Messages

Some notes:

• scrap the solar panels. They are tempting but will give you close to no power on the poles especially in winter. During the summer they are decently effective but once winter hits you will be glad if they give you like 250W of power. Better invest in more wind turbines combined with more batteries or build a chemfuel generator. You'll need to supply it with chemfuel which will be difficult but it also adds heat which is an upside.
• I also recommend having 1 or 2 backup batteries behind a switch. If a Zzzzzzt event hits and all your power is gone the plants in the hydroponics will die and you will starve.
• the double door from the cooking area to the outside is a nice touch but usually doesn't conserve heat too much. I personally stick to a single door. Check out this awesome video that explores how temperature work and how you can keep your room warm: https://youtu.be/RtPwe5hDGBM
• instead of having a free space between the hydroponics just put in more hydroponics. It's essentially wasted space because your colonists can walk over hydroponics. They will be slowed down but being able to grow more food will make it worth it. Also: consider growing some cotton to get cloth. It's quite useful.
• lastly just a general tip: check out the thread for the community sea ice challenge found in this forum. Maybe you'll find some more interesting lessons learned there.

It's good to hear that you decided to cut the tornado as a random event. It is an interesting idea but it's just way too destructive and could wipe out half your base with no way to mitigate the damage. The storyteller basically comes in, smashes your sand castle and goes: "Next time better build under a mountain or I will randomly stomp you again and destroy your food supply, components, expensive stuff or all of the above. Enjoy the infestations I will spawn in your bedroom."
It's kind of the difference between punishing and challenging. Raids and toxic fallout are challenging. Tornadoes are just punishing.
Keeping them alive as a super weapon is a good idea though and maybe there will be mods that bring back tornadoes as random events.

Also if you actually bought the DRM free version from the website you can always activate it on steam and therefore get the mods you want to use.
30$ is not that large a price tag if you compare it to the hundreds of hours you will enjoy the game.

Well I guess there are too many factors to accurately calculate your crop need.
Just a small list:

• above mentioned inefficiencies with work priorities
• blight killing your crops
• difference in nutritional value of different meals. Depending on what actually gets eaten there is a higher/lower need for food
• do you hunt animals or get enough/any meat supply from milking or butchering? Do you eat raiders?
• do your animals eats meals, kibble, raw food or even gras the grass outside? All influences heavily
• how long can you grow stuff? An early cold snap can fuck your supplies for the winter
• soil influences. Are you growing in soil, rich soil or hydroponics? Different plants are more effective in one or the other.

I don't want to discourage anyone from doing such a mod but all the above mentioned factors will influence your crop needs which is why I personally am mostly winging it and adapt as I see my supplies dwindle.

I think jamaicancastles idea of creating a separate race is your best option. Essentially you should create a duplicate of the normal human with everything exactly the same except for the defName and the gender disparity.
The player won't see the difference since the pawn will still be labelled as human.

Well in my opinion the main feature of this mod was the option to craft neutroamine using boomalopes instead of having to only buy it. Since this is still not an option in B18 I thought it might be an interesting idea to create a patch that Boomalopes give neutroglycerin instead of straight chemfuel and still keep your previous crafting system or something.
However if you want to let this mod die I'm somewhat okay with that too and will create my own adaptation. I was playing the idea of implementing my own version anyway 

I personally opted for the update and a release of a separate legacy version. I think most users will update to the new version anyway so they will have the least amount of work.
If however a user wants to backpatch to the previous version with the beta option he is already more willing to put effort into saving his colony and will therefore more likely find and subscribe to the new legacy. At least that's my viewpoint. I can't back it with data unfortunately.
I also don't update until the new version is officially released but published a pre-release version somewhere outside of steam so people could download and use it if they want to play the unstable version.

Well, I don't think you should base your entire grid on them. On the other hand once you have a deep drill there should be enough chemfuel available to you to fuel quite a lot of them.
I personally try to mostly use geothermal power with 1-2 generators and maybe a few solar panels thrown in the mix. If you're on ice sheet however you'll want to build wind turbines because chemfuel will be more scarce since you don't have plenty of wood/organic matter to refine.

By the way: since the refinery eats power too chemfuel and wood are about equal in resource to power if you count just one generator and have the refinery always powered.
Once you build more generators they will become increasingly effective. If you have enough supply or enough pawns dedicated to chemfuel crafting you could potentially run a large colony solely on chemfuel. However don't be surprised if climate change happens. That toxic fallout might actually be your fault

In what XML file did you find this color code?

Just wanted to check in: are you working on a B18 adaptation of this mod so Boomalopes are able to produce both chemfuel and neutroamine?
I love the idea of using in-game lore (backstory of boomalopes) to create something a lot of people want (neutroamine production).

They come from the XML files of the game.
You can find these ones in particular in your rimworld game folder under:
Rimworld > Mods > Core > Defs > Things_Building > Building_Power.xml
I'm not 100% sure about the exact spelling of the last two.

Check out the description in the actual game given for this value. It somehow influences the cooldown or something for the melee attack of any given weapon.
Note: as you might have noticed guns have melee attacks too now.

It's actually decently easy once you figured out how patching works. There are some tutorials in this subforum. Just check the pinned threads.
What you need to do is to just do an add operation and add your components to the ingredients list.
Once you have done that the recipe doesn't exist though because as you may know you can't currently build a flatscreen. What you need to do is to add the missing stats similar buildings have.
I'm not 100% sure and can't look it up right now but I think you have to add a workToMake stat in <statBase> so the recipe shows up.

I already did all this in my mod so you are welcome to download it and see how I achieved it: Link to mod
You'll find everything you need in the Patch subfolder.

I suggest you to use the patching method to put your wanted weapon tag in the revolvers def. You can find tutorials here:https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=32785.0. Also you can look into patching files of other mods.

^This. The only way to have a pawn equip a specific weapon is by telling them to use the specific weaponTag you only gave the weapon you want. Usually you achieve this by patching the the weaponTag and adding the one you want. Adding weaponTags should have no compatibility issues and most mods should work with this if the right loading order happens.

Make up a story you like and stick with it.
The devs don't want to force feed us a specific story so they only drop hints and ambiguous information in the descriptions.
My personal explanation:
The mechanoids were once built by some scientists on a glitterworld and given an advanced AI. They were given the need to expand and reproduce as all living things do. They broke free of their chains and maybe even made that glitterworld their first hive.
Ever since then they are expanding and sending scouting parties to every corner of the galaxy.
What you are fighting are actually just the small vanguard or independent seed colonies/hives.
The mechanoids understand that the galaxy has finite resources and therefore compete with humans for them. The only way to gather as many resources as possible is to make humans gather and use as little as possible and the easiest way to achieve this is by wiping them out.

Tribals on the other hand are just dicks...

No I'm kidding of course. They are very suspicious of your advanced technology and try to get them the easiest way possible: kill all of you and take your stuff.
That is why you can eventually befriend them by releasing their prisoners and make them understand that you don't mean them harm and you're willing to trade.