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Any of the Great: (Skill) or Awful: (Skill) genes which add/remove passions respectively permanently increase/remove passions even when the xenogerm that granted them is replaced.

It's quite simple to reproduce, take any pawn without a passion and install a Xenogerm with one of the Great:(Skill) genes in it. Then replace it with a different Xenogerm, the skill offset will be updated, the passion will remain.

The inverse is also true, installing an Awful:(Skill) gene will permanently remove passions, even after the Xenogerm with that gene is replaced.

This is EXTREMELY broken as it allows players to literally staple every single passion onto a pawn. Or inadvertently permanently remove passions from pawns.

Barricades function as fences by the way, for anyone who wants their fences to have more health or provide more cover.

Just chiming in to say this is still an issue in 1.3.3080.

The in-game, dev-mode Animal Economy chart and the Pen nutrition calculations appear to be the same and correct based on my testing and the confirmation of other discord users, however the information panel is still displaying nutrition eaten per day ( Hunger rate ) at double what it really is.

I haven't tested the aging/meat per day during growth side of things but if both changes were made in the same way they would result in the same incorrect information being displayed to the player via the information panel.
The only difference being that there's no point of comparison like the Pen marker for such stats apart from the dev-chart which most people won't see.

The room requirements for sculptures associated with Ideologies are listed on the mouse-over tooltip for the sculpture in question within the respective Ideology's menu. Scroll down to the bottom and you'll see it, just mouse over it.

Psychic Readers also scale trade price improvement based on your psysensitivity.. which is *something* I guess.

Blindsight is fairly weak in general however.
I'd personally like to see it have better access to psy levels, only being able to obtain +1 level from the blinding ritual and *only* if it goes well is a bit rough. Something costly but repeatable to that increases psy level would make Blindsight feel less like a punch in the crotch.

Given that the precept is only +30% psy sensitivity ( being blind is natively +50% ) the opportunity cost is definitely quite high.

Tame and then subsequently shoot elephants, rhinos, muffalos, or if you're feeling particularly spicy thrumbos. Basically anything with a lot of hit points per body part.
Preferably with something that doesn't do a lot of damage per shot to minimize the chance of instant death and delay the inevitable death by brain damage, machine pistols are a personal favorite. Melee weapons work too, same basic principle applies.

Tame animals will never fight back and additionally you can use them to train medicine.

I /think/ that the amount of xp rewarded for a given combat action is tied to the time it took to perform that action so every weapon should result in roughly the same amount of xp, but don't quote me on that. From experience the practical upshot of not having to constantly replace animals means that lower damage weapons are preferable regardless.


Do keep in mind that colonists without combat passions only get 35% xp, so it takes a lot of work.
Even a pawn with Fast Learner only gets ~61% xp. (100% x1.75 fast learner) x 0.35 No passion.

I'm fairly sure xp gain = Global Learning Factor * Passion modifier.
Since both Fast and Slow Learner affect the Global Learning factor it should be -

Normal pawn with no passion: 1*0.35 or 35%
Fast Learner with no passion:  (1x1.75)*0.35 or 61.25%
Slow Learner with no passion (1*0.25)*0.35 or 8.75%

With passions it's
Normal:1*1 = 100%
Fast:(1*1.75)*1 = 175%
Slow:(1*0.25)*1 = 25%

Burning passion
Normal:1*1.5 = 150%
Fast:(1*1.75)*1.5 = 262.5%
Slow:(1*0.25)*1.5 = 37.5%

So slow learners are preeeetty bad.
Even if you give them a learning assistant(+20% global learning factor) a burning passion is still only 67.5% which makes them considerably worse than a standard passion.

On the other hand given the XP-per-day-softcap in any given skill it's possible some slow learners would be fine at long tasks where they might hit that cap, art, research, maybe even cooking if you're doing a lot of it.
They're pretty much doomed to be meh-at-best at things like Combat, Social, and Medicine though which isn't great. It's always going to be difficult to get above and stay above 10 due to daily xp loss.

It wouldn't be so bad if they didn't lose xp at the standard rate - Maybe roll in some of the Great Memory effect so that if you put in the effort ( or luck into ) a high skill Slow Learner they don't hemorrhage all their skill? Dunno.

There's no need for warden because my base is quite full and I don't want to recruit anyone anymore.

Well that's a bit of personal preference going on there - Keep in mind that he can still be used to Trade so you really want his social skill to be as high as possible.
Worst case you might want to consider capturing prisoners and setting them to Reduce Resistance and then eventually releasing them simply to keep his social skill high.

What's worse, he keeps giving Royal speeches which waste everyone's time. I regretted it so much and had to dev-mode him a title down.

High social skill royals actually give quite large and long lasting mood bonuses for successful speeches. Much like parties they can be quite useful.

It really got me thinking, what are the advantages of Count over Baron? Just two new psycast abilities which don't bring much new to the table (imo the most useful ones are in level 5).

Well, Berserk Pulse is so strong that it's been repeatedly nerfed and may be totally irredeemable according to Tynan and may have to be removed from the game because it's so fundamentally overpowered and that's one of the two tier 6 psycast abilities.
So that's worth thinking about

On the topic, the out-of-nowhere "Royal Expectation" mood debuff makes zero sense...I already got everything (fancy throne room, fancy bedroom) he needs and he still complains? The Count's -12 mood debuff is even worse. I think this should be dropped, or applied only when the title required bedroom/throne room is undignified.

Strictly speaking the royal expectations "Debuff" is similar/identical to the standard expectations, the only difference being that it bottoms out at -12 rather than 0.
The fact that it's presented as an negative obviously affects perceptions of it though.

Keep in mind that royals have access to mood bonuses that are denied standard pawns - They get bonuses for impressive thronerooms, for fulfilled decrees, and for having high Authority. All of which can easily compensate for or actually overwhelm the measly -12.
Edit: Oh they also spend more time sitting on their comfortable throne so their average bonus from Comfort is also really high.
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As for the overall usefulness of Counts - I've found them to be fine overall but I can understand how you'd feel bushwhacked by the sudden loss of previous capabilities.
Though the restrictions to work are listed in the info box for each title they can be easy to miss.

Best case scenario you take someone who would otherwise be useless (Pop Idol background I'm looking at you) but has a high social skill + passion and turn them into your dedicated Count, slap a Joywire, Psychic harmonizer, and Psychic sensitizer into their brain, accumulate as much Psycast gear as you can, and enjoy the ~+20 mood bonus they project to everyone around them.

[Most people]

You made general claims about what "people" want in the game.  Try again.

Most people. In my experience. I've talked to thousands and the overwhelming majority mirrors my thoughts. And that is further confirmed by gameplay.

Universal agreement is not necessary. Proper argumentation is. Common sense.

Well if anything good has come of this off-the-rails-argument it's that it made me grin.
Emphasis mine of course.

Maybe pick a different hill to die on?
Maybe something else might be more important to you?
Just a thought, Friendly/Empathetic advice even.

I fundamentally disagree with your assessment and think you're stuck on comparisons to previous versions instead of considering what can be done with the current rivers and what new tactics can be employed to take full advantage of them.

I think however we're going to have to chalk this one up to personal preference.

On the subject of rewards - Some quest rewards circumnavigate the rarity of certain items to a rather extreme degree, particularly in the late game.

In one of the above screenshots posted the reward includes twelve linked weapons which is considerably more powerful than those weapon's value in silver because there's a hard limit on how much trading and thus how much access you can have to those rare items.
You could have unlimited silver and that quest reward would still be extremely (disproportionately) valuable.

I've had similar quests which rewarded huge piles of otherwise rare objects in the late game and they always seem a bit out of place - even if the quest is really, really hard.
It's especially noticeable when you're offered something like 7 healer mech serums.
The value of those objects isn't their actual sale value at all - Similarly the same could be said of a dozen doomsday launchers.
Their value to the player is always artificially high because of their rarity rather than their listed value.

Having the issue with that currently as I have a Huge River dividing my map in the middle plus some huge marsh patches.

I guess only way to fix that is to forbid some Areas by a special zone instead of Unrestricted?

Or pave paradise with bridges.
Unfortunately it uses a lot of wood and a reasonable amount of manpower.

As to the general pathfinding issues - thicker bridges combined with restricted zones tends to solve most issues. Though not all.

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I disagree with the assertion that rivers are "useless" now that you can only protect watermills with wooden walls.
Rivers simply aren't strict bonuses anymore - and that's fine.

Having played with rivers in the past and post 1.1 I can safely say that they're considerably more balanced than previously when they were just giant strict advantages that all but disabled the need for power in any other form.

As it stands rivers -and by extension watermills- are still quite powerful as many types of threats simply treat all walls as permanent obstacles regardless of their fragility. (Or flammability)

Additionally rivers can be extremely useful in manipulating the enemy's pathing to stand on traps or IEDs (Individual tiles of bridges are preferred by the pathfinding of enemies and as a result enemies will predictably stand on them)
Moreover, increasing the time it takes enemies to reach you is useful.

As to the idea that power generation via watermills is somehow useless, that's a pretty hard point to argue as the alternatives are more expensive and typically have a larger (or very restrictive in the case of geysers) footprint.
You can argue that your colonies might not consume a lot of power but not that all colonies do.
In more extreme climates (Particularly those with short or non-existent growing cycles) vast amounts of power are required for hydroponics particularly as your population scales up. Geothermal may not be desirable given its location or its own susceptibility. Even walled-in geothermal generators require connections via conduits which are often indefensible, and flammable.

Rivers still offer unique options that simply don't exist in other biomes, much in the same way mountains do, and they're totally viable.

Rivers aren't "Dead". You just don't like rivers

Thought I'd chime in particularly on the melee weapons as I make significant use of melee in virtually all my colonies - The problem isn't just Linked melee weapons ( though they are absolutely incredibly powerful ) it's also Plasma/Monoswords and Zeushammers.

Plasmaswords effectively stun any non-mech target they swing at indefinitely as ignited pawns are forced to run around until they extinguish themselves. It comes at the small opportunity cost of some raw damage output compared to a longsword but in general the effect of an enemy taking up space in melee combat while not fighting back is more powerful than killing that target.

Zeushammers are just.. the best blunt melee weapons for general use in addition to their EMP utility. They're probably the least powerful of the new weapon types but they still outclass their competition trivially while being fairly common relative to their power level.

Monoswords meanwhile are just strictly better versions of all other melee weapons for pure damage output. They do more base dps than Longswords while also ignoring almost all armor. In practice they end up doing ~2-3x the damage output of a plasteel longsword of comparable quality against most targets.
Additionally Good+ quality monoswords do more than 30 damage per swing which removes limbs in a single hit which reduces kill/down times considerably.

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As for their linked versions - Only linked monoswords even have a detection chance. Anyone can use a linked Plasma/Zeus with total impunity - they're bonkers.

Linked Plasmaswords have all their inherent advantages while also being far too lethal - the average raider can't handle being swung at twice.

Linked Zeushammers essentially ignore all armor while -again- doing more damage by a huge margin *and* passing the 30 damage threshold required to remove limbs while having a high attack speed.

And Linked Monoswords are ... egregious blenders.
High skill melee colonists with good equipment ( Recon armor, marine/cataphract helmets, shield belts) might as well be lawnmowers.
The average number of hits to kill a human with a Linked Monosword is 2. They swing once every second.
If you exert any control over the combat (By reducing the range at which enemies can engage primarily through LOS blocking) then a single monosword can often take out an entire raid by just standing next to an entrance and cutting down anyone who walks through in an instant.

Meanwhile my current colony has eight linked weapons by year 9.

3 Zeushammers, 3 plasmaswords, 2 monoswords.
Everyone using them has 15+ melee skill, I've got an additional 3 standard monoswords and a zeushammer..
It's like a woodchipper in here! I just finished killing 117 megasloths as a result of a damaged monument -  And to be clear that's just my 12 guys standing shoulder to shoulder in a corridor beating them to death. No notable injuries or really any risk at all.. because I cast vertigo pulse twice.
Could've cast berserk pulse, didn't need to

Intended to be at war with the empire but with royal favor toggled off you get a lot of quests that reward gigantic amounts of reputation so I've still yet to actually be at war with them.
With royal favor quests off it gives me more access to quests likely to yield linked weapons and the notion of using a non-dlc weapon isn't even a consideration.
Linked weapons are so strong that you could cut their raw dps by.. 40%? and I'd still clamor to buy them or be rewarded them via quests every time.

Building a melee-orriented colony is probably.. 4x? more powerful compared to pre-royalty. Before accounting for psypowers.. which are giant force multipliers in of themselves.

Overall I'd say the Royalty melee weapons are a bit too common, and the Linked weapons need their disadvantages to be more prominent AND have their damage output lowered.

Smoke either works in some weird way I don't understand, or does not work as advertised at all; I had a group of 8 colonists approach a dormant cluster, popped a smoke psionic power, and then opened fire. Surprise surprise - all the turrets immediately locked on despite all my visible colonists being inside smoke, tearing them to shreds.

Smoke actually does work in some weird way. It's unintuitive IMO, and I just recently posted it in the bug forums since either the descriptions or the mechanic need to be changed to accurately resemble one another.

Smoke only stops turrets locking on if there are 2 tiles of smoke between the turret and the target.

So as an example:
[Pawn][Smoke][Smoke][Turret] = Safe
[Pawn][Smoke]-any amount of distance- [Smoke][Turret] = Safe
[Pawn][Smoke][Turret] = Not safe
[Pawn][Smoke]-any amount of distance- [Turret] = Not safe

The smoke that a pawn is standing on doesn't seem to count so:
[Pawn+Smoke][Smoke][Turret] = Not safe

So in general you want smoke between turrets and your pawns, ideally directly on the turrets.
Though do remember that 2 tiles of smoke is required and smoke physically ON the turrets doesn't contribute.
Hope that helps.

Edit: Also you can never safely melee a turret because there will never be enough smoke between the turret and your pawns.

Smoke only stops turrets locking on if there are 2 tiles of smoke between the tile the target is standing on and the turret. This isn't made clear by any descriptions of any smoke effects.

In practice this makes smoke very hard to use as the edges of it are not safe to stand in nor is it often clear at a glance where it is/isn't safe to stand

If a player deploys smoke on themselves they can easily think they're safe only to be immediately shot even though all their units are within smoke, but simply too close to the edge.
If a player deploys smoke on a turret (Which is pretty difficult to do given the range disparity regarding mech turrets) this works up until melee is attempted at which point there are no longer 2 tiles of smoke between the turret and the target.

Also smoke launchers in particular aren't very accurate and don't provide a lot of smoke and so a missed shot can result in insufficient smoke being deployed on the relevant side of the encounter which again can result in being shot when visually there is still smoke between the turret and target.

It all adds up to smoke constantly feeling ineffective/bugged, even though it's entirely mechanically consistent.

Though to be clear the descriptions of smoke in-game aren't sufficient.