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Colony AI could automatically reconnect machines when a conduit breaks or is destroyed by a mortar shell. What currently happens when you press "reconnect" would require a colonist to come with allowed Flicking.

Colonists should really really really have to Flick to reconnect. Lights, autodoors, and turrets especially, benefit from magic reconnect way too much. You don't even need to assign Flick to anyone in the entire colony, all for the low cost of building a singe unconnected electric line next to powered objects. It's even more cheesy now, as players can move around and indefinitely store full batteries.

I agree, hydroponics should and do have appropriate balances.

I realize the game's probable reason for omnivorous cobras, but that doesn't make it any less needlessly silly. Why even represent something that acts like a slightly more aggressive hare as a snake? 

Hydroponics can't grow corn in the game, which is actually fairly realistic for the tiny hydro set ups we run. I assume Tynan did it for balance because corn is a better producer than the other plants, but you can justify it with pollination requirements (corn HAS to be spaced out or it can't really produce, and poor air circulation compounds the issue). Haygrass would also be worthlessly inefficient in our set ups--you'd never get enough nutrional value to make it worth growing over another crop; its low requirements are its biggest advantage, but it needs lots of space to be economically viable.

The (real) major benefits of haygrass is how little you need to seed a field once it has been established, relatively low soil requirements, and low amount of work to process it for storage. A few sowings ought to lead to fairly persistant pastures, and haygrass grows fairly uniformly relative to soil quality (which is part of why haygrass usually gets planted when demanding crops like corn are rotated out). The high hay yields we get seem to represent those benefits without overcomplicating the game. Growing something like straight alfalfa (sometimes a componant of what we call hay) might make sense, but then colonists could eat it... 

Realistically, why do dogs even eat hay? If it's nutrionally viable for a dog, a colonist could survive on it too. And every snake on earth is an obligate carnivore, what kind of space cobras are we dealing with here?!

Oops, I actually just assumed the rhino nuzzled (I read that's when many animals are named, iirc), as it was the only named animal I've seen besides dogs and cobras, even though I had a few highly trained elephants. I haven't had any other rhinos; I'd guess they are probably automatically named.

Interesting post, thanks.

Another con of elephants is that they seem very into getting drunk/consuming beer. I had 2/3 of my herd die of alcohol poisoning before understanding what was going on....wonder if it's just their ability to eat so much volume that gets them in trouble?

Also, how much do folks see animals nuzzling? Despite basically running rimzoos in two colonies I have only noticed it happen once (a rhino self-tamed and immediately nuzzled a hunter), no matter how I set up animal and colonist area restrictions. It seemed weird to lock every living being inside a small area for four months and see no interspecies interactions outside of taming/milking. Spaceyorkies feel about as useful as a single fine meal, hayfed cobras hang out docilely alongside puppies and chinchillas, and elephants never step on anything.

You may easily modifiy the research costs for your personal game. Look at the mod, then: defs>researchprojectdefs, and then simply adjust the field "totalCost" of the file inside.

I've attached a modified version of the research defs which almost doubles the costs for this mod's additions; just dump it into the researchprojectdefs folder for this mod and overwrite.

[attachment deleted due to age]

Thanks for all of your replies, I appreciate the feedback.

Incidentally, I started using a physical screen magnifier set up like a pair of bifocals and it's working brilliantly.

What resolution/screen size do you all use to play? I'm trying to find a sweet spot where the UI fits the screen, but the font is also clear.

On a 21" desktop monitor (using lower-than-usual resolutions) the UI seems overbearingly large, but the font is fairly easy to read. On a 47" HDTV, which I prefer for games like this, the UI better suits the screen, but the font is nearly illegible unless seated a few feet away. I'd brushed this off as a personal issue, but recently tried showing Rimworld off to my nephew and he quit within minutes because he got tired from squinting.

I found an old thread discussing this (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=8710.0), but nothing recent; what do you all think? Overall, the pop-ups are too bad, but the tooltips and the white text in the corner indicating ground type, temperature, etc. seem difficult to read on most common resolutions.

I like this idea, but think it'd need to be more nuanced to not be exploitable or cheesy.

If some colonists developed bloodlust/cannibal as you're describing, an even greater ratio ought to develop PTSD (maybe their rest/joy meter fills slowly and they wake up at random), maybe commit suicide, or face other issues in exchange for lower overall negative event debuffs. That'd illustrate not everyone copes the same way with trauma (others might permanantly losing the ability to be social or do medicine, but not cross into full psychopathy). Some people just aren't cut out to be murder machines, no matter how brutal their surroundings. Additionally, a balanced chance at positive/negative traits emerging would lead to more storytelling potential than a straightforward leveling up to cannibalism through cannibalism mechanic.

I think you're a little mixed up about the strengths of bows. Bow users stood up to firearms because of the relatively great rate of fire at the time; for example, Comanches could fire an average of six arrows per minute without ever needing to reload-. That fired arrows are smokeless and largely silent was definitely a plus, but not a real gamebreaker as the army was good at forcing engagements (everyone needs to camp somewhere). Still, it wasnt until the late 1830's, with the Colt revolver entering mass production, that bows were really outclassed by guns in the American Old West; soldiers could carry two or three at once without them becoming ungainly (12-18 shots before reloading), they reload much quicker than rifles, and were relatively affordable. I think the bows in Rimworld are a bit slow, actually, but they are being compared to modern arms (and the great bow does maim pawns pretty well).

I don't think that fog of war would be entertaining unless there were more supporting mechanics in place, such as patrol routes, weapon sounds mattering more, visually relevant darkness, and maybe differences in the day-night behavior of wildlife. It also feels like it would unavoidably add plenty of micromanagement (hunting alone is already fairly time consuming). It might be fun if it was done right, but I'd rather see other content before fog of war was considered. I do like the roleplay potential of setting up an ambush, though.

Thank you!

Thank you for creating your mods and tutorials, and especially for offering a vanilla-friendly variant.

The extra events are great, but I noticed that some of the pop-ups seem incomplete (I'm using misc vanilla+MAI). For example, I just got one with "RumorofSlaverCamp_VisitorTellingRumorInitial" as the flavor text, with RumorofSlaverCamp_VisitorTellingRumorInitial accept/decline as the options; is this a placeholder? Another example happens every time I load a new colony with these mods: there is mostly-blank pop-up that says something about colonist group instructions (which I notice is a feature in the full version, but not the vanillaish pack).

I have already tried redownloading and reinstalling the mod to see if I was missing some files with no luck.

Superior Crafting is too focused on minutia for my taste, though it has some great ideas. I'm OK with mechanics like cotton=cloth, because the game is abbreviated--- there are only 10 days in a month; mechanics like that are a summarization of tedium, something Tynan is fairly adept at balancing.

That said, there ought to be a bit more progression. People have made reasonable suggestions here and elsewhere in the forums about optional, luxury techs:

• Acclimitization research for most crops (depending on biome?).
• Techs that improve workbench speed or variety of goods produced, or increase the range of your grow lights, for additional power cost.
• Junction boxes/insulated wiring for powerlines.
• Timed/smart controllers that can reroute power away from production areas not being used, with a potential new use for AI cores.

*I didn't mean to turn this into a suggestion thread. My point is that a few more techs that are situationally useful would help replay and story building, and thus progression.

Consistency in quality of life tech unlocks would create more divergent early gameplay; wood/steel walls stink, but you can squat inside them awhile, especially in mountain or large hill starts. Likewise, not having a cooler is survivable with a small colony that actively works to get food (and in the cold biomes where food is actually scarce and needs to be stockpiled, it hardly matters).

Auto doors, turrets, and coolers are examples of quality of life devices, in that they remove burdens from colonists, but aren't strictly necessary for survival; techlocking them would lead to varying decisions, based on biome and start location, adding replay value.

(Better) Snakes: (1) seek hotter areas while avoiding the cooler temps, (2) can crawl over unroofed walls and through vents/coolers, (3) create messes, and (4) have a large negative beauty modifier while alive; possibly have them sometimes spawning in indoor heated crop fields (dirt floor, heated), occupied colonist beds (spawn on rest?), or foodstuffs purchased from traders.

Rats: (1) don't attack active colonists, but chew on incapacitated/resting pawns specifically, (2) travel through vents/coolers, (3) damage food, and (4) create tons of mess; a massive food surplus could see a groups of them spawn, but with no pop-up until food is being damaged.