ideology & biotech balance question

[Church.exe]

I've been looking at the DLCs, and I'm honestly not sure if I'm missing something or ideology is just unbalanced as ♥♥♥♥. Managing colonist moods is a crucial part of the game, but with precepts you can make your colonists fine, or even happy, with everything from nutrient paste to dead bodies to even all sources of pain. The thing that's throwing me for a loop though, is that the recent Biotech DLC doesn't have this, and is actually designed with complexity and metabolic limits specifically created to balance it.

If both were unbalanced I could see an argument that "well it just lets the player play how they want" (I don't think it's a GOOD argument mind you, if the only way for your game to be balanced is for players to voluntarily not use aspects of it that make it too easy it's not a balanced game) and if they were both balanced I could see an argument for it since, well, it's just balanced. But, the fact that one of the DLCs is completely free reign and lets the player do whatever, and another one of the DLCs is specifically created with balance in mind is what's throwing me here.

Is there some hidden balance to ideology I'm not seeing or am I just missing something else entirelyhere?

[Church.exe]

Originally posted by whatamidoing:

It is the player's job to pick a difficulty that suits what you want. It's a single-player game, who cares about "cheating?"

no-one, hence why I've repeated several times that isn't the issue.

[whatamidoing]

It's a story generator, not a competition. If you want your people to suddenly start metagaming and enjoy that, cool. If you don't want to, also cool. It's clearly not an issue many people struggle with, since I can't remember the last time I've seen it brought up.

[Church.exe]

Originally posted by whatamidoing:

It's a story generator, not a competition. If you want your people to suddenly start metagaming and enjoy that, cool. If you don't want to, also cool. It's clearly not an issue many people struggle with, since I can't remember the last time I've seen it brought up.

I have explicitly used rimworld's status as a story generator in my arguments, so either your intentionally saying things you know are false or you haven't read anything I've said and are saying them without caring whether they're true or not.

[whatamidoing]

Because you're just being silly. Dev mode, custom scenarios, and custom storyteller options (on top of the predefined peaceful difficulty) do exist, with no warnings. It doesn't matter if you think they're better hidden or not. You still interact constantly with ideology if you don't metagame it. This isn't Fallout, or Bioshock, or Dark Souls. It's not meant to be some perfectly balanced experience or something. The tough trait exists, and is probably stronger than a fully meta ideology.

[Astasia]

The scenario editor isn't "cheating." You don't have to turn dev mode on to use it, you have go through scenario selection every game and the edit button is just there. It's basically the same deal as ideology, you have ideology selection full of predesigned ideologies and then an edit button to make a custom one. Making a custom ideology is the same as making a custom scenario, both options are very powerful tools that can lead to a very imbalanced experience of your choosing, either extremely difficult or extremely easy. It's the same again with the storyteller, you have the custom difficulty option right there to click on with a whole bunch of sliders to make the game very easy or very hard. That is how RimWorld works and has always worked.

Originally posted by Church.exe:

if that's the point of the DLC then why is biotech rather strictly balanced?

That's entirely false. With Biotech you can create a custom xenotype at game start using all the archotech genes and make literally immortal super pawns for all of your starters. Many of the "negative" genes aren't really negative and can be used to stack more bonuses, much like how ideology tends to work.

For example with ideology you can only make colonists fine with nutrient paste if you pick the transhumanist meme which comes with some fairly hefty forced resource costs. There's definitely a cost there, it's not a free bonus, but the cost comes with other bonuses. Being forced to keep everyone on neural chargers is expensive but does mean your colony is stronger for it.

You can only make colonists fine with seeing rotting corpses if you pick something like supremacy, raider, pain is virtue or the cannibal meme, all of which come with hefty downsides in other areas. There is some balance there. Then there's stuff like research speed which has no requirements and only exists to be a RP dial to adjust your challenge.

[Church.exe]

Originally posted by whatamidoing:

Because you're just being silly. Dev mode, custom scenarios, and custom storyteller options (on top of the predefined peaceful difficulty) do exist, with no warnings. It doesn't matter if you think they're better hidden or not. You still interact constantly with ideology if you don't metagame it. This isn't Fallout, or Bioshock, or Dark Souls. It's not meant to be some perfectly balanced experience or something. The tough trait exists, and is probably stronger than a fully meta ideology.

this isn't even an attempt at a point, you just flat out admitted to blatantly lying about what I've been saying and are trying to brush it off. At best it's a low tier whataboutism that other aspects of the game are unbalanced which, even if I take it for granted which I very much don't, wouldn't actually prove anything aside from "game with unbalanced feature has another unbalanced feature". Wow, shocking.

[Hykal]

No, that's just called having fun. I think you just hate fun, my dude.

[DeathWeaver4]

i aways just hit random religion with my eyes closes so...

[psychotron666]

You can also use ideology to make the game way harder too. It's just more control over your colony and themed runs

[Wasted]

if ideology makes the game too easy then up the difficulty 1 notch

if it makes it too hard then lower the difficulty 1 notch

you're welcome

not a fan of trolls with private profiles also. do you even own this game lol
its always the private profile people i tend to disagree with the most

DLCs are awesome. you will enjoy

[Church.exe]

Originally posted by Wasted:

if ideology makes the game too easy then up the difficulty 1 notch

if it makes it too hard then lower the difficulty 1 notch

you're welcome

not a fan of trolls with private profiles also. do you even own this game lol
its always the private profile people i tend to disagree with the most

DLCs are awesome. you will enjoy

say it with me now
"it is not the player's job to balance the developer's game"

[whatamidoing]

It is, and that's a good thing.

[funewchie]

Originally posted by Church.exe:

say it with me now
"it is not the player's job to balance the developer's game"

Say it with me, kid, "The game IS balanced."

Not the devs's problem you believe everyone has to play some insane Nuzlock Ultrahard difficulty.

What's next, "Permanently remove dev mode, force Brutal difficulty, no scenario editor, no reloading, disable all mods, mandatory Randy, final destination, fox only" on everyone?

The game is balanced. Let others play the blasted game however they want.

[Defektiv]

I think both DLC provide options for dealing with the games very difficult base mechanics. If they were part of the base game and could not be disabled, it would be hard to argue that they were not making the game easier than without them. But as they stand they are optional in every way. And as someone with over 1k hours in the game, I feel like they do little for the early game but provide much needed options for ultimately mitigating the tedious tasks that define the early game, allowing you to to expand end game into world map exploration and multiple settlements without punishing yourself with the necessary micromanagement that would be necessary otherwise.

[Wasted]

Originally posted by Church.exe:

Originally posted by Wasted:

if ideology makes the game too easy then up the difficulty 1 notch

if it makes it too hard then lower the difficulty 1 notch

you're welcome

not a fan of trolls with private profiles also. do you even own this game lol
its always the private profile people i tend to disagree with the most

DLCs are awesome. you will enjoy

say it with me now
"it is not the player's job to balance the developer's game"

game is balanced and so is DLC

ideology mostly makes the game HARDER unless you make a super ez precept

why do trolls hide behind private profiles? do you even own rimworld?