Your feedback: Base Attacks & Campaigns

[scythe111]

I voted "Other." Raids are too hard early and too easy late. Copied below from Steam forums. I agree that raid strength feels wrong at just about every point in the game.

Originally posted by Nel:
Imho the problem is rather with the fact that certain game mechanics do not apply to the raiding factions. Dust Bandits raid and occupy a mining outposts, which has no food. And then they just stay there, no food or medical supplies.

Further, NPC factions just spawn units with high stats, while the player has to recruit completely unskilled units (makes you wonder how these characters even managed to reach adulthood given their obvious incompetence in just about anything), and then spend time and money to train them until they are even remotely useful. And it doesn't help that you have to get them to get beaten up to increase their defensive stats, i.e. purposefully make them lose.

This makes raids simply annoying, because the factions raiding you have no cost, while the player will suffer each injury.

Originally posted by Rik:
What a great post. Made me lol and great points.

While I doubt the devs are going to implement player-mechanics to all NPCs (lots of work and very hard), they might be able to address both raid-balance issues and improve satisfaction if they have NPCs scale over time. Idea: all squads spawn with certain stats + populations + aggression-chance which increase daily. That way, if a player kills half of a faction's units, and those units respawn, that faction suffers the penalty of having 50% of its units being terrible for a while, just like the player would. At the same time, it implements a mechanism for higher-tiered raids towards the end game, as the increased aggression-chance would mean as squads build in power, they also become more likely to attack the player.

You made that idea come to my brain and I felt compelled to spit it out.

[PerfectDeath]

When I built a base in the foglands I got very frequent raids, was pretty challenging. Though, I didn't have a lot of tech and skills. IE: no harpoons or turret trained people.

Later I set up on the south coast of the bonefields south of Catun near the fishman island bridge. Slaver raids and fishman raids only. Once I paid off the slavers with a trader's guild membership and beat the fishman king I got no hostile raids. Just the rare band of bones assault which usually gets eaten by beakthings, skin spiders, or bone dogs. Sometimes the beasts attack the gates but I have double barrel harpoons now so the base is extremely safe.

I can see why players can get annoyed with heavy raids, it is hard to commit to other things when you are constantly being attacked. Unless the player makes enough preparations beforehand. However, I don't feel its a bad thing, a settlement should be a commitment.

[hotspur75]

Bandits and home territory are fine, but river raptor crop raids are stupid ridiculous right now. I can't do anything else but defend crops. None of the Holy Nation farms face anything like this or we could farm animal skin at the beginning like it's nothing. The level I am facing I would say needs to be cut by 90%. I am not even kidding when I say that there is less than five seconds between waves of raptors showing up.

Also, either turn down the speed at which they eat crops, or turn up the speed at which they eat dead bodies. A single raptor can clear out my L crop planting in 5 seconds, but takes a solid minute to a eat a body? Again. this is just ridiculously unbalanced.

[Pokpaul]

I voted other, and agree about player control and raids making sense.

I appreciate the slider, but mostly player control should be based on what you do in-game, which ties into things making sense.

The examples given of the Leviathan Coast bases do both. You don't want to have a lot of raids? Build a base where they won't come to you, or they get stomped flat.

You want lots of raids, build in the middle of someone's territory and royally piss them off.

Where you settle and what you do (make friends or enemies) should in my opinion really be the deciding factors.

And I also agree about being able to do something about that and the world reacting to you. It does make a certain amount of sense that if every ninja raid gets completely massacred then maybe they decide not to come around so often, maybe there's none left to come around for a while, maybe they decide to ramp things up a level and even bring a few allied friends. Or all of the above at one time or another.

The ability to affect raids by killing specific leaders or settlements is also something I like.

I like to make a decent sized walled-in base around where Gut, the Eye and Heng meet. I get UC tax man, Trader's Guild tax man, trade caravans, black dogs and the occasional ninjas. A nice variety of visits, and most can be friendly or not depending on how I've decided to play. I'd say I get visited often enough, but part of that is because of how many different guys visit me. If the only folks visiting were say the black dogs, well then I would say not often enough because each faction only comes by so often. But again, these are all logical consequences of my choices, that I could impact by building somewhere else for example.

The walls are to keep the beak things out. I like beak things, they're not so bad to fight once you know how, drop lots of meat and skins for food and leather, eggs for when money is still an issue, and are very efficient at keeping undesirables away. I can kite them into any patrol I don't want to have make it to my base. Again these are all logical and obvious consequences of what I decide to do or not do, and to me that's the best way to go from a design point of view, instead of more sliders.

[FearAndLoathing]

Just started playing a week or so ago (loving it) but the raids are a bit too frequent imo, when you combine the random attacks with the actual events.

- Base located in "Rainbow Valley" between Stenn Desert, Vain, and the Border Zone.
- Attacks typically include Shek, Dust Bandit Raids, Starving Bandits. Other attacks involved the band of bones, and I have some issues with wildlife in the area.
- Right now I have 23 members in my faction all operating in this base. My chars are typically between 10-30 on their base stats (toughness, strength, etc.).

For a new player, like myself, I'd like to be able to scale it back a little better. Even at the low default number the raids are extremely frequent with random encounters stacking on raids. It took me a ton of do-overs to even have a cast of characters who could survive constant raids, sometimes (and not infrequently) with two or three groups at a time. I love the idea of raids happening, and at least now I can survive them okay - but it would be cool if I hadn't missed out the on Shek tax request because I was fighting for my life against Dust Bandits, etc.. Late game I would love it if there were random events where factions could declare war on you or something if you get big for major raid events. But anyway - loving the game, but as a new player the constant raids made actually working in my base less frequent than fighting people off.

[DeathKnyte]

Hunters Playthrough


Location:

Skinner's Roam; on the East end of a huge crater, just near the border of the area with the lightning and acid rain. I was playing a group of hunters, and decided to settle here because of the large herds of wild bulls roaming around. They provided food, horns and skins. i wanted a type of "hunting lodge" settlement, therefore no walls built - but I was researching to maybe discover the fences that are in swamp settlements, and intended to use those once discovered.


Raids/Visits:

Dust bandits, hungry bandits and wild bull herds. I'm certain these were just random encounters and not raids.

Hive farm supplies merchants visited from the dark lightning area, I was slightly surprised they came through unscathed, so will be looking into playing a sort of hive fraction in the future to explore this. I loved these guys, they were hilarious with their dialogues!

Real raids came from Black Dragon Ninjas, but they would just insult the way my outpost looked ( I was building a lodge, not a full fledged settlement, but I suppose they are not programmed to discern such things), then would break down the door to my kitchen building and stand around a food storage barrel. Sometimes they would stay there for days, until I expressly made efforts to eradicate them from my kitchen.

Other real raids were from the Holy Nation. I was very surprised by this, because unlike Okran's Pride, Okran's Gulf, Okran's Arm, Okran's Valley, etc. - Skinner's Roam has no Holy Nation patrols (!). Any ways, these were considerably more difficult to handle, but accepted this as a challenge and persevered. Then one day a group led by an Inquisitor came along and... the game ended shortly after.


Squad Size/Levels:

24 members, all armed with the cheapest naginatas I could find due to financial constraints, however I had two members armed with the most expensive found at the Rebel Base (3030 cats each), we were after all hunters - not a mercenary outfit. Armour was light leather and cloth, mostly blue with some green grade.

Levels were a couple in the 30's, most in the 20's, and some in the 10's range.


Only things that bothered me somewhat was not having any fences, and the way the Black Dragon Ninjas raided.

[DeathKnyte]

Bootlegger Playthrough

Holy Sword start. Concept was a gang of bootleggers, working stills within a city. But I encountered a problem - no water...


Location:

#1. Swamp, just South of the Northwestern swamp village.

We were actually living, farming, cooking, and planned on distilling in the swamp village itself. I had purchased all the available buildings and figured a way to do the above - and defend the village proper, without it being eventually over run by the blood spiders and having all the inhabitants eaten. You see, there is a bug (?) in the game, whereby certain settlements get depopulated due to predators spawning within the confines of a settlement. In this case, it was blood spiders spawning inside the village.

So I was feeling pretty proud of overcoming all this, and then realized I had no access to water. The village has no well, so I tried placing rain collectors cause it rains often here, but none of the buildings would accept them. The prospect of leaving the village and importing bought water barrels from other settlements proved extremely inefficient in manpower, time dedicated, and amount brought in to satisfy the demands. Therefore I decided to construct "just" a well, as close as I could, South of the village (meaning away from Holy Nation zone of influence). The exact moment I finished construction I received an event notice of some kind of Holy Nation retribution raid incoming (!). I checked the map, and saw the force coming from the abandoned Tiny Settlement in the Border Zone. Wow! Like what a disappointing surprise this was. So I dismantled the well and we decided to relocate the entire operation...


#2. The Hub.

Purchased several buildings. Constructed a hefty amount of water collectors on the roof tops. Ran supply convoys to the two nearby Way Stations, Squin, and Rebel Base for resources, materials, etc. Built up quite a reserve and production facility. Only problem was my water collectors did not seem to function, therefore no quick access to water - again.

Knowing that I would get Holy Nation raids of retribution, I decided to construct several wells nearby in the valley West of The Hub. Then I could haul enough to my twelve waiting water tanks in the dedicated "water reservoir" building - between these raids. I even constructed several wind generators in the valley, so I could upgrade the wells to powered ones, thus increasing efficiency of the hauling squads. All was going fine, I would simply cancel the hauling jobs when the raids got near, and we were safe inside The Hub.

There was something strange though, about having a player outpost so close to The Hub; the Hounds pacifier, for some reason, decided to leave the bar at The Hub, and instead walk around my water wells in the valley.


Raids/Visits:

Random raids were Dust Bandits, Hungry bandits, and the occasional wolves, garrus, goats, and Holy Nation Outlaws which thought we were paladins.

Visits were Hive merchants (again I enjoyed these guys and bought near everything they had), and some Nomads.

Raids were Black Dragon Ninjas, which couldn't figure out what to do because we had no food barrel for them to stand around. So they just stood there and with exception to Holy Nation raids, attacked anything else that would come close.

Holy Nation raids were constant, but we just withdrew to the confines of the Hub - until one day, they decided to beat on the Hounds pacifier. I didn't yet know if I cared about The Hounds, or not, so decided not to take the chance of losing him, and went and rescued him several times (like minimum six times). After a while the guy looked like a mummy, he was covered in bandages all over his body. We even would bring him back to the bar inside The Hub and paid for a bed to put him in. But he would always wake up and go back to hanging around my wells in the valley. This invariably lead to us confronting the Holy Nation raids before they got to my wells. Then one day an inquisitor came by and the game ended during that confrontation.


Squad Size/Levels:

28 + 2 animals. Main character was 50's, seven were 40's, ten in the 30's, and the rest in the 20's. Weapons were whatever they came with plus whatever we scrounged up to this point, mainly focused on katana type weapons (nothing special or expensive), armour was either medium or light, mostly blue quality with some greens.



Issues I have with this playthrough were:

- Blood spiders spawning inside the Swamp Village.

- Holy Nation raids spawning from the Tiny Settlement (versus Swamp) and the Abandoned Military Outpost (versus Border Zone). These are ruins, so I found it difficult to understand how they could mount such powerful raid groups.

- The Hounds Pacifier deciding to spend all his life hanging around my wells in the Western Valley next to The Hub. My attempts in trying to keep him alive, ultimately led to my demise.

- Access to water; wells that don't work (like in Tiny Settlement, it is powered with no power source, so does not function, yet the street lamp lights at night), the description in game about water collectors (you should mention that it needs to rain, I left them up for over a month at The Hub before dismantling them), the Swamp has constant rain and pools of water everywhere, but we can't "scoop" and/or collect any (like - there are cups, bowls, even water jugs already in game), most major towns (cities) don't have a functional water source (!) - even if I had to pay for their use, I would find it acceptable. This was the issue which influenced all my major decisions throughout. I will always remember it as the "How To Get Water?" playthrough.

[FluxCap]

This is my experience.

I built a small starting base, one I intended to abandon, and researched more advanced walls, and other research needed for farming.

The farming needed more space than what I had, so I setup shop in a more flat area. There I built a couple of buildings (perhaps a mistake), and a small farming and mining operation. Dust Bandits and Starving Bandits started to come in waves, and I had only a six person crew, but used the gates and walls to try and divide them into two-four person groups, and was able to pick them off fairly easily.

Then came a handful of tougher opponents in waves, and I had to flee. They setup shop, one right after another, and so usually there are now 2-5 groups of various bandits surrounding my farm. So now I am building a small base to try and build up to reclaim it, one without any buildings for them to setup shop in, but it is a long term project for sure.

What is annoying recently is that a group that I cannot fight except like 2-4 on 1, can come to my FOB, the base I am building, open the door, and then attack. So, I am going to have to fall back somewhere, find a way to support 20 people (and recruit and train them), and then try and reclaim it yet again.

So, for me this is difficult...the raids piled up on each other, and it seems difficult to try and get 1-2 of a high leveled group away from the main group, neutralize them, heal up, and then do that for the other 15-20 in the group is difficult, but to have 1-5 groups like this it seems more than difficult to get started. Even if I had the 15-20 members in my group: I fear dealing with just the one group would be realistic, but not so many.

I do like seeing the various groups fighting it out over my little farm, but I am having trouble seeing how to support 15-20 people without farming, having a house to cook meals in, having a house to make weapons and arrows, etc.

[acrylic300]

Maybe it should scale to the size of the base. 20 ninjas attacking a small shack and then all squeezing inside to the point they can't move, but convulse like they are being electrocuted is kind of silly. I had a small shack with 20 ninjas and 10 dust bandits inside it. They wouldn't fight each other, but camped and killed my sleeping characters until they were dead. They also killed two groups of mercenaries that I sent with my one character that was in town. I didn't really mind because it was my first play through and I was looking for an excuse to start over, but it felt like a design flaw to be trapped by lack of movement and basically spawn killed. A small shack was not meant to have 35 characters inside it on top of a weaving loom, work bench, food basket, and chests.

I always build at least two buildings now, so the ninjas can run around like idiots instead of packing themselves like a lunchbox.

[lorddcee]

I have so many attacks at my base that most of the time the bandit bands fight each other on the way in, out, or while shouting at me from outside... I mean... not fun...