Messages

I'd never really noticed before, so I tried to reproduce it by setting up some hydroponics farms with hauling disabled (I also gave the colonists survival meals so they wouldn't eat any potatoes). Here's a picture of the results: http://i.imgur.com/qfgGjU6.png

While many of the amounts were cleanly divisible by 4.5, some amounts weren't, and the totals weren't either. Is it just a weird rounding thing, or am I missing something else?

Good question! I totally forgot about that since I rarely use paste.

So basically a 10% reduction in inputs changes usage from 10 to 9.
http://i.imgur.com/NqNYHTM.png

It turns nutrient paste into (just barely) the most saturation-efficient form of food there is, needing around 4% fewer potato plants (2.7 vs 2.6) to maintain daily saturation.

Gnomoria has a somewhat related time-based system for military guard duty, but it's based on time of day instead of day of the week. A unit may be assigned to stand guard duty from 6pm-11pm, for example. A similar feature in Rimworld would be cool, where colonists work certain times and sleep/recreate others.

[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!

Honestly I wouldn't expect Rimworld on Steam at least until the next patch, and that will probably be some weeks from now since the call for public testing hasn't gone out (also because the patch will add a ton of content).

On the flip side, Valve asking Tynan to stop distributing Steam key promises is probably an indication Rimworld is nearing its Steam release date.

Items and people will now burst into flame if in an extremely hot room.

As someone else mentioned, it's also pretty handy for forming stockpiles around beacons because even if you have a beacon selected, it'll select the freshly made stockpile when you designate it. Use it for sun lamps too

This is one of the first things I started using the planning zones for. I've even used it a little to outline turret and weapon ranges (then I fill them in the zones with flowers).

The response that foraging wouldn't currently affect turtlers is mostly on target; I think the thing to keep in mind is the impact foraging could have on gameplay in future patches where the game will have more choices.

For example, energy demand is set to increase in the next patch, as climate control becomes a thing. Having less spare energy available means hydroponics will be less viable than they currently are. As other elements are introduced into the game (eg art, herbal medicine, and weapon crafting), colonies are going to have new alternatives to the spamming crops for silver we see in the game now, making opportunity cost for farming more expensive. The stations involved with the new features, and buildings like turbines, will also increase the material opportunity cost for choosing farming, instead of other things.

Holing up isn't in and of itself a bad thing, but Tynan's definitely set on minimizing it, what with sieges, crashed AIs, etc. Making the outside world easier to draw plant/meat/lumber resources from expands the scope of the used map, and offers the player a choice instead of making intensive farming a foregone conclusion.

[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!

This one's pretty simple and not too important: make devilstrand cloth red!

It's weird that all devilstrand clothing is red, but when harvested devilstrand yields white cloth. As it has the same white image, devilstrand cloth is also indistinguishable from cotton.

I imagine it's adding a different option for euthanasia, since that will have a penalty in the next patch (and execution too, I imagine). Starving a prisoner to death might also have a similar penalty.

Alternatively, this could be Tynan putting foundation in place for the future/distant relations module

The reason it's like this is because Valve policy doesn't allow us to promise Steam keys to people indefinitely. They seem to be generally cool about it when it's just for a Kickstarter or something, but after a while policy kicks in. They're running a business and they only make money off Steam sales, so I see their position on this.

I'm sorry for creating a bit of heartbreak about this. I'm going to see if I can get keys for people who may have missed the official deadline, but I definitely can't promise anything. Obviously I want to give as much as possible! But Valve's policies do win in this situation.

Regardless, everyone will always get all future updates at the same time, whether on or off Steam.

http://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/2m90ma/why_wont_i_get_the_steam_key_if_i_bought_it_after/

TL;DR Valve doesn't allow for Steam keys to be distributed indefinitely. Non-Steam will still be updated.

I'd love to see it!

Where the heck is that gif from?

Cabin in the Woods. Great movie, it has a super SCP vibe to it. Imagine boomrats flooding in through unpowered doors...

This would be cool to see, especially as a way of modulating temperature with the new climate changes incoming.