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Topics - Boboid

#1
Any of the Great: (Skill) or Awful: (Skill) genes which add/remove passions respectively permanently increase/remove passions even when the xenogerm that granted them is replaced.

It's quite simple to reproduce, take any pawn without a passion and install a Xenogerm with one of the Great:(Skill) genes in it. Then replace it with a different Xenogerm, the skill offset will be updated, the passion will remain.

The inverse is also true, installing an Awful:(Skill) gene will permanently remove passions, even after the Xenogerm with that gene is replaced.

This is EXTREMELY broken as it allows players to literally staple every single passion onto a pawn. Or inadvertently permanently remove passions from pawns.

#2
Smoke only stops turrets locking on if there are 2 tiles of smoke between the tile the target is standing on and the turret. This isn't made clear by any descriptions of any smoke effects.

In practice this makes smoke very hard to use as the edges of it are not safe to stand in nor is it often clear at a glance where it is/isn't safe to stand

If a player deploys smoke on themselves they can easily think they're safe only to be immediately shot even though all their units are within smoke, but simply too close to the edge.
If a player deploys smoke on a turret (Which is pretty difficult to do given the range disparity regarding mech turrets) this works up until melee is attempted at which point there are no longer 2 tiles of smoke between the turret and the target.

Also smoke launchers in particular aren't very accurate and don't provide a lot of smoke and so a missed shot can result in insufficient smoke being deployed on the relevant side of the encounter which again can result in being shot when visually there is still smoke between the turret and target.

It all adds up to smoke constantly feeling ineffective/bugged, even though it's entirely mechanically consistent.

Though to be clear the descriptions of smoke in-game aren't sufficient.
#3
Auto Charge Blaster Turrets have a listed Ranged Cooldown of 7.4 seconds in their information panel, however they fire roughly every 6.5 seconds. I had to time this manually so there will be some human error on my part, tested each turret 20 times and averaged the times to account for it however.

Mini-Slugger Turrets have a listed cooldown of 5.1 in their information panel, but fire roughly every 2.5 seconds. Again manually timed

Auto Inferno Turrets have a listed cooldown of 8.4 seconds but actually fire every 11.5 seconds.
This wasn't hard to check as they actually have a "Can fire in: X seconds" UI element which is.. odd.. and handy.. and would be nice on other turrets.

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Also - The fact that turrets don't have aiming times dramatically increases their fire rate compared to their centipede equivalents (And is also pretty frustrating) Just throwing that out there.
#4
Multiple Psychic Harmonizers can affect an individual, including someone with a psychic harmonizer installed.
This results in a feedback loop which can result in situations like this https://imgur.com/a/5ZdnVik
Where every harmonizer's mood is capped by the harmonizers around them, which in turn caps the mood of the others, and so on.

In theory a significant mental disturbance could result in a failure cascade but.. in practice I'm yet to encounter that 3 years after that screenshot, additionally a single dose of Yayo typically resets the entire feedback loop.
This is all amplified by the fact that both the mood sent and mood received are affected by psychic sensitivity as shown in the 2nd screenshot.

I'm torn about whether or not this is a bug.. but it's definitely flagrantly overpowered.
Harmonizers aren't sufficiently rare to justify this kind of interaction imo.
They're a lot of fun and open up interesting synergies but.. when deployed in large numbers they essentially allow me to ignore mental state entirely.
#5
For those who don't know a Psychic Harmonizer is a brain implant that provides a mood bonus/penalty to surrounding pawns based on the mood of the person who has it installed. The bonus varies from -10 to +10 from 0-100% mood. The range is roughly circular with a diameter of 31 tiles.
You can't craft a harmonizer meaning you can only be rewarded with one from a quest, or purchase one from a trader.
The mood projection and mood received are both affected by psychic sensitivity. A projector with +100% psychic sensitivity projects twice as much mood, and a receiver with +100% sensitivity also receives twice as much mood resulting in 4x the mood change.

The intended use case seems to be to take an individual that is naturally happy (Optimist/Sanguine ect) and coddle them by giving them a nice room, environment, ect so that bonus can be passed on to nearby allies. This totally works and seems reasonably balanced when taking into consideration the downside that when they get ill or injured -unless more drastic steps are taken- they'll make everyone around them sad.

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The problem is that they stack. And this trivially perpetuates an unbreakable positive mood cycle due to its interactions with psychic sensitivity.
For those who don't know Psyfocus gear increases your psychic sensitivity, as does the Psychic sensitizer implant. The total bonus from a full set (Staff/Shirt/Vest/Robe/Helmet/Implant) is 50+10+15+20+15+25 = +135% psychic sensitivity...
This rounds up to +24 mood when the sender is at 100% mood. This also means that a second Harmonizer provides 24 mood to the first harmonizer even if the second has no bonuses to sensitivity.
At this point it should be noted that anyone who doesn't have a harmonizer is now getting +34 mood combined.

If you're selective about the people you put Harmonizers in (Pawns who already want Psyfocus gear,  in relationships,with passions for stationary work like cooking or crafting, optimists, ect) and then coddle them slightly ( Better rooms, food, comfortable furniture while working, high beauty in frequently traveled areas) the effect is extraordinarily consistent.
And this is with just two harmonizers.. With 3 the effects are even more pronounced as each individual A buffs B and C which directly buffs A's mood.
The theoretical max with 3 sets of psyfocus gear at this point is +72 mood for all non-harmonizers, and +48 mood for all harmonizers.
Edit: I'm a dummy and those numbers are wrong because as mentioned earlier sensitivity applies to both sent and received mood. The real total for 3 harmonizers should be +116(10x2.4 = 24 sent, 24x2.4 = 58 received per harmonizer affecting an individual or +116 for 3 harmonizers with gear)
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TLDR: Psychic harmonizers stack, are affected by psychic sensitivity, are reaaaaallly god damn strong, and with 2+ might result in unbreakable colonists.

Here are some screenshots of my current playthrough where I'm experimenting with them. The install date of the second harmonizer is shown
Before someone comments about the Lovin'/Comfort I included some after the graph with -30 from dev-mode to compensate.
https://imgur.com/a/BhJ2dbI
#6
So - Elbow Blades (arm replacements) Knee Spikes (leg replacements) and Hand Talons (Hand replacements) all lower the dps of pawns equipped with good melee weapons.
The reason for this seems to be that they add more attack types to the pool that pawns can choose from resulting in suboptimal situations where your pawn with a Zeushammer will instead opt to swing their Hand Talon. This also applies to Venom Fangs/Talons though.. that's.. a whole different  conversation about how useful those are
Power Claws also technically suffer from this though it's typically less pronounced as they do more damage.

(iirc the system is weighted to favor higher damage attacks but not to the exclusion of lower damage one)

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So long story short - Implant weapons on characters with guns = Good
Implant weapons on characters with good melee weapons = Bad.

That's not to say that the implant weapons are entirely useless - They're actually exceptionally cheap limb/hand replacements. A Knee Spike is a considerably better leg than an actual Prosthetic Leg.
#7
Transhumanists correctly suffer the -4 penalty for not having an artificial part and it is correctly removed when one part is added. However they do not get the corresponding "Transhumanist Pleased" bonus for having an artificial part until a second part is added.

This trend continues all the way to Machine Body Complete, At 0/1/2/3/4/5/6/7 artificial parts they receive -4/0/4/6/7/8/9/10 mood.

If this is the intended progression then each of the tooltips for the various moodlets need to be changed because they all specifically list the number of currently attached body parts with the exception of Machine Body Complete.


#8
For those unaware the carry(hauling) capacity of pawns/animals is affected by their Manipulation and Body size. The default is 75 for humans (and dogs) while larger animals or pawns with higher manipulation (bionics/drugs ect) can(technically) carry more.

The problem is that the vast majority of items only stack to 75 with some rare exceptions like Hay which is not small(Unlike Silver/Uranium/ect which due to their size allow for 750 rather than 75 to be hauled simultaneously).

The result is that large animals such as Elephants who have a whopping 300 potential carry capacity simply can't haul more than 75 of any given item. Which is a real shame given the upkeep involved in keeping a tamed elephant and training it to haul.

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Now a dirty solution to this ( and one that has been modded ) is to simply increase the stack size of most objects - which does work.

However it doesn't really get to the crux of the problem for me - Rimworld has a bunch of great systems but its storage/stockpile system is really lacking. Throwing everything on the floor is simply bonkers, as is only picking up one shirt and moving it from one stockpile to another when you could trivially carry 10 or 30.

Rimworld really desperately needs a storage and hauling solution and it can be as simple as putting things into boxes which hold more than their tile footprint. And allowing pawns to pick up and carry more than one object/stack of things at a time. Even if it requires something like a wheelbarrow to do it.

Given that every object already has a weight it's especially odd that hauling is limited by stack size instead of by weight.

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Anyway I'm getting pretty off topic - The long story short is that large animals and bionic limbs don't (in practice) affect the amount a pawn can haul which in the case of larger animals broadly makes them even less useful than their smaller counterparts before you factor in hauling frequency/food intake ratios.
#9
Ideas / A change/balance pass for Scyther Blades
November 02, 2017, 01:49:38 AM
I'd really love to see Scyther blades changed.. They've never worked very well because they destroy the Manipulation ( and subsequently the chance to hit ) of the pawn.

In the vast majority of cases adding a scyther blade is less effective than just using a steel club.. Let alone a longsword. And that's before we even mention plasteel melee weapons.


I love the idea of a maniac brawler with blades for hands but in practice they're barely more deadly than someone with a piece of wood.

It's especially noticeable now that the melee system has more depth to it.
#10
Ideas / Scrollbar for the Weapon Table
March 08, 2015, 06:13:32 PM
Might seem a bizarre request but a scrollbar for the dev-mode ranged weapon table would be really helpful.

Currently the table is large enough to display all the vanilla weapons but once you add in a handful of modded weapons they fall off the end of the list.
Hardly a priority but it'd be useful for balance testing weapon mods.
And a bit of future-proofing should you ever add more vanilla weaponry.
#11
It seems like it's pretty easy to duplicate steel by constructing structures that produce slag when they're destroyed and then smelting that slag down using a colonist that has particularly high Smelting Efficiency. (burning works though may cause accidental fires)

For the record Smelting Efficency is derived from Crafting Skill, then modified by Sight and Manipulation (40% - 90% importance respectively)

Solar Panels seem to be particular offenders in this regard, when destroyed they drop 40 steel (Half the construction cost) and a whopping 8 slag chunks. With a smelting efficency of 110% ( 14 skill no sight/manipulation modifiers ) each slag chunk melts down to 9 steel, the end result is 112 steel or +32 for every solar panel destroyed.

At 19 crafting ( The highest obtainable due to the way crafting xp is delivered in chunks - fixed in the next update ) with two Bionic Eyes and Arms - 193% smelting efficiency - you produce 16(!) slag per chunk or 168 total per destroyed panel.

(Cost:370)Geothermal generators yield 16 slag +185 steel - 329 steel at 9/slag (441 @ max efficiency) Profit = -41/+71 OR 88.9%/119.1%

(Cost:90)Nutrient Paste Dispensers yield 6 slag + 45 steel - 99 @ 9/slag (144) Profit = +9/+54 OR 110%/160%

(Cost:25)Steel beds yield 1 slag + 12 steel - 21 (28) Profit = -4/+3 OR 84%/112%

(Cost:60)Steel Royal beds yield 2 slag + 30 steel - 48 (62) Profit = -12/+2 OR 80%/103%

(cost:80)Solar Panels yield 8 slag + 40 steel - 112 (168) Profit = +32/+88 OR 140%/210%


Those're the only objects I found that had the potential to yield more than you put in, solar panels being the most obvious offender. Feel free to chime in with anything I might have missed.