A few thoughts after first playthrough.

[Agent]

For my first game I played Concordia/Hard and the standard moon as I figured I'd give it a go on a pretty normalish setting to get a feel for the game (as I haven't played Rimworld either). I ended up with 6 survivors and extracted them all safely after 4-5 years. Could have done it faster of course but I put it off to see all the research etc. Now I'm giving the desert biome a go on Very Hard and the Jason (I think) moon, to see how it changes things. But I thought I'd share a few impressions, if you can call them impressions after a full 4-5 year game I guess.

I had a blast and got sucked in completely, in a way that hasn't happened in a while. So I'm really enjoying it. The desert/VH/jason playthrough is muuuch more difficult on every level which is good since the first one was honestly pretty easy given I'd never played the game before. Enjoying the atmosphere, the gameplay, and the basebuilding. Wanted to start with that since now I'm going to move on to what you know is coming, the stuff I'd like to see changed.

First where I'm coming from: If a bunch of content and options are in the game, they are there because you want us to be able to use 'em. So for example if there are 4 different types of clothes that range from summer weight to winter weight, we should find it advantageous or, on harder difficulties, necessary to make use of summer weight and winter weight stuff. Otherwise it's just there to be there and has no impact. But I've found that once you research the synthetic armor there's no point in any of that, you just slop it out for everybody and wear it all year round. It is better cold weather gear than the cold weather gear and doesn't hurt you in the summer.

Oh, and it protects you in combat too.

This isn't great as it renders the entire tailoring system basically moot. There really should be tradeoffs; maybe the armor is protective but hot, and if you're constantly wearing it in a heat wave you're gonna drop. Something like that. But as is, research it fast and you don't ever think about clothes again. I searched the forum to see if I was out to lunch here and I realize this isn't a novel insight, but I wanted to reiterate it as it was something I picked up on pretty quickly on my very first game.

I don't think that's too controversial although some people might not think it's too big a deal. My other one probably will be. I think it's bad that... wait for it... attacking animals always beeline for open paths/gates/etc. We have all these options for cool walls made out of all kinds of materials of varying strength, up to carbon nanotubes, but you don't actually have to use any of it. If you leave a path or maze on one edge of your base you can basically make the other sides of your base out of dental floss and they just ignore it. Yeah, the flying dudes might go that way sometimes but since they go over the walls anyway... yeah.

I feel like if the animals would at least slightly evaluate the path and, if it's too crazy or far away, attack that nearest wall instead that would at least make us pay some attention to all the defenses and not just the MAZE OF DOOM where the enemies bravely charge through a gauntlet of flamethrowers and turrets, never even getting close to the actual buildings.

Again, if all this content is there with stone, cement, nanotube, etc fortifications it should be something that it makes sense to use as the game progresses. As is, see above: wet paper bag walls on three sides. Ok, yeah I'm sure most people build at least one wall with something reasonable if only because it looks stupid otherwise but that's just for the aesthetics.

So yeah, it would be good if the bugs would attack you in such a way that a good defensive fortification was actually a solid, closed defensive fortification and not a quasi-tower-defense game where it's counterproductive to make a solid all-way fort.

And, lastly, the survivor (Viv? ) that tailors FOUR TIMES faster needs to be nerfed. Search your feelings, you know it to be true. You know it to be true.

That went longer than I wanted and I had another whole bit about the heat pump tech rendering a ton of other things pointless since you can build giant house sized freezers and suggesting that the heat pumps should only be able to reduce the ambient temperature by 20 degrees or so (which is realistic, you can't make a freezer with a dang wall unit heat pump) but most of you have already stopped reading so I'll stop.

So those are the things that I thought could use some changes after a bit of play. Again, I got super sucked in to the game (and still am!) and love it. I'm sure I'll play the heck out of it either way but I think it would be improved a bunch witch changes to synthetic armor (and any other clearly-superior-to-literally-everything-else item) and enemy pathing.

Oh, and vivien, you know it's true.

[The Former]

Personally, I do use clothing for different seasons. Which surprises me given the way I ignored clothes entirely in Rimworld. It may be down to me not leaving armor on at all times. Since I only equip armor when it was time to do something dangerous, I don't get the excellent insulation from it while working, so my people need to watch their heat and cold tolerance when working outside.

[Agent]

Why do you take the armor off when not fighting? To prevent degradation? I suppose I saw the advantages of always using synthetic armor late enough where it wasn't an issue to always keep a bunch of spares but early on if synthetics are a bottleneck I could see that. I found a railgun sniper rifle right away on my new game and I sure babied that thing between fights.

[Ralesk]

> I had a blast and got sucked in completely, in a way that hasn't happened in a while.

Same here. It's absolutely ridiculously addictive :D

[Ralesk]

Regarding the heat pumps: I find them seriously underperforming on large enough rooms where they should still realistically work; and though I know it's possible, I've never built freezer rooms before partly because getting a large enough room cooled like that is kinda hard in my experience and I just end up throwing down rows of freezers instead which do it much more effectively. So eh whatever :D

[Bjørn]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Ralesk:

Regarding the heat pumps: I find them seriously underperforming on large enough rooms where they should still realistically work

I've settled on 5x3 rooms as freezer rooms. They hold the temp very good, built with brick walls. Shelves on both long walls, door on one end and the AC on the other.

And if you're willing to use a mod, I've found this one to be very good for QoL. Can fit a lot of stuff in that freezer room and shelves with 5x more capacity:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2960035041

Regarding clothing and armor I've also used this mod by same author, enabling making batches of 5 of most items, and in a shorter time. There is no mention of how much shorter, but I suspect it can be called major cheat to use it, as those batches of 5s seem to be made pretty quickly. Had all my 6 guys in carbon armor pretty quickly in my previous game

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2962802482

Clothes have been a bit useless to me as well so far, by the way. Gone for synth armor ASAP. But I don't mind that. It's an option.

[Agent]

I believe my freezer rooms were brick and 3x6 rather than 3x5 but that was a fluke because I decided to stick some heat pumps in the walls of my two storage rooms which were already that size to see what happened.

re: synth armor. I dunno I just can't help but feel that everything should be useful and have tradeoffs, and having one set of clothes/armor be simply universally the best option isn't great even if it's not at all game-ruining (which it obviously isn't).

[The Former]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Agent:

Why do you take the armor off when not fighting? To prevent degradation? I suppose I saw the advantages of always using synthetic armor late enough where it wasn't an issue to always keep a bunch of spares but early on if synthetics are a bottleneck I could see that. I found a railgun sniper rifle right away on my new game and I sure babied that thing between fights.

Roleplaying tbh. :P But it does help save on resources by a tiny but now that you mention it. Mostly, I just feel like people wouldn't generally be working the fields in full kit, so I have them take it off until they need it.