Topics

Combat is somewhat fun, but it lacks nuance. I think the complexity and fun of combat could be greatly expanded if variables like pawn speed and accuracy could be affected by active player decisions. To accomplish this, I suggest three combat stances to be choosable by the player, sort of like how colonist reactions to threats when not drafted can be chosen by the player.

Stance 1: Normal
The current default stance for everybody. Pawns walk at their normal speed, shoot with their normal accuracy, melee with normal strength, and take cover normally.

Stance 2: Prone
Pawns lie down on the ground to take careful aim. Aiming time is 1.5x longer and about 50% more accurate. Pawns are harder to hit when in the open, and are much better at using cover, but move very slowly and take time to transition into and out of the prone stance. A prone pawn is not in a good position to engage in melee combat.

Stance 3: Running
Pawns move faster to take advantage of mobility. Pawns move twice as fast as normal, but are less accurate and get tired much faster while they move (four times faster seems reasonable to me). Running pawns can shoot while they move, but are much less accurate than normal/shooting while standing still. Pawns who are moving while in the running stance have a melee bonus against pawns who are standing still.

I suggest that pawns start off in the normal stance whenever they are drafted, with three buttons for each stance option.

These stances can interact with existing pawn traits. A pawn with the jogger trait, for instance, might not move twice as fast as normal when in the running stance, but doesn't get tired as quickly as pawns who don't have the jogger trait. A Careful Shooter might not have an increase in aiming time while in the prone stance, but does get an accuracy bonus.

Prioritization is nice, but I often find it lacking, as things that I set to be high priority—like cleaning after a battle—nonetheless take ages to get done. For this reason I would love the ability to assign particular tasks to be prioritized at particular times of day from the "restrict" menu. It would be a whole lot nicer to be able to tell everyone to clean for one hour a day versus dealing with the hassle of setting cleaning as a priority, forgetting about it, noticing it's not getting done, finally giving up and making it the only priority, resetting all priorities, etc..

Playing A11, getting back into Rimworld for the first time in months, I found myself frustrated that colonists who were arrested for having mental breaks are so hard to re-recruit and return to productive life. After several rounds of this I finally realized I could just release them and they would go back to work.

I learned the wrong Rimworld!

Are there any other recent small improvements that make old ways of playing maladaptive?

I'd really love to see an incident in Rimworld that mimics episodes 19A/19B of Welcome to Night Vale. In those episodes, every citizen of Night Vale has a double of themselves created by a sandstorm, and every citizen fights their double to the death.

If you've paid attention to RW lore, you know that this kind of surrealism is fully possible in-universe, and I think it's an under-explored angle of the game.

Some ideas for implementing it:
This might be precipitated by an object or weather event, like the evil ship part or the volcanic winter.
It could be as simple as a raid featuring pawns identical to the colony's pawns, but healthy, or perhaps every humanlike pawn on the map could be cloned on the spot and go berserk until its double is dead.
There should be thoughts associated with the event (A new "I had to kill myself" event or perhaps the existing "Witnessed an ally's death" would suffice).

If anyone is interested in doing this, I'd love to participate, especially with regards to the writing involved. (I'd do it myself, but I don't know how to code at all!)

Waste!

These people don't poop!

Food doesn't seem to generate any other kind of waste!

People never get dirty and don't need baths!

Reasons waste might be nice to have in the game:
It's a small but reasonable challenge to have to set up a system for managing waste.
It adds verisimilitude.
Think about the consequences having a dirty base in the middle of a siege. I bet you wish you'd built a HyperAutoToilet now!

Productive applications of waste:
Fertilizer
Compost (creates soil you could put down?)
Psychically generated fecal demons

Possible implementations:
Latrine zones
Buckets for prisoners
HyperToilets that turn waste into soil or fertilizer
Potato (etc) leavings that can be packed into compost piles that turn into soil
Regular toilets and waste lines that deliver waste to e.g. fields to fertilize them
Showers/Sonic Showers
Hyper Washing Machines
Medical waste (and another need for incinerators)

From today's changelog:

Player can no longer magically toggle power on any item. Rather, you designate power to be toggled and the colonists go do it.

I suggest that similar logic be applied to door locking: make colonists necessary to lock doors.

A further implication of this change would be that attackers would be able to open unlocked doors, and would only have to break a door down if it were locked.

Perhaps down the line, the ability to let players lock doors and toggle building power by themselves could be granted through research and a powered "base management computer" building (or something like that).

Jan 9
You can now rescue incapacitated neutral people and heal them. Their faction will be appreciative.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt2FWAbXinY

When I saw this excellent addition in the changelog, I got a little curious about how seasons on Mars work.

"Wrote a new time-of-day calculator that determines a proper sun glow from latitude, time of year, and time of day. Now, equatorial regions have the same long days year-round, while northern areas have shallow days or varying lengths, and can even have no proper night at certain times of year."

Apparently, Mars' closest approach triggers massive global dust storms:

"The 25.2° tilt of the planet's equator with respect to the plane of its orbit imposes an Earth-like progression of the seasons. The approximate alignment of the Martian northern winter (southern summer) solstice with the planet's closest approach to the Sun appears to trigger occasional global dust storms sometimes lasting up to several weeks."

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/allison_02/

I think it would be very neat if Rimworld had something analogous to this. Maybe not global dust storms, but maybe instead once or twice yearly extreme weather events that push the limits of the biome's weather patterns and mark that time of year as special and interesting.

I'd really like to see buildings in the game that allow for input, autonomous time-based work, and output.

Example: an oven.

How would an oven work? Well, in real life, when you want to make a cake, you mix the stuff, put in in the oven, let it cook, take it out, and decorate it. The chain of production could be:
Raw ingredients mix to become unfinished cake
> Unfinished cake is placed in an oven and becomes an undecorated cake
>> Undecorated cake is worked on by a colonist and becomes a Cake (awful)

The oven itself consumes energy while it cooks the cake, but the colonist also puts time and skill into mixing and decorating the cake. In this way, technology and pawn characteristics are intermingled in a satisfying way because the player decided to set up the cake mixing station (or whatever), build and power an oven, train up or find a good cook, gather ingredients, and make a cake.

A simpler idea is something like a 3d printer. The printer itself could take in metal (or whatever) and every so often produce a widget, which could be "designed" by a pawn with the research skill to produce widgets of a certain quality. Subsequent research would allow for widgets of increased quality. (Or, say, Nutrient Paste Dispenser parts which use food more efficiently. Etcetera.)

An example of a thing I tried to mod in, but couldn't because the game doesn't work like that, would be a recipe for a simple meal which could be cooked at a campfire which would consume 1 log, 10 meat, and produce a ~Legendary Hamburger~ (or just 10 cooked pieces of meat). In this case the log would be consumed as fuel and the reaction would produce the cooked meat. (When I tried, the log would wind up as an ingredient in the meal, which, aside from being a bit weird, actually produced error messages, rendering it useless as a mod.)

Rimworld is ostensibly a sci-fi game, but so far there's not actually a lot one can do with the technology in it. Interesting interactions with machines would therefore be a good addition to the game.

"A9: Map generation is now in a def and moddable again."

This gave me an idea: why not push starting equipment out to defs?

Also, it would be nice if starting equipment varied by storyteller and difficulty level. Right now, if you land on the tundra in winter with phoebe on basebuilder mode, your survivors don't even get one parka.

1. RimWorld has a lot of solar flare events, which makes me think RW's system must be a hazardous place to live. Which makes me wonder: why shouldn't the colony have to worry about, say, radiation events as well? Special clothes might be required to shield a colonist from the harmful effects of radiation, making them a priority for a fledgling colony. Lasting negative effects might include illness, reduced organ function (losing eyesight, etc..)

2. Psychic events are pretty interesting, and have a lot of potential. I suggest that, in addition to or instead of blanket effects, psychic drones might also cause delusional thoughts which result in colonists having negative buffs about things that haven't happened (Lost an ally, colonist unburied), or even give strong desires to colonists (I must butcher X corpses! I must kill [colonist]! I must destroy a battery!) which result in colonists acting autonomously and resulting in negative consequences if their desires aren't fulfilled.

3. Siege weapons could stand to be more siege-y. I honestly think they're just a nuisance right now. Perhaps in the future, sieges could use weapons with longer-lasting effects, like a chlorine mortar than splatters chlorine sludge in an area of the base, which in turn releases dangerous gas for a period of time, and then must be cleaned up.

A simple idea: the ability send one of your colonists off to establish or improve relations with a faction.

1. Choose a diplomat from the faction screen with instructions to e.g. offer resources or just schmooze. The colonist leaves the map in X direction.
2. A timer ticks down (5-15 days) and you learn about the results when they come back (or don't). Depending on the colonist's social skill and traits (psychopaths might be good to send to pirates, and not so good to send to towns), the mission could result in greatly improved relations, a cessation to hostilities pending tribute, the faction kills the diplomat, or the diplomat is attacked/captured and escapes.

I suggest getting rid of geothermal energy, because it's an unsatisfying gameplay element. Most of RimWorld has some kind of "breath" to it: turrets must be turned on and off, traders come and go, crops must be planted and harvested, food must be produced, metals must be gathered, the colony must be defended with force. RimWorld is made of moving parts, which makes it interesting. In contrast, a geothermal generator is basically just a big battery, but more reliable. It's static and constant. Raiders don't prioritize attacking geothermal generators, so it's not really a flash point for conflict. It renders solar panels and batteries redundant for quite a while, but unlike the solar panel/battery combination, they don't really encourage expansion, and they don't have a built-in rhythm (the day-night cycle). I've actually stopped using geothermal generators, and I like it better because I feel that they just sort of sit around doing everything you want, rather than requiring some kind of regular attention or management.

The more I play RW, the more it seems weird to me that physical strength is non-existent. In the real world, it affects how hard you can punch, how well you can move with a heavy load, what objects you can lift and how quickly, etc.. But the abilities of RW pawns are solely affected by skills; they can walk around all day carrying heavy rifles while moving boulders without any cost or long-term benefit.

In the future, I suggest that RimWorld incorporate strength, as well as other attributes such as endurance, as factors affecting the physical capabilities of pawns, and that the physical requirements of various tasks be taken into account comprehensively.

Personally, I really want to watch a housemate or a politician transform from a soft, coddled creature of civilization into a scraggly, toughened survivor, and this is an important way to be able to illustrate that.

Slavery, as it currently exists in RimWorld, is a bit troublesome. Although the game ostensibly takes place in a survival situation, the mechanics mean that the player will soon be taking on the role of a plantation owner by judging the capabilities of enslaved bodies and buying or selling accordingly. I've even seen some people say they trade off colonists for ones with better characteristics.

Aside from the whole "This Is Problematic" angle, slavery's implementation is thematically inconsistent and could do with some rethinking.

• What if, instead of purchasing slaves to grow the colony's population and increase production, we purchased wreck survivors? That is, the slave ships (or, why not pirate ships?) that come by could have captured survivors of the wrecked ship, who would be more naturally inclined to join up with the colony. Some of the other wreck survivors could be spouses, family members, or colleagues of the original three, giving a psychological and story-based incentive to find them, collect them, and ultimately escape with them.
• Nearby towns and tribes might also have captured some survivors, and might be willing to part with their "guests" for a price in some commodity (higher if they're hostile, but every community needs resources, right?).

In addition to changing the central mechanic of population growth from "slavery" to "rescue," there are also thematically consistent changes that could be made to slavery as it stands to make it less abstract and bloodless.

• After a slave enters the colony, they often assume a status effectively equal to the wreck survivors; everyone gets along and forgets that anyone was enslaved. But what if a slave wanted freedom? What if they were associated with a faction, and that faction knew you were buying their people as slaves? The contradictions between slave and master would add a completely new dimension to this mechanic.
• Purchased slaves often wind up outnumbering wreck survivors or "POWs" who join the colony. But there's no real mechanism of control. What if slaves wore explosive collars or had implanted mental control devices? It would be more plausible, and require more thought and choice on the part of the player, if slaves had to be coerced and could be manumitted.
• Mechanisms of controlling people often have downsides. A slave with an explosive collar or a brain chip probably wouldn't have access to their full capacities as a person, in terms of intellect or affect.

I've been thinking about this for a while, so I hope these thoughts are of some use.

Although I like the idea of mechanoids, especially the centipedes, I've found them pretty underwhelming opponents overall. It takes very little ingenuity or risk to kill them, unless perhaps they come in numbers. Here are three suggestions to make them something fearsome in the relatively near term. The first is to remedy the weakness of individual centipedes, while the second and third are more speculative.

1. AI change: I've noticed that centipedes, especially centipedes armed with rapid fire weapons, have a hard time even scratching the paint on turrets. This is because they start shooting at turrets as soon as they get into range; they're attacking at the very edge of their ability to fire accurately. Meanwhile, the settler with the lee-enfield the colony started with is chipping away at the centipede steadily. Since centipedes are basically tanks, they should take advantage of their superior health and move in much closer before they fire automatic weapons. (That's the reason tanks were developed: to breach enemy lines and cause havoc in the rear.) It would also make them more difficult to deal with if their aggression priority were structures rather than colonists, so that if the player tried to delay or distract the centipede by using the much faster colonists to outmaneuver the centipede, the centipede's threat to the colony itself would not be diminished. 

2. Let them consume items on the field. If a centipede is low on health, it would be more interesting, and force the player to be more proactive, if it could retreat and consume metal, food, or even human corpses in order to regain health.

3. Let centipedes create smaller melee fighting units. Wouldn't it be delightfully grim to watch a centipede consume dead muffalo, squirrels, and humans, only to produce a group of weird beetles dedicated to your destruction? This could be a primary feature of mechanoid sieges. Instead of a few centipedes to worry about, the player would also have to consider facing down an indefinite number of secondary enemies, necessitating decisive moves to take out centipedes and rendering long-term wall-offs a doomed strategy when faced with this unique threat.

Thanks for reading!

Is it possible to mod diplomacy with external factions? I'm interested in adding things like alternate gifting options, maybe even receiving demands from hostile factions. That kind of thing doesn't seem to be in XML, so maybe it's an opportunity to learn some C#, but I don't know where to begin. Any direction would be appreciated.

I think it would give a good flavor to the new factions system if factions had individualized ethical systems which affected their diplomatic relations with the player. If I waylay a member of The Helpful Geese while they're walking through my colony and kill them for their +boomrat hide trenchcoat+, it would make sense that their faction would respond in a particular way to that act. Potential demands for restitution by that group might include giving up one of one's own colonists to be killed, paying a certain amount of silver for the +boomrat hide trenchcoat+, or the surrender of all our weapons. Alternately, their ethics might simply demand the extermination of one's colony.

With enough parameters, one might never encounter the same group twice. The Careening Alligators might be peaceful Luddites who secretly harbor a shameful love accele-potatoes, whereas the Childish Wombats are intolerant technophiles who only like mohawks.

It could probably get goofy and unrealistic at times, but "goofy and unrealistic" are known human traits. Overall I think it would bolster the theme of endless, wild diversity to which the game aspires.

[stuff]

Resource Kompression Mod

Is your base overrun with psychotic potatoes?

Are you drowning in pistols, rifles, and grenades, with no idea how to get rid of them all?

Do you desperately need options to deal with the sheer volume of stuff that accumulates in a long-running colony?

Are you pulling your hair out over all those darn simple meals you have to keep track of just to keep people from cracking?

Worry no more! The Resource Kompression Mod is here! Now you can use up to 90% less space for storing items.

What it does:

The Resource Compression Mod adds (semi-)balanced in-game options for packing resources into smaller spaces through special recipes. At two new worktables, you can:

• Pack 300 of Potatoes, Berries, or Agave Fruit into food crates at a new Cannery Table (requires the cooking skill).
• Convert Simple Meals into MREs, meal items which have no expiration date and which stack to 25 units, also at the Cannery Table (also requires cooking).
• Create crates of 10 weapons at the Packing Table (requires the crafting skill)
• Buy and sell crates from trading ships.
• Stack Silver to 750 units per tile.
• Buy Uranium at 1000 Silver each, and sell back to any trader for 750 silver. (Uranium now stacks to only 4 units).
• Arrange for "special" surprises for raiders who are foolish enough to burn your Frag Grenade or Molotov Cocktail crates.

Screenshots

http://i.imgur.com/n2JNZ96.jpg


http://i.imgur.com/NmOm1TB.jpg

How to use:

Download and install in your mods folder, then start a new colony to use the Resource Kompression Mod. Warning: because this alters too many def files, this mod is incompatible with existing saves.

Authors:

Nasikabatrachus: New def files for mod.
mrofa: New textures for mod.

Known Issues:

• Incompatible with existing saves.
• Meat Crate recipes are not included in this version because the game doesn't use meat defs in recipes properly, so including them would allow "laundering" of human meat into muffalo meat, etc.. This functionality will be fully implemented when Alpha 3 comes out. Short of that, I will post another version of the mod with meat packing recipes in a day or so.



• Grenade and Molotov Crates don't automatically explode after they are "lit". If they are damaged enough to be "lit" by the old Blasting Charge "about to go off" texture, they will remain that way indefinitely unless they are destroyed or consumed by the unpacking recipe. If you manage to save your explosives crates from a fire, you don't have to put up with them permanently sparking: just unpack the affected crates and repack them.
  

Please let me know of any issues you encounter with this mod so I can fix them as quickly as possible.

Existing Save Compatible Version [link]

Original Version Download \/ \/ \/

[attachment deleted by admin: too old]

[NOTE]

I don't know why I never thought of it before, but today I made a very simple mod to solve a pet peeve of mine.

Usually, after many days in game, the desert ends up looking kind of, well, hairy:

http://puu.sh/7Cjrs.png

Not only does it look kind of ugly, it also doesn't make any sense. Why would the grass be growing like that if it wasn't that way already? On a newly generated map, the sand is clear of grass, giving it a strong desert-y feeling, but that is eventually erased.

I much prefer my maps like this:

http://puu.sh/7Cjxv.png

This mod solves the problem by reducing the fertility level of sand to .01, below any plant's threshold for growing. To use this, simply load the clean sand folder into your mod folder. Or, if you prefer, just copy and paste its TerrainDefs folder into another mod.

NOTE: cannot be used with existing saves.

[attachment deleted by admin: too old]