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I researched the 'automatic power switch', but it's not showing up under Power or Misc. Where can I find it? My only next researches are timed switches or automatic enemy switch.

Finished research: http://i.imgur.com/MXTdA4p.png

Power menu: http://i.imgur.com/QH41ETG.png

It's not a new switch. The mod changes the existing switches. Any switch now will have a power on/off option as well as an option to have the power automatically turn on when it detects movement in the room.

I managed to get through it, I just wasn't prepared for an event that suddenly wiped out all wildlife on the map during a time period in which I was relying on hunting to compliment my stockpile. I slaughtered some of my tame animals to make it through until I got a trader carrying some food. I had just never seen the event before, and between that and repeated mechanoid raids in my first year, I decided that Cassie hates me.

How long does this thing last? I've had it going for nearly two months. It has killed all of the wildlife on the map in the middle of the winter, the whole map is on fire from all of the boomrats and boomalopes exploding, so now I have a map devoid of any life whatsoever. No plants, no animals, and it's the middle of a long (first) winter, so I can't grow crops. I don't think I've ever had a colony fail so quickly, and certainly not go from thriving to dead because of one event!

Cassie 100% is a fair challenge. Play smart, and if you make it through the first winter, you've already won. No killboxes or unbalanced magic soil spawners necessary.

Wow! I was away from the forum for a few weeks. I'm glad you all have enjoyed the story. I generally don't get into the roleplay, but this story was hard not to see as special.

I've been Rimming for some time (quiet at the back) and my new colonies these days don't get the Nutrient Paste Dispenser as it's almost entirely a waste of time when compared to cooking, and also gives no real advantage in any other situation owing to the way it works (or, in the case of power outages, doesn't). Well, some comments kicking about the forum and a few solar flares later and I've had some ideas for the NPD that could potentially bring it back into contention as a "useful thing".

Currently, the NPD takes raw food via a hopper and converts that raw food to nutrient paste when a colonist uses it, providing it has food to paste and power to do the pasting. As it gives a -8 mood debuff and switches off with everything else during power outages, it's basically pointless at the moment. Here are my thoughts/suggestions to change it and make it a more viable option for colonies...

- NPD takes food from a hopper as normal
- Whilst powered, the NPD pastes the food put into the hopper and stores it in that enormous tank (the rate this occurs at could be varied to add balance)
- This continues to occur whilst the NPD has food in the hopper and is connected to a power supply. (Perhaps bills could be set to determine how much food goes into it, or perhaps its capacity could be the equivalent of n number of cooked meals or something).
- The NPD doesn't require power to deliver the paste once produced (gravity feed system) and so would continue to provide paste during power outages, assuming there's enough paste left in the tank to do so.
- (Optional) reduce the debuff a few points

The above suggestion should bring the NPD back into contention as a useful thing to have and would go some way to mitigating the impact of solar flares, which are a total shitbrick on times, as your colonists would at least not be eating raw food.

I suggested this exact thing -albeit in less developed terms - in the cheap suggestion thread the other day, minus the change to the  negative thought. Don't feel that would be necessary as the thought is so small. I love the rest of this idea, though. Wish I remember who I borrowed it from lol.

[and]

I'm always finding myself in need of wood. That's because i like to build outside and build cozy wood cabins.

I didn't follow this post closely so i won't give any insights, but i figured i should voice my POV.

I haven't played much with planting or used the pumps in any extensive manner, but when i did it provided me with a fun time, it entertained me, which is the purpose of the game, so the idea of removing both of these COMPLETELY AGE-OLD NATURAL AND OBVIOUS ABILITIES (planting stuff and fertilizing stuff) feels pretty radical for me. Perhaps its the fact that i never used with an exploiting mind, even so it just shows that it's not the idea of planting trees and fertilizing the ground that is wrong: it's the execution of it (well, obvious right?).

So, i'll throw right back at ya: All the mantra here of not getting moved by the "realism" argument is bollocks (and i mean this in a friendly way). You're just spitting on the plate you ate, everything is built upon "realism", and while we don't need to factor every reality bit inside a game, or how its being said: a game doesn't need to be realistic, but it does need verisimilitude. There's absolutely no reason why 5k years from now the human race and your intrepid group of spaceship builders wouldn't be able to plant a tree or build a fertilizer pump.

Taking away both, like it has been pointed, just feels like a cheap way to challenge or to make a biome unique.
Want to make it unique? Give it unique events, give it unique fauna & flora, resources availability, power generation potential, enemies. Already on track? Good! Enhance upon, just don't take away options, improve them.

What's so bad about planting trees? The speed they grow? There are exploding mice in the game. Is it exploitable? Slow the growth speed, make it require a specific soil, an expensive growing technique or a terraforming gardening equipment, seeds, constant care, specific animals, birds, rain, whatever reason. Make it impossible to plant in a desert, its okay, it makes sense, but geez, let me plant my tree garden in my hard-earned dream colony, let me put a tree in front of Ross' house so he can have a shade and watch the birds.

Fertilizer pump is OP? Uhh, nerf it? Lower the radius, denies certain terrains to become soil, make it require water or some other resource, make it so if you delete it, it returns to its old terrain type, move it waaaay further in tech tree, make it require hard-to-buy equipment, change its purpose a little. I mean, all these rimplanets have all been terraformed but your rapidly-advancing colony can't built a fertilizing pump?

Well, that sounded a bit ragey, but i just didn't see a good justifiable reason that couldn't be addressed in a better way

I could see both of these things fitting into the game under two sets of circumstances:
1) The fertilizer pump requires compost or some other form of biomatter and can only enrich existing soil, not create it from nothing.
2) Trees grow much, much more slowly, and require a lot more space to grow big enough to cut for lumber.

They're 5% better and they fit perfectly in the center of a 6x6 room. That's pretty much everything that they've got going for them.

Do you just make them 6x6 for symmetry with the bed? 5x5 gets the spacious interior bonus.

Well.. in the games defenes, the pawns do seen to have a welder or something - the flashes have to some from something.

It's my belief that these things are done with their mouths. They chew up rocks to make steel (I like that explanation more than "it was already like that"), bit rubble into bricks, melt stone with their saliva for mortar, and shoot flames from their mouths when they need to weld things.

stuff

Let's please keep it on topic, thanks.

My apologies, but how was my suggestion off-topic?  Wouldn't indulging oneself in one's favorite food be considered a valid way to find a "release" from everyday pressures along the lines of what you're asking for?

You were suggesting an entirely new set of mechanics, which while technically relevant to the topic at hand, would only ever be so secondarily. While eating a favorite food could certainly contribute to a joy need, the rest of what you suggested functioned as thoughts separate from the mechanic being worked on here.


I'm really loving the input I'm seeing here. The idea of being able to micro a colonist's joy need but not required to is ideal to me and fits the game's current manual prioritization mechanics.

I'd also be thrilled to see the joy bar filling while a colonist is exercising a passion, and perhaps a minor drain when doing work they're not interested in. This would make the random character creation make more sense, as I've seen at least one flame on all but one or two skills before, which has struck me as incongruous. How many people can be passionate green thumbs and melee brawlers, plus actively interested in mining, construction, cooking, and medicine? If instead one flame marked neutral feeling on a subject, and none marked something of no interest to the colonist, the denotation would be different.

[no chopping down tree's "tree hugger" colony]

I don't want to make judgements on something I havn't seen implemented yet.

All this topic has done makes me want to do a no chopping down tree's "tree hugger" colony in the tundra or dessert. I bet it's going to do just fine. I might miss wood doors - will make getting plasteel ones feel that much more awesome.

I've never once used the tree planting feature in A9. Nor have I ever had a shortage of wood in any biome. Wood just isn't that important at any stage in the game except at the very beginning before you've researched stonecutting. Even then, you start with enough silver to buy all of the wood you will ever need from the first trader to pass by, if you're willing to waste it.

I believe that needing to find and secure a means of producing potable water would add a bit more depth to the survival part of the game, which feels a bit bare at the moment. This would be particularly relevant in deserts and rainforests, which would have problems with quantity and potability/disease, respectively.
This would be a whole new mechanic with a lot of necessary change to the game, however. You'd need water sources: springs, perhaps. Collectible snow, rainwater collectors, solar stills, etc. Then you'd need filtration options, from boiling to charcoal, gravel and sand filtration.
I'm uncertain personally how much this would add from a gameplay/fun standpoint, though if someone were to take the time to flush it out and look appealing from that perspective, I'd be all for it.

Right now gold feels rather... irrelevant? I would prefer that it were of much higher value, but also much rarer and dropped (whether from persons or ores) in smaller quantities. It should be something carried only by high-ranking faction members and elite mercenaries, and finding veins of the stuff should be more of a big deal. Maybe down the road also make small quantities of it required to craft certain devices (gold does have certain practical uses), so there's a decision process for players to go through between how much of it they're willing to trade.

Craft a sculpture out of gold with a halfway decent artist. All problems with the value of gold will then vanish from your mind, and you will build a bionic man, and all shall be right in the world.

Hopefully the new joy system will be as interesting as I hope it will. I'd love to have a reason to give my colonists time to idle or focus more directly on their passions.

It would be nice to see them at least haul someone to an existing medical bed if available. Seems like a reasonable trade-off for the dozens of friendlies I generally rescue and return home hale an healthy.