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Yep.  Tucked away inside, they're a bit less vulnerable to slash and burn tactics.

Also, updated the killbox screenshot.  As if the turrets weren't overkill enough, I've added embrasures and new walled-off sections.

Well, I noticed today that Hoppers don't seem to obey the priority.  Probably because filling them is not considered a Hauling job (it's Cooking, oddly enough!)

If your colonists are hauling to a stockpile, the priority of the stockpile seems to affect the order of hauling as well.

So for example, if I want the nutrient paste dispensers to always have at least 50% stock, I leave half of their hoppers set to the default 'Important' priority.  But since I want some stock near my cook stove to make more appetising meals, the other half will be set to 'Normal' and my cook stove stockpile will be set to 'Preferred.'

What this means is that if the haulers are super busy and have other stuff to haul at a higher priority, the cook stove stockpile may run out, but at least no-one will starve.  Conversely, when things are quiet, the nutrient paste dispenser will be fully stocked if there's a surplus of food and very few other hauling jobs to do.

Give it a try, anyway.

Well, I dunno if it's the best defence system, but having the crematorium near the killzone is certainly more efficient.

A low-tech solution to make life easier, is make a new library and/or add the folder with the saved games to your Favorites in Windows Explorer.  This cuts down on the drilling to the right folder.

Also, don't close Windows Explorer when you do this.  Just leave it minimised while you're playing Rimworld and when you're done playing you can restore the window and Send the save file over to your USB drive.

Considering it.  Something to think about though - Alpha 7 will allow objects to have different appearances as masks rather than a texture for each one.  At least that's how I read it.

Sure, I can do more colours, if you throw me some suggestions or colour codes.

For whatever reason, some outlanders decided to visit... while there was a raging inferno consuming the trees near my base.

One of them walked through the fire while I was watching, and started running around trying to put themselves out.

At this point one of my colonists, Trick, steps in and extinguishes the burning outlander.  Great, I thought, they'll surely thank me for not letting the guy burn to death.

Er, well, not exactly.

Trick gets a knuckle sandwich from the person he was helping to not burn to death and a message appears about relations with the outlander faction becoming hostile.  He barely has time to duck inside before the other outlanders start shooting.

So, lesson learned.  If you see an outlander on fire, let them deal with it.

Well sure, but I like doing the art too you know?

Speaking of, here's a texture I worked on this afternoon.

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Well, I don't know if gear will emit light when it's equipped.  If not, I could at least make the lantern drop itself in item form when deconstructed, so that you can move it around that way.

And, I'll look at making a more lantern-like texture.

Something to consider, whether you prefer an outside or mountain base, is that you can rebuild a base.  You can't (at least not at the minute) rebuild colonists.

So, let's say that being raided by an overwhelming force is inevitable.  If they can't find your colonists because you've dug yourself a shelter and sealed up the entrance, they can't kill them.

It might not be the most dignified or honorable way to survive a raid, but you can't win them all.

This mod is now part of the Winter is Here! mod.


This mod adds a smaller light source with a quarter of the power requirements of a standing lamp, and a smaller radius of illumination.

You need to research Colored Lights to unlock the lamp.



Also, there is a mining lantern which requires no research.  However, it must be pre-assembled at a Lantern Table before being placed at the desired site.  It can be deconstructed into item form and re-used elsewhere.  Compared to the standing lamp it uses two-thirds as much power.



Changelog

Alpha 6

v1.0.0: Initial release.
v1.1.0: Added mining lantern and lantern-making table.
v1.2.0: Yes I know, version numbering is terrible, haha.  Increased value of lantern kits to 25 to decrease lantern kit spam in crashed cargo pods.
v1.2.3: Similar changes to v1.3.0 in Alpha 7, but supports Alpha 6.

Alpha 7

v1.3.0: Updated to Alpha 7.  Decreased metal cost for lamp.  Reduced power consumption for lamp and lantern to 40W and 100W respectively.  Screenshots do not reflect this.

Alpha 8

v1.4.0 Updated to Alpha 8. Added an outdoor battery kit, which requires 25 Steel and 5 stone blocks (of any type) to craft. You currently need two battery kits to make one outdoor battery (same size and capacity). Deconstructing the outdoor battery should yield the two kits again. Lantern and battery kits are made at the smithing table. Lamp no longer needs Coloured Lights to research.

Merged into the Winter is Here mod.


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Oh yeah.  Thanks to embrasures, a small raider drop-in on the trade beacon was easily taken care of today by my colonists.  None of the raiders survived.

The advantage of a base built outside is that the terrain is quite open, meaning good fields of fire for your colonists.  It's certainly possible to use some tricks (like placing a cutting table across a wall gap) to shoot out from your base.

Using multiple cores to divide up the work sounds great in theory.  Multiple threads don't always confer an advantage though.  For example, take the example of pathfinding.  If you just split that up across two cores, you can have pawns trying to pathfind to the same spot, because the spot was reserved twice in different threads.  Oops.

An example of what you could do without too much hassle:

Divide the pathfinding into two stages - the first simply returns a series of binary matrices indicating for example 1) Is the terrain passable, yes or no 2) Does the tile provide high cover, yes or no 3) Are there any bashable doors, yes or no.

Then the second stage examines the matrices and suggests possible courses of action for that pawn to take - move to a place with high cover, bash in a door, or flank an enemy pawn.

Thing is, to actually get any benefit from dividing this into two stages, the work required has to exceed a certain threshold.  Otherwise you can just do stage 1 and stage 2 on one thread.