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Hello back !

Chemfuel Furniture, Annoying Life and Meteors are updated in Steam Workshop to support v1.1

as far as i checked (quite quickly), all 3 of them are working fine.

Update of Meteors Mod :

Meteors properties configurable in settings :
   - days between incidents
   - meteors size
   - meteors amount

Mods updated/verified against 1.0 working fine
No known issues with 0.19

Non steam versions updated also

i've reuploaded them as .zip (with latest updates of version/changes to meteors) so all should be good now

In both, real beds and Chemfuel furniture mods texutres doesnt show up, but giant rectangles with x in them

I got the same problem. Rename all the folder in texture folder (basically 1st letter to capital) n problems gone.

Sorry for late read - as far as i've checked files in mod itself (the upload version) have proper names with capitalized 1st letter - so this should not happen

code for bedrolls in itself is from vanilla (as far as i remember i did not write any sleep-bonus code) so the bug is related with core-game.

Only thing that might not work in caravans is changing comfortable temperature for pawn ( so pawn wont freeze but still will get slept in cold mood-debuff)

this mod will not be supporting 0.18
about chemfuel stove and smithy - i will take a look and add it when i got a moment

The core issue, to me, is the colony death spiral.

Yup. Game is designed from beginning (Tynan please correct me if i'm wrong) in a way, that colony is set to be non-sustainable long-run, the end and main goal of game is to build ship to prevent this annihilation.

As for RNG i would not say that it should be influenced by storytellers because that will make it even harder to pick for most players which difficulty they want. More 'configurable' RNG might be a compromise here.

Do You put Your guys in plate/power armor or just flak ?
I tend to loose a limb or two in good+ plate armor but that's usually because i face tank centipide/couple of scythers with one pawn while rest is shooting from behind

My take on Tribal Start with Randy Rough->Hard->Pheobe Builder-> Randy Hard

Started in Mountainous, Temperate Forest -6 - 29*C, slate and granite, 30/60 growing days, currently pushing day 341 with, for now, bright future ahead.

Early game was rather uneventful on Randy Rough->Hard (at least nothing i could not handle) slowly carving myself into mountain. Since i did not plan well my colony was starving a couple of times (especially after i was testing my meteor shower mod in summer and went along with loosing all crops).
In general colony was not too well-off, i was not pushing towards too much wealth and had to buy food from called merchant a couple of times, but everyone was dressed in plate armor (good+), however my weapons were 2 poor shotguns, Heavy SMG and ikwas...
From technology standpoint i had Geothermal and medicine, and other minor required things.
2 colonist also joined : Miranda that could do nothing worthy except cleaning, and Gerber who was non-violent backup-medic cleaner.

Around day 170 patch came which 'fixed' Randy.
In following 10 days i got 2 heavy raids, 2 or 3 ships and of course again I had no food. One pawn got Brain dmg when i needed to calm him down when he wanted to slaughter my boomalope, and about 3 legs and 2 arms were missing from other colonists. First colonist to die was Miranda - she was melle-dmg-sponge and died gloriously under Centipide (or took a bullet that was targeted on Centipide). the same day (188) i had to succumb to changing storyteller, because after destroying last psychic ship, however base was intact i had no food and only 1 pawn barely mentally-ok to do some hunting, with rest of pawns in hospital on having mental breaks (or both).
When trying to continue on Randy i got raid the same day (reload), got psychic ship (reload and change to Pheobe Builder to recover from this rampage).
It took some time (~30 days), with some small annoyances (toxic fallout, normal raids) and i turned back Randy Rough.

Since i was aware that Randy behaves normally now, i researched guns, and shifted crops to have more food (that was still problem)
I got toxic fallout which ended pretty quick - still got one guy dementia and  despite gathering all crops i did not have enough to survive winter
Then when starvation started another psychic ship, followed by another one, just when i've finished destroying previous. Luckily i managed to take down both with only one loss. Had to micromanage animals and do some manual hunting to ensure no one dies of starvation / animal revenge.
Some mental breaks did happen (especially my 20yo toxic-fallout-dementia guy likes to just wander in confusion every 2-3days).
In the meantime I had bigger area walled to secure power line and another geothermal as well as some trees - also some haygrass planted for animals (not enough) and another psychic ship (only lancers though). Also first winter without starvation ( in year 5505 )
I'v set up launchers to maybe go some caravaning/trade and will try some sunlamp growing for sustaining winter better.
Built also mortar battery for securing myself agains sieges.
Planted lots of hops to process into beer - and for that refashioned my base to make fridge bigger.
Had to destroy all traps since they were throwing errors in console after recent patch.
Another psychic ship - had to escort catatonic breakdown from under centipide. And also decimated some raiders at the same time (with help of scythers) out of which one survived long enough to make into prison (and possible recruitment i hope).
Nice surprise was that animals driven mad by psychic ship were attacking mechanoids also.
After, again, had to beat up some of my pawns that were in breakdown and starting to freeze/murder other pawns.

Infestations, due to base layout and granite walls/doors are not worth mentioning, since they do not pose any problem.

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I think that the base problem (that overlaps with RNG) might be in another place :

Game is about escaping a planet - this is the only true 'win' = build ship and escape planet. It's not build a thriving colony that will survive anything storyteller will throw at You like sim-city.
By definition players should go for leaving planet - trying some other strategies, different paths of development, some melle-only etc., BUT in reasonable pace with target of researching and building ship.
So by this definition game is not suitable at all to most of problems that ppl are complaining INCLUDING rng (others are storytellers scaling, wealth accumulation in colony, pawn amount).

In 'designed' run i think half or even three-fourths of events would not happen, because there would be no time for that in game, because player would be already off-planet (maybe in slower tribal scenarios it would give a longer 'story' due to research penalty).
So :
- there would be less raids (less chance for FF blowing off your legs or stray bullets hitting brain because of RNG)
- less mad animals (as above, less squirrels tearing off your eyeballs because of RNG)
- less social fights
- less injuries (less chance that doctor will cut off your arms because of RNG)
- in general less events that might trigger 'RNG-bullshit'

So if chance for hitting neck is 0,1% per bullet shot and You have game play with total of 20+ raids with pawns shooting on both sides this gives lots chances for this event to happen.

Good example (that i think someone mentioned but in different context) is drop of equipment in mmos :
- something drops at 1% on monster kill, it's low, but if you grind long enough it'll drop, even multiple times.
So some players basically grind themselves into this RNG events, and instead of random low RNG chance it feels that's happening often.

And the rest of mentioned points keeps and strengthens it : players are attached to pawns, have different styles of gaming (i myself in total of 1k+ hours sent maybe 5 ships) and have different approach to random negative events or 'forced' setbacks in game, see that mostly RNG caused that so they put blame on it (kinda correctly)

From my perspective, RNG is ok. There's no other way to handle that. And it's working well.

traders still have troubles recognizing where my base is.
they prefer to hang out near mini-containment zone i set up against poison ship, rather than close/at my base

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I've got no point here except to note just how clear the conflict is between the story-frame and the game-frame here. Each point of view is totally legit within that frame, yet completely ridiculous in the other.

That really is the point. Story (movies/books) and gameplay (games) are inherently in conflict, because one is interactive and one is not. The interactive one will always leave you angry, unsatisfied and disappointed when something bad happens which you have no influence on.

I think You guys missed the point (or I did).
I think Tynan was making parallel to the plot/events of movie from acotr/character perspective, not to compare experience of playing RW to watching a movie (that comparision does not hold for the reasons said above).

So I start a new tribe, roll for a decent starting crew and a day 1 social fight has 1 pawn bite off the hand of another.

The first tribe I lost was bad luck in combination with bad preparation. The second I simply quit day 1 because losing a hand is just (excuse my language) shit tier rng. The clearly-traceable mistake in the first colony was preventable on my part. Could I go on with the second tribe? I guess so, but is it worth it having 2 wounded guys on day 1 and even when they recover have 1 work on 50% efficiency? I'll just start a new colony.

It's an interesting isolated case, because here you reject the "lost your hand on day 1" situation as simply bullshit. Which is reasonable from the "skill test" game frame. After all, if you lose because of random events, it's a pretty shitty skill test.

But in a story, losing your hand day 1 is actually a really common sort of thing to happen.

I think it all boils down to what one wants to do with game. For me it would not be a showstopper and restart, but i'm more ok with setbacks even early-game. Some people can accept more 'shitty-RNG' later in game when it's more easily mitigated (prosthetic/medicine/etc).
So for some ppl it's kinda like 'storyteller, i want to build nice base but i want some challenge, so hurt me some, but not too much, and remember that i decide afterwards if it was too much'.
Example would be 'send raiders, but they can shoot only that my pawn not lose limbs or dies. no infection also. and no kidnapping. and not too much sappers, since i like my base layout. and no centipides, not ready for them'. I guess it could be scripted, but then the core idea of game is compromised that way.

As You have said, people tend to go for not the difficulty they should. Also I think not everyone realizes there's possibility to change storytellers during game (for ex. to recover from Randys ideas of how your colony should look like ).

An idea could be to add 1 checkbox and 2 sliders when choosing storyteller.
checkbox, unchecked by default [] custom story
slider 1 : negative events amount (including 'shitty-RNG')
slider 2 : negative events strength

It can give players some 'control' about what and why is happening and then, only they (players) would be to blame.
It could create more scenarios (lots of almost-continuous weak raids/fewer but a lot more difficult events where limbs are flying left and right)
Story would be still told and kept, with it's extremity chosen by players
I guess that would be a nightmare to balance though.

Is the anger reaction a consequence of caring about characters, or them being not easy to replace? Nobody minds that much when a marine dies in StarCraft because they're replacable. But either for story or gameplay reasons, people do tend to at least care about when people in RW die. Which sounds like a design success. But it also creates this anger reaction in some circumstances.

Imo both. As opposing to SC marine, pawns are specialized and each is different. So Player cares if he loses his best miner/medic/crafter/etc.
At the same time, since getting this pawn to be better, attachment to it grows - imo it's great succes and achievment, but players are kinda not used to that (and ppl in real life too).

1. Should the game have a such a thing as bad luck outcomes that's not induced by some obvious, non-pressured, voluntary player decision? Or should I make a universal design standard that nothing bad ever happens unless the player actively induces it or makes some clearly-traceable mistake to cause it?

Yup. Problem here lies with probability though - Rimworld is packed with action - so even if there is 1/10000 chance to have friendly fire into neck, relative chance is high.
One solution might be tuning numbers for shooting/melle accuracy: shooter lv.<5 barely hits anything and if then it'll be rather friendly fire, shooter lv.15 will have really high chance to hit (higher than now-20lv.) and really low rolls for friendly fire (in general punishing more low stats, rewarding more high, but that's design decision)

2. Should I just ignore some classes of player feedback as simply not linking up with what RW is? Are some players worth leaving alone to try to make a game that's different from the usual assumptions? Even if it leaves them pissed off because they intepreted a story generator as if it were a skill test?

Yup. As i see replies (and sometimes play myself) it's kind of 'sim city' x 'tower defense' x 'rpg'. On A18 it was ok-balanced, on A1 it's ok-balanced too but in different way. There can always be just special 'unadjusted' mode/storyteller that will make it more as tower-defense rather than above said mix.

3. Should players be able to consistently avoid losing people/resources even at high difficulty? At any difficulty?

Game will be boring then for some/lots players. What makes this game 'THE' game, is risk that one bad decision/incident can be painful without soft cushion to land on.

4. Is there a way to set expectations (relative to the whole game, or relative to a given difficulty level) to encourage players to accept some degree of randomness to game outcomes? Or will they always reject this randomness and demand to be rewarded in accurate proportion to their skill/effort?

Heh, some kind of tutorial, that is set to player failure with final message that "not every time all has happy ending" might give some insight of what game is going about. But still, some RW players (like normal ppl) will reject randomness in stuff they care about.