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Post by LegendaryApe on May 23, 2024 21:52:43 GMT
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Post by LegendaryApe on May 23, 2024 21:57:08 GMT
Wow, a normal new page post
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Post by skalpadda on May 24, 2024 6:06:46 GMT
Sidebar: Base update and defences.
Just as last time, no narrative. Feel free to skip it if you want. I have the screens for another update ready, but I wanted to get this out first.
The base hasn't expanded much, I've mostly been tinkering and fixing earlier design mistakes. I didn't plan it out at all at the start, I think it's more fun to build as needed and see what you get, but it does mean you have to fix things later. I've been making more bedrooms, there's a little "church" above our workshop for ideoligion purposes, and I built a throneroom for Troi at the very top there. I want to put in a lab for more advanced tech stuff, but that will have to be a winter project.
(I had to censor some stuff in this screenshot because it belongs to the next update.)
A rundown of the new defences since it might not be obvious how it works:
This is a very small and very simple "killbox". When an attack happens you (almost) always want to leave a path into your base and to your pawns, or the attackers will spread out and start hammering down random doors. The basic idea is that our pawns should have the best cover possible and the enemies should have as little as possible.
Our shooters will stand on the far left and there are granite wall segments with barricades between them. Walls give the best cover, and barricades are pretty good too. One shooter behind each wall good cover, and they can lean out to fire. There's a smaller line of barricades in front for melee pawns. I've floored that area so it can't catch fire. The three grey things on the floor are captured firefoam poppers, if our pawns catch on fire they should trigger and put them out. There's also a light I can turn on, not for combat purposes, but because pawns don't like being in the dark. Mood can be an issue in long fights. I'm also roofing that bit to stop them getting soaked if it rains.
Enemies of course come in from the right. The snaking tunnel with sandbags on every other tile is there to slow them down and spread them out a little. At the end there's a "funnel", and the line of sandbags is there because creatures can't (usually) stop on them, so they'll be forced inside and can't take cover behind the wall. The main killing field isn't floored because I don't care if it burns and the unfloored ground makes enemies move a little slower (not much, but every bit helps). Once I have the research and materials I might make a few IEDs I can plonk down in the middle for tougher raids.
Plenty of raids and events will just ignore defences like this, but it's going to help against the huge waves of raiders and animals that will start coming in.
Some people build *much* more elaborate stuff with turrets and traps all over. I might have to expand this eventually, but can't afford maintaining traps and I don't like turrets (they're weak, don't do much damage, and have to be rebuilt/reloaded all the time).
It's designed for heavy SMG range. Troi here has just enough range to start shooting as enemies get inside. Heavy SMGs are good default weapons for pawns that aren't combat specialists - decent damage and not too expensive to make - so they're a good baseline to design around.
Yar's hellcat rifle has slightly longer range and assault rifles reach significantly further, but we only have one of those.
Sniper rifle range is ludicrous by comparison, but those aren't any good for massed enemies because they're just too slow.
I also installed another mod called RimFridge. I set a couple of small freezers around the kitchen. The cook will have ingredients close at hand and there's one for meals by the rec/dining room. It will stop pawns having to run in and out of the main freezer room all the time. Every time you open the doors some heat leaks in, and it's just annoying to see them run back and forth. They take power, so I think it's pretty balanced, and it just makes sense to have them by mid game on a tech level.
Oh yeah, I bought a tube TV and built some armchairs in front of it (bottom left). It's just another source of recreation. Pawns get sick of doing the same thing over and over, so the more different things you have the better.
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Post by Nanocrystal on May 24, 2024 8:48:27 GMT
Thought this thread was about eating ass. Imagine my disappointment when I finally worked up the courage to open it.
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Post by magicpanda on May 24, 2024 9:13:04 GMT
Thought this thread was about eating ass. Imagine my disappointment when I finally worked up the courage to open it. The forbidden mod (rimjobworld) will more than likely cover that. Don't google it, you've been warned. |
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Post by skalpadda on May 25, 2024 23:18:21 GMT
Chapter 8: I'm sorry we killed your husband.
13th of Aprimay - 6th of Jugust 5502
I randomly notice Yar has the moodlet debuff "Rebuffed by Scotty". I know he's a hot immortal vampire now, but you're 20 and he's still 97. I'm glad he turned you down. Our neighbours have a quest for us: We bring them 14 pairs of pants and they'll give us a neuroformer. These can be used to advance a pawn's psylink levels without having to go through the Empire (or use the anima tree, which is more for tribals). It's a good idea to do the Empire stuff for a few levels and then get the rest with neuroformers. That way the psykers don't get so posh they stop doing all useful work. They're extremely rare though, so of course we're going to take it in exchange for some trousers. I also take the opportunity to sell off some animals. The labradors have been breeding like crazy and the muffalo are starting to multiply as well. It's no wonder we've been going through an insane amount of kibble lately.
Here's something new again. Breacher and sapper raids don't care about your defences, they just pick a wall and go straight through it. Luckily they're usually smaller than "normal" raids.
So we have to go out and meet them. Mechs have a "termite", with a cannon that does something like 100x damage to walls. If you can kill the breacher the rest of the raid will default to normal raider behaviour, so you can try to snipe them and then retreat. Termites are too sturdy to take down fast though. If you have an insanity lance you can zap the breechers and have their own mates take them down, which is always funny.
This is a small raid, so we'll just fight them in the field.
They go down fairly easily but Neelix loses a thumb. I think the only ones not missing fingers and/or toes now are Yar and Troi. We're going to need a lot of prosthetics. I let Neelix make another sculpure. This one is also lame, about Kirk reading a book. She has the technical skill, but her choice of subject matter is awful. You're off art, Neelix. Yar may be an amateur, but she makes art about cool thrumbo battles.
We finished geothermal power and didn't even have to research it the normal way. It's all from a book we found that the pawns have been reading for recreation. It gives 3600W of rock-solid power. We have a huge excess when it's windy now, but we're going to start building very power hungry stuff soon. Some kids turn up and want me to give them 39 industrial medicine. If it was herbal medicine I'd be happy to oblige, but I only have about 50 of the good stuff. It has to be some kind of scam. The game helpfully lets me know I can murder them and steal their organs. Jesus effing balls of christ, game. Here's another type of quest: A shuttle crashes and we have to go out and defend it from a raid. I quite like these. I'm tempted by the flatscreen TV, but I'm taking the honour and giving it to Scotty this time. As a vampire he has genetic psychic sensitivity (he gets more brainjuice for psycasting), so a rank or two with the Empire should suit him.
I tried to set up a little defensive line with stone chunks, but didn't have time. The raid is just some poorly armed pigskins though, and we wipe the floor with them. After the raid I notice Yar is close to having a mental break.
Your husband? Kirk had a son and now Yar was married, apparently. There's something these Starfleet officers aren't telling me. Who the hell is Squpugag?
Oh, there he is, on our corpse pile. Yup, we sure killed him. We'll give him a proper sendoff, by which I mean I send Chekov out to blow his corpse up with grenades.
I'm dosing Yar with psychite tea because drugs are always the answer, and I'm keeping her inside doing art so she can work through her feelings. The ever so helpful tooltips let me know that Yar can't have kids with Squpugag, because he's dead.
Also, this means Yar was still married when she tried to get it on with Scotty.
The French arrive. French arrives and asks us for help. I wouldn't normally take in random refugees, but they have a kid with them, so I'm going to let them stay. It's just 13 days. Soyez bienvenus, mes amis.
The kid's name is Pansy, she's 5 and not good at anything. I don't know how I feel about adding children to the game. Rimworld is a horrible place where horrible things happen, and I'm not comfortable with them happening to kids. I'm going to make sure Pansy has a good stay for these 13 days and makes it out of here alive.
French and Schroeder don't have good skills, but at least they'll haul and clean and that frees up my pawns for other stuff. Their gear is hilariously bad. I'm not going to waste precious time and materials on temporary pawns, but I at least give them some clothes that aren't falling apart.
I've been making a royal bed and a bigger bedroom to keep Troi happy, but she's away on a caravan at the moment, so Pansy immediately claims it instead of her own little bedroom I made. That's okay kid, you can sleep there for now.
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Post by skalpadda on May 26, 2024 3:11:02 GMT
Chapter 9: The kid and the creepy one.
Double update, because I played too far ahead again. This one is pretty short though.
I like having Pansy around. She spends most of her time in our rec room reading books, chatting to people, and drawing on the floor. The other colonists are getting a positive moodlet form having a happy kid around too.
Some lady wanders in. Her name is "Skulk".
This sounds like a terrible idea, but I'm curious and will let her stay... for now. I think this is from the Anomaly DLC, so it will probably lead to something horrible happening.
She has 17 in intellectual and we're way behind on research, so she'll spend all her time doing that. She can also transmute steel into... something.
The first transmutation turns some steel slag into gold. Not something we need, but I suppose it's somewhat useful.
The second creates some twisted meat. Okay, maybe we won't let her do that.
Tasha's next piece of art depicts our battle against the mechanoid termite.
Just as a caravan is returning home, a sapper raid arrives. These are breacher types, so we have to go out and face them.
I split the pawns into three teams. Kirk Troi and Yar, who were leading the caravan back home, will hold the south-west since they were already there. Chekov, Scotty and Worf take the north-west. Everyone else goes to the north-east. Except Laren and Beverly, who I apparently... forgot? I have no idea.
In the north-east the enemies are split up so I move forward to take them out fast. Pansy is leading the charge. Wait, Pansy is leading the charge?
Nonononono, I appreciate the enthusiasm and the bloodlust, but I'm not sending 5-year olds into battle. You're going back inside.
They do fine anyway. French gets a bit singed (these are the fire-breathing tribals), but who cares?
In the south-west it's basically the dream team; Yar and Kirk have long range weapons while Troi can slow down enemies before they get close. They just pick them off one by one.
Team north-west gets their raid to break before I can send reinforcements, though Scotty really doesn't like it when people breathe fire on him.
The next day...
Pansy wants to join us. I didn't even think of this as a possibility. Of course you can join, Pansy! I have no idea how to take care of kids, but I'm sure we'll learn together.
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Post by Destria on May 26, 2024 15:15:12 GMT
Awesome! Great reads, as ever.
So was Squpugag some random raider or something? How'd Yar end up getting married?
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Post by skalpadda on May 26, 2024 20:11:34 GMT
The game sets up relationships when generating the world - family, friends, rivals - for both your pawns and pawns of other factions. You can't see them until they're on the same map (unless you use dev mode or mods), so it's always a surprise when someone's daughter or dad turns up. And yeah, close family can be part of enemy factions as well.
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Post by skalpadda on May 28, 2024 20:09:43 GMT
Chapter 9: An arm and a leg. 13th of Jugust - 15th of Decembrary 5502.
Pansy is part of the Perfect Army of Stello-Islamists. Ideoligions are somewhat randomly generated, like most things in the game. This one is remarkably compatible with ours (apart from her wanting slaves), but we're obviously converting her to The Worst Generation ASAP. I start noticing some new negative moodlets.
Of course it's Skulk being a creep.
She's even freaking out the kid. Skulk is churning through research for us, which is something we desperately need, but bumming everyone out can become a problem. If she makes Pansy depressed I'm taking her out back and putting a bullet in that big brain of hers.
A feral "wild man" wanders onto the map. You can "tame" these (and yeah, hunt them if you're so inclined). I don't want him and will just leave him alone; either he wanders off the map eventually or succumbs to the elements or the local wildlife.
Three migrating thrumbos are passing by. We definitely want to hunt these and they only stay for a day or two, so we're doing it immediately. Worf is teaching Pansy a class in how to swear and I don't want to interrupt them, but I don't want either of them wandering outside either. I just lock the classroom door.
We have a lot more people and firepower than last time, but there's still no chance I'm taking on multiple thrumbos head-on. Luckily they're not immune to psychic shock lances and we have a couple of those. One has wandered off a bit, so I start with the closest two, set up a firing line, shock one and aggro the other. I'm putting our visitor French up front as a meat shield just in case. He'd probably get stomped to paste in seconds, but he's the most expendable.
Everyone is concentrating fire and Troi is spamming Burden to keep it slowed, but it still almost makes it all the way to us. These things are insane. Even with every bodypart and organ riddled with bullets it's still just downed, not dead.
As all the pawns are extremely busy outside, the game of course decides to be a dick and throw in an electrical malfunction, starting a fire in the kitchen. The kitchen, rec room and storeroom are the only places with wooden walls, so thats very bad. I could send Worf, but he's still teaching Pansy curse words and I refuse to deprive her of crucial education. I send Neelix alone to try to put it out while the rest deal with the final thrumbo.
Yeah, Neelix isn't doing too well. As soon as the hunting is done I set three people to haul the thrumbos back and the rest on immediate firefighting duty. They just about make it in time and the fire only took out the stove, a wall light, and some crops.
Thirteen days have passed and French and Schroeder bid us farewell. I wish them luck and you never know, we might see them again some day.
Well here's a hell of a quest: We can sell the entire colony to another faction and start over somewhere else with just five of our people. That's pretty crazy. I don't think I've seen this before, but it's clearly leading to one of the end game scenarios. There are a couple of ways you can finish the game and I haven't decided on one yet. This seems like it would take forever though, if you have to build a colony with $350.000 wealth three times, so it's probably not on the cards. I've *finally* planted that tree seed we found 1½ years ago. I just completely forgot about it. The harbinger tree eats corpses, so I put a stockpile for dead people around it. I'm sure feeding it won't have any consequences. Scotty is getting his first rank with the Empire, and his first level psycast. He gets Word of Trust, which is crap. It helps you recruit prisoners, but Troi and Worf are so good at social that it's not something we need. And Troi is bestowed the title of Dame. This is as far as I'm taking her, at least for now, because going further would make her refuse to do farming work, and I need her for that. Her random level 3 psycast makes groups of people projectile vomit. Awesome! Here's the other perk of royal titles: Permits that let you call in various favours. These have extremely long cooldowns (several seasons to a full year) but can be very useful in a pinch. I'm picking the transport shuttle and aerodrone strike. The shuttle can save caravans in trouble, or get them home fast if you absolutely need them back. The aerodrone strike isn't amazing, it drops a single bomb comparable to a rocket launcher in power, but every bit helps. It seems French and Schroeder made it after all. A recon helmet is pretty nice but the tornado generator is a bit pants. It's one of the "super weapons" in the game, but by far the worst one. Spawning a tornado is cool and all, but while it might go devastate your enemies it could also randomly turn around and chase your own pawns, or destroy your whole base.
Oh no you fucking don't, fox. I'm feeling ridiculously protective of Pansy and I'm genuinely emotionally invested in her wellbeing. I set up a pretty generous zone around the base for her to roam outside whenever she wants, but I'm checking the map every day and immediately taking out any larger predators that wander in. I'm still worried a mech cluster will drop on her head or something.
Remember the fleshbeast summoner Jimmy from the first year? His friends have come for revenge and there are more of them this time. A lot more. Like last time there's a summoner doing a ritual, so we have to go out and stop them. We're outnumbered and Troi and Yar are out trading, so we're missing the best psyker and our best shot, but Jimmy and his henchment went down pretty easy last time.
I make a firing line and have Worf and Scotty take point. There's one cultist I want to capture, so I send Chekov round the side to zap her.
They're a lot tougher this time, and these aren't like normal raiders that break and flee once you've killed or downed enough of them. They're fighting to the death and they're not breaking. Seven of them rush our melee bulwark, they crush Worf's left arm and hack off her leg. She's still - somehow - trying to fight on. It's an incredible display of badassery, but with manipulation reduced to 10% she can't even swing her thrumbo horn and it doesn't take long until she passes out from blood loss.
Scotty goes down shortly after, but holds the line long enough for the ranged team to eliminate their brawlers. I'm not worried about Scotty, as a sanguophage he'll at least live, but Worf is about a minute from bleeding out. I rush doctor Beverly to try to save her while the rest move forward to take on the remaining cultists.
They're using weapons I haven't seen before, that stun whomever they hit. We're bringing them down one by one though.
And then they start coming back to life. Fuck.
The ritual is almost complete. We have no choice but to rush forward to engage the summoner.
Beverly just about managed to get to Worf in time. Somehow she's concious and back on her feet. Well, foot. I have no idea how her bloodloss only got to "minor" with 720% bleeding and two hours (80 seconds) left to live. Maybe pigskins have extra blood in them.
They keep coming back, but we eventually grind them down and limp back to base.
Everyone but Kirk and Beverly are beat up. The only one we had to carry back was Scotty; Worf hopped all the way to med bay on her one remaining leg.
Then, while Beverly is patching people up, I hear combat sounds and a dog whine.
I killed all of them but here this fucker is. Alive, inside our base, and he's punching Labrador Retriever 4.
(Yeah I may have forgotten to name the animals for three years)
I send Chekov and Beverly out to shoot him in the head. Then I make Chekov remove his skull, just to make sure. I'll have Scotty craft a skullspike out of it later, so we can look at it every day and remember what a prick he was.
I actually had no idea how he was alive or how he got into the base at the time. Looking at the screenshots now, he was one of the crossbow cultists in the back and he was the only one to get downed instead of dying. I must have missed him lying there as I rushed everyone back to med bay. Then he probably bled out and used his self resurrection to get back up. I'd held the door to the base open for everyone to get in quicker, so he could just walk inside.
Scotty, waking up and apparently deciding he don't need no doctoring, goes to the throne room and plays the harp.
Worf is stable. I can fix the arm and leg eventually, either by buying bionics or rushing Skulk to research it and make them myself. I could give her a peg leg, but for now I'll just let her rest. Pansy is busy cleaning up all the blood in the hallway.
I've been giving all the corpses from raids to the harbinger tree, but these bastards are going in the fridge. I will butcher you all and let Chekov feast on your flesh. What's left I'll sell to the cannibal tribe, and we'll make corsets out of your skin.
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Post by skalpadda on May 29, 2024 1:06:37 GMT
Not really a "sidebar" like the other ones, I just want to jot down some thoughts about the last update without bloating the post itself. As usual no story here, just me rambling, so skip it if you want.
That last fight woke me up to how complacent and overconfident I've been. I don't know if it came across how close it was, but if Worf and Scotty had gone down just a little sooner their melee fighters would have rushed our ranged pawns. They would probably have gone down too, since they can't shoot with enemies stabbing them in the face. Worst of all, I don't know if I could have saved Pansy.
Troi and Yar would have returned to find a dead colony, and while it wouldn't be a definite game over it would have been awful and hard to recover from.
I have about 600 hours played in Rimworld and I've never made it this far without losing anyone. I'm expecting people to get killed, sometimes for dumb reasons, but this was a potential colony wipe. I'm okay with losing the game too, but if that's the way it ends I'd prefer if my pawns went down in a blaze of glory rather than perish due to my poor planning and tactics.
I'm intentionally keeping the colony small. I'll stop recruiting at 15 and do my best to avoid going past 20. What we lack in numbers we'll have to make up for in firepower. We don't have nearly enough of that, so I'll be churning out all the weapons I can to get better quality stuff. Their shooting skill needs work too. It will be slow, I haven't been recruiting pawns for their combat skills, but I can at least try to raise them from utter crap to mediocre. Anyone we recruit from now on has to be able to fight, or at least have the passions to quickly learn.
Better psycasting is also a priority, and I have to stop being stingy with utility items and consumable weapons. I'm a terrible hoarder in games, the sort that always ends up with absurd stacks of consumables, but that's a bad habit in a game like this. I can trade for more items. I can't buy a new Worf, or Troi, or any of the others.
Worf has been an absolute trooper - she's carried the rest of the team through most difficult fights by tanking hits with her face. She's not actually a very good fighter though, and she'll never be great due to lacking key traits. Scotty is a decent frontliner now due to his vampire powers, but they also make him useless whenever there's fire around (which is often). They need sharper sticks and better armour immediately, and I'll do my best to find them a solid brawler friend to hold the line and share the pain.
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Post by Destria on May 29, 2024 20:32:53 GMT
I hope you get as much pleasure from writing these as we do from reading them.
If you added up all the missing body parts across the various pawns, have you lost an entire person yet?
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f00b_inc
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Post by f00b_inc on May 29, 2024 20:41:07 GMT
Haha this has been on my wishlist forever but I didn't want to lose entire evenings/weekends so I'm glad I can read the adventures here - keep them coming skalpadda!
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Post by skalpadda on May 30, 2024 8:16:55 GMT
Destria Last time I did a count it was seven toes and five fingers, so still a ways away. I'm going to start slowly working on fixing those now that we're getting up in tech level, as well as scars and some other health problems. While not fatal they make the pawns worse at many things, including combat. f00b_inc I would recommend giving it a try to anyone who thinks it looks interesting. Maybe not with all the DLCs active at first though; all the new stuff is slightly intimidating even for me, and I've been putting off starting the main Biotech and Anomaly events. Yeah, it eats lots of time, so maybe save it for retirement or something, but it's a pretty unique gaming experience, with Dwarf Fortress being the only real comparison.
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Post by skalpadda on May 30, 2024 17:28:25 GMT
Chapter 10: Lovin' ![]() 7th of Aprimay 5503 - 7th of Jugust 5503. Nothing terribly dramatic happens in this one, but it's probably the most wholesome update so far.  We've had four frustratingly loveless years, but two of our pawns have finally hit it off. I obviously give them their own bedroom immediately. I'm relieved it was Laren and not Yar hooking up with Scotty. Laren is 60, that's still a 37 year age gap, but Yar has kept hitting on him and she's still just 21. I'm all for fancying whomever you fancy, but a 76 year age gap would be a bit icky even with Scotty having that sexy immortal vampire thing going on.
It's Pansy's seventh birthday and she gets her first "growth moment". It's not a good one.  I'll go over how this works since it's something I've had to figure out (scroll on to the next screenshot if you don't care). Between ages 3-13 kids have a unique need for learning, satisfied by various special activities like reading books, talking on the radio, taking classes, running around outside, etc. Satisfied learning increases a "growth" stat over time, which has 8 tiers.
At ages 7, 10 and 13 they have these growth moments where you can choose a trait and maybe give them passions for skills. Higher growth tiers give more passions to spend and more traits to pick from.
Raising a child from 3-13 with perfect growth would let you choose between 6 traits and hand out 3 minor passions at each growth moment. The traits are still random, but with luck you could get a total of 3 good traits, burning passions in 4 skills and a minor passion in a fifth. That would be a superpawn, far better than you would ever expect to find through regular recruitment.
I don't think I've done a bad job with Pansy, her learning meter has been at 90%+ pretty much all the time, but she was about 5½ years old when she joined us and started at 0 growth. She'd already "lost" 2½ out of 4 years and there simply hasn't been enough time to get her above tier 3. I don't get to give her any passions and the possible traits here are awful, so I don't pick any of them.
Sorry Pansy, I hope I can do better at 10 and 13. And you're not going to get lung rot, kid. Even if you do I promise I can fix it.
Oh yeah, kids age at 400% rate between 0-13, then gradually slow down to 100% at 17, when they're considered adults. A newborn would reach adulthood in just under 5 years (I think). Not realistic perhaps, but probably necessary as 17 years in game is a very long time. I also realised I could go into the custom storyteller settings and turn off child raiders and shamblers, so I did. I don't want to kill kids. With Troi getting the title Dame I can send her to trade with the Empire for the first time. They have the best chance of having ultratech items for sale and there are four imperial settlements within reasonable caravan range, which is fantastic. I didn't get anything amazing this time, but I nabbed this persona monosword. Monoswords and zeushammers are the highest tier melee weapons in the game, and they also come in these "persona" variants that are better still. Persona weapons bind to the first person to equip them and nobody else can use it. They have additional "traits" that give various effects (some good, some bad), and this one has "freewielder" which removes that bonding, so I'll be able to hand it down if I find upgrades. At "good" quality it's not amazing, but a massive upgrade over the thrumbo horn and spear Worf and Scotty have been using so far. Speaking of melee, I've captured two candidates for a third brawler to support Worf and Scotty. The first is Seara, a cultist I zapped back in chapter 9 and kept locked up ever since. He has a burning passion in melee and starts at a good level. Iron-willed is a good trait (unlikely to ever have mental breaks) and jogger increases movement speed.
But then I just captured Banastra Kangaroo here as well. Weaker fighting skill and only a minor passion in melee, but he has the tough trait. It's arguably the best one in the game for combat pawns, halving all damage taken. But it gets better: He's also a neanderthal. Neanderthals have two very good genes for frontline soldiers. Strong melee adds 50% to all melee damage dealt and robust reduces damage taken by 25%. The game isn't crazy enough to add tough and robust together for -75%; it adds them multiplicatively, first -50% and then -25% off what's left. It comes out at -62% in the end, but that's still bonkers. If I can eventually shove him in a suit of cataphract power armour he'll be a beast. Not invulnerable, but crazy strong. The reduced pain is a double-edged sword. He won't get downed as easily, but that makes pawns more likely to fight to the death.
There are some definite negatives to neanderthals though. Slow runner is bad, but can be mitigated in various ways. Slow study is much worse, reducing learning speed by 50%. It will take a long time to train up his skills. The one I'm really worried about is Agressive. He's twice as likely to start social fights and his mental breaks are almost guaranteed to be violent. I've had a pawn punch someone's head off before, and that was without an extra 50% damage. There's a very real risk he might accidentally kill someone, especially if I give him bionics.
I think the risk is worth it. I'm pretty sure I can manage his overall mood, and hopefully he won't get in too many social fights. I just release Seara. I was tempted to execute him, since he belongs to the cult that maimed Worf, but couldn't be bothered. Bye Seara! Don't come back, or I'll definitely be making some more human leather corsets. It seems love is in the air! They really like each other, and they're immediately getting it on with some quality lovin'. Oh. I completely forgot that's a thing now. I guess we're having a baby! I have no idea how pregnancy works and I'm very nervous about it. Also no idea how to take care of an infant. (and in the game). Yeah, they've sure been going at it.
I can apparently inspect the genes of the fetus. Yar is a baseliner human, so she can only pass on some inconsequential genes for hair and skin colour. Beverly on the other hand is an impid, so he has more meaningful ones. Well, this baby got the short stick in the genetic lottery. They could have had something cool like fire breath, but it's four negative genes and one "positive". I don't care about the weak skills, but weak immunity and slow wound healing aren't great. The heat tolerance would be nice if we were in a desert, but we're pretty far north. Heat is easy to deal with anyway.
I guess the upside is all those negatives seem to make metabolism more efficient, so they won't need to eat as much. I'd have preferred a fire breathing baby though.
I picked up this aesthetic shaper on our last trade run and I'm going to put it in Ro Laren. Thing is, she's really into her lover Scotty but he's not quite as enchanted. Pawns' opinion of their lovers tends to drop a bit over time and I haven't seen them do any lovin' (lovin' helps as it gives a boost to both opinion and mood). Increasing her beauty stat (giving +20 opinion with everyone) might save us from a breakup.
Yeah, I'm giving her plastic surgery to keep her elderly boyfriend happy. :/ The operation goes well, but the anesthetic didn't agree with her, so she's wandering around in a daze for a while, only stopping to vomit on the door to her workshop now and then. I'm sorry Laren. At least it seems to have had the desired effect. I don't think I've shown the whole view of our tile, so here it is. It's very boring. Grasslands just don't have much in the way of anything. The lack of trees is already and issue and there's not much to mine, so we can't get much stone, iron, etc. I didn't think my misclick putting us on the wrong tile would be a problem, but it's annoying me more and more.
We get another group of migrating thrumbos this summer, this time a whole five of them. I won't bother recounting the hunt in detail. It's much like last time, except I used an insanity lance to make three of them fight each other. The kitchen didn't catch fire this time, but the mad thrumbos started some fires of their own by killing a couple of boomrats.
5 thrumbos is a crazy amount of meat for the fridge and plenty of fur to make awesome dusters out of. A lone visitor from our allies wanders by one evening, and she's apparently Scotty's daugher. She's a misandrist and a teetotaler, and her only real passion is animals. Sounds like Scotty is a terrible dad. The wookies have arrived, and they brought artillery. I don't know why the game suggests you can "wait them out". It's a terrible idea to sit in your base while it's getting shelled into rubble.
Okay so they're not wookies but "yttakin", but you're not fooling me. They're definitely wookies with fancy tails stuck on. They're also packing some serious firepower. Several grenadiers, a couple of assault rifles and some are wearing recon and marine armour. The even bigger threat is that one of them has a doomsday rocket launcher and another has a triple. I'm absolutely not going to let those get a chance to fire at us. They set up to the south and start constructing barricades and two mortars. And oh dear, that wookie has a minigun. I set up just outside their firing range - at least they don't have snipers - and Chekov zaps the doomsday wookie with his last shock lance charge.
Kirk hits the one with the triple rocket launcher with an insanity lance, making her go berserk and attack her friends. They make short work of her for us. They're not turning to attack us, so Yar starts taking potshots with her sniper rifle. She manages to take out two more before they've finally had enough and charge us, but we've already thinned their rank enough that it doesn't take much to make them break and flee. This turned out fantastically: We took no damage, and we get to loot their stuff, including a marine helmet, components, and two mortars. We also got our hands on their doomsday. These aren't quite "I win"-buttons, but definitely a "Fuck you"-button when something really dangerous turns up.
Troi and Worf have been working their magic and Banastra Kangaroo is joining up. I name him Chakotay, and he immediately puts on a flak helmet and heads out to do some farming. I like you already, Chakotay.
I just realised Bevery has picked up a goddamn orbital bombardment targeter (we got it from a quest) and is just casually carrying it around on his utility belt. I'll have to remember to take that off him because that's an ultra rare superweapon I'm saving in case some colony-wiping threat turns up.
This is what happens to your fridge when you butcher five thrumbos. Over 1800 thrumbo meat. We can't eat all that, so I'll have to dump or sell it. Hell yes! Two new relationships, one marriage, and a baby on the way! Well the pregnancy thing is both scary and exciting, but this year has been amazing so far.
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Post by skalpadda on May 31, 2024 22:18:05 GMT
Chapter 11: The Next Generation.
I've given Worf bionics for both of her arms and both legs. It's very expensive but we've finished the research to make them ourselves now, and I feel she's worth it with all the beatings and stabbings she's had to endure.
As a pigskin Worf has the gene "trotter hands", reducing her base manipulation to 85%. Manipulation is important for almost everything and affects the speed pawns do most tasks as well as their accuracy with weapons, so that debuff is a pretty big drawback. I naturally thought bionic arms would remove the trotters, but I guess we installed bionic trotters instead of hands. Still a big improvement, but slightly annoying.
I've been making a nice new bedroom for Yar, Beverly and the baby. Scotty managed to make a masterwork quality crib, so the little one should be very comfortable when they arrive. Dead woodpeckers and her dad getting sick from toxic fallout is certainly an intersting choice for decorations.
Laren has prepared a kid romper made of hyperweave, the best clothing material in the game. She's made an outfit from thrumbo fur and a plasteel helmet for Pansy earlier as well. It's a silly waste of precious resources, but I want the kids as well protected as possible, just in case.
Lovely, we have pigskins drop-podding into the base and one of them is Worf's brother. Two of them crash in the freezer room and immediately start smashing all the shelves. A few land in the corridor outside, but the main group end up in our fields and immediately start burning down the crops and breaking the wind turbines. We zap Worf's brother immediately so nobody accidentally kills him.
They luckily break and run break pretty fast after Troi hit them with a vertigo pulse (making them violently sick and puking all over the place). The survivors start hammering down the door trying to escape. I send Scotty to chase them down while the rest try to rescue our food supply from the fires. The green here shows what areas are roofed. Having a big hole in your freezer isn't ideal. We end up losing most of our rice and a wind turbine to the fire and lots of stuff is damaged, but we got off lightly this time. Worf's brother is a slow learner, depressive and very neurotic. I'm going to release both the prisoners we took as it nets us some rep with their faction. I'd prefer eventually having them as neutral trading partners rather than have them crashing on our lawn again. Chekov keeps trying to find love. Dude, Laren is 40 years your senior and she has a vampire boyfriend already. And maybe pick a better moment, not while we're busy hauling away all the dead pigmen littering the garden.
He's been trying his luck with every lady pawn in the colony and getting nowhere.
That's nice. Oh damn it. Way to be a dick, Scotty, and in the middle of Troi's concert. I guess Laren won't be getting that mood bonus today. Yeah, you tell him. Maybe not the most cutting insult, but at least she knows what she's talking about. I think the new bedroom turned out pretty nice. Hm, maybe we shouldn't put the baby right next to the heater. Tasha and Beverly are still getting that lovin' done.
The baby is coming. I'm genuinely nervous. Beverly is our best doctor, so he'll be delivering his own kid. I expanded the hospital and had Scotty build proper hospital beds and a vitals monitor to prepare, but I should have put sterile tiles on the floor as well to minimise the risks. Not sure why I invited so many spectators. I guess it will be a learning experience for Pansy at least.
Everyone's gathered. Jeez you guys, not cool.
It's a healthy baby girl! Yar will be resting for a while. Everyone else leaves except Pansy, who immediately steps up and carries the baby to her crib. And then goes to feed her. You're so goddamn awesome Pansy. Then I get an alert: "Colonist needs rescue." I immediately pan over to check on Yar, but she's still just sleeping. Phew. It's Beverly. He started a fist fight with Chakotay over some petty insult. You've had a stressful day, I get it, but can you please not try to fight the insanely strong neanderthal?
Yar is doing well and is very happy, but she'll be resting a while longer. Chakotay nearly punched Beverly's arm off and he has slow wound healing, so he'll be in bed for a couple of days. Despite the mind-shattering pain he has so many positive moodlets stacked that he's still in a very good mood. The baby is sleepy but otherwise doing fine. Infants apparently only need food and someone to play with them until they're three years old. She likes her masterwork crib. We need a name though. If it was a boy it would obviously be Wesley Crusher. I suck at naming things. She'll be Wyll, because I had Will Wheaton on my mind already.
28 raiders from the local neanderthal tribe have come to murder us. Definitely don't want to fight them in the field, so we batten down the hatches and wait for them to come to us. But then the cavalry arrives. We've traded so much with Northern Butler they've turned from neutral to allies, meaning they will occasionally send people to help fend off attackers. Apparently Kirk has another son, and Troi somehow has a great grandson. Troi is only in her thirties, so I don't know how that happened. I don't want them to die, so I guess we're going out there after all. With our combined firepower the tribals don't stand a chance, but Kirk's son charged in and immediately got himself clubbed to death. :/
Laren and Chakotay? That's nice, if a bit unexpected. I'm glad she's moved on, and at least Chakotay has better pickup lines than Chekov. I've set him to do the less important crafting, so they've been spending a lot of time together in the workshop. Oh no. Harriet the labrador is 12, which is the expected lifespan for labradors, and she's developed dementia. We might have her for another year or so, but she'll get these confused spells now and then. She's bonded to Troi, so it's going to suck when we loose her.
But... Alcohol tolerance? Which one of you morons gave the dog booze? Turns out I did it. We've been brewing some beer and I just put it on a random shelf and forgot to change the animal zones so they couldn't get to it. Yeah, animals will drink beer and even eat drugs. They can get addicted too, which sucks if they've managed to get to the harder stuff like flake or yayo. (Meth and cocaine, basically). It's time to investigate another ancient complex. This one has also been on the map for a while, so I'm not too worried.
In the first half we only find a lowly mech pikeman and a megascarab insectoid. Virtually no theat at all. There's carpeted floors and puddles of chemfuel around, which usually means fire traps. In the topmost room there's a scorcher mech and a cryptosleep pod. Those contain "ancients", people who have been in stasis for a very long time. They're usually a bit grumpy when you wake them up. They grey thing in the blue room is an unstable fuel node. They explode and set everything on fire if you enter the room, so we're staying away from that. Well that didn't go as planned. The ancient woke up and immediately ran through the south door and now everything is on fire. Steel walls burn, apparently. We're on the clock now - Fire in enclosed spaces get very hot very quickly, so we need to leave or we get cooked.
Chakotay will have to beat down the mech by himself as the rest fan out to open every hermetic crate in the building and troi hacks the comms console.
Jackpot. The last one contains a techprint, needed to start certain research projects. This one is for "flesh shaping", letting you make aesthetic shapers, noses and love enhancers. Not the most important, but it definitely makes the trip here worth it.
Tribal raid time again. This time it's 38 impids. Tribals never have great gear, but they come in greater and greater numbers. Eventually you can get well over 100 at a time. This is the sort of thing our killbox was made for. It's not a terribly interesting raid, but I figured it was a nice opportunity to show how the defences work. It's pretty effective, but our firepower is still a bit weak. These tribals are the easiest targets we'll face, at least when we can funnel them in one by one like this. Sturdier enemies might still be a problem. And we end on another happy note with another engagement. It's been a good year on the whole. The colony finally has some lovers, we're starting to catch up on research, and we're slowly getting there with gear and expanding the base. We built a second geothermal plant, so power shouldn't be an issue for a while, and I've set up a small indoor growing zone with a sun lamp so we can keep growing a few plants in winter.
Here's a timelapse for year 5503. Almost all the timelapse screens for 5502 got eaten by the screenshot gremlins, so that one's lost. I also tried to up the resolution to 1080, but the program I've been using to stitch images into video went haywire at higher resolutions, so 720 is the best I can do.
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Post by LegendaryApe on Jun 1, 2024 6:26:08 GMT
Fantastic update as always, user Skalpadda.
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Post by skalpadda on Jun 6, 2024 20:20:37 GMT
Chapter 12: Reformation.
4th of Decembrary 5503 - 10th of Septober 5504.
Been a bit of a gap as I had finally caught up last time, but then haven't had time to actually play the game. Anyway, I'm reforming our ideoligion. The Human primacy meme is all about people being above nature, things that mostly don't matter unless you're a bunch of trehuggers. There are two precepts we want from it.
We're not putting kids to work, so having them learn 20% faster seems decent. It doesn't direcly affect the rate the growth stat goes up, but should help with keeping the learning need satisfied. And I'm ditching melee specialist (Chief Security Officer) for production specialist (Chief Engineer), because I realised the former was actually pretty bad. The increased crafting speed for a production specialist is nice, but that +1 quality modifier is amazing. A high level crafter will have a decent chance to make masterwork gear and a small chance at legendaries, which is normally only possible with a rare "inspiration". We can choose to call down a mech cluster for a quest. I don't like these much, as clusters and mechanoid raids are already a bit too common. For a neuroformer though? That's worth it, and they're sending some assistance. And there are three unstable power cells. They're often not salvageable because they land too close to turrets (which usually explode on destruction), but these are walled off, so there's a decent chance to get one or all of them. The big grub-looking things are centipedes, incredibly tanky and well armed. Large numbers of those are common colony-wipers late in the game.
We tried taking potshots to lure the mechs away, but they love their buildings too much to give chase. We have no way to take out structures from long range. Plan B is to berserk a centipede with an insanity lance as a distraction while the rest set up in what cover is avaliable. Our tribal reinforcements are all melee warriors, so they get to hide behind a rock, ready to ambush anything that comes for us.
We just can't get the mechanoids to unglue themselves from their buildings, so I have our meatshields allies charge in to occupy them while we lay down fire support. The tribals aren't doing too well... It's not long before half of them are dead or downed, desperately trying to drag themselves towards safety, and they're cracking under pressure and having mental breaks left and right. But they last long enough for us to put the mechs down, and our pawns haven't taken any serious damage. We only have the turrets left to mop up, but we have smoke launchers and EMPs, so they're easy prey when they're the only things left. Quest complete, and we get to salvage all three power cells. That's 1200W of infinite power. Got to wall them in somewhere though, because having them explode inside the base would be very, very bad. It's Pansy's 10th birthday! Time to see what skills and traits we can give her. Last time she got nothing, but we've managed to reach the highest growth tier this time and get a good selection of traits and skills to choose between. We need another good constuctor, shooting is always good, and another decent sawbones never hurts. Iron-willed is a great trait, making her almost immune to mental breaks. Great memory would also be decent. Psychically sensitive can be good for a psyker pawn, but is otherwise pretty bad.
I'm very happy with this. If we manage to hit max growth again before she turns 13 she could become a very promising member of the colony.
Laren got an inspiration just as Skulk finished researching pulse charged munitions, so I set her to craft our first charge rifle. It's arguably the best ranged weapon in the game - shorter range than an assaut rifle, but making up for it with great damage and armour penetration. At legendary quality it gets a bonus to both, as well as better accuracy. Tasha and Bevery have their marriage ceremony in the throne room and it's very sweet. Don't know why Troi is standing in a corner staring at the wall. Another zombie horde. This time I'm determined to fight them. I still haven't fought any of these, so I'm bringing out the big guns. Well, a big gun: Chekov gets to take one of our doomstay rocket launchers for a spin. It's always satisfying to fire one of these into massed enemies. Ten shamblers are immediately vaporized and several more wounded, but there are still 49 left and they're coming for us.
They're also not as slow as I thought, so after a quick assault rifle volley it's time to leg it to a more defensible position. Pansy goes to open the south door so everyone can file in quickly.
We hold the door open and the melee team lines up to block the entrance so the others can fire over their shoulders. It's usually a pretty good tactic against massed melee enemies. Some of the shamblers have broken off from the horde and are clawing on random walls and doors all around the base, but the main group is still giving chase.
But then, just as everyone is in position, they stop and start headbutting the walls next to us. Not good at all. We're outnumbered and with no chokepoint they could easily swarm us.
They chased us when we were outside the base, so I'm thinking perhaps they just have a phobia of doors. I get Scotty to deconstruct it, and now they start coming after us again, though a few are still stuck banging their heads against the wall. This is more like it. Chakotay holds the entrance, and as they funnel in we take them out pretty easily. They seem completely immune to psycasts, which is very annoying.
The ones that wandered off at the start have broken through in several places and are roaming around the base, smashing random things and going after our labradors. Poor Pansy is cowering in her bedroom. They're not too bad to fight in small numbers and narrow corridors, but once we've finally cleared out the last of the undead there's a lot of cleanup to do and things to rebuild. We've researched biosculpting, so Laren is getting her first age reversal treatment. At 60 years old she has a significant and increasing risk of developing serious ailments for every year that passes. Some can never be fixed or cured, so if we can get her down to 50-something it would be a great help. I'm also hoping it will lead to some more lovin' between her and Chakotay.
Each cycle only reduces age by one year and takes half a season to complete. It's a pain to be without your best crafter for that long, but it's better than her getting alzheimers or some other terrible disability. In one of the first few updates we got a lead on the Klingon Bat'leth, one of our ideoligion relics. I was wondering why there haven't been any follow-ups, you can usually complete the chain to find a relic in a year or two, and then I realised I hadn't actually accepted the quest four years ago. Doh. Well, once I did we quickly got the first followup: A space drone has crashed on our map and we have to hack it to get more information about the relic. Every few hours a raid will come and try to destroy the drone. Skulk has 20 intellectual skill so she's by far the fastest hacker, and we've improvised some cover with stone chunks around the drone.
The raid arrives, and it's... eight tribals. Not even a slight threat at this point. Skulk finishes the hacking well before a second raid gets launched. Four more quests to go before we have enough leads to find it. The wookies are back, again packing serious firepower, but it's a normal raid this time so they're walking straight into our defences. One of them is trying to woo another just as they run into our hail of bullets. Cute.
We zap anyone carrying a shield or a rocket launcher, and the killbox breaks the rest. I let Pansy get her first taste of combat by hunting down a few of fleeing furries. I can't keep her sheltered forever. And a moment later Wyll turns three years old and heads out of the nursery by herself for the first time. Naked in the pouring rain, as Chekov saunters by with a dead wookie to feed to the flesh eating monster tree. I guess it's one of those days where everyone grows up a little.
We captured one of the wookies and he's joining Dovov and Bug in the special prison. There have been some... incidents. A few accidental slips of the scalpel, an arm or two amputated by mistake. Minor setbacks in our quest to advance medical science. Well, our first subjects are running a bit short on bits to practice on. Per the wookie is a raging alcoholic, so at least we can help him with that. Can't relapse when you're locked in a cell with no legs.
Another relic quest: There's a "peaceful" village with a computer terminal we can hack for another lead. The only problem is the locals worship the computer and will attack if they see us messing with it. You can, allegedly, do it stealthily, but I've never managed it. Well, they did attack us first. Yar lost a finger in the skirmish, so we welcome her to the club. Oh, another one of these and it's much worse. 29 mechs, with at least five more from the drop beacons and the capsule. At least eight centipedes. Ten turrets. 3 assemblers that will build more mechs over time. Not a chance.
Oh goddamnit another neuroformer. No idea how we'll deal with this, but I feel like we have to take it. That's a lot of pods landing in our back yard...
And that is an absolute mess of mechanoids.
Oh for... wonderful timing, you guys. I had set Tasha and Beverly to try to "avoid pregnancy", reducing the chance to 25%, and while Tasha was breastfeeding Wyll the odds were reduced by another 95%. Then I forgot about it. Well, they're in their 20s and have been lovin' 2-3 times every single day. I guess we're getting another kid. |
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Post by skalpadda on Jun 8, 2024 12:43:40 GMT
Chapter 13: Nåntingnånting
10th of Septober - 11th of Decembrary 5504.
Seems like our next kid won't be inheriting their dad's cool fire breathing either. I've started researching the new genetics stuff and it seems like a few "bad" genes might leave room to put more beneficial ones in later, so I guess it doesn't really matter.
Oh yeah, that mess of mechs...
I don't really know how to deal with them. My first thought was to just send Kirk and Scotty out to berserk a couple of centipedes with insanity lances. It won't solve the problem, but maybe it will inflict a little damage. Troi is just there to teleport Kirk back out of harms way with her psypowers.
Yeah, they die in a few seconds. Centipedes are tanky, but there are just too many other mechs and turrets. At least it's two centipedes out of the way, but I'm running out of insanity lances, so that's not a valid tactic. On to Plan B.
I've picked up one of these animal pulsers on a recent trade run.
Triggering it will make all the wild animals on the map go berserk. If we close all doors and stay inside they should go for the mechs.
And there are quite a few animals on the map. Let's see what they can do.
Not much, it turns out. The mechs just wipe them out as soon as they get close.
And now the entire south-east of the map is on fire. Guess we're all staying inside behind the stone walls while I try to think of a Plan C.
Okay, Plan C: We've captured three mortars. We don't have many shells and don't have the research to craft more, but maybe we can inflict a little damage.
Our little mortar barrage took out the smoke spewer building, the mech assemblers, and killed a handfull of the smaller mechs. Not bad. As long as the turrest are alive they won't come for us though, and I'm not sending anyone down there while the turrets are alive.
I'm out of ideas for now, so I make a new zone called "mech avoidance" and zone everyone into it. You can go outside in the norther half of the map, but noone gets close to the mechanoids.
That's the schedule interface btw, where you can control what pawns do during the days. Nothing special, except I split their sleeping block in two, which prevents them from ever completely bottoming out their sleep need. It helps in general with mood, but especially when dealing with things like raids. If they've been awake all day and a raid happens late in the evening they quickly get exhausted and risk mental breaks. Skulk has a displaced schedule because her ramblings creep everyone out and I want her to interact with the others as little as possible.
I feel really bad for Harriet. She's having these confused spells every day now, and I'm worried she'll wander outside during a raid or something and get killed.
And it's Pansy's 13th birthday! It's a good one again, with three passions to hand out and six traits to choose between. I can definitely let her hunt some muffalo, not sure about the fame.
Double passions in construction and medical is very good. Ideally she'd get another in shooting, but a minor passion for social fits her well too. For traits I was tempted by fast walker, movement speed is always nice, but the tough trait is too good. Halving all damage taken massively reduces the risk that a pawn will get randomly killed. I've become irrationally attached to Pansy, so I'll do anything to keep her safe.
That's the last growth moment, and the game considers her to be an adult now so she works and learns like any other pawn, but she'll still age faster until she's 17.
Some visitors from Northern Butler wander in... straight into the mechanoids. Yeah, they get insta-gibbed and there's nothing I can do to save them.
More zombies - an even bigger horde this time. Just what we needed.
They're coming in three groups, north-east, south, and south-east. Looks like the south group will run into the mechs, so maybe they'll do us a favour for a change.
We have to split in two teams. I really don't like fighting these shamblers. They keep spreading out and chewing on random walls, and they just walk past my melee blockers and go for ranged pawns whenever they can.
At least we're starting to get our weapons in order and most have at least a mediochre shooting skill, but I wish I had a flame thrower or something.
A few of them even make it into Tasha and Beverly's bedroom. It's lucky Wyll isn't stuck in her crib anymore, but we really need to start building an outer wall to slow down threats like this.
The southern group of zombies ran into the mechs and got taken out almost instantly. At least that hive helped us a little.
And now more mechs are coming to raid us.
Well I'm not having this. I send Scotty out to zap one of them with our last insanity lance. That gets rid of one centipede and gets them to charge into our killbox immediately.
One decides to break into Kirk's bedroom instead. I figure Chakotay can handle this while the others get the main defences ready. Centipedes have absurd health and strong ranged damage, but they're pretty rubbish if you catch them in melee.
Just a few bruises. Chakotay really is the strongest melee pawn I've ever had, and his melee skill isn't even fully trained up yet, nor have I given him full bionics.
Things go well in the killbox, too. We don't have any really strong psykers yet, but Troi getting Skip is extremely helpful. What do you do against very dangerous ranged enemies? Teleport them into the melee moshpit of course! She can only do it twice before running out of brain juice, but it's a huge help.
The mechs set fire to the northern half of the map as well, so now we lost most of the trees, and all the wildlife was already slaughtered in their mad rush against the cluster.
The next day a big raid of hostile neanderthals arrive, and they come in from the southern edge, right next to the mech cluster. Will they fight?
They immediately charge at the mechs! I don't rate the tribals' chances very high, but they are tough and mechanoids usually aren't great in melee.
I know you came to kill us all, but I'm rooting for you.
Damn, they're all on fire. Those new flamethrower mechs are nasty.
And the tribals break, but they did significant damage and took out nearly all the smaller mechanoids. We've managed to research mortar tech and made some more explosive shells, so we take out the turrets and the remaining mechs finally come to fight us.
And then our allies from Northern Butler come to help us again. Alo here thought it was a good idea to take on a centipede all on his own. Sorry Alo, but you're no Chakotay.
Luckily Alo brought a lot of friends, and they charge the enemy from the rear. A few are already on their way into our defensive positions, so I just leave Chakotay behind while the others man the fort.
In the end we only had to fight three mechanoids out of the 30+ we started with. As Chakotay returned I accidentally misclicked and had him take a swing at Worf, and he destroyed one of her bionic legs and nearly took out her whole torso (which would have been instant death) with a single blow. I really need to be be more careful with that monster.
It's finally done, the cluster is dead and hopefully we wont face more mechanoids and zombie hordes for a while..
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Post by skalpadda on Jun 8, 2024 12:59:03 GMT
Jaysus, I made a lot of typos in this one. I also forgot to go back and give it a proper title, but I'm leaving it because the random Swedish is very silly.
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Post by Destria on Jun 8, 2024 13:29:46 GMT
Cool update as ever! I do love those in-fighting moments... takes me back to DOOM.
Bit of an eco-disaster though... all the animals slaughtered and most of the trees on fire. Is that going to cause problems later?
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Post by skalpadda on Jun 8, 2024 13:44:58 GMT
The trees are a slight problem already since we need a small continuous supply of wood. Especially given what starts happening at the end of the next chapter. Haven't played further yet, but I think we'll manage, and it's not fatal if we run out. Animals aren't a biggie, we have plenty of meat in the freezer and new ones will migrate in eventually. More of a slight annoyance as I'm using hunting to train shooting skill.
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mikeck
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Posts: 1,925
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Post by mikeck on Jun 9, 2024 11:26:28 GMT
Your updates have been amazing, I'm ill in bed today so have been reading all your thread posts, very entertaining!
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Post by skalpadda on Jun 9, 2024 16:00:37 GMT
Thanks, glad people like reading it! On a meta note, I'm going to start really digging into the new DLC stuff from now on (when the game will let me - things keep getting in the way). I've been sticking too much with what's familiar and procrastinating for the last in-game year or so. Things have also been a little too easy lately (okay that big mech hive was a genuine challenge) and we're getting towards end game tech levels. I'm bumping up the difficulty (threat scale slider) some more to keep things interesting. I'm sure I won't come regret that. |
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ekz
New Member
O_o
Posts: 696
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Post by ekz on Jun 9, 2024 22:18:20 GMT
That was the best update (finally got to read it all in one sitting). Good shit.
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Post by skalpadda on Jun 10, 2024 23:35:28 GMT
Chapter 14: Quest for the Bat'leth. 12th of Decembrary 5504 - 2nd of Jugust 5505. The Empire wants us to deal with a waster camp far from home. Thankfully they're providing us with a shuttle transport, so we don't have to caravan there ourselves. I, er, brought Wyll along. I'm obviously not going to make a 5 year old fight for us, but I promise she's here for a reason. She'll just be going over to that lovely pond and play in the mud while the adults take care of business. There's only a handful of wasters to deal with and the Empire demanded we send 11 people, which is crazy overkill. I've been raiding much bigger work sites with 4-5 people lately. Luckily with the shuttle ride back and forth we won't be leaving the colony undefended for long. Yeah, Chakotay has a jetpack now. His only real downside in combat is that his base movement speed is a bit low (his marine armour slows him down even more), but now I can launch this crazy zeushammer-wielding neanderthal madman right into the enemies' faces. Because we brought Wyll along I get to award her the honor from the quest. I have a Plan for little Wyll. I've done a few more Empire quests lately, and at age 5 she's already amassed enough honor for the royal title of Dame (4th rank out of 7, the same as Troi has), but we're not stopping there.
Time to head home. It's time again. Our hospital is as good as it can be and Beverly is a very skilled doctor now, but I'm still nervous. It goes well, and this time it's a baby boy. Just like last time, Pansy is the one to step up and bring the baby to his crib. She's the only one with a sense of responsibility in this colony.
The only possible name for Bevery Crusher's son is of course Wesley. Welcome to this awful world, kid. And I immediately install an IUD in Tasha. I enjoy having the kids around, a lot more than I thought I would, but pregnancy and raising them from 0-13 is a big undertaking and really puts a hamper on our ability to get things done. I could set them to more work, and there are even growth vats you can build to speed things along, but those just aren't things I want to do. I'm also completely paranoid that something horrible will happen to them.
With Ro Laren's age reversal she and Chakotay are getting more lovin' done. It's good, as it both gives a mood buff and makes the relationship stronger. No worries about pregnancy here because Laren was already sterilized when she came to us, and she's past menopause anyway. We're still on the trail of our first relic. Another "peaceful" village with a terminal to hack, another massacre. We brought a survivor back with us and she's not doing well. Apparently we slaughtered her entire family. Well they shouldn't have attacked spacers with power armour and ultratech weapons with your crappy bows and arrows if they wanted to live, should they? She's a masochist, so perversely she liked that we hurt her.
We destroyed a leg, a kidney and a lung. Ouch. She came with a pegleg already installed, so that's half our job done for us. Yeah, we're keeping her, for reasons I'll explain in a separate little post below. We've completed the five quests needed to locate our relic. Nothing left to do but send a team to get it. At the site we find a giant cock and balls. Okay it's a temple, and it's guarded by six puny militor mechs. The guards dealt with, we finally grab our prize. A few more mechanoids turn up to ambush us outside, but it's just two more militors and a single centipide, which we lure inside so Chakotay can introduce it to his zeushammer. And here it is. In the hands of Chakotay it does almost 40 damage per second, and that armour penetration means it cuts through virtually anything. A human torso in this game only has 40 hitpoints so yeah, pretty insane. The kill-happy trait means he'll get a mood bonus whenever he kills something, and he'll be killing a lot of things.
Well, just as we get home we get to immediately put our new toy to work. 80-something damn shamblers, attacking immediately.
We've started building an outer wall around the whole base and they immediately start clawing their way through. Against threats like this it only serves to slow the enemy down, but time is still valuable. The little alcove here serves to lure enemies into a trap. There are no doors (the shamblers refused to come through the last time we tried this) and Chakotay can hold the opening while the others fire over his shoulders. I'm having Skulk spam grenades just outside, which is very effective when enemies bunch up. This is still risky as your melee blocker has to face tank, but Chakotay is pretty much ideal for it with his enormous damage mitigation. Against enemies you can't (or don't want to) lure into fortified defences it's still one of the better tactics.
Of course shamblers are damn annoying and some of them ignore us and go for another wall, so Scotty and a few shooters rush to plug that gap.
 It works, but the orange clouds there are "rot stink". Hasn't happened before because we've mostly fought them in winter, but now in summer they instantly decompose. Everyone got serious exposure and apparently you can catch "lung rot" from this, which sounds very nasty. This is a new thing and I don't know how to deal with it. I'm extremely fed up with shamblers and mechanoids at this point. Can we please have something else, Cassandra? Oh god, I didn't mean that! There's no choice but to zone everyone indoors and roof over *everything*, including the animal pens and all the fields. The crops will die, but they would have died from the fallout anyway. Our solar panels and wind turbines obviously won't work, so we're down to geothermal power only. All the wild animals will quickly either become seriously ill and die (toxic exposure means they don't give any meat anyway), or they'll simply flee the map. At least we have a lot of food in the freezer and a small indoor farm with two growlamps, so we won't starve. The growlamps pull an insane 2900W each when they're on. Without the wind and solar we don't have enough power, and even with batteries we can't cover it. Any machinery and all lights that aren't strictly necessary have to be turned off. We're locked in, and there's no way of knowing for how long.
Oh, I almost forgot: timelapse for 5504 and half of 5505. Over 2000 frames this time, so it's a tad long. I switched programs for stitching screens together, so it's in 1080 now.
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Post by skalpadda on Jun 10, 2024 23:47:24 GMT
Just a quick note on genetics. I had it in the update at first, but decided to split it off as it got a little talky and didn't really add anything to the story. We've finally started digging into genetic research (Biotech expansion) and built a new lab for it. I made it really big, so there's space to expand and use it for more things if needed in the future. I've started extracting genes from all our prisoners with different xenotypes (baseliners have nothing useful). Each "extractee" can only be harvested every 20 days (they die if you do a second) and what you get is completely random, so it's not a quick process.
If we have a look at our yttakin prisoner Per, he has a whole bunch that we want. Strong melee would be amazing for Worf, and the robust gene would be great for everyone. However, adding genes with positive effects reduces "metabolic efficiency", meaning the pawn has to eat a *lot* more. Bad for productivity, and you wouldn't be able to push them as hard with prioritsed work or keeping them drafted). Adding negative genes improves metabolic efficiency, so that "awful mining" is also very valuable. Stick it in a pawn that doesn't mine and you can add a positive gene with no negatives. "Complexity" limits how many genes you can put in a gene package. Stronger genes add more complexity. It seems you can build machines to get around that, but it puts a price in materials and power if you want to make big, complex gene packs. I should have started this much sooner, and kept an eye out for genes when trading, but oh well. It's going to be a while before we can make a gene pack worth giving someone. You can only do it once every two years, so don't want to settle for something mediocre. |
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Post by skalpadda on Jun 12, 2024 21:47:32 GMT
Chapter 15: A farewell to our bestest friend.4th of Jugust 5505 - 14th of Decembrary 5505. The toxic fallout ends up only lasting a few days. I'm not complaining, it could have been a whole season, but it's almost an insult. Wyll has her first growth moment and it's been relatively easy to get the kids to the max learning tier, as long as they aren't set to do any serious work. Quick sleeper is a good trait (does exactly what it sounds like) and beyond wanting her to cook I don't even care about her skills. She won't be shooting or hitting things and she won't be doing much actual work with what I have planned. I could use a second chef to help Neelix out in a pinch though, and that would free up Yar to become Tactical Officer (shooting specialist). It's time we dealt with this thing. It's an "ancient danger".
It's been sitting on our map, just north of the base, this whole time. I've just been ignoring it, and then forgetting about it, but now it's actually connected to our outer wall.
They're very old buildings where you can find cryptosleep caskets containing "ancients"; pawns that were put in stasis during the war that happened hundreds or even thousands of years ago and wiped out the planet's civilization. The ancients can be neutral or hostile, or they can pop out dead. Opening them is a valid way to capture an extra colonist or two, or get some gear early on, but they also contain enemies - hence the "danger" part. Usually mechanoids or insectoids, including centipedes and megaspiders, so they can be very dangerous for a new colony. To get in we just deconstruct some walls. Oh, and apparently they can contain fleshbeasts now, too. That's new.
And what the everliving Christ are those things?! "Explode into a horde of smaller fleshbeasts." How absolutely wonderful.
They sure do, including trispikes, which in turn explode into three fingerspikes on death.
I'm very glad we didn't open this in the first year. We can deal with them now, with a well-armed and armoured team, but 3-4 underequipped pawns would get overrun, especially as I wouldn't expect it. Probably a colony wipe.
There are only three cryptosleep caskets, some glitterworld medicine, and a hermetic crate (which contained a techprint).
Two disabled ancients and one dead guy. The only one with decent skills and traits is of course the dead guy. Yeah, really glad I didn't rush this. Well, I have an idea for how to use the space as part of the base, so I'll clear it out and reinforce the walls.
Little Wesley Crusher has turned three and is out of his crib. He immediately goes for some raccoon meat in the butchery room. That's great Wesley, but please go put some clothes on before playing with raw meat.
He's probably the last kid we'll have in the colony. We're getting towards endgame stuff (still lots to do though) and I only want to actively recruit one or two more pawns.
So, er, we grabbed these two prisoners for genetic extractions. Talia is a "dirtmole" xenotype, which I haven't seen before, and Skag is a waster. Well apparently they really hit it off in prison and now they're a couple. I was going to extract Skag twice, killing him, and keep Talia until we got the good genes our of her, but now I'd feel very weird about it. I guess I'll just... leave them be for now?
An outbreak of plague has hit our animals and Harriet, already old and weakened, passed on during the night. I didn't expect us to have her much longer, but it's still sad. She's was with us from the very beginning, and was the matriarch of all our puppies.
Since labradors are venerated by our ideoligion everyone will mourn for a few days. Troi and Harriet were bonded, so she'll be in mourning for more than a season.
I built a couple of sarcophagi (Sarcophaguses? Sarcophageese?) out of black slate in our new room and let Troi say her farewells. I was expecting our first burial to be a human colonist, but I'm definitely not putting Harriet in some anonymous hole in the ground.
Troi makes a nice inscription to remember her by.
And our other colonists can come here to meditate and pay their respects. You were a good dog, Harriet, and we'll miss you.
This is eerily similar to when Skulk joined us. Well we don't want another creepy pawn around, so I send Scotty out to tell him to get lost.
You piece of shit. Fine, go ahead and attack the vampire in cataphract power armour. See what that gets you.
Scotty isn't quite a Chakotay, but you don't want to mess with him.
We've started the hunt for our second relic, and got flown out to this ancient complex to hack a bunch of computers for a lead. It's full of bugs.
A *lot* of bugs.
The complex is huge, so it takes all night to clear it out. We don't have any major problems with the insectoids, but everyone is getting tired and hungry, and when you're out on a caravan they can't do much recreation.
We work our way back, hacking all the terminals and opening containers as we go. When Kirk starts hacking the last one by the entrance a fire trap goes off in the north of the base. Good thing we cleared the whole place first.
Then the toxic waster pirates ambush us. There are lots of them, and we don't have a good defensive position. Tasha is left inside; in the rush I simply missed her and didn't notice her standing there. A few of the pirates have flanked us and one is heading inside.
It's an absolute mess. Tasha is a great shooter, but she's a bit rubbish in melee, so she's not doing well. The pirates are firing off toxic grenades everywhere, so everyone is dizzy from exposure. The wasters are immune to their own farts but not to Troi's vertigo pulses, so pretty soon half the pirate force is stumbling around and vomiting all over themselves.
And then Chekov decides to have a mental break. Yeah, I'm sorry we couldn't stop for a nap, but really? Now?
Tasha goes down. No lethal damage, but she needs rescue and the pirate left a cloud of tox gas behind, so she's getting slowly poisoned.
"High on go-juice". A powerful drug that massively boosts combat potential and makes pawns nearly immune to pain shock. They'll fight to the death, and Tasha didn't stand a chance.
We break them eventually, but it's a complete shambles. Toxic clouds and vomit everywhere, Chekov is still psychotically wandering around, and Tasha is in dire straits. Time to drag everyone back to the shuttle and get out of here.
At least the ride back doesn't take long.
Really? I've never had prisoners get engaged before and don't know if we can even hold a marriage, but okay, I guess? Skag is severely alcoholic and going through withdrawal btw, and he has cirrhosis of the liver. Also a genetic psychite addiction. A real catch you've got there, Talia. I suppose it's nice that they found love in difficult circumstances.
Timelapse for the second half of 5505. Nothing of note has happened to the base these two quadrums (seasons), but I'm putting it up for the sake of completeness.
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Post by LegendaryApe on Jun 13, 2024 6:07:09 GMT
Troi's inscription was very moving, indeed. As always, great update.
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Post by skalpadda on Jun 14, 2024 20:50:42 GMT
Chapter 16: The abusive boyfriend.
2nd of Aprimay - 6th of Jugust 5506.
There will probably be a little break after this one. In part because I'm just a little busy at the moment, but I'm a bit ahead and the next year has mostly been spent hunting for genes and doing quests. There's not much new or interesting worth writing about. I might just do a short short time skip or a quick summary before we're back on track. Our prison love drama is taking a dark turn. Skag's alcohol withdrawal sent him berserk and he attacked his fiancé. Luckily she gave him a right good seeing to, but you're on notice Skag, I'm not having domestic abuse in this colony. I tried giving them a double bed earlier, but apparently prisoners don't use them. Probably just as well - I don't feel like having to deal with any prison babies.
And then it happens again.
Talia punched two of his fingers off. Good.
Uh-oh, this is terrible timing. Troi and Kirk are off trading with the Empire and four of the others are returning from a raid. Well, if it's dormant we'll at least have time for the away team to get back, they're just one or two (in game) hours away. God damnit they have an auto mortar. The mechs are dormant, but that thing will start shelling the base any minute. Well, we have mortars of our own and quite a few shells, so it's time for an artillery duel. They have a mech high shield and I didn't notice. That thing completely blocks things like mortar rounds and orbital bombardments. It's not hopeless though. We have some EMP shells, and you can launch the EMP and then send explosive shells right after it. Tricky timing - the EMP only takes the shield down for a few seconds - but it's doable. The first volley of return fire hits our mortar room, but luckily only bruises Neelix and causes some structural damage. Could have hit the stockpile of shells instead, which would have been an absolute disaster. In the middle of this our away team returns to our tile. Luckily they don't wander in from the south, where the mechs are. Once they get back to the base we'll at least have some manpower to help out once the fighting starts. Our next barrage gets through the shield, but it will take several hits to destroy a mortar and they're horribly inaccurate, so this could take a while. And then... Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck! I completely forgot these clusters don't act the same as quest ones. The ones from quests will stick to their buildings no matter what, but ones that drop down as events will go for you as soon as you hit them. With all the EMP timing I somehow didn't notice all the mechs leaving the hive. Tasha was trailing behind and hadn't got into the base yet. The caravan brought a prisoner, and luckily most of the mechs go for him first, but a tesseron and a scyther are chasing her down. Scythers are nasty - high melee damage and like to cut peoples limbs off - and the Tesseron has set her on fire, so I can't even draft her and give her orders. This is very, very, very bad. I wasn't prepared for this at all and everyone is spread out across the base. The mortar team will stay, but we have to get to Tasha *immediately*. I burn through jetpack charges on Chakotay to get him to the gates faster. If we're going to fight this many mechs out in the open we absolutely need him to soak hits and crack heads. Chekov took a serious leg wound on the away team's raid, so I can't even get him out the door. We're down four people, and another three are stuck on mortar duty.
Tasha is down, but at least the mechs will ignore her as long as they have a path to other targets. She's not on fire anymore, but the grass and bushes are, and it will spread to her. These tesserons are incredibly nasty. That beam weapon shreds through pawns if they're bunched up and sets everything on fire. Mechanoids are fire immune, so they don't even deal a lot friendly fire.
I'm still trying to take out their mortar, but I don't have the multi-tasking ability to time the EMPs right and most of our shells bounce off their shield.  We have a few insanity lances so we drive a tesseron and lancer into berserk mode. They're the biggest threats and hopefully they'll take each other out, or at least act as a distraction. A few of the mechs are heading into our killbox, which means we don't have to deal with them immediately, but it also means they'll get in the base, where the kids are. Worf forms a one-woman rear guard to try to take out at least a few of them. Most of the smaller mechs are down, but now the three centipedes are coming in. I get Chakotay do some jetpack jumps to try to hold them off and tie at least one up in melee. He'll have two centipedes able to lay into him, but if anyone can take the punishment it's Chakotay. Tasha is still downed but has regained conciousness and is trying to crawl back to base. She's still bleeding out and won't make it on her own though. One of the tesserons has made it into the base and is going for the mortar team. I just can't keep track of everything going on. At least it didn't head for the children. Scotty is scared of fire and doesn't have a jump jet pack, but he has a vampire jump and can close the distance immediately and go bonk the tesseron across the face. Neelix has caught on fire a bit, but otherwise they're okay. I send Pansy to rescue Tasha. Pansy is quickly becoming our best doctor, so if she can just get her into med bay she'll be able to patch her up. One of the centipedes has a flame cannon and Chakotay has caught fire, but I'm not worrying about him right now.
More mechs have made it through the killbox maze and I've sent Worf to help Chakotay, so Scotty has to deal with them. Taking out the mortar will have to wait. Worf and Chakotay are dealing with one centipede each. Absolute heroes. With the mechs dealt with and Tasha rescued I can finally focus on EMPing the shield properly and take out the mortar. There's just a lowly turret left, and I send Chakotay and Worf to smack it to oblivion. And Tasha is safe in med bay. It's over, but that was the messiest fight we've had so far. And that wasn't even a big cluster. Only Pansy and Beverly avoided getting hurt (good, because they're our doctors). I don't even have enough hospital beds to tend everyone in med bay. Skulk goes on a mental break before we can get her medical attention. She's been very upset about us killing prisoners via genetic extraction, and the pain and injuries have driven her over the edge.
She decides to go rant at some dead deer in the freezer room. I don't think they'll mind, but she's still bleeding all over the place. Luckily she snaps out of it before getting frostbite or bleeding out.
Wyll has now - at age ten - accrued enough honor with the Empire for the title of Countess, the highest you can achieve. Which is a bit nuts.
We might as well call in the Bestower and start the ceremony.
Countess Wyll of the Broken Empire. She gets the maximum psylink level and the permissions to call down orbital bombardments and transport shuttles once per year or so. We've made the throne room "unbelievably impressive" to satisfy her rank and built her a grand meditation throne, with one for Troi and Scotty on each side.
Her life hasn't changed much for now though. I'm not going to have her meditate a lot, because I want her to be able to study and play whenever she wants, so she won't have the psyfocus to do much. And I still don't want to force kids to fight for us. Once she turns 13 she'll be an incredible asset. She'll never fire a gun or swing a sword, but that mech cluster we just fought? The next time she can pick up some grenades, turn herself invisible, walk up to it and blow it up. High level psycasts are nuts. Skag has gone berserk and is having a go at Talia again. The only reason he's still alive is because she still really likes him for some reason. But that's enough. Chakotay, please deal with this.
Chakotay simply walked in and punched his leg off with his bionic fist.
You're not laying a hand on her again, Skag. Literally. You've lost your hand and leg privileges.
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