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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!!

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?

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.

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?

- Construction: Colonists with low construction skill could end up wasting more materials than normally needed, or downright fail to construct the intended object AND waste some of the materials in the process. Also, low skill repairers could randomly CAUSE damage to target object, potentially destroying it. When it comes to shutting down incapacitated mechs, they might end up HEALING some of the damage, potentially reactivating the mech.
- Medical: Skill level checks for treating some of the injuries. Result of failure: loss of medical supplies, more pain to the patient, no healing done, failed cybernetic limb installation (needs retry then), failed organ harvest or transplant results in death.
- Growing: Failure to harvest. Less harvest or no harvest from a plant.
- Research: Low skill researchers could randomly lose some of the research due to lack of academic discipline.
- Melee: Fumble and injure yourself. Get a bruise or even a broken bone or get stunned maybe. Randomly lower weapon HP if one is used due to lack of care.
- Social: Anger the conversational partner, or at least cause him/her negative mood.
- Cooking: Failure wastes ingredients. Randomly cook a lower quality meal than intended. Butchering yields less meat or no meat, same with animal hide quantity.
- Crafting: Delayed production (added time to craft the item), random waste of materials, potentially halting the crafting process.
- Art: See 'Crafting'.
- Mining: Random minor injuries. Accidentally mine an adjacent square although this might drive the OCD types crazy. Less minerals from ore veins.
- Shooting: Randomly lower weapon's HP due to misuse, eventually/potentially breaking the gun over time. Experienced shooters might actually passively repair the gun that they're carrying over time.

As a consolation, gain a nice XP bonus from failures since failures teach us the most.

Single animals keep going insane despite having

Code Select Expand

  <IncidentDef>
    <defName>AnimalInsanitySingle</defName>
    <workerClass>IncidentWorker_AnimalInsanitySingle</workerClass>
    <chance>0</chance>
    <favorability>Bad</favorability>
    <threatLevel>SmallThreat</threatLevel>
  </IncidentDef>
Suspicion/Guess: This setting doesn't affect the animals added in alpha 6: deer, megascarab, iguana. It might affect correctly muffalos, squirrels and boomrats. Or it might not.

Agent revealed despite having

Code Select Expand

  <IncidentDef>
    <defName>AgentRevealed</defName>
    <workerClass>IncidentWorker_AgentRevealed</workerClass>
    <chance>0</chance>
    <minRefireDays>40</minRefireDays>
    <favorability>VeryBad</favorability>
    <threatLevel>SmallThreat</threatLevel>
    <populationEffect>Decrease</populationEffect>
    <pointsScaleable>true</pointsScaleable>
  </IncidentDef>
Is the chance scaled up as the population goes up? Is that what the <pointsScaleable> means? Because I hadn't had this after I had zeroed it out... up until recently, soon after obtaining my 7th-9th colonist.


Playing on Randy, 100% challenge.
Win 7 (32-bit)

Would you...

...rather lose a poorly skilled colonist or lose 160 metal, a turret's material cost? (you're low on metal and the nearest ore vein is far, on the other hand you're short on manpower)
...rather deal with 20 psychotic muffalos or 20 psychotic squirrels? (you have 6 guys with M-16s, no turrets and no time to build any)
...pick a lazy but passionate grower or a very neurotic chef? (you do not have neither a chef nor a grower on your team already)
...rather have smoothed out stone floors with rock rubble (dirt) on them, or have clean but rough rock floors?
...rather have your colonists eat raw animal meat or starve moderately and wait for your chef to recover from his wounds to get some fine meals (potential minor health loss due to starvation; no vegetables stored)
...go pick an M-16 if it was all the way across a large map, right at the edge. You have pistols only and you haven't had a raid in a loooong time...
...go get the said M-16 with your entire crew in case you'd get a raid on the way?
...feel screwed if a raid came from the opposite edge of the map, and you'd have to run back to the colony with your ass on fire, to defend it?
...rather listen to the rain sound or the ancient crashed ship part droning sound? You're trying to think.
...pick a highly skilled but depressive shooter or an iron-willed poor shooter? You specifically need fighters.
...rather have your burly and barbaric melee fighter run around without clothes or have him wear a sissy pink shirt? (it's the only free shirt there is and this is a trick question)
...rather have a colonist take a shot from a shotgun or a burst from an Uzi? (both fired from the range of 15 squares)
...rather deal with 10 Centipedes or 10 Scythers?
...rather play RimWorld an hour every day, or for 3 hours every 3 days?
...rather have a 14-day eclipse or 4 consecutive blights?

Brothers and sisters!


The day is here. The day we all have waited for. When I felt the arrival of The Gift, just outside these very walls, I wept tears of joy. This is truly a miracle. Do you not feel it? Is it not the most wondrous of sensations? We are the few. We are the chosen. Where others succumb to madness in the omnipotent presence of The Gift, we get to feel its true love and power. Sister Addy here is special. She struggles from day to day with the love of The Gift, and her old self. The madness of the old world will not leave her completely. But yet, she is able to handle The Gift, even if barely. Truly she is the strongest of us all. As such, she shall be appointed The Guardian Under The New Sun. Her daily rituals will involve several hours of meditation and fasting amidst the roses. She shall overwatch our work, and keep an eye out for dangers. She shall not be approached during her meditation. Consider her duties as holy as The Gift itself. My faith says Sister Addy is the conduit between us and the Ancients. No, I KNOW she will be the key to revealing the ultimate meaning of The Gift. She will be needed to guide our minds to understand it. What we all felt today was just a glimpse, a mere sample, a single drop of the ocean of love we will experience in the coming weeks.


From here on, we shall cast aside all fear. The Gift is on our side. The unworthy ones outside this holy place will perish under The Gift's influence, and rightfully so. We will mourn their souls when the upcoming great war is over. But right now there is no reason to be sad, quite the contrary. My children! We have much work to do in our hearts and souls. Same as Sister Addy, we too have to meditate each day whenever each of us gets a chance. Eventually each of us has to be able to give ourselves to the mercy of The Gift. Only by studying your own self, your past and your feelings, will you be able to let it all go. You cannot let go that which you are not aware of.


I know all of you have some concerns, but rest assured, should the power of The Gift grow unbearably intense, together we can seek refuge in my personal quarters, where we will plant an exquisite garden of local roses. Their tranquil scent will assist us on our spiritual journey. With the guidance of Sister Addy and myself, we shall hold hands and meditate together, and find our way to embrace The Gift, just as strongly as it embraces us.


As I'm speaking of The Gift, I realize what we must do. We must protect The Gift. Its shell is already strong and can withstand great adversity, but nevertheless we must not stand idly. We shall build a temple and a sanctuary around it. We will decorate it with the bodies of the unworthy, as an offering. We shall protect it and guard it with our lives. This is the beginning of our eternity! We are immortal! The Gift cannot be stopped! WE cannot be stopped! This is the cradle of the last revolution that this universe will ever witness! This galaxy will be the first to bathe in The Gift and we were chosen to be its harbingers!

---

In plain English and without the theatrics: I caved in and gave Alpha 6 a shot, also to test if I could pull this one off. I started a new cult... uhh, a colony with guys who are immune to the psychic droning. Two immune, one half immune (Addy). Then I just casually built the colony and waited for the ancient ship part to crash. Soon after it had come, I built walls around it to protect it. My concern was that a random lightning bolt would strike it and release the mechs, so I wanted a roof over it. It's not like I started to worship it myself. Honest. The ship remains untouched in my base. It's been like that for weeks, and the droning is at maximum, at least I THINK it is. Any group that enters the area goes insane fairly fast, ending up wandering in daze. Addy, who is only half immune, can still withstand the full effects of extreme droning, which is -50 penalty to mood (=constant -25 to her). On the other hand, she has 'Iron will' to boot. I do my best to avoid exposing her to corpses. She's the gardener so she's frequently exposed to the beauty of the roses as well. I built a 5x5 rose garden in my "cult leader's" quarters as a safety measure.


It feels like I get visitor groups constantly. I should start collecting other 'psychically deaf' pawns that wander in daze outside but I'm reluctant to make factions hostile, even if they pose zero threat. I only have a crew of four... Before the ship crashed, I had a couple more (unwanted) colonists earlier. They served their purpose and finally I sold them, since none of them were immune to droning.


Speaking of the 'psychically deaf', to get 3 starting colonists with that trait, I spent about 20 minutes hitting 'randomize'. They seemed quite rare, and possibly rightfully so. However, in the field, 'psychically deaf' faction members seemed far more common. I clicked through one tribal group and THREE of their pawns were 'psychically deaf'. What are the odds? A little later I checked a random town visitor group and they had TWO. When I was starting the game and clicking 'randomize' over and over again, I positively went through 100+ colonists. And later, in a batch of 40-60 visitor pawns in total, there's 3+2 of them? I'm forced to believe psy immune pawns are easier to obtain in the field, but obviously capping them might require elaborate measures. There's a chance that the save file can be edited directly to add or remove traits, but I'm not 100% sure if it's just that simple.


I initially wanted to surround the ship with roses but too late I remembered that plants actually die around it. Duh. On the other hand, it might make a nice way to powerlevel the Growing skill... Plants die faster than what you can sow. Instead of roses, I ended up decorating it with corpses of the non-belie.. uhh, other faction pawns. I'm not much of a visual designer, as you can see from the humble temple I built around it.

(screenshots attached, login to view)

Pic 1 - The overhead view.
Pic 2 - A closer view of the temple. This is where you're not allowed to go.
Pic 3 - Sister Addy at work.
Pic 4 - Behold! The power of The Gift. Can you count the corpses?

[attachment deleted by admin: too old]

Kindly list all your experiences and observations about various functioning traits in here. Also, please mention any particularly beneficial OR nasty traits, or combinations of traits (with related skills) a player should look out for!

Try to keep an eye on raiders' traits as well.

Is there any info on how many functioning traits there are in Alpha 6?

I seriously despise this event.


Randy: "Well, there goes your chef, man. Oh boy, I bet you're going to miss the fine meals. And why? For absolutely no good f***ing reason. I mean, it's in the BaseIncidents.xml file, so there's always a chance for it triggering, but there's no deeper rationale behind it. Get it? No reason, no purpose, entirely random. Do you like it? Are you not entertained? That's universe for ya. Isn't chaos... liberating? Now, hold on! Chill, man, chill! You could still catch the guy and beat him. I promise! Oh, uhh, or, you know, the other way around - beat and then ca-- ANYWAY, totally up to you. I'm not gonna tell you what to do. Sheesh, are your knuckles always so white when you squeeze the mouse? I never noticed that before."


The second time it happened was enough for me. Edited it out of BaseIncidents. You?

[,]

So we're at alpha 5 already and I've yet to see a list of shortcut keys. Most of the keys can be obviously seen on-screen during gameplay but here are some of the less visible ones. (What is Tynan trying to cover up?)

, and . = Cycle colonists (Gee, would've been nice to know about this 6 months ago.)
F10 = Take screenshot (Used to be F11. Nice try, Tynan. You can't hide this from us.)
F9 = Hide interface. (Interface-Be-Gone. Consult your doctor if you get interface in your eyes.)
Esc = Options menu. Also closes most screens, including character sheet. (Away with ya!)
T / Page Up = Zoom out (Bad Tynan! T is also used for the hunt command which makes me zoom out.)
G / Page Down = Zoom in (Citizen Caligaro! What are you wearing!)
Tab = Opens the menu menu (duh). (Hit your trusty Esc to close it.)
1,2,3,Spacebar = Adjust game speed (Can't stop here. Bat country.)
Alt+F4 = Exits game immediately (No questions asked. You're on your own, partner.)

Did I miss anything? (Am I old yet?)

These are the haunted remains of Shooterville, a colony of 8, whose all Shooting skill was 12+ (double-flame). The screenshot is actually something like 50 days past the final battle. I let the game run in a sudden realization (and probably in futile optimism) that I'd get a stranger to join my colony out of the blue, who would then rebuild everything to its former glory and beyond.

Shooterville withstood countless strenuous raids and infinite hairy situations, suffering only 2 casualties in its time. The straw, or rather the log, that broke the camel's muffalo's back, was the 6 Centipedes. I suppose I could've done things differently but one thing led to another and the colonists made their last stand at the end of the long corridor, a strategy that had worked quite well before. The Centipedes were weakened already by their hunger(?) and prior battles. What the hell was I thinking... They still had 800 HP.

You can only see 4 Centipede corpses in the image but two of them had burned. Speaking of which, a Centipede corpse burns forever. Days. Even their corpses have 800 HP. After they had annihilated the colonists with a wall of Minigun fire, they stuck around and naturally started destroying everything, setting things on fire. Eventually a team of 20+ raiders came, as usual, and madness ensued. Fire was everywhere, and much to my disappointment, rains put out fires on things that have roofs above them! Still, fires and the mad gunfire wiped out walls and doors... walls that support the place. Cave-ins! Nothing gets crushed. Centipedes and raiders wipe each other out, almost.

How much gunfire can there be before you have to regard 'air' as 'metal' because there's so much metal flying around?

A few raiders remain, but there's something odd about them... They wander in confused daze! One of them has his name tag turned purple. What in the... Oh, he's on a "psychotic rampage". In his madness, he kills his confused (former) friends with blasts of LMG fire. Rain. Fire. Destruction. Madness. Giant husks of cybernetic larvae. Dead hope. The thing about ghosts is that they can't be seen, but they are felt, and I felt the ghosts of every colonist and raider that had died there as I stared at the lone raging raider, gone berserk, killing his mates. Maybe he felt the ghosts, too. Isn't this what you wanted, raider? You and so many before you had tried to ransack this place before. And now that it is all yours, now that it all is in ruins, you are upset?

The raider finally wanders outside, only to get sniped by a random bypasser, just 3HP short of starvation death. One shot, one kill. Like putting down an animal. The stranger continues his journey casually. Another day on a distant noname planet where suffering and struggle are plenty but mean nothing.

You know you've played too much RimWorld when the music starts to eat at you... But what to replace it with?
For me, this one's going in for sure: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2QAeRZmq7I (instrumental version of 'Hurt')
Bit monotonous but great if you can hum the melody 
EDIT:
Might work nicely, too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nV8sY2Xv3Os ('Home' from the game 'The Last of Us')
Potentially great, if you can ignore the shoe tapping the rhythm http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUpP9STBKig (instrumental slide guitar version of 'John the Revelator')
Potential treasure trove http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=thomas+oliver+instrumental

[Terrain/Surfaces/SmoothStone]

Such a simple little thing. The texture of smooth stone is a little off-putting, practically a deterrent for me to not to use it. Perhaps a modder with nothing better to do could mod in an alternative? Image search with the words 'brown marble' seems to yield some nice alternatives. Although perhaps a simple color adjustment to some darker shade of brown might work just as well! The path for the smooth stone texture is Terrain/Surfaces/SmoothStone (for convenience)

Link to image search results:
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=brown+marble&go=&qs=ds&form=QBIR

I noticed quite some time ago, possibly when skill decay was introduced, that if a colonist hits the skill level 20, it'll stick there, instead of decaying, and on the character sheet the said skill level will flicker between 19 and MAX. Just moments ago I noticed another symptom that I suspect is likely connected to that. See the screenshot. If you look at the skill counter on the tooltip, it reads 'Progress to next level: 11000/10000'. What happened there was that Doug's melee skill decayed from 10 to 9, and stopped right "below" 9, as it should, since skill decay starts ticking at 10+. However, it seems the progress counter has a bit skewed idea where the limit goes. When I had Doug perform a single melee attack after that, the skill level rose to 10 and the counter read 1100/11000. Normally when Doug attacks, he gains 100xp per attack. So, for some reason the extra 1000xp sticks there after skill decay drops the skill level.

Can anyone confirm this?

[attachment deleted by admin: too old]

[Hypothesis:]

I have dozens of gameplay hours behind me and I can't help but think, time and again, that raiders shoot too well. Their shooting stats are consistently worse than that of my colonists' but somehow they manage to peck my colonists with their dinky pistols, while my colonists are behind cover. It's like Jagged Alliance 2 all over again. Winning a battle without obtaining significant casualties, when both sides are in cover positions, seems exceptionally hard, even with superior weapons. I haven't done any actual methodical empirical science on this, partly due to lack of energy, partly due to unwillingness to check the dev console, assuming the dev console can even help clarify the situation. From suspicion to science:

Hypothesis: Raiders do not suffer the accuracy penalties from rain, darkness, distance or target's cover. (Although cover seems to dampen the damage at least.)

A) Prove or disprove, or
B) Propose a testing method/procedure for a larger scale combat data collection.

[Player tasks:]

I believe I'd loooove it if I was able to send a raiding party to get back at raiders. These raider bases would be on a totally different map that would be created once and deleted afterwards. Here's how they could function:

Player tasks:
- Capture a live raider. Interrogate him for the base location. Add interrogation as one of prisoner treatment options.
- Pick 2-4 colonists, arm them and send them on their way.
- Defeat the raider defenses and kill them all to get access to the real rewards.

The rewards:
- Rare, modified or otherwise unobtainable guns.
- Prisoners (who were captured by raiders) for you to recruit. Release them to get assistance with the raid.
- Unique and otherwise unobtainable research topics, providing modest bonuses to movement speed, shooting accuracy, healing speed, overall power consumption or energy generation, just to name a few. The list could go on and on.
- Guaranteed several week peace from raids.

Features for raider base maps:
- These would be temporary locations; the player would only have limited time to spend there.
- Have colonists in the extraction zone by time-up or lose them permanently.
- Disabled mining and construction options.
- Potentially overwhelming number of raiders, forcing stealth, diversion or other underhanded methods to gain an advantage, such as wildfires. Or wait around for them to send the majority of their guys on a raid... and be prepared for their return. Maybe allow improvised turret construction at this point?
- Raider colonies would use default starting colonist AI as if all their tasks were enabled. They would repair, hunt, eat, sleep and wander around as (idle) colonists would.

Development challenges:
- Randomly generated raider bases or handmade bases and maps? Could include player-made maps.
- Randomly generated small bonuses for modified guns or handmade new versions of old guns?
- Might need intruder alerts or stealth (kills) implemented.

Other potential:
- Storyline locations for any potential future main story. Gather bits and pieces of information to reveal the bigger picture or a dormant catastrophy waiting to happen that you have to either prevent or prepare for, such as a meteor or a period of extreme drought and heat.

[Randy:]

The image is the soup. These were the ingredients.

A colony of 40-50. SWOOOSH. Randy decides to send 40+ raiders my way. "O...K." I thought to myself. "Looks a little tough but I think I can handle it." 30 seconds later: SWOOOSH. Another group. 20+ of them, I think. "Goddamnit, Randy. FINE!" I know in the back of my mind that they'll arrive within a minute of each other. The first wave comes. Things get hairy. So much shooting going on. I rescue four colonists from dying. Lucky I didn't lose anyone. Raiders retreat, what's left of them. I order the clean-up.

Randy: "Not so fast."
*DIKIDIH*

Notification: A psychic wave. Boomrats go mad, 20-30 of them. My cleaners had barely started. I got lucky, again, because no boomrats are inside my colony perimeter. But I know they'll come flooding within 10 seconds. They have to. I'm too paralyzed to even look around for them. Blood's everywhere and boomrats are red, too... I pause and start hesitantly ordering people back to battle stations. Unpause. Boomrats start trickling in immediately. One at a time they blow up as half of my cleaners cover for the other half. Time to pull the rest back as well. At this point my soldiers are back in position. It is no longer a trickling current of boomrats. It is a river of at least a dozen of them. The cleaner group is still retreating, under heavy friendly fire.

"Come get some, you little bastards! Tyaaargh!"

Boomboomboombuh-boomboom. A beautiful rapid-fire orchestra of bullets and dying boomrats. Fire is everywhere, even though there's no grass. It's the raider bodies that burn... and electrical wire. A couple of my battlefield lights go out. Rain! Thank gods. It's 6pm. *DIKIDIH*. The second raider group startds advancing. The last boomrat dies. No rest for the wicked.

I pause and zoom out to check out the other raider group. The sight strikes me. I notice immediately I wasn't the only one who got attacked by boomrats! Ha! I just wish I had seen the other fight. 2 raiders dead on the spot at least, and many of them wounded. Their upcoming attack on my colony was pitiful. Later I recovered at least 8 boomrat corpses from the raider landfall site. As my colonists start gathering the bodies to the disposal site, I start piecing together the events from the past hectic 15 minutes. I find a bit of symbolism there.

Sometimes Randy knows how to keep a man on the edge.

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I've been playing RimWorld for a total of dozens of hours and just recently I discovered that if you clear the grass completely, TWICE, inside a walled off area, the grass actually doesn't grow back. EVER. Woo hoo! The reason I started cutting it was because I wanted a break from all the wildfires. I thought "Hell, I'll keep it clear until I get tired of cutting it and that's it." I was in for a pleasant surprise.

*grumble mumble..*
"Hmm.. The area's been clear for a while now. Not complaining though.."
"Ok, it definitely should've grown back by now. M-m-maybe it...? Could it be...? HOW COME I DIDN'T KNOW THAT!"

Previously I had obviously tried to clear areas but got disappointed when I saw the grass grow back, assuming that it grows back no matter what.

Look at it. JUST LOOK AT IT. It's been that way for like a week now. My plant cutters are unemployed! That's a good thing!

[DO IT!]

It was a colony of 16 men and women. Raiders weren't much of an issue. Local wildlife, however was a much bigger nuisance. Finally I had had enough. I decided that not a single squirrel or a boomrat was to touch my precious strawberry fields ever again. A normal person would just wall off the colony but the bit gods had deemed it fit not to allow that in RimWorld, lest ye want to attract the curse of stuttery framerate upon your machine. At the time I had theories that being walled off relates to the animals not being able to feed off on your land. Perhaps their AI demands that your food storage is also THEIR food storage. I wouldn't know. I didn't care. I had harnessed my full intellect and wrath to get rid of the animals once and for all. I was then struck by inspiration.


"Let the animals starve." I said to myself, with a malevolent grin and burning hatred in my eyes.


Through the magic of technology, I ordered my colonists to convert metal into concrete, and pour it upon the sand, to smother the grass that sustains the animals. Let no animal thrive upon the vast concrete hell I was about to create. Spare no tile of soil or sand from my concrete revenge. The concrete would sleep where the grass would grow. It took months. The entire area didn't seem so big at first. The work itself was trivial and progressed steadily. Getting the metal was problematic. I already had thousands of metal in store, but that only lasted so far. I was barely halfway done. Behold, a rain of pods from the sky! Blessed be the gods of space. As animals started to struggle for grass, and as my colonists utilized the metal, these pods would be quickly consumed, since animals were perfectly content eating the skyfood instead of grass. It was as if the gods demanded that a certain amount of pods should reside in the world at any given time, yet the gods didn't mind if the pods were consumed rapidly. How odd.


It was also then that I decided to let go of my sense of aesthetics completely. I had become truly depraved at that point. I used to like the natural walls in my caves, even if there was mineable metal there. I didn't want to touch it. Usually I would trade excess weapons for metal but since raider attacks were few and far between, weapons trade was not an option. I was too blinded by my disdain to see that I could've built a dozen new hydroponics tables and trade the surplus potatoes. However, potatoes are food for animals, and that is not what I wished to cultivate. When I gave the order to my colonists to mine the walls, to mutilate the beautiful symmetrical pattern of the corridors, it was as if they all stopped and turned at the screen, to stare at me in disbelief, to question my orders.


"DO IT!" I raged.


The colonists gave each other looks and scurried to do my bidding. I'm now dismayed at what I had become. I was, in fact, glad to see that corridor wall come down piece by piece. I felt devious joy. It sickens me now. The memory of that transformation will haunt me forever. How can a man let go of his sense of aesthetics and succumb into decoration that's proper for barbarians and other uncivilized savages? And for what? A few miserable animals?


Little did I know. As the concrete was filling up the landscape, and as the green would fade from the view, the animals started to get increasingly desperate. I had not succeeded in thwarting the animals, but quite the opposite. They became even more interested in my strawberry plots, as it was starting to be the only source of food in the whole area. How could they know about it? Do animals smell strawberries from miles and miles away like I do? Do they leave post-it notes to each other saying "Humans have food"? No matter how many squirrels I slaughtered, even more would come to defile my beautiful strawberries. My babies... ravaged by these vile, flamboyant rats. And my turrets did nothing. Not a single bastard in my colony was able to reprogram the turrets to fire at animals. Their strong encryption systems turned out to be a double-edged sword... and I was feeling it cutting my soul.


Why can't they just die? Why can't they just accept that there is no food around for them and that their fate is to starve in the grey flat nightmare I had created for them until their bodies would become sustenance for my colonists? Can't they just appreciate the cruel beauty of it?


I had set out to create a void hell for the animals to starve in. Instead of creating a hell for them, I had created one for myself, and I had sacrificed everything in doing so. I am a fool. I am a damned failure, elaborate in my stupidity, so eloquently self-destructive in my quest for never-ending self-improvement, clouded by fascination and unhinged by a few rodents that do not even exist outside the screen. Somewhere there is a god of misery... and I believe that same god is also the god of laughter.



( inspired by the thread 'Animal overpopulation' http://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=2473.0 and yes, I was that stupid )