Reverse the Decision on Trees and Fertilizer Pumps...

[Darkhymn]

The fertilizer pumps were a ridiculous concept and absurdly overpowered. Seeing them gone is fine in my book. As for tree planting, I think this is for the best as well. I haven't noticed a shortage yet in places where trees would realistically be common, so long as I don't deforest huge swaths of map, and in places like deserts and tundras... Well, most trees do not survive in those environments. There should be a dearth of trees and, therefore, wood.
Tynan is promoting challenge and discouraging the homogenizing practice of holing up in fully self sufficient, automated killbox defended, roofed in fortresses. I see nothing wrong with that.

[Vaperius]

The fertilizer pumps were a ridiculous concept and absurdly overpowered. Seeing them gone is fine in my book. As for tree planting, I think this is for the best as well. I haven't noticed a shortage yet in places where trees would realistically be common, so long as I don't deforest huge swaths of map, and in places like deserts and tundras... Well, most trees do not survive in those environments. There should be a dearth of trees and, therefore, wood.
Tynan is promoting challenge and discouraging the homogenizing practice of holing up in fully self sufficient, automated killbox defended, roofed in fortresses. I see nothing wrong with that.

Frankly ? Why is he doing that...it's a game...challenge is fine but it shouldn't be so unrealistically enforced; anyone that understands the basics of biology and forestry knows how to get saplings for trees or compost dead things to create fertilizer....

My stance is to bring it back BETTER and BALANCED so its FAIR and not a giant mess of explotation;  I know full well tree planting and fertilizer are weirdly unbalanced; I am suggesting we improve both to be challenging, require more research, take more resources and be overall more difficult to use...or you know for him to just include them as secondary mods like he used to so we have a choice.

[Mathenaut]

This argument of 'realism' is really wonky sometimes, if for no other reason that it's not.. realistic. At all.

If you want to introduce soil quality issues? Sure. Also introduce the very-easy-to-implement means we have of getting around these issues (i.e. fertilizer, and the ultimate end isn't any kind of depth or complexity, it's just a resource drain attached to primary resource generation).

Want lack of wood to be a problem because 'wood is hard to come by in the arctic'? Sure. The solution would be to just use things other than wood in constructions. Butcher table made out of stone would work fine (if not better) and would even be preferred if I have stone aplenty and no wood to spare.

That's really the issue at the heart of all of this. For all that 'muh realizm' is being used to justify this problem, actual realistic solutions are being shied away from.

[MsMeiriona]

There are already multiple kinds of terrain with multiple variables to them (growable, diggable, light, other stuff, too lazy to look into coding get the exact wording), I think limiting what can be planted by biome, and soil type, and pawn growing skill, would be reasonable.


For example, tundra might only be able to plant pine trees, and would have to be on a certain terrain type and by someone with a growing skill minimum 7.

[Argon]

Both game mechanics were OP as they previously were, but if they were significantly rebalanced they could be fine.

Example: Trees could be balanced by requiring a large amount of research into "genetically modified trees", with colonists having to individually research each type of tree. Trees should also take longer to grow, maybe a couple of years (certain real life hybrid poplar strains can be harvested for timber after their third growing season).  This timescale would make them useless in the short term, but useful for 3+year longplayers like me.

Example 2: Fertilizer pumps would require ammonia, which would be fixated in a Haber furnace.  The Haber furnace would be researched, consume a ludeonicrous amount of power, and require some source of hydrogen. This would balance fertilizer pumps.

-Argon

[akiceabear]

By definition tundra is an environment where trees do not grow!

I personally support moves to differentiate the biomes, even if it means my old easy strategies will be broken. Wash rinse repeat is very boring, and the biomes should be more than just new skins.

[Tynan]

Wash rinse repeat is very boring, and the biomes should be more than just new skins.

This is really the heart of it.

If a desert base looks just like a jungle base (but with slightly different heating facilities), something is wrong. In my book, anything that encourages more dramatic differences between biomes is good. Being able to build the same optimized, self-contained, killbox'd fortress in every biome and play out the exact same production lines is, to me, a total failure of game design. When each biome feels really different, that's where we win. I made this change because I think it moves further in that direction.

The realism argument doesn't move me. Real trees take decades to grow. If we made them grow realistically, there would be no point in planting them in RW since they'd be nothing more than saplings by the end of even the longest-lived colony. Have you ever heard of a town in the old west in 1875 planting a bunch of trees for lumber? It just doesn't happen because it doesn't make sense in real life. Reforestation is purely a modern phenomenon and only makes sense in the context of huge mechanized logging operations. The only old counterexamples are things like olive, fig, or cork trees, and only because these trees produce for decades after maturity and don't need to be chopped down.

You still have the choice between a tree-filled and a tree-scarce environment. If the idea of tree-scarcity seems horrible to you, just play boreal forest, temperate forest, or jungle. If you want a bit more of a desperate experience, play tundra or desert. You still have access to the same experiences as before, but with new more desperate ones emphasized.

I know that as players you *want* on some level to be able to optimize your colony perfectly into the same perfect base each time. After all, that's your goal at every moment while playing the game, and you feel a sort of dopamine rush pleasure when making progress towards that. It's natural to recoil from design changes that seem to take away what you *want*. But please recognize that a game that hands you your goal easily is not a better game. Games aren't fun because they give you what you want. They're fun because of the dramatic process of struggle, decision, story, and drama that you experience in pursuit of your goal. Just as in life, it's about the journey, not the destination. And when you finally do achieve that perfect base in a desolate tundra, even with the harder game mechanics and greater challenges, the emotional reward will be all the greater because you'll know you bloody earned it.

[Mathenaut]

Wash rinse repeat is very boring, and the biomes should be more than just new skins.

This is really the heart of it.

If a desert base looks just like a jungle base (but with slightly different heating facilities), something is wrong. In my book, anything that encourages more dramatic differences between biomes is good. Being able to build the same optimized, self-contained, killbox'd fortress in every biome and play out the exact same production lines is, to me, a total failure of game design. When each biome feels really different, that's where we win. I made this change because I think it moves further in that direction.

Ironically, I think this is a mark of success. Essentially, you've provided the players with the means to innovate a way to survive across a variety of different environments. I think it's something to understand that bases built to survive 3+ years are all going to be the same, just pallete-swaps of each other. This is something you see in real-live cities, all structured around maximum efficiency.

For me, at least, Rimworld isn't just Sim City with a wonky theme though. Every colony I build isn't made of 'maximum 3 year efficiency', it's made for 'keeping things going long enough to get off this fucking planet'.

That's where the experience is, I think.

It makes sense when you look at it statistically. With a limited que of events, even Randy's long-term behavior isn't really that random and becomes a script of it's own in the long term. Because each AI draws from the same pool in just different order/frequency, the long-term game is going to play essentially the same, no matter the environment, no matter the storyteller. It is going to be difficult to do more than just really delay that.

What many of these changes really do is affect the short-term. When decisions aren't weighted under the assumption of 'being here for 3 years', you start to see the special sort of nuances that appear from 'temporary thing that accidentally became permanent because of a hiccup in the plan'. Loss of colonists is more significant because you aren't stacking up 20 of them, as more than 5-6 really piles on the cost of getting everyone out.

I think that the essential experience of Rim World lies in trying to get off the planet, not in sticking around forever. Things are desperate, dynamic, losses hurt, the research tree is only half-explored (in different orders, depending on environment), and everything is a god damned mess by the time you leave because the choice between 'optimize everything' and 'get the fuck out' isn't a choice.

The realism argument doesn't move me.

Thank the gods.

[Darkshadow]

I believe the common issue to both is that they have been removed to try and prevent people making a colony that is a bunker buried indoors with no way in for pirates and no challenge.

Fertilizer pumps were used to make large underground farms which were better than hydroponics, trees were also grown inside bases and this change is designed to make colonies be more accessible to the outdoors. If you make trees only growable outdoors and much slower so you have to plant a plantation too large to protect with walls, that should be a happy middle to the current option of wild growth only.

The real solution to underground bases would be making mining harder and slower to prevent people building whole bases inside a mountain (this isn't dwarf fortress despite the parallels), I find the game much more interesting and challenging if you have to build a set of buildings outdoors with little natural protection, defended by the colonists and clever base design not exploit-y kill boxes.

[Mathenaut]

That wouldn't solve anything.

[Bob_Namg]

Some kind of method of fertilizing grounds should be possible; however, it should only be possible maybe in the late-game (prerequisite techs, the whole lot) as well as take a lot of power or production time to successfully administer.
That way you maybe could make a bigger farm in your desert cave colony, but only after a number of in-game years with certain material conditions applying as well as each usage of said method being useful for only maybe one tile per device/whatever.

Even if Tynan doesn't implement such a thing, there are mods already and will be mods doing so, I'm not quite sure what the ruckus is about.

[akiceabear]

Some kind of method of fertilizing grounds should be possible; however, it should only be possible maybe in the late-game (prerequisite techs, the whole lot) as well as take a lot of power or production time to successfully administer.

I'm also fine with its removal, but think if it is reintroduced it should be nerfed considerably. My thoughts:

Fertilizer pump requires soil balanced to it. All ground should have a positive fertility, but in tundra and desert biomes be so low that no plants except a basic moss or cactus will grow, and even then very slowly. A fertilizer pump will increase the fertility of an area by a multiplier, rather than converting the land to a new type. Thus fertilizer has a limited but positive affect in biomes like the desert, where it maybe only adds one more plant (a potato?) to the list of possibilities you can grow. If the power generation balances used in BTSG are applied to vanilla that would also reduce the ability to spam fertilizer pumps.

Trees should be re-balanced to grow incredibly slowly, e.g. a year or more before harvest is possible. It's been requested many times, so perhaps not going to happen, but blights need to be balanced as well to make them only attack a set of genetically similar crops at one time.

[cultist]

I know that as players you *want* on some level to be able to optimize your colony perfectly into the same perfect base each time. After all, that's your goal at every moment while playing the game, and you feel a sort of dopamine rush pleasure when making progress towards that. It's natural to recoil from design changes that seem to take away what you *want*. But please recognize that a game that hands you your goal easily is not a better game. Games aren't fun because they give you what you want. They're fun because of the dramatic process of struggle, decision, story, and drama that you experience in pursuit of your goal. Just as in life, it's about the journey, not the destination. And when you finally do achieve that perfect base in a desolate tundra, even with the harder game mechanics and greater challenges, the emotional reward will be all the greater because you'll know you bloody earned it.

I really hope you'll stick with that philosophy. I agree completely.

But then again, I am very much a survival game masochist. I just can't get enough punishment as long as I can see a light at the end of the tunnel.

[Kegereneku]

Even if the light is an incoming train ?

[BetaSpectre]

I need my pumps.
All this water is driving me mad!