[A13] Mod MEGA PACK

[Justas love]

Skilled builder, removable stuff. Important mods

[crusader2010]

Updated the main thread - see {EDIT 6} for details, or below.

Updated CombatRealism to version 1.6.5 (the last before development cessation); updated Rimfire to PREVIEW version 2.1 patched for CombatRealism 1.6.4. Added two new mods: Stonecutting Tweak, Additional Lighting. Also updated the Notes and Known Issues sections! - please take a look in order to make your current saved games compatible!

[crusader2010]

Skilled builder, removable stuff. Important mods

I am testing "skilled builder" as we speak (together with some others). "Removable stuff" will not be added unless those removable items cannot be sold to traders (otherwise it makes gaining silver too easy).

If you know this doesn't happen, then please let me know so I can give the mod a test run and check further (if there are some weapon bases and such, they probably won't be compatible with CombatRealism too, which means I might not be adding the mod unless nothing spectacularly bad happens).

[Justas love]

the westernization mod is 100% made for combat realism

[Undecided]

the westernization mod is 100% made for combat realism

Ehh... at this point, with all the mods, the game has far more weapons available than you can ever use, even if you give four or five unique guns to each colonist. I think it's okay as far as weapon add-ons, personally. But that's just my personal opinion.

Anyway, I'd like to nominate a few interesting mods for consideration to the modback.

Caveworld Flora. Caves are pretty bland by themselves, and that mod adds little bits of fungi that pop up like wild bushes and flowers do outdoors. 

AutoEquip mod is a good quality-of-life mod. It lets you decide manually what items your pawns are allowed to put on their own, so you won't have them inappropriately wearing combat vests instead of winter clothing, or vice versa (which can be very frustrating if it's the wrong situation, let me tell you).

Rimsenal's submods, specifically the Storyteller pack. Good for choosing if you want to play a disaster-focused or war-focused colony. The Hair pack is also good (with so many pawns on screen at once during trade caravans, there are way too many of them with identical haircuts!)

Glittertech I find really extends the achievable progression of the playthrough. Most of its things you can only really afford to start producing when you're already at what would normally be the end-game in regular Rimworld (swimming in lots of silver), so unlike most super-tech mods it doesn't upset the balance of the game.

Industrialisation I like primarily because it adds a lot of materials; and not just end-game super materials like most mods, but workable concrete, copper, aluminium, refined steel, etc.

[crusader2010]

the westernization mod is 100% made for combat realism

Ehh... at this point, with all the mods, the game has far more weapons available than you can ever use, even if you give four or five unique guns to each colonist. I think it's okay as far as weapon add-ons, personally. But that's just my personal opinion.

Anyway, I'd like to nominate a few interesting mods for consideration to the modback.

Caveworld Flora. Caves are pretty bland by themselves, and that mod adds little bits of fungi that pop up like wild bushes and flowers do outdoors. 

AutoEquip mod is a good quality-of-life mod. It lets you decide manually what items your pawns are allowed to put on their own, so you won't have them inappropriately wearing combat vests instead of winter clothing, or vice versa (which can be very frustrating if it's the wrong situation, let me tell you).

Rimsenal's submods, specifically the Storyteller pack. Good for choosing if you want to play a disaster-focused or war-focused colony. The Hair pack is also good (with so many pawns on screen at once during trade caravans, there are way too many of them with identical haircuts!)

Glittertech I find really extends the achievable progression of the playthrough. Most of its things you can only really afford to start producing when you're already at what would normally be the end-game in regular Rimworld (swimming in lots of silver), so unlike most super-tech mods it doesn't upset the balance of the game.

Industrialisation I like primarily because it adds a lot of materials; and not just end-game super materials like most mods, but workable concrete, copper, aluminium, refined steel, etc.

Hi. I'll definitely consider the first two (also played with them in previous alphas). New storytellers I do not plan on adding, but everyone is free to use anything they like! About industrialization, I'm torn about it because it does not feel right. I have the impression that it provides too much to do and complicates the game beyond a certain limit. It's also the possibility of incompatibilities with mods like VeinMiner for example. But this is just a feeling and I would need to test it extensively! About Glittertech, I'm not sure it is compatible with some of the other mods, that's why I did not add it yet; this one will also require extensive testing.

The issue is: time (especially for large mods). I only have a few hours every day to play and test + do the whole pack altering process, backups, checking for new mod versions, etc. And there is also the fact that a specific strategy game launches today and I want to play it

[Undecided]

Hi. I'll definitely consider the first two (also played with them in previous alphas). New storytellers I do not plan on adding, but everyone is free to use anything they like! About industrialization, I'm torn about it because it does not feel right. I have the impression that it provides too much to do and complicates the game beyond a certain limit. It's also the possibility of incompatibilities with mods like VeinMiner for example. But this is just a feeling and I would need to test it extensively! About Glittertech, I'm not sure it is compatible with some of the other mods, that's why I did not add it yet; this one will also require extensive testing.

The issue is: time (especially for large mods). I only have a few hours every day to play and test + do the whole pack altering process, backups, checking for new mod versions, etc. And there is also the fact that a specific strategy game launches today and I want to play it

I've already played a handful of games with both Industrialization and Glittertech alongside this mod (totalling at least 20 hours of gameplay), placing them at the bottom of the mod queue, with no significant issues or errors. It's possible minor ones do exist that I haven't noticed, but there are at least no issues that affect gameplay noticeably (repeating loops, un-usable items, etc).

I'd understand excluding Industrialization on account of its deep mining; unlike the OmniGel mod, it allows you to produce very large quantities of rare ores in bulk, even if it does have a much higher setup cost than OmniGel farms. I mostly use it for the ore variety myself, since mining nothing but steel and plasteel can get a bit boring or repetitive.

[crusader2010]

I've already played a handful of games with both Industrialization and Glittertech alongside this mod (totalling at least 20 hours of gameplay), placing them at the bottom of the mod queue, with no significant issues or errors. It's possible minor ones do exist that I haven't noticed, but there are at least no issues that affect gameplay noticeably (repeating loops, un-usable items, etc).

I'd understand excluding Industrialization on account of its deep mining; unlike the OmniGel mod, it allows you to produce very large quantities of rare ores in bulk, even if it does have a much higher setup cost than OmniGel farms. I mostly use it for the ore variety myself, since mining nothing but steel and plasteel can get a bit boring or repetitive.

That I totally agree with. There is also Jade to be mined (not sure if this is from vanilla or some mod adds it). Moreover, if large quantities of ores can be mined, then it's not something i'd add in this pack but leave it for players' personal taste to include it or not. Other issues that i can think of are related to the items you can create from the new ores (what's the point of having ores if you can't build anything with them,right?). Specifically weapons(if any) and CombatRealism.

Did you have the time to test this out? Is everything as it should be?(weapons requiring ammo, having armor penetration stats etc). Same for the Glittertech.

What is missing from all of this is a way to suddenly increase difficulty after you get your first glittertech item... there's really no point in killing mainly naked natives with that gear

I'll add some more mods that I tested out when I have some free time. All I seem to miss in order to have a complete experience is a way to split the game by technology eras, add weapons and apparel specific to each one, and redo the whole research tree while displaying in a much more friendly way (e.g. Civilization 5 style).

[Undecided]

Did you have the time to test this out? Is everything as it should be?(weapons requiring ammo, having armor penetration stats etc). Same for the Glittertech.

What is missing from all of this is a way to suddenly increase difficulty after you get your first glittertech item... there's really no point in killing mainly naked natives with that gear

You recently added a mod that gave armor penetration values to certain weapons. It seems that these AP values do not show up on weapons from other mods (since they presumably have no AP values modded in), though this isn't a showstopper bug since they tend to be higher powered, so can still be worth using even without any armor penetration. They also don't use ammo but I haven't found this a major issue either because, again, Glittertech stuff tends to be pretty end-game, and by that point you're usually swimming in enough silver to buy all the ammo you need from merchants (bullets are cheap compared to nanoarmor and plasma rifles!)

And as for difficulty, it was my understanding the Storyteller AIs take that into account. Glittertech stuff would theoretically increase the collected wealth of your colony by a huge amount, and thus cause the Storyteller to scale up raid strength. Same if the defences are so powerful that you're not taking losses, it may cause the AI to up the difficulty over time. And of course certain factions (Orion Corp, commandos) will us the same advanced gear against you.

Also, found an unrelated bug: The mod you added so that the AI does not clean the home zone... seems to prevent cleaning entirely. Ordering them to manually clean a spot, even in a designated clean area, just causes them to clean the spot with no progress made. I'm not sure if it just takes a very very long time (several hours to clean one stain) or they make no progress entirely.

[crusader2010]

The only issue is that I would like to have consistency. The armor penetration mod is CombatRealism. Any mod not adapted to it will be either underpowered or overpowered.

The bug with NoCleaningPlease mod is quite strange and bad hopefully it can be fixed by some reordering.

[BlackSmokeDMax]

and redo the whole research tree while displaying in a much more friendly way (e.g. Civilization 5 style).

That'd be great, the research display in Hardcore SK2.5a is one of my favorite parts of that modpack.

[La_Moose]

Please add hair mods.

All of them, but especially rim hair.


And if its possible could you work in prepare carefully?

and sorry if these were requested already.

[crusader2010]

Please add hair mods.

All of them, but especially rim hair.


And if its possible could you work in prepare carefully?

and sorry if these were requested already.

About "Prepare carefully" I already wrote that I won't be adding it because it makes the start too easy (people don't usually choose to make their lives harder ). Regarding the hair mods, I'll take a look at them when I have some time (right now I'm trying to focus on functional mods rather than appearance ones - yet, there will be a time for cosmetic mods and I'll definitely consider your suggestions!).

But, like I said a few times before, if you like some mods that are not in the pack, please add them and enjoy the game! Adding them to the end of the mod list is probably the best way to avoid incompatibilities. This pack is not meant to be a complete solution because such thing doesn't exist in a strategy game. The intent of this pack is balance, extended functionalities and quality of life improvements.

Also, there are a ton of mods out there and I want to keep things under control as much as possible, so as not to create a huge mess of the game. And there is that huge impairment called "free time"...  ... in the sense that I want to add more mods in one go, after testing them a bit, instead of one mod at a time and creating hundreds of pack versions (and some interactions make it hard to test properly).

[Undecided]

Since you're keen on game balance, Crusader, something worth noting is that Big Plasma Reactors seem a bit overpowered.

Most other mods with an end-game, self-contained and unrestricted power generator require really rare components from traders, mechanoid cores, or special materials with long and complex refining processors. But with plasma generators requiring only a little uranium as its more exotic component (and maybe a few extra solar/wind generators for the chargeup sequence), they are far too easy to achieve. This is even more so when you consider each plasma generator can charge up the next one you build, effectively negating the additional power costs after you build the first generator.

I think we all know how much easier defence becomes once you achieve self-sufficient power that can be scaled up infinitely. So given your emphasis on avoiding a "too easy" gameplay experience, I'd expect you might want to consider making the Big Plasma Generator less accessible.

[crusader2010]

Since you're keen on game balance, Crusader, something worth noting is that Big Plasma Reactors seem a bit overpowered.

Most other mods with an end-game, self-contained and unrestricted power generator require really rare components from traders, mechanoid cores, or special materials with long and complex refining processors. But with plasma generators requiring only a little uranium as its more exotic component (and maybe a few extra solar/wind generators for the chargeup sequence), they are far too easy to achieve. This is even more so when you consider each plasma generator can charge up the next one you build, effectively negating the additional power costs after you build the first generator.

I think we all know how much easier defence becomes once you achieve self-sufficient power that can be scaled up infinitely. So given your emphasis on avoiding a "too easy" gameplay experience, I'd expect you might want to consider making the Big Plasma Generator less accessible.

I know they are a bit over the top, but I'm not really into modding so can't properly modify the mod. Feel free to contact the author and propose more balanced stats. The reason i'm including it is that there is no other mod for more power options AND that those generators at least provide some kind of disadvantage (like consuming uranium or needing to charge up). This means that there will be more than enough cases when you won't risk building them, especially on higher difficulties.

For easier games they are indeed over the top, but for hard games they are more or less balanced. In either case, power was never the issue in my playthroughs, but rather the lack of certain resources (components/plasteel/gold/silver), diseases, mechanoids, grenadiers dropping on top of my defenses, lots of combinations of these, etc. And this is because I'm not playing the tough storytellers as I don't enjoy that type of game. Harder difficulties will very likely require more care regarding timing and such.

Moreover, look at it this way:  if one building provides you 10kW of power, which is the equivalent of like 5-6 wind turbines, is it really better to build it instead of those, considering the cost and the fact that if it gets destroyed you're screwed? 

PS: I would change at least one thing about the plasma generator: make it usable only outside.