1) Fog OF War doesn't feel good.

One of the perks of being a Human is exceptional long range vision. As long as line of sight isn't obstructed, we can literally see miles. Being restricted to seeing a mere ~30 meters doesn't feel good unless weather or a cataclysmic apocalypse is involved.

I can understand why sight ranges are low. I'm sure there are performance concerns, and you want to encourage using cameras and animals for recon. It's honestly astounding you were able to get the performance working so well as is. This is the first Fog Of War I've seen with no noticeable visual or FPS jank.

The best fix I can think of would be to implement the Fog Of War both ways. If my pawns can't see 30 tiles, then mechanoid turrets and enemy snipers shouldn't either. If the enemy can magically detect where the nearest bedroom is, I should at least be able to detect roughly where the raid group is.

There would also need to be more vision tools. Disposable drones for scouting, smoke grenades that block or impair vision, spy satellites (as per the Supreme Commander "Novax" satellite), etc. (Personally, in vanilla rimworld I RP that the player is a spy satellite.)

PS Zombieland would be PERFECT for playing with Fog Of War.

2) Kiting is a little excessive.

Take this one as a complement. That mechanoids can split up my forces, consistently abuse their range advantage, and play to win is absolutely terrifying.

That said, after I've already won it can make things a little ridiculous. Chasing mechs all the way to the map edge since they can outrun me is a very obnoxious chore. Luring mechs in closer then ambushing them is very time consuming, and not in an interesting way.

My recommendation is that mechs should either be able to flee if they lose badly enough like human raids, flee if they are chased to the map edge, or turn suicidally brave once it's clear escape is not a reasonable option. They are bots, after all - they don't need to be as smart as humans.

I've sometimes managed to cheese raids by tricking them into kiting, splitting them up as they retreat, then using psycasts or other tools to close the distance and perform "defeat in detail."

I'm finding that I need walls not to keep the enemies OUT (they are quite good at breaking in anyway), but to make it harder for enemies to kite and flee!


TLDR, way better than vanilla, but still has a few abusable quirks.

3) Barricading (Blocking doors with walls) still works.

I personally hope you don't fix this, but if you do I'll understand. If you build a wall behind a door, raiders will quickly lose interest in that door - and anything on the other side. I've spent in game days surrounded by centipedes, safe in sound behind doors barricaded by wooden walls.

Mechs seem to mostly want to smash furniture, so unless they run out of distractions they are perfectly harmless. (Or unless a breacher shows up). They like smashing doors, but don't seem to like smashing walls as long as juicier targets are available.

I have less experience with insects, as I prefer to fight them in the open with Vertigo Pulse, but I suspect that once aggroed they share a reluctance to attack walls. I'm not sure how raiders react, but I'm sure wall building still buys quite a bit of time.


Not sure what can be done about this without breaking the game a bit. Walls in rimworld are absurdly flimsy. The only thing keeping walls safe in Vanilla is Artificial Stupidity. Once you start making raids smart enough, walls become almost meaningless.

That's about it for now. I do want to make a last shoutout after all that complaining: Thank you! This is an amazing performance mod. Not because it can simulate 100 raiders with minimal FPS impact, but because it only needs 25 of those raiders to be a serious threat!

EDIT: I'm currently on 100% threat scaling, 58k wealth (108k was too dangerous), Randy, year 8, still working on geothermal tech (Research Reinvented + 25% research speed from Ideology).

Originally posted by RedPine:

1) Fog OF War doesn't feel good.

One of the perks of being a Human is exceptional long range vision. As long as line of sight isn't obstructed, we can literally see miles. Being restricted to seeing a mere ~30 meters doesn't feel good unless weather or a cataclysmic apocalypse is involved.

I can understand why sight ranges are low. I'm sure there are performance concerns, and you want to encourage using cameras and animals for recon. It's honestly astounding you were able to get the performance working so well as is. This is the first Fog Of War I've seen with no noticeable visual or FPS jank.

The best fix I can think of would be to implement the Fog Of War both ways. If my pawns can't see 30 tiles, then mechanoid turrets and enemy snipers shouldn't either. If the enemy can magically detect where the nearest bedroom is, I should at least be able to detect roughly where the raid group is.

There would also need to be more vision tools. Disposable drones for scouting, smoke grenades that block or impair vision, spy satellites (as per the Supreme Commander "Novax" satellite), etc. (Personally, in vanilla rimworld I RP that the player is a spy satellite.)

PS Zombieland would be PERFECT for playing with Fog Of War.

If you want a better experience, use Better Sliders - it allows you to go beyond the limit of the mod. I'm currently playing with Fog of War radius set to 5 (the maximum the mod slider allows is 2) and fade radius multiplier set to 0.5. This allows a pawn to see most of the map provided there's no obstructions, but it makes it so that said obstructions matter, and you'll need either the security cameras or a pawn standing watch if you want visibility outside your walls, for instance.

I've had a similar experience. I do use "Walls are Solid," but my threat points are 300%. So, in effect, most raids are really cool Total War Warhammer-style affairs. Btw, the only other game I've ever seen with the type of grouping and tasking CAI provides is the Total War series and they've always been proud of how good their combat AI is, really impressive stuff from the Rocketman team here.

As for kiting, you might tweak your settings. There's a sprinting option that makes enemies a little too effective at kiting. My mechanoid strategy is usually to hit them with mod-added psycasts and use a lot of high armor penetration fast melee pawns, so chasing them down (with the sprint option turned off) hasn't been a very time-consuming affair.

Blocking doors with walls seems like a base game "bug" the CAI team will have to work around. Walls are too fast for good builders to build and base game raider objectives are really stupid. Personally, I was so used to house ruling "no killboxes" (which CAI helps me enforce on myself) that I have no problem just not building a wall behind a door. That said, I think the team will improve this.

Generally, my raids aren't existential threats to my colony (unless they drop pod or I have 2 major threats at the same time) but they do require me to think strategically, organize a dynamic defense, and spend most of my attention on defeating the raid. Compare this to vanilla raids where you build a killbox, set defensive positions, and check when you stop hearing gunfire, it's a HUGE improvement.

Oof, fog of war doesn't apply to enemies? Does that mean raiders can target your pawns in the dark when you can't target them?

does fog of war apply to enemies?

Originally posted by Knight 'Pink from the Outset':

Oof, fog of war doesn't apply to enemies? Does that mean raiders can target your pawns in the dark when you can't target them?

Yes, I had a time where I got raided at night but, I had silent raids on so I did not know until they attacked and when my melees went to attack some guys throwing bombs at my walls they got they got their heads shot off like a pie. I did try to fight back but, they had better range then me so they could see me and I could not see them as they steam rolled all of my guys.

The only reason I even killed one of them is because I heard one of them doing something and made a mad dash to kill them out of revenge cause I was just dead at that point.