The Working Orphans

[Cece]

Having made it to Year 4, I felt like sharing some insights on the current gameplay. Just a little bit.

Testing branch v0.533 - The Works! difficulty - Orphans (minus animals) - World settings 0 - Seed 475889332 with Idea Points Mode and Variable skills on

The Works! difficulty really brings back the One Year challenge in the earlier versions of the game where the first winter is the only time your clan has any risk of dying out. From the second year on, the gameplay felt more of a chill marathon than a "totally unfair and unforgiving" experience.

A brief summary of the run before I review the challenges. I removed the animals because they had no value. My first attempt, they died to predators before I could unlock traders to sell. No need to slaughter because starting out, berries and eels are enough. And the extra money you have starting out will allow you to hire helpers for a few days to really help get things together going into that first winter. I'm sure my next run will have no issue even with the "standard" settings.

The Orphans are three juveniles which makes working slower due to being young and unskilled and three babies which only add more work to an already slow working trio. The third attempt that went well was when I stopped the three babies (press V) and parked them in the same tile for the entire of each work day so they don't bother the workers for any needs. This is hilarious in its cruelty that babies are forced to stand in the same spot facing a wall until they're starving/dehydrated before someone comes to care. At least they can be next to the campfire and under a roof later.

Bathroom? Nope, just poop right there. Cleaning? Nope. waste of time. No one gets to be clean until after the 1st winter. Everyone's mood and work bar has so many negatives that not having the filthy debuff doesn't have any affect. The needs bar is frustrating due to wanting to fulfill the bar when only 1/3 to 1/2 empty even though the activity will fill the entire bar. There needs to be more consequences to a 0 mood/work bar. Rimworld mental breaks were very impactful.

With Ideas on, if you don't progress in a certain order, you won't survive the first winter. Something like getting the campfire first to not waste time harvesting and hauling berries. Digging into the mountain and getting doors and straw mats so your three workers can sleep well in a private room. Otherwise, being juveniles, they won't have enough sleep bar to make it thru the day and will sleep during the workday. You can probably get thru the first winter without using an idea point for walls and roofs, but you will need a lot of branches to keep a mountain room warm.

You need to hire a good hunter to make enough fur clothing. I messed up by hiring a hunter too early and most of the meat spoiled just as winter started. The run was saved when two wolves entered the map. They killed a deer every day, but did not fully consumed it so I was able to yoink the corpses for free food.

And roads! Nothing more impactful than roads and its lack, especially in floodplains. Get that dirt path from home base to the big forest before doing any branch harvesting. Same for any big berry patches. Rivers for straw. Travel time is critical due to slow work speed. The roads going straight out into the map really helped during the winter when I was stealing deer corpses from the wolves.

It was my most interesting first year, I might write a story about it.

The difficulty options:
Heavy Rain/Snow - no real impact on gameplay. Perhaps heavy rain/snow can cause random terrain blockages where you can't traverse. Or if someone caught far from home gets surrounded by localized flood or snow piles that you have to clear, risking death by not clearing in time and dying of food/water/warmth

Extra flooding - makes floodplain completely unusable for farming since plants will die due to the negative growth value during floods. Hugely decrease movement speed during floods

Epic Storms - no real impact. The volume of thunder gets annoying due to frequency

Dangerous Lightning - needs to be more dangerous. Even when hit by lightning, the debuff slows work a little, but will heal overnight. Weird behavior where nothing happens during a storm and then multiple people get hit and buildings get hit multiple time all at once. This ups the danger factor in a good way where multiple people are slowed/downed and multiple building fires are happening.

Colder winters/Chilling Winds - Little impact on gameplay. Causes warmth to drop quicker, limiting travel distance, though certain jobs like hunting will allow your people to continue even at 0 warmth. Rooms take a little more to warm so more campfires = more consumption.

High Flammability - nothing noticeable

Slower Plant Growth - High, but avoidable impact since map starts with most things ready to harvest. Very noticeable on how slow things grow, but since every other gameplay aspect is slowed down, this doesn't cause much issue. The most noticeable was that branches on trees take years to be harvestable again. I never harvested berries after the first year. Took too long for 3 and then having to haul it back.

Slower Skill Progression - no real impact. Your starting characters are too busy doing everything to get good at anything. Any hires will have some high leveled skills already and it's usually more easier to throw more bodies at jobs. Except hunting! You NEED a very skilled hunter to survive the first winter.

Work Takes Longer - Highest impact. At low skill level and especially if not an adult, every tasks are time consuming. Surviving the first year actually takes a lot of micro due to this challenge.

Longer Lifespan - I'm actually not even sure what this does?

Fewer Traders - Did not really notice. Longest I went were two days without traders. Maybe it's just a lower % and I rolled high.

Scarce Resource - 2nd Highest impact. Combined with slow work speed, you have to plan and micro a lot of tasks to make it thru the first year

Expiring Cold Room - minor impact. No more easy mode for food. However, a decent mountain room with enough frozen water can still last thru most of Spring. Considering how long dried and smoked food lasts, spoilage is a minor concern.

[Philtre]

Originally posted by Cece:

Longer Lifespan - I'm actually not even sure what this does?

People live longer, and each life stage also takes longer (2x, IIRC?). So babies take longer to become juveniles, and juveniles take longer to become adults, but then they also have a longer lifespan before dying of old age.

[telandra2]

No orphans but several 'The Works' starts. I'll add my feedback

Heavy Rain/Snow and Colder: I think these have a bigger impact on hired workers. Combined with public poop shame and no baths I had one drop -75pts in a few RL minutes. I did have a Clanswoman hunter go out, only to turn around to run inside without completing the hunt, repeat over and over which was annoying. I also had one carry a snare 4/5ths to the spot before dropping it and returning.

Few Traders: I haven't noticed a difference. Still getting 2 or 3 in what feels like daily. Maybe 2xs or 3xs the points to needed to change their goods?

Storms/Flooding/Lightening/Fire: Like you, I haven't seen much impact. I suggested dry lightening to up the fire risk.

Slower Skills: Its so slow it makes variable skills pointless. I ended up turning if off and keeping variable. (Edit: For clarification, I mean max skill bars. There doesn't seem a point to ranking them beyond starting skill value with the slowness.)

Longer Lifespan: This should be standard for kids. Babies take a realistic time to grow. How about adding an 'elders are too old to work' stage so they'll leech more and more resources as the population ages.

Slower plant growth: Little impact for me.

Scarce Resources and Work Takes Longer: Map/Resource dependent. I ended up disabling the first or else I spent too much time gathering food if I roll a bad map although I survived with a good map. Work takes longer I don't really notice.

Expiring cold rooms: Not a big deal. By the time I can build a cold room I've got food managed.

My previous self challenge was to forbid myself to dig into mountains. The addition of bluebells and ferns made getting straw super easy in Classic. The Works kills me with this restriction: grass and forest 3 so all land must be cleared, gathering food, gathering straw, and building just takes too long. Maybe try that with your Orphans.

[Blorf]

Thanks very much for these detailed notes. I have copied a link to this post into my todo list for when I do some more tuning on the Difficulty Modes. I am currently working on something quite major so I have moved on from the difficulty modes for now, but I do plan to circle back for tuning.

I plan to reveal what I have been working on in the coming weeks once it is more ready to be shown.