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Note: I've decided that I no longer wish to update and maintain this mod.  As a result, I am hereby releasing it into the public domain.  Feel free to do whatever you wish with it and its code (included in the download).

I am proud to present version 1.0 of Better Than Sentry Guns:

Download Link (http://www.mediafire.com/download/71l1rop2cuae7vb/BTSG1-0.zip)

WARNING: Given the more spread out progression in BTSG, it is *highly* recommended that you not play it on difficulties higher than "Rough".  Difficulty level affects the size of the waves of enemies the AI storyteller throws at you, and without access to turrets in particular in the early game, this can make large numbers of enemies on the higher difficulty levels next to impossible to fight off.  Even on Rough it tends to get really rough at times :)

Installation instructions may be found in the readme included with the download.

What is Better Than Sentry Guns?

BTSG is a mod which attempts to create a deeper and more prolonged gameplay progression and to further refine the balance of the game in general.  To this end, it includes revisions to stock systems (such as how crops grow), tweaks to the stats of various things (such as research costs and trade prices) and a small number of new items and features.  In general, it aims to make small adjustments to the way things work in order to have the maximum impact on gameplay.

What are the key features?

-Revised farming dependent upon seeds to plant crops. Seeds come in two varieties: terminator (single generation), and fully viable, and each crop type (potatoes, corn, cotton, etc.) has its own set of seeds, available from various traders.

-Delayed tech progression and reworked tech tree. There are a number of additional research projects that help better throttle player progression and break gameplay up into distinct stages where you're working with limited technology.  Overall research progress has also been slowed so that the player has to work harder at surviving while researching new tech, and thus feel a greater sense of accomplishment when it is achieved.

-Delayed access to turrets.  In order to build turrets in BTSG you must both research the corresponding tech and either trade for specialized parts on the black market (represented by slave traders), or harvest them from incapacitated mechanoids.  This helps emphasize the tactical elements of RimWorld early on in the game, reduces the dominance of kill-boxes as a defense strategy, and tends to make early game survival a much more desperate affair where you'll regularly have to put your colonists in harm's way in order to thrive.  It's also the change that's behind the mod's name ;)

-Cooking on campfires.  This isn't a big feature, but I just mentioned it here as if you don't know about it as a player, things will get pretty rough once you realize you don't have early access to stoves :)

-And much more!  Other changes should be pretty apparent during play (let me know if they aren't), but a full change log can also be found in the readme include with the mod's download.

Why the name?

"Better Than <insert questionable design decision>" has become a bit of a running gag with my mods, starting with "Better Than Wolves" (Minecraft), extending to "Better Than Starting Manned" (Kerbal Space Program), and "Better Than Giant Bees" (7 Days to Die).  While I am normally inspired to start modding projects by those kinds of odd design decisions within games I otherwise love, in the case of RimWorld, there's really nothing major I can point out in the design that I object to (at least not to the same extent as the others), and "Sentry Guns" was the best I could come up with ;)

Regardless, no offense towards the developers has been intended with any of my mod names.  They're my rather tongue in cheek way of poking fun at the few things I don't like in the games that I love the most.

What's coming in the future?

Nothing is really off the table at this point.  The extent and type of modifications I make with my mods is usually only limited by my own interest in a game, and the game's modding capabilities.  RimWorld is one that I am both particularly excited about, and which has a particularly powerful modding system :)

Where can I view the mod's source code?

It's included in the mod download in the /BTSGSource directory.  Feel free to check it out for learning purposes on your own modding projects.

Enjoy! :)

Wow i wasn't expecting this, it sounds really awesome!
I'll have to try this once i finish other stuff im doing  ;D

Thanks guys!  I hope you have fun with it :)

Nice Nice Nice. I always love modders who aim to add challenge and diversity to games rather than simply making them easier.

Congrats on the official release :) Buckle up your seat belts, boys & girls. This is not for the faint of heart.

Quote from: hawk. on March 06, 2015, 11:26:03 PM
Congrats on the official release :) Buckle up your seat belts, boys & girls. This is not for the faint of heart.

Come on...it's not that bad.  Just because I lost my last colony to a well placed pirate grenade and the resulting bloody dismemberment doesn't mean it's THAT hard ;)

And as an aside, thanks for the testing and feedback on the various pre-releases man.  I'm quite pleased with how this is turning out.

Oh, it's hard but sooooo much fun and well thought out. It's been an absolute pleasure to play and you have to know I really enjoy our back and forth. I can't wait to see where you take this. :)

Just as a reference to anyone who may be lost on the above, this mod has been in various states of pre-release over here for the past week or so:

http://www.sargunster.com/btwforum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=8789

I'll add this to my list of mods to try.

Think you could do a research road map for us, if you get the time?

Good thing you can't ban people from posting FC ;3
Glad to see your still modding!!
Can't  wait to see what you have in store for RW!!! :D

...I'm kind of scared to try this mod xP

Quote from: Sir_W_Scott on March 07, 2015, 02:03:53 AM
...I'm kind of scared to try this mod xP

Bah, worst that can happen is a few dead colonists and a lesson learned ;)

In all seriousness, I generally aim for "brutal but fair", so if you find anything that feels otherwise, be sure to let me know.

Quote from: TheSilencedScream on March 07, 2015, 01:44:42 AM
Think you could do a research road map for us, if you get the time?

It should be pretty straight forward once you're in-game, with (hopefully) what you're trying to achieve having a fairly apparent connection to what you have available for research at any given time, but I will agree that some kind of visual aid on the tech tree would likely be helpful, both with the mod and in general.

Quote from: Sir_W_Scott on March 07, 2015, 02:03:53 AM
...I'm kind of scared to try this mod xP

You should give it a shot. It is challenging but every small hard fought victory is very rewarding and the tension of the early game is downright delicious.

One small but of advice: Don't ignore the warning in the OP about difficulty settings. Even then, much like your first few games in vanilla (assuming you were playing at a decent difficulty level), your first few games with this mod will likely be a struggle. If you are like me, that is why you fell in love with RW in the first place. The vanilla game is deep and challenging; the mod highlights and expands upon that same premise.

EDIT: Ninja'd by FC

Quote from: hawk. on March 07, 2015, 02:55:28 AM
One small but of advice: Don't ignore the warning in the OP about difficulty settings.

....and in the readme...and in the mod selection screen.

I like the games I play to be tough, so if I plaster warnings all over the place bolded and in all caps about turning down the difficulty, you know I'm utterly serious about it ;)

Play on Rough? Ha ! I laugh at danger and drop ice cubes down the vest of fear! And tweak the nose of the dreadful spindly killer fish.

130% with melee weapons only me-thinks!

Quote from: Boboid on March 07, 2015, 03:52:10 AM
130% with melee weapons only me-thinks!

Best of luck ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5mqQBgobTY

It's going to be a bit embarrassing for you if this works :P

Quote from: Boboid on March 07, 2015, 04:28:22 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5mqQBgobTY

It's going to be a bit embarrassing for you if this works :P

Not at all man.  If you can pull it off, then more power to you.  I was genuine in my wishes of good fortune :)

FlowerChild, can I make compatibility mods for this?. That is if I can get permissions from other mod authors to modify their work to fit with this one.  Sorry if this is the wrong way of asking. If so instruct me on how to ask about this.

welcome FC, long time BTW player here, always loved your take on games, look forward to seeing where you take this.

btw reading your thread I have actually got a mod that removes the original "free gun" turret and uses the stuff system to turn guns into stuff so they can be used as building materials on a turret all from 1 button, its in my OmniCorp thread. It also uses the researchMod class to effect the turret with research even after its built on the map. Might be worth a look and seeing if theres anything useful to you in there.

Quote from: redcat on March 07, 2015, 04:44:42 AM
FlowerChild, can I make compatibility mods for this?. That is if I can get permissions from other mod authors to modify their work to fit with this one.  Sorry if this is the wrong way of asking. If so instruct me on how to ask about this.

I've got no issue at all with that man.  I actually appreciate the initiative of wanting to do it yourself rather than asking me to ;)

Quote from: skullywag on March 07, 2015, 04:50:31 AM
btw reading your thread I have actually got a mod that removes the original "free gun" turret and uses the stuff system to turn guns into stuff so they can be used as building materials on a turret all from 1 button, its in my OmniCorp thread. It also uses the researchMod class to effect the turret with research even after its built on the map. Might be worth a look and seeing if theres anything useful to you in there.

Will take a look to be sure.  It's beginning to get a tad late for me, so it's probably beyond my current processing capacity, but will make sure to do so tomorrow :)

Quote from: FlowerChild on March 07, 2015, 05:15:52 AM

Quote from: redcat on March 07, 2015, 04:44:42 AM
FlowerChild, can I make compatibility mods for this?. That is if I can get permissions from other mod authors to modify their work to fit with this one.  Sorry if this is the wrong way of asking. If so instruct me on how to ask about this.

I've got no issue at all with that man.  I actually appreciate the initiative of wanting to do it yourself rather than asking me to ;)

:O FC are you ok? xP did I really just hear you say you are fine with some one making... *gulp* "compatibility" with this mod x_x ;3 oooh this should be fun :3

Ty FC

Quote from: Sir_W_Scott on March 07, 2015, 06:14:54 AM
:O FC are you ok? xP did I really just hear you say you are fine with some one making... *gulp* "compatibility" with this mod x_x ;3 oooh this should be fun :3

I think you may have me confused with the mythology I find myself associated with ;)

There's a lot of history associated with the things you are probably referring to there, years of it in fact, and very little reason for it to be an issue here.

Hrm.. Crop Blights destroy viable seeds permanently, 85 days in and I just had 14 viable seeds destroyed which was pretty much 70% of my colony's total wealth.

Didn't expect that!

Welcome FC. Also a long time BTW player. Looking forward to giving your RW mod a playthrough or 3. :)

Quote from: ItchyFlea on March 07, 2015, 07:29:00 AM
Welcome FC. Also a long time BTW player. Looking forward to giving your RW mod a playthrough or 3. :)

Hey Itchy!  Good to see a familiar face here :)

I was actually very tempted to mention I was working on this mod when you posted to the BTW thread yesterday, as I had seen you here before while lurking these forums, but decided it was best to leave it as a bit of a surprise.

Thanks for the warm welcome! :)

Quote from: Boboid on March 07, 2015, 07:12:59 AM
Hrm.. Crop Blights destroy viable seeds permanently, 85 days in and I just had 14 viable seeds destroyed which was pretty much 70% of my colony's total wealth.

Didn't expect that!

Hehe...yup.  Keeping some seeds in reserve in case of disaster is a rather important strategy.

Having said that, some tweaking to the way blight works in relation to the mod features may be in order regardless, and that's something I'll be looking at more closely in the future.

Tbh seems like the most limiting factor of the entire revamp - Crop Blights are nasty, frequent, and blanket-fire every growing zone. You can't sensibly deal with the problem apart from throwing more silver at it, but there's some exponential growth problems and then you run into trader stock limits as you can't create seeds independently.

Apart from a bit of early cannibalism you can get to a reasonably familiar, vanilla-esque stable colony in less than 100 days even on 130%, but your food supply long term is entirely in the hands of the RNG god.

You can hunt up to a point but.. eh..

Of course saying all of that I could trivially switch back to ranged weaponry, anger all the tribes that I just befriended, and cannibalize my way back into space. Might not be quite what you intended however :P

Quote from: FlowerChild on March 07, 2015, 09:21:21 AM
Having said that, some tweaking to the way blight works in relation to the mod features may be in order regardless, and that's something I'll be looking at more closely in the future.

Growing zones respecting room boundaries with respect to blight is a possible solution. Probably not easy to implement and it would lessen the importance of reserve seeds but it is reasonably intuitive. I suspect there's a better "bang for your buck" solution you'll come up with. There's a reason I'm the guy who plays the games, not makes them. ;)

Quote from: Boboid on March 07, 2015, 09:32:38 AM
Might not be quite what you intended however :P

Don't be so sure, playing a morally ambivalent protagonist might be the core theme of Better Than Wolves. ;)

Wow, I cant believe that you have played all the games that i did :D i actually had all of your mods for all the games that you ma
de them from :D.

Quote from: hawk. on March 07, 2015, 10:35:37 AM
Growing zones respecting room boundaries with respect to blight is a possible solution. Probably not easy to implement and it would lessen the importance of reserve seeds but it is reasonably intuitive. I suspect there's a better "bang for your buck" solution you'll come up with. There's a reason I'm the guy who plays the games, not makes them. ;)

I think I'll likely opt for something a little more elaborate.  Don't forget how much I've enjoyed modeling various forms of pestilence with some of my mod features in the past, up to and including another form of "blight" ;)

I think there's some potentially very cool gameplay that I can associate with dealing with this kind of thing.

Quote from: Boboid on March 07, 2015, 09:32:38 AM
Of course saying all of that I could trivially switch back to ranged weaponry, anger all the tribes that I just befriended, and cannibalize my way back into space. Might not be quite what you intended however :P

Well, what I intended was to try and provide a more interesting gameplay experience, so if you've had a good time with your colony, then I'm happy.

Please keep in mind, I'm not trying to "beat" people here.  Would be easy enough to do that with a single line of code, but it likely wouldn't be very much fun to play :)

Interested to see what you come up with in terms of crop blights. The vanilla mechanic itself is a bit clunky.

In terms the long term food problem my intention was to point out that you may have inadvertently turned cannibalism into a FOOS while simultaneously forcing people to do it. Pigeon-holing isn't fun for anyone :D Intelligent decision making is where it's at.

And yes of course I understand you're not trying to beat people.
But any mod that says " This is hard " is going to get the " I can break this " treatment :P

Quote from: Boboid on March 07, 2015, 05:20:00 PM
But any mod that says " This is hard " is going to get the " I can break this " treatment :P

Well, that's not so much what I was trying to say, as I was trying to provide a warning that it's really not balanced for play on anything harder than rough.

Even with your mentions of cannibalism, I'm wondering if you decide to go that route, whether it actually becomes easier in some ways on higher difficulties due to the more abundant food supply, trade goods, and potential recruits that keep being conveniently delivered to your base :)

Personally, I haven't been using cannibalism in my own play with the mod, so no, directing people towards it wasn't what I was going for.  I had assumed cannibalism came with heavy status penalties, and potentially turned other colonies and tribes against you which would make it of dubious value, so it's something I've avoided using in my own play up until now, but if you're saying it becomes the most effective strategy under these circumstances, it is certainly something I can look into penalizing more heavily.

If you feel there are other tactics along those lines that allow for bypassing some of the more challenging and/or interesting aspects of the game, especially if they feel cheap, please do let me know, as that will be extremely valuable information for me in guiding ongoing development of the mod.

I just took a quick first crack at this as it sounds fantastic. But, if I'm understanding what I saw correctly, the minimum to plant a potato is:

Research:



• Electrics
• Machining
• Communication Systems

Build:



• Power Source
• Communications Console
• Power Conduit
• Orbital Trade Beacon

Now, I'm not seeing how to get a power source going. Wind and geothermal require generator components, which come from the machining table, which requires power. Solar requires solar cells, which are not craftable, and so would require purchase from a trader, which requires power for the console--or the one-shot event that dumps free solar cells onto the map (as of late Oct, I've not seen this happen.) So, how does one get from no power to power?

Then, as I understand it, once I've power, I'd await an interplanetary trader stocking GMO potato seeds. Wait a minute, potato seeds? What the heck are a potato seeds? :)

I feel like I'm not getting the mechanic. I mean, I follow it, it's just feeling at odds with the vanilla themes (unlike the other BTS mods.) Much of what is grown in RimWorld doesn't really need processed "seeds". Have some corn? Shove some kernels back in the ground. A potato? Cut it into pieces and stick 'em in the dirt. I guess that could be abstracted as "seeds". Even so, having to nail orbital communications and renewable energy to plant a few spuds feels off, given the simplicity of vegitative reproduction.

To make this work in a non-surprising way would probably be too much rework and likely not at all what you were after for your own play. So, some minor tweaks I might suggest, though others likely have better ideas:




• Distribute some of the cultivated crops as low occurance, wild crops yielding viable "seeds".
• Remove power requirement from machining table
• Bonus: Change some planting requirements to consume plant products, i.e., to plant seven potatos requires one potato. Choices: do we eat those or plant those?

Some terminology changes that might help: change corn seeds, potato seeds, and rice seeds to seed corn, seed potatos, and seed rice respectively.

But, enough pontificating from the armchair. Back to trying to salvage my own mess of a mod.

Quote from: Famous Shoes on March 07, 2015, 09:13:22 PM
I just took a quick first crack at this as it sounds fantastic. But, if I'm understanding what I saw correctly, the minimum to plant a potato is:

Research:

• Electrics
• Machining
• Communication Systems

Not sure where the machining requirement comes from here.  You initially crash with more solar panels than are required to make a solar generator.  Machining would only be required if you also need to make wind generators.

And really, you can plant potatoes within the first couple of minutes of the game, so not sure why you think it's so involved to get started.  The only big problem there is that all you have initially are the single-generation (terminator) seeds that are part of your survival kit.

It sounds like perhaps you didn't start a new game with this installed, and thus you didn't get the starting equipment?  If that's not the case, something might be whacky with your install.

QuoteI feel like I'm not getting the mechanic. I mean, I follow it, it's just feeling at odds with the vanilla themes (unlike the other BTS mods.) Much of what is grown in RimWorld doesn't really need processed "seeds". Have some corn? Shove some kernels back in the ground. A potato? Cut it into pieces and stick 'em in the dirt. I guess that could be abstracted as "seeds". Even so, having to nail orbital communications and renewable energy to plant a few spuds feels off, given the simplicity of vegitative reproduction.

I think if you read the seed descriptions this will make a lot more sense.  The problem is two fold:

a ) you aren't on earth, so you can't expect the soil and environment to sustain regular earth crops.

b ) the seeds themselves have been genetically modified to maximize profit, so you aren't planting regular earth crops either, nor are regular earth crops available to you (perhaps they don't even exist anymore). 

Personally, I think this fits the dark scifi vibe of the RimWorld universe (which I personally find is reminiscent of the Dune books, which I've also emphasized in some of the mod's mechanoid elements, or maybe the Aliens series in some ways) very well, and it's based on real-world concepts (look up "terminator seeds" if you don't believe me).  If you take a minute considering the limited cargo space/weight that would be available on interplanetary trade ships, shipping seeds instead of raw food would make a lot of sense (assuming your destination was capable of growing them), and genetically modifying them to terminate after a single generation would also make sense (in a very mercenary "life is cheap" mindset) given it would keep the buyer dependent on the supplier to keep coming back for more.  In some ways I've even been thinking of it as a form of futuristic tenancy, where someone probably paid an awful lot to terraform these planets, and thus charging "rent" through controlling the food supply in some way might be considered a way to get some return on that investment instead of just letting a bunch of random freeloaders crash on your nice factory-fresh planet and despoil it at will :)

And yes, "seeds" are a general abstraction, that wouldn't necessarily apply in the case of potatoes ;)

EDIT: Actually, here, for easy reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_technology

Dune is one of Tynans inspirations, so no wonder you feel that way about it. ;)

Quote from: skullywag on March 08, 2015, 04:21:15 AM
Dune is one of Tynans inspirations, so no wonder you feel that way about it. ;)

I definitely caught the Dune reference with the personal shields, and was picking up a generally similar vibe from some of the in-game descriptions, so yeah, that totally makes sense to me :)

I decided to run with that idea and go a tad Butlerian Jihad on classifying the mechanoid parts and the AI persona cores as black market goods.  I find it works well in relation to there essentially being some tech that the player can never manage to build themselves, and I think it further emphasizes the creepiness of the mechanoids.

I've always liked the whole "fallen tech" idea in sci-fi whether that be Dune, or some gaming franchises like WH40K, or the old Battletech games.

It appears that this mod and EdB Prepare Carefully don't fully work together, as the changes PC make to the world generator prevent solar cells from spawning at the start of the game. Potato seeds still spawn as you've got them arriving on the map through a droppod event at map start.
A possible solution would be to add the solar cells to that droppod.

The player can solve this issue themselves as well, as PC does allow the player to add the solar cells to the list of starting equipment.

Oh, I was SUPER confused when I spent an hour and half trying to find how to get power going... I use a lot of mods so I wasn't willing to go through all of them and see what was going wrong. Thanks so much.

edit : Message directed towards ItchyFlea

Quote from: ItchyFlea on March 08, 2015, 07:16:08 PM
It appears that this mod and EdB Prepare Carefully don't fully work together, as the changes PC make to the world generator prevent solar cells from spawning at the start of the game. Potato seeds still spawn as you've got them arriving on the map through a droppod event at map start.
A possible solution would be to add the solar cells to that droppod.

Thanks for figuring that out Itchy!  That should help greatly with future support :)

I'm not too keen on adding the panels to the drop pod as that implies they're packaged as part of your survival equipment (which is the intent with the seeds) rather than being part of the crash (which is the intent with the panels), but I'll take a look at it to see if I can otherwise switch around how they're generated to prevent potential conflicts.

I intentionally implemented the seed drop through code instead of just spawning it normally to get that sequence right (you can even see the section in MapGenerators.xml where I initially just plopped them on the ground like the solar panels then thought "that's not right" when I saw it in action and commented it out to go off and implement a custom drop pod handler), so I'd be rather hesitant to change it around to this end :)

EDIT:

Yeah, after taking a quick look (would have been happy to make a change if it was a matter of a few minutes, but it doesn't look that way), I think this:

Quote from: ItchyFlea on March 08, 2015, 07:16:08 PM
The player can solve this issue themselves as well, as PC does allow the player to add the solar cells to the list of starting equipment.

Is the most reasonable solution here, as if the player has a mod installed to change the equipment they spawn with, I think it reasonable to expect them to know that it's going to affect the equipment they spawn with ;)

Oh hey, a 'Better Than' mod! This is going to be fun!
And by fun, I mean 'Lets see how many ways I die in the first two years' :P
(Seeing this brings back memories of years stuck in the stone age in BTW Hopefully, I can do better with this)

Just a question, but how compatible is this with other mods?

Quote from: AllenWL on March 09, 2015, 12:14:10 AM
Just a question, but how compatible is this with other mods?

Short answer is: "no idea" :)

It was developed and tested in isolation, so I can't really say one way or the other.  The posts immediately preceding your own seem to be indicating the first discovered minor incompatibility, but beyond that, I haven't heard anything more from players since it was released a couple of days ago.

I'm not doing anything too funky here, so I doubt there would be any technical incompatibilities, but of course if you're using additional mods that provide stuff like more crops or additional turrets, that would likely provide ways to bypass the systems I've setup, potentially nullifying the value of using BTSG.

Quote from: FlowerChild on March 09, 2015, 12:30:01 AM

Quote from: AllenWL on March 09, 2015, 12:14:10 AM
Just a question, but how compatible is this with other mods?

Short answer is: "no idea" :)

It was developed and tested in isolation, so I can't really say one way or the other.  The posts immediately preceding your own seem to be indicating the first discovered minor incompatibility, but beyond that, I haven't heard anything more from players since it was released a couple of days ago.

I'm not doing anything too funky here, so I doubt there would be any technical incompatibilities, but of course if you're using additional mods that provide stuff like more crops or additional turrets, that would likely provide ways to bypass the systems I've setup, potentially nullifying the value of using BTSG.

Ok, so no new crops or turrets I can build at the start and I should be fine then I guess.

Quote from: AllenWL on March 09, 2015, 04:18:26 AM
Ok, so no new crops or turrets I can build at the start and I should be fine then I guess.

...or anything that would normally be unlocked through the tech tree :)

There's technical incompatibility, and then there's conceptual.  There's likely very little in the way of technical incompatibility here, however, whether things will play right is a whole other matter.

You could always read through the change log in detail to determine whether any given mod would fit well with this one, but without knowing the specifics, I can't really say one way or another.  Honestly, I'd probably give it a try at least once on its own to get a feel for what it changes, and then you can better judge from there.

Just posting to say this is a great mod! I generally stick only to mods that make the interface more intuitive or are very close to vanilla in content/difficulty, as most of the rest tend to make the game way too easy. Extremely happy to see a mod that makes it considerably harder (without just spamming raids)!

Quote from: akiceabear on March 09, 2015, 06:51:37 AM
Just posting to say this is a great mod!

Thanks man!  Hope you have a lot of fun with it :)

   Ended up getting all ten of my final colonist off that that god forsaken rock on January 11, 5502 in a game that was start to finish BTSG v1.0. First off, Research felt balanced perfectly for this game. I had to put a concerted effort in to it to advance. It throttled my progression but in a way that felt right.

   The map I ended up playing on had plenty of natural materials so I didn't have to trade for any steel, plasteel, or uranium to build the ship. Things might have been more tense had that not been the case and I wouldn't object to having "trader only" materials being required to launch into space. ;)

   I had particularly bad luck harvesting Mech Brains on this play through either by killing the mech outright in battle, damaging that particular sensor, or critical failures when harvesting and only three turrets were built without buying the parts. I'm guessing that this was probably an anomaly since my luck was much better in my previous games (Is Mechanoid disassembly efficiency the driving stat for this? ...or surgery?).

   Art was sufficiently nerfed and I found tailoring to be more than sufficient at bringing in funds. I definitely had more than enough leather and skins coming in to feed that operation because... Farming was tough, man. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that it was the blight that was tough. My first three rounds of trying to crow terminator seeds ended in blight and that left a bad enough taste in my mouth to not bother with the much more expensive (and interesting) viable variety on this play through. Later on in the game I had few crop batches in a row those were cultivated without issue but by that time I had come to mostly rely on hunting since it was much more reliable, "trained" my shooters, and gave me materials to make clothes for colonial use and profit. Also, there were quite a few times that bulk goods traders were selling food cheaper than its corresponding terminator seed. I know that, at the end of the day, one seed gets you more than one of the corresponding crop but I found myself betting on the sure thing by just buying the food instead playing Russian Roulette with  blight.

   Even with my blight battles, it was a great fun! I had more than a few "oh shit" moments where my mistakes almost wiped out my colony and plenty of mornings that came too early because I stayed up way too late the night before feeding this addiction (The blame for which, I lay solely at your feet :)) ). I look forward to all the future changes, both large and small, but in the meantime I'm going to start up another game.  ;)
 

Quote from: hawk. on March 10, 2015, 11:19:06 PM
   Even with my blight battles, it was a great fun! I had more than a few "oh shit" moments where my mistakes almost wiped out my colony and plenty of mornings that came too early because I stayed up way too late the night before feeding this addiction (The blame for which, I lay solely at your feet :)) ). I look forward to all the future changes, both large and small, but in the meantime I'm going to start up another game.  ;)

Very cool man.  Thanks for the detailed description of your experiences, as that will definitely help with future balancing :)

Quote from: hawk. on March 10, 2015, 11:19:06 PM
I'm guessing that this was probably an anomaly since my luck was much better in my previous games (Is Mechanoid disassembly efficiency the driving stat for this? ...or surgery?).

I *think* it's the repair/construction skill that governs this.  It's using the same stock system as scavenging the bladed limbs off the smaller mechanoids.

Sarcasm:
Really FC really?? Coming over taking over all my favourite mods :(
Sarcasm off:
Nice mod! Might try it if I am less burned out ;)

Really having fun. I actually needed to make a nutrient past dispenser for the first time to survive the winter. Also I now make much much smaller farms so when a crop blight hits, I loose less seeds.

I've been playing with a few mods, and so far;
The Apothecarius NEIN mod is not really good with this mod, because while the research fits in pretty well(sorta) the medical flowers that turn into medicine don't need seeds, which suddenly makes medicine much much easier to get then herbal medicine, and a heck lot more renewable.

Defend that colony mod fits in nicely, giving you some protection (embrasures, barbed wire fence, trenches, etc) to work with.

Expanded Prosthetics and Organ Engineering fits in ok-ish sorta odd, but not that odd, and doesn't really disrupt balance

More Mechanoids is fun to work with, and I feel it fits in nicely.

The mod itself does wonders in balancing stuff out by making it harder to get a electrical system going(lots of things need electricity) and forcing your pawns to go fight themselves.

Oh, just wondering but what about having a need for resources to research(at least some things)? (Like to tinker around with) I was able to research pretty much everything other then shipbuilding within a year by having a very good researcher dedicate himself to research all year long.

P.S I find the other 'pretty apparent' changes rather hard to spot.

I havent looked at the code (weird right!) But if FC is just using a new plant class it coukd be as simple as changing the plants in other mods to use it as well. If not it should be simple enough to make that a reality at least in simple terms. (I.e theyd all be 1 shot plants)

Quote from: AllenWL on March 18, 2015, 04:26:41 AM
The mod itself does wonders in balancing stuff out by making it harder to get a electrical system going(lots of things need electricity) and forcing your pawns to go fight themselves.

Thanks man!  Glad you're enjoying it :)

Quote from: skullywag on March 18, 2015, 05:02:43 AM
I havent looked at the code (weird right!) But if FC is just using a new plant class it coukd be as simple as changing the plants in other mods to use it as well. If not it should be simple enough to make that a reality at least in simple terms. (I.e theyd all be 1 shot plants)

Yup, that's pretty much correct.  If you check the mod .xml files, there are two directly related to the whole seed thing:

Plants_Cultivated.xml which contains some modified entries for the stock plants to use seeds, which can be used as examples, and:

Items_Custom_Seeds.xml which contains the new seed items themselves, and which should be very easy to expand upon

I've got generic classes setup to handle the whole seed planting/harvesting thing in game, so all that needs to be done to adapt other plants to the system is to add additional entries for seeds and plants like in the above files.

Holy hell. I did not expect to see you here FC. It has been a long time since I have used the Better Than Wolves mod due to recent changes to Minecraft making mods hard to install. (In my opinion) And it has been an even longer time since I last played Minecraft due to me losing interest in it.

Glad to see you again.

But does BTSG have a mechanical windmill to grind wheat into barley? That's what i want to know.  ::)

Quote from: re1wind on March 18, 2015, 08:53:00 PM
But does BTSG have a mechanical windmill to grind wheat into barley? That's what i want to know.  ::)

I think if you want to convert wheat into barley you're better off with a mod that provides a genetics laboratory rather than a millstone :)

Quote from: skullywag on March 18, 2015, 05:02:43 AM
I havent looked at the code (weird right!) But if FC is just using a new plant class it coukd be as simple as changing the plants in other mods to use it as well. If not it should be simple enough to make that a reality at least in simple terms. (I.e theyd all be 1 shot plants)

Simple for you, but it's all greek to me.
I'm just using them, then feeling guilty every time I see someone with xiligum seeds.

Ok.. maybe not. after seeing this, I took a look at the codes, and changed the recipe for medicine so it used two herbal medicine, five cloth(bandages) and a piece of plasteel(casing) to make craft medicine.

Another excellent mod from FlowerChild. Are you gonna add some hibachis or whatever? Donuts, perhaps?

Or maybe wolves, to be tamed and used in massive factories to produce... um. Leather, right? Yeah, leather.

Quote from: AllenWL on March 19, 2015, 02:22:48 AM
Ok.. maybe not. after seeing this, I took a look at the codes, and changed the recipe for medicine so it used two herbal medicine, five cloth(bandages) and a piece of plasteel(casing) to make craft medicine.

Yeah, don't let yourself be intimidated by the .xml files man.  RimWorld has an extremely powerful modding system (one of the most powerful I've seen short of games that just give you the source code), the .xml files are all plain text, and they're all pretty easy to understand.

It may look like code, and thus be intimidating if you're a non-coder, but it's all really very straightforward :)

Quote from: TheMythMan on March 19, 2015, 11:27:40 AM
Another excellent mod from FlowerChild. Are you gonna add some hibachis or whatever? Donuts, perhaps?

I think if I ever found myself implementing the exact same features in one game after another, over and over again, I'd start looking around to see if I had been moved in next to Sisyphus :)

Well, winter has stuck the colony of Soulstone again, and yet again, we face hunger and insanity as the constant cold, nutrient paste, general lack of food(in both huntable animals and seeds), and snow(which slows down my colonist, which makes them late for dinner, which makes them urgently hungry... if not downright starving...).

We stopped the food supply to our prisoners, locked a 'affordable' colonist in jail, drafted a colonist and put him where people frequent so he keeps on talking with them and keeping their mood up, started farming a few hops for beer, and is now attempting to replace our labor force with droids and hacked mechanoids so people can relax and talk and be happy. If things get any worse, I might just start killing off colonists and turning them into food for the others. (come to think of it, I should have expected this. I only managed to survive the previous winter due to a trader coming by, and we had like, half the people we have now...)
For now, a siege party tried to attack us, and was quickly slaughtered, their supplies taken, and the people killed and turned into yummy yummy soylent green. Hopefully, that keeps us going for a while

The need for seed is really a heavy blow, as you don't always get nice fat elk wandering around. Especially in the colder seasons(boreal forest up in the north so things can get really cold). We try to stock up on meat during the warmer seasons, but that just doesn't cut it. And viable seeds are really expensive. The next time a trader comes around, I'm going to stock up on seeds. Lots of seeds.

"Revised farming dependent upon seeds to plant crops. Seeds come in two varieties: terminator (single generation), and fully viable, and each crop type (potatoes, corn, cotton, etc.) has its own set of seeds, available from various traders."

I do hope they're called "seed potatoes" and not "potato seeds", just a little thing I see modders who adds potatoes in a farming enviroment, there are no thing such as a "potato seed" but there are Seed Potatoes which are selected potatoes with a bigger ammount of the small "knobbs" that you may see when peeling a potato, the potato is cut and put in the ground to grow to a mother potato or a "seed potato" :3

Quote from: coht on March 20, 2015, 09:10:04 AM
I do hope they're called "seed potatoes" and not "potato seeds", just a little thing I see modders who adds potatoes in a farming enviroment, there are no thing such as a "potato seed" but there are Seed Potatoes which are selected potatoes with a bigger ammount of the small "knobbs" that you may see when peeling a potato, the potato is cut and put in the ground to grow to a mother potato or a "seed potato" :3

They're genetically engineered super potatoes flying through space thousands of years in the future.  The details of how they're grown are entirely up in the air :)

Quote from: AllenWL on March 20, 2015, 02:30:03 AM
Well, winter has stuck the colony of Soulstone again

Thanks for the story man.  Very cool :)

Quote from: coht on March 20, 2015, 09:10:04 AM

"Revised farming dependent upon seeds to plant crops. Seeds come in two varieties: terminator (single generation), and fully viable, and each crop type (potatoes, corn, cotton, etc.) has its own set of seeds, available from various traders."

I do hope they're called "seed potatoes" and not "potato seeds", just a little thing I see modders who adds potatoes in a farming enviroment, there are no thing such as a "potato seed" but there are Seed Potatoes which are selected potatoes with a bigger ammount of the small "knobbs" that you may see when peeling a potato, the potato is cut and put in the ground to grow to a mother potato or a "seed potato" :3

Actually, there are such things as potato seeds.
However, people rarely, if ever, use potato seeds, preferring to use seed potatoes because seed potatoes grow faster then potato seeds, are easier to plant, and give a high yield of even-sized potatoes. However, potatoes do have seeds.
And it makes sense that in the future, genetically 'modified' potatoes would be grown by seeds. Seeds are easier to store and don't rot, unlike seed potatoes. If genetic shenanigans can let the potato seed grow just as well as a seed potato, using the potato seed would be a better option-especially if going on a centuries-long interstellar travel to sell them.

On a side note, yet another colonist has gone off the deep end and is scheduled for the chopping block- as soon as he starves to death or dies of hypothermia, whatever comes first.

Edit: I find that seeds are very worth it, and always try to buy a shipment of seeds rather than crops. Also, viable seeds are very much worth it as well. For example, viable rice in hydroponics are a great source of food, and while it might not be much, with a nutrient past dispenser, it could keep your colonists very much alive.
Also, viable crops seem to sometimes give extra seeds. I now have 20-ish viable hop seeds and 15-ish viable rice seeds, and I started with 8 of both :D
While blight and solar flares might be troublesome, planting the crops in small amounts(say, only half your seeds) is a very good method to keep on farming. Now my colony doesn't starve as much.

On that note, could it be possible to add a sort of ability to 'coat' a electrical device with something like plasteel or uranium or something to keep it from shorting out during solar flares? It's quite annoying to lose crops to a event I can do nothing against.

On another note, my colonists seem to love beer. I got a shipment of beer crashing on the planet, and seeing it did wonders in keeping people sane, got my hands on some viable hop seeds so my colonists can be happy. They drink beer like their lives depend on it, and at least one person goes on a beer-drinking spree(forget what it's called) every month. I had to stop the production of beer because it was getting out of hand.

On (a different)another note, the mood of colonists, which had been steadily going down, has now stopped going down. Sorta.

On yet another note, I made some mortars, and since they are manned, they make a nice addition to our defenses. So I was thinking, would you consider adding some manned turrets?

Viable seeds are sold by 'black market traders' a.k.a slave traders. Other traders will only sell 'legal' terminator seeds. Hunting should be your main food source, coupled with a nutrient past dispenser for the colder months.

I like how it is now. The starting potato seeds can be used to supplement your diet in a pinch until you get set up. After that, you can buy terminator seeds or viable seeds, both with pros and cons. Viable seeds are a renewable source of food, and should be hard to get. It's a lot better then the 'make warm growing zone, never go hungry ever again' of vanilla.

As long as you plan carefully with your seeds, you should be able to get a decent(and by that, I mean you won't starve to death. Probably.) viable farm once you get enough money to buy a few seeds.

Quote from: AllenWL on March 21, 2015, 02:43:59 AM
Also, viable crops seem to sometimes give extra seeds. I now have 20-ish viable hop seeds and 15-ish viable rice seeds, and I started with 8 of both :D

Hehe...yup, that's by intent.  Right now all the different crop types drop extras for expanding your farms at the same rate, but I set things up there so that they can all be tweaked individually to further differentiate the crop types from a gameplay perspective.

Quote from: Canute on March 22, 2015, 05:10:54 AM
About the Seeds:
Basicly it is a good idea, but the current methode isn't working very well.

It's really intended to be difficult to build up.  As Allen mentioned, fully viable seeds are only available from black market (slave) traders, and they're very expensive, working on the principle that they're illegal goods that you have to pay a premium for.

Until you can acquire them, you have to rely on other food sources, whether that be hunting or trading directly for food or terminator seeds. 

Really, that's the point of the seed system: to provide a tiered progression to food production that the player can work towards progressing within, rather than providing an easy source of infinite food right from the get go, so I'd say it's working pretty well in that regard ;)

I will agree however that blight is currently excessive under this system.  We were talking about that a bit earlier in the thread.

hmm could you overwrite the blight event and make it just kill the growth not the plant, thats the equivalent of the vanilla event as it has infinite seeds.

It's not working for me and I installed it from normal fresh vanilla into the mods folder, everything including the readme yet it still doesnt work because it still says that I can build heaters and coolers and turrets and batteries at the beginning

Quote from: MrSurvivor on March 22, 2015, 06:01:17 PM
It's not working for me and I installed it from normal fresh vanilla into the mods folder, everything including the readme yet it still doesnt work because it still says that I can build heaters and coolers and turrets and batteries at the beginning

Did you activate it via the mods menu as per the install instructions?

Quote from: FlowerChild on March 22, 2015, 03:21:42 PM

Quote from: AllenWL on March 21, 2015, 02:43:59 AM
Also, viable crops seem to sometimes give extra seeds. I now have 20-ish viable hop seeds and 15-ish viable rice seeds, and I started with 8 of both :D

Hehe...yup, that's by intent.  Right now all the different crop types drop extras for expanding your farms at the same rate, but I set things up there so that they can all be tweaked individually to further differentiate the crop types from a gameplay perspective.

Looks like a good method so far is planting half your seeds, then keeping the other half in reserve. Also, hydroponics. Hydroponics are good. Quicker harvests mean faster buildup of seeds, and a lower chance to lose crops to blight. Solar flares suck too, but it's worth it in my opinion.

But some crops that take a longer time to grow, such as xerigium or devilstrand are annoying as they end up more vulnerable to crop blights and solar flares, making them a lot harder to grow. I think won't buy seeds for those(well, maybe xerigum seeds, but not devilstrand) until crop blight/solar flares can be prepared for and averted/damage minimized.

On another note, I think better crop blights are planned for laters

Is it possible for a blight to kill a plant but leave a (fraction of a) seed?

Will this be updated to A10?

Quote from: AllenWL on April 18, 2015, 06:56:36 AM
Will this be updated to A10?

Unfortunately, I think I'm going to let this one go. 

I realized recently that I'm trying to juggle way too many projects simultaneously, and as the newest one, this is the mod I am most inclined to give the axe to :)

I'll open up everything in the mod to the public domain, so that anyone else will be free to do as they please with the source, and keep the thing going if they're so inclined.  Will put a little notice about that in the OP.

Huh, pity. I really loved the 'need seeds to farm' thing.
...
Hey, if I try to rip out all non-seed related thing, and just keep the seed things with absolutely no knowledge of codes and how they work, what are the chances of me getting a 'need seeds to farm' mod for A10?

Quote from: AllenWL on April 24, 2015, 07:56:30 AM
Hey, if I try to rip out all non-seed related thing, and just keep the seed things with absolutely no knowledge of codes and how they work, what are the chances of me getting a 'need seeds to farm' mod for A10?

That's unlikely to work.  The most extensive bit of C# code in the mod is likely the one that deals with how colonists handle the job of planting the seeds.  Without that, you'd have seeds, but you wouldn't be able to do much with them ;)

Given I've opened it to the public domain though, should be relatively easy to find someone with enough coding experience to isolate that portion of the code and update it if you are so inclined.  Everything should be pretty self-explanatory for anyone with rudimentary coding knowledge.

Holy crap, I didn't realize you were still around making mods. I remember BTW from way back in the early days of MC. I'm glad to see you are keeping busy and the pests haven't pushed you into modding retirement. :D
Are you taking requests for projects with Rimworld?

Quote from: CrackShotCleric on May 03, 2015, 06:04:37 PM
Holy crap, I didn't realize you were still around making mods. I remember BTW from way back in the early days of MC. I'm glad to see you are keeping busy and the pests haven't pushed you into modding retirement. :D
Are you taking requests for projects with Rimworld?

Unlikely, as:

Quote from: FlowerChild on April 19, 2015, 02:25:31 PM
I realized recently that I'm trying to juggle way too many projects simultaneously