Messages

All of those would be cool solutions, but there are a few mods that help the caravan process in a different way. 

Set-Up Camp allows you to make a mini-settlement where you can build shelter, hunt and gather, etc, before moving on. 

RimCities generates actual cities that you can visit. 

Giddy-Up Caravan, part of the Giddy-Up series allows your colonists to ride animals while caravaning, which can double your movement speed or more, if you've got a fast modded animal like horses or meadow aves. 

Various animal mods add cool stuff that helps with caravaning.  Dinosauria and Megafauna add larger animals that can haul larger loads (Make sure you grab Pack Animals Extended-Dinosauria edition.  Alpha Animals has the fast Meadow Ave and the heavy Gigantaloupe, which can carry more weight than its mass would suggest.  Horses from the Animal Collab or Stand-Alone Horses are also good as both mounts and pack animals. 

There's also RimCities. 

[Call of Cthulhu: Cosmic Horrors]

Recently, I started playing with an old mod that I had turned off for a while.  It's fun and definitely worth a review. 

Call of Cthulhu: Cosmic Horrors
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=765890823


The basic premise of this mod is that it will add new Raids made up of Lovecraftian monsters.  Some of these are really cool, like the invisible Star Vampires or the tunneling Chthonian, these will add more of a horror flavor to your game and not just the same old raids you've seen a million times by now.  I like this mod because I often feel that RimWorld doesn't have a very strong sci-fi feel.  The alien creatures of Cosmic Horrors make you feel more like you're dealing with genuine aliens. 

Besides getting ripped to shreds, your colonists will be mentally assaulted as well.  Any colonist who lays eyes on a Cosmic Horror, or its corpse, will be hit with a really whopping negative moodlet.  Seeing the Horrors or eating their flesh can also cause the new Sanity Loss health condition.  This actually heightens the colonist's Conciousness at first, which might seem like a good thing, but it makes them more subject to mental breaks, and finally they will go Berzerk.  Eating the flesh raw will send you into Berzerk with one or two servings, but the kitchen can prepare "Strange Meals" which allow you to approach Sanity Loss more slowly.  If you don't want to risk your own colonists, you can sell Strange Meals for a hefty lump of silver, and if you like tormenting your prisoners, there's always that.  Even if you don't want the meat, Horrors are worth butchering for their exotic hides. 

Cosmic Horrors is cool, but it does have some weirdness.  The horrors do not adapt well to embrasures, if they don't have a specific target, they tend to stand around blankly instead of try to break down walls or doors, even if they're being shot at.  I'm not sure if the mod creator intended them to be used alongside embrasures, since their speed and strength are phenomenal.  If you don't have embrasures or space-man guns, they will rip your colony to shreds before you can get a few shots off.  However, if you do have a competent defense of embrasures, turrets and space-man guns, you can handle Cosmic Horror Raids pretty easily, which can make the mod feel a bit dull.  And if you're not the type who likes to play with madness, dealing with all the Strange Meat and horrifying corpses can be too big of burden. 



I'll add that Cosmic Horrors is part of a much larger collection of spooky and Lovecraftian horror mods.  In general, these don't appeal to me, because they are more fantasy, while I prefer sci-fi.  But there is one on that list that I do enjoy...

Rim of Madness - Bones
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1180573408


I was originally a Dwarf Fortress fan, which allowed you to extract bones when you butchered corpses, and I miss not being able to do that in RimWorld.  It especially feels right if you're playing with a lot of animal mods that add giant dinosaurs and mammoths and whatnot, it makes sense that you can build a house out of giant dinobones.  Unfortunately, this mod is wildly overpowered by default, but there is a mod option that allows you to tweak how much bone you get when butchering corpses.  I think turning it down to 10% feels balanced, but it is fun to have all your corpses exploding into building materials when you butcher them.  With research, you can also learn recipes that will turn bones into more interesting materials, Calcium Polymer, Bonecrete, Bone Porcelaine, and after a lot of research, you can combine bone plastics with steel to make plasteel.  (come to think of it, I should have included this in my list of Plastics mods...) 

Although I enjoy Rim of Madness - Bones, I typically play with this turned off because it generates clutter, can feel unfair and isn't as useful as other material mods like Carbon or Mechalit.  However, it's fun to go back to it once in a while, and if you like to give your colonies a fun theme, the bone stuff can give you some cool options.  And if you're not using one of the other gazillion ways to produce plasteel, Bones is one of the more do-able ones. 

Also, I do give this a mediocre "plays well with others" grade, since creatures like bugs or slimes will have bones as well.  In general, I think bones stand in for wood for making stuff, which generally works well with other mods. 

I like the idea.  At the moment, it feels like there isn't a whole lot of reason to attack settlements. 

I'm thinking that maybe this would be tied to some sort of "reputation" stat.  Like if you always brutally slaughter those tribal raids, maybe the tribal faction knows that they don't stand a chance of beating you in a siege and surrenders rather than fight a suicidal battle.  Since the game already tracks "wealth" maybe it could just be wealth based. 

I see potential for a lot of other related events.  Other factions could try to attack and control your vassal settlements, maybe vassals send a request for aid once in a while and they revolt if you don't defend them.  Maybe some settlements voluntarily become vassals in exchange for defense.  Maybe you could buy vassals from friendly factions, (i.e. for 10,000 silver, buy a settlement that produces 1000 silver a year, or 1000 beers a year or 1000 synthread a year or something), or maybe you could exchange vassals in a peace deal with enemies. 

It would be interesting if you could threaten a settlement for a one-time payment too.  Like, hey, gift me 1000 silver worth of goods and I won't attack you.  Actually, it would be interesting if you could bribe raiders like that yourself. 

Could be interesting if a vassal settlement gives you a discount when you shop there.  I've always wanted a way to get back at those filthy traders and their unfair prices. 

Maybe vassal settlements could send slaves as payment.  That would be an interesting way to get new colonists, and it feels like something they'd do in that kind of story. 

[UN-Colony]

Today I want to mention a particular mod that I've always had a confusing love-hate relationship with. 

UN-Colony
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1542036108


UN-Colony Furniture
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1547681343


This mod adds a lot of new buildings and textures and drastically changes the RimWorld supply chain.  In general, raw steel needs to be processed into steel plates, which are then processed into tubes, mesh grids, wires, etc to be used in other constructions.  As you progress, you create larger assembly lines and furnaces for processing metal.  There's also an assembly line that will convert stone into concrete and glass.  This I enjoy, since I always find it annoying to have a bunch of miscellaneous stone blocks lying around.  Concrete is a lot tougher than stone walls for defenses, and glass is prettier, both in-game to the pawns and I love the glass wall textures myself, though of course, they can be easily broken.  The UN-Colony also gives you a lot of auto-doors for free, without needing an extra research step.  The furniture mod adds a bunch of useful new things to add to your fortress, like electric fans and new medical equipment and more dressers and chests to boost the value of rooms. 

It all sounds great, and sometimes I forget about the downsides and play it again, but there are definitely a lot of things I just don't like about this mod.  First of all, it is SLOW.  Everything requires extensive research projects to build, and then everything requires lots of processed metals which take time to process, and it takes an extra element of micromanagement to get to the exact amount of processed materials that you need without going over, if resources are scarce or your crafters have better things to do.  And this is all on top of all the normal things you need to do in a fortress.  You still need to be researching and building weapons, mining resources and growing cocaine and so forth.  The metal processing ties up your crafters, so you've also got one less person helping out with the colony and it means that building something like the UN-C wood power generator requires both crafting and construction to get built.  A lot of the furniture is also much more expensive.  Wooden beds also require cloth, and if you live in the desert and want an alternative to wood, the steel bed requires your precious components to build.  UN-Colony's industry buildings are also much bigger than any normal workbench, so you'll need more space than you're used to. 

The UN-Colony also gets a pretty severe "Does not play well with others" grade.  Processing steel or components into the plates and whatnot you need for UN-C buildings means they are no good for guns or whatever.  There are a lot of things that require wood, and they won't take alternatives like bamboo or c-composite from other mods.  To some extent, it doesn't really play well with Vanilla RimWorld.  You can go through this long production chain to make the UN-C wood generator, but the mod doesn't prevent you from building the vanilla wood generator either.  If you're playing in harder difficulty or in a challenging environment, you have to constantly ask yourself if it's really worth it to put the effort into UN-C stuff, if staying in character is going to make you lose.  Because the thing is, most of the UN-C supply chain is self inflicted.  You can put a lot of research into new supply lines that process metals faster, but the only thing you're actually using metals for is to build bigger metal processors.  The UN-C mostly doesn't add anything new or useful.  The one thing that would be interesting are the concrete and glass materials, but these can only be used for UN-C constructions.  You can't build concrete or glass sculptures or non UN-C furniture or anything. 

That said, there are some mods that make UN-Colony more bearable.  Tool mods can speed up your colonists work speed.  Xenofungus allows you to grow xylem tubers which are a better wood crop than trees.  Hospitality can bring visitors with components to trade. 

And to be fair, a lot of the problem with UN-Colony is just that it's different.  A lot of your RimWorld familiarity is thrown out the window.  And that can be a good thing.  Part of the point of mods is to change things up and make the game feel fresh again.  But for most mods, you get something new for your trouble.  UN-Colony adds prettier textures, but as far as gameplay substance, it mostly just makes it different.  And SLOW. 

So who is this mod for?  I think if you like giving your pawns a cool base to live in, if you wish for a more realistic feel, if you enjoy managing more complicated supply chains, or if you just turn on RimWorld to keep your hands busy while listening to pod-casts, UN-Colony will be fun for you.  If you're the type who likes taking on ice sheets or extreme deserts or getting into gunfights with sauropods, then the UN-Colony stuff will mostly get in the way. 

[Carbon]

I'm deeply interested by real life plastics, and I always thought it was weird that vanilla RimWorld doesn't have any plastics, or some equivalent.  Luckily, the modding community has it figured out.  There's actually a lot of these, so I'm only covering my favorites. 

Carbon
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1376609823


This time, I'm going to start with my favorite, Carbon.  And okay, it's technically not plastic, but it's a building material produced from chemfuel, which is basically how all the other plastic materials work.  Carbon is relatively easy to research, 600 points after Biofuel.  It comes in 3 forms, C-Composite, a wood/steel replacement, C-Weave, a cloth replacement, and Diamond, a stone replacement.  C-Composite makes sturdy structures, but isn't any good for weapons.  Diamond is crazy sturdy, but requires a lot more resources.  Since it's renewable, you could still craft a diamond fortress if you're willing to wait, but realistically, you're looking at a few strategic diamond doors or embrasures.  Diamond also has a high selling price and beauty, so it's great for scultures or just selling raw, though not as satisfying as cocaine.  C-Weave I don't think is especially different from regular cloth.  Since cloth is already renewable, there's isn't a lot of attraction to producing C-Weave. 



Plastic Revolution
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1609378715


This is a newer mod, and though it doesn't knock Carbon off my favorite spot, it does offer some interesting uniqueness.  Plastic Revolution has 3 levels of plastic, Basic, Reinforced and Advanced.  Basic and Reinforced can by researched with nothing by Electricity, albeit at a whopping 1200 and 1500 points.  Advanced plastic will set you back 2000 and requires the Multi-Analyzer.  Basic plastic can be produced directly from vegetation without the need for chemfuel, although you can produce it from chemfuel if you're a boomalope farmer or you've got the infinite reactor.  Reinforced Plastic is a combination of plastic and steel, Advanced Plastic is Plastic and Plasteel.  They're not as strong as the pure metal, but they give you a chance to extend your supply.  You also get recipes to produce synthread and hyperweave and "steelar" which is like Kevlar, and there are recipes for plastic helmets and flack vests that don't require Smithing or Machining.  So even though the research cost is high, you really get a lot of bang for your buck. 



XND Simple Plastic
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1102480398


For the sake of completeness, there's also XND's Simple Plastic.  I tried it back in 0.18, and I didn't much care for it.  It's just kinda bland, and plastic is generally worse or less economical than other materials, so there's not much reason to use it in the first place. 



Rimefeller
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1321849735


Technically, there is also Rimefeller.  This is closer to a game-changing mod, but I hesitate to put it in that category because you can just ignore it if you wanted to.  Rimefeller is an oil industry mod.  You find oil deposits in the ground, kinda like deep minerals, and you can build oil wells to extract it, pump it to refineries with a system of pipes (which work kinda like power cables) and use it produce electricity or lots of plastic. 

Unique to Rimefeller, you have the option to produce plastic in a variety of colors.  So if you've always wanted an olive green base with bright orange floors, you can totally do that.  (Yeah, I totally did that!)  There are other fun things like artificial wood floors. 

My main complaint is that this is an incredibly complicated mod.  You will have to learn a whole new supply chain that doesn't really mimic any existing RimWorld system.  And having all the different colors and varieties of plastic is kinda nice, but also means one more level of complexity and slogging through an array of menus to get what you want.  And after all that, eventually, your map will run out of oil and Bernie Sanders will laugh at you as you have a gigantic oil refining facility that's now completely useless.  Or more likely, some electrical fault or mechanoid attack will catch your oil wells on fire, and they will burn with the fury of a thousand suns, either destroying your entire base or at least your expensive and complicated oil refinery site.  And you'll look at your smoldering ruins and all you can say to yourself is "oh right, I'm playing RimWorld.  This is what I signed up for." 

(To be fair, I think you can feed Chemfuel from Boomalopes or Bio Refineries into the Rimefeller system if your oil reserves run out, but it's still a bummer) 

So yeah, on the one hand, I have to give the author credit for coming up with a truly inspired and unique design, but on the other hand, I have to ask myself if Rimefeller actually makes the game more fun, and frankly, no, not really.  At least, not for me.  If you're more interested in the base building aspect of RimWorld and have a higher mental tolerance for your entire base bursting into flames, then this mod is a great pick. 

And if you like it, the same author also does RimAtomics.  I have never really tried this, because it requires even bigger research and build times, it's even more insanely complicated and you're just going to explode in a bigger way.  But it does come with the option to fire nuclear missiles at other faction bases. 

[Advanced Power Generation:]

Power Mods:

Advanced Power Generation:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1426296659


This mod adds several late-game power generators that require micro-electronics to research.  Wind, Solar and Geothermal generators get upgraded, and it adds a new Nuclear generator that runs on uranium.  What's cool is that these generators can be un-installed and moved, like a workshop, so you can very rarely buy one from a caravan or even start with one if you chance your scenario settings or use Prepare Carefully. 

I like them.  Power generation in a late-game fortress is always tricky to manage, and it also feels like you should eventually be able to use your space-man technology to get more efficient power sources than the first few industrial generators.  They are game-breaking if you choose to start with one, but they are so rare and expensive in caravans that realistically, 9 games out of 10 you're going to have to research and build them yourself. 


BioReactor:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1564657272


The BioReactor is a cool reactor that is unlocked by researching Biofuel Refining.  They work by placing a living organism in the tank (like a cryosleep casket) and then "fueling" it with nutrients, raw food.  You can order your own pawns to enter the BioReactor, which is a great way to deal with that asthmatic pyromanic that's incapable of dumb labor, or you can place a downed pawn or animal into the BioReactor, and yes, that includes raiders.  There are 3 sizes of BioReactor, 2x2 which fits up to human sized creatures, 3x3 which fits up to rhinoceros sized creatures, and 4x4 which allegedly fits anything.  I have to be honest with you, I didn't notice the 4x4 reactor until just now.  The 2x2 and 3x3 reactors have icons, the 4x4 is only available from a drop-down menu, and I completely didn't notice or forgot until I saw the picture on mod page for writing this article. 

Besides producing energy, the BioReactor has a secondary function, "histolysis", which will convert whatever is inside it to chemfuel.  This sounds more useful than it is, because to get anything into the BioReactor, you need to be able to beat them up without killing them, which means you can't simply order a prisoner or tamed animal to enter, you need to actually beat them up without killing them first.  If you're using a lot of stun weapons or burn weapons from a mod, then maybe it would work better, but by default, (definitely in the extra deadly CyberPunk mod which I usually run) it's really tricky to actually get a living thing into your BioReactor in the first place. 

I agree with the sentiment.  If you know your zoology, most animals, predator or prey, are crepuscular, and don't sleep for 8 hours like humans do.  Also, various animals do eat rotten meat.  Some animals actually have to wait for meat to rot so that it will be soft enough to eat.   

I don't know how to make mods myself, but I know that Alpha Animals has a nocturnal creature called the Nightling.  You might be able to look at how they do it and figure something out for yourself.  I don't know of any mods that would focus on corpses.  I would think that somewhere in the AI there's a bunch of if/else statements that direct them to hunt, and if there's no suitable hunt target, eat corpses, so you should just have to alter the priority. 

[XND Survival Tools:]

Besides weapons of war, a lot of cool modders have thought to use the weapon slot as a tool slot to give you pawns a boost to various skills. 

I mentioned it last time, the Simple Sidearms is an absolute must for tool mods, as otherwise, you'll need to scramble for a gun every time there's a raid.  Sidearms also allows you to carry different tools for different occasions, if you've got one of those renaissance pawns who is great at more than one thing. 

XND Survival Tools:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1566269698


We're going to start this collection with a mod that I absolutely hated.  Instead of tools making the game easier, XND Survival decrease all base work times so that you NEED tools to actually get anything done.  Your tools will also decay and need constant replacement.  This also means that if you have a multi-talented pawn, you need to follow them around and order them to change tools for each different job they try to do.  This is just an insane amount of micromanagement, and I really hated it. 

That said, it might still be for you.  If you like to micromanage, or want a more realistic feel, here you go.  And if you do want to "cheat", there is an item called the Glitterworld Multi-tool, which does allow you to do everything faster. 



Gimmicks:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1838946720


This is another low grade from me.  I don't hate it, but it just doesn't stand out.  The meager bonuses that Gimmicks tools give you barely matter.  It's hard to keep track of what each tool does and which ones are better.  If this your first tool mod, it probably feels great, but there are cooler ones out there.  And if you're the type who wants to jealously protect your precious game balance with only minor bonuses, then yeah, minor bonuses is all you get here. 



Toolmetrics:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1526599749


Toolmetrics is my second favorite tool mod.  Unlike the other mods, you can craft toolbelts which raise multiple stats and go in your belt slot instead of weapon slot.  You can buy toolbelts from traders, but they tend to be crazy expensive, so I usually try to make them myself instead of buy them with drug money.  Ultimately, this is my second favorite because it's a little overwhelming.  Toolbelts are made from tools, so you need to craft or obtain 5 or 6 different tools for one belt.  There's a huge number of tools and toolbelts, which is hard to keep track of.  And raiders will show up with tools, which meant that my stockpiles were always overflowing with dead men's thimbles.  (seriously, game, why thimbles?) 



Additional Tools:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1443002973


And here we are, at my favorite tool mod.  The humbly named Additional Tools is actually the most game-breakiest of them all, and this is exactly what I want from a tools mod.  After I've toiled away in the cocaine farms and cocaine lab to make enough money to put food on this table and buy a nice tool afterwards, I want that tool to make my life better, and this noble dream is exactly what Additional Tools gives you.  When you finally get your hands on a chainsaw, you can watch your farmer spin around a cyclone harvesting or planting crops with lightning speed, or get the laptop with 1200% research speed to absolutely eat research projects like they were tater chips.  And while the best tools are crazy good, there are nice normal tools that aren't quite so gamebreaky. 

To be fair, obtaining these tools is hit or miss.  Tools in general show up pretty frequently from traders, but they're rare enough that you can't really plan your colony around getting a particular tool.  They're expensive enough that you can't buy them immediately, but cheap enough that a single season's cocaine harvest will probably earn you one.  The tools are pretty easy to research and the best tools only need a machining table, but the chainsaw and laptop require over 10 crafting skill to make, so you need to be really lucky or diligent to have a pawn capable of doing it. 

One complaint that I have about the Additional Tools mod is that it lacks a sense of video game logic.  There's generally two tiers for each labor, and the best balanced example is that for plant work, you've got the low tier machete, craftable from the smithy, and the high tier chainsaw, craftable from the machining table.  But for mining, you have the Wooden Pickaxe and Steel Pickaxe, both of which come from the smithy, or for animal handling/harvesting, there's only the humble bucket, with no industrial tech to sheer and milk your muffalo.  There's also no tool that increases your crafting speed, which is the main thing I actually spend time on in the late game. 

So yeah, it's not perfect, but still my favorite. 

I see a lot of fantasy and sci-fi mods, but I haven't seen anyone do a mod based on my favorite author, Edgar Rice Burroughs. 



If you want to do this mod and need an artist, let me know, I can do art. 

The best ERB property for RimWorld would definitely be [img=https://barsoom.fandom.com/wiki/Barsoom]http://Barsoom[/img].  Barsoom is actually the Martian word for Mars, ERB depicts it as an ancient but dying world, with the remnants of high tech cultures clinging to life, while beasts and savages around them become more wild and brutal as the planet slips further into decay. 

There are 4 main humanoid inhabitants of Barsoom, Red, White, Black and Yellow Martians.  It is implied that the 4 races once lived in harmony, but the White, Black and Yellow people isolated themselves to the point of becoming only myths and legends to the Reds, who are the most populous race on Barsoom.  The Whites are more technologically advanced than the Reds, and the Blacks more technologically advanced than them.  The Yellows seem to be mostly on par with Reds, but maintain their isolation by means of a very specific defensive technology and the secluded icy mountain terrain of the Martian arctic.  It is stated that Martian Humanoids lay eggs, as mammals on Mars are rare and nearly extinct (though John Carter of Earth marries the Red Martian Dejah Thoris and has a son who is born of egg.  I think it's sort of implied that John Carter was already a Martian who ended up on Earth somehow and then came back to Mars, but then his son has half of John Carter's high gravity Earthling strength.)  (Also, technically it's incorrect that live birth or egg laying makes us "mammals".  Mammaries make us mammals.  There are mammals that lay eggs and reptiles that do live birth.  Live birth makes us Eutherian, it could be that most Martians are actually Monotremes or Synapsids.) 

There is another quasi-humanoid race known as the Green Martians.  These are monstrous people, with tusks, bulging eyes and four arms.  As most of the native animals of Barsoom are also multi-limbed, it is implied that the Greens are descended from native Martian organism, while the true humanoids may have some alternate origin (except for the egg-laying thing).  Green society believes in a savage lifestyle for a savage planet, and have a fierce warrior culture that actively engages in blood sports and raids against the Reds and other Green tribes. 

There are numerous savage beasts native to Barsoom, some of the most memorable are the White Apes, massive hexapod gorilla-like creatures with an incredibly violent temperament.  They are said to be somewhat intelligent, more so than the apes of Earth, but they are either not as intelligent as the humanoid Martians or just too violent to manage a society.  Banths are known as the Barsoomian Lion, they have ten legs and a mouth full of razor teeth.  Banths are among the last remaining, if not the very last, Martian mammals.  Calots are domesticated by Green Martians with a dog-like temperament, though like all Barsoomian creatures, more savage.  Thoats are horse-like creatures.  Zitidars are mammoth-like creatures, hunted for their meat and skins, but also raised as draft animals by the Greens.  The holy Valley of Dor is guarded by creatures known as Plant Men, a kangaroo-like biped with tentacle arms, a single eye and a slashing tail that can split skulls.  They eat plants, but require blood as well. 

More later, I need to go to work now...

But seems like that idea doesn't really appeal to anyone, but that's fine, maybe it's just not that great for a mod

Give it more time, a mod like this would be a big undertaking. 

To me, I feel like the need for water might be too big of an annoyance.  (frankly, it was too annoying with the No Water, No Life mod)  Since RimWorld ignores water by default, and there's plenty of other mechanics to have fun with, I think it might be best to just ignore water.  People could add a water patch later. 

[Simple Sidearms:]

How about some gun mods?

Quick disclaimer, my favorite gun collection is actually the Cyber Punk mod, which I mentioned previously, but it's more of a game changer mod than a pure gun mod.  I also enjoy the Ni'hal and Orassan guns from their respective Alien race mods, and I'll cover them at some point. 

Also, I realize that some people consider Combat Extended (CE) to be standard, but I'm not a big fan of it.  Managing ammunition is tedious, and it doesn't work together with just any mod.  However, I did like the ability to equip multiple weapons, and I'm thrilled to have found that in a stand-alone mod:

Simple Sidearms:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=927155256


Simple Sidearms allows you to equip multiple weapons at once.  Well, not at once, but you can carry multiple weapons on your person, and depending on the mod settings, your pawns will automatically switch to the best weapon for the best situation.  I'm really surprised that this functionality is not built into RimWorld itself.  It really feels like the game was designed with this mod in mind, and it's a mod that I absolutely can't play without. 

The basic thing to do is give your character a diverse load-out.  For example, you might carry a sniper rifle, shotgun and a longsword.  Use the sniper rifle to engage foes at long range, as they close in, switch to your shotgun, and then to your longsword if they manage to get into melee.  And you can carry a weapon like grenades or molotov cocktails in addition to a "real" weapon. 



For the record, if you did want to equip multiple weapons at once, there's:
Dual Wield:
https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=1628211313


It's self explanatory, you can hold two weapons at once, at the cost of accuracy and aiming time.  I enjoyed this mod for a while, but I remember that it got complicated and kinda buggy with other mods in play.  It can be made to work with modded weapons by altering the mod options, but by default, you (or the raiders) can dual wield crazy railguns and rocket launchers, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's annoying to fix.  Also, if you're genuinely trying to balance which weapons are good two-handers or one-handers, two pistols generally just aren't as good as a single assault rifle, so you're left wondering why you have this mod installed in the first place. 


Rimsenal:
https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=725950793

The real elephant-in-the-room when it comes to gun mods is Rimsenal.  It's a huge pack, very well drawn and with a fun lore behind the collection.  Besides guns, there's also lots of power armor, which I just love.  But, I have to admit a love-hate relationship with this mod because all the guns are very late-game minded weapons if you try to produce them yourself, and they're just not very powerful.  For the amount of research and materials needed to produce the Rimsenal guns, they're just not worth the effort.  It's especially bad if you're playing with other gun mods, since they tend to blow Rimsenal out of the water.  However, they are fairly reasonably priced if you manage to get them from a merchant, and friendly towns will often have lots to sell. 

But while I'm lukewarm to the main Rimsenal line, I love the Rimsenal Feral faction and gun collection.  The Ferals are supposed to be like a post apocalyptic Mad Max junkyard warrior type of faction.  You can craft your own junkyard weapons very quickly using the Scav Bench once you research normal gun making.  A lot of Feral equipment also uses actual scrap instead of steel, which is an interesting way to add some use to this otherwise annoying item.  I am especially a fan of the Feral Nail Gun, and I'd even venture to say that it is possibly the best weapon in the entire RimWorld modiverse if you have really high level shooter.  It's basically a pistol, with similar range, but it fires a barrage of tiny nails.  Each nail does almost no damage, but you're pretty much guaranteed to hit your target with some of them, which will start causing blood loss and decrease in movement speed and fighting ability.  This also makes it a somewhat non-lethal weapon for home uses, curing berzerker rages or incapacitating prisoners without killing them, although a lucky nail to the brain can still ruin your plans.  And a shooter with 15+ skill level can probably hit with most of the nails in each salvo, which is absolutely devastating.  I remember getting a level 20 shooter in a zombieland game, and that cat would just insta-kill almost anything with a full salvo of nails to the brain. 

The other Rimsenal faction, Federation, is also a fun twist.  Most Federation weapons use burns instead of bullets, which makes them great for capturing prisoners and dealing with some unorthodox opponents.  The Federation pistol is fairly ubiquitous and you can easily get a bunch of them to give your troops as side arms for non-lethal encounters.  However, unlike Feral gear, you can't make Federation equipment yourself, and the harder Federation raids will throw a lot of unfair bullshit at you, which i know is fun for some people, but not for me. 


Rimfall Frontier:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1547881310


AND

Halo UNSC Weapons:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1542254108


Confession time:  I definitely played with both of these mods at the same time and I have no idea which was which.  However, I am going to say that this is still a valid point to review.  They just really don't stand out much.  I seem to recall that they felt a little better than the unmodded weapons, but ultimately, they don't stand out the way most of the other gun mods do.  I'm not a big FPS fan, maybe if I had played Halo or Titanfall the recognition might help, but for the most part, it was just a bunch of meaningless names with meaningless descriptions.  It was especially hard to tell which guns were supposed to be better than others without diving big time into their stat sheets. 

But you know, this isn't necessarily a bad thing.  If you want a RimWorld experience with just a little bit more flavor, this is the mod for your.  Adds a lot of futuristic feeling guns without anything game breaking.  And if you do recognize Titanfall or Halo guns, then this collection might be a nice familiar thing for you. 

(Again, I really don't remember the guns that well, but I vaguely think that the Titanfall guns were more early research stage, while the Halo guns were more Charged Projectile level tech.  But I think that the Titanfall collection has Charged Projectile level weapons as well.) 



Plasma Weaponry:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1500625118


This is ultimately a fairly lackluster space-gun collection.  The Plasma weapons are all basically variations of the charged rifle, just imagine a charged pistol, charged shotgun, etc, and you've got it.  Again, this is a weapon pack that I've only ever used with other gun mods installed, and it always feels overshadowed by other collections.  It's not as interesting, it's not the most powerful, and the guns don't seem to show up in raids or caravans as often as other collections do.  It's possible to build them yourself, but by the time I have enough research done to even think about it, I've already got an arsenal of space-man-guns that I've pried from cold dead fingers or bought with cocaine money.  And again, this can be a good thing if you only want to push the game balance a little. 



Apex: Rimworld Legends
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1688705593


This is yet another slightly enhanced Rimworld pack, but I must admit I like this better than most of the others.  A:RL adds some true variety to every level of the normal gun development research line, and in a very simple and understandable way.  The Mod workshop page also has very helpful explanations for each of the guns in the collection.  The art style is likewise, simple but bold and attractive. 

So I definitely recommend this collection, especially if you want more variety without breaking the game, but even if you do want to break the game with other mods, the A:RL pack will add some nice variety to the default weapons. 

The same mod author also does the Spartan Foundry, a collection of fun power armors for more situations than just combat. 



Adeptus Mechanicus
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1541438614


Now this, this is what space man guns are supposed to be.  If you didn't recognize it from the title, and neither did I for a long time, these are weapons from Warhammer 40k.  These guns are incredibly powerful and will absolutely break your game balance, but in exchange, they are fairly difficult to obtain, so it will break your game but slowly, and you can enjoy some tamer gun mods while you work up to dishing out The Emperor's Justice.  To truly screw yourself over, you can also play with the Adeptus Mechanicus Xenobiologis mod, which adds hostile Warhammer factions that will come to raid you, and I mean immediately. 

Adeptus Mechanicus adds a fun and doable level of challenge to your RimWorld experience.  I'm quick to complain when things just feel unfair, and though the random nature of RimWorld can still do that to you, nothing about Adeptus Mechanicus feels insurmountable. 



Girl's Frontline Sangvis Ferri
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1684134687


So I assume that Girls Frontline is some anime about creepy little girls that I'm never going to watch, but the Sangvis Ferri gun collection is some truly top notch over-the-top anime flair.  These guns are truly powerful, I remember having one that would 100% always destroy walls if it missed a shot, and there are also a lot of gun-melee hybrids, which is a fun mechanic that doesn't happen much in the RimWorld modiverse.  If you've had it with these MFing Centipedes on this MFing plain, and really want to shoot the bleepers out them, the Sangvis Ferri collection will do that for you, and in style. 



Cybernetic Warfare and Special Weapons
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1811369911

I'm going to present this one as a little bonus item.  It's got some really cool designs and ideas, but I'm not all that familar with it yet.  I played with it alongside the CyberPunk mod, which you'd think would make sense, but the sheer volume of CyberPunk stuff just overshadowed and swallowed up the CWSW collection.  The only weapon I remember having was an Energy Glove and yeah, it pummeled stuff good. 

So I'll try to give this a better shot later, but for now, I feel like it's a good looking mod, at least. 

EDIT:  Okay, so I did sort of give it a try without any other gun mods installed, and I was disappointed.  None of the weapons show up in caravans or raids, and the research to build them is VERY late-game, and since I wasn't having fun waiting around to be able to build guns, I gave up on that game before being able to research CWSW.  It might be that they show up, but very rarely, or that they start showing up in raids once your colony reaches a very high wealth, but I for one will never know.  So hey, maybe it would be an interesting thing for people to be able to build late-game weaponry that only your own colony would have access to, but to me, this is tedious and seems unfair.  Also, I think it's safe to add these kinds of mods to existing games, so if you already have a late-game fortress, maybe you could add this in and give yourself something new to do. 

To help out any modders who take this up, I feel like a few of these things could be based on existing mods. 

Sounds like a sandworm could just be like any seriously big animal.  To make the Sandworm truly dangerous, it should have some way of dealing with Embrasures or even be capable of destroying walls and doors.  Alpha Animals has the Gallatross, which can shoot projectiles through embrasures, and the Summit Crab, which causes damage to any pawns or structures that it touches.  Bichang makes the Red Dragon, which is an impossible to face opponent.  The Call of Cthulhu - Cosmic Horrors mod adds various animals that act as siegers, and also the Chthonian event encounter, which is very similar to a Sandworm, although they're not as dangerous as they could be. 

You can ride animals through the Giddy-Up mods, so you could probably just use that same mechanic to tame and ride a Sandworm.  You could maybe use a similar mechanic to create an Ornithopter.  There is a Vehicles Mod, but I don't know if it works.  SRTS Extended has vehicles that you can use to travel around the world map. 

Sandstorms could possibly function like the toxic fallout event, where you're basically getting a health effect the longer you stay outdoors.  Instead of "toxic build-up" it could just be "battered" or "sand blasted" or something.  Too much and you die. 

There's a mod called No Water, No Life, which makes your colonists need water, and Bad Hygiene which adds sewage systems.  Needing to get water from space traders sounds pretty harsh to me.  To me, having a trade beacon is more of a mid-to-late game thing to build, my colonists would be dead long before they ever got that established.  Maybe trade caravans could carry water.  I don't know the Dune lore all that well, but if there are native animals on Dune, there could be some sort of process that would allow you to boil off their water.  (or do that to people too)  If you want to cross the streams a little, I think Luke Skywalker's family were water farmers on Tatooine, maybe there's some sort of equivalent process.  Also, realistically, you can create water by combining oxygen and hydrogen.  Maybe there could also be some sort of specific workshop that trades Spice for water, or converts Spice to water. 

(Actually, I just looked up the Wikipedia article for Arrakis, and it says that the planet does have ground water, but not surface water.  Sandtrout clog up any water deposits, so maybe they're like the alphabeavers of Dune?  This makes me think that maybe water can appear and disappear at random, like as an event.)

(Also makes me wonder how you grow food without water.  The Wikipedia article says that cactuses grow on Arrakis, so maybe these absorb water through their roots or something.  If so, you could allegedly harvest cactus juice from them to solve some of your water needs.) 

(Oh wait, so there's Sandplankton, right?  Maybe you can harvest this somehow into a version of Nutrient Paste?)

[Quarry]

Some more game-changers:

Quarry
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1543177113


This mod allows you to build a good ol' medieval quarry on any gravely or stoney ground.  Colonists can use their mining skill to mine random minerals from the earth.  Quarries have a percent complete, and once your colonists finish it off, the quarry disappears and the ground beneath it can be turned into soil.  Quarries have two modes, either mining resources or cutting stone blocks directly.  In mine resources mode, the quarry will still produce normal stone chunks that can be made into blocks in the normal way, so I've never really used this feature. 

The quarry really turns RimWorld's mineral scarcity mechanic on its head.  Even on a completely flat map, you can scrounge up enough stone and steel to wall off the entire map.  In the mod settings, you can also set various resources on the quarriable list, I tend to add components to this list, since I've always hated the scarcity of components compared to how many you need.  By default, you can also mine resources like gold, silver, plasteel and uranium.  I think the abundance of these resources will be based on the natural resources on your map, i.e. if there are a bunch of uranium deposits in the open on your map, there will be more uranium in your quarry.  This means that if you're willing to patiently mine in your quarry, you never need to trade for any of these things, and if you're lucky, you'll also be getting plenty of silver at the same time. 

There are some drawbacks to balance out the quarry.  Quarries are really big, 13x13 for full quarries and 7x7 for half quarries, and they require gravel or stone floors to be placed on, and they're fairly difficult to wall off and defend (though they do produce the materials to make walls, so that balances itself out).  It takes a lot of time to set one up and it takes a lot of time to actually mine them.  Quarries are also very ugly, -5 on every square, and like I said, they're really big, so anyone working the quarry will start loosing mood quickly.  As part of the normal game balance, mining a bunch of resources will start to attract stronger raids, so you can't just do a lot of quarrying all at once without preparing for the consequences. 

Overall, I really like this mod.  I find the mineral scarcity in Rimworld really frustrating, and this is a cool way to address it without feeling cheap.  Though it alters the balance of Rimworld, it's the kind of thing that feels realistic to do, you should be able to just dig a whole without frickin' micro-electronics.  I like that it adds a sense of 3-dimensionality too, as a Dwarf Fortress veteran, RimWorld's 2D scope has always been a sore spot.  It also gives your miners more work to do, and makes it realistic to build fortress in open terrain, instead of always building on mountains. 



Deep Storage
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1617282896


Deep storage adds a bunch of storage units, like shelves, but they can all hold multiple items per tile.  This doesn't sound like much of a game changer, but ye gods, it changes everything.  I for one am constantly struggling with storage space in RimWorld, and it is frustrating and kind of silly that you can get to a point of building ray guns and power armor, but you still throw all your junk on the floor.  And, not only do you get to store multiple things in one place, stored items don't reduce beauty like loose items.  You can even put corpses on a Big Shelf and colonists won't get the Observed Corpse moodlet when they're nearby.  (though this doesn't work for Meat Hooks, which can hold 10 corpses in a single square, and boy will that make your colonists gag) 

There are lots of different storage units.  The generic storage units, Big Shelves and Tall Shelves, can't hold as many stacks of items as more specialized storage units, like the Skip which can only hold building materials, or the Food Basket, which can only hold raw foods and vegetable matter.  The storage units are also somewhat more balanced by requiring a mandatory pause for colonists to sort items when they put them into storage.  This isn't really a big deal, the storage units are all a major net positive. 

I absolutely love this mod.  It makes fortresses feel much more civilized and really eases the process of finding places to put all your junk.  Because frankly, I don't play RimWorld for the junk-management aspect, I play to grow cocaine and shoot people and then fly into outer freaking space with sunglasses on. 



Vegetable Garden Project
https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=1185272266


On the surface, this family of mods might seem like a minor tweak to the farming system, but there is a huge family of sub-mods that touch every aspect of life on the Rim. 

My favorite sub-mod is definitely Garden Gourmet, which allows you to produce various real-food meal types for your colonists, like kebabs, porridge, pizza and tacos.  I never bothered to produce Fine or Lavish meals for my colonists, but I take great joy in finally gathering all the ingredients I need to produce a pizza.  Most of the better foods also give the beneficial Well Fed mood boost, which will increase their productivity. 

Garden Drinks is a fun mod which allows you to produce Soda from any fruit and Alcoholic Beverages from almost any crop, sake from rice, tequila from agave, whiskey from corn, etc.  Even though I'm a teetotaler in real-life, I enjoy getting that top-notch whiskey for my colonists, and vodka is a great add-on for my cyberpunk cocaine cartel.  If you'd rather be nice to your pawns, Soda is a fun way to get almost as much money as drugs, without putting your colonists at risk.  I forget which sub-mod has it, but there's also a mod that adds tea, coffee and tobacco for more safe drug-like materials. 

The Garden Fabrics sub-mod adds Flax and Linen, a textile that's halfway between cotton cloth and devilstrand.  I also forces you to process raw textiles at the loom, instead harvesting finished bolts of cloth immediately.  The loom also allows you to deconstruct ratty or tainted apparel into raw textiles. 

Garden Tools allows you to cremate corpses (including rotten or desiccated ones) into fertilizer, which you can use to place your own Garden Soil, 130% growth rate, or Plowed Soil, 160% growth rate.  There are also new growing lamps and growing boxes which allow you to grow crops anywhere. 

Smoked Meat allows you to extend the lifespan of raw meat, while also cooking it to remove that Ate Raw Food moodlet.  This is great if you like to hunt sauropods, but don't like to build freezers. 

I forget which sub-mods do this, but they allow you to produce materials like Synthread, Neutroamine, Ambrosia and other trade-only materials yourself. 

There are a few sub-mods that I don't care for.  Soylent Production felt weird and not as fun as making pizzas and things.  Canning required steel for each can, which always made me uncomfortable.  (although now that I use the Quarry Mod, that's probably not so bad)  Garden Resources, which allows you to grow steel, gold, etc. in your farms, felt cheap and too made-up.  More Veggies and Xtra Trees & Flowers just added clutter without adding anything to game balance. 

(I apologize if RimWorld already has this behavior and I've just never noticed)

You ever notice that young pawns have less passions, old pawns have more passions?  That must mean that their passions grow as they get older, right?  But I've never seen that happen. 

So it would make sense within the existing lore of RimWorld that pawns should gain passions as they age.  I know that people probably don't play games so long that their pawns actually go from young to old, but I'm thinking that with the amount of passions that old pawns have compared to young pawns, they are probably developing a new passion every few years. 

For reference, I've got a couple of old people and young people in my current colony, there's a 25yo with 2 minor passions, a 20yo with 3 minor passions, a 39yo with 2 burning and 4 minor passions, a 51yo with 4 burning and 3 minor passions, and a 70yo with 2 burning and 5 minor passions.  I don't exactly know how passion points are calculated, but if minor passions count as one point and burning as two points, then to go from the 20yo with 3 points to the 39yo with 8 points, he'd be developing 5 more points over 19 years, about 1 point every 4 years.  The 25yo to the 51yo would be 1 every 2.8 years, but I think they have different passion amounts to balance their traits, as the 51yo is a pain in the ass and the 25yo is a saint.