Topics

 TL; DR:
Better storytelling. Colonists give you goals depending on who they are, eg pirate will suggest you to raid and pacifist to build luxurious bedrooms, if done they will work harder and happier, if not done they will become lazy or steal, but my be persuaded to change their ethics, so that pirate become peaceful, or hippiey becomes cannibal under certain conditions.


Everybody writes "mod request", so did I, but this is more of a suggestion, and I hope Tynan reads this, because he always tries to make the game to write it's own story trough it's character. However, those characters always remain passive. Player does something and a pawn reacts by having a mood bonus about what they approve and Berserking about something they don't approve. They never actively do stuff wich expresses who they are. And you might say that they aren't supposed to act in any way, that's what the player is for. But I think you can't really get to know a person just by them crying at different things.

That's the general idea, here is a sample mechanic, just for example.
So obviously pawns are controlled by the player, so the can't act freely all the time. But they can gather together every week or so to discuss how they feel about their life in the colony and what are they going to do to survive. And after they discussed this, they again obey you, but they mood changes and tantrums will reflect what they have said.

But as I said, just tantrums aren't really enough. On their meetings, colonists should deside, what to do, and their decision should become sort of a mission for you. So if colonists decide that they should build spaceship and leave, they get mood bonuses for every part of spaceship you build, and they care less about lack of comfort in the colony. The fun part is that some colonists may decide to stay, so they don't get bonuses for the ship, instead they a really annoyed by having to eat of ground and sleeping in the cold.

Here is important that they don't make these decisions randomly, instead they should have a set of opinions on any given topic, which comes from their backstory. So a pirate doesn't mind selling prisoners into slavery, because he is immoral, but he doesn't whant to leave, because in civilization he will go to prison. These opinions and ethics should also be able to change during the game, so in date circumstances a man from glitter world will agree to eat people, or a pirate will start liking people if he lives in a good colony.

There probably should be some kind of government system: either player simply choses governing ethics or pawns decide via choosing a leader, and those leader's ethics become governing ethics. Those who don't share governing ethics become disloyal pawns. Thy would work slower, sometimes go lazily watch TV, and sometimes even steal items, sell them, hide the silver and then leave when they have enough money. Loyal pawns would get bonuses to work and mood and they would try to persuade/force disloyal pawns to work and also prevent thefts.

Here is what I believe is the best way to implement this. Shamelessly stolen from stellaris and other paradox games:
Every colonist has a set of variables, responsible for his opinion in different topics, eg
major topics, not sharing many of which will make pawns disloyal
-civilian ~~ neutral ~~ military
Bonuses to civilian jobs, dislikes being armed and interacting with armed people (flirting with someone who has a grenade launcher, might get rebuffed) ~~ first get bonuses, doesn't care if armed ~~ is uncomfortable without a gun, occasionally stops civilian work and goes "stand on watch", or some other debuff to labor.
-humanist ~~ neutral ~~ selfish ~~ hater
Likes all people, socializes and works good, if disloyal will only be less hardworking, dislikes slavery and organ harvesting ~~ has less social bonuses, but is fine with imprisonment and selling to slavery, if disloyal, will often skip work ~~ will skip work and not work really hard even if loyal, if disloyal will steal stuff, but doesn't care for organ harvesting ~~ suggests slavery and organ harvesting and excecutions, works poorly unless motivated
-democratic ~~ authoritarian
Humanist, who sudgests to elect the leader via vote, persuades people to work using social skills, punishes by imprisonment  ~~ decides to become the leader using force and other authoritarian pawns, forces to work using threats, punishes via beating up and might even kill disloyal pawn

Minor topics, not sharing with doesn't make a pawn disloyal, but these responsible for generating goals, and if pawn's goals are ignored, they will also become disloyal.
-stay on planet ~~ neutral ~~ leave planet
If pawn is some rich or important person in the big world, the will whant to go back
-pacifist ~~ neutral ~~ raider
Sad if attacking other colonies ~~ will sugest to loot and pillage other colonies
-luxury life ~~ neutral ~~ life is tough
Pawn expects to live comfortably, but better social interactions and more loyal if goal aren't fulfilled ~~ pawn has less debuffs for low comfort, but expects his goals to be fulfilled

And you probably can make up many more of these.

The point is to have pawns to suggest goals which allign with  who they are. So every time they have a meeting, a pawn my suggest a goal, like "let's build normal bedrooms instead of this 3x3 barrack with 6 people", and some may support, but those who don't, will suggest other goal, like "let's raid some colony and sell some slaves", and if some of them are unfulfilled, they will become disloyal, and then they may change their ethics and opinions. Eg, if raider-slaver suggests raiding goals, and if he is happymay despite rebuffs for not raiding, he may become more humanist. Or humanist may become more pragmatic, if he suggests "don't sell people" goal, and you keep selling and everybody else agree, that is the best way to survive.

Now, I wrote a lot of stuff here. Ethics, government, crime, goals. Each of these may be implemented separately, and in any way you see fit. I'm merely attempting to point out here, that pawns are not even close to being actual characters, I hope this issues someone to make an improvement or at least a discussion. Thanks

    Hi, Rimworld!
    I'v been playing the game since alpha 8, but never really joined the community, mostly because the developer somehow was implementing every usefull feature i was thinking about.  Still, now when i loaded my alpha12 six ingame years old colony, i came up with more suggestions, and when i saw that teaser in the blog, i thought that it's the best time to share them.
    I'm going to talk about things, wich are obvious only when playing with a lot of colonists  and a large colony/colonies, because on smaller colonies you usually can easilly workarond such things, and it only get's hard in a larger scale.

    1. Working areas instead of allowed areas.
    I was very happy, when i saw allowed areas for the first time. Unfortunately, they turned out to be only usefull to contain colonists inside a building when there's a manhunting pack of tortoises or something like that. Colonists inside these areas can't go outside, even if they are starving near a pile of meals. This thing is usefull to tell them not to go in some dangerous place, but totally useless in telling them, where to go.
    In addition to them it would be nice to have working areas, wich don't restrict a colonist, instead they prioritise all possible work in the area before outside of it. So when colonist starts working, he's doing everything he can do in his working area, though, he can still go to sleep, or have a meal outside of it. That way you can prioritise building that building, or hauling those crops in a few clicks, but it wold be most usefull in large colonies.
    Imagine having a large secure underground base with lots of storage and crafting, but no soil nearby, because it's desert. If there's some soil on the other side of the map, you may whant to build and outpost for three or four colonists, so they would grow food for the rest of the colony. But it's not working too good because you those colonists, who are living in the outpost, will often go to the main base just to haul one piece of wood or clean one tile of dirt, and then go back because it's evening. Instead you could make a working area to prioritise outpost's jobs first, and unlike allowedareas it wouldn't prevent them from hauling food to the main base, or bringing some resources incase they need to build something.
    I also whant to specify, that workers should only look for jobs with 1-2-3 priorities, because i usually set 4 only for jubs i whant to prioritise manually, so they should still ignore it, unless they have done their job everywhere on the map.  Also, haulers should only carry things out of their working zone to any place on the map, not vice versa.
    Anyway, this feature would put things in order, so it's possible to see everyone doing their job, instead of that usuall chaotic ant-heap.
    2. Force current activity.
    This  thing:

    Sometimes a colonist has bed time, but you really need him to build those wires. You rightclick to force him, he builds one tile and goes to bed. And you have to do that tile by tile, as he tries to run away - ridicilous. Or even better, colonist somehow got totally joydeprived, but it's his working hours. So he's working... until he berserks.  To deal with, you have to go to the restrictions panel, change current hours to what you whant and then back how it was, wich is iritating.
    Instead, would be nice to just click here:

and then chose between "work", "joy", "sleep" or just unforcing to get back to usual schedule. So easy, so usefull. Forced activity can automatically unforce after 3-5 hours.
    3. Work swap
    I often see colonists reserving some work from the other side of the map, so those, who are closer, can't do it. It wastes a lot of time in case of hauling/building, but very dangerous in case of fires or turret repairs. It wold be just amazing, if they'd be able to swap automatically, and do what's already close to them, instead going somewhere and wasting lots of time.
    4. Snacks
    Sometimes colonists go to do some work, and then they suddenly become hungry, so they sit on the floor, and eat a meal out of their inventory. Bad thing is that they have "ate on ground", wich isn't that bad, but still. How about a SNACK, wich they can quickly eat with no penalties, and have no urge to eat until the end of the day, when they can finally have a proper meal. Just a funny little feature.

    Of course it may seem that these features are useles in a normal game with less then ten colonists, and that having more is just incompatible with fun, storygenerating part of the game. But such gameplay becomes chaotic pain in the bottom only because the game doesn't support it, and with these simple features you can organize a colony of any size so it would make sense.
    Anyway, it's just the first part, i dont whant to throw everything at the same time, because it's quite a lot to read already, and it's much easier to discuss things part by part.