Messages

Based on this I think I have to leave more work types separate and instead work on improving the overview interface to allow collapsing and expanding groups of work types (collapsed groups being manipulable as one).

And/or hiding work types that aren't 'discovered' yet. E.g. no need to show Smithing if you have no smithing equipment.

I agree, sounds like a good plan. That way those who want to merge jobs will have the option, while those who want to separate them out can do so with expanded view / choices. Choice is always the best route.

It's interesting to me that people are so divided, it's mostly not about the construction/repair debate it's mostly about the " Do you want a more complex interface " argument.


For me personally coming from Gnomoria it's really nice to have a colony management game where I can just sit down and play a new game without spending an hour setting up all of the professions required to play even 3 minutes of Gnomoria.

It's a combination of game difficulty, complexity, and interface complexity but it all adds up to a game that I don't have to keep footnotes to play.
For me Gnomoria for all its complexity has become very formulaic, I know exactly which professions I need to create, exactly what their priorities are, exactly when I need to create new professions ect.

As far as I'm concerned both games have sufficiently complex interfaces given the level of control and optimization required to play them.
Gnomoria has a zillion speciality jobs that you *really* need competent gnomes performing so it pays off significantly to specialise, and the game allows you to do so very accurately.
Rimworld has only a handful of true speciality jobs ( Mostly Crafting/Art honestly ) and -for the most part- allows you to prioritize accordingly, crafting is a bit of a mess at the moment but a player assigned bench priority system would probably fix that, maybe in addition to the skill lock system that's been modded in.

Nice reflection / perspective from Gnomoria. I just started playing it and wow... they said it was Dwarf Fortress "Lite" so apparently I am a very lite-ended gamer in the micromanagement department. This brings up a very good question to Tynan though ... and it might help him decide whether or not to leave many of these jobs separate and thus more micromanagement potential, or to merge them and streamline things a bit:

Are you going for a Gnomoria or big brother DF game overall? If so, keep them separated and allow the player many layers of complex management. Ignore the comments from those who say it makes things too 'tedious' because obviously they (like me) have no idea just how tedious a game can actually make management for you. RimWorld is very easy compared to the true micromanaging games. I had no idea until I thought I'd casually pick up Gnomoria as a way to train myself to handle something like Dwarf Fortress. Obviously I was wrong. DF wasn't meant for mere human brains on my level.

The only reason I could see not to would be that, since repairing takes so little time (compared to construction), we're able to allow less-essential pawns to repair without wasting the time of someone who is good at constructing AND something else.

Beyond that, I think it'd make sense for them to be together.

The fast time it takes to repair is, to me, the reason they *could* be merged since it's not that huge of a burden for my builders to do the same job. My only concern is how to prioritize repairing over building in time of siege. I don't want to have to cancel all upcoming queued building jobs because they do that and disregard badly needed electrical repairs instead.

So after careful thought, my answer is no, do not merge them. I want to be able to prioritize them separately depending on the situation my colonists are in.

Well the hybrid tag was mostly just joking since everything I see nowadays is supposed to be some sort of fancy named hybrid which just means "ugly-grocery-getter" in car terms.

It actually *is* quite difficult to put RimWorld into a neatly defined category and I'm actually happy about that because games get pigeon-holed and appeal to 'niche markets' too often. Dwarf Fortress was a game long before it's time and I've heard they were even offered a quite large sum to sell the game over to a more mainstream game producer and re-release it in a more human-friendly (lol) format but the guys declined because it's their 10 year labor of love obsession. I totally respect that. Those of us with human brains need visual cues and simpler interfacing and so RimWorld and other games with similar styles are starting to crop up here and there now just in the last few years I noticed. That's fanstastic. The fact that individual creative license (hence the Indie movement in gaming) is actually possible outside of rigid game producer companies is a step in the right direction for so many young people with game creating aspirations.

I don't know that we can clearly define RimWorld, it's got roguelike qualities to it as well and could in fact incorporate random gen 'dungeons' in the form of expanding the undiscovered areas like when you find a crypto-sleep room. That's starting to touch on more adventure driven gaming too.

It's not a bug. However, trading with spaceships is supposedly a placeholder until a more local trading system is implemented.

Has it ever been mentioned what that trading system might be? Direct trade with the neighboring colonies? I hope so, that would make diplomacy and faction favor much more meaningful than just keeping them off your back or "visiting your freezer" as someone humorously put it one way or the other.

Why are you continuing this pointless argument then? Nothing you just posted had anything remotely to do with the brain-damage mechanic of the game. I at least tried to keep it on topic. I said I was done and you need to stop too.

I see RimWorld as a Hybrid-Crossover Game. Those are both popular terms with certain types of vehicles these days, so why not games too?

I think it does nicely combine many of the elements players like from the various genres you mentioned. I originally thought it was a straightforward civilization RTS-lite (think Age of Empires meets Firefly) which btw did not have a Fog-of-war, that's particular to only some types. I was happy to be really wrong about that assumption. Rimworld has a pretty fun story-teller /RPG element to it as well. I wouldn't call it an "adventure" game only because there's very little to adventure or explore outside of the small patch you're stuck with in your immediate landing zone. There's no visiting other colonies or traveling to other planets so not much adventure in it.

I'd call it "Colony Simulator" as the default if it didn't have the forced ending it did. To me a colony builder sim is geared for very long-term play over generations or many years of the in-game life-cycle. I would like Tynan to take it that direction but he seems uncertain about whether the game AI and base mechanism would work that route at least from what I've read on the topic.

That hydro design is a major power drain too - That's actually HALF the capacity of 4 sun lamps.

Here are the two most efficient hydro setups - https://www.dropbox.com/s/7f7whjs82mq5gox/screenshot18.png?dl=0

With incorporated roof supports.
Personally I'd suggest the 16 basin design as the 24 basin design requires your colonists to crawl over the basins and that's pretty slow, space would have to be at an absolute premium for it to be more efficient.

Oh thanks for sharing that - nice layout! I too don't see how the 24 basin design is better if they have to snail their way over top of them to carry every basket of produce away during harvest. I'd rather have less basins and faster production speed I guess.

Also while I'm at it, anyone else go crazy trying to select tiny targets (squirrels, monkeys, etc) for hunting? I don't know what's up with the target box but sometimes I absolutely want to smash my mouse trying to target them.

I think the problem here is that an entity still occupies its previous spot when moving. You'll notice this sometimes when re-arranging drafted colonists in a small space. Sometimes they just won't touch a specific square, presumably because someone was standing there a few seconds ago, and the game hasn't "caught up" yet. That's how it appears to me anyway.

Yes I think you're right about the movement. I notice it's easier to select a single small animal target unpaused rather than paused because wherever the critter actually froze in pause mode may not be where the AI / game has it placed already. The idea someone gave me to try highlighting areas to target them is good but requires as much clicking anyways. I just deal with it because I'm used to 'whack a mole' clicks.

Your example still doesn't hold in contrast to tabletop games. Even those RNG elements are consequences of risks and decisions made by a player. The DM doesn't just randomly roll the dice and say 'you're brindead, have fun with the rest of the party'. There's no adventure in that, no dignity in that. You may think there's some deeper meaning to be contrived from it, and that's cool I guess, but I'll just roll another character and jump back in where the fun is.

Ok. First off, I'm trying hard to ignore your somewhat insulting bits and the end there (and edited out those parts) and keep this on topic because it's obvious you have disdain for the "endless play" style some prefer in a storyteller a' la Dwarf Fortress style game. And I hate to break it to you but Tynan has been quoted many times including this thread stating this *is* in fact a storyteller game more than it's a straight RTS. Strategy and the current (limited) ending are only part of the overall vision for the game so using that as your entire platform is not only short-sighted it's somewhat antagonistic. You act as if my way (which isn't eccentric and is preferred by many players) of playing the game is wrong, and that's a terrible way to respond to someone rather than just leaving it at "ok so maybe you like that kind of play but it's not my cup of tea and brain damage bugs me..." yeah I respect that. I don't respect being attacked for my playstyle preference that doesn't really have a lot to do with the topic at hand anyways as whether you play a game in a few hours flat and blast off, leave, game over, or prefer to stretch it out over years of a colony's existence makes no difference to the base issue of whether or not irreversible things such as brain damage are "fair" play or not.

I gave you a tabletop / DM scenario game as an example to hopefully point out to you that yes in fact things do happen out of your control and at the whim of the storyteller / roll of the dice. You said "Even those RNG elements are consequences of risks and decisions made by a player." and my immediate response to that, as others have already pointed out in responses on this thread, is: "But you did in fact take a risk, and make a decision... you put that character in harm's way somehow and it got shot and took a bullet to the brain and is now brain-dead or semi-coherent veggie state..."

There really isn't much more I can say to this and I do not want it to turn into a flame-fest so I'm going to end at least my part in the debate before it gets really heated. I didn't like your pointed accusations about my playstyle and while I can respect your position of disliking the brain-dead thing, it's not my game that's telling the story and the guy who wrote it has already spoken about it and put it a lot more simply and clearly than I ever could. Good luck with your veggie colonists. I finally euthanized mine.

PS: This is what Tynan said on page 2:

I've actually quite deliberately never thought of it as a strategy game. The entire design process has very explicitly been guided by the notion of RimWorld as a 'story generator' above all.

Mainly this is because there are tons of great strategy games on the market that I can't beat. But there are very few decent story generators.

Obviously it's good to create meaningful multivariate decisions for players (tundra/non-tundra is a good example). But this takes a backseat to narrative drama where necessary.

If we were able to expand prisoner areas to attached areas, so that one could be a whole prison compound, with attached outdoor area and even dining hall, for the prisoners to freely move around in, this would certainly make the dispenser a much more viable option for those who don't want to just cram all their prisoners in one room like a bunch of sardines.

I just started playing around with Wastelander's Prison Improvements Mod (he also has a full slaver mod) and it does just what you described ...gives the ability to designate larger areas (such as a dining area or outdoor exercise yard) as prisoner areas with a mounted wall camera. So clever! It also has doors that can't be accessed by prisoners and only your colonists. Now I am busy designing my first large-scale slave colony where the workers have their own separate sleeping cells but community eating, working and outdoor areas.

On this topic, does anyone know if the mechanoids inside generate with the map, or when the area is uncovered?

I ask because my current game generated it right at the edge of a hillside and I unsealed it at the start without any mechanoids spawning. Was it just luck or does the game take your colony wealth into account when generating content?

I haven't actually unsealed the caskets yet, my colony's not quite strong enough to handle the potential occupants, but it did make me wonder.

Yeah they can still spawn neutrals. I got one my first A9 build game that had 5 caskets in it and we uncovered it within the first month of mining and weren't prepared. I sealed it back off and waited until we had the manpower and resources to deal with it... set up some turrets and sandbags, etc and cracked those puppies open only to have 5 really sick and dying neutrals fall out bleeding and spreading green slime all over. That was a little anticlimactic after all that prep haha. We nursed them back to health, lost one to an infection and had 4 great colonist additions so it was worth it.

A trick I learned with outdoor / exposed entrances to crypts - seal up the entrances with just one block of thin material easy for raiders to bust through and a turret inside. They'll spend time trying to get into your 'base' (even though that's not your base) and sometimes accidentally open the caskets themselves. Two birds with one stone that way.

Yes I believe they were removed from out in the open and buried inside mountains and mining areas. I'm not sure how that translates for flat biomes though. I've started several new games in A9 and the crypts were always discovered in mined "new area discovered" type scenarios.

Maybe brain damaged people could receive treatments of "physical therapy" from doctors. They have to basically stay bed-ridden (to get it done as soon as possible). Maybe make it so they recover 90% with a lot of time.

It's realistic as a stroke victim can get better, but it takes a lot of work, effort, and patience.

Then, at least, you have a choice to sell/harvest a brain damaged person, or put the time/effort into getting back the colonist you care about. Still causes drama, still balanced, gives a choice.

Edit:
I can imagine my favorite colonist as a brain dead vegetable with me and all the colonist hoping he will pull through and upgrade one stage or more (random) in his mental ability. If it fails, I wasted a lot of time just trying to get him awake and moving.

Yeah I like the idea of some sort of extended medical treatment / therapy that might help improve your chances of lessening the permanent damage - gives you a wildcard roll and another chance.

Oddly enough, in looking back on my brain-damage situation, I remember the colonist could barely move, almost to the point of starvation. Suffered a mental break, and then mysteriously 'snapped out of it' and was faster but still impaired after that if that makes any sense. I don't know if that was intended by the AI or not. It did leave an impression on me and after quite a few restarts I still found that story the most tragic of all my characters so far. She was one of the three founders and they had almost gotten the ship completed too. They had to euthanize her and leave without her. Sad!

+1

I like this idea because I'm putzing around with the prison/slave mods and one of my chief complaints is how to make sure my 'slave' cooks don't eat the fancy meals cooked for the slavers! I can't really physically separate them efficiently. I have a nutrient paste dispenser in the dining area for the slaves/workers and that's all I want them to eat. I would prefer to be able to label simple meals as edible for injured / incapacitated prisoners so they don't get the nutrient paste negative. But fine and lavish meals I want to reserve only for the 'elite' of my colony. I know, it's terribly mean.