Messages

If you really really really need that slowdown, trees are the slowest thing i know. Put a tree in a 1 tile corricor to force passing, andy your enemy will slow through... for ages. Since A18 they provide only 25% cover, instead of 45%, so they might not cause such a big problem anymore.
Not sure about burned trees stats. In deserts check all terrains. I think some ground types like sand or gravel are quite slow aswell (75-90% or something).

Anyway, there are no artificial items that are meant to be used for slowdown only.

I think traps are pretty much balanced. They provide a strong effect on high ressource cost with low maintenance.

What I don't like is that they don't have any synergy with anything. Worst case looks like this: colonist shoots at attacker. arm get hit  to 15/35 health. Attacker  takes cover, cover had a wooden trap placed. Bam, arm get reduced to -35/35. Now all 'preparation' the colonist did is lost. Would have been no difference if there was just the trap alone.
My current defense is an S-shaped corridor. In the first row, colonist defend and retreat through doors. in the second are traps only and in the third are the colonists and towers again.

It would be great if traps would be used to soften enemy, not kill them outright. This would counter the current situation where traps are better to be used stacked in a row with no interruption.

[Raw Food(strawberries):]

I was pissed by cooking aswell. Making me make a similar decision like PO, but I started to use strawberries only, because according to the wiki Corn has only 17% more nutrient per day than strawberries.

Anyway, I started strawberries and I was happy for the beginning, as its been  now cooking, and berries keep around 11 days, much longer than meals. At first I was happy, but now I am back into the cooking businis, as I noticed cookig with a cook is not that much work than I thought to remember. Comparison:


Raw Food(strawberries):
+Similar output than corn per tile (-17%)
+No cook time
+No cooking skill required
+eat at work (every room can have a single food storage)
+fast grow speed, less risk

-More planting work with strawberry than corn
-Mood debuff
-Good cook can cook fast
-2% food poison is 2% food poison

Eating raw food has benefits, if you don't have the infrastructure for cooking.
This means, having a strong planter, but no cook, is a valid solution, because it always works: If you cook strawberries you have a meal. If you cannot cook, there are berries in the fridge. If you cannot take time for hauling, there is a field with harvested berries on it: finger food. So, if you have no manpower, one planter alone can do the food thing.
Downside to corn would be that the debuff can be a problem as early you have bigger downspikes in mood. A bad cook, will cook very slow, blocking that one completely and has a higher poison chance. A good cook, will cook very fast with a good setup and garantee 0% food poison. Fine meal's buff is much better than raw food penalty as +4 give the edge to happiness, but -4 doesn't make any difference.

Conclusion:
-Plant rice/corn if you're very low on manpower.
-Plant strawberries if you're low on manpower.
-Plant strawberries if you have no cook.
-Start cooking when you have a good cook.
-Train your cook if you don't have one(No flame will still able to reach cook 10)

[...]
I'm hoping to keep further changes to technical fixes and optimizations from here to 1.0. I'm not against some design changes but nothing structural or destabilizing. That's the hope.

So... the last update was beta 19, now followed by beta 20, which will probably result in a 1.0 release, but for now we don't have any idea what is  supposed to happen in beta 20 and we will find out when Ser Tynan is telling us in the next patch news which will be amazing?

[Solution:]

Just do what the French cook says!

Larger meal quantities could be gated by cooking skill, as you need some competence not to crap a dinner for 5 persons.

If realised in Rimworld I would consider 2 things:

1. Ingredients
with stools there is place for 6x75=450 units of raw food. So there its technical possible to craft 45 meals at a time without the need of walking.
Anyway, this would be a bit too extreme, to lets better pick 1-2 stacks of food, being 75-150.

2. item type
When making a feast, you probably not put it back in the freezer after youre done, or put it into tupper boxes. you probably put it on the table and people eat.
Whilst this makes sense, I think thats a bit much effort to realise, so I think it's better to stick with crafting x meals at once.

Solution:

New bills

Crew meals
IN: 75x raw food
OUT: 8x simple meals
TIME: 6x simple meals
REQ: cook 4
BONUS: 0,5 free meal

Quality Food
IN: 25x meat, 25x vegetable
OUT: 5 fine meal
TIME: 4x fine meal
REQ: cook 10
BONUS: 20% faster

Feast
IN: 50 meat, 50 vegetable
OUT: 5x lavish meal
TIME: 3x lavish meal
REQ: cook 12
BONUS: 40% faster

MRE4ALL
IN: ingredients for  8x Packaged survival meal
OUT: 10x Packaged survival meal
TIME: 7x Packaged survival meal
REQ: cook 14
BONUS: Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger?

[Here my history as a reference:]

As for the questions, I'm sure these have been asked a billion times. Where did you guys start learning programming or game design? Where should I begin, what steps to take or to not take? I've been learning basic HTML, C#, playing with unity, and bits of python; pretty well soaking up whatever I can from the web and taking notes for each different language. As far as starting goes, what do you recommend I stay away from?

Here my history as a reference:
I learned Assembly language in school. I had a teacher and a book. But most important: I had a project. A traffic light circuit with wifi, wheater report and customer service hotline.
In my first job as web designer I teached myself html/php from web references and WordPress-Tutorials. Here I learned the most about OOP and programming in common.
Afterwards I started a Project in raspberry pi, using c#. There was a difference between php and c# but there are good refences for best practice on google, which helped me a lot.
Today I work primary with java, making SOAP interfaces. But I never learned any java before.

First step in Programming is to decide what you want to do.
If you seriously want to go into programming, buy a book to get a realiable source of knowledge, so you can teach yourself whatever command is used in which way, and to get the basics of OOP and MVC. If you get at this point, will be able to find answers to all your questions by yourself, or know where to find them.
Anything else is softskill.

If you can write code in c#, you are able to read python/ruby/php/java and anything else.
If you want to programm in these languages, it's no big effort as they all work the same with similar (but not identical!) synatax.

If you don't seriously want to get into programming or youre not sure if you seriously want to, go into Rimworld modding. It might not be the best reference-project to learn, but it's not a bad one, as the code is readable and it's not too huge. Sadly there is no programmers documentation, but you cannot expect that.

I did find this tutorual quite helpful for c#-modding in Rimworld:
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=33219.0
(Don't know if this is obsolete now)

Furthermore there's a wiki page for modding:
https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Modding_Tutorials



In the very end, programming is much work and learn. You will never stop learning.

Wood shouldn't detoriate outside. Unroofed yes, but not outside.

...I was wondering if there was a term for Rimworld natives or those that live on it. ...

The word your are looking for is 'Muffalo'  - we are the Muffalos.

For anyone who has no respect for white fuzzy fur, grow a heart ... I mean, listen closely:
The term Rimworld implicates that it's a world on a rim. Being a description for any Planet far away from anything else. This knowledge in mind, I think Sir Jonas Tynan did already define the name for the native species as 'Outlanders'.


Anyway, when I look at my ID Card I read "Pawn", dunno what that has to mean.

[New trait: Survivalist]

New trait: Survivalist
+Faster caravan movement
+250% berry harvest (should be self sustaining)
+reduced caravan visibility
-Cabin fever if not traveling

[C) The solution]

C) The solution

Fixing the wealth issue is much more difficult than listing its shortcomings. What do you think could be done to improve the game with respect to difficulty? Discuss!

Keep in mind that it has to be simple to have a shot to be implemented, i.e. implementation effort must be handled as wealth

I think that the wealth system makes people who know about it feel threatened. Those who doesn't know about instead, get a very balanced gameplay feeling as the wealth adaption is actually a pretty good idea.
In this way, same like the unknowing, nobody should be afraid of the wealth system. It affects the difficutly, but in a good way.

A rough Example:
Let's say you will craft a excellent LMG. it's a strong weapon that makes you stronger. If i get the math right thats LMG 300 x excellent 2 = 600 wealth. itemWealth gets divided by 100, so its 600/100=6. The next raid will have 6 points more than the last one.
A raider has a point value of 35-210 depending on its type. The difference of 6 means, that from 20 Raiders attacking you next time, the one with the two peg legs, will only have one peg leg!
This means, while you get a rambo rifle, the raider gets a new leg. Now I ask you: Is a LMG able too fight a leg? I'm pretty sure it is.

Here's the formula:
P = (( C × 42 ) + ( iW ÷ 100 ) + ( bW ÷ 200 )) × ( sR × lR ) × D × T × R
C= Colonist
iW = Items
bW = building

Further information here:
https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Raider

I think the idea of rescues having valuable stuff with them is kind of stupid as it doesn't make sense that only rich people have accidents.

More likely would be that a rescue doesn't join you on impact, but gives you the option to take him to his home place for a big reward or take him home where he will stay for x days, giving you time to recruit him. If you don't succedd he will leave the map and give you a small reward instead for saving.

This would make the rescue event harder and still intresting if you're not intrested in new colonists, what could make a colony sustain on rescue/escort-Missions.

[Good traits are universal good as their benefit is strong unaffected by the colonist purpose:]

I truely love the idea of mixed benefits. By now I select my colonists only after a few good traits that are OP. The negatives are counted against those positives, but mosty ignored and most of all traits are ignored in general as they are useless/nicetohave.
Short overview:

Good traits are universal good as their benefit is strong unaffected by the colonist purpose:
-Learning speed/Memory
-positive Workspeed
-positive running speed
-positive Treshold
-positive Happiness

Bad traits, which give a malus but can be ignored
-negative social
-negative Treshold

Bad traits, which cannot be utilized or interacted with:
-wimp
-pyromanic
-drug interest

Useless traits, mostly ignored as their benefit doesn't matter at all:
-positive social =>Difference between relation 0 and relation 30 doesn't matter, as they rarely become enemies if not negative in the beginning
-negative mood => While a sanguine gives the edge for mood buffs, are depressed rarely taking effect,cause it's in the big grey zone between happy and mental break.
-greedy/jealous/ascetic => Same as depressive, no intresting effect
-body purist => sometimes useless sometimes negative



Some ideas:
Buffs for Bads:
Pyromanic:
=> Buff on fire weapons
Body purist:
=> Doesn't get sick
Chemical interest:
=> Faster drug crafting
Greedy:
=> better trading
Pessimist:
=> faster science (depressed are more focused)
Ugly:
=> higher treshold
Abrasive:
=> Melee bonus
Wimp:
=> higher social impact
Misa-/Misogynist:
=> +opinion with the better gender
Nervous:
=> Same as Trigger Happy

Bads for Buffs:
Super immune:
=> higher transplantation failure
Masochist:
=> Sometime cuts itself
Optimist:
=> -relation with unhappy colonists
Steadfast
=> less social impact ( mostly not the talking kind)
Tough
=> less social impact ( mostly not the talking kind)
Beautiful
=>slower learning speed
Psychically Sensitive
=> Prevent others mental breaks in dialogue (giving mood buff if partner is in low mood)
Psychically Dull
=>Increased Treshold
Slothful/Slowpoke
=> Happiness/Resting/Art Bonus
Teetotaler
=> Can't produce drugs
Tunneler
=>negative mood outside (opposite to cabin fever)
=>higher mental break on caravan
Kind:
=>Ignore timetable and keeps recreation always up as if in recreation mode

Maybe the simple way is the best: rock chunks can be disassembled into 5-10 stone blocks, allowing to convert them without a crafter or a workbench, but at a worse material output than the mason's table with 20 blocks per chunk.

Anything else sounds too complicated to me as the PO's demand is a niche situation.

The colony is managed in the same way.
Just belongs to a planet faction and is called to respect some rules. Fight the same war, help when allies are in need, propose newfaction buildings, vote the major etc

Careful. Now your twisting words.
Yes there are factions, towns, planets and people in rimworld. But there are no elections, societies or politics. It's not the same.
So, this might be a reasonable idea, to put colonists into a society, but that would be another game, as rimworld is not intended to display these elements.
These actually would be very boring as there is no base builder AI written yet.

A more realistic way I could think of, would be, that if you surrender your last colony, you can 'join' a settlement, meaning you enter a new map with some structures and few colonists living there already, which simply be added to your colonist list.
But, as you said, that's another topic. Create one and discuss there.

Suggestion #2: Make hunting more authentic. Real hunters don't have omniscient knowledge of the species and location every animal within a several mile radius. Real hunting takes patience and skill and stealth and often results in failure. Don't show wild animals on the map. Change the Wildlife tab to a Hunting tab and make it a bill system in which the player designates what animals to hunt for and the hunter goes out hunting, anywhere on the map or in designated zones. They have a chance, determined by biome and skills and terrain and human activity in the area, to sight prey and attempt to kill it.

You serious? We go into the forest with grenades, flamethrowser and a LMG, and you ask about authenticity? I think that ship has sailed.
"One hunter with a minigun is a good idea. But a second one isn't."
-Bullet Hole Bill, rotten corpse age 37

Anyway, your point is a quite good one: Hunting need patience and has a risk of failure. Problem I see in yuour idea is, that it's way too complex for rimworld. Not that it's bad, but it needs to be simpler.
Current state is, whenever you shoot an animal it will fight or flee 10 tiles and wait for getting shot again.
Let's say, whenever a shot is fired, all animals will turn "disturbed" within 25 tiles. When 'disturbed' an animal will behave like it's now fleeing, running away 10 fields and calm down again.
After being attacked few times or being disturbed multiple times, animal will completely flee off the map, making it almost impossible to catch up and kill it.
By this, a trigger happy SMG-User will empty the forest with nothing, whilst a careful aim bolt rifle, will catch animals by surprise, and a bow makes no noise at all.
Additional, fast hunting animals will greatly help, as they keep the prey busy, just as in real life (more or less).
Result: Still a lot of animals on the map, but no free meat delivery, as difficult to hunt.

Also, reducing meat a bit by damage taken sounds nice, but dont overdo it here. A skilled hunter should be able to get a shot to the heart/head, minimizing meat loss.

Already done with 'missing body parts' in vanilla: this reduces both meat & hide yield from the corpse.. possibly encouraging your skilled marksmen/hunters to take up more accurate weps?

Maybe it's not enough. When I look at my hunting results there is rarely a body part missing. And even if, it's 5-10% percent meat value lost.
It should be greatly more. Especially depending on animal size. have you ever shot a rabbit with a shotgun? You almost cannot eat it because there shot pellets everywhere.
Hunted animals should be nerved in their products. Maybe, every shot stacks up a hediff 'plumbiferous' which decreases meat/leather value by 1%. To a max of 75%
A clean sniper shot => 99% left
Maffia style hunting party =>25% left
Butcher tamed animal =>100% left

By this, Lifestock gets more instresting as they offer their full meat value.