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All of the below could be added or made meaningful compared to movement:
> Room Size [Bigger, Nicer = Production Bonus(es)]
> Dedicated Purpose of Room
> Room Lighting
> Temperature of Room
> Dedicated Room next to but separate from another Dedicated Room (Kitchen, Next to Dining Room for example).
> Attractiveness of Room.
> Quality of tools, benches, etc in the room.
> Skill of the Pawn using the room (This is rewarded in terms of quality of item for items that have quality but not for quantity of items).

Other ideas:
> Less waste or bonus production for high quality rooms
> Penalties for things being in rooms that would actively harm each other (I.E. food production in the same room as mining drills. Which would of course, contaminate food with dust).
> Pawns making things in stacks, rather than per item, for things typically mass produced.

Note:
Many would say that some of the above affects production because it can affect pawn mood. But as long as the pawn doesn't have a mental break, production is unaffected. So you really need only do the minimum that is required to keep mood above a break level.

Regardless of indirect effects on mood, many of these things you've mentioned are already part of the game:

> Larger room sizes effectively mean fewer doors per walk distance, which speeds up movement.
> Dedicated purpose of room is up to the player to furnish efficiently, and if laid out well movement will be optimized as a result (which is essentially the whole point of the OP).  Although, if optimization is the goal, why would you want to limit an entire room to only one function?  That's a big waste of space and resources.
> Light level directly affects movement speed.
> Temperature affects work speed at tables.
> Temperature will affect movement and work speed (manipulation) if a pawn goes hypothermic or heatstrokey.
> Pawns working in rooms with dedicated uses innately benefit in movement speed from adjacency of dedicated rooms because of their beneficial dependent functions.
> Attractiveness of a room can bump a pawn working there into Inspired Work Speed or Inspired Movement Speed.
> Dirt, blood, etc. in kitchens (which can come from buildings like butcher's tables) contributes to the chance of food poisoning, which directly affects movement and work speed.

Like a few people have said before, this thread doesn't acknowledge the effects that the many levels of built-in depth in the game have on movement and work speed (among others), instead offering only an increase in value of base movement speed as the solution to the "flaw".  The brilliance of this game is that these effects can be orchestrated by the player as described above, not clunkily prescribed ad hoc. 

EDIT: And to the footnote note, with the introduction of Inspirations in B18, mood is no longer something that has only to be avoided at the low end to stave off mental breaks, but there are significant benefits from pumping colonists' moods as high as possible.

I don't know how to explain it to you other than this.

You can make a "perfect room" with all the bonuses you mention and if it involves more than a few tiles of movement, it will be less effective at producing (for example food) than a closet where a pawn does not have to move at all. Plus the pawn that doesn't have to move will be gaining skill faster, compounding the issue for the pawn that has to move.

The only exception is obviously, something like a mental break that'd interrupt production. But if the pawn loves the task, then that is unlikely to ever happen anyway.

Many of the things you've mentioned may "speed up pawns" and thus make movement faster, but that doesn't have any where near the impact of not having to move at all in the first place.

Movement optimization I still think can give an interesting game, given how many things have to be juggled.

Your critique though is that there is only one meaningful dimension of optimization in the game.  What other avenues of focus would you like to see rewarded in a game?

All of the below could be added or made meaningful compared to movement:
> Room Size [Bigger, Nicer = Production Bonus(es)]
> Dedicated Purpose of Room
> Room Lighting
> Temperature of Room
> Dedicated Room next to but separate from another Dedicated Room (Kitchen, Next to Dining Room for example).
> Attractiveness of Room.
> Quality of tools, benches, etc in the room.
> Skill of the Pawn using the room (This is rewarded in terms of quality of item for items that have quality but not for quantity of items).

Other ideas:
> Less waste or bonus production for high quality rooms
> Penalties for things being in rooms that would actively harm each other (I.E. food production in the same room as mining drills. Which would of course, contaminate food with dust).
> Pawns making things in stacks, rather than per item, for things typically mass produced.

Note:
Many would say that some of the above affects production because it can affect pawn mood. But as long as the pawn doesn't have a mental break, production is unaffected. So you really need only do the minimum that is required to keep mood above a break level.

Then why are you solely focusing on optimization if you don't believe the game is about optimization. The developers are focused on making a story as that's what the game is mainly about, but you insist the game which is not about production optimization is "flawed". And you say it has little depth because Rimworld has not "fixed" this "ultimate flaw".

You're criticizing a game about something its not meant to do in the first place.

You MUST have a level of effective production of things to survive.

Your effective production level (of everything but some long term art and some weapons) is more about the amount pawns had to move to get things than anything else.

Unless you want your Rimworld stories to be ones of Pawns starving to death you will need to, more than anything else, optimize movement.

The harder the difficulty, the more you must optimize movement.

Not room design, production bonuses, lighting, heat, comfort, chairs, etc, etc. Those things could not even touch the surface of the effective production bonus you'll get from removing even a single tile of movement from a process.

I'm not sure how I can explain it any better.

He views the game as a game about optimization (like factorio) when its main goal is telling a compelling story and because it does not fit his view he calls it a flaw. He's locked himself in a view which does not fit the intended goal of the game and wishes for the game to fit his view by suggesting ways to "fix" these "flaws".

I have not said that the game is about optimization, I have said that if you want to optimize anything, minimizing movement is the only real dimension in which you will see benefit. It's too important, it's all consuming. There is no other, deeper or interesting strategy outside of the combat.

I do indeed see a game with so little depth as flawed. Of course it is. When your attractive, realistic room is outperformed by orders of magnitude by a closet with a bench in it, you start to doubt how much freedom you really have.

In a game that's meant to have freedom.

I'm still interested in how the math allows movement optimization to do a < 1 year launch, even under theoretical perfect movement micromanagement.

The video I saw of a 5 day launch rush basically relies on a suicidal rush for the exact research required while digging for the resources needed to build the exact minimal spaceship. However, it was in a time before the AI core was required and getting that item is completely random, so in theory it could still be done in the same time but it would require the luck of getting a trader with it or a ship part drop.

The key takeaways were:
> To not bother with beds, food, or basically anything. You are relying on the rations you start with and the new colony optimism buff to succeed.
> You are only basically building 2 research benches while the 3rd man gathers the items you need for the adv. research benches and the ship. Basically by mining non-stop and sleeping at the cliff faces.
> Crash-landed is the setting and some very decent pawns were required (so lots of re-rolling, basically).

Failure to get the job done fast enough is almost certain death, as you are not preparing for the future at all.

You require some luck on finding veins of plastisteel and normal steel, near enough and in enough quantity.

It was really interesting to watch, I would recommend it. It has to be on youtube somewhere and I originally found it on this very forum.

As you know from my EUIV play through, I love to do the impossible in games by pushing the mechanics to the limits. Which is why I made this thread, I just think the importance of movement makes a lot of the strategy very simplistic and thus, disappointing.

[If]

Edmon, the fact that Bozobub has said he never goes for the "'win' scenario" simply means he doesn't bother racing to build a spaceship and leave the planet. It doesn't mean that he hasn't played on the highest difficulty settings and it doesn't mean that he hasn't had to deal with the various challenges and threats the game throws at him.

Similarly, the fact that he (like most players) recognizes how wonky pawn pathfinding can be hardly means he agrees with your claim that pawn movement efficiency is an "ultimate flaw" that somehow dictates "one and only one" way to successfully play the game.

But, then, I'm not surprised you don't get that. In three weeks, you've really demonstrated no ability (or desire) to understand what others have to say. You've done nothing in this thread but repeat yourself over and over. Others have explained in detail why your "only viable strategy" really isn't the only option, and why the "ultimate flaw" you're complaining about is really not an "ultimate" flaw at all, and your response has been to accuse them of "lying" about their play style and experience because that experience contradicts your claims or runs counter to your assumptions.

You might want to try actually listening for a change.

I am telling you that the quickest way to get 2, is to add 1 + 1 together and most of the counter arguments in this thread is that you don't have to do that, you could take 4, add 6 and then remove 8 to get 2.

And that's correct and all well and good, but it IS NOT OPTIMAL.

Movement minimizations centric designs are extremely optimal in Rimworld, as to the point of being all consuming. If optimization is your objective, this game is incredibly one-dimentional. unlike say, factorio, in which optimization can be a deep and massively complex thing.

The fact that he has discovered path finding can be wonky is not just an admittance that movement can be critically important at times.

It also tells me he does not or has not got the skill or foresight to minimize movement in the first place in the confines of the simplistic path finding to prevent path finding from ever being an issue in the first place.

Successfully playing the game and playing the game optimally are two completely different things and you should not mix the two.

Let me make it clear why many of the people in this thread are simply burning a strawman in simple terms:

I am talking about there only being one viable strategy if you want to be optimal.
They are talking about there being other strategies, if you want to be [X]. Where X =(successful, survive, have fun, insert target goal that isn't what I said here that fits their argument and isn't optimization).

I think it's time for Bozobub to have a conversation with himself. No literally.

You  fail miserably here.  Why?  Because a central courtyard IS NOT always optimal, depending on the item(s) stored.  Your lack of imagination limits no one else but you, that simple.

I've never tried to "win", even once.  I *like* sandboxes.

You're also going to have to show how you're "escaping by the 5th day", without using  the console or larding yourself with resources at game creation, because that's rather obvious bullshit.

Oh, by the by, I've played on *every* difficulty; snoot fail.  Perhaps if you upgraded your bullshit skills?

I've never tried to "win", even once.  I *like* sandboxes.

Thanks for clearing that up Bozobub, so do you agree that movement is the main issue with this game?

I personally think that similar QoL changes is what RimWorld needs most (well, OK, pathfinding, pathfinding, pathfinding, but BESIDES that ).  That also meshes well with going to a beta release, imo; I'd be willing to bet we start seeing a LOT of polish incoming =).

Ah, great.

Thanks buddy.

Anything else?

Your suggestion was obviously an attempt at humor =).

I felt it necessary to say something, before I heard the baying of hounds.  Let it go, people...

1.  That should be fully up to the individual player and already kind of is, via storyteller and difficulty settings.  I personally *never* go for the actual "win" scenario.

2.  See above.

Ok cool, so you never try to win, so you have no idea about what is optimal in many cases. That's totally fine.

You just wanted to have an argument in here because you think arguing the opposite for the sake of it is fun, even if you actually agree with me (and have said so in many other threads, at least in terms of pathfinding which of course is about making movement optimal).

Both of these things are optimal in terms of Raw Resource > Product in the shortest time.

To all those saying that a central courtyard is not optimal in the early game, I want to ask you something.

Did you ever realise that it was optimal to just build stockpiles over the top of dropped resources at the start, with the materials you want to use to build starting in the top left corner and then rotating around? There are people out there who made videos of themselves doing this, actually building the ship and escaping before the colony even got named. Have you done this?

Did you realise that it's more optimal (skillset permitting) to kill a large animal further away  and either cut wood down there (trees permitting) or just take wood with you (put a single tile down and command the pawn the haul it as they go out to hunt). Then build a butcher table and fuel stove out there in the middle of nowhere? So that the goal is simply to return with meals and your middle of nowhere cooking stations are available for next time?

There are things you only realise when you are trying to push the limits of the game, rather than just enjoying a lazy sandboxing experience. The problem is, movement is so ruthlessly important that if you truly are excellent in minimizing it, stuff like escaping before the 5th day isn't just possible, it's easily possible.

But you only will come to realise this if you have the skillset to execute at that level of play, or you've watched videos of other people playing at that level.

The important point is, that even if you don't play to speed run or that's not your thing, improving the movement versus work balance is going to make your game more fun and feel less limiting.

You should be free to build a base that is reasonably realistic and for it to actually work. As it stands, that is not the case, unless you basically have hostile events turned off.

Which isn't great balance.

Funny enough, I *never* have a central "courtyard".  Your "universal use case" is not universal, that simple; many user-posted bases similarly do NOT share your design choice.  So much for "always, always".

You have either never played the game, or only played the game on the lowest difficulties while deliberately having a rule about not building your stockpile in a central and accessible location. Or you are lying to try and be contrary.

I know on which of these possibilities I would place my money.

Once you get going, mini-stockpiles everywhere is a better design. But early on, ruthless difficulty demands a stockpile in an optimal position in the centre of your base, if you plan to survive for more than a few days anyway.

It is a sandbox base builder game. You do what you want. All I can say is they have a mod for that.

You don't just "do what you want" though do you? The need to optimise movement is too constraining for that.

At a small field base, the stockpile is off to the side somewhere out the way, in real life right? But in Rimworld, it's always, always, always in the dead centre of the base like some sort of demented courtyard. It has every building facing it like it's some sort of place of worship. At least until you have really effective systems and peons with individual stockpiling.

The importance of Movement is needlessly limiting.

Can we have no pride in finding THE BEST SET UP?

I wouldn't put my butcher table in the same room as my cooking thats barbaric! The butcher table is dirty and butchering now causes blood!

Who says you need everything optimal? I haven't used a kill box in about a month. Sometimes optimal is boring.

The "best set up" is not something you can have any pride in when it's obviously the design that minimizes movement, usually to a single tile at most.

Your right, optimal is boring. In this game, optimal is extremely boring and extremely obvious.

That is the issue, in a nutshell.

A few things could be done to help out this problem. However, I feel this is a very small issue as there are many things the player can do to mitigate these issues with how you set up the base and production.

If by "small issue" you mean the potential gains in terms of productive use of the day are overwhelmingly in favour of a complete and utter focus on movement excluding basically everything else short of a mental break then yes, that is a small issue.

Firstly dkmoo, I'd like to thank you for your write-up. You understand exactly what the issue is, which is great, but as a game designer I don't agree with your conclusion.

However for RW and many other games in between, a true solution to this "ultimate flaw" simply does not exist. The best that these games can do is to balance other aspects of the game to create the best game-playing experience.

That's why it's called the Ultimate Flaw. There is no "true" or "simple" solution to the problem. We're not using the word lightly, it's a flaw built right into the heart of the nature of the game. One that requires extremely carefully balanced design to compensate for.

The basis of what you say is correct, it cannot be truly reconciled without time phases (Games with a build phase and a combat phase, but this isn't that type of game either). However, it can be balanced to feel right and to be strategically interesting.

Even slowing down production by 4x and increase movement speed by 4x like the OP suggests truly only migitate  the issue by roughly 25% (1:16 vs 1:60). This brings us to the following point: as long as the in-game movement to production ratio do not approach the RL ratio, there will always be a point in which "reducing movement cost design or lose" becomes a limitation.

Right, but 1:16 is a hell of a lot better than 1:60. Plus, now all we need to do is make the bonuses for having a really nice room, with tool kits and various other items in it, that doesn't have things in it that should not be there, be approximately 8% of total productivity for it to be worth making an interesting room. Over a movement minimized one.

Though you will always get gains from minimizing movement, the bonus of doing that should not be so all consuming like it is in Rimworld. Pawns can waste 70%+ of the day just walking around doing nothing productive, if you aren't power gaming your designs. Which means organic building of bases to be somewhat like a real-life design is strategically awful. Which shouldn't be the case.

The balance isn't right and leeway in having a movement inefficient base design is too little and too punishing.

I disagree with your premise that Rimworld has got the balance right, let alone "masterfully". Movement is the primary consideration of everything you make and it really shouldn't be.

Sorry, but I really don't see the movement time as a problem.

It takes approximately 30 real time seconds to move 10 tiles (approximate 10-15m?) into cover and fire a single round from a rifle.

In real time, this feels totally fine.

But in game time, nearly an entire HOUR of the day will have passed.

And you don't think that's a problem? In that same amount of time, a pawn positioned at a workbench for 30 seconds could have prepared 3-5 meals. Which, for an hour of in game time, seems not to be unreasonable.

The in game time cost of movement is absurd and this is an issue that has absolutely plagued games of this type since games of this type crawled out of the brains of nerds and manifested themselves as code and passion.

This is why it's the Ultimate Flaw. The issue is in the seminal DNA of this type of game and how serious it is for a particular game directly relates to how enjoyable it tends to be.

15 years later, people are still playing Sim City 4 because it does not have this problem and thus solving the in game problems always requires a unique and diverse approach.

Not true of literally all of the other games I've listed and many more. A focus on moving pawns from A to B needs to not be the all consuming primary consideration of the game, if it is to reach for more strategic dimension than a Mobius strip.