REVISION 35B NOW IN EXPERIMENTAL BRANCH

Imma gonna give this a spin right away and see if I can pass day 2 now!

 

Thank you Thank you.

 

Well it seems to be better now. I have gotten to day 4 without crash!

 

Is it just me, or is no one carrying things to the stockpile?

Edit:
If I disable a commodity and then re-enable it, hauling jobs are working as expected again.

 

I can confirm stockpiles are wonky:

My new colony ignored the first stockpile I drew, regardless of filter settings. They also ignored the second stockpile, until I changed its filters.

 

Nope, no one is carrying things to the stockpile. Also, no one will do any sort of node mining for me, so I can not gather gold/stone/iron etc. I am also having a problem where all of my colonists begin wandering into the blackness to pick up meat dropped by animals, mostly beetles I think.

 

IT seems nametags are broken aswell. Only colonists that joined the colony AFTER loading a save, is shown. Dunno if it was like that in 35A too though.

 

Almost, it's the characters from before the save that are missing them. New colonists that join after loading is doing just fine.

Also my non-CTD seesion ended with this little fella:

 

Yep - However I tried to re-create it by just making a new game and then save/load to see fi they were gone, but they we're not. Maybe I'm wrong....

 

IT should be the same replay! Just at the very end instead

 

I can confirm stockpiles are fixed.

 

Much more stable, much more balanced, except for one thing.

Bandits are now pretty damn tough. Perhaps too tough.

I'm not sure if it's the new reload action, deleterious effects of low combat supplies, improved bandit stats or some combination thereof but a group of six of these guys is pretty much unbeatable unless you have 6-8 foosoldiers (not militia), fully decked for combat, properly positioned (which, for now, is simply a matter of luck since the colonist sight radius is so small), and even then expect half of them to walk into your colony and saunter off with your goods before you can stop them. It does encourage you to strategically place your stockpiles, though my guess is that it will only buy you a couple more seconds.

I got hit by a raid of six bandits on day six. I had army of six redcoats. I position them to meet the raiders (though two of my soldiers were about to go to bed; they're not about to let an attack by a bloodthirsty band of brigands get in the way of their nappy time!). They manage to kill off two of the bastards and the other four grab some random goodies and walk away. I send soldiers after them but get this: because of the range/speed of the pistols/spine guns around half of my men were wielding they couldn't actually fire at a moving target. Instead, they followed the bandits ALL the way to their camp waiting for them to stop so they could actually SHOOT them (a soldier with a rifle managed to kill one of them on the way); I'd qualify this as a design bug. At which point the bandits turn around and kill all three of the soldiers that actually made it in a couple of seconds. I guess all of them were wielding revolvers since none of the bandits had to reload. Oh, then I was hit with a fishperson raid.

I'll try to change my tactics, ensuring that soldiers are ALWAYS fully supplied, keep my stockpiles in the center of town and try to be more efficient with my placement of fortifications (though they're pretty costly in terms of lumber). If this doesn't help, my conclusion will be that bandits are now overpowered (they used to be underpowered, admittedly).

EDIT: Another possible problem is that some injuries don't heal and cannot be healed. Because of this soldiers will eventually wear out and die. Given the semi-daily regularity of raids and the slow trickle of footsoldiers that come via immigration (unless you acquire enough prestige to request a regiment of footsoldiers) colonies will inevitably run out of fighting men after a couple of weeks.

Fishpeople raids feel more balanced. They're not as powerful or tough as bandits, but they tend to scatter, making it difficult to pick all of them off before they enter your colony. More of a nuisance that can turn dangerous if not properly dealt with.

Food is no longer a problem. I haven't played long enough to gauge whether it becomes more challenging to keep everyone fed as the population grows, but for now it seems as though the balance has swung in the opposite direction; it's now almost too easy to maintain your food stocks.

I'm going to post this in the design suggestions forum, but I'd like to put it here as well for emphasis.

New Military Module: Watchtower. Costs 5 planks. Idle soldiers and militia with 'workshop' tasks active will man any empty watchtower and remain there until another task (food, sleep, enemy attacks, etc.) interrupts them. While manning the tower their sight radius increases DRAMATICALLY. This module makes a lot of sense, in my opinion, given the tactical challenges posed by the fog-of-war and how the colonists would realistically deal with it. It might even be a precursor to turrets, guntowers, and other static defenses, but I think it's desperately needed now for balance issues and should be added ASAP.