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I haven't played A18 yet since I'm waiting for the proper release but it looks amazing from what I've seen others play so far. There was one thing I noticed in someones play through that could really use a minor mechanic to help out. A18 already has all the current features implemented so this idea might have to go into A19 but it's something small so who knows. Sorry if this is the wrong place to post this.

So basically this guy was doing a Youtube play through and an animal went mad. He could mouse-over the little warning icon in the lower left and it showed an arrow pointing to the event/animal (that part is really useful) so he could easily find it. The problem is that when you close the warning you can't mouse-over to get that arrow so you basically have to hunt around yourself and hope you find this moving whatever.

So here's the idea: Basically a means to 'highlight' or 'select' an NPC/mad animal/whatever and that would provide that locator arrow pointing to whatever you selected (until it dies). So like a longer more stable mechanic of the warning and locator arrow. The mechanics are basically all there already, it'd just be a matter of setting up a button to 'highlight' something manually and to then point it out (maybe not point to it all the time but only on mouse-over of that button like mousing-over the warning).

In Tropical Swamp, there are many tiles in which we cannot build upon.

So when I want to build rooms, I find myself dragging the structure wall blueprints in adjacent lines until I form a nice square. But making lines after lines is kinda slow. I would prefer to be able to make 14x14 square blueprints of walls, to figure out where is suitable to build rooms.

Can't you use the planning tool to see which tiles are buildable?

[2. The difficulty]

2. The difficulty
Especially early, when you ain't got the colonists affordable, the advanced equipment or animal support, it is probably not worth the risk. Probably because You have no clue on the actual difficulty of the encounter, so I cannot calculate as long as I doesn't have my win-'em-all Team. I'd wish there to be a small clue about what you can expect( e.g. "There are about one dozen of bandits armed to teeth", " Five madmen with rocket launchers", "Two jerks and a coma" or "It's a horde of furry tortoises!)

Agreed. It would be nice to have a better idea of what you might face otherwise there's not much point sending people in early game because you might be up against a well armed horde and get slaughtered, but it also means you might pass up on raiding that settlement that had only two jerks guarding it. Not asking for an exact number of enemies and exact weapon types, but something like those examples you just gave would be great. Maybe we could even get a new type of tech as an exploratory/scout drone. We have bionic body parts and mechanoids that attack us, why can't we build a drone of some sort to scout out an area and give us more detail of what we might find. Number of enemies, equipment, number of buildings and infrastructure, and even how much natural resources/ore there is in the area. Or you could have it as some sort of researchable/trainable skill to teach a pawn (so tribal's can also scout) so they can move alone without needing a caravan, can move faster, and have whatever skills needed to scout and survive alone while doing so. Maybe it could just require a pawn to have a certain value in certain skills, like melee and/or ranged, animals and/or plants (to hunt and eat on the move), good eyesight, no/minimal movement penalties, etc.

3. The hunger
Food on caravans doesn't feel balanced. When there's an AI caravan visiting you see 10 people with 3 pack animals and 99% of their goods aren't food.
When I send caravans myself about 50% have to be food, and it would be best to put a pool table beside them to prevent joy crisis.
AI caravan never had a pool table with them, but multiple bad quality granite sculptures (who the hell would carry these??)
I think there is no way on how to reduce food consumption in traveling, but I think it needs a way to resplenish it. Here I think about pawns hunting offscreen, animals producing milk or eggs or something.
This could be toggled in caravans, similar to colonists timemanagement, preplanning a caravan's relax, travel, hunt and sleeping time. By this a well prepared caravan could make very big journeys, presupposed, they have a good hunter, medical supply and weapons.

The food thing for caravans doesn't make much sense to me either. AI caravans don't carry that much food and it seems rather sucky for us to have to take so much food which means we can't carry as much other stuff which is the main point of caravaning. Like you mentioned it'd be great to see some on-the-move foraging. Unless it's a desert or ice biome there should be plants and berries on the map you could harvest or animals you could hunt as you move through. Automatically of course. That would suck to micromanage.

People say that a dollar an hour makes a game worthwhile, and you'll likely spend hundreds of hours in game so in my opinion it's well worth it.

I haven't read all these responses/ideas yet though hopefully I'll get around to reading them all in the near future. There are already plenty of different mechanics in the game so hopefully the next update will maybe add a few new mechanics but mostly focus on updating, expanding, balancing and streamlining the current mechanics. Storage, weapons, food production, bodily damage, etc.

You don't have to floor up the entire map to reduce dirt. Floor up your buildings and also make floored paths between buildings. Sure when they go out of your home zone and onto dirt they'll track some in but it atleast should be a lot less dirt than if there was dirt between or inside buildings.

Could anyone try this out? A youtuber do a test or something? No flooring at all, flooring only in buildings, and flooring in and between buildings. See what happens and how much dirt gets tracked all over the place.

I didn't read all the posts on this topic though maybe I'll come back later and read them all, but for honesty's sake, I pirated RimWorld to get my first play experience. Not sure exactly which Alpha version it was, but it was very early and likely A1 or A2 and I played it for hours and hours in just that initial Alpha release. Well I pirated maybe 2-3 extra alpha's after that and loved the game so much I purchased it and have been a legit owner/player of the game since around A5.

Many people are against pirating and I can understand the reasoning due to losing money, but if you make an awsome product that people really enjoy then most people will actually buy a legit copy to support the creator. Being able to pirate gives people a taste. If it's a bad taste they won't want to play or pay, but if it's a great taste then they'll be willing to pay and continue to play. The people who are afraid of losing money likely know their product is of poor quality and they know if people get to play the game for free for a few hours they won't want to pay full price because they won't want to play more than the few free hours (or less) they already played.

Honestly there have been games like this I've looked at and absolutely did not want to buy or play (like Prison Architect, which I later purchased after pirating maybe 3-4 Alphas because I liked playing it, much like RimWorld), and the only reason I played was because of a pirated copy and because of that pirated copy I actually bought the game. So basically I would never had bought or played RimWorld if it weren't for the pirated copy I originally played. So curse pirates all you want but if it weren't for a pirated copy Tynan wouldn't have got my money or my respect as a developer or me constantly checking for new updates to get back into the game and play all over again.

Why not just solve it the same way you do IRL?

The names of the months are only part of the calendar, and the sun, earth, moon, and stars couldn't really give a rat's ass about the calendar when it comes to seasons and weather.

That's exactly what the current quadrum system is...

Equatorial climates typically have two seasons - wet and dry.

Anyway the upshot is that you really cannot use this sort of local climactic pattern as a global calendar.

But you do need a global calendar. The main options I see are:
-Quadrum names as now
-Use real month names and skip 2/3
-Some other quadrum names (maybe latinized numbers - unumber, duember, etc or something better).
-1st quarter, 2nd quarter
-No month or quadrums, just use "1st day of year", "23rd day of year", etc.

I'm happy for suggestions but just asking to have seasons without any dating system will leave quite a few unsolvable problems.

I am a big fan of KISS, keep it simple stupid.

That's why my preference: 1st quarter, 2nd quarter etc. That makes the most sense and is completely intuitive. Unlike basically all the alternatives.

I disagree on this. Numbered quarters would work great for timekeeping, but they don't intuitively map to particular times of the year. Is the first quarter northern-hemisphere Winter or Spring? What season is the third quarter? Even in the seasonal climate I'm used to thinking in, I'll always have to pause and mentally convert the number to a time of year. "Decembary" sounds odd but I immediately understand what time of year it's associated with.

Although... come to think of it, that problem could be solved pretty easily via UI. If instead of "8th of Aprimay" it said "8th of Aprimay (spring)" or even "8th of Duember (spring)" I'd still get that intuitive understanding.

I disagree with your disagreement. I personally think 1st quarter, 2nd quarter etc would be better than decembary and janumay. You said ""Decembary" sounds odd but I immediately understand what time of year it's associated with." Yeah, so do I, but a complete opposite of you I'd wager, which means the whole 'time of year' is relative, or geographical, or whatever. You said quarter's "don't intuitively map to particular times of the year. Is the first quarter northern-hemisphere Winter or Spring? What season is the third quarter?" These are flawed arguements. You could say the same thing about months. Seasons are opposite based on North and South hemispheres. I'm an Aussie so when I hear about a 'white Christmas' in December I can only dream about snow in 40C+. With quarters it's easy. I'm in this spot and the growing time is 2nd-3rd quarter. Over this zone growing time is 4th quarter. Way over there growing time is 4th-2nd quarter. And way up there growing season is never. Sure there may be different seasons in different areas but all you gotta know is what season/growing time it is for the area you're in. It's much easier to grasp a simple concept as a year split into four quarters than try to remember what some mutt bastardization of months is supposed to mean. Kudos for Tynan for thinking of something unique but I'm personally not a fan of the month naming thing.

Dang. More awsomeness for RimWorld.

Rivers sounds like it could be interesting with some additions. Bridges, fishing, being able to dig your own trench to redirect water into your own man-made river, lake, or moat surrounding your castle/town. Climate being able to affect it would also be kinda neat, from flash floods after rain storms, poisoned water for a few days/weeks after toxic fallout or volcanic ash, frozen rivers in winter or dried up river beds during an intense summer or drought. Water would also be nice to have as a required resource (like food) for colonists, animals, and crops, and more than one way to gather water, like rivers or lakes, well, condensation contraption, desalinization, etc (some would require researching). Maybe localized events near water sources such as mosquito swarm or rampaging alligators so you'd need to weigh up proximity to water based on assorted benefits and dangers.

Changes to animal farming sound nice. I never used animal farming before because it was too complicated for too little reward. It was easier to just hunt animals for meat. Actually I like all the changes to food production Tynan mentioned (crops, hunting, foraging, animal farming).

Those incident quest mission things sound interesting and would give me a reason to actually build caravans and go exploring. Nice work getting something in place that gives players a reason to explore. Even though I've made like one caravan so far this is one of the features I'm looking forward to so I've got a good reason to actually use the caravan and explore the map features.

Self healing has been much needed. When I read it my first thought was self brain surgery, which in RimWorld could honestly possibly happen. You've long been able to remove someones eye and spleen when trying to remove their leg, so why not self brain surgery? However it's more likely as other people have mentioned being self healing of wounds and not surgery. Oh well.

There might not be much focus in A17 cause of all the other features being added/upgraded, but more 'stuff' would be nice. More looks for statues, more floors, more furniture to improve rooms or for certain functions, more production types/trains or whatever its called where you need to produce something to produce something else needed to build something else, more crops and general food options. And more/better storage options would be really nice for more space efficient ways to store food, clothing, weapons, etc. Just having everything dumped on the floor as a stack or a single item takes up heaps of space. Can we get a shoe rack? Gun rack? Texan gun rack? Vacuum storage bags? (would work for clothes or smokeweed) A closet/wardrobe? Good Sammy's bin? Big ass electronic white goods freezer you can put in (or out) of your regular floor freezer? I'd like to see items that we can research or just build straight away (depending on item) that can greatly improve storage space. I'd much prefer to store 500 meals in 5 researchable electronic freezers that take up two floor spaces each and can hold 100 meals each instead of taking up 50 floor spaces for a stack of 10 meals each in my floor freezer (I hope my math was right).

Anyways, rock on Tynan, this sounds like another awsome update. Keep up the fantastic work and I'll be sure to play the heck out of RimWorld (again) when A17 finally arrives.

It's probably already been mentioned, but I'd like to see certain meat and fur/leather combined so there isn't so many stacks of different items.

For example, instead of having like 6 odd different dog meats and fur/leather, combine them into canine meat/leather. Same goes for other animals. Instead of having rabbit, hare, rat, etc, combine them into rodent meat/leather. Boom leather could combine boomalope and boomrat leather.

Combining animal items like this would be nice for meat but more important for fur/leather, because it's really annoying having over a dozen stacks of different types of leather but you can't use any of it because you don't have enough of a single type to make anything.

Can people stop saying "wait because mods" when the modders themselves have said that a bug fix/refinement patch would actually be better for them.

Try adding a comfy chair, flowers, a statue, or anything nice near where he works to keep him as happy as possible throughout the day. If I he still has mental breaks then uhh, try what everyone else said.

I tend to plan out a little at the start but I don't plan for anything too big. A freezer and dining room (usually the same/similar design), and atleast 4 bedrooms with room to expand to 6-8 (I never get much further than that). I try to fit 2-6 prison rooms somewhere too. I also plan a stockpile relatively close. From there things expand based on what I need or what I have the space for and where things can fit.

I'm posting another reply for more info, but my opinion still stands. Bug fix/balance, then more content later.

So first off, if it's just going to be a bug bash only then I vote wait for more content. But based on what Tynan said in this initial post it sounded like it would be a bug fix AND a balance, or a bug fix, balance, and new content. If this is the case, I vote for a bug fix and balance of the current systems in game, then add new content later.

This would allow for the base game to be more stabilized and balanced, which would mean later updates would have a more stable base game to update. Many other games frequently do a bug fix/balance update every so often, like Prison Architect did (I'm not comparing the two in gameplay). This would mean that some mods would be obsolete since some mods are there simply to balance out existing gameplay/systems and not add anything new (e.g. changing the power usage of lights from 75 to 25 power).

So again, I'm for a bug fix/balance and a separate content update later. We're currently at Alpha 16. Time to rework/balance most of the current in-game systems. If Tynan has an idea or knows a certain system will be modified in the (near) future then either do minor adjustments or ignore that system currently until the updated system gets put in place. Otherwise I'm sure there are changes that can be made with future revisions in mind.

There are numerous systems in game that should be balanced/revised, including medical/healing, hauling, food, combat, and more. Balance the systems that are already in game before adding more. I don't personally use any food mods but I do see the appeal in more types of food for example. Although more types of food would technically be new content, it would primarily be working on and balancing existing systems. Maybe add more of a 'combat realism' system with atleast some minor changes, but wait for later updates of weapons/armor/whatever to fully balance it (while making some changes now to better support future modifications/systems).

The base game, although awsomely fun, does require some modifying of the vanilla base game version. While mods can make a game even more fun, the base game should be plenty of fun and balanced and stable without mods.

I've found the hauling thing to be annoying too.

I like Lurmey's comment of "Don't go (back) empty handed!"

The fix I was thinking of was similar to GiantSpaceHamster's first example. If a pawn is within X tiles (say 5-10) of an item that can be hauled, and that pawn is going to go within X tiles past a stockpile  then the pawn picks up something and drops it off on the way back. This way if the pawn gets hungry or sleepy and have to pass right by a stockpile on the way to their bedroom or kitchen they will take something to drop off on the way rather than going back empty handed.

Another sort of related note, it would be nice to see pawns focus on their highest priority job. For example, if I have a pawn with a 1 on construction and order them to deconstruct a wall way outside my base, that pawn should focus on deconstructing while another pawn with a 1 on haul should come pick up stuff, instead of a pawn deconstructing a single wall then wanting to carry that one block all the way back. Same thing with mining. A pawn high on mining priority should focus just on mining while another pawn high on hauling priority should haul. Unless of course they finish deconstructing/mining, then that pawn can haul on the way back.