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I'm with you on this. I think there should be multiple ways to play the game rather than just the same "We're a good group of stranded colonists who don't harm others and are anxiously researching and building a ship to leave!"  ... I mean, why are we calling them 'colonists' in the first place? Why not call them 'survivors' or 'castaways' instead? But that's not the point of your thread, sorry - got sidetracked by my desire for long-term colonization dreams.

The problem seems to be that slave-traders are like IN. YOUR. FACE. non-stop in this game. The lure/temptation to sell your enemy captives is always there, always. And if you're desperate for medicine or weapons or clothing (now that it degrades) ...the lure can become too much and you're sucked into the slave-trade business.

I actually purposely rolled characters with despicable backstories (Vector the Crimeworld Kingpin) JUST so I can have a colony that blatantly sells and barters with human captives... is that wrong? Should I feel 'bad' for doing that? Should my "colonists-who-are-not-really-colonists" feel bad about that too? No. My decision is no they should not. Morals are fine and dandy but when you're forced into a corner non-stop by waves of raiders who want you dead and tribals who want you off their planet, you are left with few option sometimes. The negative debuffs nonstop for this behavior might be justified by certain specifically traited characters (the missionaries, the teachers, the diplomats and other goodie goodies for example) but what about the not-so-nice types? What if I purposely cultivate all those characters to create my own version of the "Loyal Killers" pirate band? Can I not play that way because I'm supposed to only do good and only strive to leave the planet?

I'd like to see a lot more versatility in playstyles.

I would prefer to have the option for long-term play be available even if it's a separate storyteller mode altogether (Sandbox Steve or something) where you still have threats but not ramped up over time to eventually make it too tedious to stay or too bogged down / lagged.

While I appreciate the story-line and the 'escape' theme ... after you've done it a few times, the obvious viable next step is sandbox mode. Challenges perhaps. I'm currently challenging myself to capture as many prisoners as possible and start a 'slave colony' (there's unfortunately no programming to allow it so it's just RP) as a challenge. But the obvious problem is that these founders came here purposely with the intent of starting a trade-colony plantation and not to escape as castaways.

[worse condition]

1. Isn't the debuff for cramped room (-8) even worse than sleeping together in a room (-5)? I would suggest either you make 5*4 rooms for everyone or make them sleep all together. Making a cramped room for each will result in a worse condition than making a communal bedroom.

Not anymore. The problem with community sleeping is they now get the negative debuff for being disturbed by others in the room AND debuff for sharing a bedroom. It's better to have many tiny sleeping rooms and let them have just the cramped debuff that goes away as soon as they leave that small sleeping room.

Actually wall type will be irrelevant to insulation.

But it does seem heat is being lost a bit too fast, I'm considering rebalancing this. Maybe for a hotfix (among some other things).

Thank you!

I too am playing a jungle biome and having a difficult time keeping the freezer cold enough. In Panzer's screenshot, he has his 'vented' through a smaller opening and I'm not sure if that makes any difference or not (less bleed area?) ... I have my freezers vented directly to the outdoors and they seem to bleed like crazy. They are smaller than both freezers shown or described by other players but they DO have two doors which I think is where all the heat loss is happening. Hunters / growers bring food in one door and the cook takes it out the other side so those doors are always opening and closing. Should this be a problem I have to rethink design? Obviously heat waves make them operate harder, but even under normal heat / tropics weather in summer it's way too hot.

I have now put two freezers in each and it's staying colder but these are not big spaces (10x5) and I don't think they should require that much power consumption and freezer use.

This is happening in my game quite frequently because I have a very slow cook (she's old and only has one leg but she has the highest skill) and because the colonists would rather eat the food raw than go to the nutrient paste dispenser if they are urgently hungry. They can't be bothered to load it unless it has enough units to feed everyone who is going to the dispenser at once which supports the theory previously stated.

I just took on 5 prisoners at once and there was no way to feed them all fast enough (we haven't gotten to the stage where we have extra food meals stored up yet) and the warden was feeding the prisoners raw meat instead of nutrient paste even though there was meat in the hopper. The dispenser is in the same room as the meals. The cook finished meals but other colonists already tagged them as "mine" and the warden is not a cook so he won't load the dispenser. He feeds them raw meat. This is annoying and amusing at the same time.

Edit: Also, the cook will ignore the meat in the freezer and take fresh meat out of the nutrient paste dispenser to cook with which is also annoying. She will walk right by a pile of meat next to her cooking station and take meat out of the hopper instead. I don't know why this is happening either.

Note that they'll learn cooking by butchering.

But yes, I basically need to add a way to train skills without actually exercising them. Like reading, practicing, or a teacher-student relationship.

I'm also considering a rebalance on food poisoning as well.

Ah I did not know Butchering was counted as part of the cooking skill. Sooo I could have my cook just do all the butchering and loading of the nutrient paste dispenser as a way to get the cooking skill up without poisoning everyone is your suggestion? Seems like a fair workaround if they're really not good cooks.

A way to 'train' up a few skill points similar to how researching works might be a great addition too.

Thanks for the tip and thoughts on it.

I just think this is going to encourage too much skill scumming to avoid a pretty detrimental issue that's part of a base function you can't really avoid.

Quoting myself to explain this sentence better because I think it's key to why this new challenge is not a good one and needs rebalanced / toned down a bit.

In almost every other skill set you have designed, there's at least a workaround or way to opt out for awhile until that colonists works up their skill or you gain a new colonist with a high level skill to take that job.

Also, those jobs are not life or death in most cases. Low research skill? No biggie, just takes longer to research or wait to research the high end stuff when you get a scientist onboard. Not a great miner, well just chip away at that wall slowly until your skill goes up! Nobody's a great shooter? Well ... keep a lot of turrets active for defense and send your best shooters out hunting game a lot to up the skill ... I think you're starting to see my point, right?

But with cooking, you *cannot* afford to be sucky at it and you can't do a workaround at it unless you make all meals untouchable until the cook's skill gets high enough to stop poisoning everyone and that's just a pointless waste of food. I have literally no way to skill up a cook without this really detrimental side effect and it seems unfair and cheesy at the high rate it's happening.

I'm not asking to have it removed - I think it's an interesting mechanic to add to the strategy. I'm just asking you to take a look at the rate / percentage calculations and consider toning it down a bit?

Remember you can use nutrient paste to avoid food poisoning entirely.

Sure and that's a viable option in the beginning. But what if your starting colonists don't have particularly high cooking? It takes 6 to make fine meals, but as others are saying, even that produces a high rate of food poisoning. I don't think that's really very balanced if a colonist can cook a 'fine' meal ...shouldn't their chances of poisoning it be much lower? Seems contradictory to me.

Also, if you provide a nutrient paste machine and also have a cook (to keep raising cooking skills) no one ever eats from the nutrient paste dispenser, they will eat the meals, which invariably make them sick. This is just not really well balanced because unless you force players to cherry-pick only high leveled chefs from the start, almost all choices in colonists are going to have a lower skill and end up mass poisoning everyone all the time until they get at least a 10 skill? I just think this is going to encourage too much skill scumming to avoid a pretty detrimental issue that's part of a base function you can't really avoid.

I agree that it's easier to take the captives of your enemy, but if you wanted to run a truly large-scale slave trading and production operation (think evil slave trade plantation) then your leaders are going to eye easier prey, their friendly next door neighbors. Of course they will no longer be friendly, but their members will be easier to pick off than the heavier armed pirates and the mass numbers of tribals, right?

I was toying with forming a three-man slave-trade operation just before A9 hit and will likely pick it up once this build smooths over a bit or moves on (it's a little rougher than A8). My three chosen starter colonists will all have traits making them ideal for pirating and trafficking humans. Since there's no game mechanic for holding enemies or captives as working slaves, I will have to 'convert' them all to the way of the plantation via my three high social and shooting (hehe) skilled starters. These guys won't care if it's their friendly neighbors or pirates, all make good slave trade candidates or workers for the colony. The tribals are the hardest ones to convert though, right?

I still think a solid slave status option for captives would really make the game more fun than just keeping all those attacking raiders in chains and useless in a cell. Make them work! And if they suck at all skills, SELL them.

I think the percentage needs toned down just a tiny bit. It's over-exaggerated right now.

I was surprised to notice walls are no longer count towards beauty. I'm not sure how I feel about that. It sure makes things easier because I no longer have to replace rock walls with pretty wood ones anymore.

I don't like this change. I always thought the idea of going through the hassle of upgrading the interior walls of cave systems was to increase the comfort level of living in there and that bare chiseled rock walls would be less desirable and therefore less beauty factor. I think you should be encouraged to upgrade walls for that reason. It forces you to plan out better sleeping/eating areas first so your colonists have prettier living spaces while leaving storage areas unfinished.

I'd like a pleasant environment buff for my colonists if I've gone through the hassle of making a nicely bricked or carpeted floor and neatly stone-masonry or wood paneled walls. It's a lot of work for colonists to do for no reward.

Not being able to pull up flooring when I need to reorganize my layout is a huge peeve of mine right now at this stage of the game. I'm new and still learning so I invariably need to remodel because I initially set things up poorly. I've also now learned to only put flooring down when I'm absolutely sure that's the final layout. Until then I just put up with dirt flooring or stone or whatever's there. It's just an annoyance.

I think I see your problem. Your 'dining hall' is the opposite direction from the door where your freezer room is located. While it's not a super long ways away, it *is* two buildings away and your colonists are forced to go through several doors and switch directions to get there. Pathing AI for these guys is really simplistic so you have to keep your layouts down to "path of least resistance" ...meaning not a lot of directional changes rather than distance being the factor.

Did you ever play Sims 3? Their pathing was insanely irritating. They would sometimes take a meal and eat it at a table farther away (upstairs or even outside) instead of right there in the kitchen. You learned to make 'nice' eating areas close to the source of the food. I think colonists in this game are similar. They seek areas of least effort. That probably doesn't explain the one-off behavior of eating in a stockpile further away but it's just a comparison because I think it's funny.

My suggestion to you is change the door where your freezer and food storage is to be directly across from your dining hall. The even better layout is to have the dining hall directly adjacent to food storage with only one door between them. That's how I do it and have never had them eating anywhere but the tables provided.

I was playing a lot of 'take what you get' random rolled characters while learning the game and I have to say there's definitely value in non-violent / non-fighting characters who stay behind and end up being "field medics" as your Kesa was. It's a valuable tactic. Good story!

I think too often the ability to roll 'perfect' characters detracts from the sometimes unrealized usefulness of those we originally thought were not going to work out. Because I rolled a lot of characters I originally hated and then ended up liking, I've now changed my playstyle for Alpha 9 and will be rolling three almost useless (other than medical, shooting and social skills) characters who are actually excaped convicts in one way or another and will be forming their own pirate slave-trading operation on my chosen RimWorld. Opens up a whole new philosophy of playstyle for me where we capture most of our 'workers' and utilize heavy trait / skill ranking in order to decide who goes to the front-lines of battle and who stays behind to support the defense and life of the colony.

Careful stat / skill boosting doesn't always lead to the balance we thought it did in this game. Sometimes you need dumb labor and standby help. Cheers to all the Kesa's of RimWorld!

Yes please.... always seem to have a little marshy pond thing right smack in the middle of where I want my colony to travel back and forth between areas of use. No way to fill it in with dirt, no way to pave over it. Docks would at least allow for easier traversing over it if I can't get rid of it.

Edit: This could make sea-side colonies actually have viable outdoor areas next to the water as well assuming you could build on these docks in some way.