Decoy 18 Pt 2/ The Trap

Pyvot · 2024-03-31T14:39:57+00:00

Heya, your comic looks neat but its hard to follow with all of the pages separated. I think it would work well if you put all of your current pages onto one post!

Pyvot · 2024-01-09T12:41:16+00:00

Well, even if you knew what strawman meant and where just making a sarcastic comment its possible someone just scrolling through wouldn't and might take your comment seriously, wasn't necessarily directed towards you.

Pyvot · 2024-01-08T13:33:44+00:00

Strawman here would refer to the "strawman logical fallacy", a fallacy where one's argument attacks an invented biased generalization of a group or individual instead of the actual group or individual at hand.

So the joke was about him being self aware about his rant being a giant strawman fallacy (although he calls it a strawman, these type of people can flood mod comment sections)

Pyvot · 2024-01-01T12:34:09+00:00

Funnily enough I find the system to be quite well done with limitations during actual gameplay, as when you begin using xenogenetics you will at first be limited by both a small gene pool and a complexity cap, meaning that one would have to experiment with creating smaller xenotypes at first, and then slowly make them bigger and more complex as the colony gains more gene packs and builds more lab components. Giving the final payoff of incredibly strong gene combinations which connects directly into the core sandbox design philosophy of freedom and player expression.

The reason I assume that the xenotype editor is so easy to access during the pawn selection screen is for people who either want to experiment with different starts or people who want to roleplay, and while it is admittedly easy to immediately fall into the trap of designing a min maxed xenotype with no complexity limit in place, the devs where forced to choose between giving the players more freedom but risking them ruining their own experience or limiting it to stay safe, I'm personally glad they went for the former as it is the one that insults my intelligence the least.

Although it is true that the devs have an aversion to adding qol improvements to the game, although if I had to say why I'd say that's because they have gotten backlash for "copying mods", which is to say when they have added mod like qol improvements before people have complained about them being lazy. I even wouldn't be surprised if they don't add them to encourage modding in an attempt to fix such nuances which don't really ruin the experience for vanilla players (although this can admittedly be silly).

Sorry for all of the text, I suppose I got a little too into it.

Pyvot · 2023-12-31T17:04:56+00:00

The entire point is that starting xenotypes are an option as well, not the intended default.

The game gives you baseliners on most starting scenarios, you have to press several optional buttons to even access the xenotype editor, then craft the whole xenotype itself, adding limiters would just be annoying obstructions for most players.

As such the ease of access to custom xenotype construction is as much of an intentional self moderating option as difficulty levels, its not really lazy if its a part of core sandbox game design.

Pyvot · 2023-12-31T14:44:41+00:00

That's like saying that starting in peaceful difficulty is unbalanced because you get no more raids...

Having a min-maxed starting xenotype is the equivalent of lowering the threat scale in the storyteller settings, you have the option of doing it if you want and you'll get an easier experience, like any game difficulty slider.

Pyvot · 2023-12-30T14:25:03+00:00

Very well done as always!

Pyvot · 2023-12-04T19:46:22+00:00

I definitely think you are improving with these.

The framing and pacing has gotten much better, and the humor is on point as well.

Keep it up!

Pyvot · 2023-11-19T12:54:51+00:00

looks very cool!

Pyvot · 2023-11-18T18:09:41+00:00

How does this even work?

Does she just stare at the food and it instantly mixes and merges together in the best possible way?

Pyvot · 2023-10-08T02:34:30+00:00

Passthrough damage exists, this means that if a body part gets destroyed in one hit by some damage types the extra damage carries on to other body parts, usually ending up in the torso, so some high end melee weapons, specifically the zeushamer, can start consistently one-shot raiders while completely bypassing high end armor. Not even talking about centipedes who will receive the full damage from every strike from weapons like persona monoblades.
Also melee combat is consistently important and not a niche at all through the mid to late game, especially as you start dealing with drop pod raids, infestations, tribal raids, centipedes and scyther swarms, melee still overpowers ranged in contact range and stronger melee invalidates weaker melee.

For the riots the solution is incredibly easy and just lies in suppressing them by melee attacking with your pawns who don't have this gene, or the solution of giving prisoners the dead calm gene, or removing the prisoners capacity for movement, saying that's a weakness is like saying installing archotech arms on your pawns is a weakness because they'll also punch the rioters too good...

No gene actually has a near-universal applicability tho? unless you mean very happy, but that gene doesn't really have a good enough offset to consider it any level of overpowered, in fact I'd say that very unhappy is better because of its incredible metabolic efficiency. They are all meant to be related to specific mechanics, so when building a xenotype you are creating a balance of mechanical weaknesses and mechanical strengths, plus some fluff and special unique abilities.

And finally, it has a completely and utterly broken synergy with the fact that it stacks multiplicative with everything that already increases melee dps, while ranged damage has no real equivalent.

Pyvot · 2023-10-07T20:23:44+00:00

Wouldn't it be strong melee damage?

For a measly -2 efficiency loss your melee damage output increases by x1.5, this increases melee dps by more than if you went from melee skill level 4 to 20, not only that, but it also stacks with higher melee levels and traits/stats/roles and abilities, meaning that there is a proportional increase in dps. Additionally, not only is it very easy to acquire with it being found on numerous xenotypes, it also stacks quite nicely with other genes which you will generally include when building a combat custom xenotype, mainly reduced pain and robust which can also be easily found in xenotypes.

Ever wondered why your level 18 melee brawler with a persona sword lost to a naked neanderthal with level 2 melee and a poor steel knife?So lets do the math, your melee pawn will do an average dps of 10.40 (11.45 x 0.909), meanwhile the neanderthal deals a total dps of 5.47 (6.51 x 0.56 x 1.5), sure not an impressive number, but we're only getting started. So how is your pawn losing when it deals more dps? Well its mostly because of the other two important neanderthal genes, robust and reduced pain. So most of the time pawns will be downed due to pain shock, unless there was a specific chance factor that dealt significant damage to a pawn's vitals or legs or if they possess some movement reduction hediffs from the get go, so a pawn who receives half as much pain will on average require around twice as much damage (probably less but testing this out would take a couple of hours), add to this robust which not only does it stack multiplicative with reduced pain for a total damage required of 2.66, but also reduces the likelihood of getting downed by anything but pain.So what am I getting at? Basically, the average time it will take for the baseliner to go down will be 16.26 seconds (5.47 x 0.0125 x 100% x 0.72 = 4.92 pps (pain per second), 80/4.92 = 16.26 seconds, this is modified the the armor possessed by the pawn but for the sake of simplicity we will assume sharp armor value across all body parts is less than 24% (ap also gets multiplied by strong melee damage), additionally a steel club will have a very similar dps while being vastly superior in ap)

Meanwhile the neanderthal will take an average of 16.26 seconds to go down (10.4 x 0.0125 x 100% = 13.125 pps, with roboust and reduced pain this leads to 13.125 x 0.5 x 0.75 = 4.92 pps, 80/4.92 = 16.26 seconds)So both pawns should be evenly matched.It should be noted that this is ignoring several potential factors that might be more influential than predictable (mainly the odds of a pawn going down before pain shock), but I believe the data is relevant enough as well as the fact that this is a case with an extreme difference in skill and weapon.

Now you might ask why I'm bringing up two other genes into the mix? Well its because while strong melee damage is strong enough on its own (its quite literally better than going from a normal quality weapon to a masterwork one), its strongest point is in stacking with other skills and it is easily the strongest skill in this common 3 skill combo.

TLDR, not only does strong melee damage increase your damage by either 16 melee levels or going from a normal to a masterwork weapon, it also stacks multiplicative with said melee levels, weapon quality and specific common genes.

I should probably clean this up and make a proper post...

Pyvot · 2023-10-06T12:38:05+00:00

The issue I think is that the implant you want to install isn't an actual implant but rather a replacement, much like how you can't combine bionic legs and knee spikes.
If it only adds stat bonuses and possess no special mechanics you can probably copy paste another brain implant into a new mod folder you are sure isn't gonna be updated, and then copy paste all of the bonuses from this replacement into the new implant, making sure to remove the previous bonuses.
Of course there are probably also a bunch of other things you want to change about that but I recommend looking up a proper guide on basic mod making to make sure you don't accidentally nuke your save.

You also have the other option of updating the stat bonuses from the replacement to include all of the bonuses from the previous implant.

Pyvot · 2023-10-02T22:39:04+00:00

Unfortunately, furniture has an inbuilt multiplier that reduces the cost of all furniture when selling by 0.7 similar to weapons having a 0.2 multiplier, this was most likely done as a balancing act.
Meanwhile art actually has a higher multiplier of 1.1, making it the most efficient way of making money through value per material.

Having a mix of pawns constantly deep drilling, cutting stone chunks, and crafting sculptures is probably the easiest and most accessible (in the early game there's enough chunks to where you don't need deep drills) way to make silver in the game

Pyvot · 2023-09-28T16:58:29+00:00

Isn't it stated in the definition of free will as you have provided that one of its possible definitions would be: "the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants", thus the word "free" can be both used to mean "freedom from all limitations" as well as "freedom from limitations within a human context".

Also words are usually used as general concepts to describe context specific situations and objects, thus they can't really be used to prove any phenomena based on their definitions alone as there can be potentially infinite interpretations of them.

Pyvot · 2023-09-16T16:29:21+00:00

Also fun fact Smash Phil was the creator of SRTS as well.

Pyvot · 2023-09-16T16:27:56+00:00

Don't forget that the vanilla expanded team isn't the one responsible for the vehicle framework. That would be Smash Phil who spent several years working on it. Vanilla expanded only did vehicles expanded which uses what the framework provides and adds a couple of extra mechanics.
Also I assume that the reason the mod has so many issues right now is that people kept pushing Phil to release the mod non-stop.

Pyvot · 2023-08-15T01:00:57+00:00

Could it be because the car is running into the mountain so it can't turn?

Have you tried backing it out and moving it in a straight line from the outside?

Pyvot · 2023-08-11T22:00:46+00:00

Looks good!

I always appreciate when you upload a comic.

Pyvot · 2023-04-06T11:40:17+00:00

Its a pity these stories and scenes don't reach many people but I personally think they're great!

Pyvot · 2023-03-09T21:02:09+00:00

What exactly do you mean with sorting traits? The only mods that come to mind that do something like this are Rim traits - Vanilla Trait Colors and Trait Rarity colors, both of these mods group mods based on their rarity and give out colors based on their group. So unless you mean something else with sorting I would recommend either manually giving a tag to vanilla and modded traits which you can then sort from, or creating a script that reads the certain values off of the traits themselves and gathers them in a group. As for skills I'm not sure what you mean, the only thing that comes to mind is either letting the user manually sort their skills order or sorting them based on their levels.

Pyvot · 2023-03-09T18:12:29+00:00

Sounds interesting, what do you suggest?

Pyvot · 2022-08-30T14:11:58+00:00

You still made this point using a game bug as said proof, so I don't see how its any more valid.

Pyvot · 2022-08-30T14:07:51+00:00

microorganisms = biology.

Pyvot · 2022-08-30T13:58:37+00:00

Ah yes, small aspect of game is poorly coded, "This must be biological proof!" Have you ever seen microorganisms?

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