Thoughts on a great game! Rimworld! (Tynan and Team? ~ Please read)

[booksonphonics]

I've seen a lot of mods and while they are interesting I wouldn't really like to have them forced in on the game. I like the natural balance of Rimworld and wouldn't mind small updates that keep the balance, challenge and feel.

I'm a fan of the Xcom series and I feel that Rimworld is similar but has its own wonderful unique feel/gameplay. This is what I would like to see with Rimworld, it would take a lot of work and would add some really nice progression and new gameplay. Overall it would really perfect Rimworld for me.

Keep the same starting factions:

1 or 2 Outlander town
2x Tribe
2x Pirate Band

Add

1x Norbal Band (spawns with world creation on random tile in colder areas) ~ Yes, I saw the mod

1x Jungle Tribe (spawns with world creation on random tile in Jungle)

1x Oceanic Pirate Band (spawns with world creation on random tile on any island)

1x Vampire Coven (becomes visible on random land tile AFTER you launch your first >>Land Crawler<<) {faction can be toggled off/on during initial World Creation Screen and Select Hostile (yes or no)}

1x Lobster Men Tribe (becomes visible on random ocean tile AFTER you launch your first >>Aqua Submarine<< {faction can be toggled off/on during initial World Creation Screen and Select Hostile (yes or no)}

1x Mechanoid Alien Base (becomes visible on a random land tile AFTER you launch your first >>Space Ship<<) {faction can be toggled off/on during initial World Creation Screen and Select Hostile (yes or no)}

The upper tier factions can still send a raid at you but their base only becomes visible after you launch a specific ship for the first time.
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Here is a description of how this might work and why I like this idea.

The Land Crawler, Space Ship and Aqua Submarine have their own research tree after Shipbuilding basics is researched. Each require their own resources to build and perhaps unique items sold by the passing exotic goods trader to construct. Basically these three ships allow the player to return to the World Map screen and move a specific amount of tiles within a certain radius from the initial colony. If you are in a colony on a tile that touches water you can construct and use the Land Crawler, Space Ship or Aqua Submarine. If you are in a colony that is on an Ocean tile you can construct or use the Space Ship or Aqua Submarine. Building these allow the player to choose an amount of colonists (with gear but no items) to include on the trip. Launching them allows you to return to the World Map. Once you choose a new destination tile you will autosave your colony minus those passengers and autosave your new landing site with those passengers). This way I can load my old colony and play any remaining colonists when I want or if my new site fails.

Each ship type gives you a circumference of tiles for that ships movement ie. Aqua Submarine only moves on water, Land Crawler only on land and Space Ship has a circumference of tiles it can reach. Each tile passed costs an amount of fuel (gold?). When you land or run out of fuel with that ship by choosing a destination tile you land just like you did when you made your first colony except it won't be a crash. (Perhaps you could add in a modifier to have a small percentage chance that you crash but I don't think it would be good unless you could recover some of the assembly parts, hardmode?).

At this point you are either starting a new colony to look for fuel (gold?) or to save up enough silver to buy more fuel (gold?). This way a player can choose to save up enough fuel (gold?) to send the transport to the tiles they want or (hardmode?) you could place a hardcap on the distance the ship can travel before force landing. This risks the chance it will crash land but if you don't crash and if you have enough fuel (gold?) to travel again you can relaunch. This is how you will move to the other tribes/bands and conquer or befriend them. Your initial colony could save up tons of fuel (gold?) before the launch but if you crash land you would still have to rebuild the ship to launch again. The other option is to load your launched colony have them build another ship with empty pods, place a pilot and launch to the tile you crashed on and pick up your other colonists. You can allow the Gold (fuel) to be a global shared resource on the map screen with a cumulative total from all your colonies (easy mode) or you can set the amount you want to take with you when you launch (hardmode). When you crash you still keep the total amount you took (hard mode) or you can lose the amount (very hard mode). You can make it where you can't crash when landing on a tile that contains one of your colonies/colonists as a safety. Space Ship/Aqua Sub can crash land, Land Crawlers break down (just like a crash).

The conquer progression in terms of items/unique resources/difficulty could be like this:

Colony -> (Outlander Town, Tribe, Pirate Band) -> (Jungle Tribe, Norbal Band, Oceanic Pirate Band) -> (Lobster Men Tribe, Vampire Coven) -> (Mechanoid Alien Base, Other Upper Tier)

This would mean that Mechanoids could or would be scaled up in strength or be left in a lower tier of progression while an New upper tier is created. You could progress how you wanted but the overall difficulty for each tier would be structured similar to above.

You just make it so Raids from the above factions are more frequent and/or higher in numbers when you get closer to their base tile. As long as early raids from these factions don't contain excessive or any higher level gear than what you already have it could add a little more variance and unpredictability to each colony. When you raid their base tile you can acquire the better gear more easily then progress to the next difficulty tribe.

Raids from some of the factions above can have unique status effects on your colonists. An example would be that the Jungle Tribes use strong poison (curable with exotic or crafted remedy). The Norbals can inflict frostbite. Oceanic Pirate Bands are like the regular pirate bands but a little stronger and wear the underwater helmet (craft-able or exotic). The Vampire Coven Raids (smaller raid but can teleport past walls) can cause a colonist to become infected with Vampirism (causes them to go beserk and restricts them to cannibal diet cure-able with exotic remedy). Lobster Men cause Lobsteritus a disease that requires a good doctor and or glitterworld medicine if it isn't treated your colonist could die or turn into a lower level creature with minimal intelligence.

The goal would be to take over all different factions and/or to destroy the Mechanoid Alien Base or Other Upper Tier faction.

Basically this update would add content, progression and a persistent World Map along with a high replay value, at least for me.

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Here is a description on how underwater or Oceanic colonies would work and base/boss raids.

Basically you could keep the same day/night cycle and use Hydro Turbines in place of Wind Turbines. You could still find Steam Vents for Geothermal. Alternatively if it was always night instead you would be forced to rely more on Geothermal and Hydro Turbines. Either way underwater colonies need to build a device(s) that generate oxygen for your roofed buildings. You can construct a dive helmet that lets your colonist breath in unroofed areas however this removes some armor from stronger helmets making the Lobstermen and raids in general more dangerous.

In order for this new content to work well you would need to allow the player to eventually land on the different tribe's tiles listed above. You could do this by implementing a couple different base designs that could be randomly selected for each tribe. This way when you raid them there's still an unexpected factor for how the tile will look. You could make them instantly hostile when you land or you could make it so you are forced to share the tile with them while you construct a small base with a medical bay before launching an attack. {You could always leave, providing you didn't crash land, autosaving your progress on their base (easy mode) or have the tile reset (hard mode)} Raids on each tier of tribe would allow you to obtain gear/materials for gear that you would need to finally destroy the Mechanoid Base or Other Upper Tier faction. You could add in a second top tier being that is on par with the Mechanoids to offer an alternative end game. Each tribe/faction base should have a leader or boss.

I love Rimworld and it's really fun to play but I wanted to take the time to describe the type of update I would like to see that would both add progression and a better end game than... construct a space ship. I don't expect everyone to like my ideas but I'm not really that interested in the mods I've seen. There are some good ideas but many of them seem to break challenge or balance that already exists. I feel like Rimworld has much more achievable potential. Tynan seems to have an idea of how to balance the game and his own idea for its direction but I thought I would give my opinion and ideas on the time I've played already in gratitude for such an enjoyable game. Thank you!