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Do you use any mods that change how social dynamics work, like Psychology mod?

I couldn't really say, I use a bunch of them. Most just add content like weapons and furniture, I shy away from any that fundamentally alter core mechanics. The only one I can think of is Hospitality, not sure if that would have an effect.

I have used Psychology in the past (A15 or 16), but I had a long-term game get corrupted and I came to the conclusion Psychology broke it. I easily could have been wrong, but I haven't used it since.

As noted about, the payments can be all over the place. The silver offered is usually about right, but the items offered seem totally random. I am not hauling 2000 units of goddamned corn through raider and manhunter infested territory just to get a piece of furniture I can likely produce myself.

Does anyone ever get legitimate requests? 99% of the time I get requests for stuff I don't even produce, let alone have in stock. It would be nice if the other factions had at least a passing familiarity with the goods produced in the colony. I typically set up a nice booze and weed operation, yet I never get requests for these presumably desired products.

Related tangent:
Corn sucks (except in chip form). I don't like it, I don't grow it, and I will not bare the moral and ethical burden of having distributed it to other humans. I have a vision of a corn-free Rimworld that I am actively working toward. So other factions, please stop requesting that garbage, I am doing you a favor!

Psychopaths can for relationships, at least they could pre-A18. I made a group with Prepare Carefully mod that I use on most new games, and one of them is a vatgrown supersoldier who is a bloodlusting psychopath. Due to my love of the Hitman games, combined with a general lack of creativity, I named him 47. He gets married in most games, albeit not quite as quickly or easily as the rest of the group.

After several games, there was only one I can recall where 47 didn't get into a relationship, and I don't think he has ever been divorced. I can't recall if any of his lovers had also been psychopaths, but he did tend to hook up with military-minded women more often than not.

I started a new game with this group once A18 hit, and the colony is a little over a year old now. 47 has not gotten into a relationship as of yet. I'm not sure if it is just how this play-through worked out, or if anything has changed that prevents him from finding love now. I run a fairly modded game, but none that directly affect social interactions (as far as I know anyway).

I totally agree about precipitation/plant density relationship.

However, I've grown to love the Rain God, and pray to him/her/it regularly.

I like to cull any undesirable species from my map. There seems to be a population cap for wild animals, so I take out all predators and boom-creatures to make room for more delicious animals (we don't eat predators, and boom-creatures taste like lighter fluid). I let the boom-creatures build up until there is a lot of them, then send out a squad to kill them all. This obviously cause a bunch of fires, but the Rain God has always had my back, putting them out before they get to my colony.

Please don't kill the Rain God.

I like the spirit of the idea, but I agree it could get cumbersome if every single pawn had it, and it seems to be a little too broad. I think food or pastime preferences would make sense, it gets a little too deep for me if they are bothered by the material the dining table is made from. I'm okay with certain clothing constraints, but having someone who doesn't like parkas would be problematic in an arctic biome.
It could be implemented so it only effects a few random pawns, where most other pawns won't really care. They are just glad to still be alive. In this case it would really be more of a new set of traits versus a brand-new system.
Maybe just have a few pawns who have a single strong like/dislike, like one guy who wont eat rat, or one who loves chess and plays whenever he can. This way the day-to-day won't require a ton of micromanaging but you still get that personalized feel.

Great ideas!

It would make a ton of sense for Outlander and tribal factions to group their settlements together, and have raiders scattered about, without any real centralized government. Seeing the various caravans moving around would be great, as well as a fog of war to reward traveling further out from your settlement. I feel like manhunters and ambushes could still run off the system they currently use now, no need to model and track them, only to hide it from the player. The military outposts could also serve to push back fog of war, using it almost like a lightening post. Agricultural and mining outposts wouldn't serve this purpose well so they wouldn't be able to push it back as far. New items could be built to help push it back, like radar or detector or something.

The outpost system might be heavy on processing power, but I would love to see it happen. I think agricultural and military outposts would be most useful, mining would be great but you would eventually exhaust the resource in the area (kind of like real life). The smaller map size used during attacks on outposts currently would probably be best for those, easier on the system. I use the campsite mod now, and have often though about leaving the camps permanently. I've only ever have 1 camp at a time, but didn't notice any lag in processing.

Faction relations sounds amazing, I would love to engage in geopolitics with tribals and raiders. I think adding a faction trait system would make this much deeper. Traits like religious/atheistic, peaceful/warmongering, tribal/high tech, cannibal/vegetarian etc. This would help form a basis for which factions would gravitate towards cooperation with each other. A High-tech atheistic society would be unlikely to get along with hyper-religious tribals for example. Nothing too complex, just something to give them a reason to love/hate each other to start.

You mentioned vassals, setting up a system for this would be great. When a settlement has been defeated the player can choose to wipe it out, take it over  (populating it with some of their own colonists), or assimilate it into their own faction. An assimilated colony would operate as a standard npc colony, they would send caravans of tribute to the players main settlement. The player wouldn't actually look into the colony, it would run autonomously. This would help reduce the burden on the processors.

Sorry, went on a little rant there.

+1. It would be great to sort all the soldiers to one side, and all the pacifists to the other. I'd help a lot when setting up for a raid, especially if you end out with a lot of pawns.

Simulated Tectonics
This would implement both volcanoes and earthquakes. It would determine the locations of volcanoes and fault lines, which would control where and how sever earthquakes are.  Players could research an early warning system that would work for both events, just gives you a little time to get pawns in cover.

Volcanoes
I think the easiest way to get volcanoes implemented now would be to place the actual volcano in an impassible mountain area. Irl they are typically located on mountain tops, and this would remove lava flows and all the coding needed to make them work. With a lava flow you would need to implement new graphic elements, fluid dynamics, as well as have tons fire all round, which is taxing on the system (i believe this is why it mysteriously rains when a wildfire gets too big).
If your colony is within a certain range it would be affected by the eruption. It would vary depending on distance and severity of the eruption. There would be 3 main effects.
Falling ash: Blocks out the sun, essentially a long eclipse. Occurs even at far distances from the volcano. Could also coat the ground like snow, and behave exactly like snow. It will slow pawns traveling through it, and could be cleared using snow removal zones.
Flaming debris: Large chucks of flaming debris crash down around the colony, damaging structures, injuring anyone nearby, and starting fires. They would behave like falling ship chunks. This would occur at medium-to-short ranges from the volcano, and would scale up the closer you are.
Noxious Gas: At close range clouds of poisonous gasses would roll down the sides of the volcano and cover any nearby areas for a short time. I imagine the effects to be a cross between a poison ship and radioactive fallout, just supercharged. As the event would be relatively short-lived, the effects should be much stronger. Most wildlife and plant life would quickly die off, pawns would be seriously injured by even a brief exposure outside.

Earthquakes
Its been mentioned somewhere before, just giving the idea a bump. Depending on strength it could damage some weaker structures, or destroy them completely. Roofs would fall like normal, injuring anyone caught underneath. Pawns could also be thrown to the ground, sustaining minor injuries. In an especially bad earthquake overhead mountain tiles could collapse randomly, making mountain bases more vulnerable.

To me, this seems like the easiest way to get both of these in the game quickly with minimal work. I tried to gear these ideas so they could use existing mechanics in the game. I think it would work well as a mod, but I don't code so I could be speaking from my ass on this.

I'm all for other methods of recruitment, i hate recruiting a new colonist from a pirate group, then slowly killing off his entire family as they continue to raid me.

I always thought there should be a way to recruit family members who visit as well. I think it could work both ways, sometime another colony will have a family member who will try to recruit your pawn to their side. Drama!

I absolutely love the ransom idea as well, that makes a ton of sense to me.

Pirate groups using extortion would be awesome, they could demand anything, including a few colonists for slaves! This is a great idea, it would also add some uncertainty when raiders show up. Do they just want some silver, or are they here for everything?

A duel at high noon would be great. I have had pawns who hated each other enough that they fought every few days, it would definitely add to the drama if things got to the point where they would want to duel. It would be up to the challenged pawn to accept, maybe with mood and social debuffs if they decline the duel.

I just found this tread, and I need to get this off my chest. I've been thinking about vehicles since a16 came out. It would be amazing to use them for hauling and defense in the settlement map, but that seems like it might be complicated coding-wise. It seems much easier to implement them now for world map travel.

I think the simplest way to do this now would be to use them solely as a means of travel on the world map, and make the vehicles behave like pack animals, just with a different skin. They could be stationary objects you place in your settlement (or use a vehicle spot), then load them up just like a drop pod. Flying vehicles could just take off like a drop pod, land vehicles would move to the edge of the map using the same pathing currently used by pack animals leaving the map now. Not sure how to work out pathing if there are only 1 block-wide gaps to pass through, but muffalo and centipedes seem to fit just fine, so maybe we could give vehicles a pass.

They would need fuel of some kind, they could chemfuel or uranium depending on how advanced the tech is. They would also need maintenance, using components and steel/plasteel to repair them after each trip.
In order to balance them out they could have random breakdowns (dependent on how well maintained they are), stranding the vehicle and the occupants. Flying vehicles could straight-up crash, injuring and potentially killing the passengers. I think this would help balance out their benefit. Pawns could bring components and steel/plasteel just in case for repairs, or they would have walk back home and get some (unless a nearby friendly settlement is selling them). The broken-down vehicle would be represented on the world map, so they would be able to get back and repair it. Raiders could also set up ambushes, disabling the vehicle and forcing the passengers to fight or flee. If they flee the raiders will salvage/steal the vehicle.

I'm a fan of the boat and the mounted animal ideas, both would be great. Boats would really open up the options for colony sites, maybe more faction settlements could spawn on the coasts, making them easier to access via water. I think mounts would be great as well, once an appropriate animal is trained in hauling they could be used for this purpose. Animals also could be used to pull wagons and carts.

Other factions could use them to get to the players settlement as well. Tribals would arrive on muffalos of something, outlanders would have vehicles of various quality (land-based or boats only, flyers should be super-rare). Pirate groups would use the same types of vehicles as the outlanders, and they would park them somewhere in or near the colony and dismount to attack. Maybe they could even have a turret on them, allowing them to attack directly provided the vehicle is occupied. The trader groups could be attacked just as they can be now, but the vehicles could be stolen from them and used by the colony.

Man, I feel better now.

Other than the massive group that popped on the map when they first arrived it didn't break anything, and wasn't much of a disruption. It was just really creepy. They did take up every hospital bed, so if I had a bad raid at the time it could have been an issue. I received no penalty from their faction for their deaths, makes it seem this was all intentional on their part. I get a penalty if 2 of their own people get in a fight with each other.
But worst of all, they all dropped pemmican when they died, which kind of looks like poop when next to a dead body.

An enthusiastic miner with no concept of privacy.

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Maybe this belongs in bugs, I don't know.

A group of tribals from the Cai of the Cave came to my colony for a visit in what had to be the weirdest way ever. There were only 4 of them visiting, but they were accompanied by literally dozens, maybe hundreds, of their fellow savages. It had to be their entire tribe.
This immediately froze my game, so I saved a new file and reloaded.
The literal cloud of unwashed heathens never advanced into my map. Upon arrival they immediately turned around in unison and filed right off the end of the map from which they entered. In their wake was left 2 distinct groups: the 4 visitors seeking refuge in the luxury resort set up in the middle of my colony, and a group of 8 creepy-ass guys in desert robes.
The 8, as I have come to call them, walked stoically to my hospital. Each silently took a bed (strangely, I had exactly 8 beds in my hospital). I had noticed them, but assumed it was a minor glitch and they were taking the only unassigned beds available. I casually clicked on one of the 8, discovering he had severe asthma. I checked the rest and all of them had severe medical issues. I then assumed they were somehow seeking treatment from my doctors, perhaps an added feature I hadn't noticed in 16.
The 4 visitors who had accompanied the 8 stayed in the resort, interacted normally with my colonists and generally behaving as model guests. They stayed for the normal duration a visitor would (around a day or so), then left without incident. They apparently loved their say, leaving a tidy sum of silver and goods in gratitude.
My colony became preoccupied with other matters, and the 8 were forgotten. It was assumed they would leave with the 4 visitors. This is the part where assuming begins making asses of people.
A few days later I scrolled passed my hospital and discovered a horrifying sight: the 8 were still there, but 5 were dead!!! The remaining 3 were on the brink of death, on the bleeding edge of starvation. Further forensic investigation confirmed starvation was the cause of death in all cases.
I tried to feed the remaining 3 but that was not an option for my colonists. Literally. I could not interact with them in any way, not even to arrest them. The last 3 succumbed to their fate, and my colonists stripped their bodies and solemnly tossed them into the incinerator, as is protocol.
Since then, The Cai of the Cave tribe has stopped by to trade several times, though they have always remained conspicuously silent on the matter. The good people of Skyfall Congress are left to assume that this was all some elaborate ritual sacrifice, or possibly some end-of-life ritual. Frankly everyone is baffled, and a little creeped out, by the whole thing.

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