|
A uranium warhammer is my penultimate weapon choice for my melee dudes for smashing through armor, downing enemies for imprisoning, and crushing mechanoids. I eventually graduate my melee guys to persona weapons, especially ones with the kill-focused trait if I can get them since I like to have my melee guys in particular be psycasters. So many psycast are useful on melee like smokepop to make you untargetable to turrets without having to wear a smokepop belt to override your shield belt, vertigo/blind pulse to severely hamper enemies before engaging, berserk to cause a distraction among enemy ranks, and invisibility and even wallraise to get your guys out of danger. The kill-focused trait on a persona weapon is borderline OP because you can fill up your focus bar just by bopping some squirrels or rats around the map or breeding chickens and having them on standby for culling for focus gain. In peacetime, I can use my on-demand focus to make a return trip back to base with farskip after drop podding somewhere or to constantly have word of inspiration on all my colonists or word of love to help them hook up.
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2023 15:57
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 25, 2024 17:46 |
|
|
Geomancing posted:Got a 'wanderer joins' event that turned out to be a five-year-old boy, so I happily adopted him, built a schoolroom, was enjoying the extra pair of hands. Had a small raid that left an injured, pregnant woman on my doorstep so I captured her, patched her up, recruited her and been slowly getting her to have some small tasks. I almost never reload from a bad event unless it's something I just say gently caress dealing with (Hello, toxic fallout!). But the first game I played after Biotech I had a 4 year-old girl beg to join while being pursued. I couldn't bring myself to let the kid be devoured so we took her in. She showed up toting a poor-quality knife and I just let her keep it because why not? You know where this is going. TRAITOR! Everyone's outside sowing the new fields and suddenly the kid screams "FOR THE BANDITRY OF THIS WORLD" and starts charging with the knife. Everyone else has assault rifles, and the kid turns into a cloud of pink mist under 4 separate streams of bullets. I just sat there for a minute, and then went and did some Googling and found out there's a way (I forget how but it's there somewhere) that you can turn off kids in raids, traitors, etc. IMO this option should be the default, and maybe it is now, I haven't played in a couple of months. But man.... it's a harsh old world when you gotta vet 4 year-old refugees for ideological purity.
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2023 16:08
|
|
|
Kanos posted:and I've got pen animals roaming all across the damned map because my pen got breached. Can't help with your other problems but I've got one weird trick for this one, drop some animal sleeping spots in your pen! When it's time to sleep they'll all run back for that comfy outline, and then you repair the wall and they're all secure again. Also works when you get an animals join event and it's like thirty chickens on the other end of the map, drop sleeping spots outside your gate and bring them in at night instead of chasing them all over the map.
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2023 18:08
|
|
|
Eiba posted:I thought sandstone was the fast building one. Regardless, with the exception of marble walls doubling beauty compared to other stone walls, the differences are minuscule. Especially since most things that destroy walls these days can destroy all walls in one shot rendering HP differences almost meaningless. Compare that to growing corn vs rice potentially being life or death for a colony in the case of a blight or attack. The stone differences are pretty vestigial at this point. Even when it comes to walls the difference is miniscule. Marble walls have 1 Beauty, other stone walls have 0. That's it. Save it for your sculptures IMO, that's where marble makes a real difference (136 beauty for a Large Marble Sculpture, vs 110 for slate or sandstone, vs 100 for granite, limestone, or wood). Good or Excellent marble statues are a fantastic source of beauty with a material that may be plentiful on your map Although sometimes these miniscule differences can add up, if you have a small throne room that's on the edge of one beauty level vs another but you can't sacrifice space for another statue then you may want to use fancier wall materials just to squeeze out those few extra points. I like the look of jade walls, personally QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 22:25 on Dec 17, 2023 |
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2023 22:20
|
|
|
I like building with jade because it looks like it tastes good I have numerous brain problems
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2023 22:35
|
|
|
Lining up the dining hall with walls made out of apple jolly ranchers
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2023 22:36
|
|
|
The real power of marble walls is in smoothing the natural ones and even then it's like 2 instead of 1
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2023 23:04
|
|
|
Smoothed stone walls look awesome, I always regret it when I decide to move things around under a mountain and have to build regular stone walls to establish the new layout.
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2023 23:08
|
|
|
Just keep building increasingly huge chambers held up with columns, there's NO POSSIBLE WAY it could backfire E: every time I try to pick a cool looking spot that's a ruin glommed onto a mountain I can halfass renovate into something that works, but excavating out the collapsed mountain part of the ruins only really is critical of you're in an extreme temp regime E2 I especially like trying to do this right next to the ancient danger if I can and working it into my base as one unit, in this map I'll have to figure out how to do it because I seem to be alone on the island even though I get visitors, so I don't know how likely it is I'll be able to get any recruits. Might need to build some kinda heat trap to cheese the inhabitants idk SniperWoreConverse fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Dec 17, 2023 |
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2023 23:14
|
|
|
It takes a lot of practice to roleplay as a real dwarf player, real dwarves never use bricks
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2023 23:28
|
|
|
The map tells you what your base layout wants to be like. If you can abandon optimal strat it's practically already done. Listen to the mapsong
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2023 23:48
|
|
|
Anyone experiment with vehicles? I'm, uh, not terribly impressed. They're extremely resource expensive to get built and guzzle chemfuel like mad in exchange for being incredibly awkward to move around and being terribly vulnerable to enemies in any real numbers. Compared to the previous land-based transportation mod, Giddy Up, they seem inferior in most regards - if a horse gets shot out from under me, it's extremely painless to replace, and a dozen horses can handle heavy duty caravan duty substantially better than almost all of the available vehicles while also not chugging chemfuel like water. SRTS blows them out of the water, but that's not really a fair comparison because SRTS is so overpowered it's pretty much a cheat. isndl posted:Can't help with your other problems but I've got one weird trick for this one, drop some animal sleeping spots in your pen! When it's time to sleep they'll all run back for that comfy outline, and then you repair the wall and they're all secure again. This is a pretty good lifehack, thanks.
|
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2023 11:16
|
|
|
Kanos posted:Anyone experiment with vehicles? I'm, uh, not terribly impressed. They're extremely resource expensive to get built and guzzle chemfuel like mad in exchange for being incredibly awkward to move around and being terribly vulnerable to enemies in any real numbers. Compared to the previous land-based transportation mod, Giddy Up, they seem inferior in most regards - if a horse gets shot out from under me, it's extremely painless to replace, and a dozen horses can handle heavy duty caravan duty substantially better than almost all of the available vehicles while also not chugging chemfuel like water. I've been playing with vehicles for a while now, I'm not sure if the damage they take can be tweaked but I know that fuel capacity and drain is configurable. I've taken the VE tanks on multiple excursions and yeah, even the beefed up tanks get poked full of holes with small arms fire and even sword swipes (although the sword was plasma sword). I watched one get it's engine blown out with an anti-material rifle, which is supposed to happen right, but groups of 3-5 enemies with less powerful arms have also swiss cheesed these things and even killed the pawns inside. When you have insane amounts of steel and components from multiple cutthroat deals made with blood money they become slightly less of a pain to replace but, yeah, that is more resource and labor intensive than letting the horsies do their thing. Armored fighting vehicles do have their uses tho, even garbage armor is better than no armor so your pawns are more protected in a firefight in a Roadkill than on horseback, you also have more firepower in a Highwayman (probably), and a single Tango is transporting more pawns more safely than a gang of horsies. You can also use them as cover, I think they function like walls where every shot fired hits the armor and not the pawn sitting behind it, unless they're peeking of course. I think the true strength of VE's armored vehicles is their firepower, a couple pawns can do a lot riding around in a Highwayman or a Tango laying down covering fire and even something small like a Roadkill is like giving a pawn a rocket launcher. With all that being said I think there is space on the battlefield for both light cav and armored vehicles. The air vehicles are entirely useless tho. The Velvet Witch fucked around with this message at 11:53 on Dec 18, 2023 |
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2023 11:47
|
|
|
Vehicles would be much better if they handled mechanoids well. The chemfuel cost isn't terrible IME once you get past the tier 1 stuff, especially if you're producing it locally somehow. I like to use a Dubs Hygiene septic tank: you can empty the waste from it and refine it into chemfuel.
|
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2023 11:47
|
|
|
The tier 3 stuff is also SRTS level broken. Cargo Helicopters have a capacity of like 60k weight and can fly around most of the world on one load of fuel. I don't bother with the combat vehicles but I've found the regular caravanning ones waver between being good and insanely good.
|
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2023 12:20
|
|
|
Has anyone tried the Deserters mod? It looks neat but vanilla expanded stuff is usually very hit-or-miss.
|
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2023 16:42
|
|
|
Mzbundifund posted:Has anyone tried the Deserters mod? It looks neat but vanilla expanded stuff is usually very hit-or-miss. Like most their stuff it's the kernels of a few good ideas mixed into a whole bunch of bad ideas. Do you enjoy the paranoia of threats that don't announce themselves with a letter?
|
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2023 16:51
|
|
|
I… I don’t!
|
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2023 17:35
|
|
|
Deserters doesn't really have that issue (thats a thing in VE: Empire) tbh. Deserters is one of the best VE modules. It really doesn't have much bullshit and has a lot of cool/new ideas to play with. I honestly can't think of anything in it thats really bullshit except some of the stuff you get access to to clown on tbe Empire.
|
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2023 17:57
|
|
|
Zore posted:Deserters doesn't really have that issue (thats a thing in VE: Empire) tbh. Wasn't Deserters the one that adds pawns to caravans that attempt to plant antigrain bombs in your base?
|
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2023 18:18
|
|
|
that post personally reminded me of the empire guys that'll come to your base with their insanely long range acid rifles, without a notification popping up or any warning other than suddenly one of your guys lying downed in the rice with acid burns
|
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2023 18:49
|
|
|
death cob for cutie posted:that post personally reminded me of the empire guys that'll come to your base with their insanely long range acid rifles, without a notification popping up or any warning other than suddenly one of your guys lying downed in the rice with acid burns isndl posted:Wasn't Deserters the one that adds pawns to caravans that attempt to plant antigrain bombs in your base? No, Deserters is the one where you get to play as those guys. Vanilla Expanded Empire added those events as Deserters targeting your nobles and you get to do them to NPC Nobles with VE: Deserters which is significantly more fun. They're paired mods but playing the Deserter side of it doesn't have any of the real bullshit the Empire side does.
|
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2023 18:52
|
|
|
I'm in my third year with a colony I'm really enjoying. Had a very defensible valley and I'm up to 6 colonists now (three couples paired off) and three kids. Best thing is early on I had a couple of Ocular Nightlings (Alpha Animals) join in an event and those breed like crazy and are super docile so I have to actively cull them otherwise I can't keep up with their food requirements. They make for excellent fodder in combat which is nice because I'm getting to the point where raids are becoming a decent threat. e: Also I'm really enjoying the Portraits of the Rim mod. My only issue with it so far has been that a visitor was wearing a top hat in the kemetic style which in game was a Nemes (pharaoh headdress) on the pawn but still shown as a top hat in the portrait. Having an actual face to put to the pawn has given them a lot of personality and helps me to actually feel for them, you know? It also shows injuries and scars and stuff really well, as well as all the racial stuff. Would recommend. Taeke fucked around with this message at 19:01 on Dec 18, 2023 |
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2023 18:54
|
|
|
Mzbundifund posted:Has anyone tried the Deserters mod? It looks neat but vanilla expanded stuff is usually very hit-or-miss. I found the quests extremely buggy - I'd show up at the event site and there would be no one there, but the quest wouldn't succeed or fail. Or there would be enemies who would flee or get killed by me, but the quest would remain stuck.
|
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2023 20:00
|
|
|
Think I built my base's entrance too close to the edge of the map because sometimes drop pods will still drop just inside even if it's one of the few times my TACS remembered to actually scramble their guidance systems. On the other hand, I use Faction Resources, so I can close the gate and watch them fruitlessly bang at it while my security team takes them all out  The local waster pirates sent a raid consisting of a single guy with a handgun because they wasted so many resources on raids lately
|
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2023 20:33
|
|
|
That sounds less like a raid and more like a drunk bet
|
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2023 20:36
|
|
|
He got winged in the arm by one of the six gatling towers outside the gate and went "gently caress this actually" so you might not be too far off I've said it before but Faction Resources + Enemy Self Preservation + No One Left Behind makes raids a lot more interesting
|
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2023 21:00
|
|
|
Zore posted:Deserters doesn't really have that issue (thats a thing in VE: Empire) tbh. I really dislike Vanilla Expanded's design philosophy. It feels like the opposite of what the name would suggest. Even the stuff I do use and it's pretty light like Fishing and some ideology memes has just so much more in it than it needs to. Why are there two dozen kinds of fish? Why does this religious belief give all pawns permanent psychic powers? I'd love a much more simple anti-empire mod. The empire sucks, but just like, add a few (simple, vanilla style) quests that only show up if you're hostile to the empire, with some rare rewards. Maybe something that gives you (difficult) access to psychic powers.
|
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2023 22:05
|
|
|
Eiba posted:Isn't VE: Empire a required mod for Deserters? That was really disappointing to me as it was even more bloat. Yes, but if you side against the empire the deserters don't attack you, because you're not part of the empire. If you side with the deserters it just makes the empire permanently hostile and they will give you the odd quest, as well as unlocking their shop where you can buy stuff with intel. If you want there's a whole xcom 2 style plot for blowing up the stellarch but you can just be anti empire and do raids for intel which you can spend on fancy gear from the deserters.
|
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2023 22:36
|
|
|
I've been vocal about VE bloat before (probably annoyingly so  ) but VE Empire and VE Deserters are pretty great IME. The trooper and jannisary armours are kinda extraneous but thats about it. It's not like Ancients where they inexplicably tacked on an entire second genetics system
|
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2023 22:44
|
|
|
Danaru posted:He got winged in the arm by one of the six gatling towers outside the gate and went "gently caress this actually" so you might not be too far off I think I've only used Self Preservation and it's really cool when you're fighting for your life and manage to break a raid, feels a lot more sensible than everyone and their dog being suicidally committed to your death, even if they're Actually Reasonable People who you have happen to have beef with rather than inveterate foes of all other life or something. Regular rear end faction of pretty decent homesteaders who don't have slavery or cannibalism or anything but they go so insane on the attack it shames Khorne's finest. Plus while it makes things easier, it's not totally unbalanced, because anyone who retreats obviously takes their poo poo with them rather than dropping it on death, or themselves being a resource for recruiting/organs/hats. Gonna install those other two, thanks for the recommendation 
|
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2023 23:57
|
|
|
Yuiiut posted:I found the quests extremely buggy - I'd show up at the event site and there would be no one there, but the quest wouldn't succeed or fail. Or there would be enemies who would flee or get killed by me, but the quest would remain stuck.  Really I'll just use dev mode to trigger quest complete if it happens more than once per quest, since sheesh Also a little belatedly, Vehicles are pretty great but you have to get used to them. If there's a road available they're fast, especially more traditional cars and motorbikes, but anything not explicitly off-road is going to lose a lot of speed on anything besides open grassland or whatever. Non-combat vehicles are great for caravanning but are going to crumple in actual combat, while combat vehicles can't carry much - but nothing stops you from having a convoy of multiple vehicles at once. And the combat vehicles have distinct specialties; most things like tanks are going to be heavily armored in front, kind of okay from the side, and vulnerable from the rear, and vehicles with separate gunners can actively kite enemies on the move which is obviously powerful if used well. All of this is generally pretty intuitive but you actually have to pay attention to it when you're planning caravans or raids. Don't forget there are vehicle mods besides VE:Vehicles too, the framework is a separate stand alone thing and there's other mods and mod collections that do things differently. Asimo fucked around with this message at 04:59 on Dec 19, 2023 |
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2023 04:52
|
|
|
Eiba posted:Isn't VE: Empire a required mod for Deserters? That was really disappointing to me as it was even more bloat. Yeah bloat is a systemic problem across all of the Vanilla Expanded mods, but they have several thousand paying patreon followers so I doubt things will change Alpha Animals has the same problem, I love the mod but I could do with like... half as much poo poo. Fungal Husks, The Black Hive, adding insect chitin as a leather type from insectoids, haxagel, there are all of these things that feel vestigial and would be better off as their own mods. Probably 70% of it is just good, but the rest feels like bloat that has little to do with the rest of the mod Alpha Biomes is hands down the better mod, each new biome comes with some creatures that are adapted to that biome and it is a lot more focused overall. But it requires Alpha Animals
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2023 05:29
|
|
|
Having said that, Vanilla Expanded does keep releasing new cool looking poo poo, the latest one is a Lycanthrope xenotype. There's some meme bullshit in there like a gene that triggers your morph randomly but overall seems like a good pack of stuff
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2023 07:09
|
|
|
VE xenotypes are interesting for the chaos factor of what the gently caress is this and what am I going to do about it, but I don't think they're great fits as long term staples of a mod list. Too many mechanics that are cool on the surface and then you eventually learn aren't worth the hassle, sometimes because they have the quality of life solution in their other mods to integrate like pipe networks, and soon your game balloons into the VE idea of what Rimworld should be rather than your own. If you like how that works out, great, if not you're going to have to start dealing with a lot of crud stuck in the gears. Did they ever change fertilized Saurid eggs showing up in transport pods? It's funny the first time Randy decides you're about to have a couple dozen kids all at once but after that it's just a chore.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2023 08:15
|
|
|
isndl posted:Did they ever change fertilized Saurid eggs showing up in transport pods? It's funny the first time Randy decides you're about to have a couple dozen kids all at once but after that it's just a chore. What do you mean? All I'm seeing is a few Lavish Meals? 
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2023 08:17
|
|
|
QuarkJets posted:Alpha Animals has the same problem, I love the mod but I could do with like... half as much poo poo. Fungal Husks, The Black Hive, adding insect chitin as a leather type from insectoids, haxagel, there are all of these things that feel vestigial and would be better off as their own mods. Probably 70% of it is just good, but the rest feels like bloat that has little to do with the rest of the mod This could describe pretty much all of Vanilla Expanded I think, if they had learned at the start to just pare things down and keep a stronger focus on their mods they'd probably be regarded as one of the greatest success stories in modding history, though we can't really say they're a failure by any measure (And those of us who don't mind bloat, like me, have little to complain about). Speaking of mods, gat dang RimPy is some serious poo poo these days. Haven't played since I got my new computer a few months back so I finally sat down and did the Big Mod Install and used RimPy to check that I hadn't missed dependencies and such. Afterwards I loaded in mostly on a lark but found that there were hardly any red errors; once I plucked out the four or five mods responsible I was able to load in just fine without any reds. Kind of wild poo poo. Now of course I've still got to configure everything and Randy alone knows if gameplay will actually last without an unforseen problem arising, but still, dang.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2023 09:02
|
|
|
Another issue you do have with Vanilla Expanded is that their content is already atomized out over hundreds of individual mods, and every individual mod you add has a non-negligible impact on performance. I also think, in general, most of their stuff really isn't that bloated with a few gargantuan outliers like VE: Mechanoids or VE: Ancients. Like I actually think both Empire and Deserters for instance as their most recent faction packs are two of their best and are both well done opt in mods that have functional subsystems added and don't really add any cruft beyond their scope of deliberately expanding out the Empire/Rebels from Royalty And for all the poo poo people give them they do tend to have very robust in game mod options to disable events/creatures/mechanics in their bigger packs. Like Alpha Animals lets you disable any of its 3 events or any of its animals from spawning individually etc.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2023 09:12
|
|
|
I've been running heavily modded for so long that I'm actually kind of weirded out thinking about what the game runs like modless. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to deal with a 500 person tribal raid at 10 FPS because all the wealth caused by advanced bionics, weapons, and vehicle mods means that wastepack retaliations are the size of a small town.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2023 11:33
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 25, 2024 17:46 |
|
|
Ms Adequate posted:
loving RimPy is the greatest thing ever and I would not have as many mods as I do without it. Everytime I have to use Irony (the paradox mod manager) and manually order my mods I die a little inside.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2023 18:01
|
|