[kovarex] [0.15.30] Exploitable Achievement Conditions

[AnnanWaters]

It is possible to earn combat-related achievements without dealing with natives. My understanding is that this was one of several achievements that was disabled for peaceful mode. Since all the restricted achievements were tied to launching the rocket, it previously was not possible to win the game without enemy bases, but the change in research requirements lifted this restriction. I earned 'Raining Bullets' after launching my rocket on a no enemy base map.

You can verify this by checking the achievement list in-game on a profile that has not earned the restricted achievements: There is No Spoon, No Time for Chit-Chat, Raining Bullets, and Solaris all indicate they cannot be earned with a red impossible notice on peaceful mode but are displayed normally in a game with enemy bases set to none.

I have not attached a log-file or savegame since the bug can be reproduced by checking the achievement menu at game start.

[kovarex]

Thanks for the report.

I changed for 0.16.3, so that lower than normal settings on enemy bases will disallow these achievements too.

[Bilka]

Lower than normal? So anything below default? That seems inconsistent with all the other achievements. Maybe only disable it for the none size, otherwise you should also disable the iron achievement if the iron generation is better etc.

[kovarex]

Lower than normal? So anything below default? That seems inconsistent with all the other achievements. Maybe only disable it for the none size, otherwise you should also disable the iron achievement if the iron generation is better etc.

Well, it is kind of a different story. Producing a lot of iron with richer resources just means it was easier to find the mines, but finishing on very low biters without laser turrets is just much more simple.

[Bilka]

Well, it is kind of a different story. Producing a lot of iron with richer resources just means it was easier to find the mines, but finishing on very low biters without laser turrets is just much more simple.

It's both easier. What's the difference there exactly? All other achievements you can make easier with map gen settings, why not be able to make the alien ones easier by turning down aliens? Being unable to turn the off makes sense, but being unable to make it easier doesn't.

[BenSeidel]

IMO:
It's more to do with the nature of the "easy".
More iron -> 1 or 2 less mines need to be created.
Less biters -> Because the late game spitters out-range turrets you will end up having to run around yourself killing & fixing the breaches (this is a massive time sink). Less biters means that you can effectively reduce this chance to zero compared to something that takes up much more of your time on normal settings. It also disables turret creep to deal with large worms, although a tank & gun turrets does help there, but again: that is a much more time consuming process.

Koverex: Does this also apply to changing the pollution settings? If you disable pollution then the major time & resource sink caused by the biter attacks is gone.
I think that you could also find more "exploits", so why not just disable achievements for any modification to the game settings? Play on default settings for an achievement run? Simple, elegant & will stop these sorts of "it's easier if you do...." issues.