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With the collapsible resource trees up the top left of the UI it seems there's three foodstuffs trees "Food" "Meals" and "Raw food"

My "Food" tree currently contains just hay, not sure if kibble also goes in there. In any case, shouldn't it be "Animal Food"?

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So we all realise that the activities in Rimworld and similar games are videogamified for the sake of balance and pacing and all that. Little dudes dig up and plant a square meter of dirt rather quickly, trees are felled into lovely useable wood etc etc.

I'm going to try tanning my own hide with a commercial tanning kit. I got interested in this kind of DIY stuff from games like Rimworld.

Today I had my first chance to skin a steer that dropped dead on my uncles farm. It took me an hour of intense work, stopping to sharpen my knife every few minutes, just to get a very rough cut of the skin from both sides of the animals belly, flank and back. I am wrecked, exhausted. Ahead of me tomorrow morning is hanging the skin over a fence post and using my knife to further cut flesh and fat off of the skin, before the process can continue. Which involve salting, more scraping, DAYS of soaking, stirring, wringing out and washing.

Really helps you appreciate just how much work goes into these things IRL. It's incredible to think of how many people experience all of these crafting processed presented simplified in video games but never get the chance to see it in reality. Even trying to look up some help for DIY things online often brings up more video game related crafting guides than DIY guides.

So next time your colonist in game completely skins and butchers a muffalo in an hour or two, try to remember that in real life it's like trying to wrestle with a dirty, stinking queen sized duvet which is covered in lard and raw steaks.

Is there an easy way to judge how much food/many meals a colony will need for the non-growing season? Been finding I'm running out by winter a lot, and have to go and hunt heaps to survive.

It would be great if a game element was introduced for these kinds of things, to be able to quantify your needs. Like how Dwarf Fortress requires a bookeeper to accurately track your supplies.

Will we see a balance pass for old wounds and infirmity? Currently it's almost guaranteed that every colonist will have some kind of impairment affecting their work and/or speed, and it's really lame. Having a permanent wound debuff because a tortise bit your finger last year just sucks. If it were a major bullet wound in the leg, that's completely understandable. But currently it seems way too easy for fit, young colonists to end up with permanent mood and mobility debuffs for minor wounds and scars. It all ties in with the wound and damage system I guess, where a bullet wound should have a great chance of leaving a life changing wound but given the common occurence of gunfights I guess it would make the game VERY difficult if it were "realistic".

On a similar note - Old age conditions. Too many, too quickly. It seems like being over 50 in the game is a certainty for mobility and work debuffs, which again just sucks and can really cripple a colony! My old man is in his sixties and is fitter than I am!

(Argh, this just gets me onto other subjects of "extremes" in this game. Having temperatures of over 50'C in a heat wave is insane. You're a typical pom Tynan, not knowing what actual warm weather should look like I literally work in the desert in Australia, anything over 32'C should be "Hot" and over 40'C "Very Hot", and trust me when I say this when it's over 44'C you are not doing ANY work without getting heat stroke quite quickly. It would be nice to see temperatures become more realistic, and even then you could have EXTREME weather events get up to 50 degrees and basically confine a colony indoors.)

So instead of having colonists walking around armed all the time, or requiring intense micromanagement all the time, I propose we have an alarm system.
When triggered by the player, all pawns will undertake certain actions. The player can assign pawns the following behaviors to be obeyed -

Combat behaviors:
Soldier (the pawns will reserve the best weapons for themselves and go and get them from racks, the player sets if they want to have melee or ranged or name the specific weapon. They will also equip any armour, or specified armour)
Militia (pawns with a lower priority for reserving weapons, will only grab armour if it is avaliable)
Medic (will attempt to recover any downed friendlies and treat them)
Noncombatant (will retreat to a preset zone specified by the player and remain there)

Then when the all clear is given, the player can disable the alarm, pawns will return their combat gear to racks or storage then life can continue.

This kind of a system would really get rid of a shedload of really annoying micro as well as having colonists work more efficiently as they're not carrying armour and weapons.

You could also set a muster point for the fighters, they would gather there and then become recruited for the player to control. Alternately they could "patrol" and auto-combat when they face the enemy.

It could be tied to a technology or building for gameplay flow, as the micro that comes with combat at the start of the game isn't too bad and can be rewarding gameplay. But later on it's a nightmare.

If the player could set multiple alarms, it could be handy for certain circumstances, ie equiping soldiers to deal with mechas, or simply having to hide indoors from an environmental disaster.

Oh and finally, let's see a means of digging tunnels underground. Even simply as a way for pawns to get from one building to another during an environmental disaster. It wouldn't be a Z-level type thing, more of an entrance way on one spot then an exit on another, or even a whole network of tunnels!

Do we know if item descriptors are going to get a pass over before the game goes 1.0? There's a LOT of creativity for the setting missing, more details that would flesh out the game world and just be downright interesting.

As an example, the description for Teak trees simply mentions how they were "used for ship building in ancient times" This description would be fine if the game were set on earth, but surely in the thousands-of-years-thousands-of-planets something more along the lines of "Used for constructing ships in the earliest days of human history, as well as on primitive worlds all through the galaxy."

Just one example how a currently sort of mundane, Earthly descriptor could be made to fit the setting and tone much better!

(I'd also love to see more detail put into the earthly crops and things, because clearly with humanity this advanced those crops are going to be gene-tailored to be quick and efficient producers for use in survival scenarios)

It would be very good to see a split between jobs that require hard labor or being outdoors vs jobs that are relatively easy and are indoors.

This could have two effects -

1) Jobs that require skill at a bench, such as sewing or cooking, could be made much easier for crippled colonists. Suddenly your colonist who suffers from old age or a terrible wound no longer shuffles around trying to haul a single load of timber over the course of a day. The player could set them for "light duties" only, meaning they would focus on housekeeping and crafting jobs, which they could achieve much better.

2) A better weather/day night cycle. Imagine, the sun sets and your pawns stop mining or logging in the pitch dark of night and instead spend a few hours indoors performing jobs in the warmth and light of your buildings, before retiring to bed.

Two aspects of the game that I think would become more immersive and offer a better balance for the various chores.

Is it just me, or are the creatures and plants in Rimworld extremely limited for a sci-fi title?

Now I'm not looking for bug eyed aliens, but there could at least be some interesting non-terrestial animals in the game. Even human made mutant creatures would be great.

The "super beavers" event made me laugh out loud, and is a great example of an interesting game event/challenge.

It would be great to see more animals that are original creations that fit the sci-fi setting better. Why not a whompa/snow monster type creature that attacks during blizzards in the snow, or a bog dwelling half catfish half crocodile monster?

Or how about a meteor crashing and bringing an all consuming fungus or mutant plant, which will grow unchecked unless the player attacks the plants. Moltov cocktails would come in handy here, giving utility to a less useful aspect of the game (fire as a weapon) or perhaps melee bladed weapons would be good for clearing the infection.

Just a thread for people to dump ideas for personality traits to give colonists an even broader diversity!

A few to start off -

Bloodthirsty - Enjoys killing or causing pain to other creatures or colonists

Caveworld origin colonists don't get negative emotions from dark or cramped environments, and in fact favour being indoors or underground.

Vegetarian colonists who either don't want to eat meat or are biologically incapable.

So a band of visitors were at my colony, then left as a band of brigands showed up. Somehow they got into a fight, and the pirates left. Then the visitors left. But hang on, eventually one of the visitors was sitting at my dinner table continually eating. Her health said she was incapacitated and starving, but she just kept on eating my food. Eventually I decided to try to capture her, and she died.... only to become an invulnerable, super slow moving corpse that was unkillable.

This was very frightening.

Okay, I'll accept the a-wizard-did-it causing animals to go insane for human flesh.

But my last game, a psychic wave caused an army of squirrels to kill my colonists. Now this was hilarious, and it's the kind of silly Dwarf Fortress stuff that makes a great game.

But the idea of squirrels breaking down a metal door is just stupid. As is the idea of squirrels or beetles being able to kill colonists.

I think small creatures should be extremely easy to kill, but dangerous in large numbers. Not dangerous in "you died from squirrel bites" although it could still happen, but more dangerous in a disease/infection and mental break way. After all, how sane would a colonist be able to stay after all of the woodland creatures came charging at them for seemingly no good reason?

In addition to this, small creatures could actually jump onto the colonists, causing them to blunder around in a panic whilst they fight, which could end up with hilarity.

Making small creature combat different to large creature combat would be an interesting, immersive and hilarious new angle.