Difficulty Spike

[thelebk]

I am a new player and I just hit a difficulty spike under the classic AI. I have seven colonists and have unlocked all of the neolithic tech and some of the industrial. I am still using the starting weapons and armor you begin the game with. I quests I used to encounter 1-3 bad guys with no turrets. Bad guys were armed with bows for the most part. I just did a quest where there were 5! turrets and a badguy armed with a minigun. What the heck?

How is encounter difficulty determined in this game? Do they take some type of composite measure of your colony wealth to scale the threat irregardless of your weapon tech and deployed armor and weapons?

[Narrowmind]

Yes, exactly. It's colony wealth that determines the difficulty ramp. But use randy random from now on. He can be cruel, but tends not to be.

[TwoTonGamer]

The quests in RimWorld require your judgement, as well. Assess the potential risks with the reward.
It is not necessary to bite at every lure the game throws at you.

[thelebk]

There have been some quests which are simply impossible. Build 19 normal maces in 10 days with one bench and one crafter for instance. Since I am new I am trying to sample as many requests as possible. I was afraid to use the random AI as a new player as I thought it would be the hardest of the three.

[Bozobub]

a) Quests are random. You are not meant to be able to take on every quest, from the get-go. RNGeebus helps those who help themselves; don't bite off more than you can chew.

b) The other two "vanilla" storytellers ramp up difficulty reliably; Phoebe does so just as fast as Cassandra, just with longer intervals between raids (this means Phoebe can be more difficult in some ways). Randy is...well...much more random; unlike the other two, he only factors in colony wealth for raid strength, not time, and there is no defined interval between events at all. Randy also has no "soft cap" on colonist population, just the "hard cap" of 50 (IIRC) they all share.

"Soft cap": The storyteller stops offering random pawns anywhere near as often, if at all.

"Hard cap": The storyteller actively starts attempting to murder extra pawns.

AFAIK the caps are per colony, not total, if you have more than one active.

You can add more storytellers via mods, change both hard and soft caps separately, or even change them in the XML defs yourself =).

[Sugar Show]

I believe you must start to distinguish each color factions, there are two Tribals (yellow and green) then Modern (blue and purple) so pirates are red.

About quest, lone pawns of modern factions have more chances to defend with better weapons than others.

[thelebk]

@Bozobub, great info, as usual. Thanks.

@Sugar Show How do I tell on a quest what faction the enemy will be?

[ACS36]

Originally posted by thelebk:

There have been some quests which are simply impossible. Build 19 normal maces in 10 days with one bench and one crafter for instance. Since I am new I am trying to sample as many requests as possible. I was afraid to use the random AI as a new player as I thought it would be the hardest of the three.

That's a really easy quest. As long as it's not requiring you to use a rare material you should have no problem doing that.

Just make sure you stockpile the crafting materials near the work bench. Also have them drop on floor when complete selected so they aren't spending time hauling.

[thelebk]

@ ACS36 good tips, thanks.

Guys how is total wealth level calculated to scale encounters? Do steel walls count towards this calculation? Crops that are growing? Or just the value of gear and silver in the stockpiles?

[BurlsoL]

Originally posted by thelebk:

@ ACS36 good tips, thanks.

Guys how is total wealth level calculated to scale encounters? Do steel walls count towards this calculation? Crops that are growing? Or just the value of gear and silver in the stockpiles?

The value of everything counts. Items you own in the world, structures you've built, amount of food in your stockpile, number and type of animals, even the skills of your pawns. Some things add more value than others for the material cost, but everything adds some value.

[Chaoslink]

I mean, 5 turrets and a mini gun isn’t so bad. As long as you can out range the turrets, you can often destroy them safely or find a way to break their power supply and shut them down (even steal them afterward if you have pack animals). Just shoot near the mini gun guy to lure him out and focus him down while you’re in cover. You’ll want some form of armor if available. Always bring one long range gun to quests for sniping out turrets or their power supplies.

As for actually countering the difficulty... balance. You need to balance your progression. You’re likely behind on weapon and armor acquisition. That means you’re likely unprepared for quests.

[thelebk]

@BurlsoL Great explanation, thanks!

@Chaoslink I had the one starting bolt action rifle which can range the turrets with a slow grind. the Issue is that there was no place I could lure the MOB with the minigun that more than just my bolt rifle guy could shoot without getting into the range of the turrets. The minigun is range 30. I had to reload a couple of times to get good RNG.

In the quests I have done the power lines/sources have never been vulnerable. They are always protected by cover fire from multiple turrets and are often behind the turrets. Easy just to snipe the turrets.

[Bar0th]

One other thing to consider - quests pretty much exist to increase your colony wealth (either by adding new pawns, or more direct via a loot stash for instance). Even the crafting quest you had: if you look at the value of what they wanted, vs what they would give you, you were earning silver.

Well, it's actually more than what it shows: the clubs themselves are worth more than the resources used to make them (value is a usually a factor of the resources + labour multiplied by a quality factor, some things have a hard-coded value which ignores the resource/labour cost). If you were to check the resource value of the materials for those clubs, vs the reward value it's much higher.

Since difficulty is based on wealth and time (mostly wealth for Randy), increasing your wealth too soon can result in death. You can click on History on the bottom toolbar, and view the graph, or just switch to view the Statistics to see the current values. And yes, almost everything counts - some exceptions: chunks, basic terrain (not smoothed - smooth rock floors/walls gives it a value), and unclaimed structures.

Want to stockpile resources without increasing wealth? Don't mine deposits until you need them, don't process stone/metal chunks until needed, etc. In the case of chunks, you can move them around - but once cut into stone blocks or smelted into steel, they have value.

[Bar0th]

Originally posted by 󠀡󠀡:

tip: dont use steel for walls, only use stone

Yup - all basic stone is stronger than steel, is not flammable, and is cheaper. Granite being the strongest, but most labour intensive, Marble is the most beautiful but only slightly stronger than steel.

https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Structure#Walls

[Bar0th]

Mechanoid corpses are another good way to stash steel, plasteel and components - the corpse value = 0, so you can set up a stockpile just for them and disassemble as needed.

[Bozobub]

Considering the weight of steel walls in the game, it really isn't surprising that a) they can burn and b) they aren't as strong as stone. They'd only be 1mm-3mm thick, tops.