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Scythers always use their blades in melee because of an XML tag. But Centipedes don't have this tag for their head (which was always used for melee up until B18 and was extremely effective). As a result, Centipedes' melee DPS has decreased by roughly 20% because they use their weapons' melee ability instead of their headbutt move most of the time.

On the other hand, Centipedes having a weakness other than just EMP and rockets might not necessarily be a bad thing.

Current burned wood/carpet floors give a massive 41% speed decrease which stacks with other non-floor speed debuffs like climbing sandbags/stone chunks, moving through doors or moving through items. This means it's only a matter of time before people realize they have a new best option for flooring their killboxes.

Solution: remove the speed debuff, make sure these floors retain their non-burned variants' speed modifiers. The player is already penalized enough with losing all materials and having to remove the burned floors unless they want to enjoy the -5 beauty per tile. If that penalty is deemed low, give them -10 beauty per tile or increase the time it takes to remove them; at least that can't be exploited.

[Smokeleaf joint:]

Social drugs. Their purpose: to provide a source of mood buff. They are not safe for long-term use but can be taken for a few days to help overcome an unexpected mood debuff without any long-term negative effects. This is their purpose. It's always nice to have some in case of an emergency. Relatives died in a raid? Smoke a joint. Bonded animal died? Drink a beer. They are great tools for a quick mood boost every few days, as long as it's on the short-term.

But then B18 happened and pekoe has disturbed the already fragile balance.

First of all, let's see what they are and what they do.


Smokeleaf joint:

• Requires no technology.
• Requires no infrastructure. Can be made at a crafting spot that costs nothing to place.
• Needs 4 smokeleaves. Has a market value of 11. Very fast crafting time.
• Smokeleaf plant needs growing skill of 5, grows in 7.5 days (assuming 24h growth; real value is roughly 50% of this at the center of a 30% generated planet without sunlamp) and yields 11 smokeleaves. It has a fertility sensitivity of 100% (bad for gravel, good for fertile soil and hydroponics). Assuming average sunlight and no sunlamp, one plant yields roughly ~0.18 joints every day or ~2.02 silver every day.
• One joint per day can be safely used up to 8 days without risking addiction. Addiction chance is 2%. None of the health ailments have any chance to occur either.

One joint's effect lasts 12 hours. Upon finishing smoking, the pawn's joy bar increases by 80% and their rest bar decreases by 10%. This is about ~2.22 hours' worth of work time lost before the "Tired" debuff appears if used before the bar falls under ~38%.
Smoking one joint will grant:

• +15 mood.
• -30% consciousness.
• -10% movement.
• -20% pain offset.
• +30% hunger need drop rate.

Smokeleaf joints provide a nice mood buff, although they destroy productivity, speed and combat capabilities. The flat 20% pain reduction is great and if it didn't decrease consciousness I'd definitely use it as a combat drug. But that's not what the joint is for.

It can be used to buff mood in extreme cases when you really don't want a pawn to suffer a mental breakdown and don't mind them being mostly useless for it. It's great for reducing mood loss from pain caused by mechanites and other pain-inducing diseases as well. The first social drug the player can make, it has pros and cons. It also sells well.


Pekoe:

• Requires a technology worth 400 points (unless the player starts with tribal tech, then it's free).
• Requires no infrastructure. Can be made at a crafting spot that costs nothing to place.
• Needs 4 psychoid leaves. Has a market value of 14. Very fast crafting time (slightly faster than smokeleaf joint).
• Psychoid plant needs growing skill of 6, grows in 9 days (assuming 24h growth; real value is roughly 50% of this at the center of a 30% generated planet without sunlamp) and yields 10 psychoid leaves. It has a fertility sensitivity of 100% (bad for gravel, good for fertile soil and hydroponics). Assuming average sunlight and no sunlamp, one plant yields roughly ~0.14 pekoe every day or ~1.94 silver every day.
• One pekoe per day can be safely used up to 16 days without risking addiction. Addiction chance is 2%. None of the health ailments have any chance to occur either.

One pekoe's effect lasts 6 hours. Upon finishing drinking, the pawn's joy bar increases by 40% and their rest bar increases by 10%. This is about 2.22 hours' worth of work time gained before the "Tired" debuff appears if used before the bar falls under ~28%.
Drinking one pekoe will grant:

• +12 mood.
• -10% pain modifier.
• -10% rest need drop rate. This can mean up to 0.6 hours' worth of additional work time before the "Tired" debuff appears.

Pekoe would be the next step for mood. It has no downsides after taking whatsoever and the slightly reduced pain means it is useable as a very weak combat drug. It can be used for a bit over an entire season if limited for once per day. The mood buff is almost as good as smokeleaf's. A definitive upgrade. In fact, it's too good.

No downsides means it can be used whenever the player wants. It grants almost the same amount of mood buff as joints but lasts only half as long. A bit less profitable but requires less growing/harvesting work to compensate. It's strictly better than beer, despite costing less research and requiring less infrastruture which hurts game's balance. It sells for the same amount as flake despite costing a lot less research and less infrastructure which renders flake's only niche moot.


Beer:

• Requires a technology worth 700 points.
• Requires a brewing station and at least one fermenting barrel to be built.
• Needs 5 hops for every bottle. Has a market value of 12. Extremely slow crafting time (fermenting takes 10 days, although needs no direct work).
• Hop plant needs growing skill of 7, grows in 5 days (assuming 24h growth; real value is roughly 50% of this at the center of a 30% generated planet without sunlamp) and yields 10 hops. It has a fertility sensitivity of 70% (good for gravel, bad for fertile soil and hydroponics). Assuming average sunlight and no sunlamp, one plant yields exactly 0.2 beer bottles every day or 2.4 silver every day.
• One beer per day can be safely used up to 13 days without risking addiction. Two beers per day can be safely used up to 4 days without risking addiction. Three or more beers per day should be avoided not because of chance of addiction but because consuming three beers in quick succession pushes the pawn to the "Drunk" stage. Addiction chance is 1%. None of the health ailments have any chance to occur either, unless a pawn enters the "Blackout" stage.

One beer's effect lasts 3.6 hours. Upon finishing drinking, the pawn's joy bar increases by 17% and their hunger bar increases by 8%.
Beer's effects appear in stages. Each bottle adds 15%. Maximum is 100%.
Upon consuming one bottle, the pawn first experiences the "Warm" stage. This stage lasts for 1.2 hours after one beer and provides the following:

• +8 mood.
• -2% manipulation.
• -10% pain modifier.
• +50% chance to start a social fight.

After this stage, the next stage called "Buzzed" starts. This stage lasts for 2.4 hours and provides the following:

• Nothing. This stage is hidden to the player.

Two beers' effect lasts for ~7.2 hours. Upon consuming two bottles in quick succession, the pawn first experiences the "Tipsy" stage. This stage lasts for 1.2 hours after two beers and provides the following:

• +12 mood.
• -10% consciousness.
• -5% movement.
• -20% pain modifier.
• +150% chance to start a social fight.

After this stage the pawn receives the "Warm" buff for 3.6 hours, then after that the "Buzzed" buff for 2.4 hours.

Three beers' effect lasts for 10.8 hours. Upon consuming three bottles in quick succession, the pawn first experiences the "Drunk" stage for roughly ~2.4 hours. Moments after entering this stage, the pawn receives a debuff called "Hangover" for 24 hours. The debuff's first stage the pawn experiences is called "Pounding". This debuff is invisible as long as the alcohol's effect lasts but the effects are there regardless of that. Both effects together provide the following:

• +8 mood.
• -53% consciousness.
• -10% movement.
• -40% pain modifier.
• +400% chance to start a social fight.
• ~3.83 vomiting per day on average.

After that the pawn experiences the "Tipsy" stage for 3.6 hours, the "Warm" stage for 3.6 hours and the "Buzzed" stage for 2.4 hours ("Buzzed" becomes visible only if the pawn is affected by the "Hangover" debuff). The effects are the same except the following has to be added to each of the stages:

• -10 mood.
• -18% consciousness.
• 2.5 vomiting per day on average.

After the alcohol's effect disappears the debuff's current stage will last for an additional 2.4 hours and the "Hangover" debuff becomes visible on the health screen. After that, the "Strong" phase starts and lasts for 6 hours, granting the following:

• -5 mood.
• -8% consciousness.

After that, the "Slight" stage appears and lasts for 3.6 hours, granting the following:

• -2 mood.
• -3% consciousness.

Drinking one beer grants +8 mood for 1.2 in-game hours. This is trash and isn't worth it. Two beers are hardly better, since it consumes two bottles. Considering equal sized growing zones, players can grow psychoid leaf instead and craft pekoe; one pekoe lasts longer than two beers and grants a consistent +12 mood buff. It's just better in every way. So it's not worth it to drink two beers either. And if drinking three, the player either has to micromanage to avoid the "Drunk" state or actually reaches that state, at which point it's simply not worth it over even two beers. Beer is completely invalidated by pekoe.

But this is hardly a new thing. Beer has been this bad for long enough. Before B18 the only other contender was smokeleaf which destroys productivity, while beer doesn't do that to such extent, thus granting beer the niche of being bad but at least it gives some mood buff without severely decreasing productivity. Beer needs a buff while pekoe needs a nerf because right now there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to ever touch beer and beer production because players can just make pekoe instead.


Ambrosia:

• Can't be cultivated. Occurrence relies on RNG and trader stocks.
• Has a market value of 15.
• Ambrosia bush grows in 6 days (assuming 24h growth; real value is roughly 50% of this at the center of a 30% generated planet without sunlamp) and yields 4 fruits. It has a fertility sensitivity of 15% (good for gravel, bad for fertile soil and hydroponics). Assuming average sunlight and no sunlamp, one plant yields roughly ~0.33 fruits every day or 5 silver every day for the initial harvest and ~0.48 fruits every day or ~7.14 silver every day for every harvest after the initial one.
• One fruit per day can be safely used up to 10 days without risking addiction. Addiction chance is 1%. None of the health ailments have any chance to occur either.

One fruit's effect lasts 16 hours. Upon finishing eating, the pawn's joy bar increases by 50% and their hunger bar increases by 20%.
Eating one plant will grant:

• +5 mood.

Ambrosia is nice. The buff pretty much lasts from morning to night (after all, pawns need 8 hours of sleep, considering normal quality beds are used). +5 mood might seem low at first but it stacks with everything else.

Despite the unreliable ways of obtaining it, it gives a buff that lasts the whole time a pawn usually spends awake of the day. This means one fruit is enough for the whole day. The perfect mid-term permanent mood boost.


Conclusion:

There are two problems. One is beer being really, really bad. This is no new story but pekoe completely obsoletes it and since RimWorld is in beta development stage, it's time for some balancing.

The other problem is pekoe being too good. Beer simply can't be buffed to the levels of pekoe without making it overpowered. Pekoe has to be nerfed too, there's no other way.

Smokeleaf still has its niche; granting the best mood buff for the longest duration, but crippling the pawn to compensate. This is the first social drug available for players and as such it performs its role well.

Ambrosia is awesome and rightly so, since players can't grow it.


How to fix beer and pekoe?

For pekoe:

First, decrease the mood buff to +8 instead of the +12. This way smokeleaf still has the niche of greatest mood buff but pekoe still feels like an upgrade because you can reach the same duration by drinking two (although not in quick succession), even though it only grants half the buffs but has no downside.

Second, decrease pekoe's market value to 12 or 10. This way flake gains its only niche of being the most profitable psychoid product back. And since pekoe is nerfed, it's fine to decrease its market value; and even a value of 10 is a value improvement over raw psychoid leaves.

For beer:

First, remove the "Buzzed" stage from beer. It will never be truly viable as long as the pawn is penalized for drinking only one, especially since it carries on this penalty no matter how many more bottles the pawn drinks. Suddenly one beer grants +8 buff for 3.6 hours instead of 1.2 hours.

Second, with such a low duration per bottle beer will never be better than pekoe. Decrease the alcohol's high effect's severity drop per day from -1 to -0.75 (and possibly do the same with hangover). Suddenly one beer lasts for 5.4 hours, close enough to pekoe.

This way beer is viable but pekoe is still better. If one really wants to make beer on par with pekoe without either decreasing beer's penalties or adding penalties to pekoe, then the mood buff has to be increased by +2 for every stage.

This way both beer and pekoe is a lot more closer to each other in terms of effects and when combined can provide the best of both worlds.

[without the melee weapon]

Although I'm 99% sure the current values are placeholders, this issue still has to be highlighted.

Since the introduction of melee attacks for ranged weapons, traditional melee-only weapons have suffered greatly. Melee was already limited, a lot; in order to not get shot you need the personal shield, otherwise you'll almost certainly start your melee brawl wounded. These wounds and their effects can vary; sometimes your colonist gets shot in the brain and never reaches the enemy. Sometimes it's a leg shot, allowing the enemy to put more holes in your colonist before they reach the target. Other times it's the arms; decreasing the ability to hit in melee. And pain is always there; if it's over 80% your colonist goes down (unless they used drugs or are wimps). It's quite rare when your melee unit reaches the enemy ranged unit without damage. So just to ensure you can start a melee brawl without any penalties you need the shield.

But a normal shield costs over 1000 silver and researching it isn't gonna happen until mid-game. Meanwhile a good LMG or assault rifle has a market value of 420 and 510, respectively. So a proper melee loadout costs over twice as much, without the melee weapon!

Now, this was fine in A17. Sure it costs more but playing smart, it was worth it; after all, a gladius had ~6.15 DPS, a spear had ~6.5 DPS and a longsword had ~6.8 DPS. Compared to the damage output of bare fists anyone with a ranged weapon had to use at a pretty low DPS of ~4.38, melee felt rewarding since even a gladius did 41% more DPS, meaning if the melee colonist actually managed to reach the ranged enemy they'll be able to defeat them almost all the time, even if they did get shot once or twice. And this was good; risking those free shots for the enemy in exchange of superior DPS. Classic risk vs reward; after all, any of those shots could leave an eye scar, shoot off a finger or even cause brain damage. Melee was viable, although inherently more risky without a shield. After acquiring the shield, the players traded some direct risk for more colony wealth which, indirectly, still resulted in roughly the same risk since raid strength scales with colony wealth. And after mid-game the enemy numbers were just so numerous, melee wasn't really viable anymore at that stage due to the sheer amount of focused ranged DPS hitting the shielded melee pawns. Still, melee was balanced.

Now enter B18. Suddenly we have melee attacks assigned for the ranged weapons. Unarmed melee DPS is ~4.27, mostly unchanged. Ranged weapons' melee DPS is buffed from this ~4.27 to a base of ~5/~5.18, while gladius/spear/longsword base DPS is changed from ~6.15/~6.5/~6.8 to ~6.26/~6.53/~6.82; barely changed at all. Shield remained the same and can be crafted now.

So, in A17 gladius/spear/longsword had a DPS advantage of ~41%/~49%/~55%. In B18 this is down to ~18%/~24%/~29%. This alone means it's completely unviable to use melee without a shield; you'll get shot without a shield and your melee efficiency will be even worse when you start the fight. And with these numbers the advantage simply isn't there to make that risk worth the reward.

Shivs are worse than any ranged weapon in melee. Clubs and knives beat most ranged weapons' melee DPS by a laughable 5-6%. Maces have 13% better DPS than most guns in melee; guns' melee deals blunt damage and the mace is supposed to be the best blunt weapon. What a joke. The pila beats the knife in melee, what the hell? Where is the trade-off? Where is the balance? How comes a weapon that costs wood and has a ranged attack beats a weapon in melee that requires steel to not outright suck and has no ranged attack whatsoever?

On the sidenote, we have two items that function as makeshift weapons; the beer bottle and the wood log. Sounds nice, right? Just grab a piece of wood or a bottle of beer when nothing better can be found for some slight stat increase... Except wood log and beer bottle as melee weapons are outperformed by fists regarding DPS. Yup. Remember that change back in A17 when fists got buffed from 6 to 7 damage and from a cooldown of 1.85s to 1.6s? Wood log and beer bottle never received their buffs to keep them ahead of fists. They are noobtraps right now; it's possible to use them as weapons but players are better off unarmed. Either remove their weapon-like ability or buff them.



This shows the state of melee in B18 quite well. The numbers are not the base weapon DPS numbers; pawns have a chance to use their fists or perform a headbutt attack even when they have a weapon, this was fully accounted for here. For all weapons listed, normal quality and steel as material was assumed to be used if possible. The DPS value for ranged weapons is melee DPS only.

Notice how guns like the bolt-action rifle can pretty much keep up with the longsword's value-to-DPS ratio while also offering a ranged attack. Sure, the longsword has 29% better DPS in melee but this means no shield; which means the melee unit will most likely get shot before engaging in melee. A human can move 4.61 tiles per second. Bolt-action rifles have 37 range and take roughly 3.17 seconds for a full firing cycle. This means the ranged unit gets to shoot 3 times; once at 31 range, another at 17 range and one more at 2 range, pretty much point-blank. Bolt-action rifles are the most accurate non-FMR guns; that point-blank shot will very likely connect and will deal 18 points of damage. There goes the longswordsman's advantage; with the DPS values listed above the melee unit will need about 5 seconds just to get even in terms of damage and this only accounts for one of the three shots being a hit! Therefore a shield is pretty much necessary; but at that point the melee unit's budget is over 1300 silver while the ranged unit's gun is only worth about 270. To add salt to injury, longswords deal sharp damage while every ranged weapon deals blunt in melee. Armor protects a lot more against sharp than blunt. So a ranged unit can easily beat a melee one if they are both armored. Yes, the mace exists; offering a laughable 13% better DPS than a bolt-action rifle in melee. What a joke.

"But dude, just make your swords out from plasteel, that will solve your problems!" Except it won't. A steel normal longsword is worth 305 silver. A plasteel normal longsword is worth a staggering 1760 silver. That's more than just a steel longsword and a shield. Such huge investment for roughly 50% DPS increase. Yes, it does push the longsword's DPS advantage from 29% to about 93%, effectively fixing the problem; the problem is that this costs almost 6 times more silver. More wealth means stronger raids. Why would I invest in this when I can just have a bolt-action rifle?

"Just get better quality swords!" Too bad the weapons' market value scales more than the actual damage with higher quality. Besides, I could just get a better quality rifle; the melee damage gets increased by the same percent with quality for both guns and swords. Except for guns you also get better ranged performance.

Although I keep mentioning the bolt-action rifle, pretty much all other guns have the same problem. At this point they outperform the melee weapons in melee without any real kiting whatsoever simply because they get to shoot at the target closing in. Yes, players can play smart; they can either get a shield (at which point their combat equipment costs double that of their ranged counterparts) or approach carefully behind walls or waiting for an ambush. But even then, the longsword, the best craftable melee weapon, has less than 30% advantage over most of the ranged weapons, meaning RNG makes this a risky and unrewarding experience. In A17 this advantage was 55%; rewarding players for using shields/smart approach tactics. It simply isn't worth it anymore in B18.

Another strange thing to notice is elephant tusks having pretty much the same DPS as normal steel spears. Except tusks don't take forever to craft and are a lot easier to acquire in certain biomes. At least they do have a high market value to compensate.

The solution doesn't lie in buffing melee; it lies in nerfing ranged melee attacks. I'm 99% sure the current values are just placeholders but it's still important to highlight problems in the game, whether intentional or not.

[This eliminates almost all challenge from combat.]

Before we start we have to define what a killbox is. So let's have a look at what is absolutely necessary to make a killbox; the very elements a killbox can't function without. These are:

• Walls to prevent the enemy from maneuvering around it.
• Fortifications with either turrets, colonists or a combination of both to provide the best defense-to-firepower ratio.
• A way to funnel enemies into one or a few small spaces where they get shredded because even missed shots hit something.

Walls are obvious; they present a barrier. This is fine, this is pretty much their purpose.
Fortifications are the way the game was meant to be played. Smart players use cover. Nothing unusual.
Now, the problem is funneling enemies. Most killboxes even put items like stone chunks into these entrances so the enemies can't even stop to have a chance to fire back. Players can do this because they know the raiders will certainly have to pass that area since there is no other way into the colony.

But this is just bad. This eliminates almost all challenge from combat. Pair it up with a mountain base and you have a colony that is untouchable for anything except infestations. Sieges? Raids dropping on top of base? Tornados? Meteors? Too bad, overhead mountains solve those. Sappers? Rare sight and good luck mining through half the mountain if you want to skip the killbox anyway. This is why devs have tried to do at least something with them in the past. But so far everything has failed or was just a minor success; only forcing a slight change instead of complete elimination.

Every killbox relies on funneling enemies into one or a few smaller areas. Take that away and the killbox simply becomes a line of fortifications; which is completely acceptable to have.

How to stop enemies from getting funneled into a deathzone? First we have to understand that right now the game has no real way to determine the location of such a killzone to be able to avoid it. Therefore we need such a system.

How to measure a killzone? Why, that's easy; by kills, of course! Well, by "downs", to be more precise. The game already can track a pawn being downed or killed. All we need is to give this yet another value and assign it to the map. This is where my idea comes in. Let's add a new value to every cell on the game map. Let's call this value "heat" for now and should be zero by default, as well as zero for minimum value too. For performance reasons the game should keep track of the cells having non-zero heat to prevent the game from trying to update all the tiles all the time. Now, here's the trick: when an enemy dies or gets downed, the game adds a certain amount of heat to that cell and optionally to other cells around that cell within a certain radius (could even tweak it to give less heat the further away the tile is from the center of the radius). Now, when the other enemies try to path towards the colony this heat value will be added to that certain tile's pathfinding cost. Add in an extra bit of code that effectively changes pathing cost to infinite after a certain amount of heat is reached on the tile and we're golden.

Now, obviously just doing this would result in all the map tiles becoming impassable after a long time. So let's add a refresh mechanism that fires every day (much like the XP cap reset) that removes a certain flat number (not percentage!) of heat from all tiles that have heat. This is where performance might be a problem and why the game should have a list of tiles that have non-zero heat so the game can just skip the other cells.

What this does is making the raiders a bit more intelligent. When they see the 5th raider die in front of them at the very same area they will actually act smart and realize it might not be that good of an idea to go that way after all. They might decide to bash on the walls to get inside. Optionally include some code to allow any raider to mine walls if they can't find any other way inside the colony (like sappers do). This "heat map" layer can be developed further; maybe disable it for animals since they aren't that intelligent or even make it faction-specific so the angry tribals don't know about the twelve pirates who got massacred around a corner (although making it faction-specific would have far greater impact on game performance).

Now, obviously this wouldn't just affect killboxes. This would also affect natural chokepoints and fortification lines as well. But let's be honest, the enemies are mostly either humans or mechanoids. Both are intelligent and would learn from their mistakes, one way or another. If you've killed the previous raid by utilizing a chokepoint they'll try going around it. If you're gunning them down from your heavily fortified defense positions they'll find other ways inside. The enemies are supposed to be intelligent, how about we make them act like that for once?

Just to state the obvious, this wouldn't completely eliminate killboxes. They could still score a few kills if enough time has passed since the last raid. But this could present a change since raiders would just turn their backs on a killbox after suffering some casualties and find or make a new entry. This could even punish those mountain bases by effectively turning every raid into a sapper raid if they use a funneling killbox as their only defense. Overall this could make raids much more dynamic, allowing them to change the angle of attack during the raid based on rough performance.

This idea might or might not have been brought up before. I honestly don't know. Oh well. So, what's everyone's thoughts?

[Weapon trashing, the new meta!]

Quality Scaling

So let's talk about the quality system and just how flawed it is. No, I'm not talking about high level crafters making shoddy things. That's RNG and I can live with it. This post is more about high-quality items being detrimental to the players.

That's right, ladies and gentlemen, high quality things are bad for your health! Why, you may ask? First of all, the market price scaling. It works like this:

• Awful: 40%
• Shoddy: 60%
• Poor: 80%
• Normal: 100%
• Good: 120%
• Superior: 150%
• Excellent: 200%
• Masterwork: 300%
• Legendary: 600%

Wow, legendary increases the item value by SIX TIMES! Surely it must have awesome stats to compensate, right? Right?

Well, not so much. Here are the ranged accuracy modifiers for quality levels:

• Awful: 70%
• Shoddy: 80%
• Poor: 90%
• Normal: 100%
• Good: 105%
• Superior: 110%
• Excellent: 120%
• Masterwork: 135%
• Legendary: 150%

So legendary guns have 50% more acuracy for 600% more value. This has some interesting results, let me explain.

So let's say that we have 3 colonists. We can choose to outfit them with either normal or legendary charge rifles. A normal charge rifle has a value of 945, a legendray one is 5670. People might not know but every colonist has an internal value of 3700, regardless of health status.
Now comes the fun part. A normal charge rifle has X DPS. A legendary one therefore has 1.5X DPS. So if we give our 3 colonists normal ones we end up with a total of 3X DPS for a market value of 13935. Now let's try to reach the same DPS but with legendary charge rifles! That means 2 colonists with said legendaries, giving us 3x DPS for a price of... 18740.
Now that might not sound like such a deal breaker, after all, one does not simply get more colonists in RimWorld. However... Consider that every raid is based on the total market value of your colony. That extra 4805 value means the raids you receive will be bigger. And this is just for two colonists, and we haven't even considered the apparel!

It is clear that these small amounts add up over time, with each and every new colonist, creating a pretty unnecessary extra difficulty curfe that actually punishes the player for acquiring rare, high quality gear! So the higher you go in the quality system, the more you shoot yourself in the foot! Surely an intended behaviour, right?

If you think this is just for the guns, oh boy, are you wrong! Basically everything has horrible stat scaling compared to the value scaling. Except one, and that's the beauty stat.

Here are the melee weapon damage modifiers:

• Awful: 40%
• Shoddy: 70%
• Poor: 85%
• Normal: 100%
• Good: 110%
• Superior: 120%
• Excellent: 135%
• Masterwork: 145%
• Legendary: 155%

And here are the armour multipliers:

• Awful: 70%
• Shoddy: 80%
• Poor: 90%
• Normal: 100%
• Good: 110%
• Superior: 130%
• Excellent: 150%
• Masterwork: 170%
• Legendary: 210%

A bit better, yes, but still way below the desired values.

But dude, quality also affects deterioration and insulation so it's okay!
Nope. Insulation is increased by a pitiful 5% per quality level. Quality has minimal effect on wear damage and letting items deteriorate is considered an error on the player's behalf. Nobody will leave their charge rifles outside in the rain because they know it deteriorates. But even then, guess what! Good armour ABSORBS damage so it doesn't really matter, it will get damaged eventually anyway!

For melee damage this is very wonky. Melee has low damage values for those 10-20% differences and the game rounds the values. This results in some very strange things, like X quality giving way more bang for your buck or Y quality not delivering that extra performance you expected.
Example:
A steel good longsword has a damage of 17x1.1=18.7, the game rounds it up. You end up with 19 damage.
A steel superior longsword has a damage of 17x1.2=20.4, the game rounds it down. You end up with 20 damage.
So the diference between good and superior is just one damage, while the difference between normal and good is two!

Going back to accuracy for a bit; did you know that accuracy caps at 100%? Of course it does, silly! - You might say. But here's the catch: some guns' accuracy caps at 100% before they reach legendary.
An excellent survival rifle's accuracy stats: 90%/100%/100%/100% (short, close, mid, long)
A legendary survival rifle's accuracy stats: 100%/100%/100%/100% (short, close, mid, long)
So basically the only difference between excellent and legendary in this case is legendary having 3 times more market value.

Hell, it won't even matter if that legendary survival rifle got a bit damaged, it would still have maxed out accuracy stats... Which brings us to the next problem.

Weapon Trashing

This section is the product of XeoNovaDan and myself. I knew about the whole quality problems and when I shared this knowledge with fellow RimWorlders on a certain discord channel, Xeo came up with the idea of trashing weapons for even better value-to-stat ratios. Tests were made and the situation escalated quickly, to the point of ridiculous finding. This is what we uncovered:

Have you noticed how items at low health have almost no market value, yet they retain most of their stats?

A legendary steel gladius at 100% health has a value of 840 and does 19 damage.
A normal steel gladius at 100% health has a value of 140 and does 12 damage.

Now compare these:
A legendary steel gladius at 50% health has a value of 75 and does 15 damage.
A superior steel gladius at 100% health has a value of 210 and does 14 damage.

Or these:
A normal survival rifle has a value of 285 and 75%/96%/96%/90% accuracy values.
A legendary survival rifle at 40% health has a value of 16.98 and 81%/100%/100%/97% accuracy values.

That's right, since the higher quality weapons are raider magnets and don't pay for their values, might as well trash them and get high stats for the fraction of the market value it would normally take!

Just look at this table, the offender quality levels for weapon trashing are the problem levels that start to scale ridiculously regarding market value:


But dude, how can you damage your guns in a controllable way outside of devmode?
Molotovs, molotovs and molotovs. Did I mention molotovs? Anything that causes burning will work, though. Hell, you can even throw a frag on the weapon for 40 damage!

Miniguns, as well as any gun that has forced miss radii, are another big offenders. Their accuracy stats are basically ignored, which means an awful minigun at 1% health is as effective as a legendary minigun at 100% health. Do mind that rocket launchers have high value as well as forced miss radii, so make sure you leave them outside your base for some deterioration! Weapon trashing, the new meta!

The reason this works is because the items are coded in a way so they lose market value rapidly when getting damaged after a certain point instead of a linear change. This results in 4% total market value for 30% health items; their other stats, however, remain at 72% at 30% health.

The Solution

The whole problem lies in the market value scaling. It's ridiculously high, you can't balance stats for such scaling unless you want legendary knifes to become one-hit-kill weapons. This also affects basically every stat that scales with quality except beauty.

So... How could this be fixed?

First of all, make the quality price scaling linear. I've made a mod for this myself and it works rather well, using these numbers above normal:

• Good: 110%
• Superior: 120%
• Excellent: 130%
• Masterwork: 140%
• Legendary: 150%

This makes most guns retain their normal value-to-stat ratios, while a high quality armour and melee weapon is outright better. This is how it should be, rewarding players for high quality gear instead of punishing them for it.

However, this doesn't solve the melee damage rounding and ranged weapon accuracy cap problems. But those aren't that hard to solve after all!
For melee, shift multiplier from bonus damage to decreased cooldown. No more one-punch-man plasteel longsword shock troopers but no sudden jumps between quality levels either.
For ranged, something similar; halve the bonus for accuracy and put the rest on decreasing cooldown. Warmup time unchanged so the main balance switch remains untouched. There you go, DPS increase without worrying about reaching the accuracy cap.

Now, on to weapon trashing. The only fix is to bring stat loss and market value loss in line with each other. That's it, this will fix most of it...
...Except for weapons with forced miss radii. Let's be honest, the forced miss radius mechanic has to change. It turns 2/3 of centipedes into a subject of ridicule rather than a threatening force, it trashes the minigun for conventional use, it makes awful rocket launchers as good as legendaries. It's a nice concept but it doesn't really work that well in the game right now. Grenades aren't a problem; guess what, they aren't a part of the quality system either! So just exclude rocket launchers from the quality system and you can keep their forced miss radii. Make grenades' and rocket launchers' damage scale with item health and weapon trashing won't be a problem either.

I'd love to hear the devs' opinions regarding this problem.

[delete the previous version first]

Before you scroll down.

I'm not a programmer. I've made these for my own personal use but decided to share anyway. My mods are all just xml mods for now, although that might change in the future. Some of these mods I've made back in the A12 era and have been maintaining them ever since.

Some of my mods add additional research and since the current iteration of vanilla Tech Tree isn't exactly mod-friendly, especially if you start stacking mods, I didn't even bother with coordinates. Since we all know Tynan is a cool guy who wants to make his game mod-friendly, the Tech Tree will likely change in the future anyway. I strongly recommend using a mod that reverts or fixes the Tech Tree.

Feel free to do whatever you want with my mods, although messaging me first would be nice. I've added a few notes in most of the xml files for those who're new to xml modding and are curious about how my stuff works. Regarding textures, see the individual mod's section about permission to use it.

How to update my mods.

Always, without exception, delete the previous version first and only then copy the updated mod folder. This ensures the best user experience. In fact, you'll live a happier life if you do this with every mod you use, not just my mods.

Now that all that's been said, let's get to the fun stuff!

Modular Power Armor

Have you ever wondered why the Power Armor doesn't cover some bodyparts like the hands? Have you ever got annoyed because you can't have your truly lategame equipment because even Legendary Power Armor isn't adequate?

Well fear not, for I bring you Modular Power Armor!

Probably inspired by Fallout 4's system and the fact that vanilla Power Armor kinda sucks, this aims to fix the issue!

• Five tiers of Power Armor, the higher you go the better it becomes!
• Modular means every full set consists of four pieces: Chest, Leg, Arm and Helmet. All four combined covers the entire body! These pieces can be worn individually too. Certain pieces will have specific bonuses at higher tiers, like Leg pieces adding an additional speed boost.
• Cost also scales with tier, higher tiers requiring more advanced materials to craft!
• Higher tier version requires the lower tier one in the crafting recipe. No waste, feel free to build the lower tiers because you'll have to anyway!
• Additional research because this is supposed to be lategame stuff!
• It takes considerable amounts of crafting time to get from the first tier to the last. Which means, now you have stuff to do lategame! Yay!
• No new workstations because my Workshop is already 9001 tiles large. Seriously, it can get so out of hand with many mods...
• The only way you can get these is by crafing! You won't find it as loot, nor can you buy it from traders. You have to work for your overpowered armor!

But wait, there's more!

Now you can disassemble your vanilla Power Armors and get all the materials you need to craft one back. You can use this to either reroll quality by disassembling and recrafting (which also fixes the damage) or to use the materials to make my Modular Power Armor! Disassembling is a very lengthy process and disturbing the pawn will lose the progress, you have been warned!

All Power Armors now require Fusion Cores to craft. You can get these by disassembling vanilla Power Armor, disassembling Mechanoids or just being lucky enough to find some in an exotic trader's stock.



Let's not forget another small thing. These things cost a lot and I mean A LOT to make. It would be kinda pointless to craft them without any way to fix them up since it costs A LOT to craft these, both resource- and time-wise. So you can "recalibrate" the highest tier pieces for some materials to essentially recraft them, fixing any damage. Isn't that nice?

However, due to even most vanilla recipe bills not recognizing any changes to the item health scale, I highly  recommend automating this process by restricting the area the recipe takes items from, making a stockpile for damaged pieces only near the workbench and making a stockpile further away from the workbench that only accepts undamaged or not too damaged pieces only. Also make sure you don't set the bill to drop the item to the ground!

Here's the GitHub link for the download.

Balance

Is this balanced? Honestly, is vanilla RimWorld balanced? OF COURSE NOT!

I really tried to make it kinda balanced. The problem with the original Power Armor in my opinion is that it's market value is way overpriced compared to the benefits. Couple this with the flawed quality system where Legendary has double the armor but also has SIX TIMES higher market value! Since the power budget of Raids depends on the total market value of your colonies this can easily get out of hand. So how to fix this?

Easy! Since the problem is too high base value and ridiculous quality price scaling, I've removed the quality from these and made sure their value-to-protection scales better the higher tier you craft. This also prevents quality trolling, when your high level crafter rolls a shoddy Power Armor.

Don't forget that this means that any Outfit you want to include these new armors must have normal quality enabled otherwise you'll have to manually force wear. You have been warned!

As for balance, the first tier is basically the same as normal quality vanilla but can cover the hands too. The last tier makes you (arguably) more powerful than a Centipede, 90% damage reduction and 90% chance to deflect damage. You'll have a long journey ahead of you to get there, though...



Credits

I'd like to thank Ykara for giving me permission to use and modify the source of A12 EPOE. I've created this mod back in A12 for personal use and I wanted to achieve something I thought was only possible via C#. It turned out that wasn't really the case but I did anyway since this was my first DLL mod project ever and indeed I was successful. I didn't carry the DLL over to A13 though.

I'd also like to thank Shinzy for giving me permission to use two textures from the old A12 Apparello mod. These two textures are assigned to be the display textures for every Arm and Leg piece of the Modular Armor sets. If you want to use these you'll have to ask Shinzy for permission, not me.

And lastly, but certainly not least, I'd like to thank Thirite for pointing out the obvious, allowing me to fix the last thing missing from the mod to finally be release-worthy.

Textures

As mentioned above, the display textures for every Arm and Leg pieces were not made by me. Ask Shinzy if you want to use them.

I'd like to mention here that the (rather shoddy) texture for the Fusion Core was made by me. Feel free to do whatever you want with it as long as you don't claim you made it. If you think you can make something similar that's better, feel free to send me a PM. It's really just a placeholder right now.

The rest of the textures included are vanilla textures which, as far as I know, are available for anybody to be used in mods.

Compatibility

Since A17, this mod should be compatible with any other. It uses xpathing and patching to slightly change:

• Vanilla Power Armor recipe
• Mechanoid disassembly drops

Since patching happens after all the defs are loaded, unless another mod changes these exact same things via patching, everything should be ok.
Better Equipment Racks(no, I'm not gonna change it to "Better Shelves")

Have you ever wondered why the hell do Equipment Racks Shelves have quality? Have you ever wanted to make a nice medicine cabinet in your hospital? Yeah, already vanilla, thanks to yours truly!

Well fear not, for I bring you Better Equipment Racks!

Let me tell you the difference between an Awful Wooden Equipment Rack Shelf and a Legendary Wooden Equipment Rack Shelf. The latter has more than TEN times the market value! That's it, no other difference!

This is UNACCEPTABLE!

Sure, it can be used to increase the wealth of a room but wait, what's this? Sculptures exist too and they do that better? That's right, so why the hell do these things have a quality again?

Time to fix this! Since most stuff that can be placed on Equipment Racks Shelves now have a negative beauty value, let's give a beauty value to this piece of furniture. Problem solved, now there's one stat that scales with quality. Yay!

But wait, there's more!

Thanks to yours truly posting in the "Mods you'd like to see in vanilla" thread, the original, most important function of storing almost everything on the Shelf is vanilla functionality as of A17. Yup, my mod has permanently contributed to RimWorld!



Here's the GitHub link for the download.

Balance

People might actually start using this furniture now. Another source of beauty, another useful addition. Also, remember that items stored on Equipment Racks Shelves don't deteriorate.

Compatibility

As of A17, this mod should totally be fine with any other unless they add beauty to the Shelf.

More Drugs

Have you ever thought how much it sucks that most drugs can incur heavy penalties after just one use, especially in A16? Have you ever wondered why we don't have an antibiotic with somewhat realistic effects? Have you ever wanted to snort a freaking Thrumbo horn?

Well fear not, for I bring you More Drugs!

Sunrise™^*
Rise and shine motherhumper! Take one of these beautiful orange pills and brighten your day, Sunrise™^* was made just for you!
Made by refining the finest powder of white gold supplied by your friendly neighborhood junkie plantation, mixed with some high-tech stuff and cooked over burning Raiders, this stuff will surely make your life easier! Side effects? What side effects? This thing is an accepted drug on Glitterworlds, boy, like cigarettes were back on Earth in the 21th century. Except this has less cancer! What are you waiting for? Go out and buy some Sunrise™^* today!

Cure Pill™^*
Ever felt like you're about to go Berserk because those damn sensory mechanites hurt like hell? Ever wondered why you have to watch the slow death of your friend just because he caught the Flu and the next day he caught the Plague too? Do you hate Penoxycyline? Well then, I've got you covered!
Time to take the red pill and I'll guarantee this antibiotic will clean your system faster than Neo dodges bullets! Cure Pill™^* will fix you right up, buddy. What, you're in pain? No problem, this stuff has painkillers in it too! Listen to Morpheus and take the red pill today! Just don't forget that antibiotics will temporarily blow your own immune system back to the stone age too!

A17b: Thrumbo Powder™^*
Looking at that Thrumbo horn, no traders in a decade, and you want to get something out of it? Well, it's time to experiment!

Ground that horn, take a sniff and you too can feel the power of this ancient beast! Get that combat edge you need to overcome any obstacles! Take one sniff and be great. Take two and become a god! Who needs that puny Go-Juice when you can have this? Snort that Thrumbo Powder™^* and lead the charge! What could possibly go wrong, right?

*None of these are actually trademarked.

These goodies are also craftable, come with their own respective research, as well as textures.



Here's the GitHub link for the download.

Balance

Really not sure about this one. Sunrise is probably a bit too powerful right now and I might have to add Neutroamine to the recipe of Cure Pill too. Thrumbo Powder should be ok, it's a rare substitute for Go-Juice. Only time can tell if I got the balancing right. And feedback, of course.

Textures

The texture files for Sunrise and Cure Pill are based on some vanilla RimWorld textures. All I did was some slight changes and recoloring. The Thrumbo Powder one is self-made. Feel free to do whatever you want with them as long as you don't claim you made them.

Compatibility

I honestly can't think of anything that would be incompatible with this.

Quality Fix

Have you ever wondered why you're drowning in silver lategame (other than because of organ harvesting, of course)? Have you ever done the math behind the quality system?

Let me tell you the difference between a Normal Charge Rifle and a Legendary Charge Rifle. The latter has 50% more DPS while it has a market value multiplier of 600%! Do you see the problem already?

Well fear not, for I bring you Quality Fix!

In a game where the most troublesome event (a.k.a. Raid) is determined by the total market value of your colonies, you should always try to get as much stats as you can for as low additional value as you can. It's simple logic, right?

The problem with quality market price scaling in RimWorld is that it works backward. Instead of producing items with better value-to-stat ratios, higher quality weapons/armors give worse and worse ratios the higher we go. So the higher quality gear you use, the more you shoot yourself in the foot! Surely an intended behavior, right?

Anything over Exceptional is simply not worth it. Luckily, this can be easily fixed! All this mod does is change the market value scaling of quality so now most weapons retain their Normal value-to-stat ratios, while higher quality armors are now straight up always better.

Here's the GitHub link for the download.

If you want more, proper explanation regarding why I made this mod, please read the Readme on the GitHub page. It should explain everything.

Balance

Trickier than you'd think. Lower values mean less severe Raids, especially lategame, but Raiders can spawn with better stuff more frequently too. This also affects money generation via anything that produces things with quality. So unless your export consists merely of organs and drugs, you'll need more time to amass the same amount of silver you used to have.

Compatibility

Any mod that changes the market value scaling of quality above normal via patching might be troublesome.

Terraform

Have you ever wondered why your colonists can't just dig up some soil and bring it back to your mountain base? Have you ever wanted to make an artificial desert, a marsh moat or just add come lichen-covered dirt for aesthetics?

Well fear not, for I bring you Terraform!

Now, before we start. I know there are other mods that more or less do the same thing and most of them are probably more balanced than this one. On the other hand, since most of my mods were originally made just for my own personal use (just like this one), I might as well release this one too.

Obviously it wouldn't be even nearly balanced if you could just build fertile soil everywhere. I tried to make it somewhat tiered; you convert infertile diggable terrain into gravel, then you can convert gravel into any other fertile terrain type. You can also build gravel on smooth stone. However, you can't just start converting gravel into fertile soil right away. Terrain types are locked behind research so you'll gradually unlock stuff as you progress.

Here's the GitHub link for the download.

Balance

I should probably increase the work to build the different terrain types. Probably. However, as I've stated above, there are other mods out there that probably do this better.

Compatibility

This mod adds additional functions to these via patching:

• Gravel
• Sand
• Soil
• Rich Soil
• Lichen-covered Dirt
• Marsh

You might run into problems if you have any mod that also changes these. Patching overwrites def edits so beware.

[without changing]

Let's say I don't want Power Armor to appear in any trader's inventory so I can sell them one but I can't buy a new one from them.

But here's the catch: how do I do this without changing any of the TraderKinds.xml files?