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Topics - Rock5

#1
Here's the scenario. I get a trade request for 20 Ikwa of normal quality or better which I decide to do. I set the bill on the smithy to make 20 Ikwa but realise that if I just make 20 they might not all meet the requirements of normal quality or better. So I set it to "do until" I have 20 and set the count filter to normal quality.

Some time later, after I return with my pawn having completed the trade request, I notice that I have a lot of Ikwa in my stockpile and realise I forgot to cancel the work bill after it was completed.

This happens to me all the time. I sort of wish I could use the "pause when satisfied" option to pause it permanently but it can't do that. I think what we need is a "Suspend when satisfied" option as well.

An alternative is to include the quality filter with the "do x times" option.

Anyone else have this problem? Is this a good idea?


P.S. Rereading this it looks more like a suggestion than a mod request. Should I add this to the suggestions forum?
#2
Help / How do I update my mod on steam?
December 08, 2017, 07:30:10 AM
This might be a stupid question but how do I update my mod in steam? I've changed my dll and I even edited the About but when I start the game the mod in the mod list doesn't give me the option to update.
#3
Releases / Rock5s [B18] mods
November 25, 2017, 10:08:40 AM
Rock5s [B18] Mods

Butchers Can Count Meat - Allows butcher bills to use the Do Until option.

Zhentar's Sun Lamp Plan Designator - Sun lamp plan designator, with tile fertility display.

JTZoneButtons (Obsolete in B19) - Adds buttons for creating/expanding and deleting/shrinking stockpiles and growing zones when selecting a stockpile or growing zone.

RimSearch - Search for items and pawns on any map.

JTExport - Export and import worktable bills and stockpile settings.
#4
Help / How to count meat?
November 24, 2017, 11:27:03 PM
I'm making a mod. I seem to have successfully patched into the required methods but now I need to know the commands to count meat. I'm not really sure I understand the structure of the Rimworld code so I'm having trouble finding out how to do it. Preferably I'd like to be able to count animal, human and insect meat separately but even a total count would be enough.

Thanks for any help.
#5
You can't set the butcher task to "Do until". I understand why, because butchering produces different types of meat, but this is forcing me to micromanage butchering. I think the game should address issues that force the player to micromanage a task.

The game already supports counting different types of items, for example clothing of different materials and quality can be counted, so I suspect this could be implemented with meat. You would probably want to be able to exclude (or include) human meant and/or insect meat but even if you couldn't, it would still help.

To clarify: The reason I need to micromanage butchery is because I mostly hunt herds of large animals such as Muffalo and Caribou. If I set butchery to "Do forever" I can literally fill my freezer to overflowing. And before any of you ask, my freezers are not that small, usually about 130 squares.

Of course you could "Do forever" with smaller animals because they take the same or less space in the freezer when butchered. If I can be bothered, I sometimes set up a separate butcher task to butcher only small animals and set it to "Do forever" but it's a hassle to set up because there is no easy way to know which animals produce less than 75 meat. Which leads me to my next suggestion.

Could we have some sort of option for automatically selecting small animals? Or maybe animals could be grouped into 2 further subgroups, for example;
= Humanlike corpses
= Animal Corpses
= Insect Corpses
= Small Animal Corpses
= Large Animal Corpses
#6
General Discussion / Hydro Basin Pro Tip
October 07, 2017, 12:32:43 AM
This just occurred to me and I've never seen any mention of it before.

I don't usually use Hydroponic Basins, because of the inherent power loss risk, but as I'm setting up an extended drug growing region I realized I could set it up without using conduits. So no danger of Zzzt events. All I had to do is put the power, i.e. Solar Panels, outside in the corner of the growing room. In that location the Sunlamp will reach. I never realized before that the Sunlamp can reach outside the growing area room diagonally. Then I realized that, with enough power and batteries, it would be immune to eclipses. That only leaves Solar Flares.

It occurred to me this would be ideal for hydroponic set ups as it's vital to reduce the risk of power outages. I just did a quick mock up and found that it's a bit tricky handling the distribution of power but doable.

I think the lower risk of this idea would make a lot of people reconsider hydroponics. What do you think? Has anyone done something like this before? Has it been mentioned before and I just missed it?

If anyone has done this before this would be a great time to share your set ups.

Update: I finally finished playing a game with no conduits after getting the idea from the comments in this topic. Here's the final map.

There are no conduits on the whole map. There are a total of 39 Solar generators, 1 Wind Turbine and 1 Fueled generator.

Notes:
- You can't use a Wind turbine outside a growing area to power the sunlamp because the wind turbine doesn't have power in the corner, so you have to use solar (or fueled).
- Where you need a lot of power, such as near your workshop, it's good to start with a wind turbine so you can add up to 3 solar generators as you need more power.
- Place batteries carefully to extend the range of power in the direction you need.
- You can only use geothermal power if there are vents in the perimeter of your base. In my case there were none.
- Switching off sunlamps during a solar eclipse is an easy way to save power for heaters during cold weather or for hydroponic basins so you don't loose your crop, instead of having a larger number of batteries. Although having a large number of batteries is a perfectly fine solution too.
- You can sometimes put solar panels in a room, open a hole in the roof and still maintain an acceptable temperature. I did this in my stockpile room at the top. I think the way it works is the temperature in the room will get closer and closer to the outside temperature as you get closer to opening a quarter of the roof. At about a quarter of the roof open, the whole room becomes equalized with the outdoors temperature. This is from some testing I did a while back. So the bigger the room the less affect opening the roof for one solar panel will make.
- When I moved my kitchen and freezer to the bottom right and decided to finally put some entertainments stuff down, I had to use fueled generator to power the megascreen tv as it was too far under the mountain. I was in a wooded biome so it wasn't an issue. Probably, with a lot of wood available it's probably viable to have a conduit free mountain base using fueled generators. I don't know if fueled generators produce heat. If so a large number of them might generate too much heat.
- You need to make use of the reconnect button make sure devices are connected to the right power grid and to move devices to grids that have more power to spare.
- When I found the valley in the bottom right with little viable soil I decided to go full hydroponics. I just barely managed to fit enough solar panels to power it. It's best to plan fit as much power as possible in those tight places even if you don't need all of it. Then you can just build what you need and you have room to add extra latter if needed. If you don't plan to add extra later you might find that when you do need extra power that you can't add it because of how you places your power.
- Now to numbers. In this location I found that 2 solar panels was not enough power to keep a regular greenhouse powered. I found that 5 solars per 2 sunlamps works. With the 2 full hydro growing zones down the bottom I was aiming for about 9 in all. Four in the cardinal directions, so east, west south and north. These were to power about 8 basins each. Then I have a cluster of 5 solars in the middle that was to power the remaining 16 basins, 2 solar lamps and heating and cooling. Although I didn't have the full 48 basins I think my calculations are correct. Note that I was careful to place the 5 solars to make room for a 6th which I didn't need but can add later if I do.

I think that's about it.

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#7
Help / Allow me to plan, please
August 17, 2017, 03:07:47 AM
When I pod drop into a new area to create a new base I like to pause the game and spend a lot of time planning it. So, I immediately pause the game, click the Wall tool and get a message "You have no usable materials from which to build this. No! Stop clicking, you can't do that. You can click as much as you want, I'm not changing my mind. No! Stop it! ..."  ;D .

I have a work around for this, I just go into God mode, select the Wall tool (or other tool) and then turn off God mode. And once I have some wall plans placed I can select them and click "Make Copy". This is annoying and impractical, especially when I forget to turn off God mode. Grrr.

Why does it even do this? I'm quite happy it showing me which resources I don't have in the tool tip as it does now. It doesn't need to stop me from making plans before I have the resources.

Anyway, can this be changed? If there is some 'Can the user select this tool" function, is it possible to make a mod that replaces it with one that always allows it?
#8
When you double click an item such as "Cloth" it selects all cloth on screen and shows the message "Cloth x6000" for instance if you have 6000. When you double click something that has variable names such as colonists or pets it show "(various)" with no count. I can understand that it shows various because they have different names but why can't it show the count?

Firstly, I understand why it shows "various", it's because they have different names. But if I double click a cow, for example, it knows to select all cows even though they don't share the same name because they are the same type i.e. cow. Why can't it use this "type" and show a message such as "Cow x2"?

I can live with it saying "various" but the main reason for this post is to request that a count is shown regardless. Why can't it show "(various) x2"? For that matter why can't a count be provided when selecting multiple different items? I understand that some items don't stack so you would effectively be counting the items whereas items that stack you would be totaling the stacks but surely it's not that difficult to merge the two.

What do you think?
#9
I'm curious, the game seems to use about the same cpu usage playing as it does while paused. What is it doing when it's paused? No ticks should be happening. Also, why does the cpu use go up when I minimize the game?

To be sure, I opened a game with no mods. While playing normal speed the cpu averaged about 20%. When I paused it it still used about 20%. Then I minimized it, while it was paused, and it used about 45%.

Note: I have "Run in background" enabled. With it disabled it still uses cpu while paused but uses 0% when minimized.
#10
Ideas / Drop pods that can remain closed
January 03, 2017, 05:14:57 PM
Loading drop pods can take A LONG TIME. That's ok if it's only one hop. But if you have a string of 5 bases like me, getting a lot of resources from my first base to the last base is just too much.

I suggest that drop pods remain closed. You mark them to be opened and a colonist goes open them. Once opened the contents get dumped on the floor as usual.

This way you have the option to move the pod onto another launch pad and launch it to the next base. Or maybe you could move it to a better location before opening it.

Or another option is to have some sort of crate that holds a number of items. You could load these crates onto the drop pods like anything else and they will be dumped on the ground when the drop pod lands. You could then easily move the crates to drop pods and launch them to your next base.

As a caveat (am I using that word right?) you would make the crates really slow to move because they would be too heavy to pick up, you would have to drag or push them.
#11
Ideas / Messages should include location
January 01, 2017, 11:15:56 AM
I currently have 5 bases as I make my way to the friendly ship. It's made me realize there are a LOT of messages that don't give any indication of their location. Off the top of my head they include: trading ship arrival, food perishing in freezer, heat wave, chased person who wants to join, etc.

These messages require me to switch bases hunting for the right one. The location should be included in most, if not all, messages. As an extension to this,  you should include the name of the town above the colonist groups so you can quickly click to the right base by name.
#12
This is probably nothing new but I wanted to discus the way I'm using the new world travel feature of A16.

Until end-game I've been playing the same as I would have in A15 (although this is the first time I've played with permanent toxic fallout enabled). I haven't used caravans because I'm not interested in trading or attacking other colonies.

Now, instead of building a ship, I've decided to travel to the friendly ship, to end the game. Note: I've started with the full world rendered so the ship is near opposite to my home base. I've  read you can get there with caravans but I thought that would be boring so I'm traveling there using drop pods.

What I've done so far is make 3 mini bases drop pods apart and for my 5th base I'm making a new full sized base. When Ive finished making it I will ferry everyone to it and abandon the other bases to start my next set of mini bases.

After these first 5 bases I'm nearly half way there already. My mini bases generally consist of 2 or 3 colonists, 2 geothermal generators, 2 growing zones (excess growing zone is for making fuel), freezer, kitchen, small dining room with 4 2x3 bedrooms attached, small workshop for the few benches I need and a minimal kill box with 1 turret and some sandbags.

I concentrated of extra growing on the second last base because I intended to only have constructing going on at the new full base and supply them with food from the second last base.

Wow that was a long winded description of a basic idea. So what are your thoughts? Is this a good way to get to the friendly ship? Is anyone else doing it like this? Am I missing any ideas that would make this more efficient?
#13
Bugs / [A16.1393] Pet Overdoses on drugs
December 22, 2016, 03:23:46 PM
My cat, that I had from the very beginning of the game, suddenly overdosed on wakeup.

I don't think animals should eat drugs so I think this is a bug. If it wasn't a bug then there would be no way to mass produce drugs without occasional animal deaths without HUGE micromanagement. I guess it would be ok, if they didn't die, like people, although I still don't think it makes sense for animals to eat drugs.
#14
Mods / Help with bill skills
December 20, 2016, 11:08:15 AM
This might be a stupid question but after playing Rimworld for a long time I still sometime find myself sometimes confused as to which skill is associated with benches and bills.

Take for example Cremating. Looking at the recipe description and all it says is skills required: none. I like the fact that bills tell you the skill requirements but it doesn't tell you which skill to tick in the work tab to do it.

I did a search though the core folder but couldn't find any reference to the skill needed to be ticked to do it.

Could someone tell me where I can find which skill needs to be ticked?

And I'm not just talking about cremation but other cryptic bills such as making medicine, brewery, etc.

Hm... Maybe this could be a suggestion to add it to the bill description?

Edit: Oops. Topic ended up in Mods. I'm pretty sure I put it in the root Rimworld forum. Could someone move it please?
#15
Bugs / [A16 unastable] Turrets no longer explode
December 17, 2016, 03:07:06 AM
I thought to test if the turret explosion radius has changed so I tried to make a turret explode but couldn't. I destroyed with no explosion.

I had a look at the def and I see that it has an attribute chanceNeverExplodeFromDamage set to 0.5. If I set this value to 0 it explodes as expected. Any other value, including 0.01 results in no explosions (after multiple attempts).

I expect this is not working properly. Maybe it's rounding up? :)

Using 16.1389. No mods.
#16
Colonists are hauling dead pirates to my stockpile and then picking them up again and burying them. The stockpile and grave have the same priority, normal. If I enlist then release the colonist on the way to burying, he will haul it to the stockpile again before burying it again. I even tried increasing the grave priority but it still hauled it first.

I would expect that burying would be done first if the grave has an equal or higher priority than the stockpile.

Currently using 16.1388, no mods.
#17
Ideas / Hauling suggestion.
December 09, 2016, 04:39:16 PM
I just had an idea.

Currently if colonist A is is looking for a job to do and sees an item nearby that needs to be hauled, but it is already reserved by colonist B, then colonist A ignores it, even though colonist B is all the way across the map.

If a player sees this and decides to micromanage it he will interrupt colonist B and order colonist A to do the hauling. Why can't the game do this as well.

What the game should do, when looking for a job for colonist A, is when it sees the item that is reserved it should check to see if colonist A is closer than the colonist that has it reserved. If it is it should switch to colonist A. I can't see any downside to this. Sure colonist B might have traveled most of the way to the item but it's still going to save time if colonist A is closer.

I hope I made myself clear enough. I sometimes have trouble making myself understood.
#18
General Discussion / Impressiveness Calculator (v4)
November 02, 2016, 12:14:19 PM
After reading some posts about impressiveness I decided to put the wiki formulas mentioned into an Excel Spreadsheet so I could play with the numbers and see what's what. For more info on the formulas, visit the wiki.

It occurred to me that, seeing as improving the lower stats has a greater impact, then there should be an optimum value for each stat to attain the desired Impressiveness. So I started by tweaking the values until I got the optimum values for "little bit impressive" and "impressive". Turns out most people are not making the rooms large enough. At the right size it doesn't cost an arm and a leg to get the room to impressive.

Note: By "Optimum" I mean all the stats result in the same factor value. That's the value used to calculate the impressiveness.

Then I thought it would be a lot easier to just put in the target impressiveness and let the spreadsheet calculate the separate values.

After a few hours reversing the formulas (which was not easy), I decided to share it. So here it is.

Let me know what you think.
---------------

Here's a snapshot of what it looks like. Note: I've hidden some columns to make it more presentable and protected it to stop accidental edits to the wrong cells, but you can unprotect it if you like to edit it or show the extra cells. There's no password.




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#19
Ideas / My 2 cents on hauling efficiency and zones.
October 23, 2016, 11:17:46 AM
Zones could be, and should be, a very powerful feature but I often find myself avoiding complex set ups because of the inefficiencies of hauling. For example; to speed up cooking you could put a high priority 1x1 stockpile of meat and one of veg right next to the cook and they would cook really fast but then you would get a hauler topping up the stockpiles from 74 to 75 continuously while the cook is cooking. This happens with any higher priority stockpile. It goes down by 1 and a hauler makes the trip, regardless of how far, to top up that 1 item.

I had an idea that would 100%, I think, fix this. What if stockpile lists, besides having just a check mark enabling the different items, also had a min and max amount you could set. So for example, using the above cooking example, you could set the veg stockpile to accept 20 to 75 Corn. When you first create it it will be empty which is outside of the range so a hauler takes the maximum it can take (in this case 75) to the stockpile. The cook starts cooking and no hauler adds more corn until it drops below 20. After the cook makes 6 Lavish means the pile will have 15 so a hauler tops it up by hauling over 60 corn. No more wasted small hauling jobs.

The same applies to stockpiles that are filling. For example you could have a temporary stockpile to collect wood being chopped down in the wild to make hauling the wood more efficient. You could set it's list to accept a range, for example 200-300 wood. Because it is closer they would fill it quicker. When it passes 300 a hauler would grab a full load of 75 and move it to your main stockpile. So for example if it filled to 325, after a hauler takes away 75 it would change to 250 and then it would continue to fill up again. You could then delete the zone once all the wood is collected.

So in effect a stockpile is considered full if it has it's minimum amount and only considered over full if it has more then the max amount.

Working out the logic between low and high priority stacks and loose items could be a little complex but doable.

This feature, if a user sets up the ranges right, would make hauling hugely more efficient. Just a few haulers could get a lot of hauling done instead of like it is now where you struggle to get all the hauling done even with nearly all your colonists hauling.

Sorry, but that was a bit of a complex idea to explain clearly. Please let me know what you think.


Ps. Credit where credit is due. I had this idea when I saw how CraftingHysteresis uses a low stock threshold to make cooks more efficient (and other crafting jobs).
#20
General Discussion / Rimworld Sundial
October 16, 2016, 03:51:53 AM
Did this just for fun as I was getting annoyed at not knowing what time it is in game. Obviously it isn't too accurate but it's close enough I think. I've marked the hours approximately. What do you think?


This image shows 2pm. The clock runs from right to left and only while there is a shadow from sunlight or moonlight.

Feel free to comment and/or share your own designs.

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