Eclipse Colony Integration

[vagineer1]

After playing a small chunk of one of the Rimworld Prototypes: Eclipse Colony, I think that the Air mechanic should be re-added to Rimworld, I personally enjoyed building air tanks and an air producing machine, I think it should be added because in my opinion it would add more depth/ make the game more interesting.

[Ramsis]

After playing a small chunk of one of the Rimworld Prototypes: Eclipse Colony, I think that the Air mechanic should be re-added to Rimworld, I personally enjoyed building air tanks and an air producing machine, I think it should be added because in my opinion it would add more depth/ make the game more interesting.

Actually I've got Vag's back on this one, it was an interesting mechanic and one that shouldn't be scrapped for just silly reasons. It made that whole survival on a crappy planet thing a lot more difficult.

[vagineer1]

After playing a small chunk of one of the Rimworld Prototypes: Eclipse Colony, I think that the Air mechanic should be re-added to Rimworld, I personally enjoyed building air tanks and an air producing machine, I think it should be added because in my opinion it would add more depth/ make the game more interesting.

Actually I've got Vag's back on this one, it was an interesting mechanic and one that shouldn't be scrapped for just silly reasons. It made that whole survival on a crappy planet thing a lot more difficult.

Its like a double edged sword, you are at risk staying outside for ridiculous amounts of time, but so are your enemies.

[absentminded]

 Maybe as a setting on the map-size option rather than across the whole game.
(some worlds with more air than others) Probably on the low air worlds you wouldn't have tribals though, just more pirates or something. As if you had the set up to build tanks you wouldnt sink into tribalism.
It would change alot too, you wouldn't want it all the time.

Maybe an event where for X days there's no air. So you'd have the tanks and everything set up to guard against it.

[Architect]

I would imagine the problem is that it then makes other elements of game play less viable and harder to make work. At the end of the day, if one great idea means several smaller good ideas won't work, it becomes a case of which choice is going to make for the best game play mechanics. Don't get me wrong, i agree the air thing would be cool, I just think it would mean sacrificing too much else to get it to work properly.

[swiftdraw]

Its like a double edged sword, you are at risk staying outside for ridiculous amounts of time, but so are your enemies.

I'm not huge on requiring air on the surface, but I wouldn't mind having outdoor exposure effects besides decreased happiness which would have similar effect. So, for example, during certain parts of the day you have to contend with heat which you can get around by researching appropriate tech or limit your strenuous or task that are going to take awhile to cooler parts of the day. Now if we could work on the Z-axis also, I would put that if you dug down deep enough you'd need a ventilation system to send air to the deep parts of the mine/bunker. Definitely could use the air mechanic then.

What I'd like to see implemented environmental wise is water. Having lived in west Texas for a few years, rain storms like those in game in that environment tends to lead to flash flooding.  Oh no'z! All the crops and sandbags washed away! 

[vagineer1]

Water would be a good addition. Maybe a way to produce power in the midst of a solar flare. Like what a water mill does.

[absentminded]

Oh no'z! All the crops and sandbags washed away! 

Are sandbags not a solution to flooding, rather than a victim of it.
I'm fairly certain first thing governments do in a flood is drop sandbags all over the place.

[Tynan]

The hard part isn't simulating the air or creating the structures/research to manage it. It's creating the AI to interact with that system.

Depending on what effects you imagine the air having, it can present extremely difficult AI programming problems. E.g. he's hungry, there's food, but the room it's in is low on air. Does he eat it and take suffocation damage? What if he's starving? But what if he's already damaged? Really, he should just grab it and carry it somewhere safe for eating. But then that's another layer of behavior with a multi-step process to achieve a single goal. And this is just for one of the hundreds of variations that can crop up.

End of the day, it's not worth the fiddliness or the AI frustration. I'd spend months trying to make the AI handle it, newbies would spend hours getting frustrated at not noticing little holes in the walls, or missing wall pieces, or watching their guys die because they designated a wall one square too long on the first day and ran out of metal to build it and now everyone is suffocating (all these are things I observed in real playtests with Eclipse Colony). Then there are logical issues with air-proof wood and log walls, terrestrial-like animals living on airless worlds, people traveling long distances on foot on airless worlds, tribespeople and various other Western story elements, and so on.

It's a very complex system with huge design, implementation, complexity, interface and performance costs for, really, little benefit.

To be honest, I think this kind of system is a classic trap that game designers fall into. It's something that's obvious. It seems like it "belongs" in this sort of game. Bad designers will just blunder into this kind of thing and end up tied up in all the problems I described above because they didn't even conceive of those problems when they made the decision to do the system. I think that if you write the pro/con list for the air system and put it beside the pro/con lists for systems like archaeology, biomes, seasons, internal colony politics, more endgames, a deep medical system, or many other opportunities it doesn't even come close. Anyone who honestly makes the cognitive effort to expand the question from "Would an air system be cool?" to "What's the best system to work on for RimWorld?" (and who has a basic ability to evaluate the technical and design pro/cons of these systems) should realize this.

It's a perfect example of my favorite design guidelines these days: Don't ask "Would this idea be cool?", ask "Of the millions of things I could be adding to the game, is this the best cost/benefit?"

I still regret ever spending time on it in EC. I call it blunder and mollify myself by saying it was a learning experience.

So that's why there won't be an air system.

[vagineer1]

The hard part isn't simulating the air or creating the structures/research to manage it. It's creating the AI to interact with that system.

Depending on what effects you imagine the air having, it can present extremely difficult AI programming problems. E.g. he's hungry, there's food, but the room it's in is low on air. Does he eat it and take suffocation damage? What if he's starving? But what if he's already damaged? Really, he should just grab it and carry it somewhere safe for eating. But then that's another layer of behavior with a multi-step process to achieve a single goal. And this is just for one of the hundreds of variations that can crop up.

End of the day, it's not worth the fiddliness or the AI frustration. I'd spend months trying to make the AI handle it, newbies would spend hours getting frustrated at not noticing little holes in the walls, or missing wall pieces, or watching their guys die because they designated a wall one square too long on the first day and ran out of metal to build it and now everyone is suffocating (all these are things I observed in real playtests with Eclipse Colony). Then there are logical issues with air-proof wood and log walls, terrestrial-like animals living on airless worlds, people traveling long distances on foot on airless worlds, tribespeople and various other Western story elements, and so on.

It's a very complex system with huge design, implementation, complexity, interface and performance costs for, really, little benefit.

To be honest, I think this kind of system is a classic trap that game designers fall into. It's something that's obvious. It seems like it "belongs" in this sort of game. Bad designers will just blunder into this kind of thing and end up tied up in all the problems I described above because they didn't even conceive of those problems when they made the decision to do the system. I think that if you write the pro/con list for the air system and put it beside the pro/con lists for systems like archaeology, biomes, seasons, internal colony politics, more endgames, a deep medical system, or many other opportunities it doesn't even come close. Anyone who honestly makes the cognitive effort to expand the question from "Would an air system be cool?" to "What's the best system to work on for RimWorld?", and who has a basic ability to evaluate the technical and design pro/cons of these systems should realize this.

I still regret ever spending time on it. I call it blunder and mollify myself by saying it was a learning experience.

So that's why there won't be an air system.

Oh well. Its alright. I just thought that the game could use this as a option for world generation, but other things could replace it like trading, or some sort of water implementation.

[swiftdraw]

Oh no'z! All the crops and sandbags washed away! 

Are sandbags not a solution to flooding, rather than a victim of it.
I'm fairly certain first thing governments do in a flood is drop sandbags all over the place.

Against fast moving water in a flash flood and the debris it carries, they don't tend to do much as the force can sweep them away unless they're stacked properly and several layers deep. Against a steady rise in water level or barricade against preexisting water they're a good temporary measure until the water recedes.

[Col_Jessep]

I agree with Tynan's reasons for not having to manage air.

Maybe we could have an incident of the atmosphere being flooded with poisonous fungus spores. Everybody who goes outside during that time takes a small amount of damage over time and suffer from dangerous halluzinations after a couple of hours. That would give you enough time to grab some food, dig yourself into a mountain (if you haven't already) and wait until the air clears (after 48 hours or something).

Local fauna would be resistant (muffaloes) or just dig themselves a hole (squirrel/boomrat). Raiders would be exposed and go on a rampage eventually. Tribals might just retreat into the mountains or their caves.

I believe there was an episode of Star Trek Enterprise like that where all human crew members were exposed and went nuts and only T'Pol, the vulcan science officer, kept her senses.
Note to self: Watch more Star Trek.

[dd0029]

Fascinating wall of text.

And this right here is part of why it's fun to be part of this process. Thanks for that.

[vagineer1]

The hard part isn't simulating the air or creating the structures/research to manage it. It's creating the AI to interact with that system.

Depending on what effects you imagine the air having, it can present extremely difficult AI programming problems. E.g. he's hungry, there's food, but the room it's in is low on air. Does he eat it and take suffocation damage? What if he's starving? But what if he's already damaged? Really, he should just grab it and carry it somewhere safe for eating. But then that's another layer of behavior with a multi-step process to achieve a single goal. And this is just for one of the hundreds of variations that can crop up.

End of the day, it's not worth the fiddliness or the AI frustration. I'd spend months trying to make the AI handle it, newbies would spend hours getting frustrated at not noticing little holes in the walls, or missing wall pieces, or watching their guys die because they designated a wall one square too long on the first day and ran out of metal to build it and now everyone is suffocating (all these are things I observed in real playtests with Eclipse Colony). Then there are logical issues with air-proof wood and log walls, terrestrial-like animals living on airless worlds, people traveling long distances on foot on airless worlds, tribespeople and various other Western story elements, and so on.

It's a very complex system with huge design, implementation, complexity, interface and performance costs for, really, little benefit.

To be honest, I think this kind of system is a classic trap that game designers fall into. It's something that's obvious. It seems like it "belongs" in this sort of game. Bad designers will just blunder into this kind of thing and end up tied up in all the problems I described above because they didn't even conceive of those problems when they made the decision to do the system. I think that if you write the pro/con list for the air system and put it beside the pro/con lists for systems like archaeology, biomes, seasons, internal colony politics, more endgames, a deep medical system, or many other opportunities it doesn't even come close. Anyone who honestly makes the cognitive effort to expand the question from "Would an air system be cool?" to "What's the best system to work on for RimWorld?" (and who has a basic ability to evaluate the technical and design pro/cons of these systems) should realize this.

It's a perfect example of my favorite design guidelines these days: Don't ask "Would this idea be cool?", ask "Of the millions of things I could be adding to the game, is this the best cost/benefit?"

I still regret ever spending time on it in EC. I call it blunder and mollify myself by saying it was a learning experience.

So that's why there won't be an air system.

What about a toxic fog event? You're colonists have to stay inside for an undetermined amount of time until it dissipates.

[Untrustedlife]

I would imagine the problem is that it then makes other elements of game play less viable and harder to make work. At the end of the day, if one great idea means several smaller good ideas won't work, it becomes a case of which choice is going to make for the best game play mechanics. Don't get me wrong, i agree the air thing would be cool, I just think it would mean sacrificing too much else to get it to work properly.

I dont think, at this point, that it fits the game anymore (for example tribals, and the less sci fy more  industrial theme)