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Perhaps we could model the colonist's vitamin D levels and increase disease chance accordingly .

Bullets are powerful, but that power lies in the kinetic energy and thus severed limbs are only possible with the largest of bullets. After a bullet has entered the body and stopped moving, it will no longer harm the victim any further (lead poisoning is a long term issue, and exceptional circumstances notwithstanding).

By comparison, a good deal of a Pilum's damage comes from its size and shape. Consider getting hit in the thigh or knee by a 4-foot long stick with a 2 foot long metal blade that's designed to bend after contact. Not only will this hurt like hell on impact, and significantly damage any muscle, nerves, tendons, or arteries in its way, but now you have a ruined 6-foot long spear in your leg that is constantly moving as you shift weight, cutting up more muscle, and doing more damage. Then you pull it out and the pilum gets to do even more damage -and even MORE damage if the blade bent or broke and you have to jimmy it out! And that's before we consider that the tribesmen have probably stored the blades in muffalo dung to give you infection.

...So yes, Pila have a definite chance of taking off your leg. It's just at the moment we don't have to surgically remove the ruined leg, but rather said leg falls off of its own accord.

I don't see a slower mining speed as the solution. Personally, I won't stop embedding myself in a mountain just because it takes a week, instead of a day, to build an underground room. As long as the bunker is finished before the first siege it's a net gain for me. Until then some cheap wooden huts with no floors will store my food, beds, and prisoners.

Good discussion to have. Thanks for bringing this up.

It is a tough balance problem to solve. I think the best, most obvious solution is to put players on the offensive more often. I tried to do that with sieges and the ship part, but I think it's not quite panning out that way with sieges. So maybe I could rework sieges and make them a bit more common, and perhaps add another kind of threat or opportunity that draws people out of their base. Anyone have any thoughts about what this could be?

Adding some further mood penalties for being underground for long periods may be a viable option as well. You can live underground, it's true - but it's really awful to be underground all the time.

I suggested a "Hive Queen" earlier whose premise was that it would steal local resources and turn them into mechaniods. It would be hard to implement, maybe impossible IDK, but I think its the principle that matters: The problem grows over time, not diminishes. That will force the players out; not a siege that can be avoided by tunneling, gives you free stuff, and becomes less dangerous over time.

As for living in a cave debuffs, living in a cave is generally preferable to living outside: The temperature is more constant and generally hovers around 30 degrees Celsius*. This is the principle behind Ground-Coupled air conditioning. If you can provide the proper amenities and raise the roof height to over 6 feet (maybe install a ceiling if rock bothers you) then you may as well be on the moon for all it matters. Especially since the current game build has no windows. I support the idea of new, underground dangers. Perhaps a few worm signs (the likes of which GOD has never seen)?
*Temperature varies with climate.

We should probably consider how little of a colony must be underground. I don't need my colonists to never see the light of day, I only need the dorm rooms, kitchen, and dining room underground. When a siege occurs, I merely cancel all jobs (except cooking), remove outside home regions, and remove outside stockpiles. The Colonists, now idle, will elect to gather around the dining room tables and chat, sleep, or maybe do botany on the hydroponic tables if I have them. Meanwhile, my outside constructions are safe because the Pirates only target colonists with mortars, and are thus obsessively firing into the mountainside.

Shouldn't it be, "When siegers are hungry and don't detect nearby food, they switch to assault mode"?

If they wait until they are starving they'll start taking damage and moral penalties before they even reach the fortress. Plus it makes more since if the Siegers said

"We're staring to run out of food, we better assault this colony before we run out."
instead of:
"Oh god I'm starving to death and were out of food, I say we attack the fortress anyways!"

*For Forests and dry areas with lots of fauna.

Blurb:
The temperature rises drastically and you look upon the horizon to discover a wall of flames stretching for miles in both directions!

Spawns a wall of flames along the entirety of a single map border. Flame spread is temporarily boosted. Rain disabled for a couple weeks. Have fun!

Roads are actually a bigger improvement than you think: Trees, shrubs, rocks, and even item piles all slow down your colonists beyond the base speed shown at the bottom corner of the screen. By clearing all these things and adding wood/stone/concrete flooring you give your colonists not only a huge speed boost, but also a coherency to pawn formations during sorties to kill sieges.

All good ideas. But I believe bosses should have at least the following traits:

1) They can't be mortared to death -that just induces more camping
2) The problem needs to grow over time, rather than slowly weaken like the siege does
3) The boss needs to "Clean up" the map -I find late game colonies have too many dead siege camps, weapons and junk scattered across the map. It's just ugly and all too often the camps are too far away to clean up in a practical manner.
4) They need to provide something of unique value upon defeat.

[long]

The ultimate form of Mechaniod. This creature occupies multiple squares (say, 5x5) and kinda looks like a smaller version of this:


Big freaking Laser cannon and all. Laser inflicts burn damage, has long charge time, long fire burst, and perfect accuracy. Can shoot through metal (heat conducted through metal) and wood (wood burns away) as well as all half cover. This laser also has the nasty side effect of completely vaporizing any loot drops from dead characters. >: )

AI
The Mechaniod Queen does not directly attack your base upon arrival. Instead, she travels the map searching for all forms of metal - natural deposits, scrap, guns, piles lying around, mortars, buildings, furniture etc. Then, she breaks down the pieces (when necessary), "Eats" the metal, and, like a spider, "spins" a new Mechaniod with her hind legs. (!!!)

The new Mechaniods then accompany the queen around the map as she eats resources. They don't go away, they only get worse. Until finally the Queen and her family's search for metal brings them to your doorstep. The queen will defend herself, and can mine through rock to dig you out (and dig up the exposed metal). The Queen's lackeys function like normal mechaniods and will chase you down and murder you if you threaten the queen. Finally, the queen will attempt to dodge incoming mortars, and will not be provoked into a preemptive strike (Her lackeys will attack, though)

Possible Loots (pick your favorites!)
If killed, yields a ton of metal and "Mechaniod parts" that can be disassembled, an AI core, and a laser core. The laser core can be presented as a pretty trinket to a hostile tribe to finally rid you of an enemy raider group. Alternatively, you can use it and the AI core together to build a new type of turret that kills quickly-but at the expense of vaporizing carried items.

Purpose
Super difficult end-game enemy that serves multiple purposes. Perfect for taking out those entrenched, 20+ person colonies without crashing the game though numbers. Can't be ignored to wonder the map, but if you try, you'll have a mechaniod army to deal with. Also cleans up the map so you don't have all those abandoned metal piles, sandbags, mortars, guns, after a long run.

Bonuses:
Does not Eat, Does not sleep, organs soak up lots of damage, multiple legs, not slowed by terrain or debris (big and long legs to traverse terrain), can mine through rock, spawns enemies, dodges mortars, special weapon, and possibly, if the rest wasn't hard enough, emits a psychic wave.

Centipedes carry heavy weapons with a long reload time. They are very vulnerable to hit-and-run in the early game:
1)find/build tall cover that can both cover AND CONCEAL your guys (3-5 length wall should do). You'll probably want two of these walls, more if your good at micro. Try to scatter them out so the minigun can't hit 2 or more firing positions at once.
2)Hide in the concealment until the centipede is within gun range. When he appears, have all colonists move to the corner of the walls and fire.
3)Centipede will stop and slowly take aim at one of your colonists. Move the colonist back behind concealment. The Centipede will then slowly aim at another colonist. Move HIM back and the first colonist forward. Keep an eye on the centipede's aim time to maximize exposure time while minimizing danger.
4) Repeat ad nauseam.

Right now our only options are to either capture an allied faction's colonist, or watch him bleed out on our lawn. How about the ability to rescue these envoys? We take them to a medical bed instead of a prisoner bed, and once healed they return home. Upon leaving the map area rescued colonists give a bonus to relations with that faction. Alternatively you could try recruiting them as they heal, but since they're free to leave you only have a limited time convince them to join you.

How about the ability to prioritize sleeping and eating? It's annoying when, during a siege, you want to sortie and kill the pirates, but your colonists are half-awake or half-hungry, and the trip is too long to go on an empty stomach.

This way you could get your colonists to sleep and feast, then head out to battle all full and awake.

My friend has started playing recently and his first playthough got one of his colonist's legs shot off in the first 30 minutes of playing. We were on teamspeak and it got me thinking: It seems a bit unfair for a colonist with a missing leg to become completely worthless to your colony, when we already have plenty of ways to compensate for such injuries. Here's some Item ideas that could be added to the game as a counter to injuries:

Crutch: Restores a small amount of movement speed to legless colonists. Costs wood.
Wheelchair: Restores a small amount of movement speed to legless colonists. Extra bonus on smooth/constructed ground, but far slower than the crutch on rough ground. Costs metal.
Prosthetic Leg: Restores a fair amount of movement speed to legless colonist. Requires Basic Medical Research and a decent doctor. Costs metal.
Prosthetic Arm: Restores some skill in labor and crafting to a colonist. Requires Basic Medical Research and a decent doctor.
Cybernetic Leg: Completely restores movement to the wearer. Speed Bonus if both legs are cybernetic. Requires Advanced Medical Research and a skilled doctor. Costs 1 Mechoid Corpse. Vulnerable to EMP.
Cybernetic Leg: Completely restores crafting and labor skills to wearer. Requires Advanced Medical Research and a skilled doctor. Costs 1 Mechoid Corpse. Vulnerable to EMP.
Blood Pump: Restores Circulation to a colonist with a failed/failing heart. Requires Basic Medical Research and a decent doctor. Costs metal. Vulnerable to EMP.
Glasses: Partially restores vision if at least one eye still functions. Costs metal.
Cybernetic Eye: Completely restores vision. Bonus to vision if both eyes are mechanical. Requires Advanced Medical Research and a skilled doctor. Costs one Mechiod Corpse. Vulnerable to EMP.
Circuit Implant: Repairs a very small amount of brain damage, but a fair chance of failiure. Requires Advanced Medical Research and a skilled doctor.
Cybernetic Brain AI Implant: Partially repairs brain damage, but high chance of failure. Requires 2nd Age Medical Research and a skilled doctor. Costs one Mechiod Corpse. Vulnerable to EMP.
Organ Transplant: Partially restores functions of miscellaneous organs. Requires Advanced Medical Research and a skilled doctor. Costs one fresh human corpse or Printed Organ.
*Organ Printer: Special Furniture that produces Printed Organs using the patient's DNA. Printed Organs expire a couple days after manufacturing unless surgically installed into a patient, so no Stockpiling. Confers a bonus to the success chance of the Organ Transplant Operation. Requires 2nd Age Medical Research.

Most items are "built" as a medical operation, with nonintrusive procedures such as glasses having a 100% success rate. A doctor merely brings the required material to the medical bed. Cybernetics require the machining table to make the special items first.

Basic Medical Research is for mid-game and should be scaled accordingly. It is meant to analog to our current medical technology.
Advanced Medical Research is for late-game and is analogous to near-future technology, or current procedures that are very difficult to perform i.e. Brain surgery.
2nd Are Medical Research refers to technology that is mostly speculative, but plausible.

Any other ideas? Comments? Concerns?

[Faction:]

So another thread posed the question:

Not sure if anyone else had though about why isn't there any 'law' enforcers or at least any peacemaker of sorts in the Rimworld. I'm baffled at the hostile factions' ability to pump out so many raiders in such short notice, yet not a single man of law in sight we see.

Now the obvious answer to why we see no law enforcers on the Rimworld is, simply, that it's a rimworld; their is no central government to uphold the law. But, I figure there is an opportunity here.

Faction: [insert name here] (Lawmen)
Information: These men and women are the self-proclaimed rulers of the Rimworld. They enforce the peace, provide material aid, and drive off pirates...for a price.

Game Mechanics: Lawmen are a nonentity until the player builds a comms array and beacon. Once the Lawmen detect both buildings, they will begin sending envoys just like other friendly factions. However, unlike other factions your relationship with the lawmen is never static: Instead, it drops slowly over time at a rate dependent on the wealth of the colony. In short, you must pay taxes to the Lawmakers or suffer their wrath.

As Hostiles: Lawmen will either raid or besiege your settlement, depending on the settlement size. Unlike hostile tribes who kidnap your settlers, the Lawmen will try to steal wood, metal, silver, and manufactured resources. If they succeed in taking enough resources, your relationship with them will reset to zero (They've collected their 'tax').

As Allies: Lawmen do not want to destroy you. In fact, they want you to thrive so they can keep taxing your resources! So as long as you pay tribute, you will have access to two diplomatic options:
-Barrow Resources: For a diplomatic penalty, the Lawmen will deploy a stockpile of metal, wood, and food to your location. Good for recovering from a deadly attack.
-Call for aid: Just like every other faction

As an Army: The lawmen are, man-for-man, the strongest humanoid faction in the game. They never leave home without full body armor, and generally pack a combination of energy assault rifles and M24s. They also come to fights en-mass, and thus as allies can be generally relied on to bail your ass out during a pirate siege. Their greatest drawback is their self-preservation: Lawmen will fight from a distance whenever possible, and if one of their own is incapacitated they will attempt to rescue him/her. That means for every lawmen incapacitated, another will be lost taking the wounded back to base. Further, any Lawmen brought below 30% health automatically retreats.


What do you think? Too much of an annoyance? Too powerful? Just fine? Or completely untenable as a design idea?