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I thought crafting skill also affects the speed of work (especially, _only_ speed for some of these tasks where quality isn't a factor), so in a way it would make sense that as one does the work (e.g. cutting stone), he learns to become faster in it.  But it does not make sense that he would, as a side effect, become better tailor by cutting stones... But then again, it doesn't make sense to become faster stone cutter or better weapon smith by being tailor, either, but so it currently goes... So, obviously, making sense doesn't have much weight in this game's design.

I do understand that it is not a bug, though, and the related balance issues. I also got surprised by this at first, but IIRC, I managed to google the answer to that mystery, perhaps because I was already a bit suspicious about skill balance when I started with the cutting stones task the first time.

Oh, but shelves don't have a beauty stat, do they?

(Vanilla) Jade shelf (masterwork) has beauty stat 50, and shown in its info. So yeah, unless I misunderstood something, they do have beauty stat. But indeed, in the room beauty display mode, it is not shown to have a value, and the room's beauty doesn't change when moving that (empty) shelf out of or back in to the room.  Room's space, wealth and impressiveness does still change, so it is only the beauty effect missing.  As tested by poor Mila hauling that "decorative" (but apparently not really) jade shelf in and out the recreation/living/dining room.

I'd consider that a bug, since most other furniture with non-zero beauty stat do work as expected, radiating their effect into the mood of the nearby pawns, especially ones that have material choices and quality.

In situations where a room has door (or more than one door), and monitoring and keeping that room clean by using the 'room stats display' and 'beauty display'. Or trying to.

Problem #1 - beauty display doesn't show dirt effect in door tiles

The beauty stat view doesn't show any value/effect about dirt for tiles with doors, so it is not possible to see when/if they have dirt. (I have not checked if it could be seen with doors that would have a non-zero beauty value themselves, i.e. marble doors.) Only way to find them is to simply try to select a colonist and right click that door tile. If the menu doesn't have option to clean something in there, the tile may or may not be dirty; if the option appears, it certainly has that dirt. (Well, another option is passive; make someone cleaning a high priority and if they come near the tile, they will clean it.)

Problem #2 - delay between dirt dropping and becoming possible to clean it up

Even worse, when dirt is dropped by a colonist (under door or anywhere), it takes a moment before cleaning it becomes available in that menu. Or more correctly, before cleaning it becomes possible in general (even when beauty view and graphics shows the dirt there). Yet it affects the cleanliness stat immediately. Thus, it is possible to see room's stat showing there is dirt, but no dirt can be found anywhere, and no option to clean under doors (as if they were clean tiles). (And no, certain buildings which increase dirtiness is not the case here).

Problem #3 - room cleanliness stat is not updated after dirt is cleared in door tiles

Also, once the door-tile has been cleaned finally, the room's cleanliness stat does not change to reflect that... until e.g. starting to use stove, at which moment it will get updated to correct value. I would expect the room stat to be updated the same way as for non-door tile cleanups, i.e. immediately after each unit of dirt is removed.

Minor thing #4 - how dirt in door tiles affects both sides at full effect

While I think this last one is not a bug, per se, it still seems "incorrect"; Apparently dirt under door tiles affects both connected rooms with full effect. I would somehow count only a share of it to each connected room. A simple approach would be to apply half the effect to each room, even if that isn't quite correct in more exotic arrangement where door connects more than two rooms. In most cases I'd expect doors to be connected to two rooms (or room + outside), so the simple approach should be enough (for me, anyway )


Reproduction

Create a "typical" colony with a number of normal rooms along hall-way with normal door(s) to that hall way, and I'd suggest some rooms connected directly with each other (recommending kitchen and freezer). The rooms should have floor type of smoothed/carpet/any "tile/wood, to see the dirt better. Make sure colonists have reasons to move around and cause dirt, e.g. by making one room butcher, another corpse storage, another meat storage, hall way to be outside with natural dirt floor and animals herding. (etc.)  That should emhasize dirt accumulation

Keep all colonists NOT doing cleaning, except one with lowest priority. With that one colonist, manually keep the rooms' main tiles clean, I recommend kitchen. (This should already reveal the #2, possibly #4, along the way.)

Once it is spotted that the room stats shows dirty room but room's normal tiles are all clean, check doors manually (right click menu tries). When the dirt there is spotted, note beauty display not showing negative score at the door tile (confirms #1), note the room's stat (for rooms on both side of the door, if possible), stop any other colonists doing anything in that room, clean the door tile, recheck room stat immediately after that; not changed (confirms part of #3).

Order some colonist use some working place in that room (e.g. stove), and keep observing the room's stats while the colonist approaches. The cleanliness changes when the utility is used. (Other part of #3).


(Edited for closer to correct terms, clarity, and added reproduction ideas.
Also, I have a save game file that can be used to check 1, 3 and maybe 4, but problem 2 probably needs just watching them move around and when spotting them drop new dirt, trying to force-clean it immediately.  1,3 and 4 are also easy to check but may take a random while to get the dirt in door tile.  I'll try and arrange that save game file later.)

6. A battery system won't discharge its full energy in a single instant, 35 km down the circuit by some random piece of equipment. Generally speaking, if a storage unit releases all of its stored energy at one time it has exploded/caught fire, and not some random piece of conduit.

Considering how quickly the game's batteries can charge/discharge (and how much energy they can contain) (discharge can be "unlimited"), they are apparently better than our current day chemical batteries, which indeed can not release all the energy instantly. I.e. they are likely closer to (super-)capacitors, which can release their energy very very quickly. I don't find it unrealistic that these scifi batteries can cause an explosive level thing (i.e. insta-vaporizing a piece of the wiring) along the wiring while themselves be just fine. (Though 35km down would of course be affected by inductance, etc., but in these colonies the distances are merely tens of meters.)

What is unrealistic that these Zzzzzts happen at completely random moments, without reason, even when the power usage is lower than what has already been "tested" to work well. I'd understand if they happened at the times when power usage goes higher than ever before, or along a new wire (not yet "tested", sort of secretly bad piece of wire), or if some device also breaks first (short circuit in it), or some physical event damages either device or wiring, etc. etc.

And also, if the batteries are so good, they should already have built-in such trivial safety features like over current protection, or at least a fuse.

Without safety features, batteries and wiring should be usable as a defensive mine-like weapon, or wall-trap against those trying to break through... Just lay down a wire-field with lots of weak separators; when enemy walks over or makes cracks on the wall, separator breaks, and wires touch, short-circuit. ZZZZZT on the enemy. Considering how much damage these events can do, that would be one dead enemy (or more).

Beauty is a black art.  If there is any definitive guide to what a "hideous environment" is and how to improve it, I can't find it.

There is quite a bit of info for beauty (and impressiveness) in Rimworld wiki; right in the vanilla game, clicking the i-buttons of various items and room stats and beauty numbers toggle (although this feature has bugs, doesn't show everything); and certain youtube guide/research videos.

If things below seems too long to read: after doing necessary structures/furniture, keep rooms clean, make wooden sculptures (poor quality or better, skill 3+ can do these) and install them in places where pawns spend lots of time awake, until the pawns beauty meter gets high enough for you.


I have found it mostly unnecessary to go into details on the beauty (unlike clean/dirty, which is quite essential). For most parts of the colony, I just smooth some walls (to allow power wires) and hallway floors (for faster walk) which provides enough "baseline" beauty. In some nasty spot, say, near turret, or an armor set kept outside storage for faster access, I might throw a flower pot or few, or if outside and there is dirt, just plant a flower or few, but only if there is some need to stay near that spot for longer. For example, in the early game when there isn't much room, ugly storage areas might be right next to working places; flower pots are a quick (temporary) solution for that.

The few special places, i.e. rooms for greedy or otherwise needy pawns, recreation room, and couple rooms where pawns spends a lot of time (research, kitchen, most production tables) or will be in bad mood (prison and hospital), I add some more beauty to get pawns beauty meter (and thus mood) stay higher... which will then also improve the room's impressiveness (another mood effect). Places where the pawns spend lots of time in a bed or sitting on a chair, to get comfort boost, the chair/bed needs high quality, which tends to also give higher beauty already.

If more beauty is needed in these locations, it is pretty much pointless to waste time with carpets, too much smoothing, marble walls or flower pots, as a single crappy sculpture, with beauty 50+, will alone give a big improvement. A large room might need another sculpture and/or better one to compensate for the large amounts of non-smooth floor.   The point with sculpture is that e.g. even the wood crappy ones don't have (relatively) much price value, yet increase beauty more than 50-100 tiles of nice smooth floor/walls with much higher total value.  Just in case it is not clear, the accumulated price value is bad, as it causes stronger raids. (It does also increase the impressiveness value of the room, but it is best to increase that by other means, i.e. space, beauty and cleanliness first.)

Flowers (in plant pots) have better beauty/value ratio, but they need occasional work, and especially in bedrooms can cause interrupted sleep, so I don't make too many of them.

The benefit of smoothed floor/wall is that they don't take space.

Examples, in order of better (i.e. lower ratio) first:
* (Higher quality sculptures have even better ratio, but I didn't have one to check for exact values. Wooden large masterwork should give 500 beauty, value $586.80, ratio about 1.17)
* Wooden plant pot (normal) beauty 0, value $24.63 + rose beauty 14, value $0; ratio about 1.76
* Wooden large sculpture (normal) has beauty 100, market value $195.60 (value/beauty ratio about 2)
* Wooden large sculpture (poor) has beauty 50, market value $146.70 (ratio about 2.9)
* Smoothed granite floor beauty 2, value $8 (ratio 4 - not that bad, but still).
* Wooden chair (excellent/masterwork) beauty 24/40, value $111.24/$185.40 (ratio about 4.6)
* Wooden chair (good) beauty 16, value $92.70 (ratio about 5.8 )
* Jade shelf (masterwork) beauty 50, value $400.00 (ratio 8 )
* Smoothed granite wall is beaty 1, market value $20 (ratio 20)
* Wooden table (1x2) (masterwork) beauty 2, value $88.73 (ratio about 44.4)

Considering how little beauty ordinary wooden tables give, there is no point in trying to make high quality ones; they just add plenty wealth, for little to no beauty. Jade 1x2 tables might be something to consider, but still, maybe best use that jade for something else. Also, larger tables increase in value almost in proportion to their size, but they only increase slightly in beauty. It may be better to put multiple 1x2 tables than one large (but it depends on the qualities and materials).

Given spare time and enough defense (turrets, wall arrangement, total combat skills, weapons, armors), I do eventually smooth more floors and put carpets etc., but those are near the bottom of the very very long prioritized todo-list...

"wooden" stonecutter's table: 30 steel + 75 wood
steel stonecutter's table: 105 steel
(Edit: and stone variants are not possible for that.)

Wooden butcher's table and hand tailor bench are pure wood. All the rest need steel

Some kind of stone cutting should be possible even without steel, as the (historical) early stone cutting didn't have steel (or any other kind of metal) available, yet made even quite accurate and beautiful results, be it bricks, smoothed blocks or statues.  Just wood, water, leather, other stones and sand, and lots and lots of work. Some variations exists, like drilling holes first (without metal tools!), but the basic processes were usually the same, hitting hard, lots of expanding force in cracks or holes, or grinding.

If such was possible in Rimworld, that would allow "bootstrapping" the process with zero steel. For easy implementation in Rimworld, I'd just make it a process doable "on the ground" (can't remember the name of the suitable spot), e.g. with a little bit of wood and two stone chunks, for similar output as the stonecutter bench, but taking around 3 times as long. The process is more wasteful than optimized cutting, so two chunks input, and the wood gets wasted, too.

Yeps, if they are made smart enough to avoid obvious killing zones, they should also be made smart enough to also prioritize obviously larger or denser building areas. Latter is actually easier to code and less calculations, and even thematically easier to explain.

See, ask one ability to be removed from the player, the same logic can easily be used to remove plenty more, even the tricks you like...

Also, if we continue with AI smartness development, the ultimate end result would be to also consider the "danger zones" in the world map level (same logic applied, but again much easier to code). The player's colony tile would quickly become one _very_ deadly zone, to be avoided at all cost. AIs would make a few futile attacks in the begin and decide one of two choices: either 1) all-out assault , i.e. large share of their total faction population at the time when your base has maybe 6-10 pawns, barely finishing their first outer wall if you were smart enough to start building one... (i.e. game over) or 2) semi-permanent peace, i.e. independent of their current relations, they would not attack for a looooong time (but will not trade with you either).

In a sense, I like the idea of making the NPCs smarter, but it must not be just one trick, but consider it more widely. Even the player's NPC AI's should also get smarter (there are several easy changes that would make them behave much better and more "naturally"), but that is another topic.

As an extension to that, simply, allow pawns to own multiple beds, no matter where the beds are, even in the same area. When they need to go to bed, they can go to the nearest one, if they have multiple in the same area.  It could e.g. save couple hours each day for a pawn doing longer work in a more distant part of the colony.  (Of course, that particular use case can be handled even now, via micromanaging beds, but that is one unnecessary chore that could be easily done with the change).

Edit: and that lead soon after to another idea, marking beds for anyone's use, i.e. in a way where the next sleeper will not automatically take ownership of that bed, and the sleeper can have his own bed, too. (Perhaps he just decided to use that "anyone's" bed instead, e.g. because own bed is at the time not reachable, or too far considering how tired he is, etc.)

Sounds like I'll be trying to those.  If there was a "thanks" button (or such), consider it pressed. And those suggestions/mods confirm that I'm not alone with my wishes and ideas.

I tried to look for some QoL-type mods soon after I started playing, but once I noticed how many "5 star" or such mods there were on Steam workshop, it seemed like a futile attempt to find actually good ones (for me). So I decided to wait and react only once I spot some nice prefiltered list somewhere.

I can understand the fun(ny) sides of some unexpected "emergent" behavior (I've seen insanely fun cases of this in certain MUD), but this visitors and their animals wandering in and messing things around is no longer fun, funny, occasional, or thematic. It is more like almost every time traders come, there is hopefully one useful interaction (trade, which is in itself already a balanced thing), and about a day of micromanagement h*ll in order to keep things safe and clean.  I.e. 10% pure usefulness, 90% of pure annoyance.  Not quite the balance for a fun game period, especially since one can not just say "Please, come back later, we're still barely recovering from the latest distaster."  They simply come, don't ask permissions, and visitor animals using the kitchen as their toilet... a dry "ha. ha. ha." from me.

Also, throwing rules and system together and seeing what happens? Sure, but those rules should then at least make some sense. Visitor animals being able to go through doors, even "locked" doors, is certainly not a thing that makes sense, and most of the times not even fun. Especially in a game like Rimworld where the colony is often on the brink of total disaster even without "friends" being an additional problem and behaving like jerks (not controlling their animals properly), too.

Note, the door rules are currently kinda borked in that visitors/traders and even their animals can access more places (i.e. any place whatsoever) than enemies or even the colony members and animals themselves. Visitors' (and especially their animals') reach should be somewhere in between enemies and colony members (arranged in one way or other), in order for the rules/systems to make sense.

Even if only the human NPCs would get in (for eating), they would still have some negative effects, like reserve an eating place (for a moment) and drop dirt around, unless the player had spent an effort to counter that, by building an own place for the visitors (if that was possible in the first place).  There should be a benefit for such effort.  If one needs some extra balance in that, perhaps there could be more or less standing change or how much they leave gifts, if any, after the visit depending on how nicely they got treated. E.g. how nice rooms they could use for their eating, perhaps even adding an option for them to sleep over the night in bedroom(s) made for them, if they could use recreation things, etc.  And if treated really nicely (and with a good trade), perhaps they'd come again sooner.

If richer (and random) interactions are wanted, then those can be added by adding more variations in the interactions, and still be thematic, fun and make sense. For example, there are already social fights and romances (within groups of NPCs). Why haven't I yet seen social fights between visitors and colony members? Or romances, say, some visitor then starting to visit my colony more and more often, trying to see a particular member again, until there is a new couple (or he/she gives up), and depending on the moods/colony status, I may loose a member or gain a new member...  Or visitors throwing a party.  Or etc.  There is certainly many ways to get some fun and/or unexpected things happen without the mentioned enforced always happening mundane annoyance.

Granted, my colony members are 99% time busy doing important stuff elsewhere (like cleaning that frigging mess they made in the kitchen), especially since there is no (sensible) other interactions than trading with visitors. So, not much chance for fights or romances... Perhaps there should be more activities with visitors? Like some kind of "socialize" actions: perhaps just chatting for a while (just like with prisoners, though maybe not as effective), or asking to play a bit of chess. Or more concrete actions, like offering to train their animal (if one or more is in need of that), etc.

(If there was a way to teach/train others, then that could be yet another useful activity to do with visitors, but alas, no such natural and critical for survival thing in the game...)

Perhaps animal(s) getting inside could be a random event (instead of being a de facto pattern)? Visitor animals perhaps getting spooked of something, or an animal smelling opposite gender, or animal randomly deciding to follow some interesting NPC (even colony member) through doors for a while, or whatnot reason, possibly ending in unexpected places.

(I don't think this really counts as a coding bug, but more like a design flaw, but since the result is unexpected behavior, I think this is closer to be bug than a suggestion. I was able to find a mention of the same symptom in the modding requests, and even there, it was noted that it should already be part of the base game.)

Ordinary situation, enclosed colony building with doors etc. and a "fridge" next to "living room" (sort of).

What happens:
When traders come, they will use the colony's tables for eating, and during those moments, their pets/animals will follow them inside, and then wander around. Both the visitors and their animals will ignore closed and even disallowed doors. (Sort of thematically understandable, if nobody went to tell them about local rules, and there are no proper locks in any of the doors. But since the doors are all "locked" for enemies, there are obviously locks.)  During those wanderings, the animals will happily eat even fine meals, stored inside a fridge.  Smart ones, they are, somehow knowing there is food inside a closed dark room, and able to open the doors...  Such animals can also enter e.g. kitchen; I've had a case when I wasn't watching (i.e. micromanaging) that a whopping 2 muffalos and 1 another animal had entered kitchen while my cook was busy cooking behind presumably "locked" door (i.e. disallowed, in order to keep other colony members out of the place). There goes a pile of food into junkyard, can't risk it with the insane amount of dirt all those animals managed to spread around in the moments they were in there.

As it currently stands, during early game, visitors can cause more trouble than an enemy raid

What I expect:
I would expect, thematically, that the visitors left their animals to the "hang around" spot, which is usually outside, even outside the colony perimeter, or at least that they would very quickly order their animals to NOT eat my food or to even enter fridge or kitchen.  (I could expect disobeying such orders e.g. if the animal has already been starving for a while, but then again, in such case I'd expect the animal to have done something desperate even before entering the colony area.)  And I would expect them leaving animals outside not just to prevent stealing/eating, but to not spread dirt.  I would also expect visitors to obey the colony's rules with doors, and actually be able to define even stricter rules for them (separate door control for visitors). Along the idea of "We barely know you, you have no business waltzing through the defensive room, kitchen, and our living room, just to shortcut from west side to the hanging area you so inconveniently chose to be on the opposite side of the colony".

And since visitors can apparently see through walls to see where the tables and chairs are (and animals see food), I'd expect them to also see which rooms are kitchens, fridges, bedrooms, and prisons, etc., and would automatically not enter such "sensitive" places; they have no legitimate business to go into them (unless a family member happens to be there or something).

Reproduction?
Since traders coming in can't be made deterministically, I can not give direct steps to reproduce, but I think it is quite obvious anyway. Make a normal colony but leave the tables/chairs near outer walls, and fridge/kitchen next to those, withing animal wandering range, and wait for the event. Also, I don't have a savegame file for this, since when I noticed these happening it was already too late, and the previous save game is too far in history (can't ensure the randomness leads to animals eating stuff).


Solutions?

Few examples, some are partial solutions (need more than one).

* Have "trader/visitor spot", just like the colony has for its own caravan making. That would be their hang around place. Would prevent hanging in an area that is too near sensitive places, and in some cases could prevent shortcut pathing through the colony.

* Do not let any non-colony animals (visitor, enemy, wild) open any doors. Visitor humans could still open the doors for animals, assuming the visitor itself is allowed/can open such door, if they have some valid reason to do so, e.g. to reach their designated gathering spot.

* Make the visitor animals stay at the hang around spot when owner/handler goes to eat. (Thematically, handler either says "stay!" to them, or gives the rope to another visitor or ties it to a tree or whatnot.)

* Have separate toggle for doors to disallow/allow for visitors. This makes it possible to designate area where visitors can go to eat (instead of going to eat in the prison, or colony member's room while she is sleeping there.

* Allow defining allowed area(s) for visitors, and possibly separate one for their animals. If they can not reach such area from outside (edges) (e.g. without passing through disallowed doors), they could just behave otherwise like before (hang around whatever spot they can figure out and reach), and not enter any place the doors won't allow.

Note, there is apparently currently no room type for "fridge" or food storage (I don't know of nice name for such room in English). I'd suggest adding such, e.g. with rules something like: It is not recognized as any other type of room, it has complete roof, (for fridge) its temperature is below, say, 5C, and has storage area(s) which have allowed foods and/or other item types that benefit from cooled storage.  Such room types might help with visitor AIs, but might also get some other useful uses.