Topics

I feel like this must have been suggested before, but it just seems like such a sensible idea to have a shooting range be a joy/skill building item.

In more traditional societies, it was common for important skills to be incorporated into sports, to passively teach people (children, in particular) new skills while simultaneously providing them with a sense of cooperation, competition and sportsmanship that comes from athletics. In Rimworld, as far as I know, there is no other way to get your shooting/melee skill up aside from actual combat, where a poor shooter is at risk.

Balance-wise, I think the targets should only be able to take a finite amount of hits (give them an HP bar that will eventually run out). As for complaints that target practice may be "too easy", remember that only a mid-game colony will actually have the time and resources to train its colonists: locking a colonist into a training room for half a day to build up shooting skill means that this colonist ISN'T performing essential functions around the colony.

I'm still personally undecided on if doing this should automatically provide joy to any colonist, or only ones who have a passion for shooting: on one hand, the "interested/passion" mechanic already exists in-game, so to violate it would be counterintuitive to the player. On the other hand, targets being a type of "game" equitable to horseshoes should mean that everyone has a degree of fun playing.

Thoughts?

Don't know if this is going to go down as an infuriating addition, but what if rescued spacers have a (slight) chance to attack the colonists?

I'm thinking of most post apocalyptic things I've seen (Walking Dead is a good example) where there's always a degree of uncertainty to the characters taking in newcomers because they don't know them, they might be crazy, and they may bring marauders in to take what you have.

In that vein, a rescued spacer no longer incapable of walking could have a slight chance to a.) find a weapon and attack the colonists (more like a prison break than a berserk) or b.) leave the map, then return shortly with friends.

At the very least, this would add another element to the downed spacer event aside from merely "are their stats good? Are they worth grabbing?"

Should maybe go in the "cheapest ideas" thread, but I think windows would be a good addition to the game. You can build them into walls (same as the air conditioners or the power conduits) and they provide light as well as permeability to bullets (ie, your colonists can shoot through them similar to a gap in the wall, and raiders can shoot back).

As cons, this drastically reduces the health of the wall segment, as well as lets out some heat.

The only thing in the game I could see this majorly disrupting is animal attacks, since you could then just hide indoors and take potshots through the safety of a window. Ideas to get around that?

How about a mechanic that allows colonists to keep slaves?

I've been playing around with custom colonies a bit, and now that the whole "do a serious colony" thing has been done, I really want to do one on the other end of the spectrum: a bunch of psychotic sadists, perhaps. That made me start thinking that slavery could be a neat mechanic to have ingame.

It would be on the Prisoner tab, maybe under "Chat and recruit" you'd have something like "break and enslave". After you successfully get a slave, he'd have to sleep in "slave quarters", and be assigned certain "slave allowed areas". He'd also be treated like a prisoner in that you can decide if he gets food or medicine, and he's still presided over by a warden.

As a slave, he'd give your colonists a very slim debuff if he died (slimmer than a fellow colonist). He could be sold, released, or executed just like a prisoner. He could even be recaptured as a prisoner, and then recruited as a normal colonist. He'd be capable of staging a slave revolt, similar to a prison revolt.

Semi-related, but I also think that slaves you purchase from pirate traders or trade caravans should have a "freed slave" mood buff that lasts for a season or so. Some gratitude would be nice!

So, thoughts?

This maybe belongs in "Your Cheapest Ideas", but I think spice would be a good addition to the game. It could be grown or purchased, you have to uncheck it to add it to a food bill, and it provides a +5 (or whatever) boost for taste.

Pros:
+Mood benefit
+Can be mixed with any food type
+Unchecked on bills by default, but can be checked on bills by your preference (so stuff like nutrient paste or pemmican that would otherwise give mood debuffs).
+Doesn't spoil
+Can be grown and sold for decent market value

Cons:
- Adds no nutritional value, doesn't fill the hunger bar
- Can't be eaten by itself
-Growing it means using up fertile land and manpower on non-food, non-medicine, non-textile item.
- (POSSIBLE) Needs minimum Cook skill level to create.

How hard would it be to make a Mass Effect mod? I've seen a few out there that incorporate ME weapons/ clothing, but what about playable species? Krogan, Quarian, Turian, Salarian, Asari, Drell, all with their corresponding characteristics (Krogans take a ton of damage and live long, salarians conversely are fragile and age twice as fast but are "burning passion" for all things research and medical, quarians are excellent constructors/repairers and need their special suits or they get sick quickly, etc...)

Mass Effect is such a rich universe, and seems like it'd fit so perfectly into Rimworld, is it possible that this mod already exists and I've just been unable to find it?

My latest colony has been absolutely infested by these random diseases. There seem to be three or four types in the gut, muscles, and brain. Even the wiki doesn't seem to have any reliable advice on these diseases, so I figured I'd bring my questions here:

1.) What causes them? I've only made one colony in A13 so far, but since about Year 3 I've had at least half my colonists beset by these diseases, sometimes multiple at a time. Every time a disease heals, another one crops up somewhere else in another colonist. Is it due to food, cleanliness, climate, or is it truly random?

2.) What cures them?
-I treated my people with herbal medicine for months (normal medicine was forbidden because these treatments would consume it in very short time). When I finally ran out of herbal meds I switched to normal meds, and seemed to get good results. Not 100% of the diseases gone, but maybe 60%. So does medicine type help? I once bought a glitterworld medicine to help a colonist with this, and it didn't help.
- My two main doctors are >level 15 with at least one enhanced arm or eye each (though now both are sick, so their sight/consciousness/manipulation are down below 100 again). Does the level of your doctor help?
-Or do you literally have to just keep hitting your colonists with medicine again and again to manage the symptoms before it goes away?

I'm sorry if this is an ingame feature already, and I simply haven't had the good fortune of seeing it, but I think it'd be cool to see Treasure Rooms or Treasure Caverns in Rimworld. We already have the Ancient Dangers, but what about rooms that used to be stockpiles for some ancient civilization, or rooms that might contain crashed ships (similar to your ship) full of colonists that may/may not be hostile?

Additionally, it would give me a lot more incentive to mine into mountains if there was a chance that I could discover a cavern full of food, materials or colonists deep within. As it stands now, I just mine the precious metals off of mountains' surfaces and then leave the rest. It just seems like a neat reason to encourage further exploration, plus it makes every mountain a potential windfall.

What if sieges became less urgent and more long-term? As it stands now, sieges are simply raids that you need to walk to instead of vice versa, because those mortars will destroy your colony in a day.

Some raiders can touch down in a corner of your map and set up a mortar, but they only bombard you with a few shots once or twice a day, instead of constantly. If you kill raiders, they can replenish their numbers once every couple days (but only replacing their numbers, not increasing them, because otherwise that could get overwhelming). Food can also drop down every couple days to feed them, because I know that AI in its current iteration can't handle tasks like hunting. This is more like a real siege, because it locks down a section of your map and means you can't get the resources from there.

Even without the "reinforcements" option, the big thing here is just reducing the bombings so that the player's hand isn't forced into action.

A possible problem with this would be environmental effects (radiation, extreme heat/cold) killing these people off, but that seems like a problem that exists in their current iteration anyway. Though it WOULD be fun to watch them all slowly go mad from a psychic drone ship.

As the thread title states, I'm suggesti adding vehicles. I've seen this idea suggested a few times in this thread, but not really in any ways that seem feasible by the developer. For one, I don't want to see raiders using vehicles, because that would likely require a mess of AI and physics tweaking. Two, no military vehicles to upset combat balance. Whats the point then? Well, there are lots of neat uses for vehicles (even on this small map) that don't require massive AI tweaks.

I have an idea for three classes of vehicles: ATV, jeep, and truck, maybe with corresponding Drive Skill levels of 3, 5 and 8 (but passengers also gain skill - watch and learn). If your Drive Skill is too low you risk crashing, destroying the vehicle and injuring/killing passengers.

ATVs can drive single people around - ideal if your only miner has a peg leg and needs to reach that gold cache across the map, or your best shooter has poor mobility and can't take pot shots at raiders without being swarmed and torn apart.

The jeep could seat 4 people, perfect for hit and runs on siege enemies/mech hives, intercepting fleeing raiders taking hostages, or even as an ambulance to get downed combatants out of the combat zone and to a medical bed ASAP. That's not to say you can fire from inside the jeep (that would be needlessly complex), but you can drive up, get out, shoot and then get back in.

The truck could hold, say, 2 people (in case your Driver couldn't Haul), serve as a mobile Zone  capable of hauling a number (let's say of slots of resources, perfect for grabbing a bunch of marble slabs or animal carcasses across the map.

So there's my suggestion of three vehicles: modest, but with (IMHO) a good degree of in game utility. This system wouldn't require a Drive skill, but I feel one would be neat - it'd just be one more way to distinguish between your colonists and isolate invaluable ones. Maybe a Mechanic skill as well, though Craft may cover that base decently enough. Let me know what you think!