It makes sense for Cryosleep Casket to be an early tech.

[b0rsuk]

About the only use for cryosleep casket is to put gravely wounded colonist in there, so you can attempt to heal him later. You could get someone with better Medicine skill, buy glitterworld medicine for an operation, etc.
You can also store "useless" colonists in there, for instance someone with a heavy brain injury, if you have conscience and don't want to kill him off. Until you launch everyone into space.

My beef with this is that it's an early game problem. It's mostly in early game that you lack good medicine or good doctors. And cryosleep caskets are not really a solution. They are a workaround of sorts. From mechanic and balance point of view, the caskets are overpriced for what they do. I mean, hospital beds come earlier.

Earlier cryosleep caskets could be rationalized by reusing something from the original ship. Suppose caskets needs uranium and you start with a small quantity of it. Or cryosleep chips. You would salvage those, and could build some early.

If not, I see two things that would be helpful:
a) more incentives to freeze colonists
b) storing prisoners in cryosleep caskets

b - makes sense mechanically, if you don't want to recruit the prisoner. But why would you reserve a piece of high tech equipment for such filthy scum ?
a - this could include more common injuries and illnesses which are likely to cause death in longer perspective. For instance, infections. These are rare in my games (I play on 100%). And as a general rule, if a pawn doesn't bleed to death on his way to the hospital bed, he survives. I can't remember an injury that requires an immediate operation JUST to save a pawn from death.

I think cryosleep caskets are in the game either because someone thought it sounded cool, or because it's a stub and new features are planned.

What do you think ?

[EscapeZeppelin]

The cryosleep caskets are a ship part. Any other use, such as saving colonists for healing later, is secondary and not really their purpose.

[riversmoke]

b0rsuk is hitting on something I've been thinking about too. Yes it's a ship part but in terms of tech it's actually more fitting for the colonists to know more about cryocaskets than building a wooden wall. There's the reverse technology discovery problem that we have in our day as well. Without the internet, few (?) people could just start a garden. Mining and building are specialized skills that most people just don't have. Whereas in simpler times, many rural kids (males mostly) grew up helping someone build a wall, barn, house. Crashlanded space-faring folk have to relearn how to live without technology. The idea that cryocaskets are easy to research fit with the fact that they would have lot of common knowledge about them.

So that's an argument for why it makes logical, game-world sense. As a game mechanic, b0rsuk hit the good points. It creates decisions for the player that revolve around emotional, human issues (I'm reading Tynan's blog): "I need to save Doc Pawn, but he's the only doctor I have right now... into the cryocasket!". "It's the middle of winter and I don't have enough food to feed everyone...". "I've got 2 colonists left and 2 prisoners, no time to convert them to the cause but I'll need them later...".

I like the idea of salvaging cryo-chips (or other tech) from wrecked parts of your ship (that fell down with you). - The crashed ship mod is awesome and terrifying btw.

[b0rsuk]

The cryosleep caskets are a ship part. Any other use, such as saving colonists for healing later, is secondary and not really their purpose.

Actually there are two separate techs to research:
* cryosleep casket
* ship cryosleep casket

I have some ideas which would make colonists go into cryosleep more often.
* Your colonist turns into a werewolf once a month. Then he goes on a murderous rampage.
* good, old facehuggers (Alien)
* the fan favorite: cancer.

Having both kidneys shot or stomach destroyed would probably work, but it so happens that torso is the body part with highest armor. It is (eventually) covered by armor vest, a shirt, and a jacket/duster. That's why we mostly see limbs flying off.

Speaking of limbs, it could be interesting if you could sew a severed limb back in some cases. That might require putting a colonist, or at least his hand, into the casket.

[Boboid]

b0rsuk is hitting on something I've been thinking about too. Yes it's a ship part but in terms of tech it's actually more fitting for the colonists to know more about cryocaskets than building a wooden wall. -snip-
The idea that cryocaskets are easy to research fit with the fact that they would have lot of common knowledge about them.

I think you're insane.
Mostly because you're ignoring relative complexity.

A wooden wall in its absolute simplest form is a bunch of vertical logs hammered into the ground.
A cryptosleep casket is a uranium powered piece of exceptionally complex tech that IRL humans cant yet create.

Most of your colonists don't come from sufficiently educated backgrounds to create a wind turbine from raw materials let alone a cryptosleep casket.
Any jackass can build a crappy wall, and it's not hard to improve a wall, it's inherently simple.


Not to mention that the availability of the knowledge doesn't actually imply the capacity to create - There is undoubtedly the information required online right now that would allow me to create a nuclear power plant, my capacity to do so is pretty questionable!




Gameplay wise yeah I agree that caskets aren't particularly useful - In the early game if you're desperate you can always crack open a map-generated casket and claim it but I seldom ever need to.

I've toyed with the idea of freezing Assassins but between the sickness upon revival and that they can still hunt or create art it comes down to the fact that they're more useful awake than asleep.



Honestly though when alls said and done I don't think it's a terribly important priority.
Think they're fine as they are.

[Mathenaut]

I think that the best idea/solution for something like this is to provide at least one or two surviving cryosleep caskets ontop of where the colonists touch down. It doesn't have to be anything insane or extravagant. Just a casket or two.

I don't think it's gamebreaking (since you don't get much for those that decide to deconstruct it), and it poses an interesting question of where/how to build for those that do plan on using it.

Thoughts?

[b0rsuk]

If there would be a surviving cryosleep casket at the crash site, that would be a minor incentive to build outdoors.

[REMworlder]

Don't forget about all the ancient caskets scattered across the map!

Especially if you find a small ruin with only one or two caskets inside, they're pretty easy to clear. Then you can throw your colonist with the 50% infected torso inside one until you get nice medical facilities later.

[BetaSpectre]

Ancient cryo pods fulfill the role well enough. The problem is that youu don't know where to get  surviving pods from a crash would be nice though

[b0rsuk]

Don't get too focused on bringing cryosleep caskets into early game. The main point is that cryosleep caskets, especially as a research option, have very little practical use. Making them easier to get in early game is one solution, but there may be others. That's why I'm posting this in General subforum, to provoke some brainstorming.

Good point about the already present ancient caskets. This makes the research even less useful.

[Boboid]

User was warmed for this post.

Heh..
Well thank goodness for that, it was getting terribly chilly in here.


In all seriousness though do caskets really need more mechanics shoe-horned into them?
Plenty of things exist in game that only perform a single function and are just fine.

Like.. Grass, it's not really there to do much, it's there to break up the dirt texture a bit and to generally slow you down (Because grass is malicious and is secretly trying to destroy the world) but it's not like we need to be able to dry grass and use it to create hats or thatched roofs.

Edit:
To be clear I'm not against the notion of weird and cool applications for caskets, but there's mechanical bloat to be considered and the simple fact that every potential feature is competing for dev-time with every other feature.

[Mathenaut]

I don't think we need any drastic redrawing of what caskets do or how they work.

I imagine there's alot of things we /could/ do (i.e. add medical perks, etc), but it would be a bit nuance on implementing.

[Monkfish]

I can't say I've ever used a Cryo casket; haven't seen the need for one yet. However, I think some interesting points have been made here and a few subtle changes could be applied to make the starts a little more interesting and in-line with the opening messages/lore as well as adding cryo early on without requiring research.

- Game loads, screen is blank. The muffled sound of sirens, wind, tearing metal and explosions are briefly heard before a loud impact before silence again.
- Screen fades up from blank showing the scene unfolding before you. The entire map is shrouded in a Fog of War, with a small clear bit centred on a large part of the now-destroyed ship you were travelling in.
- Colonists pop out of caskets
- Message displays:
"You awake from your cryosleep casket feeling unwell, unsure if this is because of the after effects of cryosleep or because your eyes and skin are telling you that you're on a planet rather than in space. Before it fizzles out and dies completely, the computer on what's left of the ship tells you that something catastrophic happened and you've crash landed on a rimworld. You squint as your eyes adjust to the sunlight on this strange planet and you take in your surroundings..."
- Message clears, game starts. FoW recedes away from crash site as colonists awake to find themselves stood inside a section of the ship that contained their cryo caskets. Smoke billows out from the wreckage and fires have started due to the hot metal (other ignition sources available).
- Some of the cryocaskets may still be functioning, or could be made to function with some repair. Power should be external (the ship section is dead)
- Ship can be stripped for resources instead of random items appearing next to escape pods.

- Add additional starting conditions as required.

Cryosleep caskets and a better start to the game; Done.

[b0rsuk]

In all seriousness though do caskets really need more mechanics shoe-horned into them?
Plenty of things exist in game that only perform a single function and are just fine.

(...)

Like.. Grass, it's not really there to do much,

You don't research grass. You don't build grass. If it's in the game, it better be good at something. I can't think of a situation where I would think "Gee, I REALLY wish I had cryosleep casket now!".

If it doesn't do anything, why not remove it ?  Leave it as a decoration ? There are dandelions and roses. Someone is going to bring up modders soon, but there must be a nicer way of doing that than having a newbie trap in the game interface.

[Boboid]

I think it comes down to the fact that Cryptosleep Caskets served another purpose ( The pre-existing structures ) and it was trivial to give players access to them afterwards.

I agree that they're not overly useful, I very rarely use them at my battlements to store incapacitated colonists until the fight is over during the late-late game where raids can be lengthy.

As for "Newbie Trap" - Once bitten, twice shy.
They're not a huge investment and they do exactly what they say on the tin. You can even test them without ever having researched or constructed them.
There's no justification for their removal IMO.