My main issue with the game balance still remains the factories; it's still very hard to get scrap sometimes, and building new factories seems A: Very, very expensive, and B:, it seems like it takes quite some time before a factory you build has paid back it's own cost, and thus actually becomes profitable. Perhaps it's meant to be more of a late-game thing when you have huge areas of the map uncovered? Getting enough scrap seems to still be very dependant on happening to find abandoned towns at times when the boss is not anywhere near them (and having enough guys to stand on enough factories at once).
Yea, the map starts with a
ton of factories in the abandoned town areas. I've done dozens of maps in various stages of playtesting and I don't think I've ever had trouble finding an abandoned town segment that I was able to exploit for several turns (enough to build up a sufficient scrap stockpile). But apparently the RNG waits until I'm not looking and gives you guys the short end
At this stage the only truly important thing scrap does is let you convert ice-age-buildings and ocean-shallows-buildings into covered farms. That's basically it. It also allows you to build clinics and housing/fortifications but those are pretty minor (I want to rebalance clinics and power again so that clinics are more important). The fact that you can build more factories is something of an emergency fallback. And you're right that the "return on investment" is pretty dubious right now due to the numbers.
Backing up a bit, the core chain of the strategy game is:
1) If all your NPCs die, you lose the game.
2) If your NPCs face high danger levels, they tend to die fast.
3) If your morale is low, your NPC danger levels will get high.
4) If you run out of food, morale will drop like a stone.
5) If you have scrap, you can build more farms rather than just relying on scavenging and grasslands farms.
There are other things: scrap can directly influence point 2 through clinics and fortifications, and your NPCs are needed to get through impasse lines and can help save you turns (and thus monster-escalation) by mass-purify. But basically it's just that Population<-Morale<-Food<-Scrap thing.
There's one other thing I'm noticing: Is it just me, or has the overall danger level dropped REALLY dramatically? For the survivors, I mean, not the player. It could just be my map, but I've got tiles directly adjacent to wall tiles that have like, 2% danger.
It's probably due to the recent rule change that high morale reduces danger level. Low morale increases it (to rapidly fatal levels if it gets really low).
And yea, there's a ton of small housing around, perhaps too much considering that fortifications are now a thing.
One thing though, I wonder if it might be a good idea to buff the summoned beasts a little? Without the wound system in place, these guys seem super easy to deal with, as (so far) they seem to do only 1 or 2 damage when they meet a survivor. Unless they get stronger later maybe?
Later on the overlord gets to summon stronger ones and/or more of them. You'd probably pay attention if he dropped 15 wall crocs on your head. But we've been kind of conservative on his magic power to avoid just roflstomping folks, so it may benefit from some buffing.
Just checking: which strategic difficulty are you playing on?
