Let's talk about Revision 31

Liking this. My game was fun. Really pleased I bought into earliest access. However, my current save has several bugs -

1. On loading, Work Crew preferences lost
2. On loading, Fog of War reveal lost
3. Invariable crashes within a few minutes of loading

Gameplay wise I think if you build away from the shore and do not harvest caviar you should not be subject to huge fish person attacks. I am not sure what the claw bulb things do. The cultist plant them, then harvest them and ... nothing else happens.

 

Reasonably sure the Clawbulb is just there to put the screws to your harvest. Not only does it replace what was a growing cabbage, but it unsettles your farmers when removing it.

 

Also what are the little black spiky balls that turn up on the ground? Anyone else noticed these?
Going to try and harvest a shed load of stone now and see if I can coax them into building altar.

 

I believe they're some sort of fishpeople weapon and so arent interactable yet.

 

Those are sea urchins. They're the Fishperson equivalent of short daggers.

 

IIRC they're actually called Urchin Grenades. AI_damage.go does have code for grenade effects; I should check if there's an FSM for throwing things...

 

Hm, maybe I just assumed they were for stabbing with because, at present, they never get thrown.

 

So I just now finished a game that was going really well. All of the sudden, all at once, a bunch of people start dying. It appears that 4-5 people suddenly lost their minds and started a massacre, starting with their bosses (I won't blame them). By the time I stop them all, I have no more overseers. Everybody is standing around doing nothing. I get offered immigrants. I choose an overseer. But one overseer can't run my once-promising colony, so I quit the game because that colony is doomed (as far as I know).

I have a couple questions. Was that really the end of my colony? Did I have any other options? Is there a way to turn people into overseers, or will there be in the future? Did those shrines make people turn to murder? What can be done to prevent it short of killing them first? I can't destroy those shrines. Maybe that would just make them mad though..

I'd like some advice!

 

Shrines are not the cause of Murder, but another manifestation of cultist power. If you see Shrines, it means Cultists have been allowed to recruit members and meet secretly too often - when cultists are allowed to gossip with one another, the chance of both the construction of shrines and a rash of murders goes up.

You can Frontier Justice Cultists, if you are able to identify them, but that will upset anyone who sees or participates in the executions. The resulting corpses will further upset your Colonists. Thus, Frontier Justice is a solution of last resort.

Prevention is the best solution; Colonists are less likely to join cults if they are aren't upset. Things that upset Colonists (with some variation, depending on their Traits) include: killing someone, being attacked, seeing a corpse, being hungry, sleeping on the ground, Cult gossip, murder gossip, evidence of Cult power, and many other common sense things.

Specific things you can do to discourage Cult activity; provide beds (the higher quality the better), make sure food is readily available, keep your Colonists busy to prevent the rapid spread of harmful gossip, build a graveyard so corpses don't upset your Colonists, and try to keep fighting away from the main body of your town.

 

So the murder cult is all about murder. Is there a point to the murder? As if if they kill X number of people that number then summons something? Should I build a bookshelf to encourage the summoning?

I really enjoyed seeing the altars but now it seems I am going back to being a good Cog.

 

tried Frontier Justice for the first time on a cultist out for murder, and five minutes later half my town is going on an axemurder spree while the rest runs fleeing with lingonberries.

 

[r31a]

Now that cult behaviour is working as intended, I've given [r31a] a pretty thorough shakedown run.

Things I've noticed:

-animal behaviour is changed, as per the last patch notes, so that they'll avoid settlements and colonists

-the practical ramification is that there is no food at all to be gained from enabling hunting; even rallying my hunting soldiers on top of an aurochs will not make them kill it for meat - the aurochs flees, and my soldiers will not attack while the rally beacon is active

-client stability is quite good now: my most recent session lasted 19 in-game days, and it only ended when I decided to quit (i.e. no crashes, hangs, or script errors)

-maintaining a stable population is much more difficult now - in previous revisions, I could have expected a population of around 50 Colonists in three weeks. Now, I'm struggling to keep 19 alive

-by far the greatest source of Colonist deaths has been axe murder

-as a result of the smaller average population, Fishmen invasions rarely occur in waves larger than 3 or 4, now; they are nearly inconsequential compared to starvation or murder

-with rampant deaths, I was experiencing an Overseer related organisational problem: Many of my Overseers were either killed by axe murderers, or shot by me, for being axe murderers. I was able to reorganize work crews, but this resulted in a very small number of Crews (3 non-military Crews) able to take on jobs

-axe murder caused Colonists to become upset, executions also upset Colonists, as did the presence of corpses caused by both of the previous; murder begets more cult behaviour and more murder

-before my latest bout of murder, I had created 4 plots for farming; if I diverted Colonists away from farming, crops would wither. If I let them farm as necessary, no other production, including cooking, could proceed

-because nothing was being cooked, food was being eaten raw, which meant Colonists could not be diverted from farming, which meant nobody could cook anything. This seems to be an irrecoverable starvation spiral caused by too many farms and not enough Overseers

-Cult mechanics encouraged close observation of gossip, particularly when Colonists would clump up together in the middle of town

-some reactions to gossip are unambiguously Cult-ish, e.g. "Enjoyed talking about the necessity of murder", some are confusing, i.e. "Enjoyed talking about the growing threat of Cultists" vs. "Was upset by a conversation about the growing
threat of Cultists"

-generally speaking, the pace of the game is slower and more intricate, construction takes longer, and progression is more difficult

-the entire Colony enters crisis mode when a wave of axe murderers are running around - I imagine this may be a balance issue to consider later (since the basic mechanics have only just been implemented), but maybe some amount of Colony business can continue under those circumstances?

-as it stands the current thrust of the game is now 'survive successive waves of axe murder' and 'stamp out the merest hints of Cult behaviour' rather than 'grow your colony'

 

Overall, the additional complexity is great, most of my post was just observations. I don't imagine balance is too much of a concern at present.

 

I concur, it's nice that it's not too easy now. It's possible the needle swung too far in the other direction, but some of that may also be my complacency with old build orders and bugs like that corpse-fleeing issue that was fixed elsewhere.

I want to try getting booze running a bit earlier now, and see if one can't feasibly have a decent operation going before half my town is trying to murder the other half. However I will say at the moment it seems like the window will be pretty tight.

Curious: Is the frontier justice option considered to be more of a "I let things get out of hand" tool of last resort, or is it more of a "You'll need this to keep things settled, bar none' device?

 

I've really been enjoying trying to deduce exactly which of my Colonists is a murderer by watching their memories, and then following them around on their daily routines. That's a great bit of emergent gameplay.

 

This all sounds great. I can't wait until I have a few hours to try out the new rev.

 

Just played 31b, pretty nice with no animal overrunning the town center! I don't know if I did something special, but cult activity was pretty low. I had no clawbulb, and had only two or three cultists alert by day 15. Was playing temperate so maybe people are happy to live there?

Also noticed that it was more difficult to kill fishpeople. They seemed to have between 50-100% more hitpoints (or weapons are less effective). Am I imagining things? On the other hand they seemed dumber, like sometimes standing there confused and getting shot at, and raiders enjoying a walk on the beach instead of raiding the town.

Anyways, it's nice to see the game growing!

 

They're definitely taking more hits, but I don't think they're any dumber. They just used to die before you'd see them standing around.