Messages

Livingston,

I've suggested a RPG-like inventory/equipment system (mine included encumbrance) before. So I support your suggestion. A proper GUI with a preference system for each slot. Ect.

Cheers,
Michael

Goldenpotatoes,

Golden suggestion. Not only for better social simulation, but also for more control via designations.

Cheers,
Michael

Hello,

First of all, I think it's sad the OP had to put a disclaimer in the subject to prevent people from bashing his/her idea because "g@m3 n0t d0n3 d3wd".

With that said, I like the idea, but I'd like to put forward an alternate explanation: Artificial Intelligence. Cortana, Adromeda, EDI, TARS/CASE. As the AI your job is to provide tactical and management advice.

The tutorial aspect could be you, the AI, trying to get as many survivors of a life support failure to escape pods and on the ground. The continue on the ground with other aspects of gameplay.

The interactive tutorial will be optional, while the storyteller's tutorial advice will be present whether you have the active tutorial turned on or not.

This would also make escape more realistic and logical as instead of trying to completely rebuild a whole new ship, you could be sending modules and components up for the ships AI and auto repair functions to install. Culminating in the ability to leave the planet, organize multiple planetary settlements, bug out of a settlement if it's overwhelmed, and all sorts of other stuff.

Cheers,
Michael

[ORE]

Vas,

I vote yes to Proposition 26 (Hehe. Anyone?)! Metal you grab out of a mountain should be iron ORE.

Any steel that has been sitting around long enough to get buried under a mountain would have oxidized into a dust. Not "compacted". Plasteel, assuming it is based on real stuff, is a fiberglass/steel composite. Same issue occurs with steel, it'll oxidize and the fiberglass will deteriorate within a century or so to just a pile of hay-like dirty fibers.

There should still be scrap metal available to reuse and map-gen buildings/ruins to cannibalize; perhaps even busted up ships/shuttles/escape pods. Expanding on that, whenever pawns land via shuttlepods, maybe they should stay as physical objects that can be dismantled for metal and components.

Whoever says "Hur hur fun>Realism" offend me on a personal and intellectual level and, in my opinion, have no business making suggestions for a sci-fi survival simulation. It is a cop out, it is lazy, and it totally undermines the nature of the genre. A true travesty of a legacy gifted to us by the brilliantly creative minds of people such as the "Big Three".

Cheers!
Michael

Note: I didn't read the thread at all. . . Until after I posted. It would seem my arguments aren't new. But still valid. Consider this support to what other intelligent people have said.

I'd throw another 30-60 (depending on improvements) to a kickstarter campaign for something like full 3d (with z-level construction), direct x12, and multi-core/threading. Running in like UE4 or Unity 5. . . Just saying

Making the killbox obsolete should be done via eliminating the stupid AI, not by replacing, or trying to replace it with another type of killbox. The fact this game relies upon waves of insane amounts of mobs that do nothing but charge completely undermines the tactical combat system of this game. You simply end up making killboxes because there is no other way to survive. Then all you are doing is watching as your colonists slaughter humans with down syndrome on a genocidal level.

I don't know about anyone else, but once the game reaches that point, I always end up starting a new game.

It's a video game, so neither of those four. Well actually, I am childless, but I do indeed have siblings. That has nothing to do with it though. Being ready to butcher some babies that are mere xml and C# code doesn't make me a sociopath. You need to rethink life.

Trolling, indeed. How would you categorize such behavior, if not within one of those four I listed? How would we, hypothetically, affect the mood and personality of colonists and NPCs? A colonist who is okay with having a baby skin arm chair, and a baby meat dinner, is a socio/psychopathic cannibal in my mind. Such an individual would, in my opinion, cause negative mood effects such as anger or another form of stress. In addition, I would wager that someone who isn't okay with it, but is "forced" to do so, wouldn't have their personal feelings about it assuaged by nice decorations and a pleasant ambiance. Furthermore, if they were tricked into eating it somehow, and found out later what it was, I wager there would be serious problems.

And this is just for a stranger or friend. A parent or sibling would, I wager, react much worse.

A fun fact. Why are children so very often absent from video games, or made invincible? It is because of how it would be received by mainstream media if clips of people dismembering infants were to appear. Especially if it was so that the mother was able to get a new sofa and a nice stir-fry. People would recoil at the very notion of such things.

I'm being realistic from both a gameplay perspective and a real-life perspective. The latter being life, in case you were unaware. I'm well grounded in reality, life withstanding, you should at least consider the former.

Recap.

Sane pawn no like insane stuff. No matter if survival or condo living.

Things most people don't like:
Sociopaths
psychopaths
cannibalism
incest
necrophilia
infanticide
patricide
bestiality
pedophilia

These are bad things - survival situation or not. How would you react if you were on an island with some guy and hes doing inappropriate things with goats while he thought you weren't looking? Or you cut yourself and he elects to lick up all the blood droplets before he helps you out?

You are in a survival situation so it's okay.... Perfectly logical. Hell, that native woman's child is easier to steal than trying to hunt that boar. Lets just nab that and grill it up. Bet it'll taste just like the pork. Puuuurrrrfectly sane.

Cheers,
Michael

I'm sorry but are you trolling us Vagabond... It's been mentioned plenty before. Rimworld isn't a game of ethics, it's survival. There's stranger stuff then using your own babies skin to make a comfy armchair.

Trolling?

I'm afraid not. Dwarf fortress was much to primitive looking to appeal to me - I've heard many good things about it in regards to actual mechanics, but never anything like what the other user posted.

Ethics have little to do with what I was talking about. I was speaking on the mental health of people whom might consider using their's, or other's children as bait or materials for a project. Even more so, how it would affect the mental health of the friends and family who've garnered a relationship with the child.

It's a statistical fact that children make people do crazy things. The closer the relationship between the person and the child, the more apt that person is to perform difficult, dangerous and or abhorrent acts for the sake of the child's welfare.

Children bring a feeling of ease and validation to your actions when you have a quiet moment to sit and simply watch them snuffle their blanket or give out a little belly-laugh over some silly and inconsequential thing. This feeling extends to other non-relatives as well. Children mark progress and provide motivation to press on.

Now, I see four possible reasons you stated "There's stranger stuff then using your own babies skin to make a comfy armchair."

1) You are harmlessly trolling.
2) You are a child.
3) You are a childless adult or a young adult raised as an only child.
4) You are a sociopath.

This isn't multiple choice - you don't have a pick one. However, I would also like to note one last thing on the matter: Instinct. Empathy. There are some who truly lack it, but attributing that to a majority?

Cheers,
Michael

If Rimworld had babies and children, they'd probably get treated the same way as babies in Dwarf fortress - mostly expendable. A baby gets captured/killed and the mother goes insane? Retain order with a hammering to the head. Some players would set traps using unwanted children as bait. You'd get players churning out babies for cannibal meals and leather chairs. It would be like the DF's mermaid baby farm all over again. As long as you can keep the pawn's mood positive, they'd be sad their children died but the room and meal is quite lovely.

Ethics and morality quickly go out the window when we become overseers. Even more so when players get bored and think of new ways to "have fun".

I... Sorry, momentarily speechless. Such depravity should obviously have serious repercussions to the mental state of colonist and npcs whom aren't deranged cannibalistic psychopaths; Affecting happiness, relationships, and diplomacy.

Different faction types might have different reactions towards children. Some might try to take them to bolster their breeding pool. Some might take them to eat. Some might refrain from attacking. Others might simply try their best not to hit them. Idk.

This is an incredibly strange scenario you've presented. One I would have never thought of. Though it wouldn't surprise me that others have thought of it, or done it. Games, and particularly the internet, bring out strange things in some people.

Yea...Is this a true story?

Hello,

I'd like to add on top of Austupaio by saying that the inclusion of tool requirements for tasks would require colonists to fill one or both slots with something other than a weapon - mind you, most tools make excellent melee weapons, but at least you'd still be forced into situations where you sharpshooter who's also a miner happens to be across the map with a pick rather than his sniper rifle in that primary slot when bad guys attack.

Now, I understand some people are very much against tools as equipment, but there we have it. I can't for the life of me understand why there are such folks - tools are so important to us as humans. It's our equalizer. I don't think I've seen one (non-industrial) thing that I couldn't figure out, as long as I had that right tool. Hell, even without the tool some times; change that rad hose on the fly without a flathead - AH I got a penny in my pocket from McDonalds earlier.

Tools also add another layer of progression to the game.

Cheers,
Michael

TLHeart,

First off, construction without government intervention and safety rules does not take months or weeks.... ever hear of a barn raising? where a barn, a large warehouse is erected in one or two days?  Happened all the time, before government safety regulations. And that is without HEAVY equipment also.

Sorry but I totally disagree with you on the time scale... It can use some MINOR adjustments. But nothing like the changes you want. I play and like rimworld because it is different from the games you are talking about. Let rimworld stand apart from other games, and NOT become those other games.

1) Barn raising was done with wood, joints, biscuits, dowel, nails, and wood angle supports over packed dirt.

2) Barn raising was performed by a LARGE amount of people, essentially the whole community - many different families.

3) This is different on so many levels from construction with steel, concrete, masonry, rebar, foundation, ect.

4) There is a reason for regulation of construction, aside from greed and half baked conspiracy theory. Without it, there is nothing to keep the constructors from building something that will fall on your head. In a place where there is no regulation, the architects and builders must check, double check, and revise as they build. Which takes even more time.

5) Simply throwing barn raising out there as having been an example of small structure construction, that is possible in two days, without considering the enormous amount of forethought and logistics is just... Yeah.

I agree that Rimworld is a great game. Even better in most ways than other games. However, I don't think I've ever come across a game that didn't have at least one thing about it that was just brilliant. Even if the rest of the game was bogus. Rimworld isn't perfect, some are content with the casual simulation and in favor of the arcade-like shoot'em up. I'm not, and by looking at the ways in which other games have made features I enjoyed work, I can suggest modified models of that mechanic in a way I see it working for another. I respect my opposition, but it doesn't deter me from putting forth my ideas of what I think will make the game better for me.

I'm honest and upfront about that. I'm in it for my entertainment. If my vision is aligned with, or inspires the developer of a game to come up with something else, then I couldn't be happier. If it stays the same, then I accept it as it is and continue playing, or set it aside. But I'll never regret the purchase of Rimworld, which ever way it goes - I've gotten my hours out of it.

Cheers,
Michael

But construction does not take weeks or months in real life. 2 people can build a shelter in one day, large enough to sleep in, cook in.

And sleep, with your time scale will make no sense, and neither would eating.

O.o; A shelter out of sticks? or Straw? Maybe a small square brick and mortar cube that they could crawl into. Sure, a small lean-too could be done. I accept that. But building a concrete or steel structure. . . No. A warehouse just put up down the street, that if based on scale in game to what it'd roughly be equivalent in rl....Would probably fit our geothermal generator in it.  Took about two-three months, maybe longer to build it with a full construction crew and heavy machinery.

So to sum that up: Survival shelter acceptable in one day. Construction of actual buildings -does- take weeks or months using construction -crews- and -heavy machinery-.

Sleeping and eating are the casualty of this and part of the abstraction. The Guild 2 has you playing a family and at the end of each day a year has passed. You don't sit there and go "man... how did a year go by, my people only ate -twice- in a year! They couldn't have survive on that single night of sleep!". The reason for this, is because its an acceptable abstraction to make construction, production, family, and all other facets of the game make more sense. Which is precisely the issue I find with this game. By having this abstraction, it would allow for TONS of new mechanics regarding relationships, diplomacy, logistics, ect.

Cheers,
Michael

If you defend multiple weapons for the sake of realism, then, for the sake of realism, you'd have to accept the drawbacks.

There should be significant work speed penalties for having multiple weapons equipped (or even single weapons of the 2-handed variety) or be limited to knives/shivs.

That seems like a pretty arbitrary choice of penalty, especially when considering Seabees, Engineering corps, and folks like woodsmen. Are you aware how little most armaments weight? Once you get used to the feeling of metal or composite against your back, it's easy to forget you have a rifle there. I admit, that walking around with a "two hander" sword would make things difficult, but even those are relatively light - 3-7 pounds. They can't really be stowed away on your person  though - not if you want to be able to draw them. Which is why I suggested the primary slot to be allowed for a one or two handed item, and the secondary a one handed item.

I can personally attest to one thing: Having a rifle shouldered, with a knife on one hip and sidearm on the other, is not encumbering. Hell, most activities go completely unhindered in full LBE- After a couple days you even figure out the balance and stop feeling like you are going to fall over. The biggest thing is fatigue and the long term effects of carrying a buck-twenty, no matter how well it's rigged. As an MPO your time is split half on and half off garrison depending on deployment - so infantry has it even worse. Day in and day out, what is worse is standing around in it - it's much easier when you are moving and alert (as odd as that sounds).

Secondly, you say that the playing field will naturally even out, but in this game, at least so far, that isn't true.  Multiple weapons evens the damage out in a fight...no longer will you be able to melee rush a rifle-wielding pirate or bow bearing tribesman with your swordsman and expect to get off relatively unscathed.  Instead, any melee action will always be "equal" in terms of give/take of damage between the participants...sounds great, right?  except that equal damage is fundamentally UNEQUAL in rimworld, where the player cannot sustain the losses that the innumerable pirates and tribesmen can.  A single dead colonist in a raid is significant.  Not necessarily devastating or unbearable, but certainly significant.  A dead pirate...even killing the entire raid is fairly inconsequential...a slight increase in loot/colony wealth...a slight reprieve before the next raid (excepting Randy), and thats it.

Let me tell you a story. South east Georgia in the muck after TDRL with my dad, my son, and my little brother. Went hunting with an old family friend (One of dad's Navy buddies). Had just dropped a buck and my dad and I were cleaning it up. My little brother was taking a piss off about ten yards in front of us. My son was behind us cleaning the barrel of my rifle because he had decided to stick it barrel first into the mud. Boar came out of nowhere and was headed directly for my boy. Didn't hear it at first, my dad was making fun of my shot and saying that he (an old navy guy) could out shoot a young buck marine any day. Didn't even notice it until I heard the first shot - we spun around, my son was facing down a charging boar - first shot cought it somewhere in the shoulder plate. It kept coming, he stood his ground. Second shot blew off the front right hoof, i got to my boy in time to snatch my sidearm from him and put a bullet in the boar's head.

I share this story because the ever old "Don't bring a knife to a gunfight" thing is true. Unless the guy running up to melee is in shield or in cover - he's going to get shot. It's why I've also lobbied for easier hit chance when out of cover, and harder when in cover. My eight year old son disabled one of the scariest critters in those woods. My son had lots of target practice, but it was his first time out. This should be represented.

"innumerable" pirates is a separate issue, but as you've brought up, ties into this. This is starting to go into the territory of the combat & logistical issues that the game has. Using something fundamentally broken as an argument isn't worth countering, imo. Mind you, this is my position that it is broken, as I look at this game as a sim - I believe this game could be much better without the casual/arcade elements.

The more equal the pawns are made, the more difficult it will be to strategize and make those meaningful choices.  There will be no more clever jumping out of doors to surprise a gunman who wandered close...cuz he also has a gladius now and RNG and the fact that your colonists go thru many MANY more raids than any given pirate pawn means that eventually you're going to lose an arm, leg, or the whole head to a lucky swing.

Seriously? This game's combat is about as tactical as a tower defence game. Why not go play Kingdom Rush or VectorTD if you want this sorta mindless waves and waves of bad guys? I'm sorry, but you lack vision and imagination, which is what suggestions are about. Creative solutions to things people find bothersome. I get it, you are for the status quo. I, however, hope for a deeper simulation, a better AI, factions as dependent on logistics as the player faction is. Better combat using vision cones, fog of war, more powerful cover, with penalties for being out in the open in a gun fight. Essentially accounting for suppression and what other games consider reactionary fire - It is deceptively simple to hit someone moving laterally, or forwards/backwards. Which is why you are taught to 'zig zag' with diagonal movements in an effective range around your target - circular in a sense.

This game doesn't get more challenging as they dump more and more enemies on map. Two things happen: A) get bored and start over, B) Are simply completely overrun by the insane amount of enemies on screen.

It cuts the TACTICS of the combat side of the game down to either a standoff shootout trading shots and hoping you come off better, or a bum rush in melee with 6 guys to 1, hoping the one hit the enemy pawn gets before he goes down doesn't lop off an arm.

Can't even tell what point you are trying to get across here, I'm sorry. As far as I can tell this is what goes on right now. Either by the player, or by the enemy. Especially in early game. I agree with you that the combat system and AI need improvement. But that isn't something this proposition covers, and while it certainly would be a factor in such an overhaul, it isn't the end all-be-all to it, or the current mechanics.

Cheers,
Michael

I just feel time shouldn't be changed, I didn't have an argument besides that. Also, the game uses ticks, 60 ticks is a second, http://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Time. Better to use ticks then in-game hours. My argument now though...

So you're proposing, firstly, a 3600 tick day, 24 minutes. A current day is 8 minutes, so x3 time increase. But then you remove months and basically make it 12 days a year. Yet months are 1h 23m 20s, or 300,000 ticks. 43,000 ticks per year then, yet the current year is 3,600,000, or 16 hours, and your proposal would mean a full rimworld year would be done in about 11 minutes, a bit over a Rimworld day.

You're trying to fix the 'construction time problem' and fitting it into your own systems, but it would really fuck up time in the game. Our current time problems are how long it takes for pawns to do any task, completely speeding up time just really fucks it up. They would take half a day in Rimworld, 4 minutes, to walk an irl 5 minute walk. This is guessing for the walking past, but they walk extremely low as it is now, and we can't make them go super fast. Plus, with the speeding up ability, it could take roughly 4 minutes to finish an entire year in Rimworld. Four minutes. I just don't think this makes it realistic at all, it really just bends the time to your system and doesn't help the current time problems.

Zombie2,

The current flow of the game feels right. It isn't to fast, it isn't to slow. It keeps the game moving forward. Which is why I proposed altering perception of time, rather than a rebalance of work-ticks. I'm kind of confused as to why you are focusing so much on engine ticks as opposed to timescale, when most users don't "see" ticks. They see the seconds, minutes, and hours going by in game - not how the engine uses ticks to push them. That would just break the fourth wall and ruin immersion.

I really don't think those ratios work. Making a day 24 minutes long, so every hour is a minute, then making it so there's only 12 days in an entire year? I get what you're trying to do, but doesn't really work out well. And yeah, I misread your original post.

You also seem to be ignoring the three other scales in favor of the twenty four minute one. Perhaps you were just using it as an example, but bashing it, instead of the one more closely matched to the current one is a bit unfair, I think. If you insist on speaking engine, I'll do the conversions for you:

RL Seconds:In game hour
15:1 = 6 rl minute long day; 900 ticks. In game year: 10,800 ticks, or an 1h 12m rl.
30:1 = 12 rl minute long day; 1,800 ticks. In game year: 21,600 ticks, or 2h 24m rl.
45:1 = 18 rl minute long day; 2,700 ticks. In game year: 32,400 ticks, or 3h 36m rl.
60:1 = 24 rl minute long day; 3,600 ticks. In game year: 43,200 ticks, or 4h 48m rl.

Now...You use movement speed as an issue. As square size isn't published, I think it's safe to assume they are between three and five feet. A person wouldn't fit in a 1x1 or 2x2 square comfortably. As map sizes can be between 200-400 tiles, at 3 sq ft / tile we have a figure between 600 to 1200 feet across. At 4 sq ft/tile we have a figure between 800-1600. At 5sq ft/tile we have 1000-2000.

A mile is 5280, 3/4 mile is 3960, 1/2 2640, while 1/4 is 1320. Consider movement speed with these figures.

Then perhaps movement is the -only- aspect that is stretched by my suggestion, however you have to take into consideration that the "work" being conducted is abstractly representing a month. Consider how long it takes to mine, gather, process, and transport materials - then consider how long it takes to construct a building without heavy equipment. By using an abstract timescale, we have a plausible amount of time for this to have happened - as some amount of weeks, rather than days or hours. The same goes for researching, it has to be a record to draft, design, and blueprint the construction of a geothermal generator in two or three days for any scientist- especially when he has no other part in the construction. Those have to be really good instructions.

You've found one good argument against it, travel on our play map, which can be explained with the system as it being the sum of an entire month (for a 24 hour game day).

But if that is all, then consider what is improved, or could be implemented with it:

Construction: Takes weeks/months of abstract time, rather than days.
Mining: that Cheyenne Mountain Complex you're building has taken months, if not a years of work.
Research: No more inventing the wheel in a day.
Overland movement (off map): Can now take a reasonable amount of time, offering possibilities for mechanics geared towards off map missions
Sustainable Npc and player colonies: Population models that regenerate or deplete over time to account for births and deaths. (sorry, but this will force new interesting challenges that don't revolve around "Slaughter 100s of humans every few days")
Space Travel: No more building a vessel capable of traversing space, while at the same time keeping X amount of people alive via suspended animation in as much as some months or a year. This is now a project that takes years. We don't have the manpower (or resources) of NASA to churn one out in a short period of time.

The list goes on.

Work times don't need to change to fit this. They are fine as they are - they just need to be done in a new timescale to make more sense. This would have zero impact on pace or gameplay, except that it will allow deeper simulation and integration of mechanics that would be even more absurd in a game with a timescale that plays each individual day in less than ten minutes.

Take a look at some of the planned features on the most recent dev blog post. Families. Deeper relationships. These things need time to develop. If each day were a day, these things would be so painfully slow to happen (if modeled realistically) that they wouldn't be worth it. Essentially boiling down to colonist A meeting colonist B, two days pass, they are in love. In my timescale these things would have happened over the course of months, while not slowing down gameplay or having features that only occur after hundreds of hours of gameplay with the chance of being wiped away by a stray bullet the next moment.

Cheers,
Michael

Blub01,

That is an interesting suggestion. One I've never thought of myself, for sure. It is def. a common issue in RtWP games that don't have a queuing system (even ones that do, due to changes in flow after queued orders).

Another, no more elegant method, would be to add a half-game-speed toggle between pause and normal speed. I just personally think it'd drive me crazy to have my game feeling like it is stuttering between normal speed and pause.

Cheers,
Michael