Suggestions: Better wardening/justice system/weapons handling

[Caliell]

First of all I want to say this game is amazing with what it have so far.


However I find quite a few things baffling since for survival game how unrealistic (and seemingly pointless with exception for "balancing of the game" - which kills immersion) some things are. 

1) Cooking -  Why the hell does it take at least 6 dedicated cooks to feed 20 man colony? This seems asinine to the point this game become "CookWorld" without Gordon Ramsay in it. I noticed in Dev's mode there is T stove that requires skill to make 3 meals at the same time, but this should be one of the base skills in every survival game since edible food is one of the basic needs in every survival game. Feed the Colonists mod seems to be addressing just that, but there shouldn't be any need for the mod on the first place.

2) Warden - This system should be better addressed. For example if a colonist goes berserk or begins to torn things around them, someone assigned Warden in work assignment should automatically try to arrest someone at such mental breakdown. Even worse when two colonists get into a fight and one kills or mains the other, nothing happens as if this is just another day on the Rimworld. Both or Perpetrator should be arrested or otherwise receive Social Debuff (-10 or so) with such names as "Perceived Dangerous" or "Perpetrator of Crime" where that pawn is shunned by others. The Debuff should only apply if another pawn witnessed the crime.

3) Weapons Handling - Why is it impossible to handle two weapons at the same time? This creates extremely imbalanced gameplay by the fact that the late game, at least Pawn vs Pawn turns into melee battles (due to how powerful Personal Shields are) and ranged weapons saved for dangerous Man hunter Packs like boomalopes and Elephants. This is simply neither realistic nor fun with so many weapons in game.

This could easily be addressed in several ways:
a) Add Melee Stats to firearms and have them deteriorate  duration as they are used as melee weapons in melee combat.
b) Allow for pawns to equip smaller weapons with addition to firearms or allow for pawns to quip small firearms in addition to Large melee weapons. For example One: a pawn wielding longsword cannot equip any of Two Handed firearms, but can equip One Handed firearms such as Heavy SMG, Pistol, or Machine Pistol. Example two: a pawn wielding Charge Rifle cannot equip Longsword or Spear, but can equip knife, shiv, gladius.

Furthermore there is urgent need of adding to formations to Drafted pawns at least for pawn with Military or Law Enforcement Backgrounds. Such as Space Marine or Combat Medic able to get into Wedge formation or Line formation upon clicking one of formation's icons. The clutter is one of the real killers in this game due to constant need to pause and organize pawns, instead of having them intelligently follow already learned tactics.

[horus]

1) I don't know the skill of your cooks that you need 6 to feed 20, but in my games 1 cook can easely feed 10 and produce more meals for sale, if I had 20 pawns 1 (at most 2 if no bionics installed) cook can feed them all with like a skill of 10+ in cooking
2) there is already some stuff like this ingame, like social debuffs between pawns if they kill/sell someone they cared about, including animals. the more they cared the larger the debuff
3)not sure what sort of game are you playing. why would you ever want to send your pawns to fight melee against raiders?

I can't see any need for formations, like why would you ever need wedge formation?

[DariusWolfe]

Like horus, I find your remark about cooks:colonists to be a bit brow-lifting. If your cooks are spending too much time, there are some techniques that will significantly speed up the process, regardless of cooking skill.

First: Set the orders to drop food on the floor. If you set a stockpile around the stove set to allow nothing, it will still increment the count, and then haulers can take it to long-term storage, leaving your cook to do their job. This obviates the need to carry each meal to your freezer one at a time.

Combine with the first, set a couple 1x1 stockpiles on either side of the pawn space, set to higher priority, and allowing only meat and vegetables (1 ea); This means your cook doesn't have to go get food; They will still do so from time to time, so setting the radius on the orders to only a couple tiles can help with this; However, if your haulers are busy, this will prevent your cooks from cooking entirely if there's not food in those stockpiles; use with caution. Also, ensure your kitchen is at least refrigerated, or micromanage when food is allowed in the stockpiles, else they will rot away.

For even faster cooking, put benches in those two food stockpiles; This will prevent the cook from taking the one step to pick up the food, so they'll just cook meals one after the other in rapid succession. Finally, put a chair in their cook spot, and they'll get comfort while they cook.

Using these techniques, I usually have to worry more about making sure I have sufficient stock to keep my cooks busy than I do about having to ensure they're cooking enough food to keep the colony in good state.

Ahem. 'Nuff said about that.

I agree that there needs to be more depth to the wardening system; There are mods that address this somewhat, but the most impressive one (by E) was on indefinite hiatus last I checked, and also included a bunch of systems I wasn't personally interested in (advanced prison management, slavery) I was mostly interested in the system for house arrests and "crimes" amongst the colonists. Hopefully Tynan will add something like this at some point.

Allowing melee and ranged weapons on the same pawn has been requested for a long time, but I don't know if there was an official answer given; Either way, I have a feeling that it goes against Tynan's desired balance for combat. I'm fairly certain that at least one mod addresses this, though.

Also, formations: I'd love some easier way to create a line formation, but wedge isn't really practical in Rimworld. A wedge formation is typically a moving formation, and involves moving in situations where enemy presence and positions are unknown; The wedge allows you to respond in either direction fairly quickly without unduly endangering your own teammates. As Rimworld fights are generally either static firefights or one-on-one melees, wedge formations, shieldwalls, etc. wouldn't be especially useful; But yeah, I'd absolutely love some sort of line formation, or a battlestations command.

[Caliell]

The reason why the cooking dilemma happened to be for the fact that none of my colonists somehow ended up having a cooking skill besides one... and she was killed by rabid boomalopes when the colony got raided. I tried to make everyone cook simple meals, but it seems pretty daunting since you have so much of the other stuff you have to do.

The problem with current combat system that in the late game (Plasteel longsword) and Personal shield combo is go to, with defensive turrets on the sides and mines to chew up anything else like man hunter packs. I set up ridiculous man traps of uranium walls with one exit and built houses with one tile only to walk on, which severely hampered any of ranged attackers. They either had to shoot friendlies in the back or chuck grenades. This just becomes quite bland, when firearms should be the deadliest thing.

Then there is issue with the sniper rifle being underwhelming. That thing needs severe love.

It is true that wedge formation was designed for a mobile combat squad, but perhaps there could be some weapons made to be fired on the move (pistol and SMGs for example) with severe accuracy penalty when moving. In either case there have to be some kind of clickable formations for drafted pawns, at least the ones with military background, instead of them running in one large clutter. There should be ability to "Assigned when Drafted" to certain firing positions as well, where drafted pawns should automatically head to their assigned positions upon being drafted.

The balance is kind of two edged sword in this game. - If you have too much of it, it can kill immersion for the sake of fairness. If it is non existent, it could do the same. At the moment my gripe is this seems a bit immersion killing for 1) Colonists begin to use their fists in melee combat if they are armed with firearms. This could easily be addressed for firearms to receive some kind of melee stats as well and I honestly do not consider this game breaking for how godlike powerful Personal Shields can be. Large mob of pirates with personal shields and melee weapons cause this to be irritating constantly "Pause and force your colonists to fire" when the game was designed for pawns to be semi autonomous (having some sort of free will) and the game forces you to baby sit your colonists, when it is so easy to program them for mundane things as that or add policy assignment for them to only fire weapons in melee range instead of trying to use fists against someone armed with melee weapons. 2) Cooking is just unrealistic. Yes, this is videogame but at the same time some realism should be present in it. Why would you cook one meal at the time and spend your entire day going from a stove to fridge, when you should be able to large quantity of a meal to feed several colonists? Is it the lack of large pots and pants or Rim world colonists enjoy spending to run to point A - pick up one ingredient. B- pick up another. C- pick up third and then run back all the way across the colony to cook one single meal for a few seconds and then repeat the process until the sun goes down? Why not given an option for them to be able to carry several ingredients at once?

3) I was imagining Wardening to be more autonomous with not just an assigned Warden talking to prisoners (and awesome downed or visiting guests in some mods which I believe should be an option in game as well, with some perks. - For example losing one point of Good Will if you successfully recruit a neighbor's pawn or have that pawn gain some social debuff such as "Left the colony -5".) But arresting people in mental states, drunkards, and taking pawns high on drugs or overdosing to prison cells (hospital beds in prison cells).

I be such little things could be programmed in Rim World with ease.

[DariusWolfe]

Oh yeah, trying to split responsibilities like cooking beyond maybe 2 people is asking for trouble. Get your best cook (or your least essential dude if none of them have worthwhile cooking skill). That way, you have one dedicated person there churning out meals, rather than constantly getting re-prioritized, or getting in each other's way. Plus, it ensures that the dedicated cook will eventually get good at the job, whereas spreading it around among more than 2 pawns means that they'll never really get enough experience to get good. Combine that with the tips I gave in my last post, and you should be fine soon enough.

I personally can't stand melee pawns; The A17 changes should hopefully help, but melee pawns get beat up too much for my tastes. Firearms could use a bit of a buff too, because with the aim time, hit and run tactics, which are super viable in real life, are basically worthless in Rimworld, and mean that all firefights have to take place in the open, at range; close-range firefights are basically non-existent.

I am not for any tactic that involves "severe accuracy penalties", as that's the main drawback of firearms; They miss far more often than they hit. Wedge formations, even with mobile firing, still wouldn't be especially feasible. As I mentioned, they're a tactic designed for moving through hostile territory with unknown enemy presence/position. In Rimworld, you're generally either on offense or defense, you know where the enemy is, and you're going to position yourself to take advantage of, or negate the enemy's use of cover, rather than moving in the open, pretty much ever. It's a great tactic for other games, but it's just not feasible in Rimworld.

Also, as a slight distraction, I found a mod yesterday that allows you to set up to 4 battle positions for pawns; I'm checking out A17 right now, so I can't report on it's effectiveness, but it's UnlimitedHugs, so it's a reputable modder.

The problem I have with combat balance is that it's canted toward disposable combatants. If injuries were easier to recover from, I'd be more willing to risk pawns at melee ranges; (Also, I'll admit that I haven't really taken advantage of personal shields until pretty recently) Of course, with a ranged focus, it's really dangerous when they send in melee pawns, because if I can't take them down before they reach me, they both neutralize one of my ranged combatants, and severely outmatch them, since they actually have weapons.

What I'd like to see for combat balance is injuries being less permanent; If I kill a dozen raiders with nothing but a few scars, eventually that adds up and attriting my combat effectiveness considerably; The enemy has no such concerns, because they have an infinite pool of pawns to send at me. I'd also like to see the ability to drop a gun and switch to a melee weapon; Even if the gun literally falls to the ground and I have to micro- picking it back up after the melee fight is over. Alternately, an ability to "afix bayonets" would be appreciated, allowing for limited, but still better than current, melee effectiveness while wielding a gun.

Since you go back to cooking, I'll re-emphasize the advice I've given; Follow the advice in my last post, and you'll be pumping out meals so fast; Like, literally 3-5x as fast as letting them do it their own way. Once you've got it set up properly, there's no reason to micro-manage your cooks at all.

Wardening is definitely something I expect to see Tynan expand in the future. Social skills in general are in need of some love, especially with the popularity of mods like Hospitality. As the social system is still relatively new (A14? A13?) and very complex, I think it's possible that Tynan is probably waiting on more data before he goes back to tackle it again with any serious focus. Crime and punishments, a way to deal with social fighting without potentially killing or crippling your own colonists, all of that is coming, I'm sure.

It's good to remember that, for as polished as feature-rich as this game already is, and how long it's been a commercial product, that it's still an Alpha. That means that the emphasis is on adding new features, and balance and refinement are still secondary concerns. It's actually pretty rare that a game is commercially available when it's still in Alpha, so it's really easy to forget how it's supposed to work. Beta is the phase where fixing systems, bugs, and balancing the game becomes the primary focus, and we're not even there yet.

...and I've written a novel, so I'm gonna stop now. Enjoying the discussion, obviously.