[MOD] (Alpha 9) Better Than Sentry Guns (v1.0 - Mar 6th)

[Boboid]

Interested to see what you come up with in terms of crop blights. The vanilla mechanic itself is a bit clunky.

In terms the long term food problem my intention was to point out that you may have inadvertently turned cannibalism into a FOOS while simultaneously forcing people to do it. Pigeon-holing isn't fun for anyone Intelligent decision making is where it's at.

And yes of course I understand you're not trying to beat people.
But any mod that says " This is hard " is going to get the " I can break this " treatment

[FlowerChild]

But any mod that says " This is hard " is going to get the " I can break this " treatment

Well, that's not so much what I was trying to say, as I was trying to provide a warning that it's really not balanced for play on anything harder than rough.

Even with your mentions of cannibalism, I'm wondering if you decide to go that route, whether it actually becomes easier in some ways on higher difficulties due to the more abundant food supply, trade goods, and potential recruits that keep being conveniently delivered to your base

Personally, I haven't been using cannibalism in my own play with the mod, so no, directing people towards it wasn't what I was going for.  I had assumed cannibalism came with heavy status penalties, and potentially turned other colonies and tribes against you which would make it of dubious value, so it's something I've avoided using in my own play up until now, but if you're saying it becomes the most effective strategy under these circumstances, it is certainly something I can look into penalizing more heavily.

If you feel there are other tactics along those lines that allow for bypassing some of the more challenging and/or interesting aspects of the game, especially if they feel cheap, please do let me know, as that will be extremely valuable information for me in guiding ongoing development of the mod.

[Famous Shoes]

I just took a quick first crack at this as it sounds fantastic. But, if I'm understanding what I saw correctly, the minimum to plant a potato is:

Research:



• Electrics
• Machining
• Communication Systems

Build:



• Power Source
• Communications Console
• Power Conduit
• Orbital Trade Beacon

Now, I'm not seeing how to get a power source going. Wind and geothermal require generator components, which come from the machining table, which requires power. Solar requires solar cells, which are not craftable, and so would require purchase from a trader, which requires power for the console--or the one-shot event that dumps free solar cells onto the map (as of late Oct, I've not seen this happen.) So, how does one get from no power to power?

Then, as I understand it, once I've power, I'd await an interplanetary trader stocking GMO potato seeds. Wait a minute, potato seeds? What the heck are a potato seeds?

I feel like I'm not getting the mechanic. I mean, I follow it, it's just feeling at odds with the vanilla themes (unlike the other BTS mods.) Much of what is grown in RimWorld doesn't really need processed "seeds". Have some corn? Shove some kernels back in the ground. A potato? Cut it into pieces and stick 'em in the dirt. I guess that could be abstracted as "seeds". Even so, having to nail orbital communications and renewable energy to plant a few spuds feels off, given the simplicity of vegitative reproduction.

To make this work in a non-surprising way would probably be too much rework and likely not at all what you were after for your own play. So, some minor tweaks I might suggest, though others likely have better ideas:




• Distribute some of the cultivated crops as low occurance, wild crops yielding viable "seeds".
• Remove power requirement from machining table
• Bonus: Change some planting requirements to consume plant products, i.e., to plant seven potatos requires one potato. Choices: do we eat those or plant those?

Some terminology changes that might help: change corn seeds, potato seeds, and rice seeds to seed corn, seed potatos, and seed rice respectively.

But, enough pontificating from the armchair. Back to trying to salvage my own mess of a mod.

[FlowerChild]

I just took a quick first crack at this as it sounds fantastic. But, if I'm understanding what I saw correctly, the minimum to plant a potato is:

Research:

• Electrics
• Machining
• Communication Systems

Not sure where the machining requirement comes from here.  You initially crash with more solar panels than are required to make a solar generator.  Machining would only be required if you also need to make wind generators.

And really, you can plant potatoes within the first couple of minutes of the game, so not sure why you think it's so involved to get started.  The only big problem there is that all you have initially are the single-generation (terminator) seeds that are part of your survival kit.

It sounds like perhaps you didn't start a new game with this installed, and thus you didn't get the starting equipment?  If that's not the case, something might be whacky with your install.

I feel like I'm not getting the mechanic. I mean, I follow it, it's just feeling at odds with the vanilla themes (unlike the other BTS mods.) Much of what is grown in RimWorld doesn't really need processed "seeds". Have some corn? Shove some kernels back in the ground. A potato? Cut it into pieces and stick 'em in the dirt. I guess that could be abstracted as "seeds". Even so, having to nail orbital communications and renewable energy to plant a few spuds feels off, given the simplicity of vegitative reproduction.

I think if you read the seed descriptions this will make a lot more sense.  The problem is two fold:

a ) you aren't on earth, so you can't expect the soil and environment to sustain regular earth crops.

b ) the seeds themselves have been genetically modified to maximize profit, so you aren't planting regular earth crops either, nor are regular earth crops available to you (perhaps they don't even exist anymore). 

Personally, I think this fits the dark scifi vibe of the RimWorld universe (which I personally find is reminiscent of the Dune books, which I've also emphasized in some of the mod's mechanoid elements, or maybe the Aliens series in some ways) very well, and it's based on real-world concepts (look up "terminator seeds" if you don't believe me).  If you take a minute considering the limited cargo space/weight that would be available on interplanetary trade ships, shipping seeds instead of raw food would make a lot of sense (assuming your destination was capable of growing them), and genetically modifying them to terminate after a single generation would also make sense (in a very mercenary "life is cheap" mindset) given it would keep the buyer dependent on the supplier to keep coming back for more.  In some ways I've even been thinking of it as a form of futuristic tenancy, where someone probably paid an awful lot to terraform these planets, and thus charging "rent" through controlling the food supply in some way might be considered a way to get some return on that investment instead of just letting a bunch of random freeloaders crash on your nice factory-fresh planet and despoil it at will

And yes, "seeds" are a general abstraction, that wouldn't necessarily apply in the case of potatoes

EDIT: Actually, here, for easy reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_technology

[skullywag]

Dune is one of Tynans inspirations, so no wonder you feel that way about it.

[FlowerChild]

Dune is one of Tynans inspirations, so no wonder you feel that way about it.

I definitely caught the Dune reference with the personal shields, and was picking up a generally similar vibe from some of the in-game descriptions, so yeah, that totally makes sense to me

I decided to run with that idea and go a tad Butlerian Jihad on classifying the mechanoid parts and the AI persona cores as black market goods.  I find it works well in relation to there essentially being some tech that the player can never manage to build themselves, and I think it further emphasizes the creepiness of the mechanoids.

I've always liked the whole "fallen tech" idea in sci-fi whether that be Dune, or some gaming franchises like WH40K, or the old Battletech games.

[ItchyFlea]

It appears that this mod and EdB Prepare Carefully don't fully work together, as the changes PC make to the world generator prevent solar cells from spawning at the start of the game. Potato seeds still spawn as you've got them arriving on the map through a droppod event at map start.
A possible solution would be to add the solar cells to that droppod.

The player can solve this issue themselves as well, as PC does allow the player to add the solar cells to the list of starting equipment.

[r3dp]

Oh, I was SUPER confused when I spent an hour and half trying to find how to get power going... I use a lot of mods so I wasn't willing to go through all of them and see what was going wrong. Thanks so much.

edit : Message directed towards ItchyFlea

[FlowerChild]

It appears that this mod and EdB Prepare Carefully don't fully work together, as the changes PC make to the world generator prevent solar cells from spawning at the start of the game. Potato seeds still spawn as you've got them arriving on the map through a droppod event at map start.
A possible solution would be to add the solar cells to that droppod.

Thanks for figuring that out Itchy!  That should help greatly with future support

I'm not too keen on adding the panels to the drop pod as that implies they're packaged as part of your survival equipment (which is the intent with the seeds) rather than being part of the crash (which is the intent with the panels), but I'll take a look at it to see if I can otherwise switch around how they're generated to prevent potential conflicts.

I intentionally implemented the seed drop through code instead of just spawning it normally to get that sequence right (you can even see the section in MapGenerators.xml where I initially just plopped them on the ground like the solar panels then thought "that's not right" when I saw it in action and commented it out to go off and implement a custom drop pod handler), so I'd be rather hesitant to change it around to this end

EDIT:

Yeah, after taking a quick look (would have been happy to make a change if it was a matter of a few minutes, but it doesn't look that way), I think this:

The player can solve this issue themselves as well, as PC does allow the player to add the solar cells to the list of starting equipment.

Is the most reasonable solution here, as if the player has a mod installed to change the equipment they spawn with, I think it reasonable to expect them to know that it's going to affect the equipment they spawn with

[AllenWL]

Oh hey, a 'Better Than' mod! This is going to be fun!
And by fun, I mean 'Lets see how many ways I die in the first two years'
(Seeing this brings back memories of years stuck in the stone age in BTW Hopefully, I can do better with this)

Just a question, but how compatible is this with other mods?

[FlowerChild]

Just a question, but how compatible is this with other mods?

Short answer is: "no idea"

It was developed and tested in isolation, so I can't really say one way or the other.  The posts immediately preceding your own seem to be indicating the first discovered minor incompatibility, but beyond that, I haven't heard anything more from players since it was released a couple of days ago.

I'm not doing anything too funky here, so I doubt there would be any technical incompatibilities, but of course if you're using additional mods that provide stuff like more crops or additional turrets, that would likely provide ways to bypass the systems I've setup, potentially nullifying the value of using BTSG.

[AllenWL]

Just a question, but how compatible is this with other mods?

Short answer is: "no idea"

It was developed and tested in isolation, so I can't really say one way or the other.  The posts immediately preceding your own seem to be indicating the first discovered minor incompatibility, but beyond that, I haven't heard anything more from players since it was released a couple of days ago.

I'm not doing anything too funky here, so I doubt there would be any technical incompatibilities, but of course if you're using additional mods that provide stuff like more crops or additional turrets, that would likely provide ways to bypass the systems I've setup, potentially nullifying the value of using BTSG.

Ok, so no new crops or turrets I can build at the start and I should be fine then I guess.

[FlowerChild]

Ok, so no new crops or turrets I can build at the start and I should be fine then I guess.

...or anything that would normally be unlocked through the tech tree

There's technical incompatibility, and then there's conceptual.  There's likely very little in the way of technical incompatibility here, however, whether things will play right is a whole other matter.

You could always read through the change log in detail to determine whether any given mod would fit well with this one, but without knowing the specifics, I can't really say one way or another.  Honestly, I'd probably give it a try at least once on its own to get a feel for what it changes, and then you can better judge from there.

[akiceabear]

Just posting to say this is a great mod! I generally stick only to mods that make the interface more intuitive or are very close to vanilla in content/difficulty, as most of the rest tend to make the game way too easy. Extremely happy to see a mod that makes it considerably harder (without just spamming raids)!

[FlowerChild]

Just posting to say this is a great mod!

Thanks man!  Hope you have a lot of fun with it