1.4 content update in testing with cross-expansion integration

Posted November 12th, 2022 by Tia Young

New precepts, gene modding and inheritance changes, player-made xenotypes in the world, polux seeds, and more

Hi everyone – Ty here.

So behind the daily bug fixes, we’ve been working on a 1.4 content update with more substantial improvements and more stuff to play with.

This content update comes with cross-expansion integration between Biotech and Ideology, improvements to gene modding and gene inheritance, changes to pollution management strategies, and extra polish for various gameplay elements and UI.

It’s nearly done and is now up for testing on Steam’s unstable beta branch. Everyone’s invited to test it, and we’d love it if you could share any bugs or issues you find on the official RimWorld Development Discord!

To get access to the unstable branch, go to your Steam library, right-click RimWorld and select “Properties”, then select the BETAS tab and choose branch unstable. Restart Steam if your game does not automatically update.

It should be compatible with all savegames and (generally) with mods. But being the unstable branch, there will still be bugs and missing pieces (which is of course why we’re testing it).

Everything in the update is listed in the changelog at the bottom of this post, but let’s take a look at some key elements.

Cross-expansion integration

We’ve been following feedback across the community (Reddit, Steam comments, Twitch, YouTube, and our insightful testers on Discord) to try to make sure all the details are covered. It’s a very complex game at this point, so there are quite a few details – having feedback from tens of thousands of people is frankly invaluable from a design perspective.

One theme that’s come up is the desire for integration between expansion packs. Originally, I was a bit hesitant to put this in because I worried it would feel like locking one expansion’s content behind another expansion. However feedback seems to indicate that people want it, and narrative-wise, it would make a ton of sense if the ideoligions from the Ideology expansion had beliefs about xenohumans, sanguophages, children, and so on. So I decided to work on this.

I’ve found over the years that the wrong way to design Ideology precepts is to just think of something that seems fictionally reasonable and implement it blindly. You end up with mechanics that “make sense” but aren’t actually storyful or fun. Instead, we decided to take a “goal experience” approach to the design: We wrote down a list of the specific play paths and role-play stories that players might want to explore, and which would also be fun. Then we created precepts that specifically open up those play paths:

Belief issue – Bloodfeeders: The vampire lord with human worshipers is a classic idea. So are the vampire hunters. This precept changes peoples’ attitudes towards people with the bloodfeeder gene (which in Biotech means only sanguophages, though you can of course create your own bloodfeeder xenotypes).

Those who revere bloodfeeders will want them around, love them, and be fine with being fed upon. Those who revile bloodfeeders will hate having them around, despise them, love killing them, refuse to become them, and hate themselves if they are one. Bring on Dracula’s thralls.

Belief issue – Child labor: We always had the idea of players being able to choose to invest more or less in children – to decide between using them as workers or fighters, or trying to strengthen their development with a rich and free childhood. Now ideoligions can have opinions on how this ought to be done.

Those who encourage child labor will have children who work faster and not like assigning children to recreation. Those who disapprove of child labor will have children who learn faster, but adults won’t be happy if children are assigned to work.

Belief issue – Mechanoid labor: Machine worshippers need to be able to live off the labor of their electrically-powered buddies. When an ideoligion has mechanoid labor enhanced, mechanoids controlled by its mechanitors will work faster, but colonists will work slower (because why should a human have to do a machine’s job?)

Belief issue – Growth vats: Ideology has technology worshippers and technology haters, and they need to be able to interact with growth vats as well as biosculpter pods.

Those who see growth vats as essential will grow quicker in the vats, but be unhappy with (yuck) natural reproduction. Luddites who see growth vats as prohibited refuse to build them and will be unhappy having them around, and especially having kids inside.

Belief issue – Preferred xenotypes: Whether it’s a baseliner purity cult or a fur-only yttakin tribe, some beliefs may place a certain xenotypes over others. An ideoligion can have up to three preferred xenotypes. If there are no preferred xenotypes, there is no effect, just like in older versions. However, if any xenotypes are preferred, believers will be happier with a colony of their preferred xenotypes and have a higher opinion of them, but a lower opinion of others. They’ll also try to refuse becoming a non-preferred xenotype and be quite bothered if they end up as one.

More generally, we linked xenogene implantation to the existing body-modding precepts, so those who love or hate body mods will appropriately love or hate having xenogenes as well (note this doesn’t affect germline genes, so you can still have e.g. a body purist impid ideology).

Those with beliefs about autonomous weapons will extend those beliefs to the use of mechanoids as well.

Other notable features

Xenotypes breed true: Previously, there were sometimes broken-looking cases where parents with germline genes would have a child that lacked many of them. We removed some metabolism limits for baby gene generation and made the algorithm that generates baby genes from parent genes more flexible. This means that your gene-modded humans will pass down their genes completely and reliably.

Loosening the economy around gene-modding: Previously, making custom xenotypes during game setup worked well, but it was quite hard to actually do genetic modification during the game. Getting your hands on the genes and building all the infrastructure was quite costly and sometimes hard to justify from a game advantage perspective.

We’ve tuned some systems to make gene-modding more viable. Now, quest rewards come with a lot more genepack options and they’re available earlier in the game. We’ve reduced the xenogerm shock from extracting genepacks which will speed up your extraction efforts. We’ve also changed how certain genes apply traits so that you can stack effects together and create more diverse xenotypes. This is an ongoing tuning effort and we’ll be watching and dialing in the numbers to try to make gene-modding useful, moderately costly, and narratively-interesting.

Polux tree seeds: These new special seeds can be acquired in a few special ways. They’re rare to find, but with them you can plant a polux tree at a place of your choosing. Collecting polux trees is a new alternative way to suppress and remove pollution (besides the atomizer) in the late game (after it builds up in the early/midgame).

Pollution dumping diplomatic responses: There are a variety of ways to deal with pollution – freeze it, erase it in the atomizer, let polux trees neutralize it, just make less of it – or export it. We’ve added more depth and sensibility to diplomatic responses from other factions when you dump pollution off-map. Whether you’re dropping pods of pollution straight onto their homes, or dumping them off of a caravan, or launching toxic packs into the ocean, other factions will notice and respond more consistently and interestingly. At the most basic level, this means goodwill impacts. However, there is also a small chance of new faction retaliation in response to you dumping pollution in the world – they might send punitive attacks, or even drop some pollution back onto you. Together with the polux tree seeds, we hope that this will balance the choice between different pollution management methods and make that decision more interesting, while also de-emphasizing micromanagement-heavy strategies. It also adds a bit of narrative flair to have other factions respond directly to your actions.

Player-made xenotypes spawn in the world: Player-made xenotypes will now spawn in the world! Your customized pig/cat/dog hybrid no longer needs to be alone. Basically, in various random spawn situations like crash pod survivors or refugees, there is now a chance that the arriving person will spawn as any xenotype in the world. That includes modded xenotypes, as well as xenotypes created by the player. (Note: Not every player-created xenotype file is considered – only those if the xenotype is referred to in an ideoligion or the player used it for a starting colonist).

And the changelog below lists a pile of other smaller changes and fixes – go read it!

Here’s hoping that the unstable branch isn’t too unstable and we can release it to everyone pretty soon. We’ll be testing for mod compatibility and watching for gameplay feedback. Everyone’s invited to test and I’m very thankful for all feedback we can get. If you’re like to help out, please join the RimWorld official development discord.

Please join the discussion on Reddit as well.

The creative story continues – We’ve learned a ton from feedback so far and I hope we can learn more going forward. And don’t hesitate to leave a review on Biotech!

Thanks all,

Ty

Unstable build changelog

Note: Some items may not be fully functioning in the unstable test, but below is the target changelog for the full release.
Recent patches to the unstable build:
– Unstable build update 1.4.3548

Big new stuff

Added precepts related to bloodfeeders:

  • Revered: “Bloodfeeders should be worshipped.” Positive mood effects for having bloodfeeders in the colony. Negative thoughts from bloodfeeder deaths. Positive opinion towards bloodfeeders. Not bothered by being fed on.
  • Reviled: “Anyone who drinks blood to survive is a monster.” Negative mood effects for having bloodfeeders in the colony. Positive thoughts from bloodfeeder deaths. Negative opinion towards bloodfeeders. Will not absorb or implant bloodfeeder genes from xenogerms.

 

Added Ideology precepts related to child labor:

  • Encouraged: “Children build character through work. It’s important for everyone to contribute.” +20% child global work speed. Negative mood offset for adults while a child has recreation assigned.
  • Disapproved: “Childhood is sacred. We should let kids play like kids.” +20% child learn rate factor. Negative mood offset for adults while a child has work assigned.

 

Added mechanoid labor Ideology precept:

  • Enhanced: “Why should we work when we have machines?” +20% mechanoid work speed. -8% colonist work speed.

Added Ideology precepts related to growth vats:

  • Essential: “We have the technology for safer childbirth and faster childhoods.” 30% quicker growth speed in growth vats. Negative mood when naturally pregnant or with a child outside of a growth vat.
  • Prohibited: “Growth vats rob children of their childhood.” Unable to build growth vats. Negative mood when growth vats are in the colony or children are in growth vats.

 

Added a new category of precept: Preferred xenotypes.

  • Up to 3 can be chosen at any time. This includes player-created xenotypes. When chosen, believers will be happy to be and be around preferred xenotypes. Believers will be unhappy when they or others are of other xenotypes. Believers will not accept becoming a non-preferred xenotype via reimplant ability or xenogerms. Single-xenotype NPC factions have a chance to generate with this belief about themselves.

 

Other:

  • Xenogenes count as artificial enhancements for body modders/prosthophobes.
  • Autonomous weapons include colony-controlled mechanoids for precepts.

Smaller new stuff

  • Added child tribalwear.
  • Added an auto load toggle for genepacks. When off, the genepack will not be taken to a gene bank.
  • Added an option for selecting “no trait” on growth letters some of the time if there are more than two trait choices.
  • Added a UI button for absorbing xenogerms of appropriate targets, to help players understand that this option exists.
  • Added social thoughts for giving a lesson to a child and the child receiving a lesson.
  • If a child is unarmed and hasn’t participated in combat at all, raiders will treat them similarly to harmless livestock. This means the raiders will deprioritize them as targets and not hunt them down. It makes unexpected combat more survivable for kids, opens up those “porkchop hiding in the shed” stories and might create some rimworldy strategies.
  • Melee raiders now ignore non-combatants that aren’t in LOS when choosing new targets (previously only ranged-attack raiders did).
  • Factionless pawns can spawn with any defined xenotype including those from mods and those which are player-created. Player-created xenotypes must be referred to in an ideoligion, or used as a player starting colonist, to spawn.
  • Added more varieties of yttakin pawn kinds. This means more variety of yttakin raiders and traders.
  • Display recipe ingredient counts on recipe float menu option tooltip.
  • Gases can travel through vents.

Miscellaneous

  • Reduced the power needed for the wastepack atomizer to 400 W.
  • Reduced the work needed for the extract hemogen operation to 500 (from 1500).
  • Adjusted bandwidth costs for scorcher to 1 and lancer to 3.
  • Increased the health of the mechanitor’s remote shielder ability to 75/150/225.
  • For the purposes of precepts, autonomous weapons include colony-controlled mechanoids.
  • Increased the availability of gene packs from various traders.
  • Increased frequency of genepacks in quest rewards.
  • Xenogenes count as artificial enhancements for body modders/prosthophobes.
  • Increase the apocriton’s health, armor, and damage
  • Apocriton can now cast resurrect without line of sight. This should make him less cheesable in narrow hallway contexts and a bit more scary overall.
  • Yttakin factions no longer get desired apparel precepts, because they’re uncomfortable in all clothes.
  • Buffed furry tail minimum comfy temperature offset to -10 (from -5).
  • We now allow the kind trait to apply in addition to other violence-related genes.
  • Cribs no longer require any research, so tribal colonies can use them in the early game.
  • We now display market value on colony mechs’ inspect pane.
  • Pawn apparel generation takes into account min and max temperature stats per individual pawn rather than per xenotype. This means that yttakin will be less likely to spawn with parkas (they generally don’t need them) and so will look cooler.
  • When a bloodfeeder feeds on a person, the hemogen they gain is now related to how much blood was left in the target. This solves some logical incoherencies, and an exploit that involved keeping a deathless blood-farm and bloodfeeding on them over and over.
  • Reduced the impact and duration of gene loss shock from the gene extractor.
  • As people grow up, their aging rate now smooth scales from child age rate to adult age rate over several years. This prevents the problem of having a lot of 13-year-olds in the colony after raising children.
  • Renamed “child raiders” storyteller setting to “child enemies” to be more accurate.
  • If child enemies are disabled in the storyteller settings, refugees with children will not betray and attack (because that makes children your enemy). We reduced the chance of children spawning in refugee hospitality quests to mitigate balance impact of this.
  • Allow modifying the “child aging rate” and “babies are healthy” storyteller settings even if children are disabled, in case there are already children in the game.
  • Display recipe ingredient counts on recipe float menu option tooltip.
  • Added a “(disliked food)” parenthetical warning on the right-click menu when telling colonists to feed themselves or a patient a food that the eater would dislike. This helps players predict what will happen.
  • A caregiver feeding a patient will now feed them ideologically-venerated food sources if there are no non-venerated food sources.
  • Improved formatting of the research project content source line in the research UI.
  • When a deathless pawn takes damage that would have been lethal and falls into a deathrest coma instead, as an additional consequence they lose 3-6% of XP in a random skill. This should make non-death less trivial for these characters and preserve the sense of risk and danger. We’ll tuned this ongoing as needed.
  • Super-mechanoids cannot be called when there is already another super-mechanoid on the way.
  • Player is given the choice to set mechs to escort when a mechanitor leaves a map.
  • Hemogen UI gizmo no longer displays when multi-selecting pawns, to reduce clutter.
  • Ability UI buttons can now shrink like psycasts if there are too many, to avoid covering the screen.
  • Update the wording of the stillbirth letter to be a bit clearer about the choice of naming the baby, and allow the player to decide not to name the baby.
  • Fathers now get a negative thought if their child is stillborn.
  • If a baby is stillborn from a surrogate mother, the gene-mother gets a negative thought.
  • Updated the apocriton’s description to note that it has a jump launcher.
  • If player sends a pregnant colonist on a “pawn lending” quest in a shuttle, and she gives birth during the quest, the baby will be returned with her instead of being kept by the questgiver.
  • Psychic bond now gives a small amount of psychic sensitivity so that it makes more sense, and as an interesting extra bonus.
  • Psychic bonds can now be created during lovin’ instead of just on romance attempts. This means that two people who were in a relationship when the gene was implanted can now form a psychic bond after one gets the psychic bonding gene.
  • Psychic lances can’t be used on mech bosses (because they trivialize the fight).
  • Added a thing category for mechanitor body parts (used on stockpile config etc.)
  • Updated textures for all super-mechanoid chips to look more appropriately ultratech than archotech.
  • Added a toggle for the glower color picker to disable the darklight-related UI elements for modders that want to re-use the dialog for other things.
  • Pawns away on a PawnLend quest won’t have their lactating condition expire if there are any babies with them that can feed.
  • Show birth letter for babies born from lent colonists in a PawnLend quest.
  • Babies born during a pawn lend quest: If a baby is stillborn they are sent to the colony immediately for burial.
  • Display conditional stat affecters from ideoligions in stats page.
  • Optimization: Improved performance of AnyMechsInPlayerFaction and CompOverseerSubject.
  • Add dev tool to add ideology development points.
  • In the ‘Completed scan’ message sent when subcore scan is cancelled, changed ‘cancel load’ to ‘cancel scan’.
  • Subcore scanners: Added confirmation dialog when cancelling a scan that can kill the occupant.
  • Added description to “force xenogerm implantation” command.
  • Shuffle inherited genes before adding them. Added a debug tool to spawn a baby given two parents.
  • Bringing babies to a safe temperature jobs can now be interrupted.
  • Kid tribalwear no longer lists skin layer twice.
  • Added an alert which displays deathresting pawns who can be safely woken.
  • Gene extractors will cancel extraction and eject the victim if they are without power for a cumulative 24 hours.
  • Update the lactating hediff’s description to mention that it reduces fertility.
  • Lactating no longer prevents pregnancy but just applies a 5% fertility factor to the pawn.
  • Update the fertility stat to read back any hediffs that are modifying fertility.
  • Mood related genes no longer force traits. They apply a separate mood offset.
  • Learning genes offset global learning factor of a pawn instead of forcing traits.
  • Beauty-related genes offset pawn beauty directly instead of forcing traits.
  • Speed-related genes offset pawn speed directly instead of forcing speed traits.
  • Added a toggle to the hemogen gizmo which allows configuration of whether or not a pawn can ingest hemogen packs to desired hemogen level.

Fixes

  • Fix: Tribal children who grow up in a colony don’t get the ‘natural’ meditation focus type.
  • Fix: Lamps unconnected to a power grid do not properly have reduced power consumption once advanced lights is researched until you reload.
  • Fix: Ripscanning doesn’t kill pawns if colonist instant death in difficulty settings is 0%.
  • Fix: Pilgrims coming to venerate a relic cause charity believers to get unhappy regardless of outcome.
  • Fix: Unwaveringly loyal inspect pane text not appearing for slaves.
  • Fix: Kills with body part weapons like knee spike and power claw don’t satisfy kill satiety.
  • Fix: Custom xenotypes show up with relationships that make no genetic sense.
  • Fix: Hair color genes have a chance to not be passed on.
  • Fix: NullReferenceException when beginning role change in extreme temperatures.
  • Fix: Xenotype icon selection scrollview not working correctly.
  • Fix: Some broken word replacement in the grammar code run on labelNounPretty.
  • Fix: Gaining growth points with letter pending.
  • Fix: Grand altar draws rotated.
  • Fix: Bloodfeed can be used on pawns in mental states.
  • Fix: Wastepack cocoon infestation storyteller setting appearing in the wrong spot.
  • Fix: Apocriton appears in mech clusters.
  • Fix: Destroyed pawns can cause issues with deathrest building inspect strings.
  • Fix: Genes requiring other genes can be skipped for child genes generation.
  • Fix: Atomizer looks like it’s rotated wrong by default.
  • Fix: Pawns ignore allow zones when hauling to transport pods.
  • Fix: HypothermiaRevealed tale displays death by cold even if the subject did not die from hypothermia.
  • Fix: ‘No colonists can do this surgery’ message appears even when there is a colony paramedic mech.
  • Fix: Farskipping a pawn into a range of an expired proximity sensor will trigger it again.
  • Fix: You can start as a psychically deaf mechanitor.
  • Fix: Second funeral is offered if corpse is destroyed after burial.
  • Don’t maintain labor progress bar effecters if the pawn is not on the map anymore.
  • Don’t maintain effecters for non-suspended world pawns.
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Recent patches for 1.4

Posted November 11th, 2022 by Tia Young

Bug fixes, improvements, and Discord

Hello, I’m back with the details of our last couple of patches for 1.4 and Biotech. Also, our 1.4 midterm patch is just around the corner!

You can view our previous patch note updates here:

If you’re experiencing any issues with 1.4, Biotech, or something else – let us know in the Official RimWorld Development Discord and we’ll look into it. 🙂 We’re always collecting feedback, thank you for helping us.

See you soon!
– Tia

1.4.3541, released Nov 7, 2022

– Don’t add genepacks to gene assembler dialog that are empty.
– Disallow baby food and hemogen packs for chemfuel creation recipes.
– Extracting hemogen no longer requires medicine and does not anesthetize the target.
– Adjusted power info text for deathrest buildings.
– Don’t allow pawns in the gene extractor if they don’t have any engineered genes.
– Fix: Paramedic mechs can’t carry pawns while jumping.
– Fix: Softcore scanner tooltip formating.
– Fix: Sites where the only player pawns are mechs inside drop pods will auto-remove.
– Fix: When the mechanoid faction is disabled, mech bosses will not attack pawns.
– Fix: Victims of bloodfeeder bites can gain hemogen from the interaction.
– Fix: Mech debris can spawn on the anima tree.
– Fix: Emancipated slaves that are drafted stay drafted.
– Fix: “No doctor” warning not appearing properly.
– Fix: Empty genepacks can be extracted.
– Fix: Fertilize command label is broken.
– Fix: Consume hemogen packs toggle tooltip displays hemogen in % form.
– Fix: Overactive temperature warning for baby moving.
– Fix: A colony mech that is abandoned at a tile will still consume bandwidth.

1.4.3542, released Nov 8, 2022

– Updated name-in-game content.
– Fix: Quest lodgers can do the “give up and exit” mental break.
– Fix: Missing ideology check when drawing dietary type stat.
– Fix: Certainty bar doesn’t display for games where Ideology has been enabled after the game was started.
– Fix: Coagulate can still be queued if hemogen is below casting cost.
– Fix: Can destroy wastepacks on temp tiles to avoid relationship penalty loss.
– Fix: Destroyed pawns can cause issues with deathrest building inspect strings.
– Fix: Mechs summoned from mech drop beacons don’t spawn in mech pods.
– Fix: Dialog_MessageBox doesn’t call Event.current.Use() in OnCancelKeyPressed() and OnAcceptKeyPressed().
– Fix: Unable to properly translate boss group apparel wave descriptions.

 

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Currency conversion rates updating soon

Posted November 11th, 2022 by Tia Young

Rates moving closer to Steam’s recommendations

Hi everyone. Valve has recently released their new recommended currency conversions for Steam games and many game studios are beginning to implement these.

We are planning to follow Valve’s recommendations and update some of our non-USD price conversions. (Note that none of our base USD prices will change – this is only about updating currency conversion rates.)

In most cases our prices will remain lower than what Valve recommends. The major currencies will generally see increases of 2-10% – this includes Euros, Chinese yuan, British pounds, Canadian dollars, Australian dollars, Japanese yen, and Korean won. Biotech will change less than other products, since its prices are already more up-to-date.

Some currencies stand out since Valve is recommending larger changes. In Brazilian reals, Steam recommends 101.99 BRL for RimWorld; we are planning 79.99 BRL. In Polish zloty, Steam recommends 161.99 PLN; we are planning 149.99 PLN. In Russian rubles, Valve now recommends 1200 RUB; we’re planning on a price under 800 RUB. In Chinese yuan, Valve recommends 128 RMB; we are planning for 114 RMB.

The biggest changes will be in currencies which are currently selling at 90% off compared to the direct exchange rate. Unfortunately these huge price deltas have led to a large amount of cross-region arbitrage fraud. It is so extreme that the overwhelming majority of purchases in these regions are fraudulent. From our metrics it seems clear that we lose far more to fraud in these currencies than we gain in legitimate sales. This has been an issue across the industry which is why many games have already adjusted prices in these currencies, including Valve games, Dead Cells, Deep Rock Galactic, Factorio, Rust, Grounded, DayZ, Mount & Blade II, Euro Truck Simulator, etc.

Price updates will occur on November 17. You can of course buy RimWorld and its expansions at their current prices until then.

The world has changed a lot since we last set our prices back in 2018. While we’re not going as far as Valve and others already have, we do need our prices to make sense for the world as it is today. I appreciate your understanding and will be listening carefully to the conversation on this.

In other news, on top of the ongoing 1.4 refinement updates, we’ve got a chunky mid-term 1.4 update on the way with a variety of new cross-expansion integration content. We’ve been absorbing feedback voraciously and knocking down issues and concerns one by one. I’m looking forward to telling you more about that – hopefully next week.

-Ty

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Multiple updates for 1.4 and Biotech

Posted November 3rd, 2022 by Tia Young

Improvements and more bug fixes

Hi everyone!

We’ve been pushing updates with hotfixes and improvements for 1.4 and Biotech over the last week. We tweaked fixes to make them more mod-friendly and have been collaborating with modders to make updates more seamless for everyone. I’ve added a cumulative changelog below for your enjoyment that covers aaaall of those updates.

Here are some highlights:

  • Mechanoids: Labor mechanoids have more work types, are more accessible, and tunnelers have more armor. Fabricors now know how to butcher and cook, and they’ll be serving up hot meals for your colonists in no time. You can also leave body disposal to your lifters who can work the crematorium themselves. Cleansweeper mechanoids are available through “basic mechtech” research instead of “standard mechtech”, and tunneler mechanoids are beefier to help with melee combat.
  • Genes: The time required to extract genes and regrow genes was reduced – your mad scientist efforts should be a lot faster. Temperature genes were also adjusted to be more impactful, for example, heat tolerance was increased, but so was heat weakness.
  • Royalty: Wearing mechlord armor from Biotech satisfies the Royalty royal title requirement. (King of fashion and robots.)
  • Miscellaneous: We added more clarification and feedback to certain menus and alerts for things like xenogerms, buildings that summon mechanoid bosses, and subcore scanners. Lots of various fixes as well.

Have you found a bug or issue? Please report it on the RimWorld Official Development Discord. We really appreciate all the reports and we’re constantly checking our forums, Discord, and Reddit for issues that pop up. Thanks to everyone who has helped us squash those bugs! 🪲💚

Want your colony featured on the Ludeon Studios Twitter? Tweet us a screenshot @ludeonstudios!

– Tia

1.4.3527, released Oct 24, 2022

– Updated tutorial end message to point players to the correct place for changing storyteller settings.
– Flamebow now triggers “pyromaniac has incendiary weapon” thought.
– Growth moment flavor text no longer appears when a baby becomes a child.
– Ensure severityPerDay doesn’t become 0 between save/load cycles.
– Tox gas research requires machining instead of electricity.
– Reduced mechanitor ship combat points by half.
– Remove the option to close the birth letter if the player has not yet named the baby and it’s the last tick available to do so.
– Babies born outside the player faction are given a real name instead of just “Baby”. Players may still change the name if they adopt the NPC baby within a day of their birth.
– Add a new icon texture for the circle which shows the current color on the copy/paste/change color widget icons.
– Fix: Using reimplant ability doesn’t give the recipient the correct xenotype icon for custom xenotypes.
– Fix: Embryo implant float menu options missing pawn icon.
– Fix: AbilityOnCooldown key missing Resolve() call.
– Fix: If a downed enemy is teleported using farskip they will be drafted upon entering the destination map despite being downed.
– Fix: Never sleep xenohumans still rest when caravanning alone.
– Fix: Scenario text cut off if tiny text is disabled.
– Fix: Genetic metabolism doesn’t actually affect hunger rate.
– Fix: Double slab bed is not next to single slab bed in the architect menu.
– Fix: Abandoning colony pawns text doesn’t mention mechs.
– Fix: Control Sublink (high) can take up the lower 3 sublink levels preventing use of the normal sublinks.
– Fix: Can train shooting and melee on colony mechanoids.
– Fix: Abandoning a colony with mechs in it and making new a base will cause a mech control group error and show mechs are still active.
– Fix: Non-grouped control groups have their label pluralized.
– Fix: Hostile pawns try to path to destroyed structures.

1.4.3528, released Oct 25, 2022

– “My child is happy” and related thoughts can now trigger if a pawn is being carried.
– Fix: Charity-believing pawns will get negative thought from “rejecting” refugees when the quest hasn’t even been accepted yet.
– Fix: Letting a pawn die on the world map with wastepacks will not pollute terrain.
– Fix: Eye cut out graphics are misaligned.
– Fix: Ancient exostrider remains are failing to generate in swamp maps.
– Fix: Diabolus has two ‘first’ body rings.
– Fix: Mechs not entering transport pods.
– Fix: Lifters can try to haul themselves to a transport pod.
– Fix: Bossgroup drop pods don’t use mechanoid drop pods.
– Fix: Mech gestator draw size.
– Fix: Mech charger exceeding 100% full of waste if partially emptied.
– Fix: Do a better job of displaying hulk body types in the pawn portrait in the rename UI.
– Fix: Psychic drone now properly triggers for colonists being carried.
– Fix: Held babies/children will now have thoughts about how their parents are happy.
– Fix: NRE when right clicking on prisoner being carried.
– Fix: Mod requirements wrapping instead of truncating
– Fix: Save modlist saving the filtered mod list.

1.4.3529, released Oct 26, 2022

– Added missing fill percent for gene and mech buildings.
– Update go to bed float menu option if pawn is waiting for surgery and no doctors can do it.
– Fix: Comms console float menu options error.
– Fix exploit: Unwaveringly loyal can be bypassed by enslaving prisoners.
– Fix exploit: Capture>Enslave>Imprison>Release recruits pawns immediately.
– Fix: Some Biotech buildings can have unreachable fires in the center cell.
– Fix: Clicking drums without Royalty installed produces a missing Royalty message.
– Fix: Some mechs cannot load into a shuttle.
– Fix: Highmates can create bonds with quest visitors and vice versa.
– Fix: Error if clicking a mech booster blueprint.
– Fix: Hemogen extraction can get “stuck” on.
– Fix: Babies can carry items in caravans.
– Fix: Deathrest buildings use hemogen when not in use.
– Fix: Some randomly chosen genes not overridden properly.
– Fix: Growth tier gizmo displays incorrect percent value on bar.
– Fix: Giving a pawn xeno and germline hemogenic genes results in two hemogen gizmos.

1.4.3530, released Oct 27, 2022

– “Genes regrowing” hediff from gene extraction lasts 12-20 days. (Down from 25)
– Gene extractor takes 12 hours to extract genes. (Down from 24)
– Remove addictions when adding chemical dependency genes.
– Added a toggle to the hemogen gizmo which allows configuration of whether or not a pawn can ingest hemogen packs to satisfy the desired hemogen level.
– Reduce growth points of generated children by ~25%.
– Fertility stat is no longer capped at 100%.
– Deathrest buildings only drain hemogen while in use. A fully loaded deathrest building supplies 10 days of deathrest.
– Don’t display pick up options for drugs that the pawn will drop immediately anyways.
– Re-cache CachedTextures on ResetStaticData() calls.
– Minor adjustments to pigskin and impid pawn kinds. Force them to use faction xenotype set.
– Babies that have fallen asleep in someone’s arms no longer immediately wake up.
– Fix: With toxic fallout active, inspecting items from trade ships causes errors.
– Fix: Children gain growth points in cryptosleep.
– Fix: Errors if bossgroups are called with the mechanoid faction disabled.
– Fix: Comms console diabolus threat cannot be called by mechanitors if mech faction is disabled.
– Fix: Paramedic not counted as doctor in solo mechanitor run.
– Fix: Archonexus quest allows taking mechanoid weapons with you to a new colony.
– Fix: Psychically bonded pawns in the same caravan still get “psychic bond distance” mood malus in some circumstances.
– Fix: Removing passion-adding genes doesn’t revert the effect.
– Fix: Update steel tile description to match them having 0 beauty.

1.4.3531, released Oct 28, 2022

– Increase the tunneler’s armor stats.
– Allow children to wear shield belts.
– Increase the radius of the pollution pump by 1 so it can reach the edge of the map.
– Increase the effect of the temperature genes.
– Clarify that the implanted genes’ ability overwrites the target’s xenogenes in the tooltip.
– Update the comms console spawned message to give more info on mech bosses.
– Slightly reduce damage and increase ranged cooldown for militor’s mini-shotgun.
– Signal chips reduced to 0 flammability given how much fire the diabolus makes.
– Increased EMP resistance for mech bosses.
– Children can now do basic work at age 3.
– Added alert for incoming bossgroup.
– Adjust prevalence of nicknames among pigskins.
– Add null check to StyleForThingDef.
– Updated player name-in-game content.
– Fix: Some hemogenic abilities can be queued without enough hemogen.
– Fix: AI sanguophages can use longjump without any remaining hemogen.
– Fix: Atomizer is backwards by default.
– Fix: War urchins are not newborn when created by a war queen.
– Fix: Pawns won’t haul wastepacks to an atomizer unless there’s 10 wastepacks on the map.
– Fix: Bossgroup mechs do not attack if mechanoid faction is disabled.

1.4.3534, released Oct 31, 2022

– Mechlord armor satisfies royal title requirements.
– Added more allowed work types to lifter and fabricor mechs.
– Cleansweepers are now ‘basic’ mechs.
– Reduced volume and frequency of yttakin sounds.
– Added more feedback to subcore scanners.
– Added ‘humans only’ option for bills.
– Ensure GeneDefs don’t have null icons on incorrect iconPath.
– Fix: Working combat mechs will attack berserk colonists.
– Fix: Forced lowercase in prisoner tab.
– Fix: Abandoning home doesn’t unlink deathrest buildings.
– Fix: Deathrest buildings not unlinked on starting new colony for archonexus quest.
– Fix: Melanin genes can be extracted by gene extractor.
– Fix: Cannot build some things without ideoligions active (with Ideology installed)
– Fix: Diabolus’ fire burst shoots fuel through the walls.
– Fix: Deathrest bonuses are not removed if deathrest gene is removed.
– Fix: Mechanitor buildings are considered “natural” by natural meditation sources.
– Fix: Error on drafting pawn with hemogenic ability gene with no hemogen gene.
– Fix: Pawns will continue to create a xenogerm until they pass out.
– Fix: Yttakin settlements can have mortars manned by animals.
– Fix: Thrall reinforcements can be passive in certain circumstances.
– Fix: Same pawn listed twice as owner of bedroom if they have a deathrest casket and bed in the same room.
– Fix: Genes can be given to children who do not have prerequisite gene.
– Fix: Unwaveringly loyal sanguophages will offer to join your colony after the quest.
– Fix: Ranged enemies come into melee range consistently when shooting positions are available.
– Fix: Spacedrone hack quest can spawn a spacedrone with an interaction spot in an inaccessible spot.

1.4.3535, released Nov 1, 2022

– Adjusted gene set generation. The first gene added to a set is not restricted by metabolism limits.
– Potential fix for mod-created meat defs with no source causing errors on hemogenic pawns consuming it.
– Fix: Food poisoning chance is 100% for fabricors.
– Fix: Pawn capacities are still affected by overridden genes.
– Fix: Pawns get thoughts from overridden genes.
– Fix: Exception viewing info card of things in orbital trader inventory with noxious haze active.
– Fix: Lactation hediff explanation displays after gene factors on stats page.
– Fix: ‘Any mech’ bill config not copied when copying and pasting bills.
– Fix: Mechs sometimes not getting into transporters.
– Fix: Rain rate displays as deterioration reason even with a roof above.

1.4.3536, released Nov 2, 2022

– Potential fix: Modded terrain randomly has far more value than it should.
– Fix: Players can bypass metabolism limit of implanting xenogerms by implanting via surgery bill menu.
– Fix: Firefoam poppers can trigger wastepack dissolutions even though no damage is done to them.
– Fix: Fully formed combat mechs in a gestator have 10% energy fall per day.
– Fix: Mechs with human makeable weapons spawn with varying quality.
– Fix: Gestating mechs can be drafted from the mech table.

1.4.3537, released Nov 3, 2022

– Remove “Flesh purity” meme from waster pirate ideo choices.
– Send a message to the player if a pawn is taking a baby to a safe place.
– Mechs can be multi-selected from the mechanitor’s control group gizmo by shift-clicking.
– Added some missing [MustTranslate] and [NoTranslate] attributes to FactionDef.
– Send a message notifying when a subscore softscan has completed.
– Display “deathrest connection limit” and “deathrest effectiveness” stats for non-built deathrest buildings.
– “Fertilize” float menu option displays whose ovum it is.
– Reduced “got some lovin'” thought stacked effect multiplier from 0.75 -> 0.6.
– Updated player name-in-game content.
– Fix: Typo in “kind instict” gene description.
– Fix: Wind turbine auto-cut toggle not working.
– Fix: Multiple deathrest gizmos from having both inactive germline and active xenogene deathrest genes.
– Fix: Genes losing pawn references after death->save->load->resurrect.
– Fix: Players can create xenogerms missing prerequisite genes.
– Fix: Drafted colony mechs remain drafted after their mechanitor develops a mental state.

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Update 1.4.3525 hotfixes some issues

Posted October 22nd, 2022 by Tia Young

Fixes for various minor bugs

Hey all,

Response to the Biotech release has been amazing! Just here to let you know that we’ve put out two hotfix updates so far. Change logs are below.

We’re watching and gathering issue reports across forums, Discord, and reddit and will continue to fix critical issues as they’re discovered. Less-critical things will be left for slower updates later – it’s important to stick to essentials for hotfixes, because it’s easy to break one thing while fixing another and maintaining stability is our top priority now.

If you’re willing to help report or investigate issues, please join the RimWorld Official Development Discord server. Thanks to all those who took the time to report issues.

Cheers,
-Ty

1.4.3524, released Oct 21, 2022

– Fix: Mods list not dirtied before sorting on reset.
– Fix: Breach raids not spawning.
– Fix: Children getting adult body types from genes.
– Fix: Kid Romper has no alpha channel. This can cause it to render as a pink square.

1.4.3525, released Oct 22, 2022

– Potential fix for black screen when loading a game with multiple mods.
– Disable growth moment letter for quest lodgers.
– Fix: Temporary work restrictions affect growth moment passion choices.
– Fix: Errors preventing mechs from acting in very niche circumstances.
– Fix: Gene assembler artwork has incorrect import settings.
– Added some mech gestation null checks for safety.
– Fix: Clicking on the “carry pawn” checkbox in caravan screen opens health card.
– Fix: Bandolier and sash have incorrect unfinished thing.
– Fix: Shelves cause non-haulable things in the same cell to not affect beauty.
– Fix: Attempting to absorb a xenogerm of your own colonist displays a warning message saying you’ll anger your faction.
– Ignore package id suffix when checking for mod requirements

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Biotech expansion and update 1.4 available now!

Posted October 21st, 2022 by Tia Young

The RimWorld – Biotech expansion is out! This large-size expansion revolves around babies and child-raising, genetic modification, and the ability to control mechanoids.

Get it now on the Biotech Steam page!

To celebrate the release, RimWorld and the Royalty expansion are 10% off.

Here’s the trailer:

RimWorld update 1.4 is also released! We described the 1.4 changes in detail in this announcement. Or you can read the changelog here.

Compatibility:
  • Unmodded savegames from 1.3 will load in 1.4.
  • Many mods have already been updated by wonderful modders during the 1.4 preview over the last few weeks. However, some are not yet updated and won’t work on 1.4.
  • If you want to keep playing version 1.3, please use Steam beta branch “version-1.3-latest”.
    To do this, r-click RimWorld in the Steam library, go to properties, open the betas tab, and select the version from the dropdown.

For rich details on Biotech’s features and a discussion of why we decided to make it, you can read the preview posts below:

If you want to get chatty, you can discuss this post on Reddit.

If you’re up or bug reporting, please join the Ludeon official development Discord server.

Huge thanks to all our developers, volunteer testers, support team members, and all the modders, translators, artists, and all the players in the community. I thank all of you very much, it’s been a journey so far and I hope to keep sharing it with all of you.

Best,
Ty

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Biotech preview #4: Xenotypes, world factions, and the dark blood-drinkers

Posted October 18th, 2022 by Tia Young

Meet the new factions and existing xenotypes, as well as a blood-drinking cult of immortals

Update: RimWorld – Biotech is now available!

It’s Tynan here, bringing you our final Biotech preview covering the xenohumans who inhabit the world, their factions, and the mysterious blood-drinking sanguophages, and Biotech’s price and release day.

Just a reminder that Biotech releases this week on Friday, October 21, 2022! Wishlist it now to get a reminder when it’s out!

Read the previous previews posts for Biotech:

Version 1.4 is on testing now, on the “unstable” beta branch on Steam; modders can (and hopefully will) use this to update their mods to work on 1.4 before it drops. Note that RimWorld has support for multi-version mods which work on several game versions at once; there is no need to break 1.3 support (modders see here for full info).

If you intend to stay on version 1.3 after Friday (for mod compatibility or for any other reason), please switch your Steam beta branch to “version-1.3”. Now, let’s talk about Biotech’s new xenohumans!

Xenohumans in the world

As you’ve seen before, Biotech lets you create your own kinds of xenohumans by mixing and matching from over 200 different genes. But this isn’t just a player tool – xenohumans are part of the universe of RimWorld. Whereas RimWorld’s base game has all human factions, with Biotech, you’ll interact with a variety of xenohumans and their new factions.

We designed the xenohuman types to emerge naturally from RimWorld’s fictional universe, play distinctly from each other, and enrich the game as foes, prisoners, gene farms, allies, and colonists.

Embedding xenohumans into the world helps the game in a lot of ways. It lets players experience the new gene-linked abilities both as player tools and as enemy threats. NPC xenohumans are a way for you to access many genes by capturing a foe and placing them in a gene extractor. Seeing other xenohumans helps show the player the kinds of things that are possible with their own genetic experiments. Also, the xenohuman types work as a scaffolding for more content, like the sanguophages’ special secret quests (more on that later).

Fundamentally, xenohumans make the human world more diverse. Factions feel more different when they have different combat abilities and physical characteristics. The recruits you get from different places will have more exotic abilities. Characters are more distinct from each other in gameplay mechanics and style. Handling a group of frenzied fire-breathers launching burning arrows is different from stopping the wolf escorts sent by furry yttakin riflemen. Fighting neanderthals is a slugfest; fighting wasters is a chokehold; fighting impids is a flame war.

Writing the name generators for each xenotype culture was also a ton of fun.

Let’s look at the xenotypes in Biotech:

Pigskins

Pigskins are human-pig hybrids which are capable of two-legged movement, tool use, and speech, but which also retain many pig-like qualities. They are hardy and can eat almost anything without getting sick, but their trotter-shaped hands leave them at a disadvantage when attempting to precisely manipulate tools and objects. They don’t see well at a distance, so pigskin gangs usually focus on close-range weapons. They also have a strong taste for explosives.

Pigskins were made for their organs. Uncomfortable with the idea of harvesting organs from baseliner humans, a long-gone government merged human DNA into pigs to make the animals produce more easily-transplantable hearts and livers. They succeeded, but the resulting creatures became more humanlike than anyone anticipated.

The pigskins’ faction is the rough pig union, a loose union of hardy pigskin townships. They’re willing to make friends, even with thinsnouts, but they’re also ready to toss a bomb and gnaw human gristle when it suits them. Treat them with respect and they’ll offer a trotter to an ally in need. Turn against them and the last thing you hear might be a triumphant battle squeal.

Impids

Made for desert life, impid cultures live on many rimworlds and dry deathworlds. Impids are extremely fast-moving, easily tolerate high temperatures, and can spew fire from their mouths. Though they are masters on the sand, impids struggle in other environments. They are terrible with farming. They fight well at range, but in close combat their physical weakness becomes apparent.

Outlanders call them dustrunners because of their speed over open terrain and resistance to heat. Some tribes call them devils because of their horns and because they burn their enemies.

The savage impid tribe has no intention of coexisting peacefully with anyone else. Their warriors are experts at using their natural speed and flame attacks to burn the towns and children of other peoples. Impid tribes’ combat tactics usually center on rapid-approach incendiary attacks using both handheld fire weapons and their fire spew ability.

Having been on the planet for thousands of years, the origins of this tribe are lost in myth. They might descend from a group of settlers who lost their technology, or an impid community in some long-ruined civilization.

Yttakin

Yttakin (pronounced roughly as ee-ta-keen) descend from colonists engineered to thrive on ultra-cold planets. Their great size and fur make them hardy in frozen environments. Yttakin share a psychic connection with the wildlife and can summon animals to their side during battles. They are not fast or energetic or precise, but can keep going when others would have collapsed long before.

Since they migrated off their icy birthworld of Yttak, Yttakin settlements live on many planets. Their fur, roaring voices, and aversion to urban living sometimes leads naive outsiders to believe they are simple-minded animals. Quick-minded Yttakin are happy to make good use of such wrong beliefs, whether at the negotiating table or on the battlefield.

The faction of yttakin pirates choose to be isolated, and they refuse to deal with outsiders. They’re quick to call animal warriors against anyone who threatens or disrespects them. Underestimating their wild animal companions would be a mistake. However, a captured and recruited yttakin can be a strong ally.

Neanderthals

Neanderthals are stocky, powerfully-built humanoids. Their most salient characteristic is that they are difficult to hurt: they are very resistant to injury, and their strong immune systems protect them from infection. However, without ever having evolved in a complex civilization, they are less adept than baseliner humans at intellectual and social tasks, and their impulsiveness can make them dangerously aggressive.

Homo neanderthalensis was originally an archaic population of hominids that emerged over 200,000 years ago during the Pleistocene epoch. After they were replaced by and merged with humans 30,000 years ago, they were absent for tens of thousands of years until scientists resurrected them from ancient DNA. Neanderthals now survive in sub-societies on some settled planets. On the rimworlds, neanderthal tribes carve out the same existence as their Earth ancestors did so long ago.

The fierce neanderthal tribe lives in the deep wilderness. They are open to peaceful trade, but are otherwise unfriendly and territorial. Warriors from their tribe won’t hesitate to bash in the skulls of anyone they deem dangerous. Their numbers, and the extreme amounts of damage they absorb before falling make them serious foes despite their lack of technology and analytical ability.

Having been on this planet for countless generations, they have no memory of how they got here. They might be the descendants of a neanderthal service caste from a dead civilization, or even the leftovers from some ancient science experiment.

Dirtmoles

 

With gray skin adapted to artificial light, dirtmoles thrive in cramped and dark spaces where combat and travel happen over short distances. They are extremely capable at digging or mining tasks. In the open, however, they suffer from a sensitivity to light, slow speed and poor eyesight at distance.

After the first tunnel colonies failed due to the stress of confinement, colonization agencies began genetically altering colonists to live without open space or sunlight. This xenotype are known colloquially as dirtmoles. Today, dirtmoles have expanded out of their original tunnel homes and rule many confined spaces in the anthrosphere. They can be found in deep mines, cramped low-tech spacecraft, and teeming by the billions in the dark underlayers of countless urbworlds.

Genies

Designed to be engineers, genies’ delicate bones and natural aptitude with machines allow them to manipulate devices with remarkable precision. They are emotionally cold and can follow orders where others might panic. However, they are fragile, and their amplified nerve impulses make them easy to debilitate with relatively little pain. With so much of their brains dedicated to analyzing machines, they lack the neural hardware to analyze emotions, so they sometimes come off as socially inept. Their dead calm makes it even harder for them to relate to what they see as madly-hotheaded baseliner humans.

Genies were engineered thousands of years ago by a long-disbanded space navy to hold engineering positions on large starships. Today, genies still serve as engineers in great cities and fleets, but many can also be found working as lawyers, pilots, and musicians.

Hussars

Hussars are engineered soldiers. They fight aggressively and with precision, heal fast, thrive in extreme temperatures, and freely ingest military drugs. They have a genetic dependence on the drug go-juice, which also makes them less likely to rebel against their commanders.

While hussars’ emotions make them dangerous in combat, they can’t relate to baseliner humans. They are famous for their blood-red eyes and “hussar stare”, a dead expression that unsettles many people.
Their lack of expression and burning aggressive nature has led to many violent misunderstandings.

In most societies where they live, hussars are kept separated from the rest of the population. Hussars are single-purpose tools – and they generally aren’t bothered by the fact.

Highmates

Empathic and effortlessly beautiful, these designed companions and concubines have the unique ability to psychically bond with a mate. In a certain context, they seem to be perfect – happy, charming, and kind. However, they are also inept at manual tasks, physically weak, and mentally incapable of violence even if their life depends on it.

On a few wealthy worlds, highmate xenogerms are commercially available and some people become highmates as a sort of career. However, many societies find them abhorrent, either because they distract people from forming natural families, or because they are humans shaped to serve the pleasures of another. On such worlds they are either reserved as playthings of the powerful, or banned entirely. This particular line of highmate fits the fashions of classical Novaroma, but many other variants exist.

Wasters

Wasters are gaunt-faced, grey-skinned, aggressive, immune to toxic pollution, almost impervious to disease, and can ingest as much psychite and wake-up drugs as they wish with no ill effects. Their toxin-adapted metabolism means they must consume some form of psychite to survive – usually flake or yayo.

Originally engineered to prevent resettlement of post-apocalyptic deathworlds, wasters are living area-denial weapons. Waster pirates armed with toxic weapons are the bane of many frontier peoples, both on the rimworlds and in the depths of the urbworld hyperstructures.
The faction of waster pirates are a diverse collection of violent xenohumans. They are mostly wasters, with a smattering of hussars, neanderthals, genies, dirtmoles, genies, yttakins, and pigskins. They have little interest in building, or farming, preferring to take their sustenance from others using violence. Their technology level depends mostly on who they’ve managed to steal from recently. Mostly they carry gunpowder weapons, though some prefer to stab victims at close range. They’ll always be a threat.

Sanguophages

Minor spoilers in this section – skip if you want the purest play experience!

Sanguophages pass among other xenotypes undetected while concealing superhuman powers and working to satiate their genetic need for human blood. They are subjects of wild stories and childrens’ nightmares, and their very existence is debated. They do not reveal themselves without good reason.

Powered by archites, unique micro-machines created by archotech superintelligence, sanguophages’ abilities go far beyond normal genetic enhancements. They are mentally adept across domains and preternaturally beautiful. In combat, they can launch deadly spines and heal injured friends. They don’t age or die naturally and never suffer from disease or poison. A sanguophage can make a new sanguophage by reimplanting their own xenogerm into a person.

The price of all this is the endless red thirst. Sanguophages must regularly consume hemogen derived from human blood. Hemogen acts as a sort of fuel for the sanguophages’ powers. They’re easily destroyed by fire, and slowed down by UV light.

Sanguophages must also go into deathrest every now and then, where they enter a dormant state for several days in the darkness to regenerate their powers. This process of deathrest can be enhanced by a variety of technological structures, chief among them is the deathrest casket.

The deathrest casket is an enclosed med-casket that accelerates the process of deathrest. It can connect to other devices which confer additional bonuses on the deathrester. The number of devices that can connect depends on the person’s deathrest capacity, which can be seen by selecting them. The devices to connect are:

  • Hemopump: This blood-refining pump increases the amount of hemogen a deathresting person can store in their body.
  • Hemogen amplifier: This device leaves a deathrester in a hemogen-amplified state so they gain more hemogen from any hemogen source. Using a gland probe and blood analyzer, it links with a deathresting person, stimulating hemogen glands into a more active state.
  • Glucosoid pump: This device allows a deathrester to move faster after deathrest is complete. It pumps the body with extra muscle-signaling factors while cleaning waste products from muscle tissue.
  • Psychofluoid pump: This device enhances the psychic sensitivity of a deathresting person by rhythmically stimulating neural tissues.
  • Deathrest accelerator: This device connects with a deathresting person and makes deathrest complete quicker. It enhances the effect of the deathrest casket using finer blood analysis and more powerful chemicals.

There is a secret faction of sanguophages. Every now and then, you may get an opportunity to perform a service for them by giving protection, secrecy, or salvation. If you succeed, one of them may offer you the dark gift of immortality. Alternatively, if a sanguophage can be disabled and captured, then a new sanguophage can be made against the blood-drinker’s will.

The first sanguophage appeared thousands of years ago when the lord-explorer Varan-Dur sought to control a hyperintelligent archotech and found himself transformed by it instead. Every sanguophage is descended from him. Since then, sanguophages have often been hunted because of their destabilizing power and their need for blood. Since they can pass for baseliners, many live in hiding among typical humans.

Their numbers are unknown. Some think they are legends or rare irrelevancies. Some believe sanguophages secretly direct entire human civilizations. The stories speak of eternal lords ruling billions from slate-black space stations, or directing blood sacrifices at conferences in the underlayers of the deepest urbworlds.

If you want to engineer your own xenotype with sanguophage-like powers, you can find copies of the sanguophages’ special superhuman genes via quests and trade. However, many of them require a unique resource called archites to be reinstalled in a new person. Archites are rare, but can be found via quests, trade, and other special means.It is possible to be a sanguophage and another xenotype at the same time – pigskin sanguophages look pretty great in their dark hooded robes.

You can start the game as a sanguophage with a single human servant, if you want to build your own blood-harvest empire from scratch.

We made sure to design all the character-oriented enhancements so they can be used freely in any combination. We are very much looking forward to the stories of people making their favorite colonist into a royal, a psycaster, a priest, a mechanitor, a unique xenotype, and a sanguophage all at once.

Biotech’s price

Biotech will be priced slightly differently from our previous expansions, at $24.99 USD. (Other territories have different prices on Steam.) We hired a lot of people and took a lot of time (15 months) to make Biotech because that’s what it took to properly explore the ideas that we set out to explore. The feature set got big enough that we seriously discussed splitting this into two expansions, but decided to keep it as one.

Some companies have a “cost first” model where they decide up front to make an expansion in a fixed time/price (e.g. 6 months/$20) and force the creative process to live in those constraints. We take ideas and build them until they feel well-rounded and complete. We believe that different ideas naturally take different amounts of resources to explore, so it must be okay for different expansions to have different prices, for the same reason different games have different prices. Forcing every expansion to have the same price would mean trying to squeeze or stretch every idea into the same amount of production resources, which is not a path to creative flourishing. That’s why our expansions aren’t all priced the same – because they’re different in scope, because that’s what the ideas wanted.

Biotech’s release day!

RimWorld – Biotech and free update 1.4 release this Friday, October 21, 2022.

Please wishlist Biotech on Steam and share the exciting news with your pals. We seriously cannot thank the community enough for all of your passion and support (and the awesome fan art).

Also chat about the discussion of this post on Reddit!

Thanks for joining us on this journey.

– Tynan

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Biotech preview #3: Reproduction, children, genetic modification, & release date

Posted October 15th, 2022 by Tia Young

RimWorld – Biotech releases on October 21, 2022, plus the joys of raising children and genetic engineering

Update: RimWorld – Biotech is now available!

Hi everyone, Jay and Matt here – we’re developers at Ludeon.

We’ve got a release date for you: RimWorld – Biotech is coming out on October 21, 2022. Mark your calendars and wishlist Biotech now!

Today’s preview covers reproduction, children, vatgrowing, and genetic engineering.

You can also check out our previous blog posts below:

Biotech lets you have children and raise a family! Children end up in your life in many ways – colonists could give birth or use a surrogate mother, take in a band of orphans, and even gestate embryos in machines.

Pregnancy can occur through natural means or advanced fertility procedures. You can let your colonists’ relationships develop organically, or play matchmaker with new romance options! Browse your colonists’ romantic interests and encourage them to make a move on a potential sweetheart. (Hopefully they share some kind of chemistry, or someone will be brutally rejected.)

We sped up pregnancy to last only 18 in-game days, given the short-lived nature of many colonies. Take care of mom during this time – pregnant colonists get real big, slow, and hungry. They also struggle with waves of morning sickness and brutal mood swings from the highest highs to the lowest lows.

Prepare for your little one before labor begins. Birth is difficult and dangerous for both the mother and child – you’d be smart to have a good, clean birthing room with supportive family members and a skilled doctor nearby – it could make the difference. Complicated births can be turned off via storyteller setting.

Taking care of babies

A baby’s life is simple: eat, sleep, and play.

Newborns won’t move on their own and rely on adults to feed and protect them. Colonists assigned to “childcare” work will be responsible for all the babysitting!

Keep your baby’s tummy full with lots of good eats. Babies can’t stomach the complex meals adults like, so keep mom nearby for breastfeeding or cook up some mushy gooey baby food. (Adults forced to eat baby food will not like it.) In a pinch, insect jelly and animal milk do a great job of keeping babies full.

Everyone benefits from playtime. Build an adorable nursery brimming with toy chests and baby decorations that help fulfill the little ones’ play need. Adults will play with the youngsters and carry them around the colony. When it’s naptime, babies sleep a lot better in a high-quality crib made from good materials – no splinters please!

Happy babies make for happy colonists. Parents share a special bond with their children, and will be in high spirits when their children are happy (or feel terrible when their kids are unhappy). Keeping babies happy is vital for the short and long term health of your colony. Unhappy babies unleash a powerful sonic-psychic weapon (known as crying) which can reduce the mood of any person within earshot. Likewise, a happy baby’s giggling brightens the day of anyone who hears it. It pays to keep the youngsters and the adults in a good mood!

Raising children

At age three, children will be walking, talking and getting into trouble. We adjusted the speed they grow so that you’ll see the most important life moments in a single game. Those that prefer a more “natural” progression can adjust the speed in the storyteller settings.

Children have a unique “learning” need. Satisfying this need depends on what their current learning desire is – they may want to chat over the radio, explore nature, scribble on the floor, take lessons in class, daydream on the ground, or watch the adults as they work. Fulfilling children’s learning desires contributes to their overall development and improves their chances. While children are generally slower and less skilled than adults, they have a natural optimism and a curiosity for the world around them. Like newborns, when children are happy, it improves the mood of the adult colonists around them. Children will also require clothing tailored just for them. Make sure you’ve got enough child-sized parkas to keep them warm in the winter!

At ages seven, ten, and thirteen, children reach developmental milestones known as “growth moments” where you choose their traits and passions, and unlock new work types for them. Children that spend more time fulfilling their learning needs have a greater variety of advantageous traits to pick from. Balance your children’s work and leisure schedules with care. A rich childhood with lots of attention gives them better chances to be a capable adult, but doesn’t guarantee anything.

Vatgrowing

Technology offers an alternative to long and burdensome human pregnancies: growth vats. Extract and combine genetic material from the parents to create an embryo, and insert it into the machine.

Growth vats accelerate development and sustain the embryo without subjecting a mother to the unpleasantness of pregnancy. In a mere 9 days, embryos develop into babies. You could remove your child at this time – or leave them inside to continue growing.

Children grow significantly faster in the vat than if they were out and about in the world. However, they’ll miss out on childhood and never pursue their learning desires, resulting in poorer choices of traits and passions during growth moments. Whether you keep children floating in growth vats or let them out to experience life depends on your goals.

Growth vats are excellent tools for churning out super-soldier and simple workers, but require large amounts of nutrition. Without an adequate supply of nutrition, individuals in the vats will suffer from bio-starvation.

Genetic modifications

With Biotech, you can create your very own genetically-engineered colonists, known as xenohumans.

To create a xenohuman, you’ll first need genepacks – small capsules containing a handful of genes. Genepacks can be purchased from traders, earned as quest rewards, or extracted from a host using a high-tech gene extractor. The process is not terribly comfortable, but the result is a genepack containing a random assortment of the specimen’s germline genes and xenogenes. Using a gene assembler, you can recombine several genepacks together into an implantable organ called a xenogerm. Once implanted into a human, they will immediately gain the traits associated with the xenogerm’s contained genes.

Don’t want to wait to make xenohumans? When starting a new game, you can select premade xenotypes for your starting colonists – or create your very own! We’ve also added a number of xenohuman factions (but more on that in a later blog post).

Genes

So what do genes do? Well, quite a bit. Let’s preview a few of them:

  • Fire spew: The carrier of this gene gains the ability to spew flammable bile. The bile sticks to anything in a small area and can ignite people, objects, and the ground. (Just make sure to have a firefoam pop pack handy.)
  • Longjump legs: This gene gives the ability to jump long distances, letting melee attackers quickly close distance between them and their foe.
  • Furskin: The body of a carrier is covered in thick fur, providing some insulation and changing the person’s appearance. Furskin is perfect for cold climates.
  • Smooth tail: Carriers of this gene grow a slender tail that can act as a dexterous fifth limb, increasing their manipulation.
  • Strong stomach: Carriers have an extra toxin-filtering organ in their stomach and will never suffer from food poisoning even after eating rotten food.
  • Psychic bonding: People with this gene bond with a single person for life, sharing a psychic bond with them. As long as they remain close to their mate, they will be happy – but if their partner dies, it can be catastrophic to their mental health.
  • Robust: Carriers take less injuries than others from the same damage. This can stack with the ‘tough’ trait to create incredible powerhouses.
  • Never sleep: This gene completely prevents the need for sleep.
  • Ageless: Carriers of this gene do not age biologically. Stay young forever!
  • Great shooting: Greatly increases a person’s aptitude for shooting, effectively increasing their shooting skill by +8.
  • Psychite addict-immune: Carriers are immune to addictions caused by consuming psychite.
  • Deathrest: Carriers of this gene must periodically regenerate themselves in a special coma called deathrest. Deathrest takes days, but can confer substantial bonuses with the right infrastructure. Deathrest can be accelerated and its effects enhanced by the use of a variety of special buildings and technologies.

…and that’s just a small sample from more than 200 genes available in Biotech!

Genes come in two distinct flavors: germline genes and xenogenes. Germline genes are present in every cell of the host’s body and are able to be passed onto children. Examples in a baseline human would include hair and skin color. Xenogenes, on the other hand, are technologically implanted and cannot be passed on.

You’ll need to pick genes carefully. Powerful genes will decrease a person’s metabolic efficiency, making them need more food. On the other hand, genes with drawbacks will increase a person’s metabolic efficiency. Creating a functioning xenotype is a thoughtful balancing act of picking the right strengths and weaknesses. Create a muscular cave dweller who’s afraid of the sun, or a sleepless genius who needs smokeleaf to survive. The possibilities are endless.

The most powerful genes require archite capsules – small containers of microscopic machines produced by superintelligent archotechs. These devices are capable of enabling genes with physical and psychic feats which would otherwise be impossible, from perfect immunity, to super healing, to immortality.

Next time

Remember, Biotech releases on October 21, 2022! Stay tuned for our last blog post and please wishlist Biotech on Steam.

Join the blog post discussion on Reddit here!

– Jay and Matt

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Biotech preview #2: Combat mechanoids, pollution, and super-mechanoid bosses

Posted October 11th, 2022 by Tia Young

Beautiful polluted wastelands, and three super-mechanoids to fight for fun and profit!

Update: RimWorld – Biotech is now available!

Hey everybody! I’m Will, a designer working on RimWorld – Biotech. In our last blog post, we covered how Biotech lets you build mechanoid colonies run by high-tech mechanitor overseers. You can also read the original 1.4 update and Biotech announcement here.

Today, we’ll look at combat mechanoids, commander mechanoids, and pollution! New combat mechanoids open up many avenues for offensive and defensive tactics, and special super-dangerous mechs hold the key to greater power for your mechanitor. Mechanoid production also generates pollution which has its own unique challenges and uses.

Later this week we’ll take a look at reproduction, children, vatgrowing, and genetic modifications.

Check out the other preview blogs:

Mechanoid commanders

Biotech introduces three new commander mechanoids to fight. Defeat these super-deadly enemies and harvest special mechanoid chips from their smoking husks to advance your mechanoid technology. You can provoke super-mechs into attacking your colony by using signaller devices – but be prepared!

Each mechanoid commander drops a different mechanoid chip. The first time you acquire each type of chip, you’ll unlock a new tier of mechanoid research. Mechanoid chips are also used as resources to produce top-tier mechanoids and mechanitor upgrades. With enough chips, you can power up your humble mechanitor into an unstoppable mechlord.

We created the super-mechanoid enemies to add meaningful milestones to mechanoid progression. While research is fine for most advancements, we wanted mechanitors to feel different. Progression is actively earned by overcoming tougher and tougher challenges, instead of research alone. We added tons of new controllable mechanoids, brain implants, buildings, and gear to each tier of mechanoid tech to make progression extra rewarding.

You’ll be able to fight mechanoid commanders at your own speed. Unlike other challenges in RimWorld that scale as your colony grows wealthier, super-mechanoid enemies scale with the number of times you call them. This allows you to tackle them early on to beef up your tech, or wait and carefully prepare your colony for the big fight.

Super-mechanoids come with escort mechs of all other types to add combat power. Commanders bring a new escort every time they are called, and require a different tactical approach for each engagement. We designed them to be as distinct from each other as possible, so each group is a new challenge. From swarming, to sniping, to scorching, super-mechs have a huge range of combat styles.

Let’s look at the super-mechanoid types:

Diabolus: An ultra-heavy mechanoid with a high-energy hellsphere cannon. Made for siege-breaking, its hellsphere cannon takes time to charge up a shot, but can melt concrete and vaporize bone. The diabolus dissipates its waste power through a heat column mounted on its back, allowing it to produce massive fiery explosions as a defensive measure if surrounded at close range. While extremely powerful, the diabolus lacks maneuverability – meaning you’ll need to be fast and agile to defeat it! Keep your colonists moving to outpace its hellsphere cannon, or distract it with cannon fodder.

War queen: A terrifying mechanoid with a built-in mech gestator. The war queen can gestate small war urchin combat mechs inside its massive carapace and deploy them into combat. Given time to build up numbers, a war queen can overwhelm any opponent with dozens of war urchins. The war queen demands respect – failing to destroy it quickly could have devastating consequences as it grows its swarm and overruns your colony.

Apocriton: The mysterious apocriton is an intelligent commander mechanoid and psychic warrior that harbors endless hatred for humanity. Not much is known about it, except that its psychic powers poison the human mind with rage. Its weapon is hatred.

Combat mechanoids

Crush enemies and raiders with your own mechanoid army.

Biotech lets you control hordes of killer mechs, all connected to your mechanitor overseer. Even death won’t stop them – you can resurrect your destroyed mechanoids in gestator tanks.

However, protecting your very mortal mechanitor is crucial. Drafted combat mechanoids need to stay within range of their overseer to receive commands. While mechanoids can work autonomously at any distance, they can only be ordered to move or attack targets that are within their mechanitor’s range. Mechanoids that become severed from their overseer risk defecting to hostile mech hives.

The new combat mechanoids in Biotech include:

Militor: The cannon-fodder of any sizable mechanoid army. These small combat mechanoids are armed with a low-power mini-shotgun. Roughly four feet tall, militors lack the power, range, and toughness of more senior combat mechs. However, they are cheap to gestate and maintain, making them the perfect swarmer.

Scorcher: A close-approach war mechanoid that specializes in incendiary attacks. Its flame burst attack has little reach, but once it closes on defenders, it can ignite and disrupt them with blasts of searing flame. Scorchers quickly turn firefights into “fire” fights. These mechanoids start wildfires with ease and are especially effective against large groups of attackers or those taking shelter in flammable defenses.

Legionary: A combat support mechanoid with a wide-range bullet shield and long-range needle gun. Legionaries are excellent for defending long-range allies. Its shield absorbs incoming projectiles, while allowing colonists and mechanoids to shoot out freely. However, legionaries are weak to melee attackers, and their shield can be quickly broken with an EMP.

Tesseron: A medium-range combat mechanoid with a powerful, sweeping beam graser attack. Their gamma ray laser is powerful enough to ignite its targets and can even pass through shields. This lets tesserons strike multiple foes from a safe distance, and breach shielded enemies. However, tesserons are unable to focus their laser at close range, making them susceptible to fast-moving melee opponents.

Centurion: A nearly unstoppable ultra-heavy mech with a built-in shield bubble generator and point-defense bulb turret capable of firing even while the mechanoid is moving. The centurion acts as a mobile defense platform. Its massive shield is one of the strongest among mechanoids, providing large numbers of allies with strong defense while allowing them to shoot outwards.

In addition to the new mechanoids, you’ll be able to control the classic mechanoid types – pikemen, scythers, centipedes, and lancers. With the right technology, you can even create your own super-mechanoids like the diabolus and war queen!

We had two main goals with combat mechanoids. First, we wanted to create more diversity in combat. Colonists are only human, which puts limitations on how diverse they can be in battle, whereas mechanoids can have very exotic movement types, abilities, weapons, and tools. From swarms of cheap, disposable gunners to slow-moving, tanky tunnelers and shield-projecting defenders, mechanoids bring a ton of variety to the battlefield and allow for many creative tactics.

Second, we didn’t want to entirely remove the human element from combat. Some of the most interesting RimWorld stories come from defending your colony – or attacking another! By requiring mechanitors to fight alongside their mechanoids, we preserve the human element – and the tension – of facing down hostile mechs, pirates raids, and manhunter packs.

Mechanoid colors and names

Style your mechanoids with dozens of different colors to give them a personalized look, and distinguish them from enemy units. And yes – you can rename your mechanoids.

Mechanitor upgrades

By unlocking more powerful mechanoid technology, you’ll gain access to a wide variety of mechanitor upgrades, from neural implants to special mechanitor armor.

Here’s an overview of the mechanitor implants you’ll have access to in Biotech:

  • Control sublink: These neural implants expand a mechanitor’s processing power, giving them additional control groups and increasing the work speed of labor mechs.
  • Remote repairer: A mechlink upgrade that allows a mechanitor to repair mechanoids at a distance. The user links with the mechanoid and psychically guides the self-repair mechanites. It’s great for long-distance mid-combat repairs.
  • Remote shielder: An implant that allows a mechanitor to project a shield onto a friendly mechanoid. Use this during critical moments to save your mechanoid!
  • Mech gestation processor: This implant connects the mechanitor directly to their gestator tanks and increases the speed of mechanoid production or resurrection.
  • Repair probe: The more mechanoids, the more repairs! Repair probe implants substantially increase the repair speed of a mechanitor.

Most mechanitor implants can be installed multiple times. There’s a ton of room for progression to make an extremely powerful mechanitor. However, all power comes at a cost. High-level mechanitor upgrades can only be made using high-tech chips obtained from defeating super-mechanoids.

In addition to implants, mechanitors have a wide variety of specialized gear:

  • Mechanitor headsets: These head-mounted comms computers increase the number of mechanoids that your mechanitor can control.
  • Mechanitor packs: Control packs and bandwidth packs allow mechanitors additional flexibility, granting more control groups, or more bandwidth.
  • Mechcommander and mechlord armor: The ultimate in mechanitor gear! This power-assisted armor dramatically amplifies a mechanitor’s bandwidth.

The basics of pollution

Mechanoids make for powerful allies, but they come with a unique cost – pollution.

Creating and recharging mechanoids creates toxic wastepacks. Unless frozen, these packs of toxic waste will eventually deteriorate and pollute nearby terrain. Even worse, if they’re burned or damaged, they’ll pop like a balloon and release deadly tox gas. Storing them close by may be convenient, but be careful!

Mechanoids aren’t the only source of pollution. Toxifier generators provide a steady supply of power but directly pollute the terrain around them. These generators are perfect for mechanoid colonies that need plenty of cheap power… so long as you don’t mind some toxic buildup. While a small amount of pollution is manageable, it can quickly get out of hand if you’re not careful.

While mechanoids are immune to pollution, your colonists aren’t (depending on their genes, of course). Pollution makes living things sick. It poisons colonists and animals, causing them to slowly gain toxic buildup. Anyone who’s encountered toxic fallout in the base game will be familiar with the deadly effects of toxic poisoning. High levels of toxic buildup can cause vomiting, dementia, carcinomas, and ultimately death. Additionally, normal crops and animals can’t survive on polluted terrain. The more polluted your colony becomes, the more it will attract toxin-adapted plants and animals. From the twisted witchwood tree to the gas-filled toxalope, pollution will slowly corrupt the land and animals around you.

Pollution also affects the planet at a larger scale. The more polluted an area, the more it affects the surrounding world. High levels of nearby pollution can cause acidic smog to roll in that’ll make your colonists’ eyes water. Acidic smog blocks the sun and slows plant growth, and the vaporized chemicals corrode exposed items. When starting a new game, you can adjust the world’s pollution level. Turn it off for a relaxing game, or turn it up for some extra challenge.

Managing pollution

There’s no shortage of tools to deal with (or even embrace) pollution. Wearing anti-pollution gear, like face masks and gas masks, reduces your colonists’ exposure to pollutants. Transplanting artificial detoxifier organs makes your colonists immune to pollution’s toxic effects. There’s even pollution-related genetic modifications – but we’ll discuss those in a later post.

Order colonists to manually clean up polluted terrain and they’ll package it back into toxic wastepacks. However, the safer option is to use automated pollution pumps to keep vulnerable colonists away from the pollution.

Now, what to do with the heaping piles of wastepacks?

  • Freeze them. Frozen wastepacks won’t dissolve, but they take up a lot of space.
  • Export them. Use caravans or transport pods to dump your wastepacks on the world map. For extra fun, you can even leave them as a gift in your enemies’ bases. People may not love you doing this.
  • Polux them. Heavily polluted maps will eventually sprout special polux trees. These trees slowly purify polluted terrain around them. Their delicate root network prevents them from being replanted.
  • Atomize them. High-tech wastepack atomizers let you completely neutralize the threat of toxic wastepacks. The process is somewhat slow – and quite expensive.
  • …or ignore them! Polluting the land does have some benefits. Polluted terrain can grow new crops, like the fast-growing toxipotato. (Just don’t eat it raw.) Pollution can also attract new animal variants, like toxalopes and waste rats.

Pollution and insects

Giant insects love pollution. Originally engineered as anti-mechanoid bioweapons, these insects are stimulated by the toxic fumes of polluted terrain, making them faster and deadlier.

When conditions are inhospitable, insects form stasis cocoons and burrow underground. These cocoons keep insects safe from fire, extreme temperatures, and other threats for decades. Many planets are littered with these cocoons, lying just below the surface. The scent of a dissolving wastepack can trigger the cocoons to resurface in a dormant state, until they’re disturbed… causing a mass eruption of insects.

Cocoon infestations are threatening, but have their uses. They can be intentionally triggered to farm insect meat or be set up defensively in strategic locations. (Stop raiders in their tracks with a horde of angry insects!) You can also avoid cocoons altogether with strict wastepack management.

Tox gas

Tox gas is a deadly chemical irritant. It burns the lungs and eyes, causing temporary shortness of breath and reduced sight. Chronic exposure to tox gas results in toxic buildup, and eventually death. It can be created by burning toxic wastepacks, or weaponized with a new research project. Tox gas weapons include tox grenades, toxbomb launchers, tox mortar shells, tox IEDs, and wearable tox packs.

Tox gas adds a lot of interesting combat tactics. Tox gas clouds can greatly diminish the effectiveness of ranged attackers. After all, it’s hard to shoot a gun if you can’t see or breathe. Additionally, attackers that are exposed to tox gas for long enough will eventually be downed from toxic buildup. You’ll also need to learn how to defend against tox gas (it’s the signature weapon of one of our new factions – more on that later!) Wear gas masks or be smart about your colonists’ movement to negate the effects of tox gas.

More on the way

Stay tuned! We have more Biotech details coming soon. In the meantime, wishlist Biotech on Steam!

Have something to say? Join the discussion on Reddit!

– Will

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Biotech preview #1: Mechanitor infrastructure and labor mechs

Posted October 8th, 2022 by Tia Young

Mechanoid control in a human-centered way, with big power and big challenges

Update: RimWorld – Biotech is now available!

Hey all – Tynan here. This is the first of our Biotech preview blog posts, where we lay out the features of the Biotech expansion, and the thought behind them, in more detail. You can look forward to more posts on the way. (If you missed the Biotech announcement, you probably want to start there. You can wishlist RimWorld – Biotech here.)

Today’s preview post covers mechanitor core concepts, mechanoid infrastructure, and labor mechanoids. The next post is in a few days, and will cover combat mechanoids, enemy super-mechanoids, and other mechanitor-related features, and there will be many more after that.

Check out the other blog posts:

The mechanitor

A mechlink is a new implant that allows a person to form a direct mental link to mechanoids and control them via electromagnetic signals and psychic influence. Someone who has a mechlink is called a mechanitor.

Mechanoids aren’t controlled independently, but through a human – this design intentionally keeps the mechanoid systems focused on a human being, which is critical to building an emotional story.

Mechanoids can perform in both work and combat. Some mechanoids are workers that will politely harvest crops or haul items as long as their little power cells are charged. Some can work or fight, crushing rock and bone with equal ease. Finally, there are a wide array of pure combat mechanoids with very diverse abilities. Incendiary beam weapons, movable projectile shields, long-range charge lances, blade-covered scythers, flame-spitters and more can be deployed in many combinations to defeat any threat via interlocking tactics.

There are a few ways to become a mechanitor, and all involve looting technology from an ancient dead mechanitor. If you can dig a datacore out of an ancient ruined super-mechanoid, you can use it to call an ancient mechanitor’s ship to land at your colony and harvest the mechlink from his body. Alternatively, you might be able to learn about an ancient mechanitor’s command complex, go there, penetrate inside through the security systems and grab the mechlink from him. You can also start the game with the new mechanitor scenario, where you begin the game as a solitary mechanitor with a mechanoid buddy.

It’s possible to do a single-person mechanitor run, where one mad scientist type lives alone in a grand base surrounded by walking, semi-thinking machines. Making this possible was a design goal from day one, because exotic play paths are so fun to explore. However, we expect mechanitors to most often live more normally among other colonists, commanding mechanoids to work and fight alongside human allies. If you really want to scale up, it is possible to collect multiple mechlinks and turn several colonists into mechanitors, though this takes a long time.

All our game mechanics interact freely. It’s possible for your mechanitor to also be a high noble with the Royalty expansion, a religious prophet with the Ideology expansion, and a deathless blood-drinker with this Biotech expansion, because why not?

Mechanitors start out with the ability to command just a few small mechs. Over time, they can grow a grand swarm. They do this by gaining more bandwidth and control groups:

  • Bandwidth determines how many mechs a mechanitor can gestate and control at once. A mechanitor who loses bandwidth will temporarily disconnect from some of their mechanoids. If a mech is left disconnected for too long, it may reconnect with the wild mech hive and leave – or attack.
  • Control groups are groups of mechs who can be controlled as a unit. A mechanitor with more control groups can send mechanoids to do more separate tasks at the same time. A more advanced mechanitor can have combat mechs patrolling a colony, labor mechs toiling in the field, and bodyguard mechs escorting them around, all at the same time.

Mechanoid challenges

A basic game design principle is to push things as far as they can go without breaking the game – that means make tools more powerful, enemies more dangerous, changes more overwhelming than seems safe at first. The idea is to ensure you’re exploring the full range of experience that’s possible in your game systems.

So we wanted mechanoids to be very powerful in order to create more extreme situations and distinct playstyles. The more impact they have, the more they can transform your game. However, in order to not unbalance the game, this meant that they needed to come with serious challenges as well. But what?

Existing costs in the game are things like consuming food, chemfuel, or steel over time. But simply making mechanoids consume resources wouldn’t feel transformative, and wouldn’t substantial alter gameplay since the mechanoids can pay for themselves by producing the resources they consume. The collect/spend loop is too simple and has almost no side-effects on the world, story, or characters.

So we decided to emphasize two new challenges that would come with mechanoids: Infrastructure and pollution. We cover infrastructure below – A future post will cover pollution, its causes, consequences, aspects, uses, and solutions.

Mechanoid infrastructure

Mechanoids require heavy infrastructure that takes up a lot of space and burns a lot of electricity. Big sections of your colony can turn into mechanoid maintenance, production, and control centers. You’ll feel your plucky wooden village transforming into a grand integrated machine of generators, chargers, control nodes, and gestators. Your base will tend to grow large with a lot of mechanoids, and have a lot of things moving and consuming.

Each mechanoid must contain a mechanoid brain known as a subcore (short for subpersona core – the psychic substrate on which a dim, sub-human-level intelligence can be hosted). There are several tiers of subcores, with more advanced mechanoids requiring more advanced subcores.

Basic-level subcores can be produced by a mechanitor with just some resources and time at the subcode encoder.

More advanced subcores require scanning the psychic pattern from human minds. A person can be placed in a subcore softscanner and scanned to produce a subcore. This causes temporary mental effects but is ultimately harmless.

The most advanced mechanoids need extremely high-fidelity psychic patterns to work, and these can only be readily produced using the subcore ripscanner, which scans the brain quickly at ultra-high energy, destroying it in the process.

Once a subcore and resources are ready, mechanoids can be produced in mech gestators. Instead of being built like normal machines, mechanoids are gestated in a mechanite-rich solution that accretes the mechanoid molecule-by-molecule in a quasi-biological process. Gestation takes time, electricity, resources, and occasional guidance by your mechanitor.

Only a mechanitor can guide the gestation process, since it requires a psychic link to the growing mechanoid. As always, everything about the mechanoids links back to the human whom they serve.

The gestator can also resurrect some types of mechanoids. This makes your mechanoids more expendable in combat, which makes using them in combat give more distinct strategies compared to using human fighters.

There are several sizes of gestators. Small gestators are used for smaller mechs, while larger gestators are needed to produce ultra-heavy war machines. Little mechs gestate quickly, while big bosses take a long time to grow.

Mechanoids consume their onboard energy supply over time and must recharge at mech rechargers. Mechanoids will automatically seek out available rechargers so they don’t run out of energy. If they do run out of energy they’ll enter a self-shutdown state and recover energy very slowly – it’s much better to have a mech recharger available to keep your mechs working hard. There are several sizes of mech rechargers appropriate to different tiers of mechanoids. They consume a lot of electricity, and produce pollution as well – the characteristic cost of mechanoids.

Band nodes are signal amplifiers that can increase a mechanitors total bandwidth. They can be quickly tuned to a specific mechanitor. However, returning a band node to a different mechanitor is a complex task and requires a long time. There is no limit to how many band nodes a mechanitor can build, so a mechanitor can have a huge swarm, though it will require heavy infrastructure to control.

Mech boosters are enhancer buildings that boost the speed and work ability of mechanoids nearby. Great for powering up mechanoid-based factories.

Mech signallers are a set of single-use structures that can be used by a mechanitor to call in fearsome super-mechanoid enemies to attack you. You need to call these enemies so you can loot their corpses for special high-tech mechanoid chips. These chips are core to the mechanitor’s progression since they are needed to advance to the next tier of mechanoid technology. This structure of “choose your enemy and be ready” is a little bit new for RimWorld, and creates a new kind of self-directed game pace for the player (as opposed to being blindsided by raids at any time).

We’ll explore these super-mechanoids in more detail in the next blog post.

Labor mechs

Labor mechs can perform a variety of work tasks (but not absolutely everything – some things still need a human touch). Some are plucky little worker bois who are best kept away from danger, while others are hulking crusher machines that tank damage with ease.

Paramedic mechs are designed to aid in emergency situations. They can rescue the wounded, fight fires and even perform surgery. The paramedic has a built-in jump launcher for quickly getting into and out of emergency situations, making it excellent for extracting downed colonists from battle. It also has a built-in firefoam popper which it can use to extinguish fires. It also has basic medical skills – it can tend the wounded and sick, and even perform surgery when a skilled human isn’t available.

Lifters are there to move things where they need to go. They’re small, weak, pretty easy to get and always useful. They will haul a corpse to a grave or rearm a turret. They lack a real weapon.

Constructoids can perform an array of construction tasks, from building roofs to repairing buildings and even hauling resources to blueprints. The constructoid is equipped with a small slug gun for light defense and built-in cutting blades, but is not a good frontline fighter.

Agrihands are small mechanoids designed to sow and harvest crops and can perform a blunt melee attack.

Cleansweepers are light mechanoids that clean filth and do blunt melee attacks.

Fabricors will craft all manner of manufactured objects at your work benches (though they can’t do the same quality of work as a skilled human). Like the constructoid, the fabricor has a small slug gun.

Tunnelers are massive, heavily-armored mechs equipped with gigantic crusher claws. The tunneler can dig tunnels and mine resources tirelessly. In combat, it is slow but its very strong armor makes it an excellent tank for absorbing enemy fire while your other fighters deal damage. The tunneler has a small built-in smokepop pack which is can activate to spread smoke and shield itself from incoming fire. It also has a shield pack that recharges over time. Its weakness is that each time it takes damage, it slows for a few seconds – this means that when tunnelers attack you, even if you can’t kill them quickly, you can intelligently kite them by falling back from your position to escape the blocking smoke, maintain distance and slowly whittle the tunnelers down. (More on mech combat in the next post.)

That’s it for today! You can wishlist Biotech on the Steam store page and please join the discussion of this post on Reddit.

We’re planning on several of these blog posts, so there’s no shortage of more Biotech info on the way. Cheers for now, thanks for reading.

– Ty

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