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I'm wondering if these mods would be possible to create:

1) No Through/Access Only zones

Colonists wouldn't enter these zoned areas unless they had a job that gave them a reason to be there. It would stop a colonist, for example, from walking through a freezer to get somewhere rather than using the nice corridor next to it.

2) Animal refuge area

A way of sending all animals to a safe refuge area with one click when the base is under attack, rather than having to change the current allowed zone for every animal individually.

3) Universal colony cap

So that founding new bases does not increase the overall population cap, instead of the current system whereby building a new base will increase colony size by 20. This can currently be done manually every time one founds a new colony by adjusting the "populationIntentFactorFromPopCurve" values in the Storytellers.xml, but this is not ideal.

I've been creating a systems chart as a guide to creating an efficient base. Here's what I have so far - anything missing?

Lines represent linked areas that one will want to minimize the distance between in order to maximize efficiency.

My last game, in which I used Randy, seemed a lot easier than the game before, in which I used Cassandra. Both games, I used the Rough difficulty level. I'm not sure how much of it was to do with me just getting better at the game.

Anyone else have any thoughts?

The complete lack of AI coding to prevent colonists from automatically shooting each other in this game is a contentious issue. Many are fine with the ludicrously unrealistic and brutal non sequitur friendly fire incidents this can lead to, but others think it's really quite silly and spoils the game.

There are now mods that fix this issue, by having colonists hold fire instead of automatically shooting their fellow colonists in such situations. These mods have also shown that such a layer of coding does not negatively impact on game performance, or on anything else noticeable. So it has now been demonstrated that the lack of any AI coding in this area is not a technical issue, but rather a conscious design decision, perhaps so as not to remove "drama" events from the game, even if they are negative and make no sense.

The subject of friendly fire in this game has been brought up many times, and so I won't retread old ground about how nonsensical and inconsistent it is that colonists will do literally many dozens of actions automatically (eat, sleep, flee from things, view art, fight fires, watch TV, cook meals, research etc), but not have the basic "intelligence" to hold fire when another colonist is located between them and their target - they will open fire 100% of the time, without exception, as if the friendly colonist or colonists in their line of fire did not exist.

While I'm very much in the "lack of friendly prevention fire is dumb" camp, I also believe in looking for solutions that attempt to navigate a middle path, in order to find something that is acceptable to both sides of a debate.

Why not reflect players' diversity of opinion on the subject of friendly fire in the game itself?

A middle path solution would be to combine both approaches - just as some players of this game are fine with their colonists firing away without a care in the world or a thought in their head, there are others that think colonists should show a bit of common sense with the guns, just as most real people would do, and indeed how colonists themselves do most of the rest of the time in the game.

This could be reflected in the game by having colonists use an anti-friendly fire system, similar to the mods that have already been created, but have those with the Psychopath or Trigger-Happy traits ignore it.

There seems to be a lot of benefits to pawns having the Psychopath trait, without many drawbacks.

Similarly, in the real world, "trigger-happy" has a negative connotation, meaning that someone is liable to discharge their weapon at inappropriate times, thus possibly putting others in danger. In Rimworld, however, the Trigger-Happy trait is only a positive trait, as the aiming time bonus exceeds the accuracy penalty.

To conclude, a combined system such as described would:

- remove most of the possibility of mindlessly silly incidences of colonists shooting each other for no reason
- still have friendly fire "drama" incidents, but they will now at least make more sense because the shooter was a Psychopath or Trigger-Happy*
- bring a strategic layer of managing your Psychopaths and Trigger-Happys in battle without them shooting other colonists
- satisfy proponents of both sides of this debate
- reflect the Rimworld  playing community and their diversity of thought

* Note that the mods that address the friendly fire issue do not eliminate all possibility of friendly fire incidents from the game, so, even if using anti-Friendly Fire measures, it would still be possible for freak accidents to occur and for a non-Psychopath or Trigger-Happy colonist to accidentally shoot another.

There's a bit of transparency at the back of the Dresser graphic, so you can see the floor through it.

There are many times that colonists will walk through areas where one doesn't want them to walk, such as walking through a freezer to get somewhere instead of using a corridor. I think the game would benefit from the introduction of a new zoning type, called something like a "no through" or "access only" zone. Colonists would not walk through these areas on their day-to-day business unless they had a job or some other reason that involved them being there. If drafted, a colonist would ignore these restrictions. Certain jobs, like firefighting duty, might also ignore them.

Here are some areas that it would be helpful to have such a zone for:

1) Freezers

Typically one will want at least two entrances to a freezer - one to to the kitchen and another towards wherever people will be bringing harvested crops and dead animals from. This means, though, that colonists will sometimes walk through the freezer instead of through an adjacent corridor to get some place, or to visit the kitchen to pick up a meal.

2) Storage rooms

Storage rooms are full of ugly stuff which is slow to walk through. Often these rooms can have multiple doors for easy access from any direction. This means that colonists will often walk through such rooms instead of walking in the adjacent stone tile corridors.

3) Bedrooms

Viewing sculptures and sitting at a table to eat would not be counted as activities that allowed access, so colonists would not, with access-only zones, be able to go into other colonists' bedrooms to view their sculptures/eat at their tables. They should be able to do so in their own designated bedrooms, though. An activity like cleaning, on the other hand, would be a reason for being there, and therefore allow the cleaner to have access to the room.

4) Prisoner rooms

For a similar reason to bedrooms - so colonists don't go in there to eat at tables or view art.

5) Bunkers

Sometimes colonists will walk through defensive bunkers rather than, for example, a base entrance. In the early part of my previous game, I built a 5x5 bunker with doors and sandbags in the outdoors between a couple of buildings a few dozen tiles apart. Instead of walking around the bunker through open space, the colonists would walk through it, climbing over sandbags and through two sets of doors to do so.

6) Corpse-dumping and other ugly areas

You'd want colonists hauling bodies to be able to go to such places, but if a colonist didn't need to be there, it would be better if they took an alternate route to their wherever their destination was.

7) Any time colonists take unrealistic routes

Pretty much any room type can feasibly have situations where colonists will walk through them, using them as thoroughfares, instead of using adjacent corridors, particularly when then these rooms have multiple entrances.

What are the thoughts of other Rimworlders? Can you think of any other areas where such a zone type might be useful? Would there be any potential drawbacks or unintended consequences?

Stone tile and flagstone both cost four stone to build. Flagstone is quicker to build, with a work to build value of 9, while tile takes longer, with a value of 19.

Flagstone produces no beauty, however, while tile has a beauty value of 1 per tile. So stone flagstone floor provides the same beauty as wood floor, yet wood floor has a time to build of only 2, and in most biomes, it is probably easier to get a steady supply of wood than stone blocks, which also need to be cut to size at the stonecutter's table. Wood floor costs three wood to build. Although it says that wood floor is flammable, I have not seen this happen.

So, do people think this is currently well-balanced? I think that perhaps flagstone, at least, might have its cost reduced from 4 to 3.

I was thinking of starting a new game on an ice sheet world by lowering the global temperature at game setup. Will the non-colonist pawns, such as raiders, caravan traders and visitors, wear warmer clothing than normal, or will I find them constantly dying of hypothermia on the map?

It would be good if colonists could do some things while drafted.

Fixing a door, for example, as colonists will often open the door immediately after completion of the repair, as they have to be in auto/undrafted mode to do this, whereupon they are eaten by manhunting cobras.

Maybe hauling specified items, too. I don't see why one shouldn't be able to tell a drafted colonist to haul something and then have them wait when they've arrived at their destination, rather than them then automatically go off and do other things.

What happens to outdoor lights - wood-burning torch lamps and electrical lights - in rain? Amazingly, Google did not provide me the answer to this.

If they are destroyed by the rain, would they be made safe from water damage by placing them next to a wall with a 1x1 roof over them?

I want to build an outdoor walled patio garden with table and stools, flower pots, statues and a horseshoes court.

When the horseshoes pin is placed, the room counts as a Rec Room, but the addition of the table and stools turns it into a Dining Room. Does it matter? I already have a Rec Room, and also a Dining Room by the kitchen, so the patio is probably not going to become a primary venue for either either of these uses. Will the horseshoes joy activity be hampered at all by taking place in, in effect, a Dining Room?

A couple more lighting options that I think should be in the vanilla game.

Firstly, warm lighting. The game's default white light is good for workshops and utility rooms, but it's not very cosy-looking for residential areas. So I've modified some lights to produce warm lighting for bedrooms and the Rec Room. The colour I've used is exactly the midpoint between the default white light and the orange light from the MoreFurniture mod, so 217,167,104,0. I was going to call it "incandescent", but it didn't fit on one line in the UI, so I've called it "warm".

Secondly, wall lights. I'm using the Wall Light mod. Standing lamps look a bit silly in corridors, while the wall lamps look much neater. I think they should be in the base game.

Here's a couple of screenshots using both warm lighting and wall lights. I also modified the integrated lamp/end table from MoreFurniture mod, which itself would be a great addition to the game, to produce warm light rather than white light in the bedrooms.

I played a few hundred hours of this game a few months ago, and my biggest gripe with it was the numerous mindless "friendly fire" incidents that I felt really spoilt the game.

Returning to Rimworld a few months later, I saw there was an Avoid Friendly Fire mod, with almost thirty thousand subscribers on Steam, and subscribed to it myself. I haven't had any major issues with colonists shooting each other while using this mod, although one colonist did suffer a non-fatal bullet wound from another colonist, so the mod doesn't make friendly fire incidents impossible.

I discussed last year the possibility of having colonists hold fire instead of shooting each other when such situations arose, and one concern was that this extra layer of processing might affect game performance, although I haven't noticed any impact on this using the mod.

So the Avoid Friendly Fire mod appears to work as hoped. For me, it's a no-brainer that this should be part of the vanilla game. What are the opinions of other Rimworlders?

I'm playing a Randy game and now have 20+ colonists. I think I prefer having less colonists to deal with and so would like to use the Cassandra critical population cap of 18, rather than Randy's 50. Can I do this with an active game?

The file that governs this is, I think, Storytellers.xml in RimWorld\Mods\Core\Defs\Storyteller.

1) Is it possible to edit files in the main Rimworld folders directly? Some games will only recognize changes if they are put in a specified mods folder, and not those that are made to core files.

2) If so, will changes to this file register in an active game that has already begun?

3) Is it simply a case of replacing this section of code from the Randy settings:

Code Select Expand

<populationIntentFromPopCurve>
<points>
<li>0, 8</li>
<li>1, 4</li>
<li>5, 1</li>
<li>9, 0.5</li>
<li>13, 0</li>
<li>50, -1</li>
</points>
</populationIntentFromPopCurve>


...with this from the Cassandra settings?

Code Select Expand


<populationIntentFromPopCurve>
<points>
<li>0, 8</li>
<li>1, 4</li>
<li>5, 1</li>
<li>9, 0.5</li>
<li>13, 0</li>
<li>18, -1</li>
</points>
</populationIntentFromPopCurve>


Thanks in advance.

I've set up a second colony, near my original one, to collect resources from. There's a basic shack there, but nobody lives there permanently.

This second colony gets events, like raids, even when there's nobody there. Will having this additional colony affect the frequency of similar events in my original colony?

I can see two ways of it doing this:

1) Raids happen with the same frequency, but are now split between the two colonies, so the original colony only gets half as many raids as before (and in my instance, the raids on my second colony are inconsequential unless there's anyone there).

2) I presume that events don't happen concurrently at different colonies, so if one colony is suffering a raid, then there won't be one at the other (since the human player cannot fight two battles simultaneously)? If so, then, in my instance, there could be a raid event going on at the second colony, until the raiders eventually get bored and leave the map, during which time the original colony would be "immune" from a raid.

Are these factors in play?

As I mentioned in another thread, I think the game's "high-beauty" carpets are a bit dull and feel that the beauty-neutral wooden floor is much more visually appealing. I was therefore thinking of modding the game's carpet graphic textures, by giving them a pattern or something, to make them look nicer.

I have located the game's carpet texture, reproduced below:



The carpet graphic is 1024x1024 pixels. From reading around, I think that a game square is 64x64 pixels, but that it may allow for a larger-sized graphic by automatically resizing it. So it may be that the image above represents a square of 16 by 16 game squares, or it could be just a single square.

Perhaps the best way to find out would be to test-draw on the carpet graphic and then see how it is reproduced in-game.

At this stage, I am lost and need somebody to hold my hand. I've looked at the mod tutorials on the wiki, but still don't know how to create a mod to insert my modded texture into the game.

Any ideas?

I think the game's "high-beauty" carpets are a bit dull and feel that the beauty-neutral wooden floor is much more visually appealing. I was therefore thinking of modding the game's carpet graphic textures, by giving them a pattern or something, to make them look nicer.

I have followed the instructions set out in this thread, including installing the DDS plugin, but opening the .dds files in GIMP just produces images like this:



Any ideas as to what's happening here and what's going wrong?

A place for further discussion on the subject of this thread:

https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=32037.0

I have over forty animals now of various different biological Classes and Orders. These forty or so animals are divided into four different Allowed Areas according to their type and function (pets, hunting pets, farm animals, outdoor roaming animals).

Whenever the base is attacked, I send them all to a new "Animal Refuge" area for safety. This requires changing the allowed areas of 40+ animals. When the attack is over I have to change the 40+ animals back to each of their original Allowed Areas.

This could be simplified in one of two ways:

i) A way to group animals together in the Allowed Areas tab. So I could create a "Farm Animals" group and put all my turkeys, cows and so on into it and would only have to change one allowed area tab for all of them each time.

ii) Have a designated "Animal Refuge" area that all animals will go to with just a single click for use in times of emergency. When the emergency is over, one would be able to unclick it and all the animals would go back to their original allowed areas.

Sometimes one needs to get stuff from one stockpile to another fast. If one stockpile has higher priority than another, colonists will eventually move stuff between them. Unlike items that aren't in stockpiles, one cannot right-click to order a colonist to prioritize hauling items between stockpiles. Instead, one currently has to use the "Delete Zone" function to un-stockpile the square one wants to move stuff from in order to be able to prioritize hauling from it.