RimWorld

RimWorld

Rim of Madness - Werewolves
Sea's 10 Jan, 2020 @ 1:36pm
Balancing
So I've played around with this mod in combination with it's vampire counterpart and while it is a lot of fun, I've realized that vampires are wayyyy stronger than the werewolves.

The damage soak mechanic + mystical powers of the vampires versus the damage immunity% and brute strength of werewolves are not balanced against eachother. The damage soak gives the vampires not only an edge against early game weapons, but also against late game weapons that deal large bursts of damage (looking at you centipede). The vamp's abilities allow it to heal, regenerate limbs and perform lots of other great stuff including but not limited to: posessing an enemy for a short time, increasing your social skill to 30+ making trading 1:1 and making everything (including your own stuff) very cheap, and lastly outright killing a selected creature (trombo, mechanoid or any overpowered mod creature, it doesn't matter, it will die).

What do werewolves do you ask? They have different passive abilities for each form they take. These can range from being able to move trough trees unimpaired to attacking twice (which still show up as a single damage number with the damage number mod), but only while in werewolf mode which makes you drop all your equipment. It lets you regen your destroyed limbs and gain larger health pools for your body parts. And ofcourse the immunity to non-silvered weaponry which seems to cap at 90%.

I'm assuming that the author did this to prevent wolf clans (this mod's faction) form being too overwelming in case they'd attack your base. But in all the games I've played with this mod, the wolfclan was a gentel clan and wouldn't attack without reason. And besides that, you are able to modify your weapons with silver which negates the damage immunity. So I'm not sure why this was done.

Speaking of damage immunity. The werewolf's immunity also don't seem to work the way it's advertised as I've seen damage numbers of around 3-5 still pop up, which means that the enemy that was attacking me was dealing 30-50 damage with each hit (for reference: a doomsday rocketlauncher deals 50 damage and a legendary charge lance deals 45)

Lastly, a personal issue I have is that I get too distracted by other stuff going on on the map to realize that there is a full moon approaching causing my colony to be destoyed by the werewolf since I largly depend on traps and don't want to kill the werewolf by accidently shooting it too many times. A easy fix for this would be to have an alert that lets you know that the moon will rise in a few hours.

Even with the issues I've talked about I still think this mod is worth a download since a it's still a lot of fun to suprise melee raiders and manhunting wolves by transforming into a MASSIVE KILLING MACHINE.

Thanks for reading, and have a good day.

Note:

I've seen some ppl comment that werewolves are weaker because they level faster. True, but:
If you finally get that 5-4 gen vampire you can put it to sleep and claim it's powers, then you get around 22 damage soak, making you practicly indestrucable to everything (except that darn sun) Plus, you're able to infect other colonists giving them 1 rank lower than your main Vlad with around 16 damage soak which still is insanely strong. Combine that with the insta heal and you have an army of super units. Or, you can have a bunch of doggos that can... take a hit
Last edited by Sea's; 10 Jan, 2020 @ 1:54pm
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The Former 14 Feb, 2020 @ 10:50pm 
While somewhat true... Well, this is technically true of the source material as well. The main reason older vampires feared werewolves in that setting is because their bite is one of the few things that can deal lasting damage to them, and I'm not certain if that mechanic has carried over to the mods.

I'd argue they both have their strengths and weaknesses. Vampires are amazing, without a doubt, but can't expose themselves to natural light. Unless you HEAVILY dampen the sunlight in your run, this significantly hampers their ability to help out during raids. It relies on a raid happening at night, or you luring all the raiders inside which is dangerous itself.

Werewolves, on the other hand, can lend a mighty claw literally any time, subject to a brief period of rest after raging. Werewolves SHOULD naturally heal at an accelerated rate, too, but the author either deemed that too OP, didn't have a way to code it, or put it in and I've been blind to it.

As far as the full moon... You can disable this. :D Every werewolf, once blooded, can choose to disable moon fury temporarily. (This doesn't account for the first change, of course. You're on your own there.)

So yes, in short, it's a lot like the source material: Vampires are arguably stronger and more versatile, but they're vulnerable during the day to compensate. Additionally, the author didn't include Gifts, which give werewolves a great deal of versatility in Werewolf: The Apocalpyse, so there's that. Also, technically speaking, you're not supposed to see very many vampires above Gen 7, so assuming the mod sticks to that (I haven't tested extensively), that also creates a sort of balancing effect.

Note: Werewolves are also superb hunters! A werewolf in Lupus is going to hunt far more efficiently than anyone else in your colony, and can do so at any time of day.
Last edited by The Former; 14 Feb, 2020 @ 10:51pm
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