Let's talk about Randy Random (again)

[ZS Maeklos]

Ever since Ideology released, Randy hasn't felt very Random anymore. It doesn't matter if I'm playing a straight-up, no-mods vanilla game, a lightly-modded game, or a full-up, no-holds-barred Save Our Ship 2 game with zombies, wizards, and ninjas. Randy has lost his randomness.

Gone are the strange, sometimes hilarious, often frustrating events that Randy used to toss. The cargo pods pull of human meat to your starving, non-cannibal colony. The random gold, silver, plasteel, or uranium meteors to boost your colony value and bring in butt-hurting raids that you definitely aren't ready for. Giving you a thrumbo only to hit said thrumbo with a limestome meteor 5 seconds later.

All gone.

Now? He might as well be called Randy Raids. All he does is send raids - plural. Often two or three raids (or sieges or whatever) within a few hours or a day of each other, OR at the same time - and both from the same faction so they don't fight each other.

Is anyone else noticing this annoying, sociopathic trend in our once schizophrenic pseudo-friend?

[Bouncer]

I accidentally selected him this patch, and only noticed because of the increased amount of raids.

Never got any of that 'wow lol so random' nature of his. I used him so often and it always led to the most boring games imaginable where mr. Randy just hibernates for a year, wakes up to press the 'volcanic winter' button, then ♥♥♥♥♥ off for a vacation in Haiti. If he was changed then it is for the better now.

[ROE]

I use Randy almost exclusively and I haven't really noticed any major differences. He always sent major raids my way. Sometimes he would even send three at once, so I guess maybe he has slowed down some.

Makes me think maybe I should try Chillax for a change and see how that goes. I can't handle Cass the cold snap queen anymore. She is just af.

[ᖇIᑎ]

Originally posted by Bouncer:

I accidentally selected him this patch, and only noticed because of the increased amount of raids.

Never got any of that 'wow lol so random' nature of his. I used him so often and it always led to the most boring games imaginable where mr. Randy just hibernates for a year, wakes up to press the 'volcanic winter' button, then ♥♥♥♥♥ off for a vacation in Haiti. If he was changed then it is for the better now.

Same. I love Randy when he's being, you know, random but he takes too many vacations. He dropped a Long Night event on me for almost two years, during which I got short circuits, solar flares, and other boring stuff. The Long Night, indeed. I guess he fell asleep on me :/

I haven't noticed any change in number of raids. But I think my Randy broke in the other direction. I'd love some raids.

[Astasia]

Doesn't look like he has changed at all. This is the part of the code that makes Randy who he is:

<mtbDays>1.35</mtbDays>
<maxThreatBigIntervalDays>13</maxThreatBigIntervalDays>
<minIncChancePopulationIntentFactor>0.2</minIncChancePopulationIntentFactor>
<randomPointsFactorRange>0.5~1.5</randomPointsFactorRange>
<skipThreatBigIfRaidBeacon>true</skipThreatBigIfRaidBeacon>
<categoryWeights>
<Misc>3.5</Misc>
<ThreatBig>1.4</ThreatBig>
<OrbitalVisitor>1.1</OrbitalVisitor>
<FactionArrival>2.4</FactionArrival>
<ThreatSmall>0.6</ThreatSmall>
<ShipChunkDrop>0.22</ShipChunkDrop>
</categoryWeights>

All looks about the same to me. He is very simple, just some pure RNG in there, which in my experience has always made him quite slow and boring.

[MagnusGrey]

I tend to get the opposite, where several super buffed raids come back to back and overwhelm my colony. Randy is a fickle for sure.

[gachi is manly]

My most recent run on losing is fun with Randy was indeed mostly raids with no "weather events" like volcanic winter or toxic fallout for the entire run. Couple of heat waves but that's about it.

So while it could be that something has changed and he's favouring raids over other events, it's equally possible it's just randy being random. I'll reserve my judgement until I do a few more colonies on this patch.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by gachi is manly:

My most recent run on losing is fun with Randy was indeed mostly raids with no "weather events" like volcanic winter or toxic fallout for the entire run. Couple of heat waves but that's about it.

None of the storytellers have any control over those. Those are all considered "misc" events, and each storyteller has the ability to tell the game to trigger a misc event but the actual event that is picked is determined by an underlying set of weights within the misc category.

So Randy will say "OK! Misc event go!" and the game will roll the dice. Volcanic Winter has a 0.08 weight, while resource pods have 1.0 weight. There is no other real logic or control behind it (other than some safety restrictions to prevent so events from happening back to back or too early). So it's not unusual to not get a Volcanic Winter for a long time.

[RequiemsRose]

I genuinely couldn't say either way. With randy I always get one or the other. Either the guy can't be bothered to tell the story, or he's micromanaging it and sending everything at me constantly with almost no in-between. Means he's either incredibly boring, or ridiculously cruel with me and neither is more "his style" than the other in my book. I actually like when he's attentive. Sure it's lots of bad events like raids or mass animal insanity (he really likes crazy animals in my games) but he also sends a surprising amount of good events my way to. Sure my entire colony might get horribly mauled by feral man-hunting guinea pigs, but they also get a lovely new recruit who rather enjoys dark clothing.

I've been leaning towards Cassandra lately, but Phoebe was my initial favorite. Phoebe likes to relax a lot but I kind of got sick of her giving me like 2 months to prepare yet constantly picking the events I have no hope of surviving despite my preparations like toxic fallout. At that point I might as well move or restart the entire colony and neither seemed fun anymore. Cassandra has actually been really fair lately though. Nothing incredibly horrible, and nothing incredibly overwhelmingly positive either. I'll probably get bored of her and go back to the insanity of Randy or the blindsides of Phoebe eventually, but for now I'm actually enjoying a more structured and stable story.

[gachi is manly]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Originally posted by gachi is manly:

My most recent run on losing is fun with Randy was indeed mostly raids with no "weather events" like volcanic winter or toxic fallout for the entire run. Couple of heat waves but that's about it.

None of the storytellers have any control over those. Those are all considered "misc" events, and each storyteller has the ability to tell the game to trigger a misc event but the actual event that is picked is determined by an underlying set of weights within the misc category.

So Randy will say "OK! Misc event go!" and the game will roll the dice. Volcanic Winter has a 0.08 weight, while resource pods have 1.0 weight. There is no other real logic or control behind it (other than some safety restrictions to prevent so events from happening back to back or too early). So it's not unusual to not get a Volcanic Winter for a long time.

Yea, I figured as much.

Any time a game has that much RNG in possible events, you're bound to have runs where you just get a lot of the same thing.

[ZS Maeklos]

The raids were something I noticed and pointed out in one of the threads that popped up in the day or two after Ideology came out. Running a pure vanilla playthrough (since none of my major mods had been updated, I didn't use any mods at all), I was getting raid after raid after raid.

Previous to 1.3, it felt like Randy would send raids when it was either hilarious (for him) or most inconvenient (for me). That royal that's been squatting in your colony finally leaving? Time to send a raid of tribals armed with knives and clubs to overrun the shuttle's landing zone! That flash storm start a wild fire that your colonists are busy trying to keep away from your crops? Time to send a raid on the opposite side of your colony! Massive siege setting up where it's a bugger to try to reach it? Quick, send in another raid right behind so they fight!

Now, it's just nothing... nothing... nothing... Raid! Siege! Raid! Nothing... nothing... Raid! Raid! Siege! Nothing... Manhunting pack of rhinos! Nothing... nothing... nothing...

[Ann☆ﾟ.*･｡]

idk randy is like mixed bag to me. from doing absolutely nothing for one season to sending 6 raids in one season. its basically like that

i guess when you have everything stockpilled to prepare for worst and able to craft all essential needs then you felt he is kinda.. uh, not that challenging

[dot]

I get manhunt and more manhunts and for whatever reason, gotten already 3 sun blockers types events, all this in a darkness tunneler colony xD

[Kitsunin]

Definitely prefer modded storytellers. Those in the base game feel weird. Like:
Events on a predictable timeframe and never overlapping.
Nastier events on a longer timeframe.
Total randomness with equal chance of boring dry spells as anything else (actually I like it, if only it weren't for the dry spells)

Randy's just random. And when things are random, our brains try to make patterns and find a cause. So that's why it seems like it's changed from 1.3 -- it's the cause you're trying to assign.

[Tam]

Originally posted by Kitsunin:

Definitely prefer modded storytellers. Those in the base game feel weird. Like:
Events on a predictable timeframe and never overlapping.
Nastier events on a longer timeframe.
Total randomness with equal chance of boring dry spells as anything else (actually I like it, if only it weren't for the dry spells)

Randy's just random. And when things are random, our brains try to make patterns and find a cause. So that's why it seems like it's changed from 1.3 -- it's the cause you're trying to assign.

Which one storyteller do u prefer over vanilla ones ?

[Kitsunin]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2193869234
Unlike Randy some things happen on a schedule, rather than the frequent dead air he brings. But you still get the randomness and chaos that leads to fun stories. IMO the best vanilla experience.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=725952322&searchtext=storyteller
If you want a more specific experience these are the best I've played with. I enjoy Sereniz in particular because sometimes I get bored of raids being the primary threat.