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When you get raiders at your door in midgame and you still don't have your killbox in place, you have to defend your colony with the flash and teeth of your colonist against 30-40 raiders... What's the problem in this? Nothing, this is Rimworld after all...
But when i look at 40 raiders goes down the straight line of the corridor where u lined up all your colonist and defenses, one thing become immidiatly clear to me: colonist don't give a shit about tactics and target selecting... they go all straight for the closest one, shooting all concurrently at the same target in the worst scenarios... some colonists with long reload time like snipers and miniguns even waste time bouncing from target to target aiming for couple second before 7 or more companions shoot down their targets for them...  so from the 40 raiders at the beginning, 15 are shot down almost immidiatly after targeted and a storm of 25 get to close range unharmed, where my colonists with miniguns start shooting for good...
This makes battle a hell of micromanaging targets every half a seconds, in order to distribute efficiently the firepower along the frontline.

What i suggest are 2 solution to this problem, both good i think:
1) Combat AI improvement: When a colonist have to automatically designate a target, he start searching from the closest one. If this target is already targeted by another colonist, he go for the second closest one, if this also is targeted by another colonist he moves for a farther one and so on. If he didn't find a free target until his effective range, it will start again the search in the same way but now accepting targets already targeted by 1 other colonist, if at the end he still didn't find a fine target, then he start again searching for targets with 2 colonist already on it and so on.
Also if someone start shooting at a colonist, that colonist immidiatly prioritize shoot him back, provided that it's in range and he isn't attacching someone else prioritized in this way. Selfpreservation is a common thought in battles after all...
This improvements, should allow for a more effective distribution of the firepower along all targets, both from attacking and defending side of the battle. Battles will look like actual battles and not launch a wall of bullets to 1 unluky guy at a time.

2) Weapon specific targeting: the idea is simple, the automatic target selection is made upon the type of weapon the colonist are holding in their hands.
Rapid fire (pistols, SMGs, short range thrown weapons) - always closest target available
Mid range (turrets, rifles, short bows, javelins) - already attacking targets, if no one is attacking, closest target available
Long range (sniper rifles, long bows) - always farther target available
Heavy (minigun, rocketlaunchers) - always best armored target available
Explosives (granades) - farther under cover targets
This will allow players to customize their attack force in advance, planning for a distributed fire scheme or focusing on a determinated range of attack.
I can for example take 3 snipers for counter-sniper, 5 mid range people with rifles for interdict fire, 5 with SMG for rapidly stopping people that come too close, couple brawlers and another couple minigunner/granadier to shot down the tough ones.

Basically, i suggest a creative mode where u could manually modify and save maps at will, placing and removing items, structures and natural stuff, unlocking resarch and edit events.
Then, start a new colony on that map.
This could open the creation of scenarios, easier/harder starts or also simply crating a test world where u could test stuff that are endgame with little effort.

Hi guys, what i'm suggesting is an improvement into variety of natural resouces and landscape features that the game can generate.

Volcano and lava:
Volcanos are like steam vents, but 2x2, they release a set amount of lava that hurt and set on fire everything it touch. It can be found into a cave. With the appropriate resarch, you could build on it some sort of conteinement for the lava, build a thermal power plant that with steam produce both elettricity and heat for your houses and it could also be used to produce chunks of rocks. In addition, rarely it becomes an active volcano, after a day long inactivity, it reproduce the solar eclipse event, spills a lot more lava then normally, and trow chunks in the air that land all around the map(we hope not on your head ^^). Obviously lava is an extremly good heat source used raw, useful if you are freezing in the cold nights and occasionally spawn rocks and few amount of metals around the lava border. Hanging around lava for too much is not advised due to extreme temperature. I hope i don't need to say everything that go into lava dies and get destroyed.

Rivers, lakes and water:
Rivers are flowing water that cross the land usually from a side to side in a plain, from a cave to another cave or a border of the map in mountains, and from a border to the sea in coasts, they are composed by an outer layer of calm water like we already have, and one inner layer of flowing water that push you around if you go into it(or really slow you down). They can be deep or shallow water where you can pass through and wade it. Seasonally fish flow into river and lakes that you can hunt (or fish), also some sort of reeds grow naturally around it like berry bushes do and the land are often fertile around it. With the appropriate resarch, you can build idroelettric generators that can be build only into flowing waters, bridges, that allow you to build a floor type that can go over water without interfering with it's flowing properties, and boats to navigate the water. Possible event with rivers are flood, that turn into flowing water all the water tile of the river and put some flowing water over the riverbank destroying everything on it, and shoal, that turn all flowing water of the river into normal water and normal water into river bad land, a big quantity of fish also die on the river bank if present, both event are a week long.

Crystal and mushrooms:
They both spawn under caves roof. There could be many type of crystals, for examples: glowing one that produce light for free, precious rare one excellent for artwork or for make easy cash, charged one, that with little efforts can be turned into mid sized batteries (maybe with a little resarch), focus crystal, that allow you to focus light in one point, necessary to build any sort of device with lasers in it and so on... Mushrooms grow and spread by their own, requiring good amount of time giving a little source of vegetarian food. They could also be intensively grown at super fast speed into idroponics. Some mushrooms can be fluorescent so they are tiny light source, and some are poisonous, paralizing or slowliy killing the colonist that eat it raw for a time or until you mix an antivenom from the mushrooms itself in a cooker with some medicine. Some mushrooms can also grow in the sunlight but only in forest and jungle biomes and only adiacent to a tree.

Fruit trees and Beehives:
Fruit trees are trees that spawn fruits regularly. They are planted like regular wood tree, and you can still chop them down for wood, but they also regularly spawn fruits ones fully grown like apples, oranges, pears, bananas that the colonist harvest like in a growing zone. Such plants are seasonal, and the fruits spoil in a week even if not harvested. Honey is found in a beehive that spawn on tree if you have flowers planted around. The hive should be destroyed from distance but the job could be done by hand (even if not adviced ^^). hitting the beehive free the bees that stay around the hive for around a day to defend it, the bee swarm is an aggressive entity that is immune to normal damage but attack only entity 3 tiles away from the hive, only fire and explosion damage can affect them. If at the end of the day the beehive is still intact, the bees return to it and despawn, otherwhise the swarm start wondering for another location for where to build a new hive (or go away of the map if no flower are present). The honey grow in the hive up to a cap (20-30?), ones the cap is reached, a new neutral bee swarm take half the honey an start migrate to another position to build another hive. Any hive need at least 5-6 tile of flower to exist, if there aren't enough flowers the bees will go out of the map edge and despawn. Honey is a really powerful ingredient, 1 unit of raw honey is enough to feed a colonist and give him the mood bonus of +5 ("Sweet happiness"). Also, honey have huge spoil duration, up to 6 month, but animals are attracted, so store them in your fridge or they will come to take your honey reserve first.

Wolfs, bears, tigers and alligators:
More animals! More predators! I don't see any carnivore predators out in the map... Any biomes should have at least one big one. If there aren't, they should appear as soon that there are a lot of entities to hunt. They could attack colonist if hungry, provocated or even if they get too close but they try to stay away to your colonist normally. Some melee weapon could really help you there if you get surprised. Wolfs stay in groups like deer and muffalos do, not too strong but fast, they count on numbers, but are a treat even if alone. Bears are sturdy, slow and powerful, they hang around alone, under a roof cave if there is some. Tigers are fast, really powerful and have average healt, if satiated they sleep a lot. Alligators stay around water pools, they are really slow and don't try to chase u, but their attack is lethal, will probably cost you an arm or a leg (not that is difficult to replace if you manage to save the colonist). More to add! even aliens creatures are good, but we need some predators!

Hi there,
i just downloaded the new alpha8 and as any update, my saves goes orribly wrong inevitably crashing and making psychedelic things, so i deleted all the save files and worlds i had, and started a fresh new one.
I played for 10 mins in the new map and all seems to works fine for now, but then i tryied to save the file and reload to see if all is ok.
Well... Rimworld stops working anytime i try to load a game, no matter what save/autosave i choose.
Also, i keep getting an error log everytime i launch the game as soon that the main menu appear.
Any suggestion?

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Thunderstorm, molotovs, incendiary mortars and also super nasty boomrats.
It seems that Tynan invented fire to see our colonists run around like monkeys while ours solars and geogens get destroyed by the inner unstoppable fire...
What about a fire estinguisher that allow u to estinguish fire in a 3x3 area in front of the colonist at the same time instead of use bare hands?
Or a resarch that allow them to do that transparently instead of an object.
Or maybe pumps, tanks and sprinklers for an area fire suppression system that use water?
I know that sound crazy to estinguish fire with water in a generator room, but once in place u could use water as a new resource, u could use that for all kinds of good stuff... from drinking to irrigation to steam turbine and down to acquarium... yes acquarium, u will put art in here, don't u!?!?