Tynan please don't cut the tornado!

[GridLink]

I'm looking forward to seeing the interactions between the ED-Shields and the Tornados in B18. I think they'd prove an interesting (and power consuming) way of keeping the important parts of your base safe.

[viperwasp]

I have not made up my Mind about how I feel about Tornadoes yet?  Ison seems to think Tornadoes will go though a change of some kind. Is it official? Or more so has Tynan announced what changes he is considering.  I do like the idea of walls reducing damage of Tornadoes.

I will say that I hope Tornadoes stay!
I feel like they need some tweaking but I don't have any useful suggestions except please don't remove them.
If I don't like Tornadoes I will simply disable them as a possible event in the Scenario Editor. For now I am not disabling them.
I kind of want the strength of the Tornado to be random as well... Or maybe the type of Tornado depends on the weather conditions? These are only tidbits of suggestions.

[O Negative]

I'm really hoping tornadoes stay as a natural occuring event. It doesn't have to be complicated. Having them restricted to certain biomes is fine. And there's always the scenario editor to turn them off

That doesn't mean we can't have tornado generators as weapons, also, though

[ReZpawner]

Absolutely hated the tornado. Tynan is doing the right thing.

[Kirby23590]

There is some love and hate for the tornado including my self. ( I had alot of fun with dev mode on with massive raids of two different raider factions fighting in the middle with two tornadoes in there. )

I going to be in the middle, and let the tornado stay and only have alot of nerfs into tornado, After destroying some objects lets say 6 or 4, it should disappear or killing a certain amount of pawns or creatures. Maybe it should deal normal damage to walls but not furniture and pawns should automatically avoid the tornado if it comes close?

I don't know how Tynan is going to implement it while being excited for it becoming a one-use superweapon item. Maybe both should pro-exist i don't know, it's wait until it comes out sort of thing how they do it.

[XeoNovaDan]

I like the tornado as a concept; having the force of nature carve a path of destruction. Yeah, as others have said, the biggest issue is that it's just got no real counterplay other than turtling up in a mountain.

I actually made a suggestion to make a simplified EF scale for RimNadoes, since that'd not only be more realistic but generally reduce the frustration around them. It just doesn't make sense that every tornado's an EF4/5 behemoth that destroys everything, neither from a gameplay or realism perspective.

[RemingtonRyder]

I like the tornado event because it's not entirely certain which way it will go and because all you can really do is get out of its way.

I got lucky - it went over some sandbags, ripped up some haygrass, and then it left the map.

[Wanderer_joins]

When i first thought of tornados i actually thought it would be a weather event mostly in tropical rainforest or tropical swamp, with a more global effect on the map.

TBH it already feels like it's been cut. I've played 9+ years in tropical swamp and got 0 tornado. Given that even when you get one, it will most likely do no significant damage, it looks like an extremely rare with extremely random effects event right now, with no real impact on your gameplay, so no wonder opinions are all over the map.

The only use of tornados i can see, is in custom scenarios where you significantly increase their likelihood.

On a positive note, they look cartoony but really nice

[jecrell]

Don't cut tornadoes.
Put in a weapon that negates tornadoes.

Design Proposal:
Create a satellite heat beam that heats up the cold air that helps in tornado formation, which can be fired on a tornado to dissipate it entirely.

[jchavezriva]

Yes, please let it stay!

-You can implement some weather monitoring device that warns you a few minutes before it happens,

-or some ultra rare and expensive device that eliminate it when it comes near it and set it to only work once,

-or you can implement new ultra resistent kind of walls and roofs that resist it and can only be build by level 16+ builders,

-or set them to only spawn at the top difficulties, etc!

[TheMeInTeam]

Tornadoes are more irritating than hurricanes IRL in the sense of their unpredictability WRT pathing. Hurricanes do more dmg over a wider-spread area but their pathing is (fairlly) predictable; tornadoes do a lot of dmg in a small area but their pathing is pretty much unpredictable!
How about:

   
• Tornadoes only spawn on flatlands (WRT the biome you have)
• They will rip off constructed roofs & scatter & damage/destroy items inside
• They will destroy wood walls & damage stone constructed walls (to say 25% of its current HP), damage natural rock (to say 50% of its current HP) but not destroy it outright from 100% (avoiding partially-dmged outcrop issues).
• They will ignore pathing WRT constructed walls but respect pathing WRT natural stone/mountain
• A constructed device (Tornado Warning) siren would be availabe to get pawns under cover, with some research (maybe a meteorologist specialist?) Tribals could gain an early similar effect by using an 'animal watch' research that dead-ends
• Possibly a 'hardened roof' could be added - not sure I like this idea..
• Since most tornado/hurricane dmg is IRL caused by debris hurled thru the air, perhaps some sort of mechanic could simulate this (eg your pawn's close to a stockpile full of stuff, they're gonna be badly hurt/killed)
• Animals (all animals, not only trained) should flee as if being hunted

Just some thoughts; I'm sure there are other ideas floating out there..

I like most of these ideas.  My beef with tornadoes has always been their lack of counterplay + poor representation of how they work in reality.

On a side note: hurricanes frequently spawn tornadoes directly, adding to the "fun" of living in areas that get them.  Still, these tornadoes are not as strong as the strongest Midwest/Bengali ones, and by far the greatest threat from hurricanes is storm surge.

TBH it already feels like it's been cut. I've played 9+ years in tropical swamp and got 0 tornado. Given that even when you get one, it will most likely do no significant damage, it looks like an extremely rare with extremely random effects event right now, with no real impact on your gameplay, so no wonder opinions are all over the map.

Tropical areas are not where you would anticipate seeing the most tornadoes.  You expect them in more temperate areas with surrounding terrain conducive to their formation (US Midwest and Bengal India both share some surrounding terrain considerations that make them more likely).

Many areas get weaker versions as part of storm cells, but compared to what initial A18 tornadoes did and what you see from midwest these weaker tornadoes are probably not worth modeling in Rimworld as they are much smaller and have significantly weaker wind speed...only the strongest of these could even threaten a well-built cinderblock structure.

[Crow_T]

I've seen some good suggestions concerning tornadoes in these forums, such as tornados can occur only during certain storm types giving the player some kind of cautionary warning. Definitely think they should stay in, as others have said you can disable them when setting up a game.

[BasileusMaximos]

I've literally only ever seen a tornado once. Is it more common is specific biomes?

[fl0]

i like the tornado idea, but not the actual implementation. i had several tornados so far and mostly no damage on my colony at all, since the tornado was way off. (which made me happy, but thats not how a disaster should work)

i think it would be a better event if the tornado mechanics were like that:
the tornado has a direction, for example east and a damage level, like 200dmg. every roof that stands out in east direction gets destroyed. the tornado then does damage to all outer walls from the east. if its a wooden wall, the wall is gone (140hp) and the tornado keeps tearing the roof away further, till it reaches the next wall and then the "remaining" 60 dmg are applied to the next wall. and ofc if something like a tailor bench is in between those wall it also eats the dmg. that way theres a reasonable counter (have rocksolid walls and dont be cheap but build a plasteel tailor bench table) and the tornado isnt just a giant ms paint erasertool-like random event. also the remains should look somehow like a house after a tornado disaster, the walls perpendicular to the direction of the tornado are almost all gone (depends on the damage level ofc) and those in line with the tornado only got scratched. and a lot of random rooftiles should be destroyed on top of all that plus all wind turbines should be damaged, just for some more annoyance

heres are two rooms connected by a door and a bench in each.

R stands for roof, W is a wooden wall, D door and BBB is a bbbench

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
RRWWWWWWWWWWWWRR
RRW............W.............WRR
RRW....BBB....D....BBB....WRR
RRW............W.............WRR
RRWWWWWWWWWWWWRR
RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

after a small tornado (200dmg) from the east it would look like that


RRWWWWWWWWWWW
RRW............w.............
RRW......BB....d....bb......
RRW............w.............
RRWWWWWWWWWWW


after a small tornado from the south it would look like that


RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
WwwwwwWwwwwwwW
W............W.............W
W.....bbb...D....bbb.....W
w............w..............w

small letters indicate stuff got damaged.

i tried to make it look aligned, but fuck my asci-drawing

[Bozobub]

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