or maybe a whole year?
(just what ever is longer than it takes to deplete)
In that case, I feel like the abundance of flat land in plains and forests would allow open bases to cycle farm plots and make best use of soil. While the limited space of mountainous regions would limit this, sometimes leading to all available soil being infertile.

Imma put this in its own post..

If a system of dynamic soil fertility were in place, I would expect to be able to rotate through a few different types of crops to avoid depleting the soil. This works even better than letting a field lay fallow for a season, and I'd be highly annoyed if the game simulated the problem without simulating the best real world solution appropriate for the level of technology (which hasn't been "let it sit for a while" since the 1500s).

[Kegereneku]

Calm down people, the debate is not about blaming mountain-base as a cheats, it's about making mountain base and fortress* have as many pros & cons than an open base. The ideals being to make it as hard to play a Mountain-base than an fully open one.
*and by fortress I mean everything with a perimeter wall or indoor farm.

Ideas I've seen discussed so far :
- Giving (soil, moods, hygiene, other) advantage to open base. (difficult task since it don't apply to fortress)
- Increasing Soil disparity
- changing Events so they don't encourage closed base. (the Manhunter pack alone force you already to build a fort)
- adding new event that would go precisely against walled-up colony (the super Ant is only being mean against mountain base, not balancing the different aspect)
- modifying how temperature work
- adding cave-in
- modifying the technology (from generator, air conditioning to mortar)
- changing how enemy AI work (limited but still)
- modifying drastically roof mechanics*

*doing that in a way that don't make "already roofed" mountain even easier will be difficult, also, working on the vertical dimension is big no from Tynan, even roof count.

[b0rsuk]

That would be nice, but the issue is that building outside is a stupid idea, mainly because mortars are stupid, see what I suggested earlier

Mortars are not a problem for any experienced player. I don't remember the last time I let mortars actually damage something. By a combination of skill and luck I always have a sniper rifle ready. If I don't have a sniper rifle, I can outmaneuver them with survival rifle.

And recently I discovered EMP mortar is adequate counter to sieges. An EMP mortar has blast radius larger than sunlamp's radius. It stuns mortars and mechanoids for 40 seconds. Then they go to sleep, and there are several ways to handle mortars when the team is asleep:
- build IED traps in interaction spots
- deconstruct them
- shoot them until they explode
- build roof over them

I do like the idea of a soil disparity between biomes, but as Reviire said soil alone won't pull me out of a mountain.

It doesn't need to. Balance is best done one step at a time, otherwise it's too easy to overcompensate.

If mountains have less soil, mountainous bases will have more trouble with cotton, too. It's currently not important but nice to have, especially for armchairs. Animal beds, too. There's generally enough leather and looted clothing to dress your colonists. But what about carpets ? They need research and stat-wise they are on par with stone tiles, I think they even have very similar wealth rating. It's likely that carpets will become flammable, too. So carpets really need perks, like extra beauty, isolation bonus, ability to hide conduits. Make carpets more desirable and reduced amount of soil will become a bigger problem.

Note less soil means less grazing space and less livestock. Make livestock more desirable and scarcity of soil will become a bigger problem.

You could also make trees harder to grow near to mountains, but lobbying here may be difficult because Tynan doesn't like tree farming.

What if crops depleted the nutrients in soil after like one or two harvests?

Micromanagement hell. Reducing the amount of soil enough + maybe making cotton, devilstrand, haygrass more space hungry would have the same effect.

[Boston]

What if crops depleted the nutrients in soil after like one or two harvests?

Micromanagement hell. Reducing the amount of soil enough + maybe making cotton, devilstrand, haygrass more space hungry would have the same effect.

I disagree. With soil depletion, all you have to do is rotate your crops, which in and of itself would take up more space (between 2 and 3 times, if you want to leave land fallow), or plant legumes and other nitrogen-fixing crops.

[erdrik]

What if crops depleted the nutrients in soil after like one or two harvests?

Micromanagement hell. Reducing the amount of soil enough + maybe making cotton, devilstrand, haygrass more space hungry would have the same effect.

You have an interesting definition of micromanagement hell...
Im not sure farm growth is fast enough for me to consider it micro-hell...

[Darth Fool]

Frankly, given that fortresses are so effective in Real life, I would be surprised if there was a way to balance the game to make them not effective in RimWorld without ridiculous Deus Ex Machina mechanisms. 

[Boston]

Frankly, given that fortresses are so effective in Real life, I would be surprised if there was a way to balance the game to make them not effective in RimWorld without ridiculous Deus Ex Machina mechanisms.

Make enemies not dogpile through "killboxes", maybe?

Yes, the concentration of force is an integral part of fortifications in real life, but in real life, attackers can also recognize that running into a killzone is a bad idea

That is, after all, why sieges and sappers were implemented. Granted, they aren't very effective, but that can always be worked on.

In my opinion, sieges shouldn't just lob mortar rounds at your colony for shits and giggles. Instead, they should be aiming at production structures; power plants, farm fields, etc. If your base is entirely inside a mountain (and therefore, entirely reliant on fueled generators for their power,) then they should just basically hang around outside your base and kill/capture any merchants that try to bring you supply. Once your base runs out of power, you will pretty much be screwed.

[Reviire]

That would be nice, but the issue is that building outside is a stupid idea, mainly because mortars are stupid, see what I suggested earlier

Mortars are not a problem for any experienced player. I don't remember the last time I let mortars actually damage something. By a combination of skill and luck I always have a sniper rifle ready. If I don't have a sniper rifle, I can outmaneuver them with survival rifle.

Well I mean, in earlier stages of the game. As time goes on I find that the game gets easier rather than harder, the only raids/sieges I ever worry about are the ones in the first half year. There's just not much you can do when a siege rolls by, you have 4 colonists, 2 guns and they have 12 people and a mortar. The only reasons I refuse to build outside are because of this, and the fact there's no counter to drop pods right in the center of your base.

Even if they're not an issue for experienced players, I'd still like to see them changed to direct fire so they can also be used against mountain bases.

Mountain bases need more reliable counters, and the reasons people use mountain bases need to be fixed. Honestly, the way I think it should work, is that mountain bases should be straight up better. But on the other hand, mountain bases have more counters that are harder to respond against. I don't mean this bug bullshit, but I mean something like a sapper siege, or maybe some more stealth-oriented raids that focus on disabling your defenses rather than walking into a meat grinder, which then gets followed up by a proper raid.

But as I said, mountain bases would see far less use if there were some direct counters to the bullshit that you have to deal with outside. When can we upgrade our roofing to prevent drop pods, and take a few mortar hits? Also why do 4 people in a wooden hut get 10-20 man raids, I don't see how this makes sense.

Look at Dwarf Fortress again, above ground forts are completely viable in that game, because you're not screwing yourself over by doing it. It does make the game a bit harder, sure. But construction times are also much faster because you don't need to waste time mining. Hell you even get underground farms right off the bat.

EDIT: Reading what the dude said above, there are definitely some things about mountains that do need to be removed. Killboxes especially, maybe give raiders some sort of threat calculation while pathing, so when they try to go through a killbox, instead they'll be thinking "HEY THAT'S LITERALLY SUICIDE.", and change their strategy to sapper, or attempt to blow the killbox to high hell. Personally I use Combat Realism so killboxes aren't needed, but they need to be removed in vanilla.

[Ford_Prefect]

Honestly, the problem is the raiders.  They don't act like raiders. They only care about destroying your base.

The raiders should show up and issue a demand for goods ('protection' money).  If you accept, your pawns haul the demanded goods to a spot they pick and the raiders then haul it off the map.  If you decline the offer, they will either attack, go away, or go away and come back with a much larger group.

Currently, combat events, without being extremely skilled with micro control combat or building a kill box will result in you loosing your base.  Every time because of the number increases on the attackers going up all the freaking time.  I don't find microing snipers by pausing and moving them over and over again isn't fun.  The alternative is the kill box... which also isn't very fun, but is allot less tedious to set up than microing my fighters all the freaking time because of the constant attacks.

The choice of giving up resources or possibly being attacked would make the game a bit less tedius and more immersive and interesting.

[Pax_Empyrean]

Frankly, given that fortresses are so effective in Real life, I would be surprised if there was a way to balance the game to make them not effective in RimWorld without ridiculous Deus Ex Machina mechanisms. 

The difference between fortresses in real life and fortresses in Rimworld is that you couldn't feed yourself from inside your fortress in real life, which changes the whole dynamic between attackers and defenders. The ability to make a nigh-unbeatable killzone is less problematic when a sufficiently well-supplied enemy can force you to choose between leaving it or starving to death.

At present, the enemy comes in great enough numbers that if you don't have a big defensive advantage they'll kill you, so while I like the idea of promoting more open-field engagements the enemy's numbers are currently tilted toward "killbox or lose." Their numbers would need to be adjusted along with any change that makes you leave your killbox.

[Kagemusha12]

Frankly, given that fortresses are so effective in Real life, I would be surprised if there was a way to balance the game to make them not effective in RimWorld without ridiculous Deus Ex Machina mechanisms. 

The difference between fortresses in real life and fortresses in Rimworld is that you couldn't feed yourself from inside your fortress in real life, which changes the whole dynamic between attackers and defenders. The ability to make a nigh-unbeatable killzone is less problematic when a sufficiently well-supplied enemy can force you to choose between leaving it or starving to death.

At present, the enemy comes in great enough numbers that if you don't have a big defensive advantage they'll kill you, so while I like the idea of promoting more open-field engagements the enemy's numbers are currently tilted toward "killbox or lose." Their numbers would need to be adjusted along with any change that makes you leave your killbox.

Which is, however,why fortresses in real life usdually had food supplies for several months stored within the fortress (and also access to deep wells for water supply), forcing any attackers to spend several months sieging the city.

Compared to RL equivalents of attacks on castles, the attackers in Rimworld usually come in woefully underprepared 

[Reviire]

Frankly, given that fortresses are so effective in Real life, I would be surprised if there was a way to balance the game to make them not effective in RimWorld without ridiculous Deus Ex Machina mechanisms. 

The difference between fortresses in real life and fortresses in Rimworld is that you couldn't feed yourself from inside your fortress in real life, which changes the whole dynamic between attackers and defenders. The ability to make a nigh-unbeatable killzone is less problematic when a sufficiently well-supplied enemy can force you to choose between leaving it or starving to death.

At present, the enemy comes in great enough numbers that if you don't have a big defensive advantage they'll kill you, so while I like the idea of promoting more open-field engagements the enemy's numbers are currently tilted toward "killbox or lose." Their numbers would need to be adjusted along with any change that makes you leave your killbox.

I think a good change to encourage more engagements outside of killboxes would be to make guns more deadly in general. I've used this example several times already, but look at the Combat Realism mod. Guns are very very deadly, it's quite easy to come out on top of a battle where the enemy has numbers, because what matters is hitting them, not having more people with more guns. A single LMG can turn the tide of an unfair battle, through suppression and just getting a lot of shots in on a large group.

[Blastoderm]

I think a good change to encourage more engagements outside of killboxes would be to make guns more deadly in general. I've used this example several times already, but look at the Combat Realism mod. Guns are very very deadly, it's quite easy to come out on top of a battle where the enemy has numbers, because what matters is hitting them, not having more people with more guns. A single LMG can turn the tide of an unfair battle, through suppression and just getting a lot of shots in on a large group.

What is the point of Melee skill then? Everyone would stick to ranged gunfights. What it does iseffectively cuts entire skill and weapon branch out.