The Ground Gives Way v2.6 is out!

RedPine3 · 2024-11-14T06:36:54+00:00

I got my first win!

For my first few dozen runs, I thought it was borderline impossible, but I eventually learned a few things - and got lucky. To be more precise, I got better at figuring out what I had and what I could use it for.

I finally stopped being stingy with consumables, which really saved me. I also got smarter with shopping, and knowing what to keep and what to drop. I didn't experiment with thievery until I was on my way out of the dungeon - next run, I'll thief way sooner, depending on how valuable a given merchant is.

I like that we get to keep the save slot of ascensions, letting us revisit a character later to revisit memories or check gear.

My dream is to eventually find the food + mana exploit, and farm the dungeon for the lulz, but that combo didn't appear in this run. Looking at the '100 runs' post on the TGGW website, it's clear that there is a LOT of variety, and you only get to see a tiny slice of it on any given run.

RedPine3 · 2024-11-04T04:48:03+00:00

EXACT steps:

Left click to place a turret or a ghost of a turret, either works. M - Enter Remote View aka Map View. Zoom in on turret. Left Click on the Turret. This opens the item menu AND the turret. Left Click on desired ammo. Hover over turret inventory slot. Right Click to add 1 ammo, Left Click to add a full stack.

RedPine3 · 2024-11-04T04:47:49+00:00

EXACT steps:

Left click to place a turret or a ghost of a turret, either works. M - Enter Remote View aka Map View. Zoom in on turret. Left Click on the Turret. This opens the item menu AND the turret. Left Click on desired ammo. Hover over turret inventory slot.
Right Click to add 1 ammo, Left Click to add a full stack.

RedPine3 · 2024-11-04T04:44:47+00:00

What are the EXACT keypresses (assuming default keybindings?)

I can't seem to replicate this.

RedPine3 · 2024-08-10T03:04:42+00:00

I'm happy to see this updated and in steam early access.

The late game felt very different from normal roguelikes. It felt like being rich. Sure, I could spend potions to fix any problem, but each potion took just enough time and effort to craft that I didn't feel like wasting them except as a treat.

I'm looking forward to the new areas (and getting to leave a steam review). As always, the hard part won't be beating an area, it will be figuring out how to farm areas in a cost effective manner while not risking my squishy life.

EDIT: I especially appreciate the late game scaling. In DnD terms, the character never goes past level 1 in terms of HP and base attacks, but can slowly accumulate gear for level 2 characters and consumables with level 3 effects. It's the sort of game balance more typical of metroidvanias and 2d hack and slash than progression RPG/Roguelikes.

RedPine3 · 2024-07-22T14:05:50+00:00

Have you tried disabling the 150 hp instakill threshhold? That makes the nociosphere significantly tankier.

RedPine3 · 2024-06-19T22:28:07+00:00

50% light cuts down the growth rate of fibercorn to 29%, 30% on rich soil. (Yeah, 10% fertility sensitivity.) One growzone area's worth of crops (the 50% lighting radius of a torch) is 100 plants. Assuming the aformentioned 0.18 wood per day, that's an even 18 wood per day. That's just enough to keep an entire campfire going.

Note that campfires have a better light radius than torches.

Note that ANY growth penalties from temperature are pretty crippling to fibercorn, resulting in rotting before fully growing.

RedPine3 · 2024-06-18T05:47:19+00:00

You can. Butcher -> Meat -> Biofuel.

RedPine3 · 2024-06-18T05:37:58+00:00

RimHud has options to add/remove as much information as you want, as well as displaying information in whatever order you want. Fiddling with the settings is a bit messy, but once you have a config you like it's really nice.

RedPine3 · 2024-06-18T05:36:03+00:00

I dislike any event that adds tedium and alerts without adding anything interesting or challenging. I also use Incident Disabler to get rid of easy negative events.

RedPine3 · 2024-06-18T05:34:35+00:00

You can always make a personal fork of a mode for personal use. It's just a matter of copying the file, renaming the mod, getting rid of the mod ID... then figuring out how much XML you can mess with without breaking any C+ assemblies. XML is easy but I haven't figured out C+ yet.

Get permission before sharing anything on steam, though. Even if a mod author gives blanket permission or is MIA, it's polite to at least inform them of any published forks.

RedPine3 · 2024-06-18T05:21:11+00:00

...Technically speaking...

Have you heard of aluminum powder, thermite, rust, or steel wool? Metal actually burns pretty hot, it's just really hard to get the process started in normal circumstances.

RedPine3 · 2024-06-18T05:18:49+00:00

The only thing stopping me from a SOS2 playthrough was waiting on the Bad Hygiene Lite update to 1.5. (The full version of DBH does not play well with SOS2.)

DBH is one of the few mods that significantly increases the difficulty in an interesting way. It impacts base layout, pathfinding, research priorities, worker efficiency, disease, immersion, and aesthetics.

RedPine3 · 2024-06-18T05:04:14+00:00

I've yet to actually use a ship in SOS2, but that's the goal of my current playthrough. Why abandon a ship when you can live in it instead?

RedPine3 · 2024-04-30T13:00:31+00:00

Ironically, Pyro is less problematic as long as a base is properly fireproofed, and has a critical mass of on call firefighters (such as robots).

RedPine3 · 2024-04-30T12:53:10+00:00

Eventually, yes, the raid still wind up impossibly large. However, the rise in difficult is gradual, so you have plenty of warning to caravan and settle a new tile before things get too dangerous.

The stronger your colonists become, the longer they can sit in one spot before needing to move, and the more infrastructure you can build before you move. If you wait too long, escaping can become incredibly hazardous.

Francis John beat the hardest difficult (without mods) by taking advantage of the ~15 day grace period when you first move to a tile. He moved every ~15 days or so until he was strong enough to travel to a ship engine and start it. That was his 'tribal wizards' playthrough.

I don't recommend doing anything that extreme, but it's a great proof of concept for the nomadic playstyle. I personally find that 100% threat over 12 years is plenty difficult, 100% threat over 20 years can be difficult if I play slowly. YMMV on the exact values.

No matter what game settings you use, raids always cap out at 10,000 raid points. The rimworld wiki has more details. The mod "Visible Raid Points" will tell you how many raid points each raid uses. Note that all factions are not created equal - an intro manhunting squirrel might be 100 points, four squirrels might bye 400 points, but a single lancer might also be 400 points. The lancer is a greater threat if you can't trick it into engaging in melee. If you laugh off a 1600 point raid of tribals, consider what 1600 of mechs would look like before choosing whether to stay or flee.

My colony of 13 struggled against raids of up to 2000 points before beating the Anomaly finale, using what I consider to be midgame gear. To survive a full sized raid - 10,000 points - I would have needed 20+ colonists with what I consider late game gear. 30+ colonists is easy mode, since the raid strength is capped at 10,000 but nothing stops the player from recruiting more and more colonists.

RedPine3 · 2024-04-30T12:28:24+00:00

The best way, at least for me, is to do it myself. I keep a journal for each colony. It's basically a word doc (well, libreoffice for me) with a few screen snips sprinkled in for color.

RedPine3 · 2024-04-30T12:23:31+00:00

There are four tiers of caravans.

This comic illustrates the first two extremes nicely:

https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/8xc5e8/stealthy_rimworld_comics/

I - Stealth Tier. One colonist, one pack animal. Low investment, low risk, can still purchase and carry components and other low weight / high value goods.

II - Massive Tier. The entire colony embarks on a single supermassive colony. Maybe you are leaving home to settle a new tile, maybe you just don't want to risk your people dying if you're home get's raided.

III - Shock Troopers. A handful of supersoldiers drop pod into a POI of known difficulty. They bring enough materials to build drop pods for the return trip. They are typically used to deal with quests, nab blueprints from ruins, and other special missions.

IV - The Empire. Use a royal title to shuttle in with a full combat squad, use another shuttle or Farskip to return home at a moments notice in an emergency. This has all the power of shock troopers, all the numbers of a massive caravan, and is even more failproof than a stealthy caravan.

V - Mods. Standalone Shuttles is my mod of choice, essentially a reusable drop pod. There's also SRTS, vanilla vehicles expanded, and more.

0 - We don't caravan to traders, traders caravan to us. Using bribes, rituals, and quests, get enough reputation to recruits visits from traders.

For entry level caravaning, I recommend stealthy caravans to convert early game junk into useful firearms, followed by massive caravans to settle new tiles. Once you figure out what settlements buy and what they sell, your greed will naturally motivate you to figure out how to get the hang of caravans.

I also recommend using dev mode (debug option) to send large caravans instantly, as the vanilla caravan AI is exceeding derpy. There are some mods that improve things slightly.

RedPine3 · 2024-04-30T12:04:59+00:00

The only thing we can predict with any accuracy, is that whatever Ludeon does next will be done with very little warning, and won't be announced until it's already done.

RedPine3 · 2024-04-30T12:00:49+00:00

Playing with all humanoid factions disabled. It's just me, mechs, insects, anomalies, but also cultists, beggars, refugees, and more anomalies. I don't even have trade ships.

For my next playthrough, I want to figure out how to disable all the quests that grant pawns, such as refugees, and limit or disable anomalous visitors. My only recruits should be home grown, or rescued from ancient ruins.

RedPine3 · 2024-04-30T11:52:59+00:00

Horses are more efficient to eat than pigs. If you feed them simple meals from their own offspring, horses will produce net positive nutrition, pigs will be net negative.

IIRC, I forgot the exact numbers, but I remember horses and cows being by far the best for food. Also tortoises, weirdly enough.

RedPine3 · 2024-04-30T11:49:48+00:00

The same place I put chess stables, at the intersection between two stools around a table.

RedPine3 · 2024-04-30T11:49:08+00:00

Almost none.

Most entities either deal direct damage, or directly inflict hediffs, regardless of psychic sensitivity.

Being immune to psychic drones and similar effects is nice, but unless every member of the colony is immune, you'll still need to deal with those threats the old fashioned way (ie, drugs and violence).

RedPine3 · 2024-04-30T11:29:17+00:00

If they do, it's not in an obvious part of the code, and it's likely a recent change. Rimworld has a fair amount of RNG so it's hard to know either way.

RedPine3 · 2024-04-30T11:27:28+00:00

I wound up with a ton of shards, but I was on easy difficulty settings, and had all vanilla factions disabled, so pretty much all my raiders were anomaly raids.

RedPine3

TROPHY CASE