Messages

As above, check the thoughts of your Colonists and see what's upsetting them. It's probably something you've overlooked like a body in a high traffic area or eating raw ingredients.

Google is watching you with all of its eyes, and it has many.

If you're concerned about it (and don't want to use their search engine), try https://duckduckgo.com/

[Turrets]

Adding different sizes of items would be a nice way of adding more content (and giving players greater options and flexibility) with the bonus being that it should be really 'cheap' to do.

• Turrets - A clone of the Improvised Turret, the "Standard Turret" takes up the same floor space but requires 100% more metal to build. However, it fires at 75% the rate of the Improvised Turret and deals 50% more damage.
• Batteries - Smaller/larger batteries with suitably adjusted storage values. Perhaps add in different types of battery (i.e. "Lead Acid" and "Lithium Polymer") that have different energy densities and can therefore store more/less power in the same space but are more/less prone to short-circuit depending on type. Li-Po, for example, could have 150% the energy density of an equivalent size lead-acid battery but be 25% more likely to catch fire due to short circuit.
• Solar Panels - Smaller panels could be made available and built next to outdoor items (such as turret) to power them directly and reduce the load on the main complex's battery bank. Alternatively, combined with a small battery pack, one could power turrets entirely independently of the rest of the complex, meaning that problems there won't leave you entirely defenseless.
• Geothermal generators - As with solar panels, Geothermal Generators could be sized to allow greater options and introduce a better order to power generation. At the moment, starting a new colony with a geothermal vent nearby means that all of your power needs are instantly met and will be met for some time as it's possible to build a geothermal plant right off the bat. I think the current geothermal generator should be "end game" for power needs and be quite expensive to build. However, smaller versions could be implemented that have a much more reasonable resource requirement with a suitably reduced power output.
• Beds - Addition of different types of bed that give differing buffs/debuffs depending on the type. Simple metal/wood bed, Basic bed (with matress) and Luxury bed (with teddy)
• Doors - A simple internal door that requires no power but can still segregate rooms would be nice. Having a structure full of doors each drawing 50W soon eats through battery supplies. The simple door should be cheaper to make and still slow the Colonist down as unpowered doors currently do, but still be able to segregate rooms so that simple bedrooms can be constructed without including power-sapping doors. A strong lockable door could also be added that, when locked, prevents all movement but is quite resistant to damage. This could be used on complex entrances or high value areas (stockpiles etc.)
• Wall lamps - Top half of the floor lamp texture with its base mounted towards the wall? Would allow placement of lamps in rooms without using up vital floorspace. Wall lamps could perhaps have a lower light output and power requirement as well as being cheaper to make (no stand).

Other items that I can think of that should be easy to implement and aren't copies of existing items;

• Traps - Set traps to catch Squirrels/Boomrats. Trap would be a 1x1 square cage that instantly kills a squirrel/boomrat that wanders over that square (with perhaps an associated trap-snapping-shut sound). Bait, which would be lost when the trap triggers, could possibly be added to entice creatures in rather than relying on chance for them to wander over the trap. This would be a nice method of 'farming' the wildlife without having to enlist a colonist to go and get beaten up. Traps could also be used to protect stockpiles.

Boomrat explosions should damage/destroy the trap depending on its condition.

• Different plants - Probably been covered hundreds of times already, but different plants with different growth rates and nutritional value would be nice.

I don't really think there's a need to try to centralize every RW idea ever into a list. I mean, there are just far too many for it to be realistic.

Perhaps not, but adding popular/sought after suggestions here gives you a one-stop location to come.

Launchpads actually have an automagic storage zone under them set to priority I believe. So if you in house storage was set to normal, things would get moved to the launch pad as that has a higher priority. Click twice on the launch pad to select the storage zone under it.

Aha! I see. That's... not particularly intuitive. The launchpad should just have a built in stockpile, although I assume this is temporary anyway.

- Building a wall in a tight spot or in a 1 tile wide corridor usually requires to command each block of wall one after another, since otherwise closer wall blocks will be build first, blocking the way to the unbuild walls and often even trapping colonists inside.

- Trying to replace a dirt wall with a metal wall in the beginning often caused my buildings to collapse, as you have to wait until the wall is mined, before it is possible to give the command to build a metal wall in its place.

How did I forget about posting these?! The corner/line building thing is a pain, it would be nice if the jobs were prioritised in order of accessibility although I have no idea how that might be implemented technically, unless the individual wall sections are just queued in the order the line is dragged, so to build into a corner or a single square width corridor, one would drag from the blocked and towards the open end.

For the second point, I haven't had the same issues with roofs collapsing, but it would be nice to be able to stack jobs on single squares. So, for example, if I wanted to replace a metal wall with a stone one, I'd deconstruct the first and then order the second, which would only be queued once the deconstruction has happened. It would be really nice if the Colonist were to bring the materials needed for the construction job with them, rather than walking to the deconstruction job, completing it and then walking back to a stockpile for the resource before walking back to the construction job.

Either that or the placement of an item to be constructed automatically issues mining/deconstruction jobs on anything that's in the way, with those specific mining jobs having a higher priority than regular mining jobs (i.e. ones set using Orders).

I've never liked the size of the NPD and especially so now it requires hoppers. Not sure what to think of its removal though, I think something should sit between eating raw food and cooking a meal that's preferable in the interim due to a lack of resources and/or higher priorities elsewhere. Perhaps the NPD could be reduced in size and resource requirement (both metal and power) whilst the cooker simultaneously is increased in resource requirement. This would mean that a cooker would be a relatively luxury item that's not high on the priorities list initially, whereas a small NPD that doesn't use much power would suffice until you have enough resource to build the cooker (and everything else that supports it).

[Useability]

Some observations 'n' ideas. And some ramblings I guess.

Useability

• Interface - Unable to scroll view whilst cursor is over a menu. This gets quite annoying after a bit as you cannot scroll the view with the mouse cursor in the bottom corners due to the permanent menu. Viewing Colonist thoughts/needs etc. prevents scrolling the view to the left entirely.
• Interface - Close cross 'hitboxes' on interface windows too small. The close interface window cross only works if the cursor is directly over the actual cross rather than being over a box drawn around the cross. This makes dismissing a window quickly quite difficult due to miss-clicking and can get frustrating if you've got raiders inbound and you don't much care who's doing what. Now that I've written that, I realised I haven't tried Escape (does that work?). Still, bigger hitbox on the cross would be nice.
• *Interface/Priorities

- It would be nice to be able to select multiple items to interact/control them. For example, during my last session I built a lot of graves (about 6 in one go) and then had to set the priority of them all manually. Being able to shift-click to select multiple objects, or have an option to select all/select all on screen, would make life so much easier. Another use of this would be selecting all lights/doors/turrets to power them down during eclipses to conserve power for more important things.
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AI Priority

• Construction priorities - Last night I wanted to remove some stone walls I had constructed in the wrong place and set the job along with a load of other construction work that I wanted doing. After a while, I noticed that the walls had not been deconstructed yet (and they were in the way for what I had planned) so I checked my builders and they were all busy building stuff, including stuff that I had set for construction after the deconstruction job was set on the wall. So, are deconstruction jobs a lower priority than construction jobs and, if so, why? I feel that the construction jobs should be carried out in the order in which they're placed, pending all other requirements being met of course, as that way I can control what gets done and when. And on that note, are there plans to introduce a priority system within a given job? On a few occasions I've found myself desperately needing to get something important like a turret or two built and had to cancel all of those carpet jobs I had set because the Colonists can't be prioritised effectively. I know I can select a colonist and prioritise a job, but often they'll grab the resource, take it to the workplace and dump it there before wandering back off to make carpets or plantpots because, presumably, the job is actually split into two and they've only done the first one. It would be nice to be able to select a queued job and assign it a priority like you can with stockpiles so that you can make a load of construction orders and then give them a sensible priority. And on that note, assigning priority to a wall should assign the priority to all connected blocks in that wall rather than the single tile that was clicked on.
• Cooking - This has been covered already for the most part, although I'll add on some comments and a suggestion I've already made elsewhere on the forum.
  With the current cooking system, it's not easy to control the rate at which meals are prepared without constantly creating and cancelling bills. If left unattended, you could find that your cook has made ALL OF THE MEALS out of your raw resources and scattered them throughout the building. As they perish, this may result in the scenario where your Colonists have eaten all of the meals and have no raw food left to eat. Not good. This sort of happened last night, except without the running out of raw resources leading to hunger, starvation, unhappiness and probably murder that usually occurs when the food runs out. Still, the cook had made about twenty meals (I had set the bill to infinite - derp) and they now littered the floor and corridors of my complex. To remedy this, I set a stockpile on the long table I had already constructed and set it to only allow meals. My haulers then promptly moved the meals to the table and when people wanted to eat, they grabbed the food from the table and sat down (often not where they grabbed the food from mind, but I'm getting to that). I quite liked the affect this produced whereby people came in from their jobs and sat down at the table to have a meal that was already prepared for them and hit upon the idea of a cooking mechanic that would be easy to use and visually, quite appealing. The idea is this; You set the meal type required at the cooker but don't set any quantities, all you do is check which meal type(s) you want to cook. The cook then makes the meals on demand as and when slots are available at a table and makes meals until the table is full, at which point they stop cooking. When Colonists come to eat, they shouldn't pick up the food as they would from a stockpile but rather just sit down on a chair adjacent a meal and begin eating. This would mean that meals can be set and left to run with little worry of overcooking. I had also thought that there could be a "had dinner at the table" happiness buff (something small, +1 or so) but that would require some way of making people eat sat on the floor. Perhaps an "eating area" in the same form as sleeping spots (or maybe a campfire) could be added as a starting point.
  
  As an addition to this, I've seen a few posts saying that the meals perishing is a bad move. I disagree and think it's an interesting dynamic to the game that prevents you from making all of the meals and storing them (although this is very space inefficient). I'd prefer for it to go the other way and have all items perishable, but introduce a new item to combat that; the walk in fridge. [Enthusiastic_Sales_Pitch] "With same footprint as our Nutrient Paste Dispenser, the Big Square Behemoth Fridge is sure to meet your every day Colonist survival needs. With a power draw of just 450W, the Big Square Behemoth will chill your perishable goods down to just 5 degrees Celcius, meaning it keeps for up to 50% longer before becoming mouldy and disgusting!" [/Enthusiastic_Sales_Pitch]. The power going off would mean that the food starts to warm up and they perish sooner. If a temperature system is included at some point, this would add a debuff to happiness due to coldness.
  

Clarity

• Construction jobs don't indicate when they're blocked.

Often I find myself setting a construction job, going off to do something else and then returning to the job to find it hasn't been started. Specific jobs that are blocked for whatever reason are not highlighted to the player, either through the notifications in the upper right or by visual indication on the blueprint itself. I think the inclusion of a red cross or exclamation mark on a blocked job as well as an "n jobs blocked" notification would be very handy.

• Hauling Priority -

I am unsure exactly how the priority of hauled items works and could make several assumptions based on what I've observed, but my best guess would be that items are hauled based on proximity to the stockpile, with stockpiles worked on based on their priority. To put this into some context, last night, after a four strong Raider attack, there were a few bodies laying about the place that needed moving to some graves I had already constructed. I allowed interaction with the bodies and guns and also set the grave priority to Critical to ensure they were moved promptly as they were in close proximity to my growing areas and I didn't want my gardeners getting all upset about seeing some dead people. After a short while, the bodies were still there, the gardeners weren't that impressed and the haulers were... moving stones and potatoes.

As I said, I have no idea how the hauling priorities work, but here's how I think it should work; The stockpiles retain the priority system so that the player can control where the items go first, whereas the items get an interface similar to the stockpile controls but where the priority of individual items (and maybe even the radius around the stockpile they're going to) can be adjusted to control which items arrive first and from where. Items with the same priorities should be moved in equal volume. This would probably require a check on the last item dropped into the stockpile and compare its priority to that of other items the stockpile still has space for, then assigning out a job based on what items are due next that isn't the last one. With this method, it should be possible to both properly prioritise items and control where they're coming from. This is handy because a Colonist going for a wander into the wilderness to collect some metal when they should probably bury that body they've just fallen over leads to undesirable situations, mostly featuring Colonists upset and dead. This could have numerous possibilities and allow for a proper and granular control of resources and their locations.

• Launchpad - What the shit?

- I build a launchpad, delivery beacon and comm station last night, figuring the 500+ potatoes I had was probably excessive and someone might exchange them for some guns. I'm not really sure what triggered it, but at some point my haulers started taking stuff from my stockpile (which is tucked away inside) to the launchpad (which is outside of the base). I... don't even. I clicked on the launchpad and it told me it was a launchpad. I clicked on the delivery beacon and it told me it was a cactus, but I told it to stop being silly. I then clicked on the comms station and it also told me nothing. I have no idea why my haulers were moving stuff to the launch pad but I'm guessing it was something to do with a trade ship being in the area as they seemed to move it all back inside when it left. Not a clue what happened there and there was no obvious indication of what was going on.
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EDIT: New items marked *

Hello ladies,

Registered today as I have noticed/encountered a few things a I'd like to draw attention to and have a few suggestions to make too, so I figured I'd get involved. Expect logic/common sense based posts with a slathering of dry wit and dusted off with the corpses of trolls.

-What introduced you to RimWorld? Or to this style of game in general?
Prison Architect. I discovered that through Steam and watched the Alpha videos available. Fell in love with the concept and execution and purchased it, playing fairly solidly for a few weeks afterwards. I can't remember exactly how I stumbled upon RimWorld but I loved the concept and could immediately relate to the style, so I jumped in at some point during the early Alpha access and played it quit a bit before getting distracted. The Alpha 2 additions have drawn me back and I'm looking forward to more updates.

-What's your favorite other game?
DayZ Standalone is currently my other biggest time thief and I've put 120+ hrs into that since I bought it in mid January. Unfortunately, my PC is a pile of old bollocks made sometime during the Industrial Revolution and it runs like shit and regularly crashes so I tend to play it in spurts. I suspect I'll start again with a new patch in Experimental.

-Most embarrassing gaming-related story?
Oh crikey, umm, probably that time when I bought Guitar Hero 3 for the XBox and stuck it straight on to Medium thinking "how hard can it be?", followed by much  ,  and  before I put it on Easy and continued to struggle. Stupid fingers.

-What kind of breakfast cereal is the best?
Choco Flakes from Aldi

I'd prefer to see an integrated use of the tables. In my current colony (which is sizeable at the moment) I have a long table with 8 chairs and have designated a stockpile for just meals in the same location as the table. What this means is that cooked meals are placed onto the table and colonists come to the table to eat. However, this is a bit clunky as I'm making best use of the mechanics available and they're not really intended for this purpose. So, I suggest the following...

- Cooked meals must be stored at a vacant slot on a table
- Cooks will only cook a meal if there is a slot vacant
- Cooks will move a cooked meal to the table rather than dropping it on the floor and a hauler moving it as happens now.
- Colonists coming to the table to eat would sit at a chair that has a meal ready and eat directly from the meal rather than picking it up and taking it somewhere else (sometimes happens currently)

This setup would mean that you could schedule a cook to make infinite meals of a given type and not worry about them making thousands that would spoil, it makes the table a functional item rather than decorative (unless eating at a table already provides a buff to happiness), prevents food being stored on the floor (no significance at the moment) and generally just looks nice). This would also mean that meals don't need to stack.

+1!

Having to manually turn off electrical devices to conserve power is a proper ballache at the moment, circuit breakers would make this far easier. I'd also like to see...

- fuses (as mentioned above)
- light switches (switches off all lights within room)
- light level detector (used to automate sun lamps to come on when it gets dark)
- timers (timed switches - alternative to the above as sunrise/sunset happens at the same time)