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I realize that the developers no longer actively use the "Ideas" forum as a utility for their game due to people being crappy and potentially filing stupid lawsuits.  HOWEVER, I ALSO realize that it's quite probable for a dev or two to occasionally peruse the Ideas forum just to see what's up.  Even though they can't officially take ideas from someone, the fact that someone's mentioned an idea doesn't mean that if it's implemented in the future it came directly from the player who suggested it - after Tynan posted what he did about not using this forum for that purpose anymore, said player wouldn't have any legal ground to stand on.

I enjoy playing the game as the developer intended it, and mods oftentimes add a facet to gameplay that alters that intention.  So while my suggestions can certainly be used by modders to create mods, somewhere deep down I really do hope the developers might find something useful in what I say, because I really love what they do and simply hope that I can offer something new for them to chew on in the future.  I like playing vanilla Rimworld - it's difficult, it's sometimes stupid, but modding the game to hell makes it feel...  I dunno - it can quite easily become a cakewalk, and plus with my garbage computer it can easily become unplayable.

With all that being said, I want to reiterate that I understand that the devs don't use this forum for drawing ideas anymore - not officially - it's just my hope that some nugget of what I post here sparks an idea in them that makes the game better. 

Edit:  This post will become my new repository for ideas!  Everything new I think of will be posted here in an edit, so if you like what I think of make sure to check back from time to time.  I realize that by making individual posts each time I have an idea it clutters the forum up a whole lot, so I do apologize, and I'll keep from doing that in the future!

SECOND EDIT:  All of my old posts will be added here as well, to provide a centralized reading location.

Wild animals are normally extremely skittish - to have them simply wander around some more when they're barely being missed by a hail of gunfire doesn't make much sense.

This is pretty simple as well.  It would be a simple piece of furniture, like a crafting spot or a wedding spot, that would set the location a visiting caravan would gather at when waiting at your colony.

As far as I can tell, the performance of the doomsday launcher versus a mortar-launched antigrain warhead is essentially the same.  Changing the name to "Antigrain Launcher" would give a player an easy way to determine the performance of one based off the performance of the other if they've never used the other kind before.

This one's just a personal preference.

This is a simple suggestion.  A pair of traits that either increases or decreases the amount of dirt/trash a pawn leaves behind wherever they go, in addition altering how a given pawn feels about dirty/unsightly areas.  It wouldn't impact things much with only one or two dirty pawns, but with a LOT of dirty pawns a colony would quickly become very ugly for other pawns to look at.

A clean pawn would get increased debuffs from ugly environments (which mostly equates to how much trash is on the ground), and dirty pawns wouldn't care as much.

I think that colonists playing instruments should be able to give different levels of mood boost based upon their artistic/intellectual ability.  There wouldn't be a mood debuff possible, but if someone with significant artistic or intellectual ability happens to play an instrument, it would be nice to see even larger, and even potentially lasting, mood boosts based on that.

Having someone who could pass out at any second working just as hard and just as efficiently and with the same level of quality as someone who just woke up and is fully rested makes no sense!  Low rest should result in low consciousness, which would in turn result in slow work and shoddy results.

There could be a pair of traits to increase/decrease the effects of low rest.

This mechanic would serve to realistically increase the difficulty and promote quality treatment of pawns.

I'd like to be able to make stronger vents for temperature stabilization.  It's a useful thing to have, but with only 100 hp it can sometimes make for a huge weakspot in a structure.  Making plasteel doors doesn't really feel useful when there's a weak little vent just waiting to be busted through...

A potential solution is to allow for the creation of vents out of different materials - specifically, anything but stone.

It's a pretty simple idea, but being able to make plasteel vents for example would really fix some base design flaws inherent to the game.

I think a useful item to have would be a refrigerator.  It would be a simple 1x1 piece of furniture, able to take a single stack of items.  When connected to power it would either freeze (0 degrees C) or cool (5-9 degrees C) the stack of items designated to be stored within it, additionally keeping them from deteriorating.  Freezing and cooling would draw different wattages.

Essentially, it's 1/2 a shelf that draws power and keeps things cool or frozen.

This would be useful to keep meals in areas that would otherwise have difficulty in transporting meals to, or would be difficult to install a full walk-in freezer near.

In real life it's very triumphant to finally kick a terrible habit, and I'm absolutely sure colonists in Rimworld would feel the same.  Someone who has overcome an addiction (including the withdrawals) should reasonably have quite a mood buff for quite some time.  After all, they've spent the last few months suffering in one way or another...

It would function like a Duster, but with less temperature buffs in exchange for completely removing the "wet"/"soaking wet" debuffs you get from rain.  Any colonists wearing a raincoat would never suffer a rain-related wetness debuff.

Title says it all.  It's for those of us who like our odd-numbered widths in our rooms...

ALSO, show what side of the spot people will gather on when a marriage happens!  I had them all smash up against a wall rather than in the middle of my nice fancy throne room because I had accidentally turned the spot the wrong way, and there's no indication!

One of the things I dislike in vanilla Rimworld is how colonists will use ANY object available to them within a certain radius.

For instance, if I place a table and chair in a prisoner's room with the intent of giving the prisoner somewhere to eat, my own colonists will inevitably eat in that room at some point.  Apply this to any table/chair or joy/recreation object placed in any room, and you have a recipe for long treks to a centralized enjoyment location that can easily waste working time in your colonists' days.

I think a solution would be to add a specific permission, called "Room-occupied only" for usable items (think TV's, Game-of-Ur boards, chess boards) in any given room with a bed in it.

This permission would give the player the option to allow only the colonists who own the bed in the room these usable items reside in to use those items.

Say I have a colonist named Joe.  Joe has a bedroom with a single bed in it.  I give him a table and a chair to eat at, and a TV to watch in case he's hungry or wants to have a little solo recreation time.  Setting those objects to "room-occupied only" mode would limit their usage only to Joe, who has a claimed bed in his bedroom - the same space the chair and TV are in.  Anybody else would need to find somewhere else to eat/watch TV at - perhaps even their own rooms, with a "room-occupied only" permission for themselves.

This would also apply to colonists who share a double bed, or colonists who live in a barracks together.  ANY colonist with a claimed bed within the space these usable objects are in can use the objects that are set to "room-occupied only" in that same space.  Married couples could have their own chessboard, soldiers in a barracks could have a barracks TV and a barracks dinner table - all to themselves.  No colonist would decide to go watch TV all the way across the map anymore.

And perhaps most importantly...  You could put tables in prison cells so prisoners no longer get the "ate without table" debuff, and at the same time you can keep your centralized cafeteria for all your other colonists.  No more eating at random tables, and a quick and easy way to make breakfast for a starving colonist very fast (they just hop out of bed and eat at their own table), without the weirdness of anyone barging in and eating at their table at any time throughout the day.

Anyway, that's my idea.

I just finished a mission that required me to send off 50 colonists to attack a bandit camp...  And everyone squeezed into the same old 3x2 shuttle!  It made little to no sense.

IN ADDITION, seeing that happen gave me a few ideas.

In Rimworld, we build a landing pad of at least 9x9 size, and a single type of shuttle will land on it.  It works, but...  This can be expanded upon to allow for game progression.

What if Rimworld were to have size requirements for landing pads so that on those LARGE jobs (like the aforementioned 50 colonist raid) a larger type of shuttle would land?  If you don't have a large enough pad you can't take the job you've been offered, because the shuttle can't land on the pad, and these new types of shuttles NEED a pad.  For the small jobs (max 6 colonists, for the 2x3 shuttle) you can take those even without a pad.

This also opens up the possibility for landing pad mechanisms, like an unloading dock for cargo ships.

Just an idea.

Title says it all.  Colonists with the "Kind" trait should get a mood debuff from shooting at hostiles who are currently in "fleeing" mode after being driven back during a raid/siege.  Something like "They were running away, and I just kept mowing them down..."  Maybe -5 for a few days.

An edit:  If they're drafted and shooting at enemies when the enemies begin running away, "Kind" colonists should automatically stop shooting.  They wouldn't become UNDRAFTED, they would simply disable the "Fire at Will" command.  Manually re-toggling it and forcing them to shoot at a fleeing pawn would give the debuff.

Rhino horns are pretty sought-after IRL by some very...  Uneducated populaces.  With tribal factions being present in Rimworld, it would make sense that rhino horns would exist too - yet when you butcher a rhino all you get is meat and leather.

Where's my rhino horn to sell to the tribals for insane prices so they can make "medicine" out of it?!

It would make sense if when you kept animals and bred them, that over time their offspring would become more tame (less wild).  It would be a VERY slow process, perhaps 1% per generation, but it would add another goal to the game.  I want to make a completely tame Thrumbo!

Tameness could also increase buy/sell price, too.  I'm sure that selling a 50% wild Thrumbo would net a LOT more than selling a 98% wild Thrumbo.

Someone who's only 50% conscious won't learn as much as someone who's somehow 120% conscious, right?

Basically what this suggestion amounts to is a flat cap on experience earning capabilities based on what % of consciousness a pawn is at.  The "Consciousness" multiplier would simply be based on the percent of consciousness, and it would be applied after every other multiplier.  If a pawn's at 80% consciousness, the "consciousness" multiplier would be 0.8, and that comes at the end.  Someone on luciferium (that makes someone have 110% consciousness, right?  I've never used it) should get an exp buff as a result, where someone with a joywire would always be earning 80% or lower.  This can, of course, be offset by installing a learning assistant.

This is just a logical idea I thought of earlier.

People passionate about their work in real life often find working to be cathartic and enjoyable - much like it's described in-game.  Working could be added as a non-required addition to recreation types - it wouldn't be NEEDED, and colonists not fulfilling their "work" recreation time wouldn't reduce their total recreation time or impact their happiness, but colonists who DO have "work" recreation time would enjoy it greatly and it would fill their recreation meter without increasing their tolerances for anything else.

Basically, people who love what they do can easily use it as recreation from time to time, and I think that should be represented in Rimworld.  It would reward using colonists for what their passions are, essentially giving buffs for keeping them doing what they love.

They would only have "work" recreation time if they have a BURNING passion for something, AND are ALLOWED/ASSIGNED to do those things, and that "work" recreation time would ONLY happen during recreation hours.

If a firearm or its ammunition becomes damaged, it only makes sense for there to be a chance for the firearm or its ammunition to malfunction.  I think it would provide more incentive for the player to keep their firearms in good working order if the more damaged their firearms became, the more likely it would be for the gun to misfire or suffer a catastrophic malfunction.  This includes mortars, which while not having the same method of firing, can still easily suffer malfunctions of outwardly similar effect if left in disrepair.

Examples of these malfunctions would be a "jam", or simply, "misfire".  The malfunctions would cause several different effects based mostly upon the condition of the gun but also upon an RNG system that becomes more harsh as condition decreases.

From best to worst case -

With a "dud", the firearm would apparently fire a weak/under-loaded round and either fall short of the target or do 50% reduced damage/armor penetration.

With a "jam", the shooter would suffer a delay in attacking while they clear the jammed round.

With a simple "misfire", the firearm would become additionally damaged AND the shooter would suffer a momentary delay in attacking while clearing the jammed round.

With a "catastrophic misfire", the firearm would completely explode, destroying the firearm and in addition harming the shooter.  They could suffer a wound to the eye, the jaw, the neck, the nose, or potentially even the shoulder.

These effects would come into play with mortars both in the HP of the mortar itself and the condition of the shells.  A lower HP mortar is damaged and more likely to malfunction in various ways, and the same goes for the mortar's shells - of any kind.  Malfunctions would be roughly similar to the aforementioned handheld firearm malfunctions, except the effects of a catastrophic misfire would be far, far worse...

Of course, these malfunctions would happen far less on low difficulties than they would on high difficulties, and the effects OF the malfunctions might be lessened as well.

EDIT:  Just thought of this.  Colonists with higher skills (a combination of shooting and crafting) would be able to negate these malfunctions by a percentage.  An extremely skilled colonist would probably not suffer any malfunctions at all on a highly damaged weapon.  This is because they'd be able to spot any defects/dangerous situations before they have a chance to literally blow up in their face.