Messages

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?

When I hear "bad luck outcomes" I interpret that as you saying a scripted event that will bring about a challenge or negative result to the colony. If I am interpreting that correctly then this reminds me of the Crisis events in Stellaris. A scripted yet randomly (confined to late game) determined event that radically changes the games course. I personally would enjoy such an event in rimworld BUT think it should be a selected parameter during the map setup. On the other side I feel like there is no need to make universal standard where nothing bad happens. It is my opinion that a sandbox mode or Chillax setting should be adequate. Perhaps adding the option to remove certain types of threats (e.g. disease, raids, blight) could be a method to find middle ground.

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 interpreted a story generator as if it were a skill test?

[Not a game designer or businessman]!! but a product that is perfect for everyone is impossible. So any product will inevitably have to be tuned to a particular population. So it is my opinion that as the game dev you should seek to make RW the best that it can be, following first your own desire for the game while continually considering the many fans that have come to love RW. Some players may never be satisfied (like those who desperately want z-level construction of which I was one for a long time) so there are players voices who you can consider outliers of your normal fan base and dismissible. Now how you balance the artistic pursuit of making RW how you envision it or maximizing its profitability is not my place to advise you.

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

This is a difficult question to answer because it is hard for me to remove my bias against what I like about RW when trying to consider what other fans may enjoy. For example, the many excellent and beautifully designed colonies that you share on twitter or are posted on Reddit are well beyond my skills in RW and not what I enjoy creating.
At high difficulty I want to sweat when a raid comes and be at the edge of my seat trying to hold back the overwhelming forces but I never enjoy losing pawns to events like disease or mental breaks. Those are a necessary part of the game. I would enjoy being able to (within most circumstances) avoid loss for events like disease or mental breaks. However, if a raid puts me in a position where I cannot avoid loss during a disease outbreak or mental strain then I would be content with the loss. A fine tuned position where a loss is (nearly) guaranteed at some points but reasonable to handle on its own is where I would like RW to be. When it comes to play difficulty I would suggest adjusting that gap, according to difficulty chosen, (i.e chillax has very small chance of loss to insane where you expect a loss)  between almost guaranteed loss and just a stressful but manageable threat would be ideal for me.

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?

I feel my response to #2 & #3 should lead you to expect that for me the description given already should lead people to anticipate randomness and look forward to dealing with the challenge or blessing. Since I don't find my expectations unmet by the descriptions I don't think my feedback is as useful.
I feel that it is part of the RW lore as the story of your colony unfolds sometimes things just go wrong and I enjoy that but for those players who are wanting preserve their year 7 colony I think they also should be able to negate RNG as much as they deem necessary. Hopefully that is possible and not just a bunch of theory crafting.

[Murderous Rage]

You make a good point about the triggers. I guess the simplest solution would be to just exempt raiding pawn relationships from being a trigger. It doesn't fit thematically since the raiding pawn is there to kill and pillage your colony so the colonist's relationship must be strained to begin with. 

Friendly fire is not as simple as you pointed out and I can see being handled many different ways but I don't know what would be best. I agree it could also be exempted as a potential trigger. Perhaps it could be replaced with a targeted Murderous Rage break against the responsible pawn?

Pawns with guns would need a lot more attention to make this mental break work well and not just kill off another pawn. I could see this coding issue taking this mental break from a cheap idea to a more complicated suggestion.
My "easy" answer would be to give the Revenge pawn near perfect accuracy and target the nearest enemy pawn within range or move closer to the nearest raider via the safest path available.

They would slowly move closer to the target raider until they were downed or the raider was no longer an option (either flees or dies). They could receive a mood boost for every raider killed during this break but a large boost if they get to take revenge. Failure to do so would result in a mood debuf but end the mental break.

I am beginning to see that this idea can quickly expand beyond a cheap idea with all the contingencies possible. 

[Murderous Rage]

A cheap idea that I beleive would add some interesting stories in Rimworld while utilizing game mechanics already in play would be to have a situational mental break similar to Murderous Rage

Murderous Rage
A colonist becomes maddened, and will attack a randomly chosen colonist or prisoner with melee until they are dead.

Introducing a Revenge mental break that would occur to a pawn during combat. Revenge would be a mental break that would occur to a pawn, at risk of mental breaks, when another pawn in the colony, whom they have a strong connection with (e.g. spouse, brother, lover), is killed by an enemy raider. The Revenge mental break would cause the pawn to seek out to kill the enemy pawn who had just killed the colonist. They would do so without regards to their own safety and be uncontrollable to the player. A melee geared pawn might just charge straight towards the enemy without any concern for cover. A pawn with a ranged weapon might move closer to a more optimal range and with increased accuracy and fire rate attempt to kill the enemy pawn without regarding the need for cover.
Increasing their combat stats during the break would make them a bigger threat to the targeted enemy pawn while also presenting the opportunity for the player to lose another pawn. However, with the stats of the mentally broken pawn increased it could also turn the tide of the battle and scare off the raiders.

We see this situation played out in movies all the time where the sudden death of a character caused the underdog to rise to the occasion and defeat the enemy (or die trying)....

Let's start with the "slow-to-learn" skills. Descending.
1)Melee - have to agree with SilencerRolf on this one. Even if melee was a good skill, to begin with(compared to shooting, obviously) it would be still to bothersome to learn.
2)Social
3)Medicine
All these skills have one thing in common, - a lack of a good source of constant training, compared to mining for example. Shooting also falls into this category, but colonists even with 0 shooting are useful enough, not to mind the speed of leveling. If I may make a suggestion, that would be allowing pawns to somehow train these skills.

Notable skill is Cooking. It is just very slow to level compared to the likes of construction.

On the easier side of things is:
1)Researching - the fastest, as long as you can dedicate somebody to slave behind a research bench 24/15
2)Mining - if you have a mountain, that is.
3)Construction, Artistic, Crafting
4)Growing - is a bit slower than the others, unless you specifically plant all the growing zones in the world. That said, I don't think it's unbalanced or too slow. Just slower than the other ones.
5)Animals skill is... fine? But you probably want to play a dedicated husbandry game. Otherwise, animals are something I usually don't bother with.

I agree with what most people have said on this forum post. I in general agree with this list in particular except that in my experience social is not too difficult to overcome since I often take prisoners. I would add that at certain levels the skill point loss/gain ratio becomes near impossible to overcome. This usually means my level 20 master skills usually fall down to 19 during the night.  I am not against certain skills being harder to learn and master than others. This gives value more to an expert melee pawn compared to an expert miner for example. The skills of a doctor and of a cook should not level the same IMO since the value of the skills and "product" differ greatly.

1. Are animals useful in combat? Do you use them? If so, why?  If not, why not?

I generally don't use animals because they are too easily killed and the mood debuf and training time usually doesn't make it favorable. I only use animals heavily in combat if I specifically aim to play a game that way.

2. Are there annoying/weird points about animals in combat?

Not being able to control the animals makes them a gamble. When they work it's great but when they don't I usually end of killing them with friendly fire. They also never stay behind cover so they usually just wander into the enemy fire before I can even release them properly.

3. How are you using animals in combat?

I like to pair animals with my hunters to give a buffer for when animals decide to attack or the whole herd becomes man hunters. I find that usually my hunter can handle themselves but several times having one or two assigned animals has made the difference.

Whenever a new Alpha is released I typically play vanilla RimWorld for quite a while until my favorite mods have been updated. With that in mind I would prefer a delay in Alpha 17 until new content can be added. The jump from one Alpha  to another is always great due to the great additions added to the game. It is always exciting to receive that email saying RimWorld has been updated. You get to go and see what has been changed/improved and the new aspects to the game. I never feel that excited when I get that email saying to download the alpha b or c update which fixes major bugs.

While I am sure the work Tynan has put in will make the game run far better if added right now waiting a bit longer seems well worth it.

I feel that blood and vomit among other pollutants that dirty our colonies should be washed away by rain or snow. Maybe not entirely but I feel that it become silly when blood from battles long ago don't seem to ever leave.

+1

I think it would be a great addition as a way to show the colony as more of a community. Parties and weddings are a fun addition so Funerals should be a obvious next step. Colonist will already mourn their lost colonist members so why not add a ceremony to give them some conclusion.

I would love to see an addition where I can put my prisoners to work. It would be nice to get some use out of them besides just having them as a liability and constant drain on my resources.

Animal Troughs so you can organize food for them without them eating your cooked meals or growing crops!

Bullet casings as a ground litter graphic, it would add a nice visual to combat.

I definitely agree that some new aspects need to be added to the combat. Once you are moderately established raids begin to loose their difficulty. Especially when using the CR mod.

I would love to see combined raids or sustained raids as this thread mentions.

Perhaps just have an effect added to the game where colonists melee attacking a berserk colonist will not inflict lethal wounds? Or perhaps inflict them at a lower rate. It wouldn't have to even be something we as a user control. Just the fact that they are apart of your faction could trigger a less lethal response. If your friend is loosing his mind your response is not going to be kill him, at least not at first. So a colonist would naturally try to neutralize their friend in a less harmful way.

This would require some tweeking on many levels. Not exactly sure how it would be done though....

These are some good ideas and like Boston said Combat realism has many of these.

Unfortunately the main modder for Combat realism recently retired from modding rimworld but someone else has decided to pick it up.

I personally think it should also become part of the main game or at least a mode option in the game.

Tynan continues to change the combat slightly and adds new aspects to it but I feel that Combat realism is a great expansion to it.

The only drawback I find with Combat realism is that it shifts the balance of power over towards you, the colony, in many ways. This is due to the fact that since bullets are so much deadlier, raiders are now forced to cross basically open terrain to get to you. This gives you the opportunity to set up fixed defenses and devastate them at range.

Trust me though, raids can be deadly and very challenging; but once you become settled and more or less established the raids begin to loose their power. This is especially true with Tribal raids.

I feel it would greatly benefit the mod and the game if Tynan or the mod developer would work on the raid algorithms and work out a way to give raids more power, particularly late game.

Add bullet casings as a left over graphic on the ground after a fight. It could be cleaned up just like vomit, blood, dirt, ect.
It would add a cool effect to demonstrate the fierceness of the fight and just add a bit more realism to the combat.

Zombies should be aware of their surroundings and know when it's time to attack. This mechanic would help with that. Also, if you were to implement the "Zombie presence" above explained, it would help trigger massive attacks that would replace the current "Raids".

I like all your ideas but perhaps having decoys to attract zombies and traps for them to get stuck on would aid in creating a well rounded experience. Adding the spontaneity you suggested would create a more believable world and I think it would be a great addition.