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I'm wondering if these mods would be possible to create:

1) No Through/Access Only zones

Colonists wouldn't enter these zoned areas unless they had a job that gave them a reason to be there. It would stop a colonist, for example, from walking through a freezer to get somewhere rather than using the nice corridor next to it.

2) Animal refuge area

A way of sending all animals to a safe refuge area with one click when the base is under attack, rather than having to change the current allowed zone for every animal individually.

3) Universal colony cap

So that founding new bases does not increase the overall population cap, instead of the current system whereby building a new base will increase colony size by 20. This can currently be done manually every time one founds a new colony by adjusting the "populationIntentFactorFromPopCurve" values in the Storytellers.xml, but this is not ideal.

Nice layout for product movement. However I would recommend also optimizing for labor efficiency which in my experience has as good if not greater benefits. It would depend on how many pawns and what jobs you've assigned them tho.

Could you expand on this?

1) butcher table should not be in the same room as kitchen - the blood will make floor very dirty, which in turn will cause a higher chance of food poisoning from the meals prepared in the kitchen

Good point - the kitchen can get very dirty, making the cooks unhappy. So a separate butchering room would be preferable, even just as a 3x3 sub-room of the kitchen.

2) you can combine dining and rec room. that way your pawns will also enjoy the beauty buff while eating

Yeah, they can be combined, and that would probably be more efficient, but I like to keep dining room and rec room separate.

3) dining location do not need to be close to kitchen. This gives you more flexibility with base design. All you need is a small (1x2, or 2x2) room chilled below 0C to use as a walk in fridge, and store food there. Haulers can restock this storage from meals cooked elsewhere.

Might one get an issue where a pawn will take a meal from the separate meal storage area, and then a hauler pawn will finish their job elsewhere and then go to the kitchen and take a single meal to replenish the other meal storage area's stock? If so, that would be inefficient.

I prefer a single meal-collecting area in the kitchen, near the colonists' bedrooms, so they get up in the morning, get a meal to eat in the adjacent dining room and take a meal with them to eat elsewhere during the day.

It could be beneficial to have extra tables and chairs as eating areas around the base, perhaps with some beautification for colonists to enjoy while they're eating, and thereby having them avoid the "ate without table" penalty.

4) hospitals also do not need to be close to kitchen - follow same set up as 3). Often times your doctor will grab food to feed your patients from whereever he/she was closest at the time "doctoring duty" kicks in, so you may not even need a food storage in your hospital

your hospital should be closest to your primary defense perimeter/setup

I can see the logic of placing a hospital close to where a colonist is most likely to be injured. However, I prefer to have the hospital in the heart of the base in the safest area. If one suffers a major attack in which many colonists are injured and the attackers have breached the base, then the hospital becomes the last place of defence, while one tries to heal wounded colonists so they can hopefully get on their feet again and continue fighting. This is another reason for having the hospital to the close to the kitchen/food area as these are the base's most vital areas when it's under severe threat.

5) I don't see any "defense" system chart

Other security/defense not pictured. I'm not sure there's much of a system to make for them for the chart. Power switches are good for turning off improvised turrets when they aren't being used.

6) Critical systems - like power generation, should not be concentrated in one area. otherwise, one unlucky pod-drop raid or mortar shell will obliterate your entire base.

Yeah, I agree that power should be spread around the base. I just put them together as a group - areas without connecting lines in the chart are more flexible in their location.

7) i would assume all your "production for trading" systems would be close to your orbital beacon locations.

Yeah, orbital beacons can be placed in any storage area containing things one wants to sell, and storage areas can be combined for efficiency, thereby using less orbital beacons.

Tailor stations - i wouldnt put it close to butcher spot b/c i rarely make anything with leather - most of the time your apparels would be made out of devilstrand (near farm) or wool (near grazing area)

Advanced fabrics are somewhat of a luxury item, in that there are other more essential things that need to be grown, such as food and herbal medicine. So one is likely going to need to use furs and leathers for clothes, at least at the start of the game, and on higher difficulties, perhaps for much longer. Also, it's good for lower-level tailor pawns to gain experience by making clothes with less precious materials, and excess clothes can be sold for profit.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but population cap is calculated per colony rather than overall, so founding a small resource-gathering outpost in another planet tile could lead to a doubling of one's overall population.

Are there any mods that change this so that the population cap does not increase with founding new colonies?

I've been creating a systems chart as a guide to creating an efficient base. Here's what I have so far - anything missing?

Lines represent linked areas that one will want to minimize the distance between in order to maximize efficiency.

My last game, in which I used Randy, seemed a lot easier than the game before, in which I used Cassandra. Both games, I used the Rough difficulty level. I'm not sure how much of it was to do with me just getting better at the game.

Anyone else have any thoughts?

The complete lack of AI coding to prevent colonists from automatically shooting each other in this game is a contentious issue. Many are fine with the ludicrously unrealistic and brutal non sequitur friendly fire incidents this can lead to, but others think it's really quite silly and spoils the game.

There are now mods that fix this issue, by having colonists hold fire instead of automatically shooting their fellow colonists in such situations. These mods have also shown that such a layer of coding does not negatively impact on game performance, or on anything else noticeable. So it has now been demonstrated that the lack of any AI coding in this area is not a technical issue, but rather a conscious design decision, perhaps so as not to remove "drama" events from the game, even if they are negative and make no sense.

The subject of friendly fire in this game has been brought up many times, and so I won't retread old ground about how nonsensical and inconsistent it is that colonists will do literally many dozens of actions automatically (eat, sleep, flee from things, view art, fight fires, watch TV, cook meals, research etc), but not have the basic "intelligence" to hold fire when another colonist is located between them and their target - they will open fire 100% of the time, without exception, as if the friendly colonist or colonists in their line of fire did not exist.

While I'm very much in the "lack of friendly prevention fire is dumb" camp, I also believe in looking for solutions that attempt to navigate a middle path, in order to find something that is acceptable to both sides of a debate.

Why not reflect players' diversity of opinion on the subject of friendly fire in the game itself?

A middle path solution would be to combine both approaches - just as some players of this game are fine with their colonists firing away without a care in the world or a thought in their head, there are others that think colonists should show a bit of common sense with the guns, just as most real people would do, and indeed how colonists themselves do most of the rest of the time in the game.

This could be reflected in the game by having colonists use an anti-friendly fire system, similar to the mods that have already been created, but have those with the Psychopath or Trigger-Happy traits ignore it.

There seems to be a lot of benefits to pawns having the Psychopath trait, without many drawbacks.

Similarly, in the real world, "trigger-happy" has a negative connotation, meaning that someone is liable to discharge their weapon at inappropriate times, thus possibly putting others in danger. In Rimworld, however, the Trigger-Happy trait is only a positive trait, as the aiming time bonus exceeds the accuracy penalty.

To conclude, a combined system such as described would:

- remove most of the possibility of mindlessly silly incidences of colonists shooting each other for no reason
- still have friendly fire "drama" incidents, but they will now at least make more sense because the shooter was a Psychopath or Trigger-Happy*
- bring a strategic layer of managing your Psychopaths and Trigger-Happys in battle without them shooting other colonists
- satisfy proponents of both sides of this debate
- reflect the Rimworld  playing community and their diversity of thought

* Note that the mods that address the friendly fire issue do not eliminate all possibility of friendly fire incidents from the game, so, even if using anti-Friendly Fire measures, it would still be possible for freak accidents to occur and for a non-Psychopath or Trigger-Happy colonist to accidentally shoot another.

What about a middle path, in which colonists use something like the Avoid Friendly Fire mod, but pawns with the Psychopath or Trigger-Happy traits ignore it? That should remove most of the really dumb and game-spoiling friendly fire incidents, yet still provide potential "drama" events of colonists shooting each other, which some people seem to enjoy (and not that the Avoid Friendly Fire mod removes the possibility of these events), plus an increased strategic layer of utilizing such units pawns in battle without accruing collateral damage.

This issue has a diversity of opinion - why not represent that diversity in the game? Combining both points of view in the game means that everybody's opinion is being represented.

There's a bit of transparency at the back of the Dresser graphic, so you can see the floor through it.

There already is different music specifically for battles.

It was a bit odd in my previous game. I had a couple of resource-gathering colonies consisting of nothing more than a hut and with no permanent residents. These colonies would still get raids when there was no-one there. So I'd be on my main base map, which would be peaceful but with the battle music playing as one of the empty huts was getting attacked on another map. I think I had a vice versa also - raid on my main base, yet non-battle music playing.

I agree. Which, of course is why i made the mods you can see linked in my sig. One to make them 2 blocks each, and the other mod to make them three each.

Which cost do you think is better?

It makes sense that uncut flagstone should cost less resources, since cutting stone to a specific size for the purpose of making tiles inevitably means wasting some stone.

There is a mod out called PathAvoid and it let's you designate specific weighted values onto whatever cells you want to encourage pawns to take certain paths. I keep reading about how pathfinding all around is always an issue that can be worked on and improved upon, and it is also can be one of the biggest resource consumers especially for a lot of things going longs distances on dynamic maps with lots of stuff constantly changing that they are constantly having the recalculate huge operations and can slow down performance significantly. That's why there is never any full working 100% solution that everyone is satisfied with. There are really dozens and dozens of different algorithms that you can apply for different types of pathfinding, all of them with different pros and cons. You have some that might be really snappy but give you some bullshit sometimes where a pawn won't even walk in a straight line over say a 40-60 clear path point to point movement. Some people would prefer to do a very solid but processor intensive operation that doesn't have as many weird paths but this will affect performance so much that people with lower end systems will be screwed once they even get a mid size colony going. You have to draw the line somewhere, and try to please as many people as possible with what you have to work with.

Thanks, I'll have a look at the mod.

Would the "no through" zone I suggested work much differently or be more taxing than the current Allowed Area zoning function, though? I think it would work the same, but with the addition of a bit of pre-logic relating to what action the colonist was about to take, and whether that action would allow it access to the zone.

What could be done is to be able to zone areas with a high virtual-pathfinding cost so that pawns wouldn't travel through such places unless it really was the much faster route.

I'm not sure that would work every time. Take the freezer - if a colonist was on the opposite side of the freezer to the kitchen and wanted to grab a meal, it might technically be slightly quicker for them to walk through the freezer, although a player might prefer that they take the slightly longer route along the nice corridor, rather than unnecessarily opening the door to the freezer, and walking through a cold place full of ugly things.

There are many times that colonists will walk through areas where one doesn't want them to walk, such as walking through a freezer to get somewhere instead of using a corridor. I think the game would benefit from the introduction of a new zoning type, called something like a "no through" or "access only" zone. Colonists would not walk through these areas on their day-to-day business unless they had a job or some other reason that involved them being there. If drafted, a colonist would ignore these restrictions. Certain jobs, like firefighting duty, might also ignore them.

Here are some areas that it would be helpful to have such a zone for:

1) Freezers

Typically one will want at least two entrances to a freezer - one to to the kitchen and another towards wherever people will be bringing harvested crops and dead animals from. This means, though, that colonists will sometimes walk through the freezer instead of through an adjacent corridor to get some place, or to visit the kitchen to pick up a meal.

2) Storage rooms

Storage rooms are full of ugly stuff which is slow to walk through. Often these rooms can have multiple doors for easy access from any direction. This means that colonists will often walk through such rooms instead of walking in the adjacent stone tile corridors.

3) Bedrooms

Viewing sculptures and sitting at a table to eat would not be counted as activities that allowed access, so colonists would not, with access-only zones, be able to go into other colonists' bedrooms to view their sculptures/eat at their tables. They should be able to do so in their own designated bedrooms, though. An activity like cleaning, on the other hand, would be a reason for being there, and therefore allow the cleaner to have access to the room.

4) Prisoner rooms

For a similar reason to bedrooms - so colonists don't go in there to eat at tables or view art.

5) Bunkers

Sometimes colonists will walk through defensive bunkers rather than, for example, a base entrance. In the early part of my previous game, I built a 5x5 bunker with doors and sandbags in the outdoors between a couple of buildings a few dozen tiles apart. Instead of walking around the bunker through open space, the colonists would walk through it, climbing over sandbags and through two sets of doors to do so.

6) Corpse-dumping and other ugly areas

You'd want colonists hauling bodies to be able to go to such places, but if a colonist didn't need to be there, it would be better if they took an alternate route to their wherever their destination was.

7) Any time colonists take unrealistic routes

Pretty much any room type can feasibly have situations where colonists will walk through them, using them as thoroughfares, instead of using adjacent corridors, particularly when then these rooms have multiple entrances.

What are the thoughts of other Rimworlders? Can you think of any other areas where such a zone type might be useful? Would there be any potential drawbacks or unintended consequences?

Okay, I checked these things with the Dev tools - flagstone is much better than wood for wealth, but less than tile, and it does indeed burn!

Stone tile and flagstone both cost four stone to build. Flagstone is quicker to build, with a work to build value of 9, while tile takes longer, with a value of 19.

Flagstone produces no beauty, however, while tile has a beauty value of 1 per tile. So stone flagstone floor provides the same beauty as wood floor, yet wood floor has a time to build of only 2, and in most biomes, it is probably easier to get a steady supply of wood than stone blocks, which also need to be cut to size at the stonecutter's table. Wood floor costs three wood to build. Although it says that wood floor is flammable, I have not seen this happen.

So, do people think this is currently well-balanced? I think that perhaps flagstone, at least, might have its cost reduced from 4 to 3.