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Tell us the stories of when Randy Random (or any other story teller) mean it well with you and give you just what you need.

#1 In my second game ever I killed the first Thrumbo that appeared, noting how powerful they are I tried taming the second. On the very first attempt, with a guy that has 9 in animal skill I tamed it.

#2 In my current game - this is why I made this topic - I needed components. Literally 1 minute later this happened:


Note it's a 350x350 map, so it was REALLY lucky. All fallen spacecraft stuff I started with was at the absolute top side of the map and my colony is at the bottom.
I didn't even know spacecraft drops could be this big? What's the limit?

The use of the incendiary launcher was not new to me, I just didn't mention it.

Not sure why you compare great bow to short bow though - I can't remember exactly, but you need the smithy for the great bow, while short bow can be made in a crafting spot. So yeah, short bow is only a weapon for the earliest stages.

Unfortunately the squirrels are not cooperating with me and are hiding in trees. They know I want to recruit them.

Also the colony wealth system seems a bit stupid. You shouldn't get punished for having higher quality stuff. If at all it should be the other way around like now.
E.g. a legendary rifle that is 150% as good as a normal one should push the colony value only by 125%. So that better quality is actually tipping things in your favor.
Why even have a crafting stat then? It only hurts getting better gear.

Well, I feel there is a big need for cheap and effective weapons. IMO all the weapons below assault rifles are too expensive in components. If all of them would be exactly 1 component cheaper, they would all be very balanced.

The problem isn't that the assault rifle is cheap, it costs 7(!) components after all - but that it is such a great and versatile weapon for good and bad shooters that you can just make two or three of them and you are set until very late game and even then they are still useful.

Why waste 3-4 components on other weapons?

Also forgot the pila, never used that before.

Sure you could gate the AR behind crafting skill 9 or so, but honestly, that isn't really hard to get, especially not with so many backstories having good crafting bonuses.

That is my opinion on the matter. Alternatively you could just make the other weapons a bit more useful. The pump shotgun is a great example. It is rather cheap with 3 components and it's pretty effective on anyone, though it has limited range as a drawback.

Also: I'm building my squirrel army as we speak. I found a mod that makes thrumbos produce wool - it was quite OP (42 sell value factor (that is insane) better heat/cold insulation than other wool, great defensive stats too) so I made the thrumbo wool have the exact same stats as thrumbo leather, which is already good and expensive (for comparison, thrumbo leather has a sell value factor of 7). The reason the mod needed a nerf was because it also makes thrumbos not go manhunter on taming attempts and makes them a lot easier to tame. I actually succeeded on my first try (4.4% chance).
But I am a lucker when it comes to thrumbos anyway. In my second game ever I tamed one in my first try without ANY mods installed with a animal 9 (lowest possible). I also kept it alive somehow inside my house during a toxic fallout - I didn't know how much they eat lol.
The funny thing: Since a full season im trying to tame a herd of 7 muffalos - guess what, I still have not a single one. But the thrumbo I get in the first try. RNG pls.

#1 Since I started playing I wondered what roles each of the weapons filled. Some I have acquired a lot and I see their values quite easily, some others are so rare and never built (and never talked about) that I have no idea what niche they fill.

#2 Also, what animals would make great combat pets?

More on #1:
Let's focus on ranged weapons first. The short and great bow are obvious - cheap (no components, only wood) and come at different technology levels. The pistol is great to teach someone to shoot due to it's low damage and possibly low accuracy (if a bad pistol) - still makes an acceptable early game weapon. The survival rifle is a good all around early game weapon and also pretty cheap to make.

So far so good, but then I see machine pistol, heavy SMG, LMG and I wonder, why ever bother with these when you can just make assault rifles? You even save components skipping these. The only use I see is in the heavy SMG because it has pretty insane dps, short range (so your pawns don't waste time trying to shoot from ineffective ranges) and rather good accuracy in it's range section. The LMG seems quite similar, however worse accuracy, more range and worse warmup/cooldown times.

The role of the assault and charge rifle is clear, and the sniper rifle is obvious too of course. I just wonder why there are 3 different MGs? If their price was lower I would consider them more, but as it is, why not make assault rifles?
There isn't even a skill limitation on building any of these.

Now for melee weapons:
Same question, why is there so many? I only really see use in the tribal ones (because early game) and then long sword and mace (if you want a blunt weapon to try to take people alive).

More to #2:
What would you use as battle pets? Thrumbos have really high dps, are tough and somewhat fast, but they are hard to get and eat a lot, plus breeding them is nearly impossible (maturity time 25 years...) - so let's not include them.
My favorites are:
Panthers/Cougars - so far they seem to have identical stats. They can't take much damage, but they are really fast and have pretty good DPS as well, nearly rivaling elephants and megasloths. Disadvantage is that they only eat meat, aren't easy to tame or train and can't even haul things.
Wargs - about the same as panthers/cougars, though I think they have more health, lower speed/dps. However they can haul, making them a better all-around choice.
Huskies - they are just all around solid. Easy to train and you often even start with them. In every way superior to Labradors.
Wild boars - if you don't have huskies, they breed fast and have about the same stats.
Chickens - They have about a third of the dps/speed than huskies, but getting 100x more chickens than huskies is pretty easy.
Squirrels - as a joke, but hey, you can train them release, faster maturity rate than chickens and they are fast! Maybe this is actually worth trying... . (concerned about their HP tho).

But as far as a "ton of plants" well, a ton of devilstrand is more like 10,000, the stuff grows super slow xD

As for shirt/pants, sounds silly but I'd say dusters should take precedence.  Pawns actually are perfectly fine running around wearing nothing but dusters like some skeezy flasher until you can make actual clothing.  And dusters cover everything AND provide temperature protection, and are cheaper than pants + shirt, and have a better protection value

Mountain jungle, so not much space to grow on. 150 Devilstrand gives enough fabric to give all your colonists a full set of clothes, save for dusters with 1 harvest (I have 9 colonists already, because two raids in a row I captured like 3 people each).

Sure I made dusters first from cloth. They had tribal wear and put dusters on top. Looked good, was effective. Now devilstrand shirt and pants for protection (done), and then dusters. Last armor and helmets. I finally have electricity... thank goodness. Playing without a freezer is annoying as hell.

Generally, I'd try my best to start growing devilstrand at once (praying for no blight to occur... especially in a biome with limited growing period).

Devilstrand is immune to blight.

What materials do you use to make your clothing? What types of clothing do you go for? How does it change from early, mid to late game?

I'm currently playing a jungle colony, so I made some early cloth dusters for my colonists. Cowboy hats are of course more efficient (4x faster to produce and 4x less materials) - but you also get less crafting skill. Dusters are really stylish and give twice the bonus as well. What is also relevant is that dusters have the best value per material used of ANY clothing, and since I make these (no worn by dead person penalty) they will sell well later.

Now I'm heading into mid-game. My researcher guy is also a grower, which kept me from getting electricity for ages (tribe start) and I still don't have it. The thing is - I planted a ton of devilstrand (around 150 plants) and I'm going to use those to make devilstrand shirts (either type, doesn't matter) and pants for the great protetion they provide. I will also make devilstrand dusters, but they are secondary. I have 600+ alpaca wool, so I could use those for dusters and get a whopping +51°C heat protection, however my jungle tile isn't very hot and heat waves don't reach 60°C - if I really need to I just make alpaca wool cowboy hats and they give +27,2°C heat protection, which is... pretty insane (twice of a normal duster, what the heck?).

Late game I don't really know what I'm going to do. Do bullets count as sharp weapons? Or does sharp/blunt only matter for melee attacks? Hyperweave doesn't seem that much better than devilstrand, or am I mistaken?

I personally started with some challenge, because I was new and with that I thought I could fail. Whenever you can actually fail it is a lot more fun. A lesson learned from the 2005-2010 period where game developers made everything super easy, thinking it would sell well (then came Dark Souls and made it obvious that that is BS).

I mostly used Phoebe at the start because she obviously is the storyteller for new players. I later switched to Cassandra, hoping she would make for better gameplay, but the opposite was true. She is so predictable yet her raids are just too harsh. When I have 4-5 colonists with nothing but the starting weapons she throws 6 enemies with shields and LMG/Assault Rifles at me.

In one of my tribe playthroughs I faced two ARs literally the second tiny raid, where they have only clubs and shivs usually. However, due to 5vs2 I killed them and then had those ARs for myself which made the harsh raids afterwards very manageable.

Now I'm playing a jungle tribe game with Randy Random on Rough. I feel like rough is too easy, but intense throws these brutal raids at you, it becomes an arms race instead of building your colony and I want a bit of both.

So far I enjoy Randy Random.

I enjoy ice sheet, where every single cargo drop is celebrated, and you're glad for joining wanderers because they bring 3 meals with them. Snow and temperature makes it very defensive. I also like tropical rainforest, which is a little green Hell.

You know you can harvest crops prematurely ? With most plants you need 60 or 65% maturity, and then you can use Orders - Harvest. This is how I managed to get 453 devilstrand in my first year in temperate forest.

Just curious - why do you prefer greenhouses for storing food for winter ? What's the big problem for you ?

I play Boreal all the time and use giant mountain bases. I try to use outside fields only and then go the whole winter hunting only if I run low on food. It makes the game feel more realistic and adds a difficulty level.

This pretty much. "Avoiding the mechanic" via greenhouses feels kind of bad, from a gameplay sense. It's very hard to put my finger on where the difference between dealing with the growing period is and avoiding it, but I guess even in year-around growing zones you use hydroponics, so "just building standard" with maybe some more focus on getting hydroponics early is what I mean by avoiding, while having bigger growing zones and storing food for winter is actually dealing with it.

Maybe it's simply because if you go for greenhouses you "ignore" the growing period and if you build more and store it you "use it" in a way you wouldn't in warmer biomes.

Anyway, I hear a lot of tropics here, so I might try that one next. Currently I'm on a flat/small hill arid shrubland and trying to build a non-mountain base. It's stell pretty early so I am doing fine, though I'm somewhat scared about raids. In my boreal forest game they came with like 6 people really early with superior weapons and I had no chance. Probably because I "declined" quite a few colonists with really (I mean REALLY) bad traits and stats.

I just can't deal with people who won't do hauling - it makes them so utterly worthless as a person. Especially since they can't even clean usually or cut plants which would be the other two "odd jobs" I could use every "useless" person for. Bad stats - no problem. No passions - meh. Bad traits - oh please go away. Won't do hauling and one or two of the previous points - please die.

Clicking through loads of hexagons I encountered a few boreal forests with 30 day growing period. It seems to happen when bordering a desert only.

Did anyone of you find any similarly rare biome conditions?

Unrelated question: What biome is fun to try aside from the normal temperate forest? I tried boreal forest myself, but I didn't find it to my liking. Growing period is a mechanic that I personally didn't enjoy that much - you just circumvent it with greenhouses or eventually hydroponics. Also random cold snaps killing all your corn just before harvest... followed by winter.
Currently trying out arid shrubland.

The idea behind the mood bonus was that it is generally useful to have, so all your pawns can drink a nice cup of coffee each morning. Theme: Luxury. With the tiredness thing being the main focus I feel like it's too niche. I mean, there is wake-up already. Sure, it's a hard drug, but it fills that niche.

What you could do instead is that tiredness goes up slower while under the effects of coffee, like 10-20%. So your colonists would sleep less each day and they could get more work done.

Either way, I wanted the benefit to be something generally useful so that you nearly always have an incentive to go for coffee - that is, if you have the time/space etc. for it.

Currently you can give your pawns only so much luxury. Basically a clean and well constructed base (with good floors) is all you can really do. Maybe flower pots and eventually some sculptures. But you will max out on beauty eventually. This would add another possible way to make them feel better - one that goes a completely different route than beauty.

[as mods]

Hey,
my name is Syrchalis and I work as a game designer in germany. I've been playing Rimworld for a while now, enjoying the stories it tells and am now starting to add more and more Mods.

In a lot of mods I see value, but as mods not as part of the base game. However, the idea of coffee has really interested me, because right now there seems to be no drug that fills the niche of "requires work and effort to produce, for minor benefit, but also minor risks".

My idea is the following:
Step 1:
Coffee has to be planted. The growth rate could be slow (imagine corn with less yield) or it could be hyper sensitive to soil conditions (e.g. it could maybe only grow decently fast on rich soil). -> It should not be too easy to acquire.
Step2:
After harvest it would need to be roasted, similar to like yayo and joints have to be created - which yields a long lasting item - roasted coffee beans. This could happen in the cooking station, a campfire, the crafting station or even the brewery (see later why that might be a good fit)
Step 3:
After that it would still need to be made into cups of coffee. This should happen in the cooking station, creating maybe 5 at a time. It would probably improve gameplay to make the cups of coffee rot away in 1 day with temperature having no effect on it at all.

Benefits:
+5 to mood
Reduces tiredness slightly - effect only happens when coffee is drunk without the buff active, so you can't just keep drinking coffee. (balancing reasons, not realism reasons hehe)

Risk:
Indirect risk, because you're using effort and space (possibly on rich soil) for plants that do nothing but give a small mood boost.

AI:
Pawns should drink coffee irregularly when available, similar to other drugs. Those with chemical fascination should try to have the buff up most of the time when coffee is available. Teetotalers should refuse to drink coffee.
Via the drug policies pawns can be encouraged to drink coffee (the mood threshold thing).

Role:
It's a luxury good. But not one that requires high tech, but one that is available to tribes already. Unlike beer there is no hangover, no addiction but the mood boost is much smaller and no pain reduction.


Note that I read previous topics about this idea and I know there are mods for this. This is pretty much why I am suggesting it for the base game. It adds barely any complexity, because it uses the same systems that are already in the game, and gives the interesting decision "do you want to bother with making coffee for a small mood boost (can you even? Do you have the space/rich soil for it?) or not?" It's for those who really really don't want to bother with addictions (not even from beer) but still want to give their colonists some luxury.