Combat in darkness

[Bosh]

So with the darkness meme ALL light including darklight gives combat debuffs so lighting my base in any way is a bad idea for combat? That seems stupid.

[boytype]

Makes sense to me.

[Veylox]

Stupid or not that's what darkness means

[cinless]

High impact memes are meant to change how you play the game, they aren't necessarily concerned with being balanced one way or the other.
"Why would I take this when it's clearly worse than this?" is the wrong attitude to approach Ideology with.
The game could probably stand to signpost this a little better, but here we are.

[Jimkiro Casy]

IIRC darklight doesn't give you the accuracy malus. It should give you a +4 to mood, and you'll also need it wherever you do surgeries or suffer the -50% penalty for operating in darkness. Otherwise, having any opening to regular light will make your pawns shrivel like water on a witch and your accuracy will plummet. Try to bait out a sunblocker for maximum the buffs. Just have your mushroom farms ready in a darklight-free zone.

[marcusaddamsson]

Darklight isn't really 'light' in the game. It's mostly a UI thing, so you can see in dark rooms without triggering your pawns' desire for darkness.

So fighting in darkness is bad, that makes sense logically. Unless you can see in the dark, like a mole guy... or a pawn with an archoeye or the like. I'm sure there's an exogene you could find/insert to get your colonists' darkvision.

[Jimkiro Casy]

Originally posted by marcusaddamsson:

Darklight isn't really 'light' in the game.

It absolutely is. You NEED darklight in order to not take a malus on treatments and surgeries, as it's the only way to get 'light' from the darkness meme and you take a huge malus to treatments/surgeries for doing them in darkness; as even if you can see in darkness, the game still applies a penalty for operating/treating without light.

[whatamidoing]

Darklight doesn't count as light for combat in darkness.

[Bosh]

Originally posted by whatamidoing:

Darklight doesn't count as light for combat in darkness.

If that's the case that would be great, but is there any reliable way to test this?

[marcusaddamsson]

Originally posted by Bosh:

Originally posted by whatamidoing:

Darklight doesn't count as light for combat in darkness.

If that's the case that would be great, but is there any reliable way to test this?

Sure. Draft two ppl, spread 'em apart. Now select one's weapon and mouseover the other guy... should show you a breakdown of the shot. FYI, you can do that with enemies as well..

[whatamidoing]

Originally posted by Bosh:

Originally posted by whatamidoing:

Darklight doesn't count as light for combat in darkness.

If that's the case that would be great, but is there any reliable way to test this?

idk, I skimmed the code and it looks like it explicitly checks for darklight. Aside from that, what the other guy said.

[Bosh]

Ok so I did some testing and it seems that basically anything that isn't pure sunlight is classed as dark for the bonus; normal torches, lamps and even sun lamps do not give a combat debuff IF OUTSIDE. When indoors normal lights give the debuff and darklight doesn't.

[Aurani]

I'm 4 years into my tunneler playthrough and I only now learn of this, my pawns have been fighting with just a roof over their head thinking it'd be enough, I knew something was wrong when my Shooting 20 Careful Shooter was missing half their shots with a legendary rifle... I don't know how my colony hasn't been obliterated given all my pawns have been fighting with those huge accuracy maluses this entire time.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Aurani:

I'm 4 years into my tunneler playthrough and I only now learn of this, my pawns have been fighting with just a roof over their head thinking it'd be enough, I knew something was wrong when my Shooting 20 Careful Shooter was missing half their shots with a legendary rifle... I don't know how my colony hasn't been obliterated given all my pawns have been fighting with those huge accuracy maluses this entire time.

Ya it's weird, being "outside" during the day will always give the penalty unless there's like a sunblocker or eclipse. Being under a roof doesn't do anything even if the colonist and target are in 0% light. You need a door on the entrance to your killbox held open to make sure the area is indoors. I don't remember if this was always the case, and I at least completely forgot about it in a previous run and was building roofs all over the map thinking it was helping my accuracy during mobile skirmishes, but apparently it was doing nothing.

Also for indoor combat it's the target's light level that matters, not the attackers. Normal lights and torches do cause a penalty, darklights do not. If your colonist is standing next to a normal light and the enemy is far enough away to be in darkness, no penalty. If your colonist is standing in darkness and the enemy is next to a normal light, -20% accuracy. You probably aren't building any normal lights anywhere though so that bit if info isn't particularly relevant.

[MadArtillery]

Glad I learned this, as always rimworld is incredibly bad at actually being transparent with how things work.

[Raymond]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Ya it's weird, being "outside" during the day will always give the penalty unless there's like a sunblocker or eclipse. Being under a roof doesn't do anything even if the colonist and target are in 0% light. You need a door on the entrance to your killbox held open to make sure the area is indoors. I don't remember if this was always the case, and I at least completely forgot about it in a previous run and was building roofs all over the map thinking it was helping my accuracy during mobile skirmishes, but apparently it was doing nothing.

Also for indoor combat it's the target's light level that matters, not the attackers. Normal lights and torches do cause a penalty, darklights do not. If your colonist is standing next to a normal light and the enemy is far enough away to be in darkness, no penalty. If your colonist is standing in darkness and the enemy is next to a normal light, -20% accuracy. You probably aren't building any normal lights anywhere though so that bit if info isn't particularly relevant.

last I checked Tynan removed all impact to accuracy and combat from lighting, so it doesn't matter whatever your pawns and the enemies are next light sources or not.