Too formulaic, no true diversity --- Add diversity of colony style

[b0rsuk]

I disagree. You could think of it in terms of Magnitude of natural disasters/events. Higher difficulties would linearly scale the Magnitude of natural disasters. The length/time and frequency of lingering events and map conditions (Toxic Fallout, Volcanic Winter, Heat Wave, Cold Snap, Solar Flare, Eclipse) is a variable that is easy to manipulate based on difficulty settings.

1. It's boooooring ! I've had toxic fallout + volcanic winter at the same time, or two fallouts in short timespan back when the grace period was longer. It was also possible to have toxic fallout in the first year. I think there was also a bug where it lasted abnormally long. The dominating feeling was boring, there was simply nothing happening and the map was empty. People were bored out of their minds, no work to do other than my 1 or 2 sculpturs, everyone else was on billard table / dining room "duty", to make sure they spend most their time in the prettiest room.

You need much more than duration to make those events hard and interesting. Truth to be told, only length of solar flare would make me nervous. Eclipses are trivially countered by 2 batteries (depends how's your power balance). Heat wave / cold snap is not important except if you heavily rely on outdoor farming (devilstrand...). Otherwise it's just a bit more power usage because you air condition / heater everything.

It's bad enough Rimworld has only a couple distinct natural disasters. You see a couple eclipses every year already, the same for solar flares. It would just feel like there are MORE of them. Counterproductive !

I can count on the fingers of one hand combat events that coincided with solar flares. Even back when I used turrets. (Most of my games are until the ship launches... in recent alphas it got a lot more expensive).

With respect to sudden events like Blight, you would simply need a new variable that determines the Magnitude or amount of plants destroyed based on the difficulty setting.

It's easy to say "stronger disasters" (magnitude), but what would it mean in practice ? Please be specific and say something about each event.

I feel I'm rambling, but here's a thought experiment. Make a scenario where combat events are impossible (I think the editor can do that ? Not sure about raids, but you can remove manhunter packs and infestations). Even with permanent eclipse and toxic fallout, life is possible and nothing is going to kill a single colonist. Solar flare combined with fallout could, but then solar flares for long periods have NO (zero) counter. You can just endure them while supplies last. Mid-late game bases grind to a halt, and turrets are not even the worst. Machining tables. Freezers. Electric tailoring benches, electric ovens. Solar flare forces you to play tribal. Non-combat disasters are only truly dangerous combined with combat events. Maybe a big malaria outbreak at the start of Spring when you're SHORT on food, but a good player will not paint himself in the corner like that.

[quote[
Strategy games will always have optimal methods, yes. However, a game that's designed for replayability should have multiple ways to play the game well[/quote]

Very much agree, and Rimworld is lacking here. If you dismiss constructive criticism you give up too easily. It takes playtesting and iteration. We're doing the playtesting.

I think Tynan should spend more time thinking what will be the impact of new changes on player behavior, not just adding features that sound cool. I mean - vehicles sound cool, but what would it bring to the game ? Global map travel speed bonus. Sheesh. Drugs and addiction sounded cool, like a forbidden fruit, but it's mostly a new serious flaw to look out for in recruits, and a new source of permanent injuries. In my opinion not something the game desperately needed. Yes it is a source of income, but it's yet another GROWING source of income, after selling raw fabrics, hops, beer, apparel, devilstrand, etc. Year round growing zones got even easier.

Currently, there is only one optimized method of deterring militaristic threats, and that's to build a kill-box/trap.

After certain point - long after a spaceship can be built - yes.

Back when pirates were capable of dropping on top of you, loose bases (with separate houses!) had a defensive advantage. They were resistant to both mortars and drop pods, at the cost of longer travel times.

That's why sapper AI was developed. Then, people were even more compelled to play in mountainous areas for the geological advantages. These mountain bases (which are boring to look at) are why Infestations were developed.

I think mountain bases are overrated. People cite mortars, but mortars fall fast to sniper harassment in early-mid game (even survival rifle). In later stages, you have your own mortars. Even EMP mortars work, they have bigger blast radius and buy you time.


By the way, in some ways Rimworld feels very combat oriented! 1) Combat events are by far the most dangerous, potentially colony-ending, 2) combat events have the most associates countermeasures, including turrets, go-juice, painstoppers, a wide array of weapons and armor, war animals, mortars, traps, stone walls, call for help (in theory), psychic items and rocket launchers. What countermeasures do other events have ?

Solar flares - wait, there's nothing you can do. You can build a few fuel-powered tables and store some wood for campfires. That's it. Store some pemmican ?
Blight - stockpile food. Hunt, build nutrient paste dispenser.
Eclipse - batteries, wind turbines.
toxic fallout - stockpile food, hydroponics.
volcanic winter - play as normal
Cold snap, heat wave - clothes, stockpile food
manhunter pack - stay inside, fighting them is not worth it except several miniguns on snow / marsh, or losing several turrets.
...

[O Negative]

It's easy to say "stronger disasters" (magnitude), but what would it mean in practice ? Please be specific and say something about each event.

I feel I'm rambling, but here's a thought experiment. Make a scenario where combat events are impossible (I think the editor can do that ? Not sure about raids, but you can remove manhunter packs and infestations). Even with permanent eclipse and toxic fallout, life is possible and nothing is going to kill a single colonist. Solar flare combined with fallout could, but then solar flares for long periods have NO (zero) counter. You can just endure them while supplies last. Mid-late game bases grind to a halt, and turrets are not even the worst. Machining tables. Freezers. Electric tailoring benches, electric ovens. Solar flare forces you to play tribal. Non-combat disasters are only truly dangerous combined with combat events. Maybe a big malaria outbreak at the start of Spring when you're SHORT on food, but a good player will not paint himself in the corner like that.

You make fair points. In practice, natural disasters of greater magnitude should have a more immediate/devastating effect. If you were to apply that idea to the Toxic Fallout, for instance, you would need to make toxic buildup accumulate faster for organics that are exposed (depending on the "magnitude", usually on a scale from 1-10). A Volcanic Winter would decrease the temperature more dramatically at higher magnitudes, and other temperature extreme events would work in a similar fashion (right now the temperature offset is always the same). Zzzt events could scale number of explosion points with magnitude, basically causing more damage to different parts of the base on the same circuit; or, the event could be reworked to scale how much stored electricity is lost based on how bad the short was. There are a lot of options available for each event, which is why I didn't really go into too much detail. My ideas, again, might not be anywhere near what would actually work best.

Certainly, more natural disasters could be introduced, and they would work a lot better than the current ones do. Without getting too complex, meteor strikes (working similarly to crashed ship parts) of various intensities could devastate a colony in almost an instant, if they land in the right spot(s). The problem with that idea is the lack of preventative measures available to the player, and the player has a high chance of ending up with the feeling of being cheated. You could make that kind of event neutral by making the meteor composed of highly valuable materials, which could be mined. But, that might not be satisfactory for most. I'm still crossing my fingers for communicable disease, because that would make a huge impact on how people deal with pawns with ailments. "Hey, look Jimmy! Your wife crash landed not far from us! We could patch her up and- Wait... She's infected with the Plague. Yeah, sorry Jimmy. We're not risking bringing that into our colony..."

[b0rsuk]

You make fair points. In practice, natural disasters of greater magnitude should have a more immediate/devastating effect. If you were to apply that idea to the Toxic Fallout, for instance, you would need to make toxic buildup accumulate faster for organics that are exposed (depending on the "magnitude", usually on a scale from 1-10). A Volcanic Winter would decrease the temperature more dramatically at higher magnitudes, and other temperature extreme events would work in a similar fashion (right now the temperature offset is always the same).

My issue with that is it just makes those events more barren and desolate. Arguably landing maps are already boring enough - otherwise people would replace a big fraction of the map with their bases, with no care whatsover for local geography. Many bases seen on screenshots here literally look like copied and pasted on top of map! And it's hard to blame players, when fire is not threatening enough to encourage spread bases, disease doesn't spread based on proximity, and maps have no points of interest like fishing sites. Some players use the same blueprint on all maps.

But I digress. What's missing is non-combat events that are punishing but don't make the map barren / reduce the number of options radically, and yet have a couple of viable counters.

Zzzt events could scale number of explosion points with magnitude, basically causing more damage to different parts of the base on the same circuit; or, the event could be reworked to scale how much stored electricity is lost based on how bad the short was.

I learned to watch my power balance carefully and uninstall most of my batteries when they get full to prevent that. This is really tiresome with wind power, but necessary. I also tend to use switches for solar lamps and most other infrastructure and turn them off at night. Tynan pretends the micromanagement issue doesn't exist. Anyway your modified event wouldn't affect me. And if it did, I would move (even more) towards wind power and fueled generators as backup. For the last couple of alphas I haven't really used geothermal so many people love. It's a huge research investment and it costs a lot. Since I like to play turretless, I don't need so much power. Such bases use 2 generators before high tech research bench. You can power them off 2 fueled generators on ice sheet (Intense difficulty), importing your wood.

Certainly, more natural disasters could be introduced, and they would work a lot better than the current ones do. Without getting too complex, meteor strikes (working similarly to crashed ship parts) of various intensities could devastate a colony in almost an instant, if they land in the right spot(s). The problem with that idea is the lack of preventative measures available to the player, and the player has a high chance of ending up with the feeling of being cheated. You could make that kind of event neutral by making the meteor composed of highly valuable materials, which could be mined.

Interesting idea. How about this implementation: you get a warning 1 month in advance that meteor shower is incoming. Then you can use colonists with Research skill to perform calculations and identify as many impact sites as possible. Meteors would fall on the impact sites, often reducing your buildings in there to dust or severely damaging them, killing pawns. To spice things up, research would not identify actual impact sites. Rather, it would identify areas which are SAFE from impacts. The zones without "safe" squares would be risky, but not necessarily lethal. Of course, it would be best to build temporary shelters for your colonists and livestock to move people there right before impact, and uninstall as many machines as possible. The meteors themselves would indeed be mineable, they might even spread some strange substance to make soil more fertile or whatever. Impacts on mountain could cause tremors and cave-ins.

To wrap it up, this event would be preventable, especially by herding pawns into shelters, and utilizing researchers (who would gain a role even in late game!). Not exactly preventable, but you could prepare pretty well for them. Still, your base base would often be destroyed after the fall, and your builders would have a lot of work on their hands before and after. If not shelters, you could ragequit and migrate to a different tile.

Yes, a rebuild-your-base event ! And it might never be the same. Are your builders good enough to rebuild it before the next raid or winter ?

But, that might not be satisfactory for most. I'm still crossing my fingers for communicable disease, because that would make a huge impact on how people deal with pawns with ailments. "Hey, look Jimmy! Your wife crash landed not far from us! We could patch her up and- Wait... She's infected with the Plague. Yeah, sorry Jimmy. We're not risking bringing that into our colony..."

Sounds good at first, but players would shoot visitors on sight !!

[dogui]

I totally agree with you, Lightzy and hope that Tynan agree too.
Real biodiversity, resources distribution, skill matters, a longer, bigger and slower tree of technologies, which forces to specialize you in making an high tech artefact instead of others.

[b0rsuk]

I mean calculating sites safe from meteors would work similar to puzzle map in Heroes of Might and Magic. As you visit obelisks, more and more *empty* pieces of the map are revealed and you are free do dig for the artifact in remaining squares. Only in Rimworld research would gradually reveal safe areas.

[NiftyAxolotl]

Two questions to clarify the discussion. Suppose it is late-game: you have all tech researched; skilled, well-equipped colonists; well-tested defenses; redundant power and temperature control; and ample stockpiles of food and silver.

• Should anything in the game be able to seriously threaten your base?
• Should you keep playing this game or start a new one?

[Bozobub]

1.  That should be fully up to the individual player and already kind of is, via storyteller and difficulty settings.  I personally *never* go for the actual "win" scenario.

2.  See above.

Another early access game I enjoy, SPAZ 2, has a similar mechanic:  Once you destroy the Zombies (it's "Space Pirates And Zombies", you see ) you've pretty much won the game, as such goes (unless you set the Zombie plague to recur) but you're still free to terrorize the other factions of the galaxy until you tire of it, while upgrading your ship into a true monster to pimp on the SPAZ 2 forums =).

[Razzoriel]

Quoting this thread because this is exactly what I've been working on for the last six months:

1) Add more plant, earth, resource, mineral, animal types.

I've been working on this as the core reason behind Outer Galaxies. So far, I've compiled 30 more cultivars (Thanks, Vegetable Garden), 5 "earth" types (Gravel, mud, clay, so forth), division of "Components" into different components for each application (you'd need Advanced Components for better tech buildings, for instance) and about 30 new animals (again, just copypasting other mods and balancing them for this mod). Funny to note, excluding the new dog breeds, each with advantages and disadvantages (pet dogs nuzzle more, hunting dogs are faster/stronger, bulldogs are smaller and more resillient, and more ferocious; a Pitbull will attack more often, are smaller but as sturdy as a full-build dog).

2) Disperse all those plant, earth, mineral, resource, animal types on the worldmap at generation. (SPECIALIZATION because no colony will have everything, or even close.)

You'll find that Outer Galaxies is four times more likely to generate ores into a map. You'll find ores everywhere. There are about two hundred ores. However, each ore has different compositions of the thirty types of metals. You won't NEED every type of metal to evolve in technology and to craft everything (after all, trading is possible). The ore maybe has a very small concentration of metal, but a high range of metals (say, for example, Inaglyite, which is an ore that yields Iridium, Platinum, Lead and copper, as in, it is a very useful ore).

3) Make crafting/building/research cost these resource types in a MUCH more complex manner. 
     --- For example, for an M16 you'll need steel (or some better metal), plastics, the ingredients of gunpowder and the tech, bullets (m16s are rather simple I guess).
     --- For shield generators you'll need some special rare crystals, some magnetized special mineral etc, some other kind of metallic ore, rare stuff

I'm adding polymer, different metals, handloading (thanks to CE) and other things which you'll need for each different type of craft. For example, if you want to craft your own prosthetics, you'll need Palladium, which is a semi-rare metal. If you want to make solar panels, you'll need Tellurium, which is also not very easy to be found.

4) Make certain crops proper for cultivation on certain earth types. SPECIALIZATION because no colony will be able to grow all the same crops. Few places are good for growing strawberries or grapes properly. Player understands that to make a heroin lab he'll need a place that's good for growing poppy, which probably won't be able to grow healroots, and so on and so forth)

It is very hard to code crop rotation. But having lots of different plants for cultivation makes it possible for players to think twice before making lots of different cultivations.

5) Add pawn skill trees and XP, making the player able to specialize pawns with certain unique abilities as they gain XP.

Skill trees are too RPG-ish. This is the only thing I disagree. Making more traits will probably be the way to go.

6) Add the ability to teach skills from pawn to pawn. Tutelage of skills becomes a marketable ability (perhaps you can send a pawn to a militaristic colony to be taught how to shoot, perhaps a colony asks if you could teach their colonists how to dance for a monthly fee. PLAY A DANCE SCHOOL COLONY!)

Reading books should be trainable, as in, pawns read them and gain skills. There's a mod that does that, and I'm planning on doing it too.

7) Make the science tree longer and such that choosing certain directions soft-exludes other directions (making them much more costly to research).
For example, if your colony focuses research heavily on medicine, it can research laser weapons, but it will be much more costly.
Thus forcing the player into choice, without excluding him from anything.
This, perhaps, can also be done by having the researcher pawn himself become more specialized in certain fields of study to the exclusion of others.

Think about 400 different techs, ranging from neolithic, to ancient, medieval, pre-industrial, industrial, modern, atomic, digital and spacer levels. You'll HAVE to specialize. You WON'T be able to make EVERYTHING, because there's just so much tech that requires others. For example, you want to research electricity? Good, what type? Solar, coal, nuclear? Each tech tree for each type of electricity takes time. You'll have to pick which one, and that will affect your future techs.

Make colony health/happiness depend also on food variety, thus a colony in a sandy beach subsisting mostly on kelp and fishing will need to import some other stuff to get by

Meh, honestly, food variety shouldn't be a thing. It is complex enough as it is.

This will make each colony more unique in function and in the economic system. A colony focusing on weapons tech will be able to produce, sell, train with better weapons, but will require trade for medicine and other stuff, unless it spends a lot of time also researching all the other stuff!  Unlike what stupid people think, putting restrictions like this on the player by the system itself makes the experience much more interesting than leaving everything open, which ends up just creating the same scenario over and over again.

A more economical-leaning colony will find out trading their goods for weapons more often, the other way around. Drug-based colonies will be more profitable, but will require trading for other things. If you do not specialize, you'll be stuck in your tech level for much much longer, making mechanoid fights very tough (defending yourself with muskets against charge rifles isn't a good idea).

In short, think up ways to make each playthrough more focused by soft-limiting choice and rewarding colony specialization, thus also making trade something that the game actually needs instead of something no colony really ever needs.

When it is ready, make sure to check it out. I think it covers most of the points you laid out.

[Bozobub]

Wow!  Sounds like THE mod to have, come 1.0; you're on, Razzoriel, that sounds amazing.

[Yoshida Keiji]

Indeed, I would love to see an expansion in the research tree, so that a particular direction would take you to a specific outcome. So far we only have one which is spaceship launch.

I will start by saying that I completely love the game and been playing it ever since I bought it, participating both here in the forum as well as in the wiki. However, the game in its lore it always sounded empty and nonsensical. I play only Lost Tribe after a few Crashlanded games, and this is because the tribals are the ones that give me more game to play, but...

If you start to analyze the game from a philosophical angle, Rim World sounds ridiculous both in the beginning and in the end.

We start with the wrath of the Gods, in a sci-fi game... Really? Year 5500...and Mankind still believing in Gods?...oh well okay... (I really hate to see my pawns praying as part of Joy, I personally would make it mandatory so that if any colonist is witnessed praying, that would be a death sentence to be...floated, lets say.)...anyways.

Then we have the "Ending", which is to launch to search for another planet, which is unclear in the sense as the game provides no single reason as to "why" we are leaving. Is the planet about to explode like Superman's Krypton? I mean... once the player sets a strong settlement that is self sufficient / sustainable...why would we want to start all over elsewhere?

I started playing Rim World after a friend recommended it to me while talking about Sid Meier's Civilization series and in that game, the fourth installment had different "Endings" like Cultural Victory, Conquest/Domination, Spaceship, Religious...argh...

So far, I have always launched the ship after 5 to 6 in game years and start a new game in a different biome, but never stayed longer than that as most players seem to be doing. And considering that we (not me) have the Gods and permanent like long term settlements, the game could use this to enrich the storyline to create alternative endings too.

* What upset the Gods in the first place? The Gods sent what? Mechanoids to raze mankind? Well... How about we develop the Colony into Archeology and create Deep Drills that allows us to recover "buried" shut down scythes that were destroyed by "Resistance" habitants attempting to survive, and use those "salvaged" mechanoids to load and read their "chips" and then find a directive with a link to communicate with the Creators, and try to NOT repeat the same "mistake" that cause the first Wrath of the Gods?

* Since in the forums here itself, we can read about players deciding to stay and NOT launch, we could also have the alternative ending of becoming a Glitterworld nation. Expand your Colony to five strong settlements and after the "Fifth" colony successfully stand a full year, we can upgrade the Glitterworld...unlocking an "Extended" research tab so that we can produce what we so far can only purchase.

* Alternatively to the above, after razing five outpost of a Faction, it is eradicated and repeating the same action with all other Factions, we conquer the whole planet. Since it is very common for people to stay several years without launching, Endings that provide more gameplay to such players would make more sense to me. To me its completely irrational to see Faction outposts scattered without Nation wide boundaries, I mean... shouldn't  Factions bunch up close to each other for better protection from other citizens rather stretched thin and more vulnerable to rival attacks? And how on ..."Earth" a single Colony faction can stand THIS long versus Factions that have 100+ outposts?


Then again of course... religious are irrational and games with Gods don't need to make sense...Well, at least I once got a game with a pawn that was Religious and was incapable of Intellectual, so I don't feel completely  isolated in Rim World.

[b0rsuk]

We start with the wrath of the Gods, in a sci-fi game... Really? Year 5500...and Mankind still believing in Gods?...oh well okay... (I really hate to see my pawns praying as part of Joy, I personally would make it mandatory so that if any colonist is witnessed praying, that would be a death sentence to be...floated, lets say.)...anyways.

Your point being ? It's year 2017 and more people in France, a developed western country, believe in fortune tellers than in economics. There are also holy wars and countries ruled by religious hierarchs. Scientology, a religion conceived by a sci-fi writer, thrives. Everyone knows the creator was a sci-fi writer, but worshippers don't care.

Frank Herbert's Dune convincingly describes a universe where religion is a major force. The year is at least 10000 after thinking machines have been developed.

Unless people evolve radically, psychological need for religion won't go anywhere.

Then we have the "Ending", which is to launch to search for another planet, which is unclear in the sense as the game provides no single reason as to "why" we are leaving. Is the planet about to explode like Superman's Krypton? I mean... once the player sets a strong settlement that is self sufficient / sustainable...why would we want to start all over elsewhere?

It's because Tynan tries to have it both ways, a sandbox and a survival game. The two are at odds with each other. A proper survival game would need tighter survival mechanics, more care about resources, diseases, nutrition, shelter mechanics, weather, even WALL maintenance. Animals that serve some purpose, not just fluffy pets every single colony can do without just fine. At the same time Tynan wants a sandbox where "stories happen".

I started playing Rim World after a friend recommended it to me while talking about Sid Meier's Civilization series and in that game, the fourth installment had different "Endings" like Cultural Victory, Conquest/Domination, Spaceship, Religious...argh...

You should play Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri instead. Very much like Civilization, except in hard SF setting, and all things add up unlike in Rimworld where they are waved away and the setting is only meant to provide colorful explosions, lasers and a new frontier. I highly recommend Alpha Centauri. It interestingly weaves various faction philosophies into a SF setting. For example, Lord's Believers are fundamentalists, they are resistant to espionage attempts and get a bonus when attacking. Because holy cause. On the other hand, they believe the planet is their Promised Land, and get a penalty to ecology. The university faction gets research bonuses, but weakness to spies, because they believe in open access to knowledge. While there is only one ending, really, there are various future societies you can achieve, including cybernetic, eudaimonia (common happiness), thought control.

* What upset the Gods in the first place? The Gods sent what? Mechanoids to raze mankind?

My understanding is that the message is simply a tribal interpretation of a mechanoid raid. They need to rationalize the carnage somehow.

* Since in the forums here itself, we can read about players deciding to stay and NOT launch, we could also have the alternative ending of becoming a Glitterworld nation. Expand your Colony to five strong settlements and after the "Fifth" colony successfully stand a full year, we can upgrade the Glitterworld...unlocking an "Extended" research tab so that we can produce what we so far can only purchase.

I think it shows the failure of Rimworld as a survival game. Even on ice sheet it doesn't feel particularly harsh. Raids are the only real pressure. Wealth is accumulated much faster than it is spent. You can build castles that don't wear down with time.

This reminds me of Heroes of Might and Magic 1-3 and its balance problems. There are no army upkeep costs, so armies grow forever, and offensive spells quickly fall out of use. Spell power grows in logarythmic scale, while attack skill / defense skill is proportional to army size, which grows linearly.

Rimworld needs either to scale its threats, or increase upkeep costs (food, components, some resource to repair walls).

[Lightzy]

By the way the easiest way to make every playthrough more diverse is to simply...

Remove the crafting skill and diversify it into weaponmaking/armorsmithing/tailoring/etc.
That way it'll be very difficult to level up a pawn to be a general purpose everythingdude, and you get a sense that you chose a certain path when training em

[Bozobub]

That's an interesting idea, BUT...  it would also seriously bollux the job priority UI .

In addition, where/when it happens varies widely by cirumstance and the tastes of each player but at some point, complexity passes a "point of no return" and people simply stop giving a crap.  This "complexity" can be any combination of UI clutter, fiddly game mechanics, and micromanagement; they all contribute.

It's the bane of every "sim" game ever made, from colony sims like RimWorld and Planetbase, to real-time helicopter sims like DCS Black Shark 1 & 2 (outrageously complete simulations of a Russian Black Shark attack helicopter, which also happens to be VERY difficult to fly IRL):  Every step up in complexity WILL lose you a certain tranche of players, who simply cannot, or will not bother with it; there's a reason the DCS Black Shark series has "arcade-y" modes !  Another great example is Dwarf Fortress; do I really need to explain why..?

This is exactly why I support changes like this happening in mods, at least at 1st.  If they work very well, Tynan HAS incorporated such changes in the past.  And it allows those of us who don't want that extra complexity to give it a pass, as well, and even better, in a granular way:  You get to CHOOSE exactly how to change your game with mods.

And last, there's the simple caveat, that each big game change increases time spent in Alpha.  Folks, we aren't even in Beta yet; I don't want to see RimWorld follow the path of most early-access games, where they lose focus and/or the dev's creative drive falters, after YEARS of early-access limbo, and the game withers and dies, never to be heard from again.  This is the rule, not the exception, for EA games, people.  Let's not let it happen to RimWorld, hey?  Don't kill it with love...

[Trylobyte]

I suspect mods are the way to achieve a lot of this for one simple reason:  The more complex and inaccessible you make the base game the fewer people play it.  Some people want a difficult survival setting where every step is a struggle, and that's perfectly fine.  I want that too sometimes.  But sometimes I just want to kick back and build a little colony without worrying too much about development tracks and optimized power distribution.  By making vanilla incorporate more 'hardcore' elements then you turn away the more casual players because the game's not as accessible.  Take Dwarf Fortress, for example.  It's a truly amazing game and I love playing it because so many different things can happen and there's so much to do and see and manage.  But I don't know any of my friends that play it because getting past the welcome screen requires a wiki.  That mod mentioned by Razzoriel above sounds amazing, for instance, and if it's available I'll probably snag it and try it.  But I always have the option to turn it off and go back to the easier vanilla experience if I want to, and I like that.

It's always worth remembering that those of us who frequent the forums are typically the more dedicated players, and thus often the more skilled, more analytical players.  Surviving an ice sheet on Extreme might be easy...  for us.  But the people who post on the forums are generally a small subset of the whole community that plays the game.  Go on any game forum and you'll nearly always find there's always a good portion of people who think the game is 'too easy' and wish it was harder.  Is the game actually easy?  Maybe it is, or maybe it's just those dedicated players have worked out the optimal strategies already and have been employing them judiciously.

Even if you do add more things and new styles and diversification there's still going to be an optimal strategy, a way to make the game too easy, a path that allows maximum gain for minimum effort.  It's the nature of any sandbox survival game.

Just something to keep in mind.

[Vlad0mi3r]

Trylobyte,
Thankyou for the above post I was trying to put it into words but you have done it very well. We forget our first attempts we forgot where we started sometimes.

Anyway well said.