How to bring the colonies out into the open again?

Started by stefanstr, September 27, 2014, 04:49:59 AM

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MeowRailroad

I started a colony a few months ago that was open with sandbags between buildings. Combine that with a lucky, early purchase of an assault rifle and having skilled colonists, (and a few times when I used debug to help with things that weren't "fun" challenging, just stupid and couldn't be dealt with without it,) we survived for about 3-4 years, so with a little skill and luck it definitely is possible.

One feature that would probably make open bases more likely is denser forests. It's hard to build a huge fortress when there are trees everywhere, so this might lead to more "cluster-of-cabins" settlements. I personally try to make those types of settlements since I prefer them to big, advanced colonies since I think they fit the style and themes of Rimworld better. Another major thing would be to add a new storyteller that starts with small events, then makes big ones that eventually stop getting bigger and could add another ending more related to "surviving" rather than "thriving." I feel like it's a bit too easy to have a huge colony although I don't think it should be any harder to get established. It should be harder to grow one's colony.
Quote from: Tynan on December 02, 2016, 05:24:06 PM
This is like being in a remote fishing town in Libera and asking, "Why can't I just pay one of the fishermen $10 to take me back to Los Angeles?"

Kegereneku

Quote from: Darth Fool on August 31, 2016, 04:32:51 PM
At the risk of annoying the hell out of people who are invested in this topic, I have decided to post a picture of my most recent adventure in building an "open" colony.
[...]
Some might argue that it is not truly open because, despite the lack of a perimeter wall, because the rooms are still fully enclosed and that there are no historical examples of buildings with walls on all four sides punctuated only by doors.  I really don't know what to say to those people.  Others may argue that this is not a fair example since I have not used any turrets in the defense of the colony.  They are correct.

That's overall constructive but the end is just getting petty.
And I don't know who is the moron who would think this isn't a open base ...or that "4 sided walls with doors" is enough to describe the problem. I remember there was a mention of the easiness to build indoor farm, or that nonsensical-events forced you to build airtight-dome if you wanted to avoid entirely terminator-animals, along other.
In any case the problem didn't disappear because someone knowingly played rougher and was lucky/or else (did you used that bait & infinite repair door exploit ? or wait it out with traps ? Curiosity : why did you separate the wind turbine/solar panel from common pathfinding ?)
...All it does is demonstrate that open-base get it rougher than if you followed the fortress-design that make entire events inconsequential, lessen food problem and else. See, I never argued that open base where impossible, just "harder and actively discouraged".

Not to be dismissive of your result or to move the goal post (that can't be set IMHO). But the random nature of the storyteller (especially randy), the way wealth influence danger (no turret = less dangerous events), traits&skills lottery, non-linear difficulty increase over a years, or simply the players playstyles variation mean that you'd need a much wider statistical base to make a point (like the boomrat army video was only specific to manhunter absurdity).

And speaking of points, if we didn't get sidetracked, I though mines should have got along with yours. I'm not suggesting to make fortress/bunker interchangeable with as you once described along the wording of 'badly defended open-base', but to change/remove the features that punish you for building open so they stay as/more problematic but compatible with open-base, along adding perfectly reasonable challenge to bunker/fortress so they have interesting downside.

Quote from: DariusWolfe on August 31, 2016, 07:10:17 PM
QuoteBASIC VERISIMILITUDE (google that)

Listen. You try your weak-ass low-key insults on me one more fucking time, and I'm going to take off the gloves.

Insult ? No, just no, it really wasn't an insult, at worse it was a sarcastic retort because you were pretty dismissive of my point yourself and I was hinting both as how it goes against Verisimilitude to keep comparing Rimworld to "military camps" and how you could in fact make a feature to force moat and defend it the same way.
If it sit better with you we can move the comparison to movie "post-apocalyptical setting", but we will probably just argue again about whether or not such camps would "logically" need walls (death at the horizon...etc).

I try my damnedest to show a wider perspective, point out the more critical points (how Rimworld allow easy indoor farms, how rimworld aren't all 100 soldiers camps, how strong-walls are absurdly easy to build, how the manhunter-gameplay rest upon a nonsensical logic) so it's not my fault if you can't see the double standard flying around. ex "You can't compare warzone small-settlement to Rimworld, but I will compare old-Romans camps to Rimworld" followed by "Next I will imply a big mud-house with courtyard defend Rimworld farm-fortress"

Free to you to say the problem is me, but what if the problem was you and other ?
More than enough peoples here understand my points & don't make strawman by pretending I am against anything with contiguous walls and doors... or claimed that I was the one insulting people with a "patently false <insert strawman>" when I'm only pointing out the critical points they overlooked.

I'm just sorry to not be easing the ego of people missing the full picture, if I told you "I'm actually closer to the topic than you are" there's no way you won't take that as an insult even if baked it up. (any of my post speak for itself)

The irony ? YOU AGREE WITH MOST OF MY POINT but the devil really is in the details like "you shouldn't have a worse time playing without a defense-walls" that get us sidetracked.
And why the details ? Because sometime the best carrot to bring players outside is a challenging stick. But you can't even say stick with people who will throw personal attack at any mention/example that it's realistic/legitimate to nerfmake their indoor farm-fortress more challenging. This despite the maddening fact that most wouldn't care much if it was a new unrelated features that forced it upon them, it's just hard to discuss.


Take it as you wish. When I said that goal-driven suggestion topic are more productive than this thread, that wasn't a insult to you or anybody else either, just a valid opinion about Multi-pages topic with Open-Question.
Now if you excuse me, I'll be suggesting that drugs can provoke random claustrophobia and maybe irrational fear of indoor farm ...joking.

"Sam Starfall joined your colony"
"Sam Starfall left your colony with all your valuable"
-------
Write an Event
[Story] Write an ending ! (endless included)
[Story] Imagine a Storyteller !

Darth Fool

Quote from: DariusWolfe on August 31, 2016, 07:10:17 PM
Darth Fool: I think this is a good example of how an open colony is viable; The problem that a lot of the discussions here are trying to address is the moderately steep difference in difficulty, and the lack of any sort of real reward for playing this way. I've also argued that open layouts like this may actually be better against manhunter packs than traditional forts (assuming "wait it out" isn't your go-to strategy). Larger raids still seem like they'd be pretty murderous in this sort of layout, since you're going to have multiples of raiders per every colonist, and there's not an easy way to mass fires while the raiders are still grouped up.

Actually, this is at least as easy to defend as a single entranceway.  Raiders come from one direction and in general there is time to line up all ranged weapons on the far side, with melee weapons hidden behind doors on the near side to clean up.  Raiders will typically mostly come through one of the four entrances with only a few stragglers on the other entrances.  A minigun, a couple of charge rifles and the survival rifle have generally been more than adequate at eliminating even a fairly large tribal raid.  And the distraction of multiple doors wants they are in the central plaza tends to keep them from all rushing at once towards their exterminators. 

While I have repaired doors during manhunter events, with granite doors it has not been necessary so much as just a matter of efficiency to take advantage of my otherwise waiting melee units.  I have not  had to repair doors while they were still being attacked to prevent a break-in.

Yes, this does take more attention than having an automatic kill box of turrets behind which one can completely ignore all incoming threats, but it is not that much.  It requires occasionally moving a pawn behind a door when melee units get too close, and moving them back into the doorway when the opportunity arrises.  The major potential difficulty  is the question of scaling.  This has worked well for a colony of between 4 and 9 colonists.  At a certain point I will need to create a second square or expand the first to accommodate larger numbers of colonists and deal with the resultant larger number of raiders.  I have not yet hit that limit, however.

chaotix14

#603
I'd like to mention to people that we may be approaching the comparison to the real world in a bit of a skewed manner, usually in the real world there wasn't a sustainable food supply within the defensive walls of any defensive structure, which is a very big difference from the usual rimworld colony we are comparing it against. It was and very much still is extremely impractical to defend an area large enough to contain enough food production to sustain the workers and the defensive force needed to defend the area. A city wall contained the core of the city, but most (if not all) of the area supplying the city with food was beyond the defensive structures. There is a reason why a siege was(and still is) the best method of bringing a city, castle or any defensive structure to it's knees, because almost all the things needed to sustain that defensive position are outside of the defensive position, while you can still bring in supplies for the besieging force.

As you might guess my particular stick isn't so much with the idea of perimeter walls, because they are the functional basis of every defensive position ever(from the beginning of civilization to the modern world) and will probably be until the only thing that can protect you from certain annihilation is not being detected at all. My stick is with that self sustained colony within the perimeter walls that can easily manage defending that entire perimeter with a handful of dudes.
You know how a village or a couple of farms clumped together(which is the approximatie size of a typical rimworld colony) defended against raiders and thieves? A bit like that redneck with the shotgun that comes after you yelling at you to get the hell off his property or by using the buildings they have as cover while attacking the intruders. Not by building a defensive wall around all their farmlands.

@darth, nice to see that you've been able to hold together an open colony. Looks pretty nice actually. But using an exploit(the whole shoot through door, run back inside, repair door till they lose interest and repeat cycle is very much exploiting the ai) against the manhunters to survive them is also something that's not desirable, since well it's an exploit and beyond the fact that there is a reasonable chance for exploits to be removed it's not fun to have to rely on exploits to deal with unfairly balanced events.

Darth Fool

Quote from: chaotix14 on September 01, 2016, 07:29:50 AM

@darth, nice to see that you've been able to hold together an open colony. Looks pretty nice actually. But using an exploit(the whole shoot through door, run back inside, repair door till they lose interest and repeat cycle is very much exploiting the ai) against the manhunters to survive them is also something that's not desirable, since well it's an exploit and beyond the fact that there is a reasonable chance for exploits to be removed it's not fun to have to rely on exploits to deal with unfairly balanced events.

Actually, I was quite explicitly not having to repair the door until they lose interest.  The key is that having multiple shooters in multiple doorways, and having the ability to move from one doorway to another to attack whatever is attacking the first door allows one to fairly quickly deal with manhunter packs.  In no situation have I had to repair a door to defeat the manhunter packs.  This is in contrast to single entrance fortresses where one does need to repair the only door since it becomes the focus of all the manhunters.

DariusWolfe

Siege warfare isn't what it used to be, in a world of guns and mortars, either.

But really, the main thing that keeps siege warfare from being a valid tactic in Rimworld is that the raids are never there long enough. You've either got enough turrets or other traps to make them give up long before starvation becomes an issue, even if you don't have hydroponics up and running. If you don't have sufficient infrastructure to wipe them out quickly, then they're likely to get into your base fairly easily; Basically, stalemate is never an option, so real sieges never happen.

Of course, I'm not really sure how that relates to the conversation of bringing colonies out into the open.

I also disagree that repairing, or even simply having doors strong enough to withstand predators while you do the hit-and-run tactic is an exploit, at least against animals. Animals are going to lose interest in attacking an inanimate object that neither screams nor bleeds after a while. That tactic against human opponents shouldn't be as effective; But that's not going to change unless the AI becomes more patient.

I do also think infinitely repairable doors is also a smidge silly; Combat repairs would amount to shoving spare materials into the space and securing them the best you're able; After the threat is past, you're probably going to have to remove the old one and put a new one up in its place. I'm not completely sure how to reflect that in game, except to perhaps have a degrading max health value.

I think it might be worthwhile, when I've more time on my hands, to comb back through the last few months of suggestions, and pull together all of the ones that I (at least) think will be the most effective set of suggestions to make open colonies more viable.

EvilMoogle

I apologize if this has been suggested already but my solution here is the same that I have for Dwarf Fortress.

Water.

It wouldn't even require a "thirst" mechanic if you require water to cook.  Require water to grow crops indoors (or outdoors if it doesn't rain enough).

Rain-barrels, rain-collecting roofs, wells (built on dirt, finite water/season), collecting from lakes/marsh/rivers, condensers, pumps, atmospheric miners.  Mostly things that either only work outside.

Add to this a change to the "siege" mechanic to make them behave more like a typical siege.  Instead of the raiders appearing and immediately start shelling have them plan a longer system.  If they're there for a siege they should be there for a long hall, with reinforcements coming and/or supply lines bringing them more resources.

Once they're secure they should pick apart anything that is outside of your "secure" zone.  Which likely will cut off your water supply.

If you want to get really tricky have different purity levels of water that interact with disease mechanics in the game.


Kegereneku

We all want to fish but that's the sort of feature that can kill an entire game.
We want to make it more interesting to go/build in the open, not to make it chore to be anywhere not near a source of water.
Ideally a new feature is always fun in itself or along other features. Not just a new chore.

I do think we can get water to work but myself I wouldn't do it in a way that constrain you. It would be more like "optional mood buffs" that you want to afford late-colony so you can say your colony is so awesome there's a shower... made of gold... in every bedroom.
"Sam Starfall joined your colony"
"Sam Starfall left your colony with all your valuable"
-------
Write an Event
[Story] Write an ending ! (endless included)
[Story] Imagine a Storyteller !

cap75

Earthquakes! Make it more dangerous due cave-ins inside mountains.

BlueWinds

Quote from: Kegereneku on September 02, 2016, 12:56:34 PM
We all want to fish but that's the sort of feature that can kill an entire game.
We want to make it more interesting to go/build in the open, not to make it chore to be anywhere not near a source of water.
Ideally a new feature is always fun in itself or along other features. Not just a new chore.

I do think we can get water to work but myself I wouldn't do it in a way that constrain you. It would be more like "optional mood buffs" that you want to afford late-colony so you can say your colony is so awesome there's a shower... made of gold... in every bedroom.

"not to make it chore to be anywhere not near a source of water." -> I think this is an excellent plan, actually! In addition to being realistic, desert maps are pretty boring right now, but adding "struggle to find enough water" would give them something fun to do. Melting ice on ice sheets, needing to purify water in swampy areas, needing to collect water in rain barrels...

I think it'd be quite interesting - plenty of story fodder there in a way that can't simply be solved by "add more steel" like food can. It provides a carrot to open bases (you can be near water!) and to open farming (you can rely on rain more!) at the same time - bonus!

(yes, I'm excited about water in case you couldn't tell)

deslona

Quote from: BlueWinds on September 02, 2016, 06:11:26 PM
Quote from: Kegereneku on September 02, 2016, 12:56:34 PM
We all want to fish but that's the sort of feature that can kill an entire game.
We want to make it more interesting to go/build in the open, not to make it chore to be anywhere not near a source of water.
Ideally a new feature is always fun in itself or along other features. Not just a new chore.

I do think we can get water to work but myself I wouldn't do it in a way that constrain you. It would be more like "optional mood buffs" that you want to afford late-colony so you can say your colony is so awesome there's a shower... made of gold... in every bedroom.

"not to make it chore to be anywhere not near a source of water." -> I think this is an excellent plan, actually! In addition to being realistic, desert maps are pretty boring right now, but adding "struggle to find enough water" would give them something fun to do. Melting ice on ice sheets, needing to purify water in swampy areas, needing to collect water in rain barrels...

I think it'd be quite interesting - plenty of story fodder there in a way that can't simply be solved by "add more steel" like food can. It provides a carrot to open bases (you can be near water!) and to open farming (you can rely on rain more!) at the same time - bonus!

(yes, I'm excited about water in case you couldn't tell)

I like the idea of water. A problem is that pools are randomly generated on a map and move with every regeneration of that map. So if I spawn supa awesum seed on world blah in location x,y which has a pool next to 3 steam geysers in a nice little valley. You may not get the same result.
Also the first new mod would be a new building (well) that will infinately produce water. Which wouldn't really solve anything (my dwarfs people would still be happy in the mountain..)
I would like to see mechanics such as snow being melted to water, barrels to hold water and water collection. But I think this would detract from the 'fun' factor. Especially at the start of a game. A player would see their colonist spend most of thier time hauling water from A to B and that would be most of the activity for the day.
This mechanic wouldn't 'force' players outside. It would just make them re-roll maps until they got 'mountain' + water outside mountain' which they would wall in for protection.

O Negative

Quote from: deslona on September 02, 2016, 07:45:41 PM
I like the idea of water. A problem is that pools are randomly generated on a map and move with every regeneration of that map. So if I spawn supa awesum seed on world blah in location x,y which has a pool next to 3 steam geysers in a nice little valley. You may not get the same result.
Also the first new mod would be a new building (well) that will infinately produce water. Which wouldn't really solve anything (my dwarfs people would still be happy in the mountain..)
I would like to see mechanics such as snow being melted to water, barrels to hold water and water collection. But I think this would detract from the 'fun' factor. Especially at the start of a game. A player would see their colonist spend most of thier time hauling water from A to B and that would be most of the activity for the day.
This mechanic wouldn't 'force' players outside. It would just make them re-roll maps until they got 'mountain' + water outside mountain' which they would wall in for protection.

Honestly, people who re-roll maps until they get the map that they want are the ones who are missing out on the true RimWorld experience. If they want to make an awesome survival game, such as this one, become trivially easy, that's on them. It's no different than save-scumming in my honest opinion.

As far as early game goes, I think the tedium of making sure physiological needs are met would make the game both more challenging and more fun. Collecting water can be balanced so that it doesn't take up an unnecessary amount of time. And, eventually, water collection can become very passive. But, you have to earn that kind of luxury!

Just look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs:


The main need missing from RimWorld, from a survival point of view, is the need for water. I'm really hoping this gets added eventually. Maybe it'll make mountain bases a little more challenging, without making them obsolete.
I don't see a real loss here.

Kegereneku

I was only saying there's "adding water" and there's "adding water in an interesting way". Not saying it can't be good.
We can discuss how to do this for years and I would expect Tynan to surprise us with something we never imagined.

So yeah I think we agree that "outside water source" would bring people to the outside. Just have to keep the things working within all biomes. I never played "hottest possible desert", so someone will have to tell us if you could survive to ALSO install water sources (starting the game in winter or so ?) and repair it at the peak of summer. (knowing that the devs can make events go easier)
"Sam Starfall joined your colony"
"Sam Starfall left your colony with all your valuable"
-------
Write an Event
[Story] Write an ending ! (endless included)
[Story] Imagine a Storyteller !

Marduk

I play mostly on Hardcore SK mod so i'm not that up on normal game strategy, but here are some ideas and observations:

First off, much like in Hardcore, automatic turrets should be considered an expensive, hi tech toy to have for defense, not bread and butter of it.
Speaking of combat, a bit hardcore plus a bit of realism would suggest that if you want your colonists to not get hurt, you should try pick your fights with heavy firepower and at long ranges, where your better trained colonists can shoot better than the average thug. At the close quarters of a mountain base even some pirate's crappy shotgun, bullet spamming SMG, or tribal's javelins should have the potential to be deadly. And then there are explosives. If someone throws and shoots a grenade at you, you run. If you fight in an open area, you have plenty of space to run to. In close quarters, if it turns out you have nowhere to run, you get savaged by the explosion. Long story short, close quarters combat should be intense and give even the less equipped side a good chance to hurt the other's guys.

Then there are tactics. You have your walled in base? Instead of storming right into the traps and killboxes, trying to break through the doors, the AI could just camp and patrol near the doors, forcing you to either fight in the open or be stuck away from outside resources.

Another reason that kind of goes against having mined out bases in hardcore is the higher need for space due to much more extansive factory facilities needed, and more types\amount of resources to store.
After all, the basic principle of building time\effort efficiency is that if you mine, you allocate effort\time per square of building area. Great for small rooms, not so much for big rooms. OTOH if you build in the open, the amount of building area you get is not linearly proportional to the amount of wall you need to build. A 3x3 "useful area" building in the open needs 5x5 walls, totalling 16 squares, about 1.7 wall per useful square. A 3x3 mined out room needs 9 squares to be mined out, 1 per 1.
But if you get into big rooms, say 10x10, in the open that takes 12x12 wall, 44 wall sections, for 100 useful area - a massive improvement to  work per gained area efficiency, from 1.7 wall per square to 0.45 wall per useful square. Meanwhile, by mining, you still need 100 rock sections mined out, still 1 per 1. Long story short, want less mountain bases, promote larger (area wise) colonies with solid benefits to being more spaced out. Perhaps more crafting? Or more farming?

And then there is another potentially very fun idea, namely expand the fire\temperature system and make it more meaningful. Such tight, bunkered out bases are damn fire hazards.
And by fire hazard i don't mean just the fire, think of all the temperature and smoke in confined space. If you have a "conventional" open village style base, and a fire starts, well one hut may be on fire, people run out of it, and you get to extinguish it from the outside before other stuff and other huts catch fire from it.
Lots of smoke and thermal energy goes into the sky, most of the hut burns down in worst case scenario.
Massive bunker style base? Oh boy. Smoke everywhere, slowing down pawns, limiting their breathing and manipulation. Toxic smoke? Carbon monoxide? Breathing in hot air causing lung burns and heatstroke quickly?
Add more accidental and combat related fire and smoke generation and you have a massive reason to not pretend you are dwarves.

buttflexspireling

  I understand what you're saying. It just reminds me of something else at the moment. However, I don't think that Rimworld should make the game a competitive race to the bottom with player characters guesstimating the collective net worth of contributions. I think it would lead to uncompetitive exoneration for economic crimes in the long-run.