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You said two of the colonists aren't eating. Are the others?

A common cause of this problem, that might not be obvious, is the "prison food" problem.

The game assumes that any paste dispenser that is in a prison cell is only for the use of prisoners. However, "in a prison cell" is pretty loose- it counts if there is ANY free path from a prison bed (or sleeping spot) to the dispenser that doesn't go through a door. Have you just removed a door, or have your miners caused a break in a cell wall (Maybe at a corner?)? If you don't have any prisoners now, perhaps try setting all beds and sleeping spots to be for Colonist use.

Another alternative is something that happened to me- I accidentally walled some colonists into a closed area. I wanted the base entrance to be hidden behind a cactus, not realising that Saguro catcuses block movement. That's probably not the case here, since you said they can walk right up to the dispenser and ignore it, but something to be aware of.

Given how rough you might expect a pre-alpha to be, I think the game does a reasonable job of giving guidance. I would say the steps are:

1) Pay attention to what's in the top-right! These are situations that need to be addressed immediately.
2) If there's nothing too pressing, check your colonist's Thoughts. That will suggest new things to do- individual bedrooms, more space, interior decorating.
3) At this stage, the game is still small enough to just read every entry in the Architect menu.

Speaking personally, I normally play on Phoebe so my priorities are growing areas and comfortable surroundings.

The very first thing I do is also one thing that is less obvious: open up the Overview menu and set your priorities. It's the old Competitive Advantage thing- if you have one Deep Space Miner and one Medieval Oaf, they should both be doing what they're best at rather than have both mine a rockface and then both go to work in the fields.

One of the stated aims for Rimworld is keeping the number of colonists small enough that we can keep track of their individual identities. Could this be helped by having the ability for them give advice to the player?

I know human traits have been discussed a lot ( Human Reactions and Values being excellent examples), so in starting this thread I’m trying to think more about how it could fit in terms of game design.

1. Tutorial tips

The easiest way to do this from what we have now would just be to put the existing tool tips in the mouths of colonists- rather than game telling me I need to build defences, what if the Commissar expressed concern? Rather than “Low food”, what if the Oaf remarks that crops are ripe, but he needs more hands to bring the harvest in?

If there’s a permanent place to get these (maybe in the Thoughts screen), it could also give information that is below the level of needing an actual alert- perhaps “If we recruit any more people, we’re going to need more crops” or “Those blasting charges we researched could be used as landmines”.

2. Dilemma decisions

The classic example; your Con Artist/Warden wants to recruit a prisoner with kind words, while the Miner who took a wound in the raid at least wants a revenge beating, and the Solider considers the prisoner a waste of food and doesn’t see why they aren’t executed immediately.

This kind of thing worked extremely well in King of Dragon Pass; then again, that game was like FTL in that it was turn-based and you couldn’t proceed without making one of a small number of concrete decisions. I’m not sure how well it would work in a more open real-time game like Rimworld. In terms of player experience it’s less relevant for character X to talk about the prisoner when you’re busy thinking about starvation. It’s also a lot easier to have a database of opinions about a scripted event that the developer wrote than it is to respond intelligently to captured raider X, who injured Y and Z, has skills A and B but character traits C and D.”

3. Interpersonal

“I agree with %Pawn_HighSocial_Friend”.
“If %rival is for it, I’m against it.”

4. Mechanical impacts

A way to give this kind of thing more weight could be with happiness modifiers: “The colony agreed to follow my advice”. This could eventually mean a benevolent pawn fleeing a tyrannical colony or vice versa.

So, what do you think? What see could Colonist Advice be useful for? Where would it fit in the game? Would this kind of thing help give a better idea of the colonists, or would it conflict with role-play?

I don't have enough programming nous to know how cheap this is, but I think it might be a good ratio of effort to interest:

Happiness modifier for a pawn engaged in work they're very skilled at, or unhappiness if they're trying to do something they're clueless at.

This would be a reward for getting a good priority schedule set up, with the miner always mining and the oaf always farming.

A problem I can see with it is that early in the game, you need everyone doing whatever is most urgent. That could be fixed if the modifier was based less on the current task and more on whether they'd want to swap with another pawn. Then again, that starts getting a lot more work to program.

Some genuine cheap ideas:

More plants: Walnut tree, figs- slower growing cycle but gives more food per drop.
Beehive: Can be harvested for honey (gives food, inflicts random small hit-point loss).

I've noticed the same thing. I think Merry may have hit the nail on the head- although the graphic is the same as for dirt (specifically, sand in my case), it can't be prioritised with a right-click and doesn't seem to make colonists unhappy. I get it on metal tile as well as carpet. It seems to happen most in high-traffic areas and around plants and lamps in rooms that are on the edge of the base, so maybe it's the ghost of dirt previously cleaned. Reloading a save doesn't always remove it, though I seem to have slightly more luck when loading an Autosave rather than a custom save (perhaps it's just about waiting for the periodic memory cleanups).

If you're seeing genuine dirt, it could be a task assignment problem. When your populations starts getting large, you sometimes have an idle colonist wandering around town ignoring a task right next to them, because it's been assigned to another person who has just finished mining 200 tiles over on the other side of the map.

Do the disconnected cells of 5 ever have short-circuits, or does that only happen if there's a change in charge?

In reality I think disconnected batteries would discharge over time, but I guess that doesn't happen here.

My thought process:

• This is fantastic!
• Oh, I died again.
• That guy seems decidedly enigmatic.
• Damnit, died again.
• This really is very good.
• Is this click-spamming helping or hurting?
• DAMNIT

Maybe I'll end up doing what I did on Thomas Was Alone; play the second half by shouting the puzzle solutions at a YouTube video.

In the Let's Play videos I've seen, people always seem to build huge battery chambers. That got me to wondering how much storage is actually needed.

I put together some sums based on building descriptions. I haven't managed to test these in-game yet, so I'd be interested to hear if anyone else has.
(For those of you who are as much of a dork as I am:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0At-nwHqB-9gNdG4zVUJMNldHc3ZOWFdSRldiVTdGYWc&usp=sharing)

Based on hitting pause halfway through each hour, it looks like solar panels produce 1700 Watts between about 07:00 and 16:00, nothing between 20:00 and 03:00, and change in a roughly linear way in the morning and evening. (Perhaps someone with a knack for code, or inside knowledge, can tell us if the transition is actually quadratic or sinusoidal or something).

That gives solar panels an average output of 1000 W over the 24 hour cycle.

Batteries have a 50% efficiency; in 24 hours, one panel will charge up a battery by 467.6 Watt-days (OK, I tested some things in-game). That fits with a roughly 1000W average power.

If some of that power is being used directly, rather than inefficiently stored, I reckon a single solar panel can support something like 750 Watts of demand. At some point I'd like to try hooking up a panel-battery-sunlamp (800 Watts) and seeing if it slowly charges or suffers blackouts in the wee hours.

And if you're thinking it, because I did, no; You can't light up a solar panel with a sunlamp and build an over-unity loop. Solar panels don't seem to register artificial light at all (granted, there is no reason for them to do so in-game, other than exploits).

The point of all this is that, by my calculations, the rule of thumb should be that for every four solar panels you only need one battery to give a continuous supply.

The reason to have a whole hallway full of batteries is for the eclipse (or unforseen accidents taking out the panels, I suppose). Does anyone know how long the eclipse lasts? Is it always the same?

By my numbers, a base that is just getting by on X solar panels will go through X fully-charged batteries a day (or one battery every five days, if they go dark on everything except the paste dispenser).

So, what's your preferred approach? The more the merrier? Are occasional blackouts and micro-managing your standing lamps worth it to avoid the Short Circuit event?

Hello, everyone.

-What introduced you to RimWorld? Or to this style of game in general?
A friend shared the Kickstarter link on Facebook.
-What's your favorite other game(s)?
In recent times; FTL, Super Hot and the TellTale Walking Dead game. Fond memories, Civilisation II and Knights of the Old Republic.
-Most embarrassing gaming-related story?
Games I have given up on because I was too embarrassingly bad at them include Bastion and Lego Indiana Jones for the Wii.
-What kind of breakfast cereal is the best?
I mostly eat bran flakes or porridge, because I am apparently far too sober for my own good.