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RimWorld raids are actually ridiculously easy to defeat. The problem is that there are two ways to play RimWorld which will lead to very different results ther

by copx 4y ago

RimWorld raids are actually ridiculously easy to defeat. The problem is that there are two ways to play RimWorld which will lead to very different results there. A.) You do what "makes sense" to a normal human being dealing with a real situation. B.) You know the algorithms and minmax. If do A.) the game can be incredibly frustrating as you watch the colony you spent hours carefully building go down in flames despite the fact that you seemingly did nothing wrong. In contrast, if you do B.) the game becomes so dead easy that you can't even impress other players anymore by starting alone, naked, as a tribal, on an ice sheet - with one leg! Have you ever wondered why RimWorld likes to throw that "Imperial Deserter" quest at you right at the beginning of the game? A.) people will think "This is silly, how could I possibly defeat an Imperial raid right at the start?" Meanwhile B.) people are like "Sure, no problem. I can build a wodden trap corridor on day 1 which will kill the entire raid before they can even see a single of my pawns." Also note that RimWorld raids are scaled according to colony wealth and number of pawns in the colony. Thus if you are an A.) player you are probably accidentally signing your own death sentence by e.g building fancy bed rooms for your pawns. Or givign your craftspeople chairs to sit on while they work.. I think the game needs to be rebalanced somehow to make it a less frutstating experience for A.) players. Cheesey tactics like kill boxes which exploit the stupidity of the AI, and seemingly non-sensical decisions like not letting your colonists have chairs, should only be required at the highest difficulty level IMO.

ed312 4y ago
You just articulated why I kept getting really obsessed with, then extremely pissed off at Rimworld. It also didn't make much sense to my why you could build all this advanced future tech in-game but then needed to tame alpacas to leave your settlement...
em3rgent0rdr 4y ago
Exactly! Route B turns into a tower-defense game, and for that reason I try to play by A for more enjoyment. The raids compensate for their dumb AI with sheer size. A smarter AI could be more challenging but use fewer soldier. And maybe the AI could adapt its tactics...like once they learn there is a big wall outside your fortress, then maybe they should park themselves outside and call sappers for support or air droppers to arrive first. Maybe the game could introduce cannons to counter wall building. And to prevent cave dwelling, maybe there could be some crucial supplies that spoil such that it is essential to have some trade, and so enemy armies instead of doing a dumb assault could instead do proper siege warfare to conquer you by depriving you of crucial supplies until you die of starvation, thrist, disease, like was done for most of human warfare history.
- morsch 4y ago
  I've had raids employ artillery and air drops against my walled compounds. Not sure if it's the computer adapting to my build, it's possible that it's just a late (or mid) game raid variation.
  - inetknght 4y ago
    > I've had raids employ artillery and air drops against my walled compounds. Not only that, but the only defense against artillery is to build in a mountain. There isn't otherwise a defense against artillery except to go kill the artillery before it starts pounding you. And good luck doing that when you're outnumbered ten to one...
    - ender341341 4y ago
      Artillery is the defense against artillery. By endgame I usually have at least 10 mortars and it's are for them to get 1 built before I've wiped out enough stuff that they just launch an attack instead of using artillery.
    - philipov 4y ago
      If you build inside a mountain, however, then the bug infestations can target you, and they're even worse. It just seems that the only story the game is good at generating is the one where you die, and that gets boring. There isn't any clever emergent behavior happening there.
      - Gigachad 4y ago
        Feels a little harsh tbh. I think you get at least 100 hours in to the game before you start to have exhausted all the scenarios. That's well over the amount of gameplay you get out of most games.
      - stefs 4y ago
        > It just seems that the only story the game is good at generating is the one where you die but ... that's dwarf fortress' motto too! (even if it's not 100% accurate)
inetknght 4y ago
> RimWorld raids are actually ridiculously easy to defeat. Yeah tell that to my 5 pawns with bows or maybe pistols looted from a previous raid when they're attacked by 50 raiders or a mech drop or whatever... > Meanwhile B.) people are like "Sure, no problem. I can build a wodden trap corridor on day 1 which will kill the entire raid before they can even see a single of my pawns." Been there, done that. Then my pawns hit their own damn traps and get raided while they're in the hospital minus a leg > Also note that RimWorld raids are scaled according to colony wealth and number of pawns in the colony. Thus if you are an A.) player you are probably accidentally signing your own death sentence by e.g building fancy bed rooms for your pawns. Or givign your craftspeople chairs to sit on while they work.. Yup, exactly. > I think the game needs to be rebalanced somehow to make it a less frutstating experience for A.) players. Yes.
- pixl97 4y ago
  Eh, did you install any mods? In general the 'easy' playthru's I've done have not been like that at all.
- hutzlibu 4y ago
  My pawns never set off a own trap and I started dev mode(cheating) to have some sort of challenge with fine tunes big raids. (Rivers with mountains are good to defend)
  - teawrecks 4y ago
    Sounds like you got lucky. Every time a unit passes over their own trap, there's a chance of it misfiring on them.
    - hutzlibu 4y ago
      Yeah, but in my unmodded version(s) they never walk over them. They avoid them.
      - TeMPOraL 4y ago
MikePlacid 4y ago
> seemingly non-sensical decisions like not letting your colonists have chairs Chairs for workers?? Everyone who’s familiar with Russia’s history knows that automatic cannons should go first (and they did a rather good job in my case). It is non-sensical to let workers have chairs unless they refuse to work without them. Or until all your neighbors are reduced to the status of Canada and Mexico.
Arrath 4y ago
> I think the game needs to be rebalanced somehow to make it a less frutstating experience for A.) players. It can! As the player you can fine tune just about every aspect of the storyteller you might want. You can disable events you may not like, like toxic fallout or sunspots. You can tweak raid sizes, disable certain types of raids, change the impact curves that time and/or wealth have on raid sizes, etc.
qudat 4y ago
I enjoy rimworld and I’m learning quite a lot here, thanks
bcrosby95 4y ago
> I think the game needs to be rebalanced somehow to make it a less frutstating experience for A.) players. Yep. The problem is some people want to play like A but the game seems balanced around people playing like B. Dwarf fortress lets you opt into a lot of this madness with their biomes. You still survive in a friendly biome if you're playing like A. And no, hand tuning every aspect of the game isn't a good option. By that point you've lost most of your players. There should be an easy default option.
- revolvingocelot 4y ago
  Biomes are key to mediating DF difficulty. The B players can go find haunted biomes, on which shorn animals' wool comes to life and tries to kill you.
  - vintermann 4y ago
    Yes, the charm about DF to me was about how the game really made very few concessions to things like "reasonable difficulty level", "balance" or "progression". If you settle on a place with no flux stone, you don't get steel (except through trade or other interactions with the world). If the procedural generation says there should be undead whales, there will be undead whales, and it's up to you to come up with an answer to that - the game in no way guarantees there will be one.
- vkou 4y ago
  Rimworld difficulty modes function exactly like you described. Raids scale 1:12, based on which of the default difficulty settings you pick, and can be disabled outright.
debacle 4y ago
Completely agree with everything said here. Because of the way Rimworld is balanced, there is really only one way to properly "play" the game.
hinkley 4y ago
> starting alone, naked, as a tribal, on an ice sheet - with one leg! Francis John on Youtube basically did this recently. He talks a good bit about the math of the game, and he minmaxes his minmaxing. You could just spend all your time cheesing the game, or you can cheese it when it doesn't really affect whatever narrative you are trying for in your playthrough. There are materials in your environment that ding you even if you don't gather or process them. There are materials that ding you less once processed. Knowing what's what mean you don't mine a mineral formation until you need the material. If his camp wasn't constantly attacked by giant furry creatures he would have probably been toast. The RNG kept throwing him meat and cold weather clothing materials. He had to kite them but then real hunters of megafauna kind of do the same thing. He fed his animals meat that the humans would not eat (namely, the flesh of dead raiders). Anyway, I think if you want to understand Rimworld 'physics' more, that series is probably a decent starting place. But he also makes no bones about how frequently the game is one or two clicks away from war crimes. I've mostly just gone back to Oxygen Not Included and make do without narrative and variation that I kind of wish were there.
- john-tells-all 4y ago
  Francis John is very entertaining! He sets up engaging challenges and then plays them with energy and joy. I'm not surprised he's done so well with the minmaxing, he mentioned in one video his day job is a network engineer :)

by copx 4y ago

ed312 4y ago

You just articulated why I kept getting really obsessed with, then extremely pissed off at Rimworld. It also didn't make much sense to my why you could build all this advanced future tech in-game but then needed to tame alpacas to leave your settlement...

em3rgent0rdr 4y ago

Exactly! Route B turns into a tower-defense game, and for that reason I try to play by A for more enjoyment. The raids compensate for their dumb AI with sheer size. A smarter AI could be more challenging but use fewer soldier. And maybe the AI could adapt its tactics...like once they learn there is a big wall outside your fortress, then maybe they should park themselves outside and call sappers for support or air droppers to arrive first. Maybe the game could introduce cannons to counter wall building. And to prevent cave dwelling, maybe there could be some crucial supplies that spoil such that it is essential to have some trade, and so enemy armies instead of doing a dumb assault could instead do proper siege warfare to conquer you by depriving you of crucial supplies until you die of starvation, thrist, disease, like was done for most of human warfare history.

morsch 4y ago
I've had raids employ artillery and air drops against my walled compounds. Not sure if it's the computer adapting to my build, it's possible that it's just a late (or mid) game raid variation.
- inetknght 4y ago
  > I've had raids employ artillery and air drops against my walled compounds. Not only that, but the only defense against artillery is to build in a mountain. There isn't otherwise a defense against artillery except to go kill the artillery before it starts pounding you. And good luck doing that when you're outnumbered ten to one...
  - ender341341 4y ago
    Artillery is the defense against artillery. By endgame I usually have at least 10 mortars and it's are for them to get 1 built before I've wiped out enough stuff that they just launch an attack instead of using artillery.
  - philipov 4y ago
    If you build inside a mountain, however, then the bug infestations can target you, and they're even worse. It just seems that the only story the game is good at generating is the one where you die, and that gets boring. There isn't any clever emergent behavior happening there.
    - Gigachad 4y ago
      Feels a little harsh tbh. I think you get at least 100 hours in to the game before you start to have exhausted all the scenarios. That's well over the amount of gameplay you get out of most games.
    - stefs 4y ago
      > It just seems that the only story the game is good at generating is the one where you die but ... that's dwarf fortress' motto too! (even if it's not 100% accurate)

inetknght 4y ago

> RimWorld raids are actually ridiculously easy to defeat. Yeah tell that to my 5 pawns with bows or maybe pistols looted from a previous raid when they're attacked by 50 raiders or a mech drop or whatever... > Meanwhile B.) people are like "Sure, no problem. I can build a wodden trap corridor on day 1 which will kill the entire raid before they can even see a single of my pawns." Been there, done that. Then my pawns hit their own damn traps and get raided while they're in the hospital minus a leg > Also note that RimWorld raids are scaled according to colony wealth and number of pawns in the colony. Thus if you are an A.) player you are probably accidentally signing your own death sentence by e.g building fancy bed rooms for your pawns. Or givign your craftspeople chairs to sit on while they work.. Yup, exactly. > I think the game needs to be rebalanced somehow to make it a less frutstating experience for A.) players. Yes.

pixl97 4y ago
Eh, did you install any mods? In general the 'easy' playthru's I've done have not been like that at all.
hutzlibu 4y ago
My pawns never set off a own trap and I started dev mode(cheating) to have some sort of challenge with fine tunes big raids. (Rivers with mountains are good to defend)
- teawrecks 4y ago
  Sounds like you got lucky. Every time a unit passes over their own trap, there's a chance of it misfiring on them.
  - hutzlibu 4y ago
    Yeah, but in my unmodded version(s) they never walk over them. They avoid them.
    - TeMPOraL 4y ago

MikePlacid 4y ago

> seemingly non-sensical decisions like not letting your colonists have chairs Chairs for workers?? Everyone who’s familiar with Russia’s history knows that automatic cannons should go first (and they did a rather good job in my case). It is non-sensical to let workers have chairs unless they refuse to work without them. Or until all your neighbors are reduced to the status of Canada and Mexico.

Arrath 4y ago

> I think the game needs to be rebalanced somehow to make it a less frutstating experience for A.) players. It can! As the player you can fine tune just about every aspect of the storyteller you might want. You can disable events you may not like, like toxic fallout or sunspots. You can tweak raid sizes, disable certain types of raids, change the impact curves that time and/or wealth have on raid sizes, etc.

qudat 4y ago

I enjoy rimworld and I’m learning quite a lot here, thanks

bcrosby95 4y ago

> I think the game needs to be rebalanced somehow to make it a less frutstating experience for A.) players. Yep. The problem is some people want to play like A but the game seems balanced around people playing like B. Dwarf fortress lets you opt into a lot of this madness with their biomes. You still survive in a friendly biome if you're playing like A. And no, hand tuning every aspect of the game isn't a good option. By that point you've lost most of your players. There should be an easy default option.

revolvingocelot 4y ago
Biomes are key to mediating DF difficulty. The B players can go find haunted biomes, on which shorn animals' wool comes to life and tries to kill you.
- vintermann 4y ago
  Yes, the charm about DF to me was about how the game really made very few concessions to things like "reasonable difficulty level", "balance" or "progression". If you settle on a place with no flux stone, you don't get steel (except through trade or other interactions with the world). If the procedural generation says there should be undead whales, there will be undead whales, and it's up to you to come up with an answer to that - the game in no way guarantees there will be one.
vkou 4y ago
Rimworld difficulty modes function exactly like you described. Raids scale 1:12, based on which of the default difficulty settings you pick, and can be disabled outright.

debacle 4y ago

Completely agree with everything said here. Because of the way Rimworld is balanced, there is really only one way to properly "play" the game.

hinkley 4y ago

> starting alone, naked, as a tribal, on an ice sheet - with one leg! Francis John on Youtube basically did this recently. He talks a good bit about the math of the game, and he minmaxes his minmaxing. You could just spend all your time cheesing the game, or you can cheese it when it doesn't really affect whatever narrative you are trying for in your playthrough. There are materials in your environment that ding you even if you don't gather or process them. There are materials that ding you less once processed. Knowing what's what mean you don't mine a mineral formation until you need the material. If his camp wasn't constantly attacked by giant furry creatures he would have probably been toast. The RNG kept throwing him meat and cold weather clothing materials. He had to kite them but then real hunters of megafauna kind of do the same thing. He fed his animals meat that the humans would not eat (namely, the flesh of dead raiders). Anyway, I think if you want to understand Rimworld 'physics' more, that series is probably a decent starting place. But he also makes no bones about how frequently the game is one or two clicks away from war crimes. I've mostly just gone back to Oxygen Not Included and make do without narrative and variation that I kind of wish were there.

john-tells-all 4y ago
Francis John is very entertaining! He sets up engaging challenges and then plays them with energy and joy. I'm not surprised he's done so well with the minmaxing, he mentioned in one video his day job is a network engineer :)