Expert (/masochistic) difficulty

[Lilalaunekuh]

To all you completionists and challenge-seekers, I think I´m not the only one beeing encouraged (/compelled) to earn all achievements with all my colonies.

=> There are 3 achievements which put some hard constrains on our behaviour:

1. Super-sustainable: Just a restriction for "intermediate tech" power generation
2. Locavore: No early farming
3. Carnivore: A need to secure a bunch of meat in your early cycles.

 

Imho:

1. Got way easier with the introduction of plug slugs.
2. Hard to tell after just messing with 3 seeds / colonies.
3. Feels like much more work.

 

PS: Mea culpa, I posted this to early without making my point.

[SackMaggie]

I didn't test it in DLC yet (figuring out how to get meat).
My food source in base game always be pacu/shovel, But in DLC shovel missing and I think less algae available it may become harder.
But I feel like in DLC give more *free* food.
With the recent POI changes not sure if free solar still a thing.

[chemie]

you are missing "it felt the same"....

[Fyrel]

1 hour ago, SackMaggie said:

I didn't test it in DLC yet (figuring out how to get meat).
My food source in base game always be pacu/shovel, But in DLC shovel missing and I think less algae available it may become harder.
But I feel like in DLC give more *free* food.
With the recent POI changes not sure if free solar still a thing.

Haven't tried it either but pacu eat seeds now as well as algae.

Also you can select a dupe with the ranching skill at start of game and then rush the ranching tech and get into raising critters much earlier than before. Start with plug slugs would give you all the power you need to run incubators.

Building a ranch around some natural grubgrub plants would let you breed your sweetles into grubgrubs for even more food.

Sweetles give 1600 meat, Grubgrub 4800 meat and plug slugs 3600 meat I believe.

Not sure about the eggs.

[Lilalaunekuh]

2 hours ago, chemie said:

you are missing "it felt the same"....

"I´m not sure, but i tried it" was supposed to fill that gap.

[I wanted to expand the point of equality considering the vagueness of this question, from excatly the same to hard to tell apart]

 

The "only" achievement, I saw as a roadblock in my attempts was the "carnivore" one.

And some of the easiest solution to this achievment aren´t available in the current game.

[Namely: A rapid expansion to secure "passive" food drops (after each live cycle) and eventually slaughter most critters.

Or a rush for early shovel voles ....]

 

 

1 hour ago, Fyrel said:

Haven't tried it either but pacu eat seeds now as well as algae.

Also you can select a dupe with the ranching skill at start of game and then rush the ranching tech a

Keep in mind that algeae isn´t really an easy available starting biome resource.

[My current base has no algae even in biomes adjacent to the starting biome and I needed to dig through abyssalite]

I started with a rancher in my current playthrough, just to realieze how pointless that was.

=> What´s the point of a rancher if you got no critter drop off or grooming station ?

 

Spoiler

To be more clear:

Yes, I could start ranching a bit earlier than without choosing a duplicant like this. But it wasn´t a huge gain over waiting for my 2. skill point.

=> Rushing ranching on a starting duplicant seems way favorable (at least for my playstyle / research order)

 

Duress to impress, seems way more beneficial for starting duplicants (on the highest difficulty stress setting).

 

[Machenoid]

I did the Carnivore/Locavore challenge in the base game until I actually completed the achievement, then swore off doing those achievements ever again on a new asteroid because the 100 cycle time limit is an unfun nightmare: It can be very RNG dependent on the map seed. The layout of open spaces, distribution of creatures and the starting dupe traits determine if you succeed or fail. The super-sustainable achievement I don't mind repeating on some new asteroids, because that's an infrastructure gimmick without a time limit.

As far as challenges go, I prefer to take dupes with a specific set of negative traits instead until I reach the maximum allowed for one negative trait (somewhere around 6-8) then i choose a new one.

[Lilalaunekuh]

54 minutes ago, Machenoid said:

then swore off doing those achievements ever again on a new asteroid because the 100 cycle time limit is an unfun nightmare:

I would prefer if all the "do or die" achievements would be only steam achievements and not tracked for every colony.

 

55 minutes ago, Machenoid said:

As far as challenges go, I prefer to take dupes with a specific set of negative traits instead until I reach the maximum allowed for one negative trait (somewhere around 6-8) then i choose a new one.

I prefer that kind of playstyle myself, like taking only mouthbreather duplicants or ...

[Hellshound38]

Depends if you cherry pick dupes.

Rancher / Miner perks make it eaiser. Even if the map itself is harder mainly due to size.

[TheMule]

17 hours ago, Fyrel said:

Sweetles give 1600 meat, Grubgrub 4800 meat

With a lifecyle of 75 and 150 cycles. The lifecyle affects the egg production rate as well. So, in their base form, they are balanced.

It's different if you have sweetles produce grub grub eggs...

[babba]

I would like some more game difficulties...I came up with the Ironman save system idea from games like Xcom, Diablo etc.

Having only 1 auto-save to fall back to could also be tied to achievements.

 

[misotoma]

Okay so someone needs to make videos..and upload regarding max difficulty in the new DLC.

I finally tested it myself in survival.. I'm pulling my hair out.. it's actually harder than the hardest in classic.

I don't like eating all the bugs in my map.. It's a race to just survive at some point EVEN with mush fry bar

[Lilalaunekuh]

9 hours ago, misotoma said:

it's actually harder than the hardest in classic.

I don't like eating all the bugs in my map.. It's a race to just survive at some point EVEN with mush fry bar

Just out of curiosity: How far did you make it ? Or which constraint (/achievement) did you throw overboard ?

Spoiler

I feel it´s harder than my last mouthbreather only oassie colony ...

But my problem is less the "real" survival aspect and more the challenge of eating enough meat to gain all achievements.

I never considered (ab)using mush bar/fry a concern and I do it all the time up to cycle 200 in some cases.

 

[cpy]

So what are the rules?

[Lilalaunekuh]

1 hour ago, cpy said:

So what are the rules?

For me:

• Set all setting to the worst option (hunger, stress and germs)
• Do all colony achievements

[At least for me the only "critical" part is to complete the "carnivore" achievement.]

[cpy]

Well Max hunger stress germs and no charity pod and no geysers. Achievements are meh. That's what I like.

[Lilalaunekuh]

29 minutes ago, cpy said:

no geysers

I´ve done that and might do it again, but it doesn´t add anything new compared to beeing lazy and just building a box around every geyser^^

[And I like tinkering with stuff so having a geyser to (ab)use after my base is already sustainable sounds more fun to me than not having that option later.]

 

31 minutes ago, cpy said:

Achievements are meh.

Most of them are not worth mentioning and will be completed regardless if you care or not.

But beeing a completionist, it buggs me to see a failed achievement looking at my colony summary.

=> I adapted the habit of dedicating the first 100 cycles to this task

[cpy]

I'm more of a let's make endgame as thrilling and keeping me on the edge as early game. But I haven't seen a single game that does this well. Maybe except simcity 4 that at least tries to be as hard the bigger city you build.