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I got my second ever toxic fallout.

The first time i ever got it was in a boreal forest.  I didn't really know what was going on.  All the animals died of course, and my crops failed, but no biggie, i had stores to spare.

The second time i was less financially prepared - no huge stores...in fact my colony had grown its number much faster than its physical size, so my food was falling.  So i used the fallout to my advantage:

I set everyone in my base to high cooking and hauling priority, built several extra butchering stations, and let my colonists make sprints out into the fallout to collect the animals that died from it.  Finished the fallout with about 1/3 of the animals on the map rotting or dessicated, but the rest stocked my freezer with almost 3000 meat.  I had to limit some pawns to indoor time as their toxicity level rose towards 30%, but no one got seriously ill or suffered any noticeable adverse effects. 

The meat binge also helped get me through the re-grow and re-populate recovery time after the fallout ended.

Dealing with the poison ship that fell RIGHT OUTSIDE MY BASE during the fallout was less fun...

Hostile Factions raid for supplies, not just killing/capturing.

From a suggestion thread of mine.

Custom start.
Redo the add a "new custom story" to the main menu, like "new colony"
Each bad or good event that can happen (thrumbos, traders, volcanic winters, eclipse, etc.) is on the next screen with either a checkbox or a slider (never -> very rare, rare, occasionally, sometimes, often, very often, always).

Allow people who want more customisation to select how they want to play their colony.  People ask for "all the time" traders?  now they can.  People HATE solar flares (guilty...), BOOM! gone!  People want their colony to suffer?  permanent toxic fallout! 

Could even work for specific playstyles.  Psychopathic canniballistic psychically deaf people?  lots of raids and psychic waves/ships!

seems like this is the next step towards making the game "appeal to as wide a range as possible"

OFC phoebe, cassandra, and robby would still be options too, and if achievements were ever implemented, making them exclusive to the storytellers would be a way to encourage the "just start my colony" mindset.

yeah, but in a 10x10 field of strawberries, or a dead herd of alphabeavers across the map, clicking manual hauling will take forever, as the colonist will take one load, then go back to whatever else they were doing/hauling.

I wouldn't mind setting haul priorities.  I'd be setting weapons/food/corpses/apparel/other

You mean like fog of war? I will very cool to see that feature.

No.  A blacked out map that must be explored, NOT a fog of war.

It doesn't make sense for something like this to be added just as an option, as likely just a starting FOW wouldn't change the game much. I'd pretty much just draft my colonists and have them walk the entire map, more nuisance then much gameplay added.

The idea is that it wouldn't be forced.  it would be something you could set at the start of your game.  It already exists for enclosed areas (like the hidden danger building, or those openings inside mountains)

Food is placed in the hopper as a part of the hauling skill, not cooking, which is why trained animals are able to deliver food to the hoppers. Just make sure you have someone set to haul with high priority and they'll refill it on their own. The fact that you say you're unable to manually get them to refill the hoppers makes me wonder if the issue could be your storage priority settings. Make sure the hoppers have a higher priority setting than the general food storage.

I found my problem.  Critical priority storages and important priority hoppers.  Thanks!

I described Thrumbos to my non-rimworld-playing friends as:

Elephant Giraffe Unicorns.

That sums it all up in my opinion.

Thanks a bunch.  I'll probably use food replicators now.  I MIGHT give some cryptosleeps a try for a hard map....not likely though, since i'm usually killed by a nasty raid or warg pack rather than food troubles (food scarce?  dig up some graves!)

Thought of another.

#4 Hearts and livers.  Is there a point, other than butchering prisoners/colonists and selling pieces for money, to having a heart/liver in your stockpile?  Since a destroyed heart or liver instantly kills you, the ONLY use i can think of for these is having one on hand just in case a DAMAGED heart or liver gets an infection?  That seems an AMAZINGLY unlikely circumstance to consider holding onto a part for.

I'm gambling that the community will respond in a non-condescending way, but three of the implemented features in the game kind of have me confused as to the exact implementation, or wondering what the purpose is.  I'm hoping some people can help to eliminate my problems or tell me how THEY use these items.

#1) Food Dispenser - My colonists often refuse to use the food dispenser when i have one, opting instead to eat raw food (no, they're not cannibals).  I know the hoppers need to have food in them, and i'm not sure if they've still eaten raw food when hoppers are full, but i can't seem to get the option to have colonists manually reload hoppers...sometimes they do it, but the "prioritize X" option doesn't seem to appear for me for filling hoppers (i've seen it once, but haven't actually been able to get the option to reappear, strangely). 

Where do you put food dispensers in your base?  do hoppers have to be on a certain side of the dispenser?  can the colonists manually fill hoppers and if so, are there requirements to be able to fill them (not job capabilities, i'm aware a non-hauler probably couldn't fill one)?  Are there foods (other than hay or otherwise ready to eat meals) that can't go in food dispensers?

#2) deadfall traps.  I've tried using deadfall traps once in a mountain base i've made.  The opening was 2 squares wide, and i put in 2 traps.  The second colonist to walk out of the base "accidentally" triggered a trap, nearly dying, and i promptly removed the traps. 

Are deadfall traps worth using?  How do you use them?  what kinds of structures do you build in order to place them effectively?  Is the risk to colonists worth placing them in a high traffic area, or are they placed exclusively in places that take advantage of a weak AI (like places that raiding pawns will cross, but that working colonists never walk on)?

#3 Cryptosleep caskets.  Not the ship ones.  What are the purposes for this item?  I've literally never used one for any reason (other than opening ones i've found in the "ancient danger" buildings).  Will colonists heal in a casket?  Why would i put a colonist into a casket?  why would i put a prisoner into the casket (i'm assuming you can't recruit them in a casket...) as opposed to attempting to recruit or release them?  Are there any drawbacks to putting colonists or prisoners into cryptosleep caskets?

Thanks in advance!  sorry if some of these questions seem ridiculously dense.  I love knowing how everything in a game works, and those 3 things are just getting to me.

Just a simple, easy to check/uncheck option at the start:

Hidden map:  The map is only revealed for 10 squares around where a colonist has been.  So the whole of the map except the landing site is blacked out at the start.  As you move the colonists around, the map is revealed...permanently.

It would make picking an ideal start spot harder, somewhat more realistic (while your colonists might have been able to map the planet from orbit, the odds that they've memorized the local layout as they're CRASHING IN CRYOSLEEP is unlikely!), and make finding those initial scattered resources WAY cooler!  It would make the traditionally favorable mountain terrain a little bit worse, as it would be harder and slower to explore

This should be an option at start...NOT forced on people.  I'm aware some people want to take every strategic benefit they can, and would like to IMMEDIATELY begin building their permanent base in the best place they can.  Some people just don't want to deal with drafted colonist exploration when they could be doing something else (interestingly, maybe colonists incapable of "scary" couldn't be sent to move into unexplored territory and wouldn't willingly explore more in regular mode - they could still reveal more territory in drafted mode by slowly moving through revealed terrain to explore via sight radius).


As a summary for Hidden Map start:
-Option at colony start...check/uncheck a box
-Anything revealed is revealed permanently
-Map is revealed by colonists as they move about the map (remember you can control movement in drafted mode)

Thoughts?  I'm aware Tynan wants us to be able to see everything, and this is NOT a "fog of war" suggestion.  This is simply a suggestion to make finding ideal colony locations include a little risk/reward (slower base setup times if you search for the "ideal spot), and make found resources seem cooler.  Packaged meals, steel, or a herd of muffalo that you come across will feel FAR cooler when you happen across them in those first 10 days than when you just scan the map in pause mode upon landing.

The MOST i'd be interested in this concept is maybe a hidden map at the start that you have to explore....

but no FOW, no FOV, no stealth.

First, the MOOD drawback wasn't meant to affect the prisoner, it was meant to affect the rest of the colonists.  Some other drawback could affect the prisoner (extra bad trait, easier mental break, whatever) as a result of brain addling drugs.  The mood hit for other colonists would be to the effect of "gosh, if we're doing this, it makes me wonder about the circumstances of my own joining."  In other words, the prisoner would not find out about the drugs until you used it on the next person and he'd wonder if HE was drugged the same way.

Second, I'd like a loyalty meter, but it would also feel like then gaining new colony members is inevitable.  I think there SHOULD be a drawback for it being easier to recruit colonists from prisoners.

It specifically seems like pirates are the biggest culprits.  They seem to have the highest recruitment difficulty.  They also seem curiously devoid of psychopath-like traits (as in, why would they stick with the pirates in the first place if they then get upset when YOU sell prisoners into slavery?  eh, that's another issue.)

I installed the mod "Prepare Carefully" and ofc started making colonists with a mix of 20s and 0s in skills.

It was rather overly easy, so i stopped and went to the other extreme.  Pick a spot, and play with the colonists it randomly gives, and go from there.

There are loads of interesting challenges, but what is really obnoxious is dealing with pirate raids.  The actual raid?  no big deal.  The aftermath is a pain.  I capture the surviving pirates...release the ones i don't want...

...and feed the ones i do want for the next 8 months, as my social person goes from 9 to 12 skill with a whopping 1-2% chance per attempt to get them to join. 

I'd love to see some researchable "drugs" that you can give to prisoners to make them easier to recruit.  Maybe reduce recruitment difficulty by 15 or 20?  It might even be usable on visitors to some effect.

It would CERTAINLY have to piss off your current colonists (like executing a prisoner or selling one to slavery).  Your colonists should certainly wonder at the morality of your "recruiting" methods and have some negative reaction.  Maybe it could even push the target's mental break threshold 5% higher (5% more likely to have a mental break) or give a random bad trait if under 3 traits or something.

I'd like to be able to grow my colony bigger - I think prisoner "drafting" could be a really cool tool to grow your colony at a cost.

Yes i'm aware that wanderer joining, and pirate merchants with slaves to buy do happen, but i think a more proactive approach to recruitment could be rather nice.

Playing a hard game, finally got everything going, then you get hit with a combo of Heat wave and solar flare?  There goes your food stockpile. 

Or maybe you're playing in a very cold biome, your initial stockpile is running out, you're looking to go out hunting to get enough food to last until your internal gardens produce or bulk goods trader arrives.  Oops, now there's a toxic fallout and you're stuck in your base for the next 2 weeks...and starve.

I'm sure the hardcore out there LOVE these situations, and it makes a heck of a dramatic game.  Some people, obviously, wouldn't love this though.

As Tynan has mentioned he wants this game to cater to as wide a range of people as possible. 

This very well may already be planned, but what about a colony start up screen with a checkbox for events.
Say you HATE HATE HATE solar flares *whistles innocently*  you could uncheck solar flares and ta-da! you now have a complete game that will never have solar flares.  You could even implement a slider instead of checkbox for frequency.  Maybe you could move solar flare from "occasional" to "very rare."

It might even be possible to flag good events like "rare Thrumbos" or certain tradeship types.  Reduce or increase their frequency. 

As far as catering to as wide a range as possible, This seems to cover the whole gamut: hardcore players could turn off some good events or increase bad events.  More casual players could do the opposite.  Specialist players could even cater to their psychopathic/psychically deaf/cannibal colony by increasing raids, Wanderer joins and pirate merchants to "frequent."  Basically, whatever you want to make the game fit you...OR just leave it with cassandra classic or robby random and play the default game.

I'm not a coder, i know jack-all about game design, but I suspect that it wouldn't be horribly hard to set the new game menu to include that.