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WhiskyTangoFox
WhiskyTangoFox

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Changes Coming to LitR

The past month has been brutal. I seen a HUGE uptick in LitR players, which has meant a huge uptick in the amount of time it takes me to run official support on the list. Most mornings I wake up to 200+ new messages in the discord. This was coupled with two major updates that required recompiling in order to get the list installable at the same time as we had a huge surge in interest. And this was at a time while I was travelling for work, and working on a major overhaul of the backend of the list. A huge shout out to everyone who's been helping with support, especially Smithkt and Lokii. Without you guys I there's no way I'd still be modding. And a huge thank you to all of you who've decided to throw money at me for making a free modlist for an almost 10 year old game. Your support enabled me to pick up a steam deck, and with an 18 month old daughter running around and a long commute on a train, that's the only way I've had any time to actually playtest the list (or anything else) since she was born. Literally.

Which brings me to the changes I need to make. As is probably aparent from the compile problem on the latest few releases, maintaining 3 profiles adds a lot of extra work, and leads to bugs. It leads to user confusion, requiring extra support. It's a decision I have come to regret, and so starting with the next major release (whenever that is) I will be discontinuing the Settle and LunarPlus profiles. Why Settle when it's probably the most popular profile? Because SS2 problems make up a decent sized chunk of our support requests, but because it's a huge, sprawling, sometimes confusing project that is basically it's own game at this point, but I've never played past chapter 1 and therefore don't understand it anymore. And most importantly, because it's not the profile I am playing, on the extremely rare occasion I do sit down and play the list. So going forward, the Wander profile will become "Life in the Ruins".

The profiles, as they currently exist, will ALWAYS be free and available to download, in their current state. This is the compile for v5.4.3.1. It will always be here for users who want it, and if any more compilation problems crop up, I'll fix them and update it before moving on.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KriXV5kPvWGhUclu0Slk-bFgf06AdB9w/view

I'm also (very) open to the possibility of someone else picking up Settle or LunarPlus and maintaining it as their own seperate fork of LitR (kind of like Phoenix Flavour and Slidikins Strenuous over in Skyrim). On the off chance that there's anyone crazy enough to want to do that, feel free to reach out in discord chat (just ping me in the discord first if you want to DM me, I don't accept random friend requests without knowing why).

And thanks again to all the Patrons for your continued support. Especially with the current ambiguity around modlists and DP over on the nexus (I support the changes they're making - it's a broken, abusable system that desperately needs fixing in order to build the kind of platform that Nexus should to be- but after the month I've had running support for the list their timing, as always, really sucks), knowing that you guys enjoy my work enough to provide financial support for it is hugely motivating. Thank you.

Edit - this will also involve making improvements to the configurability of wander. Things like the workshop crafting changes will be optional for people who want the vanilla workshop experience. I know not everyone likes them, and making it configurable is actually very easy, I've just been swamped with everything else and haven't had time to focus on improving things like that. And having only one profile to focus on should give me the extra time to do things like that.

Comments

The Wander profile is the only one I play these days, no objection from me there. I really enjoy picking a direction and seeing what happens. SS was novel but the scope is almost out of hand now. I expect the best way to experience SS is as an expansion for vanilla. It makes sense to me that the best direction for the mod list is to cut out settlements altogether.

BitLoop

I have a vague goal that if no-one wants to pick up settle, to at least give a good base for people who want to add ss2 back in. I don't want what I've learned with using ss2 here to be lost. It's not even that difficult to do so for yourself. It's the publishing and support that's the headache.

WhiskyTangoFox

It's a real shame settle has to go. However understandable due to the utter headache its causing you to maintain was is basically 3 lists. Not to mention provide modified support for those lists on the discord server, basically making this nearly 6 lists we have to give Q&A/Troubleshooting on. Settle/SS2 was the original reason i pledged so long (i don't even know at this point i think it's scraping 3 years). I'm hoping something good comes of the Wander being the new main list, but i just don't see what can be done to make the settlement building to be toggle on/off without it feeling completely out of place for people who want to do settlement building (I'm one of those weird people who like settlements). The other thing here is how less the script engine has to work with the removal of SS2. I'd like to see some more encounter content in place of if we're giving up raids on settlements from SS2 and such. Not sure if that's your vision and I know you don't like taking suggestions on that front. But I feel like something along the lines of SKK Random encounters. I'm very much still torn. I've yet to play wander but its really never been my niche of play-style and as stated the start SS2 was what sold me on the list.

Lokii

Agreed on all fronts! Even as someone who has enjoyed playing SS2 only through LitR, I think it's all the other parts of LitR that are much more important and enjoyable. And the troubleshooting burden SS2 adds definitely isn't worth it. And thank you for the detailed explanation! Glad to hear you're prioritizing your sanity.

Tyler Pullen

I absolutely think this is the right move. I know it will be an unpopular decision at first, but SS2 has become too big. I think the Anomaly list just recently did the same thing. I am not sure how many actually played the Lunar profile anyway. I have an unfinished 5.2.3 play through that I stopped because the HQ stuff in SS2 was too much of a chore. I think if I really want to play through SS2, I would be much better off with a vanilla play through with SS2 and a few qol mods thrown in.

Kevin Smith


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