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I think skill degradation can be ok for certain skills, but does need major attention to balancing, as it can make skills that can only be used under specific circumstances impossible to improve if they all degrade at the same pace. For example, doctoring, that one is only usable when someone's sick, needs a surgery or is hurt. When everyone's healthy, it's impossible for a doctor to practice his/her skills. There's no alternative like studying or whatever to keep a specialized skill like that up, that can only be used under the right circumstances.

As for the main idea of having researching have a secondary skill associated with each research project, I do like that idea. That actually creates a reason to have other colonists who are good at both intellectual and some other specific skill actually bother to be assigned a higher priority to research for specific projects. That reduces the temptation to have 1 colonist be "the researcher" and that's all that colonist ever does, all day, every day, until they get crazy good at researching. A mechanic like this would force the player to have to balance out what you research, when, and who does the research.

For skills like doctoring, I'd like to see some items that colonists can use to study. Maybe for doctoring, medical journals/books could be bought from a trader that allow each colonist assigned to doctoring the ability to study it for a finite amount of skill before the item becomes useless for learning, for that colonist. The items could also have a secondary effect that does not exhaust that halts skills decay for a period of time after completing a study task on that item. Each skill could have a similar set of items, such as textbooks, trade magazines and so on that impart skills up to a point and halt skill decay.

So if you're wanting to research how to build those fancy new chairs, for example (a construction research) don't do it while you're in the middle of a major base expansion project, or you'll either tie up your research on a project your other researchers won't be able to do any time soon, or you'll tie up your best builder on a research project right when you need him building stuff.

I agree. IMO all the small prey animals need a HUGE nerf. things like rabbits, squirrels, rats, etc, should be mostly harmless to things way bigger then they are.

I could see a squirrel who's being hunted by a desperate rat being able to fight it off successfully, as they're in about the same size class, or a rabbit maybe being able to fight off a fox if it's cornered, for the same similar size reasons. But a squirrel being able to do anything to a cougar or a human? Ridiculous. I have a colonist who had to convalesce for over a day due to life threatening injuries dealt at the paws and jaws of a freaking squirrel! She had a cracked jaw from a squirrel paw, WTF?!

A squirrel should be able to cause only MINOR injuries and only with it's bite to much larger creatures then it. The only risk factor of a squirrel bite should be infection or disease. If that cougar got bit by the squirrel before the cougar ate it, and that bite transmitted a deadly disease(eg rabies) to the cougar, then I could see the cougar in the OP's example being fatal, but not because the viscous little squirrel just savaged that poor defenceless cougar that bad.

I first got the ability to make chocolate in I think it was either v17 or 18, via a mod that added tons of new crops to the game, and that mod did have a production chain for the cocoa, which started as cocoa beans harvested from the plant, and I don't know exactly what the rest of the process was as I don't remember that version too well now. I do remember harvesting cocoa beans but don't remember what I did with them next. I may have been using them as a cash crop at the time I had to end that game due to a new version coming out and nuking all my saves.

The game currently treats them as a groundcover/grass type plant that just grows for grazers to eat. IRL dandelions are are edible and there are enough of them to make them a viable forageable plant, while not being so abundant they'd break the game's balance.

Some stipulations could be that they can be harvested and would produce dandelion greens (from the leaves and flowers) and dandelion root. The greens could be eaten raw, with a small debuff (they taste bitter and are unpleasant to eat that way) or be cooked and eaten with no debuff. The dandelion root could be cooked into dandelion root tea which could have a similar effect to coffee, but toned down a bit from what coffee would do. In other words the tea would give a slight mood and energy boost when drunk.

I first noticed this bug in B18, but at the time thought it might be coming from a mod, but this bug has carried over to B19 and this time is most definitely NOT coming from that mod I thought it might have been from.

I had a human caravan member out of nowhere go into my colony's food stores and just grab a fine meal and eat it. I had no settings that would allow this behaviour, nor any mods that should be affecting NPC behaviour. This only seems to happen with caravan members. This bug is extremely frustrating as I've even had them steal food items I'd just bought and eat them too! Even expensive food items. This means every time a caravan comes in, I have to micromanage it the whole time and use dev mode to cheat-replace all stolen items. I really don't want to be playing that way and need you to get to the bottom of this bug ASAP so I can enjoy playing this game normally again.

If you need any specific info from me to help you troubleshoot this bug, just let me know what you need and I'll send it along.

I already did. Haven't gotten a response from the author yet. Got the mod from Steam workshop.

Huh never really had much problem with wood in my experience it is really good for fast construction and great when I try to build huge walls to surround my colony. Even though yes wood is flammable I use the multiple adjancent walls that help cover the first wooden wall layer if it burns down first so that I don't have to micro as much when fire spreads quickly. Usually late game I try and build some type of stone suoronding walls since by then I have enough coloniest to focus more on the security of the place then just survival period. (And yes that's with Randy Random and The steadily increasing one on intense, sorry I forgot her name lol)

I prefer to avoid building with expendable resources, especially stone, early in the game. It takes a very long time, requires 2 colonists to be dedicated to building (1 to build, 1 to make stone blocks). Also, early game is when you're most likely to have a low skilled building doing the work, so more risk of a failed build on even easy things like walls and floors, which means wasted stone and time. Wood seems to be less likely to produce a failed build too, and wood is renewable so no big deal even if you do waste some from time to time training up that unskilled by passionate builder. Even in the harshest climates, you can dedicate some agriculture to tree farming if you need some building material.

Yea true mostly I play in biomes rich with wood  mostly because well easier and still grasping the game and how to play even though lol I have been playing and still love this game for a year now. Also I should play more difficult biomes to get a better grasp on how it's possible that wood can be rare. And yes I probably will think twice about using stone because technically as Canute says it isn't a renewable resource. 

Very good idea to try new things. I also prefer to use wood early game as it's generally easy to get in most climates, and fully renewable as I said above. You can demolish small sections of wall and replace them with stone later on when you're econamy's more secured, or you have a larger talent pool to draw upon to make the switch.

Just remember not to fall into the "it has to be this one way and no other way" trap. Technically, every map and every climate is different, so the exact strategy that works for one may MAY not work for another.

Part of the issue is that

1) It can be pretty simple in-game to secure your food from wild animals especially vermin, exactly the opposite of real life

2) Vermin don't pass on diseases in-game, like they do in real life.

Ergo, you don't have much of a reason to exterminate rats and the like in-game, when in real life you had/have people with careers as vermin-killers. THAT is what cats were used for, to both protect the food source of their human owners and to prevent disease.

A job cats are exceedingly good at.

There are huge advantages to using domesticated natural predators to control pest populations over chemical based poisons as well. Poisons poison and kill indiscriminately, including things we DON'T want poisoned and killed, like beneficial plants and fauna, people and in general filthy up the environment. Cats, ferrets, small dogs, etc don't do all that. They eat, and fulfill their natural role, just with human support and protection.

For example, in farming, pesticides may kill off unwanted bugs like locusts, and aphids, that can damage crops, but they also kill off the beneficial bugs like bees, butterflies and the bugs that prey on the crop eaters, such as spiders, wasps and so on.

The bees are needed to pollinate the crops, otherwise they won't grow. Same for butterflies and many other pollinating bugs. Wasps, ladybugs, green lacewings, spiders and many others eat the pests, so when we kill them in our effort to get to the pests, we cripple nature's way of dealing with the pests, so when we stop poisoning, they have no natural predators left and their populations explode. Same goes for when they develop a natural resistance to the poison, which inevitably happens. Life finds a way to live.

Of course, most of that's not simulated in RW, and I wouldn't expect Ludeon to simulate that much in a game that's not really about ecosystems and biodiversity. I would be nice if they'd simulate very small pests like rodents and tiny bugs finding ways through/over/around walls and into crops and food stores though. That would definitely give a good reason to keep small predators around, and maybe add a training option for pest control or something, so animal handlers can train them to get better at it or do it on command as well as on their own when hunger drives them to hunt and eat.

I think if we had to worry about rats and such getting into our food supplies we'd all be singing the praises of those cats and small dogs.

5 - Your Mod List.

The log file will contain your mod list, but if you are using mods from the Steam Workshop then the mod list in the log file will usually only appear as a series of numbers relating to the mod's Workshop ID's. Obviously a list of Workshop ID numbers is nowhere near as helpful as a list of the names of the mods, so please provide a named list of your mods as well (a screenshot(s) of your in-game mod list will usually suffice).

Or if you prefer, or if your mod list is extremely long, you can find a full list of active mods in your odsConfig.xml files located in the Config folder. So you can just attach this file like you did for your log file, and you can find this file in the same place as your Saves folder (see step #6).

This statement is taken from the post in the locked "how to report a mod bug" thread. I tried to use these instructions to get my mods list, but these instructions seem to be wrong. The file I'm supposed to look for does not exist in the folder I'm told it's supposed to be in. The only file I could find with ANY list of mods at all just lists the Steam Workshop numerical codes, which is no different then the info already provided in the basic logs and game files. Obviously the way mods lists are being stored is handled differently from when this these instructions were posted.

Could a mod or admin please update these instructions with the current info?

I posted the info here: https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=41423.0 originally, then later found out this bug seems to involve the new races added by the Beast Man Tribes mod. It seems to specifically affect Beastman race behavior when they're a member of a trade caravan. What happens is anyone who's a beast man will steal colony food and eat that, even when they have their own food to eat. The human members of the trade caravans don't seem to do this, only races added via the Beastman tribes mod.

I have a save game from a few moments before several Lynxmen in a trade caravan raid my freezer of food, even though they're carrying loads of pemmican they should be eating.

I've uploaded a copy of the save to Dropbox as I couldn't attach here, the save files always seem to be too big for the forum to allow the attachment. I'll pick up the log files and mods list later on when I have the time, if you need it to debug.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/s3sbdpz0yybknw7/Prevenders-4.rws?dl=0

Hi,
you are right this is a bug and shouldn't appear at B18 anymore.
Visitor or caravan's eat their own food, and before they are out of food they left the map normaly.
So this is definity no vanilia behavior.
When you are playing without mod, i think a safegame is needed then the devs can look into it.

But if you got some mod's enabled, it is prolly the fault of one of these mod's.
Serveral (mosttimes early version') mod did cause strange behavior to neutral pawn.
Then you should post the error log and modlist, better take a look at the subforum Mod bugs "How to report a mod bug".

I did some testing by turning off all my mods and turning the ones most likely to affect neutral pawn behavior and coudn't reproduce. The mods I tested were the Hospitality Mod, and Beast Man Tribes mods, and couldn't reproduce it with either them on, nor could I reproduce this bug in vanilla in my test game.

When I went back to my main game, and back to the point in the game where this was happening, I noticed all the ones doing this were "Lynxmen" from the Beast Man Tribes mod. There were also humans in that caravan but they were not doing this food stealing. I couldn't reproduce this in my tests though as this is either an interaction between 2 mods, or the pawns have to be members of a trade caravan for this to happen. Either way, this does seem to be related to the Beast Man Tribes mod.

Could a moderator move this topic to the Mod Bugs section please?

@Tober6fire The size and luxury of a room depends on each pawn's traits. Traits like Greedy, Jealous, etc will mean they need a bigger and more richly decorated room then your average pawn. Aesthetics are unhappy if their room is too good, so they need a room just big enough for their basic needs and no fancy decorations.

As for the tables and chairs in each room, aside from what others have already said, there are pros and cons to both designs. I won't repeat what's already been said, so other things to consider are that you need your colonists to get along together and meal times are a great time for them to have some friendly chats, which can boost mood a bit, but mostly it improves relationships so they're less likely to get into brawls and hurt each other, taking up precious medical resources on 2 people being stupid, and not to mention the possible down time of 1 or 2 of your precious colonists while they're recovering from the fight.

There's also the added bonus for shared dining in a communal "mess hall", to borrow a naval term here. 2 colonists may fall in love and become lovers. This means they'll want to share a double bed and only take up 1 bedroom. Later, they may even get married, which triggers a big party and a HUGE mood boost for everyone (except maybe someone with the Sociopath trait). The newlyweds get the biggest single event mood boost in the game too, so they're practically immune to mental breaks for at least a week afterwords.

On the other hand, if you have a colony with a lot of anti-social traits, like Abrasive, Sociopath/Psychopath, and so on, they may have bad interactions and grow to hate each other. Fortunately, in most games, those traits are a small minority and the vast majority will benefit from interacting with each other more.

Another advantage to the "Mess Hall" approach is you don't need as many resources to handle your dining needs. The biggest table in the game (I think it's 2x6), can seat up to 10 people comfortably. If you have a huge colony or tend to get a lot of guests, you may need a 2nd big table to handle the potential overflow when you have many guests sharing your table, but basically, that big table and single room will use less wood overall.

As for the layout of the housing, I'd use shared walls as much as possible. Depending on your climate, you may need a central hallway to protect from temperature extremes, as the hallway basically becomes an "airlock" limiting heat/cold loss every time someone opens a door. With the 2x3 layout you've got, I'd put a 2 tile wide hallway between the rooms on the long direction, and romove the short halls on the width. That will eliminate 4 unnecessary walls, and free up quite a bit of wood. You then only need to heat/cool the middle room and add vents to transfer the temperature control to the corners. Or, if you're in a climate prone to massive extremes (either cold or hot), you can modify this to heat/cool the corners and vent to the middle rooms. Just use common sense and observation on what's needed for your HVAC to keep up.

You do NOT want to let your rooms get too hot or too cold, as that triggers the "slept in cold/heat" mood penalty, as well as can lead to hypothermia or heat stroke in your colonists, and that means medical care to get them well again, or even a dead colonist to bury and everyone else being very unhappy about the loss.

In conclusion, community rooms are generally better for your colony. They are more resource efficient, contribute to good working relationships and generally make life better in your colony. The only reason I'd avoid them is if I had a very unlucky roll with the traits and got mostly anti-social pawns in my colony. I also like communal workshops for the same reason, your colonists can chat while they work if their tables are close enough together, which is 9 times out of 10 good.

Otherwise cats are completely useless. Just like real life!

Not really. IRL cats are how we were able to form modern civilization. They were considered sacred in places like Egypt and China because they'd hunt and kill vermin that would consume and contaminate town food supplies and granaries otherwise.

In Europe, when foolish superstitions rose about cats being "bad luck" resulting in them being hunted down and killed, the populations of rodents, like rats, mice, etc, exploded and resulted in the Black Death (aka the Bubonic Plague), which wiped out between 50 and 80% of the population wherever it spread. All because they went through a period where they didn't like cats.

People like the Egyptians, Romans, Ancient Greeks, etc, realized that cats keep rodent and other pest populations down and help prevent famines and diseases from the contamination of food supplies.

I'd call that pretty useful, wouldn't you? We woldn't be talking about Rimworld on computers over the Internet if it weren't for cats. We'd all probably still be hunting and gathering in small nomadic tribes.

I just got back into this game for the first time since the B18 update, and I love the new features but I ran into something that I'm not sure is a feature or a bug. If it is a feature it's one that should be removed immediately, but I suspect it's a bug.

I had a very large caravan (bulk goods trader) visit and noticed my food supplies were going down very fast. just after they'd arrived, I'd bought some items, including some food and one of the food stacks I'd just bought seemed to have disappeared, and I don't know what happened to it, it was too large to have just been eaten by an animal, and at the time I suspected a member of the caravan may have picked it up and stolen it back before anyone in my colony had a chance to haul it to storage. It wasn't even there for that long either.

Then I later saw one of the caravaners take food from my freezer and start eating it, and mystery solved, they were stealing the colony food stores and eating us dry! This HAS to be a bug as I see no reason why Ludeon would be so evil as to make THAT a feature, as it ruins the whole idea of friendly caravans if they eat your colony into starvation every time they visit.

This is ruining the balance of the game right now, and they've never done this in any of the builds I've played up to A17. I do have mods running, but other then the Hospitality mod, none of them should be affecting visitor/caravan behavior, and the Hostpitality mod's never caused any kind of visitors to behave like a swarm of locusts eating the colony dry of all food.

This is also happening in Season 1, so no way my colony can support 10-15 visitors all eating our food reserves. This would basically be an early game over at this rate, as I have no control over when caravans visit, and if they all do this, a 1st year colony can't possibly produce enough food to keep up.

If necessary I can attach a save file from about the time this caravan arrived to see their behavior.

EDIT: Tried to attach save file but that edit failed and sent me to a "new topic" page instead, No idea why the forum would do that. If the file's too big, which I think it is, then the forum should have given me an error message saying so, not sent me off to some weird place.

@Seriously Unserious You mean Frostpunk, correct?

Uh, yeah, that's the one.

I've been taking a closer look into "They are Billions". It is kinda different game since it is more a "defend the fort RTS" than a colony manager but... it's pretty amazing.

http://www.numantiangames.com/theyarebillions/
Yeah, that one looks good. My first look was watching Enter Elysium's latest LP of it today. I'll have to check out Splatty's LP too, when I have the time.
I suggest the Splattercat gameplay of it, if you wanna have a feel for the game. I intend to purchase this game as soon as it reaches Steam EA

That one looks good. My first look was watching Enter Elysium's latest LP of it today. I'll have to check out Splatty's LP when I have the time.