How to bring the colonies out into the open again?

[Reviire]

You can effectively remove other playstyles by inaction. For example, Quake 2 multiplayer has following weapons: blaster, shotgun, machinegun, super shotgun, chaingun, railgun, grenade launcher, rocket launcher, hyperblaster, BFG10K. Rocket launcher, railgun, chaingun dominate everything else. Good players don't even pick up worse weapons, especially in duels. Shotgun, machinegun might as well not be there. No-brainers are harmful to a game.

You can also remove playstyles by action. We want neither of these. All play styles should be encouraged, instead of making one unplayable because you don't like it.

[Pax_Empyrean]

The problem with dwarfing is that balancing events (including raids) around it makes those obstacles overwhelming against anyone who isn't doing it.

I don't think anybody's trying to get people to stop digging in entirely; just add sufficient drawbacks so that it's no longer the obviously best approach to everything.

[Reviire]

The problem with dwarfing is that balancing events (including raids) around it makes those obstacles overwhelming against anyone who isn't doing it.

I don't think anybody's trying to get people to stop digging in entirely; just add sufficient drawbacks so that it's no longer the obviously best approach to everything.

That's not true, though. You can add events that are specifically for mountain bases, i.e sappers that could plant explosives on walls. Hell, that'll kill two birds with one stone, it'll make killboxes counterable too. The solution isn't to turn existing events up to 11, trying to throw enough pawns at it to solve the problem.

Add direct fire siege weapons, so raiders can shoot at mountain bases and actually do something.

[Pax_Empyrean]

I'm talking about existing events. Throwing a big enough army that it's dangerous to a killbox will completely steamroll anything that isn't a killbox. Making fallout dangerous to pawns that spend 95% of their time indoors is lethal against any base design that sees the light of day more often.

I'm starting to think that increasing the range of guns will help matters, since if you could cover a wider range of approaches from a single position you'd be able to achieve the concentration of force necessary to deal with attackers without resorting to a killbox. Having a couple of bunkers is a lot more interesting than the assembly-line slaughter approach.

[ThiIsMe007]

I think that multiple world maps could be a good solution to the issue.

People turtle in because... it works.

I don't expect a simple AI like Rimworld's to be able to squeeze a player out of a well-defended mountain, except by enforcing stuff (cheating), which isn't fun to play through after a while for most of us.

There should be a motivation for players to leave their hideout, and expose themselves : less resources around the crash site, need to find water with the colony growing or raiders poisoning, need to rotate crops, etc.

This in turn could lead to more interesting gameplay : ambushes, territorial wars, moving the whole colony to safer spots and therefore need to tame pack animals, organizing long-distance trecks to arctic or toxic areas containing artifacts or ultra-rare resources needed for the spaceship, discovering ruins or "dungeons", assaulting enemy lookout camps to reduce raid frequency, etc., etc.

Less of the lame events generated by pure randomness, more of the interesting and challenging events generated by the strategic needs to survive!

[Azathoth]

What about making rooftops useful?

Rooftop turrets, solar panels, maybe even rooftop greenhouses. Glass roofs, too, for a mood boost. Maybe pneumatic tube systems for shuffling goods around, that are far easier to install in a normal roof than when under the mountain. To make drop pods more tolerable for those not turtling, add AA turrets that can shoot them down.

Maybe expand on the personal shield mechanic, and have building sized shields that stop drop pods and mortars from easily breaking through. Additionally, some kind of reinforced wall would be great!

[SpaceDorf]

Thought about this too, this is a brilliant idea

Also Bunker-Buster Mortars which can destroy Mountain Roofs,
it may take some time, but causes rubble to drop inside the base which damages furniture and cave-ins.

Fair game for everybody, just watch how fast the rats stream out of the burning mountain home

[ThiIsMe007]

Fair game for everybody, just watch how fast the rats stream out of the burning mountain home

Siege raiders never manage to destroy anything (significant) in my games.

Maybe at the very beginning, if a siege happens before any raid.

When the game is advanced enough though (after a handful of raids), my colonists simply deny them the possibility to deploy their mortar + sandbag fortifications 90% of the time.

How exactly will "adding more of the same" change anything ?

[Kegereneku]

You can effectively remove other playstyles by inaction. For example, Quake 2 multiplayer has following weapons: blaster, shotgun, machinegun, super shotgun, chaingun, railgun, grenade launcher, rocket launcher, hyperblaster, BFG10K. Rocket launcher, railgun, chaingun dominate everything else. Good players don't even pick up worse weapons, especially in duels. Shotgun, machinegun might as well not be there. No-brainers are harmful to a game.

You can also remove playstyles by action. We want neither of these. All play styles should be encouraged, instead of making one unplayable because you don't like it.

Actually we want one of those. But rather than calling it "Nerfing", think "Improving".
Some time ago, we had an huge problem with (old)AI & killbox. The players were being logically driven to play the game like a tower-defense game, Tynan improved the combat-AI into something more fulfilling. It's harder but we don't feel like massacring stupid lemming anymore.

So what about trying to find the Aspect that don't feel right and trying to solve those in a way that balance with other ?

ex :
> Open-Village can't exist because Man-hunter Pack force you to build a perimeter wall, what can we do about that ?
> Outside fortress let us grow indoor food too easily, wan can we do about that ?
> Mountain bunker are too easy to feed, what can we do about that ?
> Mountain bunker make enemy mortar irrelevant, what can we do about that ?
> ...etc

For each we'll want a solution that don't NERF but make all playstyle more equivalent.

(ex) My take on the first one :
> Open-Village can't exist because Man-hunter Pack force you to build a perimeter wall
Rework entirely how Manhunterpack work :
- If manhunter pack didn't homed straight on human settlement and avoided owned-structure (except if at range to hunt), a wall wouldn't be necessary. (doesn't worsen dwarf-playstile since bunker is more logical against Raiders/Faction)
- If manhunter pack didn't moved in one pack of 100 but in several packs of "just enough to to fight equally", you wouldn't need Cheat/Exploit to survive any attack. (again, no change for other playstyle, you can't bait them into a killbox since they wouldn't be waiting outside of it and they would attack you too fast to retreat)
- If manhunter pack actually eat the other animals, it would make farms more important & make their movements predictable (to compensate for not having a wall all around. (this one would incite fortress to stockpile more food inside, which is more logical)

I leave you the others, I'm sure any solution will satisfy everybody as long as we work the right way with the same objective.

[erdrik]

> Mountain bunker make enemy mortar irrelevant, what can we do about that ?

Nothing. I don't think the mortar should be relevant against a mountain base.
Instead I think a the game needs to be able to identify a mountain base and send a similar but different event instead. It just doesn't make sense for Mortars to be able to damage anything within a mountain. Fortunately the game already has weapons that could.

Psychic weapons.
Start with one single target lance, and use the same drop pod method to drop in one lance at a time at preset intervals. After X number of intervals start scaling up how many get dropped.(so two get used at once instead of one, and so on)
Psychic weapons should be expensive tho, so the intervals would probably be long, and should allow some amount of time for the player to react. Then the Seigers would just need appropriate escorts.

[Kegereneku]

Actually we can do something for that : Any room bigger than <X> would have the risk of a cave-in.
This would neatly encourage player to NOT build huge room inside mountain, thereby making indoor farming less free.
Alternatively we could have "Shock-shell" (Trademarked, do not steal) that inflict damage to all around equipment, but cause more damage when hitting a mountain top. (and it can be added along a cave-in)

Spamming Psychic weapon for raider is a bad idea because it would apply to EVERY playstyle and not solve at all the discrepancy between a open-base and an outside one. (and those weapons are supposed to be near mythical).

Also, we have enough people complaining that Raid are getting unbearable, many long for events where the Raider simply stole stuff rather than destroy all (or at least threaten to destroy if we don't pay)

[Reviire]

You can effectively remove other playstyles by inaction. For example, Quake 2 multiplayer has following weapons: blaster, shotgun, machinegun, super shotgun, chaingun, railgun, grenade launcher, rocket launcher, hyperblaster, BFG10K. Rocket launcher, railgun, chaingun dominate everything else. Good players don't even pick up worse weapons, especially in duels. Shotgun, machinegun might as well not be there. No-brainers are harmful to a game.

You can also remove playstyles by action. We want neither of these. All play styles should be encouraged, instead of making one unplayable because you don't like it.

Actually we want one of those. But rather than calling it "Nerfing", think "Improving".
Some time ago, we had an huge problem with (old)AI & killbox. The players were being logically driven to play the game like a tower-defense game, Tynan improved the combat-AI into something more fulfilling. It's harder but we don't feel like massacring stupid lemming anymore.

So what about trying to find the Aspect that don't feel right and trying to solve those in a way that balance with other ?

ex :
> Open-Village can't exist because Man-hunter Pack force you to build a perimeter wall, what can we do about that ?
> Outside fortress let us grow indoor food too easily, wan can we do about that ?
> Mountain bunker are too easy to feed, what can we do about that ?
> Mountain bunker make enemy mortar irrelevant, what can we do about that ?
> ...etc

For each we'll want a solution that don't NERF but make all playstyle more equivalent.

Yes, that is what we want to do. But we don't want to nerf mountains severely because of it. As I have said many times, the issue isn't that mountains are too good. It's that the outside is too bad, it has absolutely no advantages. Granted, some of those advantages shouldn't be given to mountains, namely being so easy to feed.

To the farming question, more land should be needed to feed people. Farming is quick, it's easy. A tiny plot can feed lots of people. One advantage the outside should have is well, lots of space for farming. A small hydroponics bay shouldn't feed so many people. Large farms that take up lots of space should be needed, and in turn, these farms are targets for raiders. Only an extremely late-game base should be able to feed themselves without going outside, and at that point, they deserve it.

To mountains making mortars irrelevant, you need to fix the reason why this is. Mortars are designed for nothing but destroying outside buildings. As I've said multiple times, this could easily be fixed by making mortars direct fire weapons, so they can damage the mountain walls. While at the same time, it will make them weaker against outside bases, making them more viable early on.

Alternatively, as someone else has said, new tactics should be added against mountain bases. If we keep mortars as they are, it's nonsensicle to send a mortar team at it. Something I also said before, sieges against mountain bases should work differently. A siege sets up, but they do this to cover a team of sappers that attempts to mine into your base and set explosives on exposed buildings and walls.

Man-hunter packs should be capped to a few animals, 80 boomrats is just stupid.

[Kegereneku]

Changing AI-tactic against Mountain-base is one thing, but I would rather have them use non-extermination method. Like setting crops/base on fire, or stealing anything they can go away with. (I wish a raider would use EMP on a turret... and STEAL THE TURRET)

Direct-fire Mortar-cannon" would worsen the problem, I don't see why you would think otherwise.
It would basically act as a fixed-rocket launcher with easy ammo and utterly destroy any non-fortress base, making the only way to play would be to build one or several ablative walls perimeters (or game the system by building those just in front of their "cannon", if you can't have a guy to bait their fire). No rework like limited range or small-impact explosion would prevent that.

Then you would have the player building their OWN mortar-cannon. (and be sure that if those made Mechanoid easy to kill, players will cry if we take away this toy latter, that's maybe why Tynan never made easy rocket)
And last unintended consequences I see, you would have to make those "mortar-cannon" be installed in direct sight of a target-base. Something all AIs are utterly bad at... else they'll be hitting any other mountain around.

[b0rsuk]

The fact that players can easily wall off a field and use agriculture in the middle of a fortress is highly unrealistic and harmful to game balance. Mountains need less soil, worse soil, soil depletion, or crops need lower yield (but that would require even higher boost to hydroponic growth speed, so maybe not that one).

[Reviire]

Changing AI-tactic against Mountain-base is one thing, but I would rather have them use non-extermination method. Like setting crops/base on fire, or stealing anything they can go away with. (I wish a raider would use EMP on a turret... and STEAL THE TURRET)

Direct-fire Mortar-cannon" would worsen the problem, I don't see why you would think otherwise.
It would basically act as a fixed-rocket launcher with easy ammo and utterly destroy any non-fortress base, making the only way to play would be to build one or several ablative walls perimeters (or game the system by building those just in front of their "cannon", if you can't have a guy to bait their fire). No rework like limited range or small-impact explosion would prevent that.

So how would this be worse than explosives that completely ignore walls and blow up your buildings anyway? I don't understand how you came to this conclusion.