Messages

I've noticed that since A17 my pawns are losing eyes, noses, ribs, and fingers a lot faster than they used to, to the point that even a light dust-up can result in missing digits.  Brain damage is also a lot more common.  Looks like those changes Tynan made to hit allocation made a big difference!

If there's one upside to piracy, it's that it seems to have given customers more of a voice in how much they should be charged. Making games more affordable is, for many people, a good compromise that keeps them from pirating.

On the topic of price, I agree there, and here's a story to illustrate.  I know quite a few friends who are fans of The Sims.  I know quite a few of them have played and enjoyed The Sims 3...  at least until EA started releasing expansion pack after expansion pack, all priced as full games.  I remember reading that if you got all the expansions and stuff packs at full price as they were released it would literally cost more than a thousand dollars (It's still $400 if you buy them on Steam today) and that's not even counting the stuff from the online store, some of which were significantly better than anything available in the base game and all of which were sold individually for a few bucks a pop.  Needless to say, many of those friends bought one or two expansions then went straight to the Pirate Bay because they felt EA was just ripping them off at that point.

For bonus irony, one of the most common issues with The Sims 3 (and the one that kept me from buying it in favor of Sims 4, talk about a frying pan or a fire) involves the game dragging even modern high-end systems to their knees after a few hours of gameplay, and this is something that is primarily caused by...  using too many expansion packs.  So yes, if those friends of mine had legitimately bought all the content they would have wound up rendering all of it borderline unusable, something that they wouldn't have known until after they bought it.

People who choose to play without paying, but then change their mind and pay for the game, do not deserve special treatment.

I feel that giving it this much attention is sending the wrong message to people who might be lurking and thinking about buying the game. We should be shutting down the train of thought that leads to the dark side, not enabling it.

A paying customer is a paying customer regardless of how they bought the game.  The point of discussion is about whether or not piracy actually hurts sales for a game like RimWorld or if it can help drive sales through spreading interest and recommendations.  None of us are telling people to go out and pirate the game, either.  It's just an academic debate.

The problem with this black and white view is that a huge number of videogame publishers are integrating anti-consumer technology and practices into their software. From literally breaking your computer to upright not allowing you to play your legitimately purchased games if their servers go down. "I'll pay for my cruise as long as I don't get infected with norovirus and die."

Oh yeah!  That reminds me.  Another pro-piracy argument you see pop up nowadays, and one I certainly took advantage of once or twice, is the fact that the pirated game often works better.  Not only that but it will often stay working for longer than the legitimate copy.  This can make pirated games attractive even for gamers who legitimately own the game already - The pirates have taken the time to scrub DRM, sever online verification, and bypass registration codes that can render a legitimately purchased copy totally unusable at the publisher's discretion. 

This is especially common for older titles or titles with extremely restrictive or frustrating DRM.  A simple demonstration would be for games that use a CD key, which used to be a thing about a decade ago.  These keys could be anywhere, on manuals, stuck to the CD case, or on little pieces of paper in the box.  What happens if you lose your key?  You now have a legal copy of the game that you bought and paid for but you can't use because you lost the manual/original case/piece of paper, and most of the time calling the company would simply have them tell you to buy another copy (after all, the only way to prove you bought the game is to have the CD key).  In this case I wouldn't fault someone for pirating it.  Especially invasive, disruptive, or unreliable DRM can also be a deciding factor in choosing to pirate a game - Remember Games for Windows Live?  I know quite a few people who pirated games just to get a copy without GFWL in it.

Opinions on stuff.

On piracy:  I used to be a pirate a few years ago.  For me, piracy replaced demos - I had very little money and had to be very discriminating about what games I bought, and most games made in that time didn't have demos.  This was also before Steam was a thing, so there was no online storefront to check the game out - If I wanted it I'd have to go to the store and buy it.  I had to make sure the game I was thinking about getting did three things:  One, ran on my system (Saved me big-time on a few titles), two, could hold my interest for more than a few minutes, and three, wasn't terrible.  If a game met these standards I bought it and continued playing it.  But now I don't have to do that - System Requirements Lab will tell me if my computer can run it, Steam means I don't have to drive to the store, and if a game doesn't grip me I can refund it.  The market has removed the reasons why I pirated games so I don't pirate anymore.

On shareware:  Shareware's legacy in the computing world is the 30-day free trial you see in most applications and every single antivirus.  It doesn't work quite so well for modern video games due to the way a lot of them are designed, but you'll still see episodic games do a pseudo-shareware thing by giving away the first episode free.

On shovelware:  There's always been shovelware out there (The Atari 2600 and NES were legendary for it) but it's a lot easier to make with the rise of game development tools like Unity and RPG Maker VX and a lot easier to sell due to digital distributors like Steam.  Shovelare of the past used to be limited by the fact that you had to get it on store shelves, now you can sell it straight out of your basement.

All the ones I listed are for A17, yes.

[Essentials]

You already have EdB Prepare Carefully and EPoE, which are both amazing, so here are a few of the mods I enjoy.

Essentials - These games just make the core gameplay experience better, or are things that you'll eventually need in your modding journey.

HugsLib - So many other mods use this that you might as well just grab it.
Allow Tool - Lets you do a number of things faster and easier than you could with the ordinary controls without adding any new functionality.  This is one of the mods I miss the most when I don't have it.
Organized Research Tab - If you have mods that add new research then you need this.  It makes the research tab understandable.
Stack Merger - There are a number of mods that provide this same functionality, this is just the one I use.  Any mod that helps organize stockpiles is mandatory.

Expansions - These mods add a lot of content to the game or greatly expand the options you have when building your colony.

Vegetable Garden - Greatly expands the variety of foodstuffs you can grow and provides a late-game solution to running out of rare resources like Uranium and Plasteel, assuming you have a really, really good grower.  Also greatly expands cooking options and food production to allow you to make all sorts of things.  A delightful mod.
More Vanilla Turrets - I'm not a fan of turrets normally, but the turrets in this pack seem balanced and fair.  This lets you vary your automated defenses and better craft a solution that works for you.  Research-intensive, though.
RimFridge A17 - All it does is add powered refrigerators.  And you have no idea how useful that is until you don't have it anymore.
RT Fuse - Adds fuses and circuit breakers that help manage the Zzzzt event.  Batteries are now safe to use - Faulty wiring will no longer blow up a large part of your base if you have a lot of power stored.

Filthy Casual Mods - Mods that hardcore players would probably shun due to either making the game easy or subverting intended mechanics.  Some of them may border on cheating.  However, I think they make the game fun.

Stack XXL - I know, I know.  Call me lazy, call me a casual, but I like not having to take up half my base with storage.
RT's Weapon Pack - Adds a whole lot of new guns and firearms to the game, and there's nothing more gloriously stupid than hunting rabbits with RPGs.  I list it here because some of these guns make the charge rifle look silly while costing significantly less.
Mad Skills - Skills higher than level 10 will slowly decay over time.  Mad Skills lets you modify exactly how.  Some people would call this a straight cheat, but I think that a master crafter isn't going to forget how to craft just because they haven't made anything for three days.  You can choose to slow it down or turn it off altogether.

I think we could solve a lot of these problems while maintaining granularity (which is quite important, I feel) by simply modifying how storage is done.  Right now the stockpile system is one of the most basic things about Rimworld - It's literally just a space where colonists put things.  There's nothing you can do with it beyond adjusting the things they put there and the order they put them there in, no way to create efficiency.

To look at Dwarf Fortress, this game's inspiration, there are bins, bags, and barrels to let you store a lot of smaller things in one space.  This is important because even a small fortress can rapidly overwhelm even the biggest stockpiles as blocks are made, wood and coal are processed into charcoal and coke, metal ingots are produced, weapons are made, etc.  And that's not even counting goods produced for trade!  If everything had to be stored in its own tile Dwarf Fortress would be virtually unplayable.

RimWorld escapes this in part due to its smaller scale, but it rapidly runs face-first into this wall as colonies grow to the size of a small dwarf fortress (~15-20) and suddenly begin needing either a lot of space or a series of flow diagrams to manage the inflow and output of goods so that you're not using half your base as storage in between traders.

You are, quite literally, asking to make the game harder (by denying players access to something they already have) just to create an environment where you can get that sense of accomplishment in specialization.  If everything is so hard to make you can only focus on one specialty but you still need that other stuff you're going to have to trade for it, and trading for specific weapons or pieces of armor is a lot more fidgety than trading for the resources to make them.

If you want that sense of accomplishment in specialization, there are mods out there that expand the trees in ways that only a super-wealthy colony can create all of them.  Embrace that.  Try getting fully bionic colonists with Expanded Prosthetics, or look into Rimsenal for full sets of advanced power armor and exotic weaponry.  There are ways you can do this without screwing over the rest of the current playerbase.

I've noticed this as well.  It's somewhat hard to reproduce unless the colony is already fairly large and has a lot going on, but when it happens it's extremely noticeable - My colony was going from smooth running to stuttering and stalling several times a second when my dumping stockpile got full.

I'd offer my savegame, but unlike the OP's mine uses mods.  I was debating whether or not to post because of this, but hey, looks like it's not just me.

Welp, that sucks. So you're paying double the resources for an item that takes ages to cook and the only advantage is it doesn't spoil? It doesn't even count as a fine meal anymore, so what's the point...

It's more or less for doomsday preppers.

As it is now, factions are generated when the world is created - The factions you get are the factions you get.  What I'd like to see is for world generation to finish, then a second menu pops up allowing you to customize what factions are present and what their relations are before it populates the world with them.  Maybe I want a world of nothing but tribals.  Maybe I'm a masochist and want a world of nothing but permanently hostile pirates.  Maybe I want an Outlander faction that's actually hostile to me without me declaring war on them.  Maybe I don't want any factions at all for a truly lonesome experience.  Maybe I have mods installed that add new factions and I'd like to add a bunch of those.  Whatever the case may be, I think this would be a nice addition to the core game to add a second layer to planet creation.

This alone is the biggest reason I have Vegetable Garden installed.  Would like to see some sort of bulk option in the base game.

What would you classify as high-end?

Isn't pemmican a lot heavier than PSMs though? Weight can be an issue with caravans.

If the wiki numbers (and my math) are correct then yeah... PSMs are 18x the nutrition and over 22x the weight. I wanted to defend PSMs at first but the numbers aren't really working out for them.

I ran the math in another thread and pemmican is actually lighter:
1 PSM is 0.9 nutrition and 0.4kg
18 pemmican are 0.9 (0.05*18) nutrition and 0.324 (0.018*18) kg.

Still using the numbers from the wiki.

It really depends.

If you have good friendly relations with the locals, have a lot of excess resources, and can spam traders, then it's not worth it - You'll be able to buy all the components you need.

If you don't have those relations or excess resources to sell but have an abundance of steel (perhaps you started in a hilly/mountainous area) then it's definitely worth it.

If you don't have those relations and excess resources to sell and have a shortage of steel, you're probably screwed.