Messages

I've had crash survivors survive and wander around in this and previous Alphas. But usually their woulds heal up and sometimes get infections they usually die from. If infection didn't get them I beat them down and arrest them, or with one instance, with the Hopitality mod, had him love my colony so much he wanted to join. This was when I forgot all about him and he was free loading on smokeleafs and lavious meals.

From my experience, predators cannot appear from thin air, but will move close to good prey candidates. So it may seem like they appear from no where, but if map is desolated with suitable prey, they see your farm and your pawns as a food source.

I propose being adding a bill that allows pawn to have some of their blood to be drawn to create blood packs that refill the same amount. I've always found it strange that pawns were able to quickly recover from blood loss within a few days and be completely fine. According to the wiki it only affected consciousness when it should also be affecting blood filtration.

With that I also propose blood loss recovery period where the pawn requires more rest and to eat more according to the severity of the blood loss amount. It will extend past the blood loss debuff as the body needs time to balance out its chemical levels, but be much less severe as you blood volume has normalized.

And for the sake of management, there shouldn'tbe blood types involved as it would make this mechanic too complicated. We don't have to deal with transplant rejections, so I see no need to make it THAT real.

One exploit is to strip incapitated pawns so their clothing doesn't recieve the dead man's trait. Other than that, I don't know another way to get around it in vanilla.

I personally set all my pawns to 1 max priority firefighting from the start, if they can do it.  Then brush the home zone of where the fire is, if it wasn't already in it.  Select all pawns, use R or battle made twice to reset their current jobs and they should immediately go firefighting.

There can be a lot of things touched up upon for melee. Like reach, as suggested to bring more tactics into the game other than baiting.  I know that predator animals already have an ability to stun prey so that getting food isn't always a gamble.  I think certain weapons should have specific properties to make them useful and diversify your choices other than choosing platsteel long swords for every single brawler.

Blunt weapons have a small chance of 'stunning' by knocking down the pawn.  If I remember correctly, pawn use to just randomly trip, for one reason or another.  Knocked down pawns could get bonuses to avoid projectiles (since they're prone), but also give the ability to be attempt to arrest on them.  The amount of time they're knocked down can be determined by skill or by weapon, at most 2-3 seconds.  Then blunt weapons would be great for capturing prisoners.

Finesse weapons, would usually be sharp weapons, have a small chance of disarming but it's solely based on melee skill.

Reach weapons, a long spear or pike for example, as is sounds, can attack past standard melee range, but suffers from attack speed and/or penalty for not fighting in correct range. (Being too close is bad)

Held shields (instead of using the personal shields), used with small melee weapons that, along with armor, gives a chance to block and immediately makes the pawn strike back.  This counter attack chance is affected by melee skill greatly.

These with something along the lines of changes like these would help open up your choices other than power armor, personal shield, and platsteel longsword.  You could choose to use power armor, platsteel buckler, and a platsteel mace for a different situation.

It would also be nice to see some melee animations and more sounds, but I understand if that was purposely not included.  It just seems bland when all other ranged weapon feels like what they're suppose to be, arrows being shot, rockets being launched, machine guns going full blast, etc. while melee combat is just two pawns tackling each other to see who can 'pfth' each other first and the most. 

- Pawn pulled a silent but deadly. (Pawns avoid area or room, else mood penalty)
- Pets gain a scratching phase. (Cats, dogs, wargs, wolve, etc. go around scratching furniture.)
- A new pawn has arrived claiming to be an important lord/diplomat and demands you service him for his goodwill. (Basically a single visitor, but arrives in tattered or no clothes and has berries for his packed food. Also may or may not belong to a faction.)  Will prolong his stay if he's happy. "'Lord' Mike, enjoys his stay and insists he stays longer." Nothing happens once he leaves.
- Elephant stampede. A large group of elephants run from one point of the map to another.  Followed by a single rat.

I don't find them really useful, aside from countering sieges but even then I'd cross my fingers.  And for raiding, the costs it takes to make the mortars it doesn't feel worth it.  What I'd like to see is mortars miniaturized.  Like when I think of mortars, I picture those bi-pods connected to a tube mortars.  Not huge and gets the job done. Maybe make smaller mortars that act as furniture, so you can carry them around when travelling, but significantly smaller explosions when used.

I think a problem with the water freezing over is what if some entity were to be on that ice when it melts. Would they instantly drown/get destroyed?

I love the approach Tynan is going with caravans and with this update I know that it will be fleshed out even more.  With your suggestions above with the faction's colony location, needs, and productions I think there should be colony types too.  Like how we choose to play our colonies, other factions have their own lifestyles. For example:

A colony's type should reflect their bases layouts, products even more, and their raiding behavior (if you were to anger/raid them)

Warring (Some pirates could be these) - This colony is all about battles, wars, and conflict.  Whether it's for raiding or defending purposes, this colony has quality weapons and armor available or spoils of war for sale.  Only faction that may be enemies with others.  This type of colony also may pay for more for food/weapons(if you see a shortage)/medicine.  Also very dangerous to pick a fight with.

Farming - Abundance in food and massive farms (appropriate to location).  Would pay more for medicine (always better than healroot), weapons, and armor.  Won't have the strongest offensive capabilities, but their defense may be tough. (Maybe farm animals fight alongside the farmers?)

Trading - This colony is usually well supplied with goods, but they always have an eye out for good quality art/weapons/furniture.  Don't expect too many fighters, but know that they will be really well equipped. Raids = 1-7 respectively (Power Armor + Personal shield + platsteel longsword for example)

Scavenging (pirates will usually be these) - Poor colonies that would love to buy from you, with whatever junk they found you willing to pay for.  They usually have garbage for sale, but will occasionally sell ancient artifacts they find for a cheap price.  Will pay more for about anything but art and furniture, but will have very low silver to pay with.  Expect regular pirate fighting strength, usually bad, but random.

I was gonna make a suggestion to add pikes and halberds in vanilla just now, then viola, there's this post.  Melee needs a quality of life.  Right now melee is just a place holder for damage, damage type, hit time, and hit chance.  Unlike ranged weapons where they can have properties like range differences, more damage properties (explosive and burning), fire burst, and even AOE, melee weapons all feel the same.

For vanilla

Pros of reach weapons:
- Can hit over friendly pawns to help reduce melee crowding (since pawn melee stacking was removed, for good reason).
- Can hit over certain terrain. (Through trees, over sandbags, chunks, etc.)
- Makes the first hit to a target and makes them have to decide to get closer to fight, or run.

Cons of reach weapons:
- Should be slow in hit speed.
- Being too close to the target should bring disadvantages.

I agree that the game needs more differentiation between more seasons (and items).  Summer, Spring, and Autumn all share the same greenery, maybe a slight tint in color.  This would be a great touch in atmosphere and really color up the game.  I can imagine my colonists enjoying a nice beautiful view of the falling leaves already.  All the peace and quite, then ruined by 4 inferno cannon centipedes making use of the fallen foliage to ignite the world on fire.

you got CCL loaded?

I do now and the mod works perfectly without any errors.  I had the CCL during A12 and assumed I already had it for A13.  A lot of the A12 mods used the CCL and I already had a bunch for A13.

Having an issue where it says it found no usable data when trying to get defs from file ModHelper.xml

I try to make the most out of rich soil and use it for long growing crops such as corn and devilstrand.  It's not vital to my colony, but I will go out of my way to build around it if the field is large enough to matter.  If it's a decent size plot of rich soil, then it'll make your first winter, and devilstrand farming, a lot easier.  I am also very picky about appearance, so I try to make 6x6 or 4x4 strictly on a certain type of soil because having plants leftover during a harvest bothers me too much.  Some people like filling in whatever they can, but it looks too messy for my to do that.