Messages

Some bugs and suggestions:

Beaverwolf Castoreum nutrition is currently set to 0.5 , i.e. 10x the nutrition value of vanilla vegetables (0.05), while having the same market value. I assume this was a typo, as it's described as "a food additive and natural flavour", so it being 10x as nutritious as other foods sounds weird, and makes it 10x as good to buy from traders as any other food.

The Hibernation Module restRateMultiplier is -0.5 , which does the opposite of what it claims in the description ("reduce the need for sleep"), i.e. it actually makes pawns regain rest slower. If you compare it with Core/.../Traits_Singular.xml , Quick Sleeper has a multiplier of +0.50 , which is what I assume was intended.

The Consciousness modifiers on the Hibernation Module and Neuron Reinforcement are extremely powerful, and may not have been intended as such. Consider that Consciousness above 100% directly translates into increases in Manipulation and Movement among other things. So a +20% Consciousness from the Hibernation Module is comparable to having a Bionic left arm, and Bionic right arm, and a Bionic left leg, and a Bionic right leg, and a Bionic Jaw at the same time and more, which is beyond incredibly good.

If the Hibernation Module is made to reduce the need for sleep, it is already a very strong and desirable effect, and so an increase in consciousness seems unwarranted imo. (An implant that makes the pawns sleep longer but provides a small increase in consciousness would be an interesting tradeoff, but based on the description I assume this was not the original intent of the Hibernation Module)

Similarly, the Neuron Reinforcement module is already great (faster learning and faster researching multiplier that stacks with other multipliers), so it providing an additional consciousness bonus seems just far too good. Even without the consciousness bonus it is very desirable.

I would suggest increasing some of the workAmount and WorkToBuild values - it feels weird that e.g. combining the genes of a bear and a muffalo is less work than building a wooden door! It feels less "satisfying" to accomplish some great genetic engineering if it can be done in seconds. With something like a 4-8x increase it would feel more like the pawns are working on a great and difficult task.

Similarly, I would recommend increasing hatcherDaystoHatch , which is currently 1 for everything. The incubator may be a high-tech piece of equipment, and it makes sense that it would speed up animal development to some extent. However, an animal still needs a certain amount of energy to grow and hatch, and if that amount of energy is delivered in a very short span of time, it would be like instead of cooking dinner at 200 degreesC for 30 minutes, you'd try cooking at 2000 degrees for 3 minutes. Not too healthy.

(When one introduces genes from one animal into another irl, it generally takes longer for it to hatch/grow than the base animal, because homeostatic mechanisms need to deal with additional developmental issues). And from a gameplay standpoint, making an incubator one day and having something like a massive dinosaur/bear hybrid hatch from it the next day feels unsatisfyingly easy to me, while having to keep the incubator at the right temperature for e.g. 10 days would imo be a nice balance of being neither too trivial nor too hard.

Thank you for the great mod - I hope you take some of my suggestions into consideration.

A couple of small suggestions for adjusting for Survival Tools materials:

Silver is very soft irl, so it seems weird for it to have the same diggingSpeed as plasteel. I would suggest making silver no better than marble. So something like:
  digging speed: 1.00 -> 0.70
  mining yield: 1.00 -> 0.85
  construction speed: 1.00 -> 0.70

Similarly, gold is also soft, yet currently outperforms plasteel. I would making it no better than slate, e.g.:
  digging speed: 1.10 -> 0.70
  mining yield: 1.10 -> 0.90
  construction speed: 1.10 -> 0.70

And while Jade is fairly hard, it is still just a stone, so it outperforming plasteel feels weird. I would suggest making it only slightly better than granite, with something like:
  digging speed: 1.10 -> 0.80
  construction speed: 1.00 -> 0.80
  wearfactor: 1.00 -> 1.30

Balance suggestions:

In GouRIMet, I would suggest adjusting the market value of Smoked Meat from 4.0 to something like 2.5 . With the current value of 4.0, making a fine meal using Smoked Meat results in a loss of wealth of 5.5 per fine meal (5*4.0 + 5*1.1 is turned into 20.0). With an adjusted value of 2.5, the same would instead result in a slight wealth increase of 2.0, which would make more sense, while keeping Smoked Meat more valuable than normal meat.

The decreased mental break threshold is a very strong effect comparable to the desirable Optimist trait in vanilla. In Fashionrimista, the Fine Shirt currently has a -0.10 mental break threshold offset, which is almost twice as good as an optimist trait in addition to the other great effects the Fine Shirt provides. It makes sense that it would help with social and negotiation ability, but the massive effect on mental break threshold seems unwarranted.

Similarly with the Military Fatigues, I think it makes sense that it would help with shooting, but in addition to that it improves so many other things that it becomes the obvious choice without question for the vast majority of pawns. It has not only a 5% armor offset but also an incredible 0.30 StuffEffectMultiplierArmor , when the second best torso skin layer apparel only has 0.20, meaning it provides more than 50% more armor than a shirt. And in addition to that it reduces the mental break threshold by 0.05 , which is not much worse than a free optimist trait.

I would suggest keeping the shooting bonuses and the armor offset, which make sense thematically, but reducing the armor multiplier to 0.20 to bring it in line with other skin layer apparel, and removing the mental break adjustment. This would still leave the Military Fatigues very very strong, but more streamlined towards fighting instead of being a generally incredible choice that helps with pretty much everything one would want.

Balance suggestion:

Black Insect Chitin is very strong compared to how cheap and abundant it is: it's arguably better than Devilstrand (which is supposed to be a very high-quality material that is difficult to obtain), and not much worse than the luxurious Thrumbofur, while costing less than Devilstrand. This means that with Black Hive attacks providing a massive supply of Black Insect Chitin, there's almost no reason to grow Devilstrand or to buy any leather from traders that is worse than Thrumbofur.

	Sharp	Blunt	Heat	Cost
Thrumbofur	208	36	150	14.0
Black Insect Chitin	175	100	150	4.2
Devilstrand	140	36	300	5.5
Insect Chitin	112	24	150	3.0

The high blunt resistance of Black Insect Chitin makes sense and is flavorful, but imo the extremely high sharp resistance in addition to that pushes it way over the top.
So I would suggest making Black Insect Chitin be somewhere between normal Insect Chitin and Devilstrand in terms of the sharp armor it provides, which would still leave it very strong, but better balanced compared to the other available materials.

Balance suggestion:

Make the market value of fertilized eggs relate to the market value of the animal that will hatch.

I like the idea of buying fertilized eggs through trades, and the idea of selling off unneeded animals (rather than butchering them). But currently doing those two things leads to extremely easy wealth generation.

Example: a fertilized T-Rex egg costs 140, while an adult T-Rex costs 3600. A "baby" has a market price modifier of 40%. So buying 7 T-Rex eggs, and just having them hatch into babies leads to a wealth increase of 9100 with almost no effort.

This is because the market value of a fertilized T-Rex egg is currently set to less than 4% of that of an adult. So I suggest setting the market value of fertilized eggs to somewhere around 25-30% of the adult, which is still significantly cheaper than a baby (40%) but would alleviate these market issues.

[additionally]

Bug or possibly unintended effect:

Infusions grant an increase in market value to items, which is fine, but the increase in market value also seems to apply additionally to the pawns themselves who wear infused items.

Example: a tuque has a market value of 56, and a base pawn has a market value of 1750. If the tuque has an infusion that grants it +200% market value, the tuque will have a market value of 168 (ok) but the pawn wearing it will also have a market value of +200% (5250)!

And as infusion effects are multiplicative, if pawns wear multiple cheap items with legendary infusions, just the pawns themselves can easily have a market values well over 10000 each, which can massively inflate colony wealth, which in turn inflates raid strength.

I did a test of setting all the infusion market price multipliers to 1.00 (see the image). There was a small decrease in item wealth as you'd expect, but a massive drop in creature wealth, as the value of my colonists returned to more normal levels of around 1750 each.



Suggestion: ideally make the infusion effect that adjusts the market price only apply to the items, and not the pawns wearing them.