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It's a damn shame about the high-quality devilstrand or hyperweave items. They're so expensive and fragile. They are definitely not worth wearing, as there are far more economic options. The 50% limit for what counts as 'frayed' or 'worn-out' is too high as well, IMO.

I think hyperweave and devilstrand should not wear out in normal use at all. And even if you catch a bullet with them, they should take damage only slightly. And make them both immune to fire. Repair option would be nice, too, but it should be expensive material-wise, and time-consuming, perhaps so that at 50% condition it'd be the same if you'd craft a new shirt. Of course if the damaged item was a legendary item, then you'd probably want to repair it rather than risk producing a less-than-legendary item. Might also be fun if clothes kept a record of the damaged location and the received damage/projectile type, much like pawn bodies:

"Left sleeve - Great Bow (Toxio Turtlepuncher, The Talisman Tribe)"
"Torso - Shotgun (Jackie Jackson, The Mercenary Group)"
"Torso - Pistol (Nellie Newbieshooter, Colonist)"
"Torso - Bite mark (Squirrel)"
"Right sleeve - Burn mark (Lightning)"

Might be great if one could assign an owner to a piece of clothing, much like you can assign a bed to someone. Colonists need wardrobes in their quarters, where to store their clothes. Prisoner wardrobes might be handy, too. I think clothes take too much space and we need a controlled way to store multiple clothing items in one square. That same mechanic could be used to store guns, which would enable proper weapon racks and armories. 5 pieces of clothing/weapons per one tile, maybe?

I predicted here some alphas ago the coming of an A.I. that would create pleasant distractions to the world, while it would slowly take control over mankind. I hesitantly questioned whether Tynan was that... entity. (Fool of a tuque, I am, to ask something like that openly). Tynan took that as a praise. So, yeah, that should answer the question. Resistance is futile by now. Whether Tynan is, or is not, a powerhungry A.I., doesn't matter anymore. He/it has had too much time to work us, to play us. But a powerhungry A.I. doesn't have to be malevolent, right? I mean, it could still be benevolent. I can't wait to not resist Tynan's global regime.

This might just be my luck, but I seem to be facing more attacks then ever, and more people seem to be running away.

So far, I got attacked by a total of nearly 20~30 people. Other then 6~8, they all ran away. Also, with four colonists, I've been attacked by a pirate group of 10, one with a charge rifle.

Then, just two in-game days later, we get attacked by mechanoids. Twice in a row.

Either I'm doing something differently, or the game just got a lot more brutal...
Playing Randy, challenging(I think. The 'way rimworld was meant to be played' thing)

Still playing my A9 colony. I thought Randy was whacko in A9 already. I thought Randy might get adjusted in A10. Because it was so obviously "too intense", I thought, that it must have been reported a thousand times already. By "intense", I mean Randy sends events ALL THE DAMN TIME. I'm still unsure if the chosen difficulty level matters but the difference between Cassandra on max difficulty and Randy on max difficulty is glaring. Cassandra sends traders painfully rarely. I think I went a full year without seeing a single trader. It was unnerving because I thought I might have hit a bug. Randy not only spams with traders, but also with drop pods. I'm playing with the ice sheet mod, so I thought I'd have to scrape and claw my fortune together. Nope, Randy just showers the area with free stuff. Since it's ice sheet, there are absolutely no animals (although I've had supposed "ice sheet" maps that have had animals), which means I'm not aware if Randy goes nuts with animal attacks as well. Does it? So, I started with Randy but after some time and frustration I switched to Cassandra. All I wanted was some tough fights and Randy messing with me with his random events every now and then, but I just can't get what I want out of the AI selection. I can't strike a balance. Randy keeps spamming with events and Cassandra bores me to tears with her LACK of events (although the lack of traders kept me on edge, too, which is good). I haven't experimented with Randy on easier settings because I suspect that (A) either the raids I'd get would be too weak for my liking and/or (B) no change would happen to the random event frequency. Or does Cassandra cut back on traders and drop pods as difficulty is increased? But if I'd tone down my Cassandra difficulty, that would mean smaller raids. I seek tough occasional (or rare) raids and Randy messing with me with his weirdness. Or, now that I think about it, was it the ice sheet mod that forced Randy to throw same events over and over because the animal events weren't applicable?

So there. That's my A9. Would I have a vastly different experience in A10? Have the storytellers been adjusted since A9? Personally I'm not thrilled about the joy system (pessimism) but I'm cautiously curious about it.

I should point out that even though I'm complaining and being a pessimist, I've had great fun with my ice sheet colonies, even if I can't seem to find the perfect AI. So yeah, great job making me feel conflicted! HAHA! I suppose it's the best possible reaction anyone could hope to get out of me.

The following is just my sugar-induced musings about Randy:

[SPOILER]I suspect Randy's development is the key to future fun. I see a lot of potential in Randy now that the game items have so much variety. Randy needs to get weird and truly unpredictable. Every now and then Randy needs to keep things suspiciously quiet as well. Too quiet, if you know what I mean. The calm before storm... or no storm. Randy should not form a behavioral pattern. I yearn more madness and weirdness from Randy... but within reason. Maybe add random weapon shipments in drop pods now that guns can be cheap? Cheap damaged sculptures, too? Prosthetics? Armor vests? A damaged lone mechanoid wandering in the wastes, slowly creeping its way across the map? A damaged lone mechanoid from a drop pod wandering aimlessly in daze locally, shooting at random animals or trees with its weapon, be it the incendiary cannon or a minigun? A Mechanoid (or tribal) hunting party, hunting animals, harvesting either their meat, skin, both or neither? The fertilizer pump could make a return as well, in the form of a drop pod deployment - it would drop from the sky and start changing the soil around it... for better or for worse, in varying area sizes or shapes. A malfunctioning terraformer unit? With or without defenses? A terraformer mechanoid? A hostile treecutter mechanoid? An ore miner mechanoid, unnervingly and slowly stealing your map's resources, building other more or less dangerous mechanoids or constructs? Seriously though, the more event variety is put into Randy, the less often "Randy should happen". Randy should happen 0.5 - 1 times a year... and it could/should be a glorious gamechanger every time. Maybe split Randy into two levels - big Randy events and smaller Randy events. Tribals should pick up loose firearms randomly... and point them dangerously at each other or at animals (once or twice), possibly hurting themselves. Should Randy have an event tracker, so that it would eventually force any events that have eluded the RNG "for too long"? Should it have a tracker so that it would prevent certain events from triggering again if they've been introduced "too many consecutive times" recently?[/SPOILER]

When you select an animal, a "Hunt" button appears.
When you select a tree, a "Cut" button appears.
Similarly, when you select rock(s), could we get a "Haul" button?

P.S. I see that Alpha 10 got just out. I hope it doesn't include this? No wait, I mean I hope it does... waaait, no... you know what I mean!!

Oh man. When I saw the title, I thought you'd be suggesting ransom for kidnapped enemies, or possibly kidnapped colonists. Hostage negotiations. Hostage exchanges. Hostage exchanges gone wrong (and a firefight ensues). Hostage exchanges between two rival non-player factions taking place in player territory. My god that would be glorious.... glorious potential for chaos and carnage.

Another question: It feels like the moving speed of the colonists is slower in A9 than before. Is this just a feeling?

Moving speed is also tied to age. Old colonists are slooow. On top of that, they'll likely get medical conditions like "frail" or "bad back", slowing them even further. Are your colonists old?

What's the purpose of the named bosses in Factions tab in Overview? Do I... kill the bosses if I see them? Capture and convert? Capture and release? Capture and sell to slavers? Do I prepare lavish meals out of their fresh bodies and serve them to colonists and prisoners alike and hope to see the event immortalized in art? Are there any special consequences if a boss is killed in a raid?

Personally I think that brain damage as a crippling health effect is good. I also agree with the idea of being able to replace with a brain implant or something similar; with of course a "penalty". If we were allow to replace the brain then we have to consider that this would completely change that person, and as such he would have to re-roll all of the skills and traits that s/he has.

I was thinking something like this as well. I wouldn't re-roll everything, though. Something like:
Force re-roll of one trait.
If any of the other traits have a spectrum, then 50% chance of a shift (for better or for worse).
Then shuffle the skill levels: Cut all skills by half. Add 1-8 whole skill levels to a random skill. Switch the levels of two randomly chosen skills. Mwahaha!

It's not true to state that "prison can't be too nice". A slightly more truthful statement would be "prison shouldn't be excessively nicer than the living conditions of your colonists". Of course you would still be free to arrange your prison to be as luxurious as you want it to be, and should it be absurdly decorated, the resulting mood penalty to your colonists wouldn't have to be crippling. Eventually you would be able to decorate your prison to the maximum without any mood penalty to anyone, because by that point you would've already provided your own colonists with their own luxurious personal quarters. Should you absolutely insist spoiling your prisoners while mostly disregarding your colonists, you would still be able to do so, just not without additional penalty.

As for wardens, their effect should be toned down to a slower rate, meaning not necessarily limit it by the amount, but by the rate of mood increase. I see now that capping the effect would prevent recruitment of some prisoners, but it might be another discussion whether all captives should be recruitable at all (just by talking)... Then again, the mood bonuses from various decorations could be tweaked up to counter the lesser effect of speech. Or perhaps only the wardens with the highest Social skill, combined with luxurious jailing conditions, might persuade even the most stubborn prisoners?

Colonists should get increasing mood penalties if the difference between theirs and the prisoners' living conditions is too great. The greater the difference, the greater the penalty. After all, honest hard-working people tend to get upset if prisoners get pampered while they themselves struggle with everyday life. But how to execute this? I can think of two ways.

1) The game could take the beauty value of all the inhabited jail squares (jails with owned beds or sleeping spots) and compare it against the beauty value of all bedroom squares. Or...

2) The game should just check the prisoners' mood, and if it's outrageously higher than that of colonists' (average), the colonists would receive a mood penalty. Although then the penalty itself shouldn't start a spiral of ever-increasing mood difference.

Also, if we choose to compare moods, then I suppose first we'd have to limit the warden speech bonus, since wardens can practically buff the prisoner mood to max all by themselves. Finally, the effect should take time to kick in, both in good and in bad, and it should be slow to change, because for example if the colony is attacked, and bedrooms get damaged, then that might instantly trigger the negative mood effect, too.

Just because you haven't been diagnosed with schizophrenia doesn't mean the huge black slimy mass with long silvery razor-sharp teeth in the corner of your room isn't going to eat you alive as soon as it has stopped growling at you. Anyway, joking aside, frequent auditory or visual hallucinations are symptoms of schizophrenia, and in that case one should seek medical assistance as soon as possible. Symptoms can be managed with the combination of medication and therapy, AFAIK. Or just turn up the volume so your brain isn't confused about which sounds are real and which are not. It is kind of interesting how some of the sounds get burned into the mind like that. I'm not unfamiliar with this phenomenon. There was at least one occasion when I had to ask myself if I actually heard a sound from the game (speakers) or was it just a faint echo produced by my own brain. I bet that with years of training, meditation, one doesn't even need sounds in a game and you can imagine them so vividly that they become real to you. Next step, stop actually playing altogether, and just visualize the game. Free games, no sign-up, no fees, no tech problems.

Come to think of it, I don't actually know how fridges work IRL....

Fridges work by removing heat. Cold and hot are human concepts but in reality there are only various degrees of hot. Fridges simply absorb heat from the inside of the fridge and carry it to the outside where the excess heat is released into the room. The heat absorption is performed by a coolant liquid that runs inside the pipes right behind the fridge panels. The coolant liquid is being pumped around almost constantly, about 10-50% of the time, or simply whenever you hear your fridge operating.

That might not be the whole truth though... This doesn't feel 100% right. Not looking wikipedia even though it whispers to me softly. Must resist the seduction of wikipedia. Anyway, fridge keeps your food cold AND warms your home. How cool is that? Ha! Haha! Ahhh... Ehh... Hmm. *sigh*

3) I found a slight bug: I closed 10 colonists in the room and increased the temp to +120C.
However, they had just a heart attack and didn't die immediately, which doesn't seem to be realistic, as blood boils at ~ +100C.

If you think about the mass or volume of the liquid which is needed to boil, and its starting temperature, you'd discover that it takes quite a lot of effort (energy) to get from 36C to boiling. Water, which our bodies are mostly made of, is a great heatsink, which makes it a great coolant, and at the same time, a tricky substance to heat. Look up the concept of 'thermal capacity' in physics or chemistry. I'd say you might just survive 30 minutes in 100C. You'd be unconscious though, and have burn injuries. You'll surely eventually die not due to boiling blood, but due to the medical complications arising from the elevated body temperature. There are other temps your body reaches before it hits 100C, such as 50C or 60C. If your core body temp rises up to 50C, that's likely lethal. 40C fever can be lethal. Five minutes in a 100C room is painful but you'll still be conscious (if you're otherwise a healthy person) and you won't even get any burn injuries, other than some red tint on your skin for an hour. Some masochists in Scandinavian countries, where saunas are common, heat their saunas up to 100C. It supposedly feels great afterwards to go from extreme hot air to extreme cold, such as from 15mins@80C to 2mins@-20C. Try different times and different temps. BTW, if you think about it, you won't turn into an icicle after an hour at -10C just because water freezes at 0C. The human body is complicated, as is physics or chemistry.

[touch/short/medium/long range (4/15/30/50 cells)]

If you hover over targets after selecting a drafted colonist, you can see the to-hit chance broken down, including accuracy penalties. I haven't made a study of it, so I can't say for sure, but on the other hand, I don't remember ever using a pistol and thinking, "Weird, it says short range when I'm clearly at it's extreme range."

Yes, I am aware of the tooltip, the breakdown list. This, however, doesn't help when I'm trying to compare the stats between two weapons. I'm a veteran so I rarely even need to consider default gun differences because I have their general properties memorized but it's bit disconcerting from the new player point of view. Also, this becomes a problem if one ever tries weapon mods. I guess I should try to memorize the 4 ranges - touch, short, medium, long. Right now I just can't seem to find the info about their exact definitions, the exact numbers.

I just assumed every weapon's range was split by 1/4, each forth being a tier of ranged accuracy, so that the highest number is always at the max range of the weapon.

Otherwise yeah, there should be a PSA that those values aren't used.

I wish the ranges were split to 1/4 parts in relation to the max range but that is not the case, or at least it wasn't in the past, which meant the pistol had an accuracy of 32% at the range of like 30-40 tiles (or whatever the exact definition of "long range" is) even though the pistol's max range is 24 tiles. I'm going to keep trying to find the Tynan's post about this, from few alphas back.

Edit: A-ha! Didn't find the post but the changelog on Googledocs showed it.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_rCdGYp3nbSUXFG4Ky96RZW1cJGt9g_6ANZZPOHyNsg/pub
From June 16, 2014:

"Refactored how weapon accuracy is defined. Instead of an abstract �accuracy� variable with a bunch of opaque equations behind it, you now set the miss chance at touch/short/medium/long range (4/15/30/50 cells) and the game interpolates between these. Allows making weapons like sniper rifles worse at long range."

Edit: Also, that should probably read "...Allows making weapons like sniper rifles worse at SHORT range. (because they actually are bad at shorter ranges in the game)

If I remember correctly, the listed weapon accuracies, expressed in percentages, are applied as hardcoded ranges, with the maximum being like 40 squares. I distinctly remember Tynan himself listing the actual ranges for each of the 4 figures in a forum post. If that is true, then why do weapons with short ranges, such as shotguns or pistols, need extreme range accuracies listed, when obviously those ranges apply only to Lee-Enfield and M24, and Charge Lance maybe?

Or have things changed along the way and is it so that the accuracies apply only from the viewpoint of a weapon's own maximum range, and the last percentage expresses the accuracy at the most distant quarter of the weapon's range?

Not following? Ok, let's look at some wiki data as an example:
Pistol's accuracy stat: 91%-71%-50%-32%
http://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Pistol

The question is, what actual ranges does the 32% cover, and can the pistol even reach those ranges?