Kosmic Kerman

Thanks for clarifying this Roland. I am going to miss rebar. I always viewed building in rebar as part of the progression system. I always found early bases tedious with the wood->cobblestone->concrete upgrade pipeline. I greatly appreciated the ability to build in rebar (especially since rebar as a metal material block could hold more weight). You could lay out an entire base and not have to worry too much about SI. Depending on the weight characteristics of the new frames we may have to upgrade as we go since the A19 wood frames have SI limitations that rebar does not. I also appreciated rebar frames because breaking misplaced blocks is one of my least favorite activities in 7dtd. I will reserve judgment, however, to see how tedious it is to layout a base with the new frames and replace with full blocks in A20. It's a shame that it was deemed not possible (or desirable) to have both starter building frames (particle board) and advanced building frames (rebar).

Going to repeat an earlier question that I don't believe was answered. Are rebar frames gone in A20? If so, I am not a fan of this change. One of the advantages of rebar frames is not having to go through the full upgrade cycle of wood (or flagstone)->cobblestone,->concrete-> steel. It also eliminates the wet concrete and reinforced concrete stages (which may no longer exist). In mid to late game I really don't want to have to deal with the wood->cobble->concrete->steel pipeline and just want to build in concrete. I would rather just focus on pumping out as much concrete as I can and not have to worry about crafting cobblestone rocks.

While anything is possible, I wouldn't get your hopes up. This has not been the direction of the game in multiple alphas. There's plenty of grindier games out there though.

And those people will whine and cry no matter what TFP does so why worry about them? Fataal has mentioned multiple changes he has been working on. There should be a 19.2 and possibly a 19.3. When those will release is a totally different issue.

I'm sure you've seen this but Fataal responded to your question in the A19 Dev thread. The bottom line is that the Devs will balance Zombie/Bandit AI when everything is in the game. My read is that people who are hoping for a return to A16 zombies are engaged in wishful thinking and are likely to be disappointed if they don't readjust their expectations.

I'm just waiting for him to grace us with his take on the purchase.

Seems unnecessary to me as well but some fights aren't worth fighting.

Variance. I found two pistols (Q1) in toilets the first two days. I also recently just received a DB shotgun around Day 5-6. I don't know if finding the pistol in toilets is intentional. The game isn't forcing a playstyle it simply reduced the availability of better gear early game. You can play however you want. If you want to nerdpole to the top of the roof on Day 1 you can. It just won't be super rewarding. In terms of A19E, why not just play the game and see how it feels. Once it goes stable, you can always mod it to your heart's content. It seems pretty inevitable that someone will create a modlet to alter the loot balance.

The stages for loot tiers are in the patch notes: Tech 0 (GS 1-11) – Primitive tools, weapons and armor including a bow and the blunderbuss. Tech 1 (GS 12) – Iron or similar melee items and armor and and the first proper firearms like a pistol or double barrel shotgun. Tech 2 (GS 50) – The best melee items, bows and armor and mid range firearms like a pump-action shotgun. Tech 3 (GS 91) – The most advanced firearms like an M60 or the Sniper Rifle. I think one of the advantages of the new system is that it disincentivizes cheesing the loot rooms of the larger POIs in the first week since there's no point. You are better off just going through the quest progression and the smaller POIs. If you want to min/max by not opening crates you can but that doesn't sound fun to me. I'd rather open the loot chests and start accumulating ammo, armor, and mods.

In the dev thread multiple people were posting problems and in most cases they had not removed mods and/or had not started a new map. I would wipe the saves folder and generated worlds folder, delete all mods, and verify the cache through steam or reinstall. I have generated two RWG maps and have not had any trouble finding the trader on both maps.