Alpha 17 is on public unstable branch

[Zhentar]

Why not just solve it the same way you do IRL?

The names of the months are only part of the calendar, and the sun, earth, moon, and stars couldn't really give a rat's ass about the calendar when it comes to seasons and weather.

That's exactly what the current quadrum system is...

Equatorial climates typically have two seasons - wet and dry.

Anyway the upshot is that you really cannot use this sort of local climactic pattern as a global calendar.

But you do need a global calendar. The main options I see are:
-Quadrum names as now
-Use real month names and skip 2/3
-Some other quadrum names (maybe latinized numbers - unumber, duember, etc or something better).
-1st quarter, 2nd quarter
-No month or quadrums, just use "1st day of year", "23rd day of year", etc.

I'm happy for suggestions but just asking to have seasons without any dating system will leave quite a few unsolvable problems.

I am a big fan of KISS, keep it simple stupid.

That's why my preference: 1st quarter, 2nd quarter etc. That makes the most sense and is completely intuitive. Unlike basically all the alternatives.

I disagree on this. Numbered quarters would work great for timekeeping, but they don't intuitively map to particular times of the year. Is the first quarter northern-hemisphere Winter or Spring? What season is the third quarter? Even in the seasonal climate I'm used to thinking in, I'll always have to pause and mentally convert the number to a time of year. "Decembary" sounds odd but I immediately understand what time of year it's associated with.

Although... come to think of it, that problem could be solved pretty easily via UI. If instead of "8th of Aprimay" it said "8th of Aprimay (spring)" or even "8th of Duember (spring)" I'd still get that intuitive understanding.

[giltirn]

"Decembary" sounds odd but I immediately understand what time of year it's associated with.

Although... come to think of it, that problem could be solved pretty easily via UI. If instead of "8th of Aprimay" it said "8th of Aprimay (spring)" or even "8th of Duember (spring)" I'd still get that intuitive understanding.

If you choose your colony in roughly the same latitude as your IRL home you will most likely intuitively understand the relation between the calendar quadrum and the season, but others will not. However I agree that your solution "8th of Duember (spring)" is the best way of clearing up any misconceptions.

[Limdood]

"Decembary" sounds odd but I immediately understand what time of year it's associated with.

Although... come to think of it, that problem could be solved pretty easily via UI. If instead of "8th of Aprimay" it said "8th of Aprimay (spring)" or even "8th of Duember (spring)" I'd still get that intuitive understanding.

If you choose your colony in roughly the same latitude as your IRL home you will most likely intuitively understand the relation between the calendar quadrum and the season, but others will not. However I agree that your solution "8th of Duember (spring)" is the best way of clearing up any misconceptions.

Except tynan has stated many times that for a large portion of the globe, there is no spring.  calling it spring when you're settled on the equator or poles not only has no meaning, it IMPLIES a certain kind of weather that won't exist...misinformation.

[DariusWolfe]

Crossposting this play story from another thread:

I had malaria strike two colonists at the same time last night; No big deal, as I'd been hoarding my good medicine pretty tightly; Except one of those colonists was almost two days away, on a quick caravan to a neighbor. So I had that colonist buy a few shitty herbal meds and self-treat; Unfortunately, I had to wait until she'd gotten a full tile away from the camp she was visiting before I could "settle", self-treat, form a new caravan, abandon base and move on. After doing this a couple times, she made it back (after a manhunting pack of two rats; FML) at around 60% infection, where it was a damned nail-biter for my doc to break out the good meds and treat her; Luckily her room was spotless, as I hadn't yet built a dedicated medical facility; That happened as soon as both of my colonists were back on their feet (the other had a sad-wander break at about 98% immunity, so that wasn't good, but he survived just fine)

While it was a tense situation that made for a memorable story, It seems like it might be a bug of some sort for an event to strike two pawns in entirely different locations. The manhunting rats didn't strike the colony at the same time it struck the caravan, so it seems odd that malaria would hit both at the same time.

[DariusWolfe]

Except tynan has stated many times that for a large portion of the globe, there is no spring.  calling it spring when you're settled on the equator or poles not only has no meaning, it IMPLIES a certain kind of weather that won't exist...misinformation.

Tynan has stated that as a problem that still needs to be solved, which means it's not a permanent solution. Two updates ago, latitude and longitude, real seasons, etc. were half-ass abstractions, and now he's modeling climate (among other things) on a literal global scale. Give him some time (and credit).

[Ragnarok]

Why not just solve it the same way you do IRL?

The names of the months are only part of the calendar, and the sun, earth, moon, and stars couldn't really give a rat's ass about the calendar when it comes to seasons and weather.

That's exactly what the current quadrum system is...

Equatorial climates typically have two seasons - wet and dry.

Anyway the upshot is that you really cannot use this sort of local climactic pattern as a global calendar.

But you do need a global calendar. The main options I see are:
-Quadrum names as now
-Use real month names and skip 2/3
-Some other quadrum names (maybe latinized numbers - unumber, duember, etc or something better).
-1st quarter, 2nd quarter
-No month or quadrums, just use "1st day of year", "23rd day of year", etc.

I'm happy for suggestions but just asking to have seasons without any dating system will leave quite a few unsolvable problems.

I am a big fan of KISS, keep it simple stupid.

That's why my preference: 1st quarter, 2nd quarter etc. That makes the most sense and is completely intuitive. Unlike basically all the alternatives.

I disagree on this. Numbered quarters would work great for timekeeping, but they don't intuitively map to particular times of the year. Is the first quarter northern-hemisphere Winter or Spring? What season is the third quarter? Even in the seasonal climate I'm used to thinking in, I'll always have to pause and mentally convert the number to a time of year. "Decembary" sounds odd but I immediately understand what time of year it's associated with.

Although... come to think of it, that problem could be solved pretty easily via UI. If instead of "8th of Aprimay" it said "8th of Aprimay (spring)" or even "8th of Duember (spring)" I'd still get that intuitive understanding.

I disagree with your disagreement. I personally think 1st quarter, 2nd quarter etc would be better than decembary and janumay. You said ""Decembary" sounds odd but I immediately understand what time of year it's associated with." Yeah, so do I, but a complete opposite of you I'd wager, which means the whole 'time of year' is relative, or geographical, or whatever. You said quarter's "don't intuitively map to particular times of the year. Is the first quarter northern-hemisphere Winter or Spring? What season is the third quarter?" These are flawed arguements. You could say the same thing about months. Seasons are opposite based on North and South hemispheres. I'm an Aussie so when I hear about a 'white Christmas' in December I can only dream about snow in 40C+. With quarters it's easy. I'm in this spot and the growing time is 2nd-3rd quarter. Over this zone growing time is 4th quarter. Way over there growing time is 4th-2nd quarter. And way up there growing season is never. Sure there may be different seasons in different areas but all you gotta know is what season/growing time it is for the area you're in. It's much easier to grasp a simple concept as a year split into four quarters than try to remember what some mutt bastardization of months is supposed to mean. Kudos for Tynan for thinking of something unique but I'm personally not a fan of the month naming thing.

[TOWC]

Basically, a new Ambrosia fruit is... a fruit. However, it's considered as some hardcore drug, therefore, it cannot be cooked or added into meals.
Tynan, is it gonna be changed/fixed some day or you will leave it as it is? I mean, production of some some sort of "happy meals"(literally) would be a nice addition to game mechanics.

UPD. If I remember right, player could already do something similar, or, maybe, identical, by adding insect jelly to the meals. I don't remember if it's true, though. As far as I understand, the only property difference between ambrosia and jelly, is the type of joy it brings(chemical/gluttonous). And that ambrosia is much easier to farm, than jelly, for obvious reasons. Personally, it's kinda hard for me to consider the fruit more as a drug, than an ingredient, really.

[milon]

On the topic of the new calendar, it seems to me that there's 2 pieces of information to be conveyed: how far we are through the current year & what the current (growing?) season is.

Why not just use 2 lines of text to convey that? It could be as simple as:

March 2
Spring

The Julian calendar (or whatever) could be used to track progression through the year. The local season could be calculated​ based on latitude, time of year, etc. That way it would be correct no matter where on the planet the colony is.

Just my $0.02.

[Tynan]

Okay, let's please end the discussion of the date system. There's a Suggestions thread for that now. Thanks.

You can see the local seasons by mousing over the date.

[oktakon]

Sry first up as I dont have the time to read through the 17 pages of dialoge to see if my issue has been brought to anyones attention. I fired up A17 yesterday with no mods a fresh copy and started buidling my first unmodified A17 game. Picked the tutorial crash landed starting condtions as I wanted to see if the tutorial system gave any new features away. First thing I saw was built packed dirt roads, wonderful addition makes a community walkthrough gate structures reasonable. Then a wild grove of ambroasia or whatever started to grow, now thats pretty cool I just need to find a way to grow these things now. But After building my own 7x7 house and attaching an aircon to it I noticed it wasent changing the temp inside even thou it says indoor when i move the mouse over it and outdoors when i move it away. I turned the AC on and off.... did all the IRL shit youd do. Decontructed it and rebuilt it to the other side of the room but still same effect dose not control the temp inside. Now if I had mods on id say in the past that "how rude mod" the one where pawns holds the doors open did this to my A16 games before and only until I uninstalled THAT mod.... amoung all the other mods ..... my game would go back to normal .... but this is A17 with no mods enabled... was really enjoying the new layout until this as it was just that room not the tutorial house you have to build, i built an AC for that one also and it was fine... anyways still an amazing game gonna get back to A17 with a new game not tutorial built to start with and see if I can replicate that fault again.   

[DariusWolfe]

This isa known issue that they've tried to fix at last once i think. Rebuild one of the walls, or reload the save and that should fix it, at least for now; it's supposedly that the room isn't detecting that it's indoors, even when the tooltip says "Indoors".

[epideath]

I have had a prisoner for over 12 days now, she has a 67% chance to recruit. I have never had a prisoner at that low a recruitment chance take this long, maybe its just some bad RNG. She is a pessimist maybe that is affecting it. Just wanted to bring it up to see if anyone else has had any similar problems.

Also still having an issue sometimes with the temperature in freezer. I had a cooler installed. but no temp change, saved and reload it all worked fine, then added another cooler to same room and the temp went to outside temp again. saved and reloaded has been working fine ever since.

[Tynan]

Thanks guys; I'm gonna ask ison to take another look at the freezer/region problem.

[RemingtonRyder]

Hunting is very time intensive. If you can farm or use hydroponics, you won't need to hunt quite as much. If you can only hunt, then you will probably have to trade for food when there aren't many animals around.

I haven't noticed any increase in food consumption.

[giltirn]

Hunting is very time intensive. If you can farm or use hydroponics, you won't need to hunt quite as much. If you can only hunt, then you will probably have to trade for food when there aren't many animals around.

I haven't noticed any increase in food consumption.

Perhaps it is my imagination then, although I am not the only one who has come to the same conclusion - others on the Rimworld Reddit seem to think the same. I'm also no spring chicken - I have 125 hours of Rimworld under my belt. I know that the game has been through a rebalance pass, which I believe was intended to make it so that farming is not the only path to sustainable foods, so it would not surprise me if some of the hunger mechanics have been changed to account for the increased food availability. Again it may be my imagination but it seems that there are more animals in the world and that berries can be harvested more times throughout the year which suggests that indeed some changes have been made. It would be nice if we had access to detailed change notes for this testing period which I feel would really help alleviate such possibly phantom balance changes.