I've been playing with A17 for a while now and since I'm a "only the mods you really need" -person I got my modlist down to "a hand full" of mods I concider essential:
<activeMods>
<li>HugsLib</li>
<li>StackXXL</li>
<li>ChickensMod</li>
<li>DeadMansClothing</li>
<li>RBSE</li>
<li>A Dog Said</li>
<li>AnimalsLogic</li>
<li>TilledSoil</li>
<li>EasySpeedup</li>
<li>QualitySurgeon</li>
<li>Hand Me That Brick</li>
<li>IdleFix</li>
<li>RotTickFix</li>
<li>MyLittlePlanet</li>
<li>Configurable Maps</li>
<li>DontTemptMe_v1.2</li>
<li>RuntimeGC</li>
And as always I'm interessted in how others mod their game. Well specifically I'm interested in "small" mod list, not those 5 pages long "gimme all da moooods" -lists, but rather those boiled down to the essentials ones.
RuntimeGC is really the only thing that you can say you must need it because it boost performance significantly. Everything is just icing on the cake.
Combat Extended.
Hugslib ( a requirement .. so running outside of the competition )
AllowTool
Fluffie Worktab
Fluffie Medicaltab
Wildlife Tab
CooksCanRefuel
AnimalLogic
RuntimeGC
icing for smoother gameplay :
ConduitDeconstruct
JTZoneButtons
JTReplaceWalls
MorePlanning
Force do job. Why i never see it in "must have mods" is a mystery, it's most must have from all the mods.
There's one convenience one that isn't so much "necessary" as "should be in the base game, as the less hardcore among us will want this":
edb Prepare Carefully
The only must-haves are things you can do in the actual game.
OSHA compliance - Pawns will ALWAYS treat deadfall traps as armed. No more accidental falling to your death.
Look, I'm the worker now! - Automatic overrides for work prioritization.
"Emu!"
"Yeah?"
"Patch up this prisoner, will you?"
"Can't."
". . . Why not?"
"Zoya's doing it."
". . . Oooookay. Zoya! Zoya! ZOYA!"
"CHEF, WHAT'S UP?"
"DON'T TEND THE PRISONER."
"WHAT? I CAN'T HEAR YA. I'M BY THE GENERATORS."
"DON'T. TEND. THE. PRISONER."
"OKAY, BOSS!"
"Alright. Emu!"
"Yeah?"
"*Now* you can patch up this prisoner."
"Nope."
"Why not now?"
"I'm not a doctor."
"Okay. Alright. Emu? You're a doctor now."
"Cool."
"Patch up this prisoner."
"You got it."
"Great. Fine. Black, you patch up the other prisoner."
"Ooh, I'd love to, but I can't."
"Why not?!"
"Zoya's doin' it."
Must haves for me, there are none that I won't play new vanilla alphas before these are updated, but any way my "must haves" besides that point:
(not in any order of "must-have-ness")
HugsLib (because so many mods need it!)
Moody
Allow Deadman's apparel (this one adds the filter, doesn't remove the mechanic)
Fresh Stockpile Filter (adds "allow fresh" filter to stockpiles/bills)
Cleaning Area
Quality Builder
Allow Tool
Storage Search
New Zone Tools by Britnoth (primarily for Uniform Grow Zone tool)
Better Workbench Management
Worktab (probably my biggest "must have")
Some others that are one step below must-haves for me:
More Trade ships
Fluffy Breakdowns
Stack Merger
Trading Spot
Recycle
Notification Archiver
Hunting Alert
Wildlife Tab
Zhentar's Vanilla Tweaks (primarily for Sun Lamp planning/fertility tool)
Miniaturisation
More Planning
Quote from: Sola on September 19, 2017, 11:13:40 AM
The only must-haves are things you can do in the actual game.
OSHA compliance - Pawns will ALWAYS treat deadfall traps as armed. No more accidental falling to your death.
Look, I'm the worker now! - Automatic overrides for work prioritization.
How could I forget those two, you are right.
EdB is a bit of a double-edged sword for me.
For one it is just the better setup tool than the scenario editor
on the other hand it is so extremely powerful in what you can do with your pawns, that it really feels cheesy sometimes.
Not to forget the other "should be ingame"-tool that was modlistbackup, was modlist manager by edb and seems to reincarnate as ModSwitch and Mod-E
and the different mods used to export outfit, storage, zone and restriction settings.
I refuse to play without using Prepare Carefully. I love setting up specific colony ideas, so I want to set the people up with specific skills, traits, etc, rather than a bunch of randos.
Other stuff I use is the one that allows a trading spot, plentiful forests (cause I love having huge forests of trees), expanded prosthetics, and a bunch of other random ones I don't remember offhand.
I play with a lot of mods. A LOT of mods. But these are the mods that I consider so essential I'd consider them 'Vanilla Plus' mods - Things that don't change the vanilla gameplay experience but instead provide important functionality and ease of use.
EdB Prepare Carefully - This should really just be in the base game. It's the most powerful tool available for setting the scene for your story. It naturally complements the ingame Scenario Editor perfectly and once you use it a few times you'll wonder how you ever did without it.
HugsLib - Do you like using mods? You need HugsLib. A lot of mods need it and even if you don't like mods then it won't do anything that interferes with the vanilla experience. Get it just so you don't forget it next time you see a must-have mod.
Allow Tool - Another thing that should be in the base game, this tool (actually a set of tools) allows you a vastly-improved mechanism to select things on the map and set permissions based on item type, like selecting every ship debris for deconstruction or every squirrel for taming (you mad bastard). It also makes cleaning up after raids a snap by letting you set everything on the map to Allowed at once instead of needing to designate everything item by item. This mod has saved me so much time I'm not sure how I got by without it.
Stack Merger - Regardless of how you feel about storage (there is always a debate between 'Don't hoard' and 'More space') you want this mod. This adds a low-priority hauling job that has pawns tidy up stockpiles. No more having 9 piles of 5 steel or 4 individual smokeleaf joints wasting tiles of stockpile space, since pawns with nothing better to do will automatically clean it up and put everything together, the way it should be. As much as I hate to keep saying it, this should also be base-game behavior.
Path Avoid A17 - This adds a tool that lets you designate pathing options for colonists. With some thought and planning this mod can easily overcome the game's occasionally-dodgy pathfinding and make life a lot easier. No more will colonists attempt to run through every patch of mud or copse of trees on their way to and from the farm, nor will they decide that climbing over a research table is faster than walking around it, because you can tell them not to do that.
Set-Up Camp - This is a bit more unusual since it's not a new tool or interface tweak but rather a natural expansion and streamlining of something you can already sort of do. All it does is set up a Tiny map for your caravan to camp at if they need to recover joy, find some emergency supplies, or just rest for a while. You can already achieve this by Settling a tile, but this mod means you can do it without littering the area with abandoned settlements.
Melee Hunting A17 - Colonists no longer need ranged weapons to go hunting. Especially great if you play tribals, since their melee options are often much better than their ranged ones. Also gives your Brawlers something to do. Just make sure colonists aren't told to hunt until they actually have a weapon or they will gladly go out and try to punch bears to death.
Conduit Deconstruct - This lets you remove power conduits without ripping down what's build over top of them first or having to select each one individually. Vital for those times you need to rewire your base, you'll never know how great a tool it is until you realize you need to rip up 90 power cables you've laid under several load-bearing walls.
Prepare Carefully - As previously mentioned, this should pretty much already be in the base game.
Trading Spot - A tiny mod, but super useful.
JTReplaceWalls - Basically, it makes it so that you don't need to deconstruct walls and then rebuild them with a separate order if you want to replace a wall with a wall of a different material.
Which version of RBSE do you use? Personally, I think RBSE Hardcore is the most balanced one.
I use the normal version since its the first time I'm using that mod and I wasn't sure.
Well Prepare Carefully is super usefull but it's also super cheesy.
Quote from: maculator on September 20, 2017, 03:47:46 AM
Well Prepare Carefully is super usefull but it's also super cheesy.
It actually includes an option "use points" option you can toggle on off in the prepare carefully menu to restrict how much you can cheese your starting colony if you want something more aimed at a balanced load out btw.
As for myself, I use over 100 mods gives or take, so the list of what I find "essenital" would be pretty long, but here's a few that I consider "must haves" and hold off on checking out a new version of RW until they're available.
li>Hugslib</li> A Core file needed for most mods to function, (and runs invisibly in the background) so put it in before you start messing with mods or you'll just have to do it later.
li>Romance Diversified A17</li> Makes the romances much better than vanilla.
<li>EdBPrepareCarefully</li> No more sitting around clicking refresh on random colonists until you get some that aren't fail boats waiting to happen, and being able to customize your start is pretty epic when you want to mix things up.
<li>RW_ColonistBarKF-0.17.1.12</li> So much better than the vanilla colonist bar in so many ways, makes the game UI far better.
<li>Spoons Hair Mod -A17</li>
<li>NackbladIncRimhair</li>
<li>Rimsenal_Hair</li>
<li>Xeva's Hair</li> These hair mods aren't "essential" to me, however they are universally compatible, so can be used without needing to wait for the next version to be updated so worth listing here.
<li>Better Pawn Control</li> Like others have said, it's a huge QOL improvement
<li>Stack XXL</li> Yeah, being able to make meat and anything else you want stack higher than the default is nice, no more needing a insanely huge freezer or stockpile, being able to set the values to whatever you want from an ingame menu is a huge plus!
<li>StorageSearch-A17</li> Such a
huge, time saver! Being able to just type the name of what you're trying to allow or forbid on stockpile lists to find it really makes life easier.
<li>Miniaturisation-0.17.2</li> It's nice not having to rebuild workbenches and everything else when you just want to relocate something a couple squares over.
<li>MadSkills-A17-2.0.1</li> It blows having your elite sniper lose most of their gunnery skill over several seasons because they don't get enough chances to kill stuff, and seeing your intellect skill dwindle down to nothing once you run out of research can make crafting items that require intellect impossible.
<li>A_Dog_Said-A17</li> Essential for animal surgery, otherwise most animals are good for combat maybe once, then they're too crippled to be good for anything but the stew pot. (which really isn't what someone bonded animal that gave their legs defending the colony deserves.)
<li>Mending</li> It's nice to be able to repair damaged armor and weapons instead of having to craft new sets all the time, especially for legendary power armor and other rare bits of gear.
<li>CombatExtended</li> Makes combat so much better, giving pawns inventory is a nice plus too so you can carry both melee and ranged weapons plus a side arm if you feel like it. (Still kind of divided on if I like its the ammo system, but there's an option to toggle that part off entirely so you can play it either way.)
<li>CombatExtended Guns</li> More guns for combat extended, always a good thing!
<li>RimFridge</li> Doesn't sound like a huge deal, but a fridge is a nice qol improvement when you don't want people running in and out of the freezer every ten minutes for meals.
<li>QualityBuilder</li> Hard to recommend this enough, having the builder with the best skill build stuff with quality ratings saves on so much wasted resources, and lets your wannabe constructors still help out smoothing floors, building power cables and other simple tasks.
<li>MiningCo. MiningHelmet</li> No more debuffs for mining in the dark, also has an option for turning the light on automatically, which is nice when trying to navigate a colony during a solar flare at night.
<li>M No Death Randomness A17</li> Nice not to have everyone but your colonists dying 60% of the time from any injury.
<li>Change Dresser</li> Didn't really think I'd fall in love with this one so hard, but being able to set up separate clothing sets for colonists to switch to when drafted is a huge asset, why wear power armor to cook breakfast and romance your significant other anyway and subject it to all that daily durability degradation?
<li>ReconAndDiscovery</li> More fun events to give you reasons to send caravans out into the world? Yes please.
<li>Rimfire 2.3</li> More guns, (with an option to turn off any weapons in game you dislike, even ones added by other mods) also Combat Extended compatible!
<li>OHU-Dropships-1.55</li> I can build a starship to fly off planet, but not a shuttle to visit the colony ten tiles over? Makes mid to late game raiding and trading much more fun and less of a giant time sink, the fuel req and weight restrictions also keep it balanced.
<li>Dubs Bad Hygiene</li> After having toilets and baths in the game it feels really weird without them, makes the bases feel much more "real" and the various buffs/debuffs keep it nicely balanced.
<li>AnimalsLogic</li> Being able to assign beds to animals so bonded animals will sleep in the same room as their master is handy, as is being able to designate animal beds for medical use. (Plus a bunch of other changes, also compatible with fluffy's animal tab)
<li>Much Better Pods</li> Removes the 300kg drop pod weight limit and improves the range (you can customize both to your liking) Makes drop pods useful without needing to build a dozen of them.
<li>Feed The Colonists</li> Because skill 15 chef should be able to cook food in larger batches than a single meals worth at a time. (With this they cook them in batches of 4 at a time.)
<li>DeadMansClothing</li> You're on a crashed alien world, barely surviving against all odds and your colonists whine about if the power armor keeping their insides from being on the outside, or the parka keeping them from freezing to death was worn by some dead guy? This reminds them to shut up and be grateful to have the clothing they need to see another sunrise than think too deeply on who wore it before them.
<li>No_Mood_Loss_Prisoner_Sold_or_Died</li> Because it's doubtful they'd care if the raider who just murdered their dog and wife gets sold into slavery or have their eyes harvested so the colony's only cook and gardener can see again.
There's a ton more mods I use, (nearly all of Fluffy's and RT's mods, EPOE, GlitterTech, The camping mods, etc, that there's just not room to list them all here without making the post a mile long. (If anyone wants a full list pm me.)
Hugslib - this is needed for ALL the best mods.
Fluffys breakdowns - breakdown system in rw is a bit shitty and having your guys have to make compulsory maint. cycles makes sense.
Vanilla friendly weapon pack - because you touch yourself at night, j/k j/k, i think rimworld is missing one crucial thing; gief teh revolvers!
Dubs hygiene and central heating mod - where the hell do these people poop otherwise?! and they never wash! it also adds some new and interesting systems for heating, solar heaters, fueled stoves and immersion heaters. etc
RT Fuses - no, just no, leave my fucking batteries alone cass, and while these dont stop shorts, they just make them less destructive by reducing the discharge values in exchange for components and repair labor.
Animal logic - because ive never heard of a fucking fox hunting people, or unmilkable goats.
Rimfridge - QOL for reducing how much time is wasted tending to prisoners, stick a fridge in their common room and fill it with crap quality meals, bosh. sorted.
Tribal Essentials - for when you wonder what is missing from vanilla rimworld starting as tribals.
Trading spot - GET OUT OF MY FOOD ROOM!
Never thought I'd get that many usefull answers!
A fe weeks ago I clicked myself through the whole releases thread now I guess I'll have to do it again^^
Edit:
My definition of essential differs alot form the opinions shared here. I really concidered only the most essential stuff. Well, in my opinion.
But since everyone has a bigger list I wonder why "Doormats" didn't get listed more often. Because when talking about easing the load on haulers etc. "Doormats" does a great job keeping you cleaners bored!
These are the mods I always use. I add others as I try out different themes (for example Megafauna can be fun! :) )
PrepareCarefully
PrepareLanding
Doormats
FuckFriendlyFire
EdB Prepare Carefully- Because people with the level of incompetence exhibited in 'vanilla' colonists would never survive
Combat Extended- Because 'vanilla' combat is a lesson in absurdity
Vegetable Garden - Because 'vanilla' agriculture and cooking is boring and uninspired
Children and Pregnancy- Because it is how real-world colonies gained a sense of permanence and 'set roots', so to speak. Plus, my colonists have sex all the time, so children would be a natural result of that.
Of course, number 1 on the list is Hugs Lib. After that is Prepare Carefully, Hospitality, most of Skullywag's mods, most of Telkir's mods, Tribal Essentials, A Dog Said or EPOE, RimFridge. QualityBuilder is fantastic, you set an item to be built, then set what base quality you want, and it's never below that quality. I'm learning to love Apparello. Doormats are so amazing they're almost game-breaking. The Industrial Age mod from jecrell's Rim of Madness collection adds some absolutely lovely lighting options to the game, especially if you are playing tribe-origin. SeveralPuffins' Rumours & Deception and Romance Diversified are also amazing and add so much to colony interactions.
I had two hilarious failed attempts on leaving the planet since I made this thread.
Both with alot of mods and now I'm going for a modlist that I concider "vanilla+"
So basically this is all the mods I concider essential, and not a single one more:
HugsLib
StackXXL
Doormat
Fuse
RimFridge
AnimalsLogic
CombatExtended
MadSkills
Moody
IdleFix
RotTickFix
RuntimeGC
Following the example of previous posters I'll explain shortly why I concider those the most essential mods ever made:
HugsLib: is needed for:
StackXXL:
Is really essential if you want to prevent your base from beeing 98% storage barns. Whats the point in beeing able to store like 10 let's say 20x20x5cm boxes of packed meat on a m² on the floor? Can't they stack? Sidenote: I set XL to 2 times and use it for food related stuff, XXL is set to 10 and used for resources.
Doormat:
Keeps dirt out of buildings and frees up worktime for people.
Fuse:
A somewhat balanced way of countering the "zzzT.." event.
Rimfridge:
Also frees up worktime since your people can grab a meal out of the fridge and cooks can put meals in fridges etc. Fridges are awsome!
AnimalsLogic:
Rename animals, have them obey the master immediatly, assign beds to them, etc... AND (this is the fun part) butcher everything into "chicken" meat. I mean do those colonists really care? saves space in the fridge and in the end nobody will know or care what they really eat!
CombatExtended:
After getting wrecked by raiders because they just eat like 10000 bullets, while walking straight forwards to knock down my shooters, I got sick of it all!
This mod is basically the best thing ever made. Ammo, turrets, embrassures and everything is awsome, BUT the best thing is: Straight, quick and brutal fights!
No more bullet-eating sons of Bs wreckig you in unbalanced melee because they refuse to go down with high bloodloss.
MadSkills:
Skill degredation is a nice thing as long as I don't loose a level. So I set it to "tiered" and "100%" wich lets me loose the current progress in XP but not across levels, NICE!
Moody:
Keeping track of everything! Its just amazing. It combines so many info mods and tab mods into one thing. Normaly I get suprised by breakdowns, now I see them coming and can ignore them willingly!
The rest:
Performance Stuff. Never really used RuntimeGC because I'm worried about relations, but when the time comes that I survive more than 3 years and I should notice some lag it'll be nice to have.
I personally enjoy using:
Prison Labour: for my evil lynx men only tribe. they dig, they farm, they cook and cut stone!
Beast Men Tribes: Because I like the challenge of only having one race in my tribe specifically lynx people.
Vegetable Garden: because farming is awesome!
Any Weapon Expansions: more guns and varietys to find and make.
Medieval Mod: the next step after tribal's enter the medieval age.
Tribal Planet And Extras: so no crazy energy weapons and pirates. also lore fires and stone ovens
Prepare Carefully: so save and always have my four starting lynx people.
Auto seller- it allows you to set up scripts to sell your stuff, and automates your pawn to initiate the sale, and figure out the best mix of things to sell to get all the traders available silver, all you have to worry about is producing the goods.
I guess the interessting thing here is the difference in philosophies and "threadshots".
Content mods aside, leaves us with QoL ones. And My philosophy is to have as few mods as possible (right now, might change in 2.4s).
So I kicked every mod I don't concider "essential" to do so I have a thradshot wich is arround the "QoL-Level" of "hand me that brick".
Everything more usefull and essential (in my opinion) made it into my list, every thing less usefull didn't make it.
Note: I refer to my above post, not the op because my philosophy, as you can see, has changed since then.
Mods that are on the edge of my threadshot are:
-hand me that brick
-multiproduce
-anything surgery related
And since my last failed attempt combat extended is the bare minimum. I simply refuse to get overrun by melee characters and die the slow death of multiple infections. When I go I want to go with a big BANG and blood and guts everywhere!
QoL ones are by far the most must have, since they can improve experience w/o altering rules.
Wildlife tab
Animal logic (some of it)
Hand me that brick
Hunting alert
OSHA compliance
Trading spot
This kind of stuff is top tier. Once you get into rules alteration it's more YMMV, but reducing #inputs for same-output is a strict gameplay improvement.
Whats osha compilance?
I use the wildlife tab, its one grade A QoL mod!
Doesn't change a thing, makes your life so easy!
I just noticed while playing that my life wouldnt be the same without moody, I use it all the time and itst so helpfull.
Quote from: maculator on September 21, 2017, 04:11:49 PM
Whats osha compilance?
Pawns always treat traps as armed. Fewer accidental deaths via re-arming.
I'd
love for 'Hand me that brick' to be in vanilla, and technically, it should fit within my moral compass (You
can make critical-priority stockpiles right next to the building itself), but for some reason, it just doesn't rub me the right way.
Quote from: Sola on September 21, 2017, 06:38:42 PM
I'd love for 'Hand me that brick' to be in vanilla, and technically, it should fit within my moral compass (You can make critical-priority stockpiles right next to the building itself), but for some reason, it just doesn't rub me the right way.
Thats exactly the reason why Its at the edge of my threatshot! It would be REALLY nice to have it, BUT the way I play the game is the follwing:
YOu got 5 zones. Zone 1 is for danger and restricts my colonists inside, zone 2-4 are "workzones" I set them up and select the beds, joy, food and then depending on whats needed a area they should work in.
I would wish for the ability to restrict them to zones over time like you can do with sleep/work/joy. A second bar where you can put in zones in relation to time of the day would be the best thing ever made!
Quote from: Sola on September 21, 2017, 06:38:42 PM
Quote from: maculator on September 21, 2017, 04:11:49 PM
Whats osha compilance?
Pawns always treat traps as armed. Fewer accidental deaths via re-arming.
I'd love for 'Hand me that brick' to be in vanilla, and technically, it should fit within my moral compass (You can make critical-priority stockpiles right next to the building itself), but for some reason, it just doesn't rub me the right way.
In practice it is vanilla rules. You can, with extremely painstaking micromanagement, force haulers to haul building supplies to each spot for construction without mods. The variance of doing this vs using the mod in *game time* is virtually nothing.
In terms of IRL time the difference is large. There's not much of a coherent "moral" argument to be had here. If vanilla forced you to only give 1 order to build at a time (IE you can only place 1 chair then must wait until it finishes or one segment of walls), you could still match game-time progress just like now with more micromanagement/IRL time usage and pausing...and a mod allowing you to queue orders like building 5 beds or an entire 50x50 box of walls and letting the pawns complete that automatically would have the exact same arguments for/against as "hand me that brick" or "OSHA compliance" (you can bypass the advantages conferred by OSHA entirely with user micro in vanilla, but this is busywork with a false choice component).
In a SP game, automating what would otherwise be micromanagement busywork to save time but give same results is strict QoL improvement without changing actual design of the game's mechanical interaction...even in MP you can make a case that basing advantage on robotic inputs without real decisions attached is a poor excuse for design, but that's outside our scope for now anyway.
This is in contrast to mods that add or remove features or content, or confer you the ability to do something you could not technically accomplish by interacting with vanilla, which is why I qualified some parts of animal logic but not others.
Quote from: TheMeInTeam on September 22, 2017, 11:13:13 AM
In a SP game, automating what would otherwise be micromanagement busywork to save time but give same results is strict QoL improvement without changing actual design of the game's mechanical interaction...
This is my main logic for suggesting 'Vanilla Plus' mods whenever a thread like this comes up. They're all things you could theoretically accomplish with base-game behavior but they reduce intense amounts of micromanagement, RL time-wasting, or in-game clutter associated with those tasks.
Quote from: Trylobyte on September 22, 2017, 04:18:38 PM
This is my main logic for suggesting 'Vanilla Plus' mods whenever a thread like this comes up. They're all things you could theoretically accomplish with base-game behavior but they reduce intense amounts of micromanagement, RL time-wasting, or in-game clutter associated with those tasks.
I guess performance is a thing here too. You can't just pack every mod and feature in the game. "Moody" ofr example is a verry verry verry usefull mod but it alone puts like 20% more load on the core that handels the game. Combine this with some other mod that adds cpu load, add a few colonists and you got yourself a pretty slow mess.
Anything that reduces micro. :P