Messages

There's an unusually large proportion of bonuses to melee

That might be because it's the hardest to train of all skills. Additionally, the majority thinks melee is underperforming compared to ranged.

Mining and Cooking are under-represented

High mining skill is one of the least important things. It can also be trained extremely easily in all biomes but one, and in that one you don't use it anyway since there are no rocks.
Cooking is used from the start, throughout the lifetime of a colony and therefore trains constantly.

It's almost like you can't just balance the average skill point distribution by mathematically equalizing everything. I wonder why.     

If taken as equally likely, the set of basic adult backstories doesn't match the typical needs and uses of a prosperous colony.

It's almost like backstories weren't balanced for lategame when you can train anyone in most skills easily. I mean, it's totally not because preset skill levels matter the most for earlygame. Nope, not at all.     

[slowest]

First of all, remember that humanity is spanned across 1.200 LY. So don't forget that:

...the slowest way we can reach this distance is with a spacecraft launched in 2100 AD that travels 3400 years at the speed of ~52900 km/s, roughly 17,6% of the speed of light.

That is the average speed during the whole flight. The closer we go to c the more energy it requires to accelerate further. This effectively defines the top speed of an engine, based on the propellant and energy required.

So let's say that a spacecraft launches from Earth and takes half the distance which is 300 LY (since the Sol system is probably the center of the 1.200 LY human-inhabited space since it's the origin point, it's "only" 600 LY to reach the edge from there) and decides to colonize the target planet there.
This means they'll waste time with hundreds of years of colonizing before they reach the stage of being able to send a spaceship themselves that can continue the tradition. It's highly unlikely that every and all spaceship was sent from Earth, after all. So our spaceships already have to reach a top speed higher than 17,6% c, in fact, probably more like 20-80% of c all depending on acceleration as well as considering more than one stop to build a colony. That 3400 years we have is pretty damn low for that 600 LY considering additional colonizing and sub-FTL speed.

If the spaceship has to periodically stop in order to extract fuel for the engine the required time to reach the destination further increases. Therefore it's safe to say that:

• Spaceships probably won't travel to targets more than 100 LY away at once. They stop, build a colony which either destroys itself or continues the tradition of sending a spaceship to colonize a not-too-far-away target.
• Interstellar engines are very fuel-efficient or don't need fuel at all. They don't stop for refueling.

This further implies why Rim Worlds are so dystopian; that they are in less star-dense locations. This would also support my theory that the human-inhabited space is like an ellipsoid, expanding quicker in the star-dense central areas of the galaxy arm.

If we want to keep to realism a bit then I can't help but notice:

Ship departs using chemical rockets to escape gravity.

Chemical rockets are shed, falling back to the planet.

First one implies the antimatter engine is not suitable for "low-speed" maneuvers. Latter implies the crew is doomed as with the engine, they shed their only option to safely land the ship on the surface of another planet too. Periodic stops for fuel would also be out of question without precise maneuverability.

Ship approaches the local star, gaining velocity for the gravity assist.

Upon reaching maximum speed gained, the anti-matter rocket lights off in a pulse-jet fashion, this allows for maximum velocity to be attained for system exit, the anti-pulse jet then continues to fire until a velocity of .05c-.15 is reached.

Now, I understand what you want to say here but it's just impractical. When your engine can easily reach 5-15% of c, the extra speed you gain from the gravity assist of any of the stars we know about (including RW Cepheli and friends) wouldn't mean jack shit and would only waste your time. You need a close supernova explosion to reach ~1% c velocity, gravity assists won't do anything unless it's a black hole or a neutron star, both being extremely dangerous for such maneuvers and reaching them alone wouldn't be feasible in such low timeframe unless you have sufficiently fast engines to begin with. See Dyson slingshot for more info.

...Allowing for the maximum velocity to be reached. (Variable, ideally .30c-.40c)...

...System approach expected, A.I. analyses system, and given the data acquired, extrapolates a flight-path to the ideal location. At this point, the ships speed is mostly unchanged, and the A.I. will bleed speed through various reverse-oberths, and aerogravity assists when possible, using the outer atmosphere of a planet to provide lift, and drag slowing the ship.* (Imagine a stone skipping on water. Where the stone is a ship, and the water is this atmosphere.) The ship, once reaching a targeted velocity, will depart to it's intended destination, or will land. Occasionally, the ship is torn to pieces by the extreme forces involved in some aerogravity assists.

This isn't "prone to failure", this is literally suicide. At the speed of 30-40% c you'll pass by stars' gravity wells in a way that even if you pass directly by the star all you'd achieve is slightly turning your ship in that direction. Slowing down is out of question. Aerobraking with speeds commonly used by spacecrafts today is already risky, imagine aerobraking with even 0.01% c (a.k.a. 30.000 km/s), that has zero percent survival rate! Furthermore, aerogravity assist is NOT used to slow down, it's used to change direction. Thre is no other way but to fire the retro-antimatter engines which boosted you to 30-40% c at the first place. Just make sure you start decelerating in time unless you want to spend another year or decade correcting your maneuver. Also, 30-40% c maximum speed is simply not adequate, unless you speak of a ship that starts from Earth and stops after 300 LY of travel. But according to the documents, colonies are being established at 20-50 LY distances or less. As I've said, if you incorporate periodic stops as well as colonization in your journey it will increase travel time exponentially.

So, how to fix it? First off, the fundamental problem is that we have a 600 LY distance to be traveled in 3400 years, along with many, many stops for establishing colonies. This is borderline impossible without FTL travel, unless we come up with a bullshit engine that can reach 99% c max speed AND reach that very fast. Even if we come up with, say, something like "early prototypes from 2100 were bad, yes, but Glitter Worlds have vastly improved the technology", we still have to get to Glitter tech first. Imagine a ship made in 2100 that travels 20 LY with an average speed of 20% c. The travel time is 100 years, we have 3300 more. Now add, let's say, 500 more years for terraforming and reaching Glitter tech levels. We have 2800 more. Let's say that they come up with an engine that can run at 80% c. So now they also send out a spaceshit to a target 30 LY away. Travel time is 37,5 years. Colony establishment and terraforming is another ~100. Let's say that they finish building up the new Glitter World in an additional 50 years, ready to send a starship. So now we're at 2612.5 years remaining to jump an additional 550 LY distance. Remember, spaceships will ALWAYS be sent to the closest and most promising targets possible. It's just logical. The problem is, that developing a planet to the point that said planet's population starts to consider building expensive ships to colonize other worlds, decades of years away both for communication and travel, takes time. This takes the most time out of all, probably more than traveling between stars.

3400 years is simply not enough for 600 LY when the documents tell us of worlds being as close as 20-50 LY or even closer. Either increase the time or decrease the distance. ~400 LY radius could be feasible, would still incorporate some of the local galaxy arm's less dense regions but anything lower than that would effectively destroy the concept of Rim Worlds.

The issue with this is that it doesn't seem to work; we have observed data that seems like it's working but we can't reproduce it consistently.

Exactly, like I've already pointed out, the EM Drive might not even work. As far as I know, tests in orbit are planned, might shed some light on this. Although I'm highly sceptical about it.

However, we can't have proper sci-fi without some science fantasy. Quantum vacuum thrusters are an intresting subject, whether it works or not. It also implies a positive feedback during acceleration, while decelerating would probably be harder exactly because of that.

But then again, I'm not a rocket scientist/physician/astronomer.

So every time the game calls Foo(), you can make it call Bar() before calling Foo(). You can even stop it calling Foo() altogether, essentially replacing Foo() with Bar().

I approve of this.

Now, gentlemen, please ignore me and carry on.

What I like the most is that you try so hard to seem like a professional, yet anyone with the least amount of modding experience knows you have no idea what you're doing.



As Dr. Pingas Robotnik would say: "Happiness is so much more enjoyable when it's based on the misery of others."



Please do continue. I want to see the part where you realize this and actually improve, too. Dunno how long will that take, though.

Now where's my second popcorn?

I like that list. You might want to check out my Quality Fix mod, especially the readme I mention there. Feel free to incorporate it into your pack. You'll find it here, along with my other stuff.

Also the colony wealth system seems a bit stupid. You shouldn't get punished for having higher quality stuff. If at all it should be the other way around like now.
E.g. a legendary rifle that is 150% as good as a normal one should push the colony value only by 125%. So that better quality is actually tipping things in your favor.
Why even have a crafting stat then? It only hurts getting better gear.

And that's exactly why I made a mod that fixes that.

Incendiary launcher has a small niche - flushing enemies from non-wall cover like rocks, trees, sandbags. It doesn't matter if you hit an adjacent tile instead of your target. But it's for positional fight, against enemies that don't have big numerical advantage (tribals), and mechanoids don't burn. So pirates only.

Pila is a good budget hunting weapon. It won't work against bears or elephants, but it tends to kill or cripple smaller animals in one hit. Bad DPS doesn't matter when enemy can't retaliate and you hit first.

Spear - marginally lower DPS than longsword, but a lot cheaper. I think it's 90 vs 120, so it matters in early game if you craft from plasteel.

Incendiary launcher are actually pretty good against tribals too. They're a lot better than the majority thinks.

You have a good point regarding the pila there. However, most of the time I get my hands on a pila I have better alternatives already.

Spear is the best compromise between stats and value IMO. I don't switch to longswords even in lategame.

I guess that could work. Just don't make it occur too often. Remember, a game is allowed to stray off the path of realism in favor of fun. Would this mechanic be fun to deal with? Would it really improve the game?

It would at least make more sense than general suffering ( feeling bad )
scars that hurt more than a infection ( Current Game - 14% pain, -6 hp, Bitescar Leg )
And at least give some explenation fluff why GlitterDoc McCyber botched yet another simple surgery.

Now that you mention these... Yeah, you got a point. Phantom pain it is, then.

And here I thought this thread would be about the Chtullhu Mod ..

Oh Great Mammon ! We call thy Name .. bless us with your presence and transmute all this useless shit into something we actually need !

And that's the story how all your plasteel turned into human leather.

Cthulhu has some unique preferences...

Although I don't have this problem since I usually generate an entire planet, giving me plenty of room to find that one spot I want, it's nice to see there are alternatives for those who can't do the same.

Since I started playing I wondered what roles each of the weapons filled.

All right, let's get started.
Obligarory wall of text warning!

First of all, we can sort ranged weapons into 3 main categories. Short ranged, medium ranged and long ranged.

Neolithic tribes have three ranged weapons: pila, short bow and great bow. At first glance you'd think it's obvious which goes to which category but that's not really true.

The short bow is utter trash at any range other than short and is outperformed in every way by the great bow.
The only reason the pila isn't completely outperformed by the great bow is because of it's ability to sever limbs that aren't covered by clothing which is an extremely niche situation, and even then you'd have to stand just a few tiles away from your enemy to get somewhat close to the DPS that a great bow can output.
So go great bow or go home.

Guns aren't that easy, though. First of all, there are "early game" guns: pistol, machine pistol, shotgun and survival rifle. These guns don't have the best DPS values but are very value-to-stat efficient. This alone can make them better on the long run since they don't act like a raider magnet, unlike some guns, like the charge rifle.

Pistol is basically like the short bow. You have better choices for close, medium and long range combat so the pistol really is just a temporary substitute.
Machine pistol is an almost-upgrade for the pistol; it performs worse long-range but is very effective for short range.
Shotgun has less range but outperforms the machine pistol; higher risk, higher reward. It also has nice burst damage instead of consistent DPS like most multiprojectile weapons have. Not enough to outright sever a limb but enough to risk going up close and personal.
The survival rifle is your long range choice and it has a DPS on par with the sniper rifle.
When I want to use guns only from this group I go for survival rifles with some shotguns for close range backup.

Then you have the "mid game" guns: assault rifles, heavy SMG's, LMG's, sniper rifles and incendiary launchers. These guns are mostly upgrades of "early game" guns.

Assault rifle is your jack-of-all-trade. Above average range, low cooldown, surprisingly high DPS. It has a value half of that of a charge rifle's, while performing at ~2/3 efficiency. This makes it a very good value-to-stat gun.
Heavy SMG has very high DPS for close ranged combat. It's a fine upgrade for shotguns and machine pistols.
LMG fulfills the niche of crowd control. It has a forced miss radius, making it particularly bad against single targets but good against massed groups. More often than not, you'll do more damage to the enemies surrounding your target than your target itself. It has a bit longer range for that support gun feeling.
Sniper rifles are overrated. They have almost the same DPS as survival rifles. The only niche they provide is range. Fun fact: if sniper rifles were removed from the game, it would reduce the amount of exploits by ~20%.
Incendiary launchers are actually a lot better than they seem. They have a forced miss radius which means listed accuracy for long range doesn't really matter. Obviously excels against crowds, providing crowd control and hilarity once you see your enemies do the fire dance, eating bullets from both sides of the conflict running in the middle of the battlefield. It's a medium range gun.
I'd probably go assault rifles with a few survival rifles, heavy SMG's and an incendiary launcher or two. Would also keep 1-2 sniper rifles in storage for cheesing mechanoids and sieges if I don't feel manly enough to properly face these threats.

And finally we have the "late game" guns: charge rifles, miniguns and rocket launchers. These are either rare, expensive or both.

Charge rifle is the best gun regarding raw DPS for any range it can reach. Period. That doesn't make it the best overall gun, though. It costs almost 1000 silver each, meaning a low value-to-stat ratio. This is the price you have to pay for using this gun.
Minigun is a costly upgrade to the LMG but it's worth it. The sheer pain this gun can inflict to groups is staggeringly high. Recommended against tribals and any late game raid. It also has a forced miss radius as well as even longer range.
Rocket launchers are one-time use and for a good reason. They are very powerful and can easily be gamechangers in the hands of a skilled tactician. They also deal explosive damage which ignores armor (as far as I remember).
I'd probably stick with 2/3 assault rifles 1/3 charge rifles. Would use charge rifles for close combat. Also a minigun or two for handling large raids, as well as a few incendiary launchers. Those are fun. Oh and the obligarory combat-cheesing sniper rifles for times when my balls aren't steel enough.

About grenades. All grenades have forced miss radius and very low range. My thoughts about them are:
Molotov is pretty bad. Incendiary launcher is a straight upgrade. Honorary mention for manually burning corpses without crematoriums.
Frag is really powerful. Use it, you won't regret it. It's the ultimate close-range weapon. It has very high risk/reward, however, having very bad range.
EMP grenade is also high risk/reward. It's a niche weapons but it performs it's role very well. Best used against centipedes.

All guns with forced miss radius pretty much ignore the accuracy stat unless it's high. This means that even colonists that don't have good shooting skill can use them well. It also means that these guns excel in the hands of a trigger-happy pawn.

Explosives are highly effective against centipedes. Frags can make short work of them if you have means to avoid their damage.

Regarding melee:
Clubs you'll find will often have worse DPS than fists. Avoid stone and wooden clubs, they're trash.
Shivs also tend to have worse DPS than fists if damaged, however they do cause bleeding and attack very fast, training melee skill faster.
I find it funny that fists, a piece of wood or a bottle of beer is better than the looted clubs/shivs I acquire 90% of the time. It's hilarious how most tribals would have better DPS if they dropped their shoddy 65% slate clubs and used their fists instead.
Knives have been nerfed recently. Better than fists but doesn't really worth their value.
Gladii are decent weapons, they offer good value-to-stat ratios.
Spears are the middle pack, better DPS but worse value-to-stat ratio.
Longswords are the other end, even higher DPS but bad value-to-stat ratio.
Maces have bad DPS compared to the above three and are niche weapons, causing blunt damage, like clubs.
I usually stick to spears. Melee is actually pretty viable if you know what you're doing.

About melee weapon materials:
Avoid wood and stone. Former has trash damage, latter has trash cooldown.
Silver, gold, uranium and jade have way too high material values compared to the additional stats they provide for blunt damage.
Steel is the master race material.
Plasteel gives sharp weapons 50% more DPS while costing 4-5 times more. Too bad value-to-stat ratio for my taste but others tend to tolerate it.

Regarding quality:
Many of you might not know but quality works a bit backwards in RimWorld. Higher quality wapons have better stats but disproportionally higher values. A legendary charge rifle has 150% DPS of a normal one, while costing 600% more. That means almost 6000 silver for one weapon, that's a raider magnet by itself. It's not this bad for armor, it's 200% armor for 600% value there; bad but not as bad as weapons. The size of raids depends on the total value of your colony. So the higher quality items you use the more you shoot yourself in the foot! Surely an intended behavior, right?

If you want to min-max your colonies' value for the best defence you can acquire, I'd advise ditching any equipment that's better than excellent. Even that one is a significant trade-off, having 120% DPS for 200% value, but not as bad as masterwork or legendary.

About war animals:
I've heard bears and elephants are very effective and for a good reason. They're tanky as hell. I'd go with bears.
Big cats are very fast and have high DPS. Speed is crucial for melee vs ranged.
I personally had good results with ostriches. Those are really fast animals too and are more abundant in their native regions than predators. They lack the DPS of predators but still have high damage attacks. I used them in combination with my melee colonists.
Avoid using muffalos in combat unless all you need is a meat shield. They're just too slow.
Swarms of tiny animals can work well; hard to hit, reproduces fast. It's like having your own zerg army. Be prepared that you'll lose a few dozens with every raid. Oh well, free meat.

Waving away all consistency "because it's all basically just magic" is a good way to end up with science fantasy (or space opera). I would prefer Rimworld to be closer to science fiction. A scientific approach to science fiction is to make some fantastic substitutions (like "time travel exists", or "FTL travels exists", but extrapolating from that in a logical manner. Fantasy doesn't care about that, it explains inconsistencies with another made up thing.

Point taken. So, since we've mentioned propulsion several times already, how about coming up an idea for that first?

We need something that can travel at ~30-40% c speed average. If we take into consideration the engines we can build for our spacecraft in-game, what could it possibly be?

Since the EM Drive might not actually work let's say that it does and it can be miniaturized enough so that the energy required for leaving orbit isn't crippling (obviously talking about the extra mass of EM drives, not using EM drives for leaving orbit, that would be beyond fantasy). So these miniaturized EM drives could be built-in in those huge engines we see in-game, while most of the engine is solid/liquid rocket fuel plus engine required to enter/exit orbit. However, even if we have miniaturized EM drives, I doubt we could reach ~30-40% c levels of average speed. Remember, if EM drives would work in this case, it would go like this:

• EM Drive steadily accelerates.
• Ship is halfway to it's deatination. EM Drive stops.
• EM Drive steadily decelerates.

Since EM Drives would output a constant acceleration value, that would mean a top speed close to ~60-80% of c which is pretty damn high in a universe where FTL travel is supposed to be impossible and considering the spacecraft has "only" ~800-900 years for each acceleration and deceleration phase (based on data we already know from the lore documents), that's nigh impossible unless we take into consideration some form of extreme, outright fantasy miniaturisation which has no trace whatsoever in-game anyway.

So... any other ideas?

Check out the long sleep revival brief. About half of it describes what rimworld inhabitants are not. You could get an occasional transanimal colonist in an escape pod, or maybe a faction of optibears. But these are mostly on other planets.

This is just a case of "you have to know the bad in order to appreciate the good". It's a bit reversed for RimWorld but you get the point, right? Besides, where does that document state that the person it was given to did actually wake up on a Rim World?

Please don't tell me that you have a problem with a document people took their time to make for fun, just because it doesn't contain what you want. 

I would be more interested about what techniques are commonly used for terraforming, how do the machines or microbes look like or behave.

But that's easy to answer. Magic! Why? Because any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Even if there was a thorough description, it would all be pseudoscience bullcrap that's obviously wrong for anyone who knows what it tries to tell. This is a sci-fi game incorporating futuristic technology, you can't explain that technology because it doesn't exist. If I told you that the air-spewing terraforming algae mentioned in the documents were blue, would it make you more satisfied? It's irrelevant information that's sometimes left out intentionally to stimulate the reader's own imagination. Sure, Tynan could take his time and write proper lore but do we want him to waste his precious time with that?
You know what's also like this? Dwarf Fortress. If you have zero capabilities to imagine all the data that's before you, you won't enjoy Dwarf Fortress. Someone sees a "g" next to a smiley, I see an epic battle between an Axelord and a Swordsgoblin.

Or, you can come up with your own ideas for those technologies and add it to the lore!

What sorts of technologies are easy to produce on rimworlds, and what not. Not all technological advances need a high level production chain.

Wait, what? That's already there! Read the documents again, maybe you've missed it or something.

As for mechanoids, you can find some tidbits of info in some colonist backgrounds. For example 'spaceship janitor' mentions that such a person takes care of the ship while others are in cryosleep and 'oils the mechanoids'.

It probably would be best if someone took the effort and went through all the backstories to gather additional lore information. Don't look at me, I have other things to do.

I can think of a better use for water. We build a ramp that goes over a shark tank and have a colonist jump over it on a motorcycle. You see where I'm going with this, right?

Of course, it's obvious. Weaponized sharks.

Please no. Tynan has enough things to do already. I don't want this game to stay in alpha for 20 years.