Rim World

[Pob255]

I picked up a few games in the steam sale, however I've not played any yet, I've spent the last 3 days playing Rim World.
I saw this game a while back when it was kickstarted but I wasn't sure about the prison architect graphics (which was a deliberate thing) and it was just a bit too basic.

But the features and mechanics have been adding up and after watching 3 different youtube (Quill18, Blitzkriegsler and EnterElysium) plays of the latest build (alpha 8) I decided I've waited long enough.

it's $30 through the dev's web page http://rimworldgame.com/ so £20 near enough but at least that's all going to the dev at this stage and I've already played it for over 10 hours.

Not sure what it is about it that I find so addictive, yes the graphics are a bit ropey but they are clean, the AI is pretty good and now and again you have to micro manage them, eg forcing them to haul the corpse which is giving every one negative mood rather than the bit of cloth next to the corpse, or building that gun turret because we're about to be attacked rather than that chair I ordered before the attack.
The one AI thing that does give me a bit of issues is "prioritising yourself" it's really annoying when someone is starving but is insisting on feeding the sick patient who's slightly hungry first and there's currently no micro management to tell someone to eat.
And it is that simple yet complex game play that's got it's hooks in me atm. the combination of base building, resource management, job management and survival built on a speed controlled "real-time" environment.

Last night my 2nd colony had just thought off it's 2nd ship piece and with half my people in the med bay recovering I got attacked by squirrels, not an issue I thought . . . the people who where still upright got butchered by them and the base was over run
Squirrels might be the weakest enemy in the game but 30 of them at once can really mess you up.

Is any one else getting hooked by Rim World?

[Pob255]

So I take it people are far too busy playing elite . . .

[Deadbolt]

I've tried playing it a few times and I suck at it, I actually prefer to watch other people stream it (CohhCarnage is currently around year 4 of a 5 year challenge, Sacriel plays it occasionally).

Really got to give it more of a chance as it can be quite a bit of fun.

[Pob255]

Well I started with Phoebe Basebuilder on Casual (25%) difficulty and found it very easy, in a fairly neutral temperature zone.
Then I changed to Cassandra Classic on Rough (60%) difficulty, in an Boreal forest cold temperature mountain biome that's when I got mauled by squirrels.Now I've started on Randy Random at Challenge (100%) on a hot temperature jungle zone.

My observations so far,

Don't bother with mortars, you can have a bit of fun with them, I built six to really work an enemy over, had a large group that waited before attacking I got off about 15 shots before they where on me (one of the mortars was emp) of which I got 2 hits killing 3 people, you really need them massed to be much use as the hit rate is too random.

Build up a kill box or kill triangle, but don't make the range too short, short is fine at the start but as you get people and better weapons you want the range at around 24 (basically the range of the charge rifle and LMG, wall you kill box at the back so they cannot stand outside and shoot in.
put people with high skill further back with sniper rifles (burst weapons can cause a lot of friendly fire)
Now you want that max range so when big groups come charging in you can shoot them more before they get into melee range. put a couple of turrets in front, not too close to your line or each other as they go bang, this is in part to soften the enemy up but more importantly to draw the AI fire away from your people.
This is also very useful as it'll draw melee units in who'll get exploded when the turret goes up.

Battling mech's can be tricky without a good kill box, the centipedes will always try to retreat to max range, their range will vary between 27-35 so they'll mainly be out range you except for the snipers, so if you don't have a back wall to your kill box they'll just pull back out of range and hammer you.

Dig into mountains to get around sieges, enemy mortars can really mess up your base as it's a big target, but any thing inside a mountain is immune from mortars, so if you build your whole base inside a mountain they've got nothing to shoot at and they'll only take a single pointless shot or two before giving up and charging you. (but they will target anyone outside with mortar fire first)

You can release prisoners to get a good rep bonus from factions if you want to make peace, but beware that once no faction is your enemy then you'll only be raided be mechs but you'll be have the same frequency of raids.

You can re-hostile a faction by attacking their passing travellers .