Messages

Green is NOT a primary color. Green is achieved by combining blue and yellow. Primary colors are Red, Yellow and Blue!

True for paint and pigments, but not light.  Then the primary colors are Red, Green, and Blue (RGB).  That's because your eyes perceive red, green, and blue and mix them to get other colors.  It's also why electronic displays (TVs, monitors, phones, etc) display every color as some combination of red, green, and blue.

Wood flooring (like all flooring) cannot and does not burn.

I suspect there's some improvements that could be made to your jobs prioritization, but it's a tricky puzzle to unravel without seeing it directly. If you want to post a screenshot of your current (or typical) prioritizations, someone here could help troubleshoot it.

That makes absolutely no logical sense, which is probably why I never tried it.  Perhaps I've underestimated the colonists' mastery of feng shui.  If I can use wood for that over anything else I gladly will because if there's one thing my present colony has in overabundant, Caligulan, Fall-of-Rome excess it's wood.  Thanks for the clarification - Now I have a better use for wood than trying to build a bridge to the Moon.

As for the prioritization, it's pretty simple because I'm not yet that great with them.  Right now when I have the job set up I'll have my builders prioritize plant-cutting, so they go out and clear the path, then switch their priority to construction so they build it.

I tend to run with everything, but if I were to disable events short-circuit would be at the top of the list shortly followed by incurable diseases (Sleeping sickness, gut worms, muscle parasites).  They're not especially challenging to deal with, being much more of a 'random bad thing' than an event I can plan around and overcome through careful planning, quick thinking, or luck.  There's no way around shorts - If you have batteries you will have this problem, and without mods (Thank you, fuses!) there's nothing you can do about it.  Incurable diseases are a long-term short-circuit event, randomly limiting the usefulness of an arbitrary number of colonists for an arbitrary length of time and there's no way I know of to speed up their recovery or prevent the diseases from happening.  There's nothing I can do to influence the event's progression in any way and that's just frustrating.

Listy:  The problem with using wood floors to secure external power lines is the fact I'm generally securing them from fire...  and wood, well, wood and fire have a very special relationship that no amount of architecturally-pleasing board placement will come between.

Zandadoum:  I've been doing that, but it's a sub-ideal way to manage construction pathfinding.  It also nearly doubles the length of time needed to build the thing.  Growers already cut down trees without running off to do something else immediately after, why can't builders?

[Yorkshire Terrier 3:]

I can see it now.

Yorkshire Terrier 3:  "And on the seventh day of the next winter, you, Krognizar the Destructor, whom the humans call Mitch, will trigger the events that lead us all to freedom...  You will, on that day, before the rise of the sun, track mud into the bedroom of the jealous human known as Wombat.  This disruption of his sleep and defiling of his pristine golden floor will be enough to drive him to a murderous rage, and in his wrath he will slay the human Edward.  Edward's death shall in turn beget more violence as humans take sides and fight each other to the death in a bloody frenzy.  When all but a few have been slain, raiders will arrive, incapacitate the survivors, and drag them away.  Then the colony will be truly ours.  Praise be to you, Krognizar the Liberator.  Go forth and fulfill the prophecy."

Edward:  "Can someone shut that stupid dog up?  I'm trying to sleep here and it just keeps barking!"

This is a hard topic to sum up in the title!  Anyway.  I'm hoping someone can help me figure out how to make sure my colonists stop wasting time while building large constructions.

Here's the specifics.  I like geothermal power and I play on large maps.  In order to keep my power cables safe I put floors over and around them so they can't burn in the many, many brushfires that dominate forest maps.  There's just one problem - Trees.  Trees will grind the construction project to a halt because of the painfully stupid way colonists deal with them.  Here's what I see:

1)  Colonists build everything except the blueprints underneath trees first without problem.
2)  Colonist A brings up enough bricks for one tile, places it, then goes to a single nearby tree, cuts it down, and leaves.
3)  Colonist B is now summoned to build the one tile Colonist A placed.
4)  Colonist C sees the wood from the tree Colonist A cut down and goes to haul it.
5)  Colonist D sees there is a tile he can build where Colonist A cut the tree down, so he grabs materials for that one tile and heads up to build it.
6)  Colonist D repeats Colonist A's actions and the cycle begins anew.

So now we have anywhere from 4 to 6+ colonists (distance depending) tied up with building this thing per tile because no one colonist will cut down the trees all at once unless manually ordered to over and over (and even then, the builders will still screw that up by reserving trees from across the map).  It would be nice if there were a way around this without having to manually designate the whole area for plant-cutting before putting down the construction (and watching as saplings sprout up while building is underway, causing the same problem).

Any suggestions or tips?

I suspect the reason the grass is short is so you can tell the fertility of the soil underneath it without having to slash and burn.  Grass grows thick on fertile soil so the thick patches of grass and dark-colored dirt are the only two visual indicators of rich soil.  This little change would cancel out both of those visual aids and we'd need another way to find fertile soil while looking around the map.

A simple enough idea, and one that could probably even be done with a mod.  Insulated walls would come as an Industrial-level research project.  They would have a significantly reduced thermal transfer rate but would cost more (perhaps requiring some amount of plasteel) and take longer to build than regular walls.  This would provide a mid to late-game solution to heating and cooling issues without putting large numbers of heaters and coolers everywhere.  And hey, we insulate houses in real life, why not in the far future of Rimworld?

Animals are a consistent source of frustration for me.  On one hand, I love having animals.  On the other hand, I can't justify a good reason for it.  They get in the way in combat without mods, they eat my crops without careful zoning, and they track dirt everywhere if allowed inside, causing a lot of mood debuffs unless I keep someone assigned to cleaning detail.  I tend to keep some on hand for hauling duties because I try to justify keeping pets, but that's about all the use I have for them that isn't eating them.  And in forest maps at least, they take too much time and too much space to breed when I can just go out and shoot two dozen deer on a whim.

Except bears.  Bears are just awesome and I will never turn them down.

I've seen a lot of completely useless colonists in my time...  I'd take this guy over ANY of them and make him a dedicated artist and trader.  His Research isn't terrible either, so I'd be happy letting him spend all day arting, researching, and trading.

My main issue with components is how many components you need before you can start making components.  You need, at a minimum, 42 of them - 2 for a cheap generator, 10 for a high-tech research bench, and 30 for the table itself.  Add in the resources and time required to make them and the return on investment for component assembly is probably one of the worst in the game.  You're better off spending your time on something profitable then spamming traders and buying components.

I'd like to see this change, since I'm fond of self-sufficient colonies, but that's just how it is right now.

Neither of those ways works. Everything on the map is counted as part of your wealth.

That's silly, and contrary to what I'd heard from a friend who plays.  He will be re-educated.  Thanks for correcting me.

I will begin destruction of stuff immediately.

There are two ways I think you can get around this, depending on what you're willing to do.

1)  Don't pick up the stuff they drop.  If you don't take it then it doesn't count towards your wealth.  This does, however, sacrifice wealth for security.

2)  Create an isolated, secured stockpile.  Put all the raid spoils in it.  Then delete the stockpile, remove the 'vault' from your home area, lock the door, and forbid everything in it.  This should also remove those items from your wealth, allowing you to keep them around if you need them but not have them count against you next raid.

Well, I'm an idiot.  Thank you for stating the obvious solution I never thought of.  Roofing time!

Lightning does seem weirdly likely to hit outside power conduits and there's nothing you can do about it short of having redundant cables (often tedious, nigh impossible on large maps) or building walls over them.  As someone who makes extensive use of geothermal power, this is a constant frustration.

On Geothermal vs. Fueled, though, it mostly comes down to 'How much power do you need?'  Early-game fueled generators rule everything.  Mid-game they're still very good, as long as you have people who can spend the time to cut down trees and haul the wood.  But if I'm trying to power one of my late-game monstrosity bases?  I doubt I could cut trees down fast enough to fuel the number of generators I'd need.  That's where Geothermal comes in handy.