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I have heard the phrase "Void Gods" before, but what does it mean? Is it referring to the AI Storyteller?

https://i.imgur.com/tjVBqHf.jpg

It's probably a reference to the Warhammer 40k void/warp/immaterium, a different dimension where all sorts of weird gods and demi-gods live, that allows a sort of wormhole travel in real space, and which tends to leak psychic energy and demons and stuff into real space. Granted RimWorld takes inspiration from a lot of sources; the Warhammer universe just happens to be one of them.

For in game hypotheticals, the warp gods might have two function: as a sort of channel for psychic energy -- what's up with all these psychic waves? -- or as a pandora's box the player can open -- let's desecrate this ancient religious site, what's the worst that could happen?

A hypothetical question: a big part of RimWorld is allowing players to develop their own emergent storylines by being purposely vague or generic. What's a good way of providing a rationale for the spaceship ending without being too heavy handed with the narrative?

Given RimWorld's scaling difficulty, the space ship ending is really the best case scenario for any colony. When threats eventually get big enough, like humongous raid sizes, the only way for colonists to survive is to leave.

For a more lore-centric reason for leaving, cryosleep does seem to offer a lot of answers. To someone from a glitterworld, used to a super high standard of living, spending millenia unconscious in space might be preferable to a slow death on an undeveloped RimWorld.

I'd guess family might have to do with the established factions on the map, like tribals and outlander settlements. Recruiting a captured tribal, for example, then him shooting his sibling dead might cause some Fun thoughts. And of course two brothers might become pirate leaders just as easily.

I agree with TheStache, though, I don't think human reproduction has a place in RimWorld's fast pace and scale. If someone wants to simulate what it would be like to have kids in a colony, just recruit a few old colonists with dementia.

If you want closure, you always could *accidentally* call up your neighbor factions on the communications console and insult them until they're at war with you.

And finally, insectoids. yup. ever sense I saw them vaguely mentioned in the mega scarab description I couldn't help but want em in the game. maybe as a threat akin to a ship part crashing. like a queen making a barrow and spawning warriors in till you destroy her.. did I mention I like the movie starship troopers?

You might be in luck!

Self-reproducing, spreading underground insect hives

https://ludeon.com/blog/2015/11/ongoing-progress/

[any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic]

As a whole, however, i think that most of the aspects you're proposing belong in a horror themed game, and really have no place in rimworld, which is basically rustic sci-fi.  Psychic waves are the closest thing to "magic" or supernatural that the game has, and, in my opinion, rightly so...

In science fiction there's Clarke's Third Law: any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. RimWorld is filled with magic with different names, from the metal golems called centipedes to the arcane machines players use to commune with ships in space. What if the box Pandora opens is just Roko's basilisk? A crazy AI that likes to collect colonist organs is understandable at some basic conceptual level doesn't make it any less scary. Plus void gods are semi-canon, but that's another topic.

The frontier RimWorld takes place on is especially prime for the ambiguously threatening and weird. What if hostile tribals didn't always attack, but circled your colony at night? The player would figuratively circle the wagons the same way settlers literally did. The threat is understandable but not completely obvious. And that's where odd events come into play, by shoving something unfamiliar into the player's face.

Whatever the explanation is, science or magic, seeing eyes in the dark is frightening in an entertaining way.

What about an event where the entire maps goes pitch black for a couple of days, player can't see anything that isn't illuminated by lamps, fire ect.  When colonists enter the darkness they get a huge mood debuf or general badstuff.  This would work great combined with a Scyther assault (Lets assume Scythers have thermal optics and such).  Could call it like "Dark Night" "The moon appears gone and the thick clouds are blocking all light from entering the surface.  Colonists may injure themselves in this darkness"

When I see the darkness mods this is the first thing that comes to mind. The night is dark and full of terrors! I love Don't Starve, and it does a great job with the darkness as a mechanic. I could totally see RimWorld using the darkness for something. Besides, everyone's been afraid of the darkness at least once in their life.

At mid-day, you receive an alert: Jerbear has been acting strange all day, claiming to hear faint voices calling to him, beckoning him into the wilderness beyond the colony. That night, you receive another alert, this time that Jerbear is sleepwalking toward the edge of the map. You send another colonist to arrest him, but before he can get to him Jerbear is off the edge of the map, never to be heard from again...

I like it! Couldn't possibly be related to all the ancient ruins on the map, or the pulse rifle Jerbear pillaged from them...

[Feed some details, but not too many]

^{spooooooky John Kenn}

Lots of what makes danger a compelling subject is the uncertainty. RimWorld eliminates much of this, down to the exact percentages I see of how likely a shot is to hit a target. What we need is something that goes off the rails and threatens not only the colony, but the player's imagination.

The narratives we find in historical tales are pretty scary, like Black Forest witches eating children or Aztec priests ripping out conquistador hearts on bloody pyramids. And some fates are worse than death: don't get your soul devoured by Ammit the Egyptian soul-eater! Or you might be turned into something you don't want, an unwilling shade, werewolf, vampire, or undead lich.

Now these are all predictable tropes, but many more abound in lesser-known tales and imagination. Really what makes these exotic and supernatural dangers less scary is they're quite well defined. A good threat is ambiguous and painted in broad strokes with only brief highlights of the especially horrifying. Beset by one monster -- yes that's bad -- but what if he has buddies? And what monsters scare your monster?

^{Colonists: the real monster?}

In all of this, the funny thing is RimWorld colonies are probably the most terrifying places on the planet, strewn with human meat and leather, decomposing bodies, and art commemorating gruesome victories. Not only will a colonist shoot off your leg, she'll throw you in a room, take your organs, and feed you nutrient paste made of your friends. Then immortalize it in sculpture.

Meanwhile, raiders, tribals, and mechanoids all are lethally-straightforward. Sometimes they'll kidnap a colonist -- and there's some ambiguity there -- but most of the time they'll just apply bullets or arrows until your colonists are dead. In this sense they're not entirely different from dealing with the flu or other illnesses, albeit the method of treatment varies. Adopting very clinical attitude towards them is easy.

^{Scope: dwarf the colony in size}

The suggestions:

Feed some details, but not too many
-Imagine tribals carry human flesh instead of meals in their inventory. If colonists get captured what happens to them? Possibly lunch. What a great implication.

Add some scary monsters
-The animals in RimWorld aren't that weird; they're all analogues to what you'd find on earth with the exception of boomrats and boomalopes. But boomrats don't hunger for human flesh and just do their own thing. Manhunters are a start, but some genuinely eldritch horrors are needed. Picture a warg digging up corpses or dragging its incapacitated prey away.

Hint at scope
-A giant shadow falls across the map. A group of tribals appears, but they're already fleeing. A mechanoid ship crash lands, and you find a human inside hooked up to something. None of these give specific stories, but give broad strokes that add to the emergent stories players are building.

A Fear Debuff
-Some things should scare players. I'm not suggesting re-introducing the Fear system, but fear is an intuitive emotion. In contrast to bad thoughts caused from things like psychic waves. Fear should be brief -- it's not dread -- and triggered by specific types of enemies, objects, or environments.

The void gods
Like mentioned in the kickstarter, gods are great for providing a little ex machina and the occasional punishment for hubris and lack of faith. Also a great source of curses and religious cults that go maybe just a little too far and summon something they shouldn't have.

Unbeatable odds
You know how in zombie apocalypses people are told to stay inside? More events to force a player to lock the doors and hide, just like the Maneater event. Except maneater is more an opportunity for free food than anything. Different than a raid where the threat actively destroys the colony, these lock-the-door threats should be solvable by locking the door and not opening it for any reason for awhile.

Ghosts
While Towns now rests in development hell, it did a good job incorporating spooky elements into the game. Especially ghosts, which spawned when townies were left unburied and would rampage among the living meting out violence. RimWorld wouldn't need to use the same mechanic, but imagine the shimmering outline of a dead colonist roaming during a psychic wave event. Ghosts -- or whatever their RimWorld equivalent is -- are a great recurring player in myth. Their consistent irritability, remote personalities, and aloofness are great for suggesting greater scope as well; how bad is something if it bugs someone who's already dead?

Cool ideas! I think the biggest question is how to make sure they're intuitive to players. People already struggle with the foundational concepts in RimWorld; I can see them getting confused over things like Grand Meals pretty easily. Complexity is another issue, like Limdood said.

My favorite suggestion is probably the lunge melee ability. It's intuitive and makes melee distinctive. Other games use it to nice effect to make melee fights feel dynamic and give a small gapcloser to mitigate the risk of melee fighers being shot in the face, point-blank.

There's definitely a lot of potential depth here to explore with how trade is conducted in Rimworlds, but I don't think Tynan's particularly interested in exploring it. The trading system itself is really shallow.

The question is how any particular aspect of trade could be made really interesting with minimal effort. And that's a big question that lots of trading games struggle with, and probably why they're not as popular as they once were. And being accessible to players is another big question. Imagine the howling players would do if, for example, a desperately needed food trader showed up but they player lacked the proper currency to feed his starving colony. Unfun nerf!

I think the first step is to build off whatever changes the faction system sees. Spess trade is odd and variable -- do they use blockchain credits? Weird pelts like in The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch? - planetary trade is much more intuitive and easier to understand.

Come on, Tynan's been working on the game for a few years. Ison is still working on the game, so development isn't stopped. Tynan's talked about getting burnt out before, and I'd love to see RimWorld development continue for a long time. Not just getting a Steam version and calling it quits. That means pacing is important.

Really though, this conversation's happened a few times already. Maybe a sticky is in order?

I'd be cool seeing this in my colonies. Sometimes rooms and things feel kind of bare, and a nice rug or entry mat would really tie things together. Plus cleanliness is good too.

Having timer or automated switches need to be flicked is a really cool idea!

Imagine syncing a colonist's sleep schedule so he wakes up at dawn to turn off night lights. Imagine a colonist with a room full of switches he uses every day. That sounds neat and really involves colonists with player planning.

Yeah, the room's really big for only two coolers. I wouldn't expect any noticeable change to start until you have 4+.

I think it is to make sure you don't miss them, as switching from ultra-fast to a snail pace is pretty obvious as a sign that raiders are coming.

Yeah, this is definitely why. OP, if you turn on dev mode you can probably override the speed restriction.

Getting up to a high population isn't too difficult when you capture and recruit. Those two crashed spacers you rescued, for example, could easily have been captured and recruited. The faction they come from is essentially Space so relations with it don't really matter like with actual factions.

Also you can breed tamed animals. Or more specifically, they'll breed and you'll get a notice of pregnancies in the second trimester.

Just a heads up, turrets explode when they get damaged too much. The blast radius of the turret you have will probably take out that adjacent wall unless it's made of stone.