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And the poll answer is stated so that even if we voted NO, it assumes we want it in the future, which many have stated NO to also.

I agree with you. There is no really "true no" answer.

I don't think that is necessarily an accurate assessment. The question does not seem designed, to me, to make any such assumption. Let's not turn this into another party line debate. In all the FoW polls and debates, probably the most under-represented views are those of the majority of forum members whose attitude is more: Meh... I can't be arsed to get worked up about it.

I think most people (in other words: me) figure that either some enterprising modder will produce something or Tynan will eventually have another crack and the question will become moot. In fact, RimWorld keeps developing and so far, almost every change does seem to improve the game.

This question actually allows those of us who don't want to feel we are being pressured into being either pro or anti FoW, as seems to be the case in many other threads, to indicate what areas of development we would like to see prioritised.

rotten meat can be swept up and reprocessed either by being used as a bulking agent (25% rotten and 85% fresh, say)

110% meat! No wonder nobody notices, the enhanced meat makes up for the bad taste

Lol! Headshot!
Frankenbeasley, Mindwipe.
Dementia, Brain Damage.
Tons of Joy
Equipped: Keyboard
Hauling brains to Dumping Stockpile 1

Ok, but someone need to put human meat into the hopper and butcher these people, so....
1. Colonist was going for beer and he saw cook butchering some people - colony knows.
2. Cook had a mental break and he told everyone about human meat - colony knows.

BUT your cook can be a cannibal + psychopath or your cook can live in 2x2 room only with butchering table and hopper, but anyway someone will need to haul bodies into this cook-cave (yep... colony knows)

Point 1 above, and your 'BUT' addendum could both be addressed by subterfuge. What you do is set up a room for the cook that has both a butchery table and a crematorium inside. You then make a stockpile for both human and animal bodies outside the door. The cook comes out to take a corpse and heads back inside with it. What happens next is out of direct view. To the other colonists, it seems as if you are taking the animals and butchering them then cremating the humans and any animal remains.

*Edit: Ninja'd by JimmyAgnt007!

And about rotten food - i know that colonists aren't smart, but they're still humans!

This is what sausages and burgers and strong herbs and spices are for. There are any number of documentaries and reports on the meat industry which expose the way that rotten meat can be swept up and reprocessed either by being used as a bulking agent (25% rotten and 85% fresh, say) or by having a piquant sauce used to disguise the rancid flesh. Don't get me wrong - I love a good sausage and I am happy not to think about what is in it. Put sausages in front of me and I'll gobble them up; put a plate of anus, ear, and eyeball in front of me and I'll probably produce a technicolour yawn.

Since I don't allow cannibals to join my colonies, this has never really been an issue for me. However, I did have one colony where I was extremely draconian on the matter, and I took to using captured cannibals as surgical dummies. They would eventually be released with two peg legs, no arms, and less than the standard complement of eyes, lungs and kidneys. Whilst this was going on, I was hoping to be able to sustain the cannibals by feeding them their own limbs but I could not. This may have been a good thing in the long run, of course, because I still feel morally tainted by what I did to them in the first place.

[The Fog Chamber]

We already have the random raids and joy aspects nailed in this place. I think there should be some micro-management of the forum to adequately represent the RimWorld atmosphere!. I suggest child boards for frequent suggestions.*

Let us create one for all the FoW debates. All the threads can be gathered there. We can call it The Fog Chamber and then everyone who wants to can go fight it out in there and leave the main board for new ideas and less emotionally invested debate.

What frequent suggestions do you think should have their own board and what mildly amusing pun that gets less and less amusing every time you read it name would you give it?



*Please Note: This suggestion is not serious but should be contextualised with a British accent and too much time available. Amusement levels may fall as well as rise. Interest Rate of 0% applies for duration of perusal. Conforms to international standards on self-referential meta-humour and contains 100% of the RDA of joke that is mildly amusing at first but that gets less and less amusing every time you read it. Thank you; I'm here all night!

Yes, I never build ships. I play until my colony is working like a well-oiled machine and is rich and fulfilled - or until I get bored and fancy a different biome or story. However, I'm wary of simply starting a new colony with all the development of the characters already done. If I want to start a new game with godlike powers for having played it through before, I'll dig out Mass Effect again! So, I'd like to see some bonus for a full play-through, but I don't want to have all the fun of a fresh start sucked away. Sometimes, the most satisfying bits are the initial period of each colony.

Well, let's face it. Our colonists get sent to certain death without a qualm whilst we play the game. They know we always get armed up when we're opening caskets and that the occupants are always either killed, enslaved, or imprisoned and brain-washed. Also, any colonist who has reached orbit has generally done so from the top of a mountain of corpses. Damn right they are going to resist.

Mainly, though, it's because it would be a bit too unbalancing to suddenly have people with, potentially, lots of skills in the late teens or even at 20, joining the colony.

Maybe, with fallout and ash and so on, we will see an overhaul of the resources to be more biome-specific, like the animals. Perhaps, while steel is steel and rock is rock wherever you are on the planet, and both are weather-proof over the length of the average colony, biome-specific resources will be wood, bamboo, ice, bone, straw and so on, which all have a degradation factor that can be enhanced through environmental factors. As they degrade, they become easier and easier for sappers to breach.

I think it would be fun to add a little bonus to escaping the planet. I think that if you get your three original castaways into a ship and off the planet, that there should be a chance that on the next map you play you may find them in a hidden chamber, as well-equipped and as skilled as they were when they lifted off. Naturally, they would be hostile to your current colony and they would not surrender (because, honestly, that's how we all play them) so you'd have to kill them. It would be a challenge and also a nice little bonus from the equipment point of view.

I would love to be able to sort my colonists by skill column on the priorities overview. I think the default order should be by sequence of joining the colony, but I'd also love to be able to click on Cooking, for instance, and have them appear with top chefs at the top. Although this isn't essential, once you get beyond a certain number of colonists it can be a pain having to hover over the priority boxes to compare ability.

Also, I find the injury indication strangely counter-intuitive; the closer an injured colonist gets to full health, the more red there is behind their tag. It may just be me, but I still auto-assume that the more red I see the greater the injury or illness and so I will frequently assign my doctors to prioritize treating the colonist with a bruised buttock whilst the newly renamed Legless Larry bleeds out in a bed three feet away. I would rather the red disappeared as they got better.

Maybe Centipede miniguns should be taken out of the portable category. How about Centipedes have a chance to drop any of their weapons and those weapons can then be mounted and turned into manned turrets? So, you could have Minigun, Inferno Cannon, or Charge Lance emplacements, which require personnel but have the kill-power, and standard auto-turrets, which lack the oomph of the manned weapons but don't cost you colonists.

I agree, with certain reservations. For instance, whilst they might all want some beer or fine food, only the Bulk Traders would want the item as a commodity and so only the Bulk Traders would take as much stock as you have to offer. The others, I would assume, would be looking for a few treats for the crew and so one would have to impose a limit on how much they would buy off you. As some sort of compensation, however, they would be paying retail rather than wholesale prices.

Unfortunately, the trade system as it is at the moment does not seem to include any form of limit on stock other than the cash available. Tynan would need to add in a sort of set capacity function to be applied to every non-standard item for each type of trader and to make it sensible he would have to predetermine the crew sizes of the different traders.

So, for instance, an exotic goods trader might have a small crew because they are dealing in low-volume, high-value markets. They might only want a single stack of beer and a few lavish meals for which they pay well. On the other hand, combat suppliers might have a larger crew as they might offer mercenary services, too. But whilst they may take a couple of stacks of beer, they might only want fine or simple meals. Slavers, meanwhile, would not only have a largish crew, but would also need to feed the cargo, although the slaves are unlikely to be offered lavish meals and hooch. So, they might take a few beers and some nice food for crew use, but they would also take several stacks of nutrient paste.

On the plus side, however, I think all traders might want to buy herbal medicines. Slavers wouldn't want to waste money on expensive pharmaceuticals so cheaper local remedies might be quite interesting to them. Meanwhile, Exotic Merchants would always see a market for snake oil panaceas. If there's one thing the internet has taught us, it is that there is a ceaseless demand for unlicensed cancer cures and penis-enlargement and no lack of people willing to extract large amounts of cash from the gullible.

I think that bones could be also used to create walls/furnitures (bones = stuff in general), but things from bones would have - to beauty.

Well, it depends on the way you build 'em. If you're talking about a simple wall of skulls then, unless you happen to be Leatherface, there probably would be a minus on the beauty scale. However, worked bone can be stunning, just like Ivory. Perhaps, 'Bone' could cover a multitude of skeletal remains such as antlers, tusks, teeth, and horns as well as the actual internal skeleton. There are certainly areas beyond building to be explored: knucklebones, dice, gaming tokens, chess pieces and so on have all traditionally been made from bone, ivory, or horn.

And i would like to see electronics chips-like resource for creating things that requires electronics. Turrets, paste dispenser, batteries and things like this.

I agree to an extent, but I would class that as either Research or Technology rather than a Resource. Here we are looking at the very basic materials that get spawned as part of the biome or that you can plant.

I did have a vague notion in mind that this poll might be useful in giving Tynan a vague overview of interest in resources, given that he has been showing an interest in being able to 'sift' through the traffic on ideas. If it were to be of use, I fondly imagined that I might put together a similar poll for Technologies/Research choices, and maybe yet another for Items. However, I don't think I would have the energy to update more than one at any given time! I am a sloth. Of course, if someone else wanted to do the same sort of thing for those areas I would enjoy casting my votes.

Id like to add ice to the mix, for the ice shelf biome.  Being able to build an igloo would be fun.

Yes, Ice for cold biomes would be good fun. Igloos and Ice Forts all the way! I suppose that smoothed Ice floors would be extra, extra speedy - although there might have to be a commensurate chance of a broken ankle or two. Skating as a joy activity could be fun, or maybe even curling. I think Adamiks is right in so far as that to get the most out of Ice as a building material would require some bigger changes than just treating it as another stone type. In any biome with even the shortest growing season would mean that the structures would need to be rebuilt each year. However, in terms of the difficulty of extracting a building material from a flat biome, compacted snow is very easy to make and can be used to build very strong structures. Ice can also be harvested from expanses of water using a saw and hook. The Ice removed leaves a hole which is filled by water and snow to make more Ice. So, I'm adding Ice.

I only voted Bamboo.
Because it is awesome.

It is, isn't it? Nice link, thanks for that. As well as the Panda hunting, which I am very keen to do, I was also musing on the possibility of being able to use Bamboo mortars to fire drunken Boomrats across the map...

Bones and Bears for everybodyyyy!

Thank you for the serenade!
I came online, my day was made
To see your song of matters ursine
Something something purple

It seems to me that what would be the ideal situation, then, would be a state change affecting all your colonists that you could toggle.

A while ago, on the Reddit, I suggested a beacon system based on the camp fire which I think could be used for this (bearing in mind that I am a congenital idiot with regards to the specifics of coding).

So, my idea is that you be able to build a fire basket beacon outside (it can be in your courtyard, say, but it will need to be unroofed). This construction would cost steel and wood and would sit there ready to be used. Should an event occur where you want non-drafted colonists to be 'safe' you would send a colonist to light the beacon. This would burn for a set time, like the campfire but probably for only 12 to 24 hours, and be totally consumed whether it runs through the timer or you extinguish it early.

While the beacon is alight it sets a 'state change' on colonists who are not specifically drafted to other tasks. Whilst the fire burns, your civilians would take gathering by the beacon as a prioritised task (sort of a cross between the 'gather' function of the campfire and the 'priority' function of the Fire Alert). In its basic form, your colonists then abandon any current tasks and head to the gather point. In an ideal system, non-drafted personnel outside the home region would abandon their current task and head home, those inside would finish their current task first - but I realise this would be difficult and annoying if they had just started a haul task on something in the danger zone.

So, I hear you ask, what does all this teal deer have to do with auto avoidance? Well, I imagine leveraging the sapper/AI pathfinding system except that where they will be looking for turrets your colonists will be reading enemy pawns as danger zones.

Logically, the problem here is that taking a running tally of all those pawns' positions on the fly is going to be hugely problematic. Therefore, I wonder if you could maybe set the path of avoidance based on a snapshot of the battlefield when the beacon is lit and your colonists set off. This would, in effect, simulate the colonist's first choice for a headlong rush for safety. If they are unlucky, the raiders will be on an intercept course and all ends badly; if all goes well, they made a good choice and get home intact. A vastly more complicated system would be to take a 'snapshot' every nth tick (how many ticks would be a matter for Tynan and his balancing act) and have the colonist adjust their courses appropriately.

This system, were it possible (and it probably isn't), would, I think, address some of the issues that have sprung up.

As the beacon is toggled at will, you can, in effect, choose to play with avoidance on or off as you prefer.

Basing the path to safety on a snapshot will not provide a perfect return for every colonist, but it would, in a way, be closer to simulating a realistic response: the alarm goes off, you know where you are, you know where you need to get to, and you make a best guess on the safest route there then cross your fingers and run.

Because we are not looking for a 'perfect' AI pathfinder, using the basics of raider AI pathing for your colonists (with raiders/mechanoids replacing turrets and the beacon as the objective) would probably be enough to prevent at least the most egregious instances of wandering into a fire-fight in search of fresh strawberries.

[Iron Ore]

I've been thinking about future resource additions, and have assumed there will be some, so I decided to start a Poll. There's no closing date, it's just to see what people like. At the moment you can have up to ten votes - but you don't have to use them all - and you should be able to change them about as/if other options appear.

I've made a list of some options already, based both on my thoughts and things others have suggested on the forums. If there is something else you would like to see up there, please post a brief overview of the suggestion and I'll try to update the options periodically.

I am sure that some of these things can already be found in mods, but here we are talking about resources we would like to see added to vanilla. Below are the reasons I have for the choices included in the initial tranche.

Iron Ore - Steel should be a research product and Iron Ore should be the resource. Smelt to ingots for Wrought Iron. Smelt again for Cast Iron. Research and smelt for Steel. Possible further research for Carbon Steels and Stainless Steels.

Copper - Hugely useful resource that also looks great. Needed for power systems such as turbines and transformers, heavily used for conduits, and pretty ubiquitous in power electronics. Used to make alloys such as Bronze and Brass. Copper smelting led to Iron smelting so it could be a nice addition to the Crafting and Research trees. Would be a nice texture for weapons. Also used in glassmaking and ceramics to provide colouration.

Ceramics - Clay is found all over the place in real life. It could be mined or extracted from soil types. Useful for floor tiles or Bricks, it could also be used for Art or Crafting to make statues and clay utensils for export. Clay could be used with Bones to make Bone China for a labour-intensive but high-cost crafting product.

Bricks - Bricks are a simple and sturdy construction material that might be ideal for flat biomes especially. It could have strength somewhere between Wood and Stone but low flammability. Bricks could be manufactured from Clay or from Mud (finally, something to do with all the mucking fud!) and could either be naturally dried or kiln-baked.

Bones - Bones could be used in the manufacture of Knives, Shivs, Clubs, Spears and Bows. Bone could also be used for Art to produce Scrimshaw pieces. It could also be used with Clay to make Bone China.

Glass - Could be used for windows and greenhouses. Could be made from Sand. Might be essential for the construction of Solar Panels or bottling Beer for export markets. Decorative Art Glass for beauty buffs or trade also spring to mind, as do research projects for Glass Fibre, Lenses, and Fibre Optics.

Silk - Harvested from Mulberry Bushes. It could provide an intermediate between Cloth and Devilstrand both in value and growing time. Would be good for those biomes where the season doesn't allow for Devilstrand. Mongols used Silk to great effect to lessen the danger of arrow wounds as it twists around rather than breaking, allowing the projectile to be teased rather than pulled or cut out. Silk is a good insulator. Could also be used for high beauty Carpet.

Hemp - The hippy terra-former's dream plant. Hemp can be grown in most biomes and could provide any or all of the following: Textiles, Oil, Flour, Medicines, Recreational Drugs.

Bamboo - Better than wood, it should definitely be available in suitable biomes. Bamboo is one of the fastest growing plants around and, according to Wikipedia, Bamboo has a higher compressive strength than wood, brick, or concrete, and a tensile strength that rivals steel. Bamboo Mortars could be fun and a research requirement for later steel mortars. Blowpipes might also be introduced if raids looking for captives become common. Blowpipes could be used to incapacitate pawns. Also: Pandas. I sooo want to hunt Pandas.

Grapes - A good resource for Wine and as a Meal ingredient. Winemaking could take a lot longer than beer and vines would take a lot longer to grow than Strawberries or Hops. Very good for Relaxing Socially, could be used for a new Gourmet Meal.

Bears - We know about Wolf-packs, what about Bears? Could be the animal equivalent of a Centipede - very hard to kill and dangerous up close but able to move a bit faster. Would only be found as individuals. Bears provide a lot of good meat, a lot of good skin. Also, there are Bears for almost every biome: Grizzlies, Polar Bears, Black Bears and of course... PANDAS! Did I mention that I want to go Panda hunting?

Ice - Ice and compacted snow for structures in sub-zero biomes. Smooth ice floors for extra speed? Igloo type building or Ice Hotels (go look 'em up).

I was imagining that the Storytellers might be differentiated more by the starting conditions.

So, for instance, you might have Tommy Tribal where, instead of three random colonists, you start with three colonists who are from a tribal background (maybe taken by slavers) incapable of research and arriving only with clubs. It could be set so that the other factions are also mostly tribal (and also mostly incapable of research, perhaps). It would certainly change the dynamic for that colony.

Or you might go the other way, with Mike Marine, where you start with three well trained fighters, full combat armour and assault rifles, but mostly well-armed Pirate factions and one friendly Outlander town. You've been sent in to establish a tactical bridgehead (build the ship).

Obviously, you can set up these sorts of colonist squads with Prepare Carefully, but it would be the tweaking of the faction conditions and the frequency of the raids that would set each story-teller apart.