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Here's a small tweak that would make colony-wide time management easier.

An option to apply a temporary time scheduling to all colonists would be helpful. Having lots of manpower awake to respond to spreading wildfires or quickly harvesting when suddenly cold snaps set in would be great. An Emergency button would do just this by waking up all colonists, and even preventing sleep and recreation while toggled.

Conversely, for special occasions like Crash Day or Casual Fridays, a Day Off or Holiday button would be helpful. And a Siesta button for colonies that just got off extended draft duty would be good too.

edit: Also, Tynan you have my permission to use the custom buttons I designed free of charge!

I'm not sure if it's a bug, since it's not explicitly stated that the player should always get materials back. But considering I'd have to use 1500 silver to make a mace(75*20), and don't get any back if I smelt it down, I feel like I'm playing some weird central bank role by destroying precious metals.

And with all the thrasher raiders leaving uranium and silver knives and stuff behind that aren't really good for combat...

This stupid little suggestion has been on a list I've added to for awhile, but I thought I'd mention it with armchairs and TV incoming. I always thought the old graphic was a fine chair design, even if it wasn't type of thing you'd eat dinner in. It looked like what you might find in a futuristic office or spaceship. Even if it was just for plasteel, it could be a neat little easter egg to include.

_{on a related now, how about an Eames chair version for colonists to ponder in?}

When a colony is happy (or poor), lighting is often a waste of metal and electricity. When I build, I often find myself forgetting to place any lights aside from sun lamps. To encourage players to use indoor lights more often, local lighting could be used as a modifier for colonist work rates. Specifically, when colonists are in dark rooms they would work slower.

The simplest implementation of this change would only apply to workstations. Activities like sculpting, crafting, and cooking would all be completed slower in dark rooms. Expanding on this concept could also make medicinal, building, repair, and recreational activities affected by lighting.

_{Even philosophizing benefits from a good source of lighting. Philosopher in Meditation, probably by Rembrandt}

Would lighting just add unnecessary complexity? Currently lighting only plays a minor role in colonist moods and shooting accuracy; these are two of many reasons humans need lighting to be productive. While a colonist's surgical ability might suffer dramatically from the loss of an eye, that same colonist can perform surgery or create a masterpiece in the dark as easily as in broad daylight. Not that realism is a goal, but the concept is intuitive since everyone knows how light works.

Tieing lighting to productivity would give indoor lamps real value, encouraging players to make meaningful decisions about their bases and how they're lit.

[Modern Neurotrainers:1) Have a chance for the subject colonist to develop a passion in the given subject area, if one doesn't already exist.2) Provide a temporary mood boost.]

Caffeinated sodas rely on large amounts of sugar to balance out the extremely bitter taste of caffeine. Similarly, neurotrainers rely on triggering a variety of pleasure centers during the teaching process to allow for maximum information retention.

Initially top neurocrafters asked, "why make learning fun?" They found the secret to maximizing retention is establishing a positive connection between the learning process and positive feelings. Though some critics argued this approach made neurotrainer skills less accessible to subjects in stressful situations, laboratory studies have repeatedly demonstrated the correlation between mood boosters and information retention. As the final step in encouraging learning, the latest neurotrainers attempt to engage in permanent mood conditioning for the selected subject areas.
_
Modern Neurotrainers:
1) Have a chance for the subject colonist to develop a passion in the given subject area, if one doesn't already exist.
2) Provide a temporary mood boost.

In game, neurotrainers will become more popular as they gain more utility. This serves to counterbalance the steep cost of neurotrainers, as they cost as much as an entire new potential colonist (slave) in many cases.

In times of mood emergencies, neurotrainers also will become a last-ditch effort for keeping colonists from total mental breaks. In this way, neurotrainers would function just like buying chocolate or alcohol from a trader, albeit a more effective and expensive option.

_
Does this make neurotrainers overpowered?
No, as neurotrainers are extremely expensive. If a player wants to drop 10,000 gold on a colonist to make her proficient in multiple areas, there's nothing wrong with that. The opportunity cost is very real, and efficient production tends to favor specialization.

Would my empath get a passion to shoot?
Just like current neurotrainers, a colonist incapable of certain subject areas would remain incapable in those areas. But the mood boost would still come into play.

Now that we know more A9 features, what are your predictions for how they'll impact gameplay?

I predict:
-growing will become increasingly important to supply hops for booze and cotton for tattered clothing
-uranium will be used in artillery shell manufacturing now that it's mineable
-grenades will be super useful again personal shields

Bonus speculation:
-corn and rice used for hard alcohol alcohol
-drunk chefs causing food poisoning
-drunk or hungover doctors making catastrophic surgical errors
-rice will be growable in marsh, since fertilizer pump removed

_{a teeny-tiny mockup of the below full-map image}

Lately I've been stitching multiple screenshots together to get pictures of the entire map. Doing this at a decent resolution is even more difficult. What if there was a way to do that easily in-game?

Titles like Crusader Kings II have a function similar to this, where pressing F10 takes a picture of the the entire map, with different map filters possible.

edit: here's a zoomable full-screen map shot that would be awesome to have standard http://i.imgur.com/U5ifmAn.jpg
_{pls ignore the artifacting it's late here}

Explosions are pretty common in RimWorld. Turrets, boomrats, mortar shells, various launchers... all sorts of things routinely blow up, shattering walls, shredding flesh, evaporating corpses. But for all explosions do in game, they don't quite look the part.

Back in 2010 I remember thinking the ending of a Medal of Honor promo trailer was pretty cool. When a bomb is dropped on an enemy position, the sun is blocked out by dust and pieces of dirt and rubble pepper the player. The two takeaways for Rimworld are: a) explosions kick up dust and debris and b) dust visually alters the environment.

The first point helps players gauge the immensity of an explosion. In current RimWorld, explosions occur rapidly and leave little evidence of having happened. Assessing damage requires players to tab through any nearby units and structures. By using motes consistent with shockwaves or debris thrown outwards and into the air by explosive force, players gain a visual tool to gauge how much explosive weapons affect themselves or the enemy.

_{The MOH Experience Part 6: Danger Close, 2:52, Sept 2010}

With the addition of shells (and shell cook-offs) and relatively new rockets, explosions are going to feature even more prominently into RimWorld. A few visual aids to help players understand their impact would be neat to see.

[PLANTS ARE LAZY]

Hey guys, I've ran through things again so the numbers I present are more helpful. My original look at food production and consumption ignored plant resting time. So here's the updated version! Now 54% less inaccurate! Valid at participating locations only!

There were a number of related topics I wanted to touch on, but they're really not *that* interesting compared to all the new incoming content. There's other, cooler stuff to spreadsheet. Plus correcting the numbers to account for plant resting was a pretty big mistake to fix.

Anyways:


PLANTS ARE LAZY
If you're not familiar with plant resting, it means that plants can only grow for 13 hours each day, from hours 6 to 19. In other words, only 54% of a day is 100% productive for a plant, and that's assuming lighting and heating are adequate.

Below, potential columns represent plants being able to grow nonstop. Actual accounts for 11-hour daily breaks from growing. Plants grow roughly 50% slower in reality than in the numbers I originally presented; the effect is immediately apparent.

Figure 1 - Plant productivity with and without rest periods


Figure 2 - How many plants to keep a colonist fed

Not a whole lot of content, but still important if you're starving. Here are two simple takeaways:
-a colonist needs 6 potato plants growing in normal soil, made into simple meals, to stay fed.
-one hydroponics table can roughly feed one colonists with simple potato meals.

[attachment deleted due to age]

I'm curious, after hoarding organs across several playthroughs and never using them (aside from maybe selling some to traders). My colonists never seem to get damaged or diseased organs that require transplants. Am I just lucky?

With mood penalties and the expense of non-herbal medicine I've started straying from organ harvesting completely.

[http://imgur.com/a/I0xGx]

Hey guys, last night I tried to survive in the coldest environment I could find. Below's a short album with commentary, and also some takeaways.

http://imgur.com/a/I0xGx

Survival:
-Planning is most important. Heated space and resources are limited on the tundra, so I had to be careful about wasting them. I was lucky a metal deposit was near the geothermal heat.
-Parkas are easier to take than craft. Not seen is some cotton I grew, but honestly food was more important, as it was harder to get than parkas. Just one is enough to let a colonist haul in survival meals scattered across the map without collapsing.

Combat:
-Super-extreme cold is kind of helpful against raiders, as you can (rightfully) outlast them in a firefight.
-Conversely, my colonists had a lot of bloody melee fights with raiders who'd try to set the place alight. I had a few rushes against me where I assume raiders were targeting the warm/safe real estate.
-Released prisoners often manage to make it off the map before freezing, even naked in -50F weather. Or at least all mine did.

In the Future:
-Geothermals power stations release a lot more heat than regular vents. Next time I'll just put time and resources into building one instead of heaters and other power sources.
-Temperatures in super cold regions seem to rise a lot in the summer, even more than in less cold regions. Could be useful for stockpiling.

_{edit: the Rimworld forums don't like � degree signs apparently}

[How Does it Work?]

^{Everyone loves nutrient loaf.}

Rather than allow colonists to wander through kitchens or dig around in supply rooms to get fed, many colonies designate food serving stations. Inspired by automat restaurants found on midworld planets, these stations are intended to keep food warm, maintain sanitary serving conditions, and give colonists convenient access to food.

How Does it Work?
In Rimworld, the meal station is a way of designating what meals should be eaten by colonists. Meals held at meal stations have the highest priority for consumption. Haulers stock older meals in meal stations to avoid waste from meals expiring. Meal stations also stop colonists from eating valuable emergency survival rations or other meals randomly scattered across the map.

Meal stations require a modest amount of metal, with more metal investment required if hoppers are used. A meal station consumes around 100-200 watts to keep the machine sanitary and the food warm; when power is lost the machine may build up "dirt" that needs cleaning nearby. Meal stations can usually hold all types of meals.

^{"pls get out of my kitchen and use the meal station thx"}

Levels of Implementation
I. Basic Tool
The meal station is a piece of furniture that functions just like a small storage zone, but only for meals. Any meal that is placed there receives the highest priority for consumption from colonists. Players can select the types of meals allowed in a meal station.

II. Better Logistics
Meals are automatically hauled to the meal station, with older meals receiving highest priority. Older meals are automatically pulled first from meal stations. Meals stations can have an adjustable ingredient search radius to give the player more control.

III. New Game Mechanic
Meals are automatically put in hoppers adjacent to the meal station. This gives hoppers a use besides nutrient paste creation! Meals put in the meal station are automatically labelled "HOT," giving a small, brief happy thought to the colonists that eat them. Hot meals have the highest priority for eating.

^{It's all just squares, maaan.}

But Why Meal Stations?
Meal stations offer a straightforward way to direct colonists to food.

Colonists and food already have a complicated relationship, and it's not uncommon for colonists to self-starve while retrieving meals on the other side of the map, doctoring, wardening prisoners, etc. Plus the new update introduces some cool new mechanics, like unrefrigerated raw food spoilage, that add another logistical hurdle to keeping colonist hunger satiated.

Meal stations will allow colonists to waste less time hunting for food or randomly pulling meals from stockpiles. Meal station priority also solves the problems created by unforbidding meals dropped by raiders or seiges.

[Some say the world will end in fire,Some say in ice.From what I've tasted of desireI hold with those who favor fire.But if it had to perish twice,I think I know enough of hateTo say that for destruction iceIs also greatAnd would suffice.]

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
-Robert Frost

I hate this cold weather. At least it could be colder, right?

So here are some traits colonists (and raiders, and friends) exhibit in response to the temperatures being introduced in the uncoming patch! (I guess most of these are spectrum traits?)

^{The Bed - Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec}

1. Snow Angel - NAME loves being in the snow, HE feels revitalized by the cold. +7 mood modifier when in snow
2. Cryogenic Dreamer - NAME misses cryptosleep. HE feels rested when sleeping in cold rooms. +10% rest in cold rooms
3. Sun Child - "Sun's out, guns out." NAME loves the sun, the warmer the better. +3 mood modifier in hot temperature
3. Iceworlder - NAME spent several years near an Iceworld, HE feels most comfortable in the cold now.
4. Sweaty - NAME thrives in warm weather, for some reason. HE gets cold easily, too. +4 mood modifier above warm temperature threshold, +1 melee combat
5. Thermophile - The warmer the better. NAME somehow never gets too hot. -3 modifier when cold, no heat penalties

^{A winter warrior in his natural habitat}

6. Winter Warrior HE has trained for these conditions. Snow and ice are friends. Winter is coming. +15% accuracy in cold
7. Warm/Cold blooded - NAME loves warm/cold temperatures. +5 mood modifier when above temperature threshold
8. Overdresser/Underdresser - NAME always puts a little too much/little on. HE always finds he's just barely too hot/cold. -2 mood modifier for warm/cold temperatures
9. Numb - NAME never knows what the temperature is, HE doesn't care. +3 temperature mood offset
10. Cold blooded - NAME always feels cold. +5 when hot, -5 when cold

I'm a huge fan of stone's inflammability, but still consume vast amounts of wood for doors and rest-efficient beds. Planting trees to harvest later led me to look up the numbers. The results are pretty straightforward.

While all values have similar daily wood production when harvested at max growth, Cecropia takes the fewest days to grow and has the smallest amount of harvest work. The only downside to Cecropia is it's the ugliest tree.

I'd also like to look at harvesting at less than 100% growth for trees, but I can't get my in-game results to match up with calculations. Harvesting sub-maximal amounts from trees is attractive given the long growth times involved, and since new trees almost immediately go to 5% growth (perhaps tied to the base tree stats?). Does anyone have insight on how harvesting from trees that are less than 100% mature works?

Excited to see how winter and summer might affect the availability of lumber in the next patch.

[But seriously, how would it work?]

Despite eating raw meat, getting shot, and dragging rotting corpses around through bloodstained landscapes, nothing fazes a colonist's stomach. Is a simple mood penalty from nausea enough? No, let's throw up a few ways to expand on nausea in RimWorld.

^{I had to eat raw food. Can't we cook it, or at least synthesize some nutrient paste? -12}

The elegant part of vomit is it's an immediate visual cue to the player that something's wrong. Here's some of the Fun that could easily happen:

1. Sick colonists could vomit everywhere!
2. Seriously wounded colonists could hurl everywhere!
3. Haulers dealing with corpses and human meat could upchuck all over the place!
4. Sensitive colonists could see other colonists puking, and start puking! Everywhere!
5. Colonists with cabin fever could get sick when they see the sun!
6. Sleep deprived colonists pass out in a pool of barf!
7. Awful cooks give food poisoning, occasionally!
8. A new way to reload!

^{"I'M NOT FEELING SO WELL"}

But seriously, how would it work?
The basic approach to vomit would simply associate it with certain sicknesses. Vomit would be just like blood or normal dirt; stuff that makes rooms uglier and gets cleaned by cleaners. Causing sickness to generate additional cleaning would make prompt medicinal treatment more important, also making medicine and doctors more valuable.

A step up from this would be to introduce a nausea value. Disgusting environmental things, emotional stresses, and physical diseases and ailments could all increase nausea levels. Some characters could have iron stomachs, while others are more sensitive. Prolonged vomiting would yield negative thoughts and chunk down food saturation values.

What does it bring to the game, though?
Nausea adds dimension to colonists. A colonist gets her first kill? He's on the edge of a nervous breakdown? A colonist with level 1 cooking fails miserably? Every barfing colonist tells a small story about what's wrong in a colony.

I hope you enjoyed considering vomit in RimWorld! Think I'll go play some Rollercoaster Tycoon now...

[Types of EMR Exposure]

Electromagnetic radiation (EMR) from things like solar flares is awful: Rimworld has no real counterplay against EMR aside from warm bodies with guns and food stockpiles. But let's be realistic in the damage EMR would do to a colony in the dark future of the 22nd century. By acknowledging the problems that would surface and fleshing them out, there's some serious Fun to be found.

As have other scientists, I found that an adaptation to the apparatus occurred and that, after some time, I developed a dependence on the apparatus. Removal of the apparatus would result in my inability to see properly, as well as sensations of nausea, dizziness and disorientation.
-Steve Mann, Wearable Computing Researcher

For the countless bionic eyes and limbs installed in Rimworld colonists, EMR has an incapacitating effect. While small bursts cause controllable system reboots, continuous exposure has been linked to catastrophic bionic failure.

^{When was the last time your hand almost killed you?}

Types of EMR Exposure
I) Light: Brief exposure. Colonists bionic equipment reboots quickly, downtime rarely exceeding several minutes. Interruption in sensory implant feeds may stun dependent colonists for a few seconds.
II) Intermediate: Constant exposure. Bionic equipment unable to function while affected.
II) Severe: Prolonged, intense exposure. Bionic equipment severely crippled. Biological user damage may occur to users in the form of electric shocks, burning, and crushing and pinching damage.

Mechanical Prognoses
Type I and II exposure to EMR usually has little permanent effect on limbs. Cheap or black market limbs may experience some long-term loss of functionality, but can usually be reliably repaired. Psychological effects of type I and II exposure may manifest heavily in prosthophilic users, who may lose faith in their bionic ability. This psychological effect has been tied to a temporary user-side reduction in operational functionality for some colonists.

Type III exposure is invariably tied to bionic equipment damage. Even military-grade limbs tends to require repair. While often not necessitating total replacement, high levels of craftsmanship are usually needed to a restore a limb to full operational capacity. Limbs and implants with type III exposure will function at a limited capacity until repaired. Temporary user-side functionality impairment is most likely in type III scenarios. Impaired user bionics has also been linked to depressive thoughts.

^{NEED A HAND?}

Sounds Terrible, How Balanced Is It?
Terrible's a two-way street! Add bionics to raiders in the game, and those raiders with bionics have distinct weaknesses. Now EMPs have a real purpose other than to stun mechanoids for a second until they evolve. Causing solar radiation and EMPs to have severe effects on colonists, not just furniture, is a huge game changer. Players now have more choices to make when planning and responding to threats.

To be honest, what I'd like to see most in conjunction with EMR bionic damage is an expensive solution to shield from EMR radiation, but I understand that could be a lot of work.

Bionics could be made stronger, or additional classes could be introduced into the game to counteract this new weakness. Right now the only downside to bionics is prosthophobes and availability. Otherwise I'm more than happy to have 120% efficient colonists everywhere. Imagine your bionic superwarrior crippled and needing repairs after solar flares. Fun!

[The Purpose of Bank Vaults]

^{Bank Vault Door - Gus Heinze}

Bank robberies are a staple of the old west. Between scyther invasions and psychotic boomrat waves, Rimworld's space western vibe often gets overshadowed. Flush with deserters from a nearby civil war, outlaw gangs are looking to pull off a bank robbery. Can the colonists stop them?

The Purpose of Bank Vaults
Bank vaults let colonists store silver in bulk, and also make it available to trade. Commercial vaults in Rimworld contain simple telesyncs that allow certified orbital traders limited access to a safe's contents.

While orbital beacons are used for many cheap commodities, bank vaults are used for expensive and fragile products. Vaults require a small amount of power to operate, and usually are usually protected behind plasteel doors. Bank vaults are commonly used for large amounts of precious metal reserves like silver and gold.

A safe's ability to resist outside attacks depends on the material it's made of. A 1x1 vault has a rough capacity of 1,200 units of silver bullion.

Robberies
While bank vaults provide an enormous amount of utility, some orbital traders are rumored to sell the approximate locations of active vault telesync codes to criminal enterprises.

While robbery methods vary, the most popular method across Rimworlds is brute force. Gangs will break through outer defenses and immediately fight their way into the room holding the safe. Other times heists consist of two groups: a sapper crew that slowly chews through walls and rock and a screening assault force that distracts the defenders from the impending breach.

Common methods of securing safes involve redundant security doors leading to a small room bored into hard rock. These vault rooms sometimes contain backup batteries to supply nearby doors and turrets, as well as provide the safe with transmitting power in the event of an emergency. Colonies with vaults under siege have been known to sell off silver below market value to nearby traders, rather than lose it all to raiders.


Summary

I feel stupid leaving really valuable stuff sitting out in the open next to an orbital beacon, but I also don't want to have to spend loads of time hauling expensive goods from place to place just so I can trade with them. The bank vault offers a nice solution to the incongruity of storing valuable stuff outside next to orbital beacons.

Having a vault also gives raiders a concrete purpose. It could also introduce a rationale for wall-breaching raider activities that could circumvent killboxes; they'll break down walls, but slowly, and only to get to safes.

A small amount of power consumption and necessity for shielding forces the player to make choices between utility and expansion. Even cooler, in the event of an attempted robbery, colonies could also allow raiders to breach the safe and abscond with silver rather than fight to the death and risk kidnapped colonists.

Optional Changes to Make Bank Vaults More Useful
-Make silver more fragile so storing it in the open requires care.
-Require an orbital beacon nearby or withing range of the vault, encouraging safe placement towards the front of colonies instead of deep beneath mountains.
-Vault types (like stone, metal, plasteel) for resource economy.
-Vault sizes (1x1, 1x2, 2x2), either acting as furniture or as a structure component.
-Vault capacities, to determine how useful vaults are and how many to make.
-Allow vaults to be the *only* way to sell silver or X commodity.
-Allow precious items like AI cores or master weapons to be stored in vaults.
-Slow down movement speed if hauling or carrying silver.

I hope this was interesting to think about!

[Boring Numbers]

Lately I've been thinking about the relationship between food and work (I'm really excited about refrigeration and rotting raw foods coming next patch). I thought I'd try to neaten up and share some of the numbers I've gathered (though I'm sure many of you have a good idea of the numbers involved already). One question I had was how much food I needed to keep one colonist fed, below.

Boring Numbers: I used 80 saturation as a rough benchmark. Saturation is lost at .004 a tick, with 20,000 ticks in a day, for -80 lost each day cycle. Hunger strikes when only 30 saturation is left (70 saturation is lost). More saturation (let's say 10) may be lost as the colonist walks to the stockpile, grabs food, and wanders away to eat it because your colony doesn't have tables, you monster. I mention these assumptions to point out this chart doesn't cover all the nuances involved, such as colonists saturation never exceeding 100, or the productivity impact of colonists eating foods that don't satisfy their hunger 100%. Inputs represent the raw food involved in preparation.

THE INTERESTING STUFF:
-Basically, a single colonist averages just under a meal a day. One takeaway here is food preparation adds significant value to raw foods, essentially cutting the amount needed to feed a colonist in half. You can see that not only is eating raw food often unsatisfying to colonists, but it requires a lot of material just to satisfy the equivalent of a meal.

-Another application of this chart I've used is your starting 3 colonists can survive off of 24 survival meals for 10 days; I usually find a similar number scattered around the map.

-I was surprised to see a lavish meal uses just as many inputs as eating raw food (of course this ignores mood effects, meat vs plants used, etc). This, plus the cap on a colonist's saturation at 100, means lavish meals are pretty wasteful for purely hunger. Though Fine meals use raw foods most effectively, this doesn't take into account how long hunting takes and how unreliable it can be.

Here's the other side of the coin, growing the edibles. This should give an idea of how terrain affects output. Days to grow is used to figure out how many plants need to be planted for a colonist to be fed. Something to keep in mind is average output can be unreliable. Looking at worst yield can be used to figure out a minimum planting level. This also doesn't take blight into account.

The rough number of active plants needed to keep a colonist fed for a day results in the table above. I multiplied the Inputs Used for X Meals for X Days (table 1) by the corresponding Yield/Day values (table 2).

The takeaway for this graph is how many plants you need to average for each colonist, depending on the meal type used. If you're feeding your colonists raw berries on marsh, for example, you'll need to average 5.8 bushes per colonist, best case scenario.

The utility here comes in estimating how many plants you'll need to get by in the desert, or in reckoning how many hydroponic tables you'll need at a minimum (worst case) if you want to devote more of your production capacity to cash crops. As a rule of thumb, you can probably also get by with one hydroponics table (4 plants) per colonist, or 4.25 tables if you want to insure against (only) bad harvests.


Anyways, thanks for reading! I know this is a wall of text and numbers, so I hope it was at least somewhat readable. If you see mistakes anywhere please let me know! Here's the workbook I used, on Google drive, if you want to see what I used.

I realize these numbers don't cover all the variables that come into play in Rimworld, but I think these are definitely a start to making decisions with data. Let me know what topics you think deserve additional attention.

^{Here are some areas I'm working on:
-effect of blight and solar flares on minimum food productivity
-economic meal stockpiling, taking spoilage into consideration
-selling meals to traders versus raw foods and cash crops
-mixed food options
-trading off rich, normal, and marshy soil by distance}

Updated last two tables by removing min and average yield values since we're assuming plants don't get harvested til 100% grown. Thanks to Cimanyd for catching that!

[BUT YOU SAID FORAGING SOLVES TURTLING]

Except for the rare times my colony's starving, there's really no purpose to the wild edibles that scatter the map. Hydroponics tables and growing areas are convenient and reliable. They're nicer than having to take the time to hunt down and select various agave and berry plants. Let's introduce foraging, to make these poor neglected plants useful.

The idea is this: enable grow areas to be set to forage.

^{Ex.1 it should look exactly like this}

At its simplest form, foraging would serve as an option to gather all the naturally-occurring plants in an area. Just drag a grow zone, set it to forage, and colonists will treat the zone just like any other growing area. Just drag, set to forage, and colonists will harvest whatever natural plants emerge in the area.

BUT YOU SAID FORAGING SOLVES TURTLING
It does! Foraging rewards colonies that have lots of open space. There's nothing to forage in a cave. A colony surrounded by open land is the best scenario for foraging.

Even more important are the labor implications of foraging. What's more, foraging only involves plant cutting. So your high-level bionic cooks or craftsmen don't have to be good gatherers to keep the colony's hunger away. Alternatively, your colony could dedicate its precious labor and energy to cultivating cash crops (or dandelions) and choose to only forage for food.

GATHERER? BUT I HARDLY KNOW HER
There are a few ways to spice up foraging too. Upcoming herbal medicines³ could be only (or most easily) found in the wild. Colonists could find a use for cut grasses. Space debris food that falls from space could automatically be un-forbidden if it falls in forage areas. The possibilities aren't endless, but they are pretty cool.

Foraging gives the player a reason to leave an area undeveloped. Banished uses this mechanic for its gatherers and herbalists.


LESS COOLER ALTERNATIVES WITH THE SAME IDEA
Another option is to introduce a gathering table, or other piece of furniture. This would be an easy way to regulate how much foraging goes on, working independently or in tandem with forage areas.

The driving ideas of both could also be expanded to logging and hunting. Set an area to logging, trees will automatically get cut down as they mature. Animals that enter the area are automatically hunted. Stopping the tedious manual assigning that plagues hunting and logging is a great step to inviting colonies out into the open.

_{Ex.2 example gathering table (but grow fields are probably a better option but this is still cool)}

Don't like "foraging?" Alternative names: harvesting, artisan gathering, scavenging, freeganism, gleaning

What do you think? I'd love to take advantage of all the wildlife on the map, but I'm so tired of having to manually select every delicious shrub (and animal) I see.

³Nov 3 changelog

[Being cryopreserved after death is the second-worst thing that could happen. The worst thing is dying without being cryopreserved.]

Being cryopreserved after death is the second-worst thing that could happen. The worst thing is dying without being cryopreserved.
- Ben Best, Why Life Extension

We've all had a colonist who gets really torn up. He loses his stomach, has his neck torn open, his pelvis is smashed into a million pieces. He'd be passed out from the pain, except he's already in a vegetative state from an overdose of bullets to the face. Despite having the finest crashlanded doctors on the planet, the colony can't normally do anything to save him.

For this reason colonists began putting their nearly-deceased peers in repurposed cryosleep pods. Cryosleep pods had always been within reach, after a moderate amount of research. Why hadn't colonies used them medicinally? After a few short but terrifying experiments, it turned out that homemade cryonics are tough to use. The medical cryosleep pod found in most modern Rimworld colonies is a tenuous mix of old spacer tech and desperate medical experimentation.

Medical cryosleep pods, commonly known as medical pods, are used for 1) medical treatment for patients with acute trauma and 2)long-term cryonic preservation.

Medical Cryosleep Pods are Complicated
-Medical pods require a heavy investment of time and material to research and construct. Early colonial researchers spent years just understanding how to reprogram basic longsleep modules that administered the pod's chemical and climate settings. The chemical slurry applied to healthy cryosleep users often served as a coup de grace to ailing colonists. That problem's mostly fixed.

-Medical pod variants are fragile and difficult to control. The rooms the pods are located in often have to be cooled to very low temperatures to ensure a stable climate inside the machines. This task is particularly difficult since active medical pods are known to run hot, while the chemical slime inside is flammable. Poorly-cooled medical pods have been known to erupt into toxic funeral pyres.

-Saving the patient's most vital organs routinely require making sacrifices elsewhere. Staving off brain damage, for example, often involves diverting circulation from limbs and ancillary organs. Best-case treatment scenarios often lose several fingers and toes.

-Colonists treated with medical pods tend to suffer from a range of physical side effects. These include: short-term blindness, cold burns, sensitivity to heat, reduced organ capability, nerve pain, loss of feeling, chillblains, and hypopigmentation.

-Medical pods require little medical expertise to maintain once set up and activated. The earliest recorded colonial use of a medical pod was when a colony's doctor, a former glittersurgeon, elected to be put into longsleep until another medical professional was available to operate on his congestive heart failure.

Cheating Death
Colonists are generally glad to see one of their own saved from death, regardless of whatever sticky quality of life issues that follow. Moods across the colony are very slightly improved when a functional medical pod is available.

Conversely, a small pool of colonists have mixed reactions. Fundamentalist luddites are opposed to a colony operating a medical pod. Other colonists don't mind medical pods, but don't want to personally undergo advanced resuscitative steps. Though there's nothing to stop colonists from putting dying peers into cryosleep against their will, it can negatively impact moods across the colony.


I hope this was interesting to read. I'd love to see an experimental last-ditch, dangerous piece of medical equipment in the game!