Messages

StatDefs, Stats_Apparel, look for this bit:

<curve>
          <points>
            <li>
              <loc>(0,0.25)</loc>
            </li>
            <li>
              <loc>(1,1)</loc>
            </li>
          </points>
        </curve>

Those are what determine the curves for stat degradation. I thin in general both degradation and quality bonuses are too strong (for both weapons and apparel). I would prefer it if quality ad its greatest impact on an item's max hit points instead - high quality objects IRL generally being much longer lasting and lower quality ones often considered such specifically because they aren't made to last (the "buy cheap, buy twice" principle).

Somewhat related to the issue with chances being greater to hit anyone but your target, changing the way weapons miss might help de-buff the killbox set-up. Tighten up the default miss radius. Allow a missed shot to pass through the square of the intended target. Instead of having all the missed shots hit the ground around the target, allow them to keep going for up to their maximum range.

Suddenly the surround-sound killbox, at least, is no longer such a great idea.

The major flaw does seem to be melee skill having no effect on a pawn's ability to defend themselves in melee. This makes them all glass cannons, even against other melee fighters, and greatly reduces the worth of a high melee skill since that master fighter is just as likely as a pacifist empath to have a leg lopped off and be completely taken out of a fight in one hit.

" Clicking on the "select" button does nothing. The button feedback is active for a while (like 1 sec) but that's about it."

Same here. Went back and fiddled with it now that I'm home from work.

1. I posted this last night after only trying it without any mods active (i.e. vanilla Rimworld), both with a world from one of the earlier hotfixes and a newly generated one.
2. Activating a mod (mine, the only one I use) allowed me to open both the old and new world.
3. Turning the mod off allowed me to open the new world once, but after backing out from that screen I couldn't open either the new or the old world.

I can generate them, I can view them at the generation screen, I can look at the list of them - but clicking to select one results in nothing. No crash, no lock-up, and no opening of the world map, either.

Anyone else tried doing this?

I added this to Stats_Weapons_Ranged and Stats_Apparel:

<StatDef>
    <defName>MaxHealth</defName>
    <label>max health</label>
    <description>The maximum health of an object.</description>
    <category>Weapon</category>
    <parts>
      <li Class="StatPart_Quality">
        <factorAwful>0.60</factorAwful>
        <factorShoddy>0.80</factorShoddy>
        <factorPoor>0.90</factorPoor>
        <factorNormal>1</factorNormal>
        <factorGood>1.10</factorGood>
        <factorSuperior>1.20</factorSuperior>
        <factorExcellent>1.40</factorExcellent>
        <factorMasterwork>1.80</factorMasterwork>
        <factorLegendary>2.60</factorLegendary>
      </li>
    </parts>
  </StatDef>

Upside, it does indeed work to modify the max health of individual Things in-game.

The downside is that they still spawn within the range of their default health - i.e. if a type of gun has 100 MaxHealth in Weapons_Guns, a Legendary example will spawn with 100/260 health, tops. And an Awful example of the same gun can still spawn at 100/60.

Is there something other than "MaxHealth" I should be using in the defName?

We need this idea applied to miniguns, stat (and just for fun, make heavy charge blasters, inferno cannons and charge lances the same). Shouldn't even be able to fire 'em without an external power source (see?), plus the weight and recoil... should require power armor to use at a penalty, turret base to use as well as the mechanoids can.

Miniguns/rotary cannons can be gas-operated, and some IRL are. That said, you're talking about a weapon that will exert, IIRC, something like 150 ft.-lbs. of backward force on the user while firing, even in dainty little 5.56. Even in powered armor you'd be lucky to hit a barn door, I expect.

Mounted is the way to go, I say, though I do like the idea of weapons designed specifically for use with powered armor - which is why my personal mod includes some. I handled it this way:

-Give the weapon a larger movement speed penalty (most weapons have one in my mod).
-Make the weapon slower to aim.
-Give powered armor a movement  speed bonus (enough offset a PA helmet and a decently heavy weapon)
-Give powered armor an aim speed bonus.

The result is a class of weapons pawns without PA can wield, but not nearly as effectively as someone in PA.

As an example, I have the assault rifle, and then I have a "heavy" assault rifle, which also fires a three-round burst, but is chambered in a full-power rifle cartridge, and has greater range and power as a result. If a pawn not wearing PA uses it, it slows them down noticeably, and if they use it defensively (in a fixed position against an approaching enemy) they are somewhat hampered by the slower aim time. But give it to a powered armor-wearing pawn, and they can handle it, aim and move with it, just as quickly as a non-armored pawn armed with a regular assault rifle.

This is a common misconception. Plate armor did not limit the users freedom of movement.

I was referring to the impractical heaviness that was a consequence of having to defend against improving firearms, and that resulted in thicker and thicker breastplates, and the abandonment of full harnesses in favor of half- and three-quarter armors, and eventually just breastplates to compensate. Give a suit power-assist, and this is no longer a problem.

As far as fitting goes, I would just assume the power armor is more like a munitions harness than a noble's custom job.

PA is already super blatantly the best armor choice in just about all cases

As it should be. It's a full harness of bullet-proof plate with power assistance, negating the major issue that put full suits of plate armor out of use in the first place.

For balance I simply make it even more expensive, and give it work speed penalties so wearing it 24/7 is only practical for dedicated soldier/haulers. I also make sure the only pawns spawned wearing it are crypt soldiers and elite mercenaries. The improved armor stats not only make them much more dangerous (especially if you don't have your own PA troops yet), but also greatly increases the odds they will simply escape alive even when you do win battles.

One -26 cut to a colonist's gut taught me not to let amateurs attempt even basic limb replacement.

Funny thing was the leg that was getting a peg had already been amputated by this point. I guess Dr. Giggles there decided to carve the new peg themselves, with a scalpel, while sitting on the patient's lap. Only explanation that makes sense.

The simplest solution I've found for both negating interest in turret killboxing and furthermore bringing combat outside has been to:

1- Make armor behave more realistically - i.e. Much higher protection ratings (that is what armor is for, and if it doesn't do it reliably, well, historically speaking a lot of expensive but questionably useful military equipment has wound up tossed into roadside ditches by those who didn't want to be weighed down by it), and making power armor give a movement speed bonus.

2 - Create a proper grenade-launcher or RPG so even a very nice static set-up with lots of interlocking fields of fire can be crippled by raiders. Similarly, I give mechanoid centipedes better armor and a better weapon balance. Scythers get one explosive weapon and one incendiary weapon - they act to soften up defenses ahead of the centipedes.

Additionally I would have turrets require a gun and a controller module to build. Planning ahead for that my personal mod already includes a Sten/Sterling type SMG and an automatic rifle based off of this:
http://www.forgottenweapons.com/british-308-sterling-prototype/

The idea is the Sterling type firearms serve as cheap, but not very accurate full-auto weapons, and amongst the very few firearms that can eventually be produced by colonists.

I have to say I'm VERY exasperated we can't retrieve them DEAD when we could ALIVE

It makes sense, beyond just play balance. IRL you need either a living person or a very fresh corpse to get a donor organ that's good for actually performing a transplant. And why would the bionics manufacturers want what they're selling to be so easily yanked off a paying customer and still remain useable? Sounds like a great way to invite unscrupulous people to murder your clients for their own (fun and) profit, not run a business.

Harpo - I think what you're trying to do is what I tried to do the first time around, resulting in the multi-colored crash.

Mrofa's suggestion works, i.e. adding a Beauty stat to the wall in Buildings_structures. Only problem is control of how beautiful that makes walls is complicated by the Stuff system, since the walls are all just "Wall" plus a material. Changing the material's stats will change the beauty of anything else made out of it as well, such as statues. With stone floors this wasn't a problem (floors are not Things, I take it). Ex. I set the Wall thing's beauty to "1", and wound up with marble walls having a beauty of 7, on account of both the Beauty % statFactor and Beauty statOffset stacking. I had hoped I could set the Wall's base Beauty to "0" and let the materials wholly determine Beauty of a constructed wall, but the game seems to treat a Beauty value of "0" as "not applicable", and just leaves the walls as not having any Beauty score at all.

There are some really nonsensical combos possible both for backgrounds and traits. I remember a colonist who was a vatgrown soldier (incapable of healing) turned glitterworld surgeon.

Nonsensical in more ways than one. I never understood what kind of fool creates an army of soldiers incapable of performing first aid. That would be very quick and expensive way to lose every war.

1: Rock walls (unrefined mountain walls) need a malus to beauty, and this malus should be so big that even with a cleaned floor you'd get a constant -5 for Ugly Enviroment. An uncleaned floor should rather quickly give you the -10 malus Very Ugly Enviroment. (This would encourage you to build a provisional upstart base outside first, while slowly mining and fixing up for a future inside mountain base). My numbers are just suggestions, but they need to be hard felt for the player.

2: Refined walls from Stone Bricks and Wood should improve beauty slightly.

3: Rock ground (not smooth) should be slower to walk on. First when smoothed it should give the 93% walk speed.

4: Smoothed rock ground should not give any beauty bonus at all.

5: Smoothed rock ground should be required before you could build real flooring from bricks, wood, steel etc.

6: Make colonists passing eachother in one tile corridors slow down tremendously, simular to when they cross a rock or a sandbag. This would further reward broader hallways/corridors and indirectly make building up a well functioning mountain base harder (You need to mine out all those tiles, an outside base don't). This would also reward well planned bases more in general, and give you a small extra challenge to deal with.

7: Keep up the design philosophy of making it usefull to do some stuff outside now and then, like the removal of growing trees is an indicator of, forcing people to go outside their base to chop wood. Another example is the cabin fever mood modifier.

8: Keep some important benefits of going underground, like solid rock roofs protecting you from mortars, and perhaps other defensive benefits, like making it harder for raiders to get inside through other routes then ordinary entrances (due to thick rock all arround the base).

1- Bare rock walls should effect beauty I agree, but whether positive or negative should depend on the stone. Right now no walls effect beauty, however. A dirty floor already counts for -10, or even more...unless you're suggesting ONE patch of dirt or blood should automatically tank the beauty straight to "very ugly environment", which would frankly be annoying.

2- Wood and certain stone constructions should be an improvement, yes. But again, this should vary from material to material - slate pretty "meh" for example, and marble downright beautiful.

3- Rough stone should have some penalty, assuming the surface is wavy and pocked. Polished and level stone would slow people down how, though, exactly?

4- Have you ever seen what a smooth-polished stone floor looks like? As it is now, the beauty of these floors are balanced by taking a while to build, and only being an option where rough stone naturally spawns.

5- That is nonsense. That is the kind of design decision that is so far broken away from reality that it takes suspension of disbelief right with it and shatters immersion. It invites players to think, "Now I have to polish stone yet again because the game designer arbitrarily decided to make a flat, hard, level surface unable to support furniture or walls as this was easier for them than coming up with a balancing effect that would make the slightest sense."

6- Yes. And I'd go one further and make no two attacking pawns able to occupy the same space at all. No more 50 raiders, squirrels, whatever merging together to magically drill through stone doors in seconds with their one-hundred combined fists.