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

[hawk.]

   Ended up getting all ten of my final colonist off that that god forsaken rock on January 11, 5502 in a game that was start to finish BTSG v1.0. First off, Research felt balanced perfectly for this game. I had to put a concerted effort in to it to advance. It throttled my progression but in a way that felt right.

   The map I ended up playing on had plenty of natural materials so I didn't have to trade for any steel, plasteel, or uranium to build the ship. Things might have been more tense had that not been the case and I wouldn't object to having "trader only" materials being required to launch into space.

   I had particularly bad luck harvesting Mech Brains on this play through either by killing the mech outright in battle, damaging that particular sensor, or critical failures when harvesting and only three turrets were built without buying the parts. I'm guessing that this was probably an anomaly since my luck was much better in my previous games (Is Mechanoid disassembly efficiency the driving stat for this? ...or surgery?).

   Art was sufficiently nerfed and I found tailoring to be more than sufficient at bringing in funds. I definitely had more than enough leather and skins coming in to feed that operation because... Farming was tough, man. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that it was the blight that was tough. My first three rounds of trying to crow terminator seeds ended in blight and that left a bad enough taste in my mouth to not bother with the much more expensive (and interesting) viable variety on this play through. Later on in the game I had few crop batches in a row those were cultivated without issue but by that time I had come to mostly rely on hunting since it was much more reliable, "trained" my shooters, and gave me materials to make clothes for colonial use and profit. Also, there were quite a few times that bulk goods traders were selling food cheaper than its corresponding terminator seed. I know that, at the end of the day, one seed gets you more than one of the corresponding crop but I found myself betting on the sure thing by just buying the food instead playing Russian Roulette with  blight.

   Even with my blight battles, it was a great fun! I had more than a few "oh shit" moments where my mistakes almost wiped out my colony and plenty of mornings that came too early because I stayed up way too late the night before feeding this addiction (The blame for which, I lay solely at your feet ). I look forward to all the future changes, both large and small, but in the meantime I'm going to start up another game. 
 

[FlowerChild]

   Even with my blight battles, it was a great fun! I had more than a few "oh shit" moments where my mistakes almost wiped out my colony and plenty of mornings that came too early because I stayed up way too late the night before feeding this addiction (The blame for which, I lay solely at your feet ). I look forward to all the future changes, both large and small, but in the meantime I'm going to start up another game. 

Very cool man.  Thanks for the detailed description of your experiences, as that will definitely help with future balancing

I'm guessing that this was probably an anomaly since my luck was much better in my previous games (Is Mechanoid disassembly efficiency the driving stat for this? ...or surgery?).

I *think* it's the repair/construction skill that governs this.  It's using the same stock system as scavenging the bladed limbs off the smaller mechanoids.

[joshwoo69]

Sarcasm:
Really FC really?? Coming over taking over all my favourite mods
Sarcasm off:
Nice mod! Might try it if I am less burned out

[AllenWL]

Really having fun. I actually needed to make a nutrient past dispenser for the first time to survive the winter. Also I now make much much smaller farms so when a crop blight hits, I loose less seeds.

I've been playing with a few mods, and so far;
The Apothecarius NEIN mod is not really good with this mod, because while the research fits in pretty well(sorta) the medical flowers that turn into medicine don't need seeds, which suddenly makes medicine much much easier to get then herbal medicine, and a heck lot more renewable.

Defend that colony mod fits in nicely, giving you some protection (embrasures, barbed wire fence, trenches, etc) to work with.

Expanded Prosthetics and Organ Engineering fits in ok-ish sorta odd, but not that odd, and doesn't really disrupt balance

More Mechanoids is fun to work with, and I feel it fits in nicely.

The mod itself does wonders in balancing stuff out by making it harder to get a electrical system going(lots of things need electricity) and forcing your pawns to go fight themselves.

Oh, just wondering but what about having a need for resources to research(at least some things)? (Like to tinker around with) I was able to research pretty much everything other then shipbuilding within a year by having a very good researcher dedicate himself to research all year long.

P.S I find the other 'pretty apparent' changes rather hard to spot.

[skullywag]

I havent looked at the code (weird right!) But if FC is just using a new plant class it coukd be as simple as changing the plants in other mods to use it as well. If not it should be simple enough to make that a reality at least in simple terms. (I.e theyd all be 1 shot plants)

[FlowerChild]

The mod itself does wonders in balancing stuff out by making it harder to get a electrical system going(lots of things need electricity) and forcing your pawns to go fight themselves.

Thanks man!  Glad you're enjoying it

I havent looked at the code (weird right!) But if FC is just using a new plant class it coukd be as simple as changing the plants in other mods to use it as well. If not it should be simple enough to make that a reality at least in simple terms. (I.e theyd all be 1 shot plants)

Yup, that's pretty much correct.  If you check the mod .xml files, there are two directly related to the whole seed thing:

Plants_Cultivated.xml which contains some modified entries for the stock plants to use seeds, which can be used as examples, and:

Items_Custom_Seeds.xml which contains the new seed items themselves, and which should be very easy to expand upon

I've got generic classes setup to handle the whole seed planting/harvesting thing in game, so all that needs to be done to adapt other plants to the system is to add additional entries for seeds and plants like in the above files.

[vagineer1]

Holy hell. I did not expect to see you here FC. It has been a long time since I have used the Better Than Wolves mod due to recent changes to Minecraft making mods hard to install. (In my opinion) And it has been an even longer time since I last played Minecraft due to me losing interest in it.

Glad to see you again.

[re1wind]

But does BTSG have a mechanical windmill to grind wheat into barley? That's what i want to know. 

[FlowerChild]

But does BTSG have a mechanical windmill to grind wheat into barley? That's what i want to know. 

I think if you want to convert wheat into barley you're better off with a mod that provides a genetics laboratory rather than a millstone

[AllenWL]

I havent looked at the code (weird right!) But if FC is just using a new plant class it coukd be as simple as changing the plants in other mods to use it as well. If not it should be simple enough to make that a reality at least in simple terms. (I.e theyd all be 1 shot plants)

Simple for you, but it's all greek to me.
I'm just using them, then feeling guilty every time I see someone with xiligum seeds.

Ok.. maybe not. after seeing this, I took a look at the codes, and changed the recipe for medicine so it used two herbal medicine, five cloth(bandages) and a piece of plasteel(casing) to make craft medicine.

[TheMythMan]

Another excellent mod from FlowerChild. Are you gonna add some hibachis or whatever? Donuts, perhaps?

Or maybe wolves, to be tamed and used in massive factories to produce... um. Leather, right? Yeah, leather.

[FlowerChild]

Ok.. maybe not. after seeing this, I took a look at the codes, and changed the recipe for medicine so it used two herbal medicine, five cloth(bandages) and a piece of plasteel(casing) to make craft medicine.

Yeah, don't let yourself be intimidated by the .xml files man.  RimWorld has an extremely powerful modding system (one of the most powerful I've seen short of games that just give you the source code), the .xml files are all plain text, and they're all pretty easy to understand.

It may look like code, and thus be intimidating if you're a non-coder, but it's all really very straightforward

Another excellent mod from FlowerChild. Are you gonna add some hibachis or whatever? Donuts, perhaps?

I think if I ever found myself implementing the exact same features in one game after another, over and over again, I'd start looking around to see if I had been moved in next to Sisyphus

[AllenWL]

Well, winter has stuck the colony of Soulstone again, and yet again, we face hunger and insanity as the constant cold, nutrient paste, general lack of food(in both huntable animals and seeds), and snow(which slows down my colonist, which makes them late for dinner, which makes them urgently hungry... if not downright starving...).

We stopped the food supply to our prisoners, locked a 'affordable' colonist in jail, drafted a colonist and put him where people frequent so he keeps on talking with them and keeping their mood up, started farming a few hops for beer, and is now attempting to replace our labor force with droids and hacked mechanoids so people can relax and talk and be happy. If things get any worse, I might just start killing off colonists and turning them into food for the others. (come to think of it, I should have expected this. I only managed to survive the previous winter due to a trader coming by, and we had like, half the people we have now...)
For now, a siege party tried to attack us, and was quickly slaughtered, their supplies taken, and the people killed and turned into yummy yummy soylent green. Hopefully, that keeps us going for a while

The need for seed is really a heavy blow, as you don't always get nice fat elk wandering around. Especially in the colder seasons(boreal forest up in the north so things can get really cold). We try to stock up on meat during the warmer seasons, but that just doesn't cut it. And viable seeds are really expensive. The next time a trader comes around, I'm going to stock up on seeds. Lots of seeds.

[coht]

"Revised farming dependent upon seeds to plant crops. Seeds come in two varieties: terminator (single generation), and fully viable, and each crop type (potatoes, corn, cotton, etc.) has its own set of seeds, available from various traders."

I do hope they're called "seed potatoes" and not "potato seeds", just a little thing I see modders who adds potatoes in a farming enviroment, there are no thing such as a "potato seed" but there are Seed Potatoes which are selected potatoes with a bigger ammount of the small "knobbs" that you may see when peeling a potato, the potato is cut and put in the ground to grow to a mother potato or a "seed potato" :3

[FlowerChild]

I do hope they're called "seed potatoes" and not "potato seeds", just a little thing I see modders who adds potatoes in a farming enviroment, there are no thing such as a "potato seed" but there are Seed Potatoes which are selected potatoes with a bigger ammount of the small "knobbs" that you may see when peeling a potato, the potato is cut and put in the ground to grow to a mother potato or a "seed potato" :3

They're genetically engineered super potatoes flying through space thousands of years in the future.  The details of how they're grown are entirely up in the air

Well, winter has stuck the colony of Soulstone again

Thanks for the story man.  Very cool