Messages

I know that as players you *want* on some level to be able to optimize your colony perfectly into the same perfect base each time. After all, that's your goal at every moment while playing the game, and you feel a sort of dopamine rush pleasure when making progress towards that. It's natural to recoil from design changes that seem to take away what you *want*. But please recognize that a game that hands you your goal easily is not a better game. Games aren't fun because they give you what you want. They're fun because of the dramatic process of struggle, decision, story, and drama that you experience in pursuit of your goal. Just as in life, it's about the journey, not the destination. And when you finally do achieve that perfect base in a desolate tundra, even with the harder game mechanics and greater challenges, the emotional reward will be all the greater because you'll know you bloody earned it.

I really hope you'll stick with that philosophy. I agree completely.

But then again, I am very much a survival game masochist. I just can't get enough punishment as long as I can see a light at the end of the tunnel.

Likewise - I'm a huge fan of choice and challenge, and most importantly that choices ripple through to gameplay. That includes making biomes matter throughout all/most gameplay decisions, not just a reskin and switching out heaters for coolers.

Overall very happy with the direction things are going!

Could switch the turret explosion to be EMP damage.
Or remove the explosion entirely and make the turret require colonists to man it.

I think one or both of these ideas is best. Perhaps basic turrets require a man, while a auto-turret requires another input (e.g. basic AI Core) that must be scavenged or bought, reducing the ability to spam them.

[Fertilizer pump]

Some kind of method of fertilizing grounds should be possible; however, it should only be possible maybe in the late-game (prerequisite techs, the whole lot) as well as take a lot of power or production time to successfully administer.

I'm also fine with its removal, but think if it is reintroduced it should be nerfed considerably. My thoughts:

Fertilizer pump requires soil balanced to it. All ground should have a positive fertility, but in tundra and desert biomes be so low that no plants except a basic moss or cactus will grow, and even then very slowly. A fertilizer pump will increase the fertility of an area by a multiplier, rather than converting the land to a new type. Thus fertilizer has a limited but positive affect in biomes like the desert, where it maybe only adds one more plant (a potato?) to the list of possibilities you can grow. If the power generation balances used in BTSG are applied to vanilla that would also reduce the ability to spam fertilizer pumps.

Trees should be re-balanced to grow incredibly slowly, e.g. a year or more before harvest is possible. It's been requested many times, so perhaps not going to happen, but blights need to be balanced as well to make them only attack a set of genetically similar crops at one time.

Just posting to say this is a great mod! I generally stick only to mods that make the interface more intuitive or are very close to vanilla in content/difficulty, as most of the rest tend to make the game way too easy. Extremely happy to see a mod that makes it considerably harder (without just spamming raids)!

I agree that random start is a great feature!

By definition tundra is an environment where trees do not grow!

I personally support moves to differentiate the biomes, even if it means my old easy strategies will be broken. Wash rinse repeat is very boring, and the biomes should be more than just new skins.

I also like the goal of this idea. 4X games are trying this now too, for example by randomizing the research tree order. I personally prefer the idea of researching in a particular direction (category) and randomly discovering a related tech. This helps reduce the rinse wash repeat syndrome that most people fall into; my impression is the recent changes to exaggerate biome play differences have a similar goal in mind...

What I'm hearing is a lot of complaints that the two easiest ways to circumvent harsh environments (Arctic, desert, etc) are now nerfed/removed. And I say good riddance. No one has any idea what balance for A10 will look like and should hold their complaints until it is out. Tynan and private testers will surely be working on balance.

These environments should be incredibly difficult, and should play radically different from temperate ones, beyond just basic temperature control for pawns bedrooms!

I'm fine with the concepts of sowing trees and fertilizer pumps being reintroduced, but clearly they need a massive rebalance so that different biomes play differently and so that the game mechanics fit well within the rimverse/reality. For trees that probably means making grow times much much slower, and for fertilizer pumps making them much much more expensive to operate. Terra-forming an entire desert or arctic tile in a few game-weeks means the system is broken.

ALL THIS ASIDE, I believe game like Skyrim and it's "content" to be overrated. Though I'll cut some slack to Skyrim for having been disappointed by Oblivion. To be quick, I do not think highly of gigantic world when their procedural and automatic generation of "content" is so cheap, unoriginal and badly used it make my head hurt. There are games that are absurdly popular yet we can find legitimately bad.
I'll prefer 10metricless time a "corridor game" that captivate me for hours over a open-world sandbox that repeat itself after an hour and wasn't that good to begin with. (think : Dark Messiah vs Oblivion). Oh and I LOVE Minecraft by the way.

+1000 to all of your post, but especially this. I despise Skyrim and cringe at the thought of Rimworld trying to emulate it. Bloat does not equal quality or good story telling.

Wondering exactly how players define "endless play" that is different from a neutral storyteller (e.g. even slower Phoebe)?

I'm in the same camp as Kegereneku. I would like for the mid-late game to have some more interesting possibilities, but in my eyes "endless" play is an impossible and mostly thankless task - most players won't get there, and the ones that do (via min-max'ing for example) will never be satisfied. I think it is more worthwhile to improve the richness and variety of experiences in the early-mid game (e.g. first ~10-20 hours of a colony) than try to improve hour 100+ of a colony.

Play prison architect - light and visibility cones definitely can matter beyond aesthetics. helps a lot with tension!

Eagle eye - longer vision than others but still restricted to line of sight cone.
Short sighted - opposite
Extra sensory perception - widens cone of view beyond 180 degrees, allows limited view around corners/through walls.
Tunnel vision - reduces cone of view.

Just a few first thoughts…

But yeah you should take a look at the mining co helmet mod to see how they did a moving light. Maybe you can do some similar stuff, like making a top-layer clothing item that emits light. Like one one of those shoulder lamps they use in Aliens.

I've been toying around with the idea of doing a flashlight object or something that is worn on the top layer of hand. But I've been too busy to really delve into any .dll work (which is required for the lights like the mining helmet). I've got that on my to-do list for the Advanced Lamps mod or maybe as a standalone mod though.

Would love to see this, especially with the pitch black version of this mod!

sorry - I specifically meant fog of war, not height. based on this board, I think there is zero chance of z levels in this game.

Ok, just to visualize it I've rebuild your described room. If you watch where you lay the power lines, I don't really see the problem. And the short line you need north of the PowerSwitch can be build with an invisible conduit..
Is this what you mean?

For some reason, when the switch goes off, if there's a power source in range, my lamps always seem to reconnect on their own. It may be mod interference or just my being dumb with how I lay them down. I like to have my bedrooms all nice and neat, 5x7 with a 3 wide hall outside (I'm probably just make the damn thing as an example in a minute) and that means sharing walls, so either all the 5s must be powered or all the 7s or none of them be powered and I run (invisible) power lines through the centre, which is what I may just do because I THINK it will work that way. Switches don't impede movement, do they?

It definitely works with invisible power lines down the center, this is how I build mine.

do remember that you should NOT have a power line and power switch on the same tile. I made this mistake for awhile, and your description sounds like that may be a possibility.