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I recently purchased the Ideology DLC, found out that this DLC has solid fundamental mechanics, much better than I thought. The Classic-like mode provides pretty decent vanilla-friendly experience, but even this mode still can use some fine tuning, the goal is to make the Ideology dynamic and less "artificial(for example, the buy-point system in Fluid mode is way too "artificial")".

I. Relics:
The DLC introduces relics that can be obtained via quests, but it doesn't make much sense. I think it would be better to let the player to obtain the relics in a different approach.
1. let all scenarios and all player starting ideologies start with no relic.
2. let player to create their own relics themselves, the requirement can be like: if a pawn of 40+ in sum of artist, intellectual and social defeated a strong foe, the weapon this pawn use become a relic of player faction.
3. let the relic hunting quests only provides clues about the AI factions' relics, because relics are legendary myths, only factions that exist on this planet for long enough know about those myths.
4. let Watching Television action to have a small chance to generate the clues about AI factions' relics. Industrial TV generates Neolithic or Industrial tier relic clues, Mega TV generates Space tier relic clues.
5. let conversations with prisoners or visitors to have a small chance to generate the clues about AI factions' relics.

II. Percepts and Traits:
The main problem this DLC has is that the ideology it introduces will overwrite the pawns' traits. This not only ruins the vanilla's gameplay, but also conflicts against the real-world experience. This is why I think the DLC need to allow each ideology to have child ideology to actually enhances the vanilla's gameplay provided by Traits.
1. let percepts from each ideology not to overwrite traits' percept, but only enhances or reduces the mood impact. For example, if a pawn without Cannibal trait ate human meat, this pawn should still feel bad even its ideology encourages cannibalism, just not as severe as it would normally feel.
2. let each pawn has its own set of child ideology, let most of those child ideology to be identically the same as the parent ideology, but few can be spawned with a varied child version.
3. if a pawn has trait that conflict against its ideology, when the low mood faith reduction event occurred, if the faith hasn't been reduced to 0 that triggers the complete conversion, let this pawn to generate a child ideology of its original ideology, with a few differences of percepts that suit better with pawn's traits.
4. if an ideology leader suffers a mental break, let this leader start a new child ideology with random percepts.
5. let Watching Television or chatting with prisoners/visitors to have a small chance to generate new child ideology.

III. Speech and other ritual activities:
These activities that added by DLC also feel way too "artificial". They can be much smoother.
1. let Speech to be a passive Recreation activity that replaces the Relax Socially for the leader.
2. let other ritual activities that involves gathering, to behave passively like the Party. So that even the leader was not around in the map, they should still be able to celebrate on their own, like in real world, you don't need pope to be in your house to celebrate Christmas. With or without the leader should only affect the quality and the leader's social ability should be affecting the leader bonus' max value.
3. let other role related activable abilities to perform passively. For example, let the Reassure and Counsel to be an additional chatting topic for the Moral Guide. Let Preach Health to be merged into Visiting Patient. As for combat command like Marksman Command, make it passive as well, that if the shoot specialist was draft and was talking to some other drafted pawn, let this other pawn to receive a non-stackable buff instead of everyone in the range.

IV. Conversion:
Conversion in Ideology DLC is way too powerful that neutralizes the rest features this DLC introduces. This needs to be changed.
1. get rid of the default dedicated Conversion Ritual, merge it with the festival ritual.
2. get rid of prisoners' Convert option, just let the chatting to do the job, if a prisoner happens to be converted to player's ideology, reduce its Will or Resistance significantly, so that every time when player managed to have a someone converted, player could actually feel been rewarded.
3. add a new trait "Missionary", which increase the chance that normal chatting occasion becomes conversion chatting.
4. let Moral Guide have better conversion chatting quality as this role's benefit alongside of its social skill level.

Edit: Never mind, I bought this dlc right after posting the original post and have already spending quite some hours with it. It still does the "overwrite" thing that I was worried about, but it has a Classic-like "mode" that minimizes the problem. Not as great as the vanilla game, but acceptable.

--------------- original post ----------------
By "worth to buy", I mean if it now offers dynamic experience.

The reason why I didn't take this dlc on its release(and still haven't bought it) was because it seems that it would overwrite the variety of my pawns with a uniformed template and such template was premade which has nothing to do with the pawns that I took and things I did on the run.

By "dynamic experience", I mean something like, if my colony did a lot of cannibal stuffs while suffering hunger, will "Cannibalism" start be added to the ideology that my colony share regardless of my premade template?

In B18, wood mask and leather tribewear should gives pretty decent protection. You don't need devilstrand at all in the first year. I played a lot of tribal start in Intense, just rush for smithing and everything will be ok.
To reduce scar, I think it is more about doctoring skill and the med supply you are using.

Dragonfly: Chief, research that Devilstrand plz plz plz...
Val: What is Devilstrand, Leira?
Leira: Me no idea.
Val: What is Devilstrand, DF?
Dragonfly: For making tribewear Chief.
Val: We DON'T need tribewear! I'm NUDIST! In case you don't understand what nudist is, Imma showing you right now!
DF: NOOOOO!
Leira: AssWeCan!

Because the in-game economy system is not a real economy system.

Ideally an average quality of a finished product should already worth much more than its material, while any Dumping Behavior should also be punished. But both of these features must be brought to the game at same time.

A more realistic system with demand and supply would mostly affect the resource trading that is so profitable right now, not help out the production side directly. What I mean is - the game doesn't need a "dumping protection" for resources to make finished products more worthwhile. Right now you're losing money AND time/work making clothes, armor and weapons (also furniture) - and that shouldn't be the case in the first place.

The Dumping Protection I would like to refer was not what those mass population societies do in real global trading that relates to both unemployment crisis and economy dependency crisis, but more about the demand of every small settlements in a game. My bad, I shouldn't use that word, it's not correct at all.
Let me try again to explain better in where I failed:
Repeatedly selling same type of product will lower the merchants' buying price for it.

Right now you're losing money AND time/work making clothes, armor and weapons (also furniture) - and that shouldn't be the case in the first place.

I don't think so, the Superior or Excellent stuffs already are selling at a nice price. And legendary stuffs are really profitable. And most importantly, a highly skilled craftman/artist is easy to access, just survive one winter, and I usually get a pawn who master one of these.
The silver are not lost as your dedicated pawnpower needs only foods and they probably can help to defend the colony when needed.
The time, on the other hand, is indeed lost, but instead, the pawn earn exp to higher its skill and the apprenticeship take times. You just need to keep this pawn alive and be patient. Silver will rained.
So, I think this vanilla setting is not that bad, please, give it a chance.

I can now say 100% that they undrafted during a firefight. They were literally firing their weapon and then all of the sudden they said "nah" and went for a walk.

I dont like this at all. I really hope they remove this or a mod comes out with a fix for this.

I agree with you, a simple notification or a message or something similar is more than enough. It should say "you've got drafted colonists", thats it.

Haven't seen this before, did you draft them to extinguish a fire outside of the home area? Myself sometimes draft pawns to fight a fire away from home but it was an insignificant fire and can be extinguished in 2 minutes, so the context we have might be totally different though.

Because the in-game economy system is not a real economy system.
It has no "demand", but only a relatively fixed sell price and traders' money cap to limit the system from been abused.
Being able to sell 600 units of meat to a village is already an abuse, as the tribe people probably don't have industrial tech to reserve properly such amount of food and besides, they can hunt themselves unless its winter.
The current sell price is kind of Ok, as their are no better solution without "mass" coding. Otherwise you might end up even easier getting a piece(or even full set) of power armor in the second year in-game.

Ideally an average quality of a finished product should already worth much more than its material, while any Dumping Behavior should also be punished. But both of these features must be brought to the game at same time.

On the other hand, you don't pay your artist or artisan any silver for their job, but only food and shelter. It is also kind of immersive if you are willing to consider the extra silver you should have gained from trading was been instantly payed to your pawns as their cut.

What's your understanding on this? And which weapon do you choose?

Basicly it is the speed of the weapon, how long it takes for the next swing.
Weapon with less bulk swing faster and higher bulk slower.
When you have the same DPS, weapons with less bulk doing smaller wound, good to let a pawn bleed out or infect much pain.
Higher bulk give much damage into a swing, good to kill/knock down a pawn.

Thank you for reply, Canute.

A range weapon has "Range CD" and "Warmup", these two are easy to understand with the Damage detail displayed. Then this "Weapon Melee Bulk" came in, like "Melee Dps", they are stats for both melee weapons and range ones, yet all melee weapon don't has their damage detail stated, which make me confuse.

After reading your reply, I start to believe that there are a generic fixed melee attack time for all weapons. Bulk will determine the actual melee attack speed of a weapon by its percentage value whether this weapon is melee or range.

Weapon bulk is merely flavour text for melee weapons; it only affects ranged weapons. Relevant decompiled code snippet:

Code Select Expand


if (this.meleeShoot)
{
return num * 0.25f / equipment.GetStatValue(StatDefOf.Weapon_Bulk, true);
}


What it's meant to influence, from looking at the entire code section, is that weapon bulk's supposed to affect the likelihood of a ranged weapon being used as a melee weapon in hand-to-hand combat. However, I did test if this was true or not and it doesn't seem to have any real impact (methodology was bashing unconscious thrumbos with a bolt-action rifle, then with a sniper rifle to see how often the weapon would be used).

Thank you XeoNovaDan. Guess I should stick with the stat Melee DPS. I'm equipping one of my melee pawn with shotgun now, it has nicer MDps than a Granite Club and just ignoring the lower WMB that club has xD

[What does it mean?]

Hi, i have some doubt on "Weapon Melee Bulk", wander how does it effect to melee combat.
The description says that it relates to the difficulty on wielding it in close combat, lighter ranged weapon will fire more often in melee.
What does it mean?
It decrease the attack speed of a range weapon in melee? A range pawn in melee will either keep firing, or attack like unarmed(have doubt on this as well), the WMB effect is applied on both style or only the keep firing one?
Does it reflect how quickly a melee weapon is? A dagger is like 20% WMB while a club is 50%, does it mean that the club will attack less frequently than the dagger?

I see Long sword and Spear are like 100%, and they need further research in B18, guess they are the best melee weapon in game. So, a higher percentage of WMB is good thing? I would like to have a Conan the Barbarian look on some brawler char, but this holds me back. If a dagger or shiv pawn could land more hit, and relatively cause more "interrupt", then I wouldn't choose the heavy weapon for teeth to teeth situation.

What's your understanding on this? And which weapon do you choose?

Lighters for smoke leaf joints

I place a campfire along with the Gather Spot, so pawns come to smoke will be around the fire as if they use that as a lighter, if you think using campfire is kinda dangerous for brows, then place a torch, or even a stove, but not the electronic one, I used to try to light a cig with elec stove in real life lighter crisis, but it never worked, even a gas water heater can do a better job than that

You also need to worry about grazing during the winter. In most biomes animals can't graze in the winter and those will be forced to eat your colonists caravan food instead.

Good to know! Well, in fact, I always bring hop or kibble for my caravan that have animal. I felt strange before as I found out these foods are usually untouched when they return. This game do gives me surprise .

And on a caravan you food can spoil even when the temp. is freezing.

Good to know! Guess I will have to horde some survival meal pack for the long trips.

A small map for caravan to hunt. In case they ran out of supply.

Maybe because they camped for the night?

No, during the day they still barely move a tile.

Are any of your animals pregnant? That can slow them considerably, especially if it is late stage pregnancy.

No, it was a male muffalo age 11.

In my experience, caravan packing can effect travel on the first day. As far as I can tell, if the caravan leaves when the rest bar is low, they still only recover at night. So they might be exhausted until the first night. They sleep from 22h until 6h.

Hopefully you can buy food at the city, it can take a day or two to starve. Though starving will probably effect speed.

I'm not sure if they were well rested or not, never thought about that. But anyway they should have been able to recover their strength the following day. And unfortunately they won't endure this, they are in the middle of two settlement, may take another 3 or 4 day to reach either side. I tried to send a new guy carrying food from the base to their location, not sure if they can be merged into one or not. But this rescue guy as well travel slowly like the troubled caravan. Also just right not, the base pop up with a raid event. the pawn left in the base won't be able to defeat this raid. Guess i will eventually use the abandon button, hopefully it will solve every problem.

What season is it?? If there it is a colder biome (temperate forest and colder), then traveling from late fall to early spring will take longer

Yes, it was winter! Never thought the season has such impact to the game! Great to know! Thank you ChillinVillian13!

Hi, guys. I send a caravan to neighbor village for trade, they should arrive there the second day afternoon as we are really close, but later I realize they haven't even finished half of the trip. What cause this issue? I checked the health of every caravan member including the mufflo, none of them have leg problem, and the weight they are carrying is not overloaded nether. Now they run out of food and they can't enter the current area to hunt.
So, why is this caravan so slow? Is this a bug or there are some factors which determine the travelling speed that I didn't check? There are actually a river between two settlement in world map, is this river caused the low speed?
Thank you for reading this, please tell me if you have any idea.