Smooth Floor vs. Stone Tile Floor

[Vexare]

Why does a smoothed floor give +4 beauty while a stone tile floor only gives +2?

This doesn't make much sense to me as crafting and laying down individual stone tiles (especially the higher end stones like granite and marble) would produce very luxurious/ornate flooring would it not? It also takes some crafting skill to produce those bricks/tiles whereas anyone can smooth rough stone flooring... so it shouldn't be considered more beautiful.

I also don't understand why crafted walls don't give anymore beauty points than the rough chiseled cave walls do. Again, takes skill, time and materials to produce marble brick walls - it should up the beauty because it's hand-crafted.

[cultist]

I agree with your point, but it's likely just a case of some numbers that need tweaking.

[Eleazar]

Why does a smoothed floor give +4 beauty while a stone tile floor only gives +2?

....

I also don't understand why crafted walls don't give anymore beauty points than the rough chiseled cave walls do. Again, takes skill, time and materials to produce marble brick walls - it should up the beauty because it's hand-crafted.

Carpet used to be a 5, but now it is 2 also.  I don't know if it is intended, but it seems odd that smooth stone is the hands-down best.

And are you sure crafted walls don't have more beauty?  The used to, but the beauty preview doesn't display numbers for walls.

[deslona]

Walls used to give beauty, but now they don't appear to. I made a bedroom surrounded by rock and another with walls, they both provided the same beauty score. Walled areas don't appear to give a beauty number (now). Also visible power cables give a -2 to beauty. So if you have carpet and a power cable on top it equates to 0. That said, cables can be run UNDER walls for no beauty penalty.
I was hoping carpet and stone would have a higher value.

[electrichobo]

I'd prefer the smooth floor even if it was the opposite, if it gave less beauty bonus than tiled floors. I just don't like some of the weird spots that look like loose rocks or dirt patches on smoothed floor which you cannot remove.

[Barley]

Funny that Tynan talked so much about discouraging mountain cave bases, then made them so appealing by making smooth stone so powerful. After all, smooth-able stone can only be found in vast qualities inside caves.

My proposal:
Carpet>Stone Tiles>Metal Tiles>Wood>Smooth Stone>everything else.

This is not ordered according to aesthetics but according to the required investments for each floor type. Trading for resources is disregarded here because trade applies to everything. Carpet requires research and nonrenewable metal but is the most powerful, maybe it should cost a slight speed penalty or it takes longer to clean to prevent spamming. Stone Tiles also require research but stone blocks are more easily attained from old buildings and rock chunks than steel which must be mined, traded, slagged (high energy cost), or disassembled from mechiods. Metal tiles require no research but use a nonrenewable resource and thus are between stone tiles and wood. Finally, smooth stone which is free but gives no beauty and takes a while to cut. Everything else? I don't know.

I also think concrete needs to confer a bonus of some type because right now stone and metal tiles are SO superior in the "Nonflammable floors" category that I never even consider it.

[Silvador]

Some different paving patterns would be nice, too. Perhaps introduce the option to make nicer looking designs with the stone tiles, at the expensive of slightly more resources, but with a higher beauty rating.

[Apophis]

Funny that Tynan talked so much about discouraging mountain cave bases, then made them so appealing by making smooth stone so powerful. After all, smooth-able stone can only be found in vast qualities inside caves.

My proposal:
Carpet>Stone Tiles>Metal Tiles>Wood>Smooth Stone>everything else.

This is not ordered according to aesthetics but according to the required investments for each floor type. Trading for resources is disregarded here because trade applies to everything. Carpet requires research and nonrenewable metal but is the most powerful, maybe it should cost a slight speed penalty or it takes longer to clean to prevent spamming. Stone Tiles also require research but stone blocks are more easily attained from old buildings and rock chunks than steel which must be mined, traded, slagged (high energy cost), or disassembled from mechiods. Metal tiles require no research but use a nonrenewable resource and thus are between stone tiles and wood. Finally, smooth stone which is free but gives no beauty and takes a while to cut. Everything else? I don't know.

I also think concrete needs to confer a bonus of some type because right now stone and metal tiles are SO superior in the "Nonflammable floors" category that I never even consider it.

Floors can be flammable? I thought floors, as they aren't a Thing, cannot burn.
Carpets cost cloth, not metal, so they are renewable.

Smooth stone takes more work to build than any other floor, this is how Tynan tried to balance it.
I think floors should not be ordered by investments, but by real aesthetics. After all, a golden wall is not better than a stone wall because the golden wall is more expensive.

However, I do agree that the balance is slightly off, I think stone tiles and carpets should be as beautiful as smooth stone floors.

[lusername]

Funny that Tynan talked so much about discouraging mountain cave bases, then made them so appealing by making smooth stone so powerful. After all, smooth-able stone can only be found in vast qualities inside caves.

Mountain cave bases are the only SENSIBLE place to live, both in real life and the game. There's a reason our ancestors chose them. Living on the plains was a deathtrap that got you eaten by lions. Moving to the caves was the first step up. But frankly, if he wanted to make mountain cave bases less appealing, siege attacks are a huge leap back, since they are basically unsurvivable unless you have superiority in both firepower and numbers...or live in a mountain. Trying to take out a dozen attackers when you have about 6 and all of two guns between them is not workable. I survived them by...living in a cave, emerging at night to steal their food and ammo to fire it back at them. Even then, it took 5 months to finally hit something critical and drive them off.

Pretty awesome, but you live in a cave or you horribly die, everything on the surface was burned to a crisp.

[Foxador]

Right now since smooth floor gives the highest beauty and the way beauty works, having them live in a cave room makes more sense then anywhere else if you want them to like the room.  I had a room with a royal bed (65 beauty) and a statue that gave at least 150-200 beauty and the room which is 4x4 was only getting about 4.0 beauty because the floor at 2 was lowering the overall beauty a lot.  I compared that to a cave room which only smooth floor and a royal bed in it, also 4x4, and it had at way higher beauty even without the statue.

[Vexare]

Great discussion here, thanks for all the constructive feedback whether you are for or against smooth stone floors.

I agree that because smoothed stone floors are so desirable, it gives another reason besides superior defense to build your bases inside of mountains. Also, because there's no penalty or difference between a rough chiseled mountain wall and a crafted stone or wood wall, it's far easier to just build rooms into the mountain as the colonists don't prefer one over the other. Why would I bother all the effort of stone masonry out in the open when it doesn't make my colonists happier and is so much more difficult to defend?

Suggested Floor Fixes:

1. Make carpet the highest beauty value but with the added risk of flammable (maybe it already is flammable - I don't bother making it to find out) and slower to clean.

2. Stone tiles with the second highest beauty value because of the crafting skill and time investment necessary to create them.

3. Polished wood plank flooring third highest beauty value. It's faster to make than stone tiles so it's less time intensive but has a higher (probably not as high as carpet) flammable value too.

3. Smoothed stone flooring and concrete should be last and have the same beauty value, very low. These are 'industrial flooring options for when you haven't gotten the research / craftsman skills yet to make tiles or don't have the wood resources for polished plank flooring.

I'm not sure where to put metal and plasteel floors in the ranking, I'm sure others can suggest that. They are more modern/tech heavy materials requiring special crafting IMO and should probably have a much higher beauty value than stone probably.

As for wanting players to stop burrowing into mountains so much (if Tynan has said that's something he would like players to do less) - that's a whole separate topic I'm sure has been debated a lot so I won't go off-topic too much on that other than to say the current defensive tactics pretty much make mountain living the best option so of course it's a no-brainer to use that because you're already tunneling through them to find stone and steel in the first place so the ease of converting tunnels into living space makes sense along with the superior protection. And again, there's no bonus to building beautiful stone walls so why bother? Also, a granite mountain wall has higher hitpoints than the same wall created from colonist made granite bricks. Why would I lessen my defenses by doing that when the bare mountain walls offer higher defense protection and no penalty to my colonists happiness?

Suggested Wall Fixes:

1. WINDOWS. This one tiny addition could change the way players build. If my colonists demand windows as part of their happiness ... I cannot force them to live like moles underground forever. To start out with, cave-living may be a necessity while we plan and build an outside 'fortress' with windows so they can increase their happiness (along with beauty factors for walls and flooring)

2. Wall Beauty - Give a much higher beauty bonus to well crafted stone walls. This will encourage players to create better living spaces outside of mountains. Maybe walling off a valley for defense (done in real life medieval times) would still be a tactic overall but I'll want my colonists happier living outdoors as much as possible in good weather (unless of course my colony is on the ice sheet).

Summary: Because RimWorld is a top-down view game, it's difficult to 'imagine' 3D style fortresses and buildings out in the open. They are just squares of various sizes with walls around them. I have an easier time visualizing my bases inside the mountains. It's easy to burrow in, easy to design rooms, and gives no penalty. These are just a few simple things to think about when trying to coax players to "think outside the mountain" so to speak. Find ways to encourage the effort to live out there (turrets mountable on walls and other helpful defense methods) rather than to penalize. Right now you are encouraging players to build in mountains because the reward is higher than the penalty.

[Foxador]

If I was going to change something, I would make it so that carpet had better beauty than normal floor since it takes some time to research and can be expensive to make.  Maybe have it at around 5 beauty so it's better than smooth flooring.

As it is right now smooth flooring doesn't cost anything but time and being in a cave while the other floors actually take resources with carpet being the most. Which in turn makes it so people want it more since being in a mountain does several things.  First and foremost it gives you IMMUNITY from mortars which is a huge deal and pretty much negates a whole bad event since if you're in a mountain they can't hit you.  Second it only costs you time to make your rooms, not resources which can be a huge deal.  Third mountain walls don't get attack by enemies which makes it easier to set up choke points to your base.  Lastly it also gives you the best overall beauty in the end.

If Tynan wants to stop people from being in mountains you need to give advantages to living outside since right now you only get huge risk for no gain for living outside. On the other hand you get massive bonuses for living in a mountain with only minor penalties (time investment).  On top of that since you can now trade items with a trade beacon even when inside a base it's only been buffed.

[Andy_Dandy]

I'd prefer no bonuses for smoothed ground at all, but that it was needed before you could lay carpets or other flooring from stone, wood or metal on the top of it. That would be a great way of making cave bases even more work intensive and a harder choice, without ruining the natural benefits mountain bases should still have.

[Akyla]

I always go for a mountain base as well. While excavating your highly secure living space, you also get piles of resources. These are already at your base, so no hauling required either! Plus beautiful stone floors with only some smoothing work.

To make it more interesting to live outside the mountain, excavating would need to be considerably more difficult. At the same time, mining should give higher yields of steel etc and stonecutting more blocks. That way, obtaining enough resources does not mean excavating half the mountain. That would just leave the annoying sieges... too bad you can't build a properly reinforced roof...

[Vexare]

I'd prefer no bonuses for smoothed ground at all, but that it was needed before you could lay carpets or other flooring from stone, wood or metal on the top of it. That would be a great way of making cave bases even more work intensive and a harder choice, without ruining the natural benefits mountain bases should still have.

I could go for this idea - a smoothed stone floor should be a first option (neutral, not negative or positive beauty) for any colony deciding to build into a mountain. You can't lay down wood planks or tiles on a bumpy floor, right?

Tynan hasn't commented yet, but I have to suspect the +4 on smoothed stone might be unintentional especially if he's trying to coax players out into the open. I'll build out there when walls and floors actually matter to my colonists.