More sensible chronological ages

[Gimmick Account]

This suggestion was born out of my mild but constant annoyance over having to edit almost every new arrival's chronological age in the game files to better match their backstory. I'd often get people from escape pods with Glitterworld backgrounds that were only a few years older than their biological age - Not really likely in the Rimworld universe due to the stated definite unavailability of FTL travel. Even if we took into account that - in spite of the game's name - a colonizable planet might not actually have to meet the strict lore-definition of 'Rimworld' (i.e. out in the distant galactic rim), but could simply be an uninteresting place close to a much more attractive Glitterworld, that still wouldn't explain professions like the 'Explorer' (who should always have clocked up at least a few decades in cryosleep) potentially only being as old as their biological age.

So here is my suggestion: Make the game internally generate a bunch of planets during worldgen*, and have colonists who come from space mostly originate from those. There could always be a low chance of people being from 'places unknown' (which would generate them with a random age like now, but weighted towards being very old). Everyone else is aged by the distance to their homeworld (plus whatever is appropriate for certain personal backgrounds). This way you would automatically have people from the same family be generated with matching ages during setup, or people who come from the same Glitterworld, et cetera. The name of someone's homeworld could be displayed on their character screen for flavour.

I hope this suggestion is both interesting and manageable in terms of workload for you. It's actually already been scaled down from its original concept, which would have seen me posting cheerfully about a local star chart with homeworld positions coloured by type - Like the current planetary map and its settlements. I figured my idea would have a better chance of survival if I pared it down to its essentials.

*Like it currently does with settlements. So you'd have maybe one Glitterworld, usually quite far away, several Urbworlds and Midworlds within a more generous distribution range, and a loooot of Rimworlds everywhere. Note that there is no need to generate a full galaxy for this kind of thing - Only the 'neighborhood' is interesting when it comes to barely-spaceborne Rimworlds, and that distant Glitterworld might simply just be the closest one there is!

[Gimmick Account]

After reading through my previous post again two days later, I thought I'd clarify that 'generating a bunch of planets' refers to only creating a name, a type, and a distance from the Rimworld for each of them. Not an actual planetary map! That seemed more clearly spelled out in my head than it ended up being in the final suggestion.

[Gimmick Account]

Since Rimworld is nearing 1.0 and development will presumably taper off at that point, I thought I'd bump my old topic about colonist ages again. I don't know if Tynan is still reading this particular subforum at all, but it cannot hurt to try!

[sick puppy]

i really like the idea. i guess this internal starmap of the planetary neighbourhood could be rng a little like this:
transcendent world: ? light years away
glitterworld: 100 light years away
glassworld: 105 l y away
toxic world 1: 95 l y away
toxic world 2: 115 l y away
caveworld 1: 90 l y away
caveworld 2: 10 l y away
caveworld 3: 190 l y away
urbworld 1: 70 l y away
urbworld 2: 45 l y away
urbworld 3: 150 l y away
midworld 1: 15 l y away
midworld 2: 75 l y away
midworld 3: 200 l y away
midworld 4: 60 l y away
midworld 5: 110 l y away
midworld 6: 55 l y away
midworld 7: 30 l y away
steam world 1: 40 l y away
steam world 2: 140 l y away
medieval world 1: 35 l y away
medieval world 2: 120 l y away
medieval world 3: 25 l y away
medieval world 4: 45 l y away
animal world 1: 10 l y away
animal world 2: 15 l y away
deadworlds and rimworlds: a whole bunch all over the place, no need to be specified.

so anyway, the whole list could be used everytime a spacer or just any human character is created by the game that isnt a tribal. tribals are always from the same planet and have no experience with cryptosleep. spacers and pirates on the other hand can. especially spacers though. spaced have a much higher chance to be a glitterworld aswell, which is where the best backstories are from. pirates have the highest chance to be from urbworlds, i guess.
anyway. so the program at first would decide the backstory of any pawn, just like it does today. but afterwards, it would alsp decide on its home world type, be that the same very rimworld as is the case by far with most pawns and definitely all tribals or if it's a glitterworld, urbworld, midworld or whatever. once the world type is decided on (which usually doesnt need rng anyway since it often is goven in the backstory), then the exact home world would be decided on, as in exactly which of the urbworlds this gangster originates from for example. you take the distance and multiply it by a number between 1 and 100 (depending on how much that pawn travelled, of course, while people from glitterworlds and space pirates would travel more of course and maybe some others aswell). i guess the most common number would be 1 and would exponentially (or linearly, if you wanna make it simple) decline until 100. (because there just arent that many people that travelled that much)

e.g. hunter is a hunter from animal world 1 and travelled only once from there to our place. (multiplier = 1) 10*1=10 years in cryptosleep in addition.

e.g. enid kapelsen, a glitterworld surgeon who travelled quite a bit in her life for leasure and crashlanded with you on this rimworld. multiplier is let's say 20 and distance of the glitterworld is 100. enid kapelsen spent 2000 years in cryptosleep.

e.g. trobo "combo" vladlena is an ace space fighter pilot and although he didnt spend a lot of time in cryptosleep caskets at once, he did it as many times as only few other people in the known galaxy. urbworld 1 is his home, it's 45 l y away. his multiplier is 70, so he spent 3150 years in cryptosleep.

[Tynan]

I've thought of doing this, actually. But if I did, I'd want to use real stars, which kind of gets into designing a whole RimWorld universe star-by-star, at least implicitly. It's a really cool idea but it's a big project I didn't want to bite off just to add a line of flavor to backstories you can't interact with anyway.

[Gimmick Account]

Aww, that's a real shame... Although couldn't you dance around the real-star-distance problem by having the origin of a character just be the planet name and a distance to the Rimworld, without any more granular resolution? Since no extrasolar planets have official names yet (and won't for quite some time) and there are billions of stars in the galaxy, any one '58 light years away' planet from your Rimworld could be... anywhere, basically, without running the risk of running counter to current astronomical knowledge.

Anyway, would this kind of thing be within the scope of modding, or are there hardcoded barriers to that approach?

[Razzoriel]

You cant change the hardcoded timelines of the game. Animal, neolithic, medieval, industrial, spacer, transcendent. You can make subtimes from greater times (Medieval becomes Ancient, Medieval and Reinassance). Im doing it in Outer Galaxies. Currently coding animals in. Lots of stuff also included. Check the Unfinished subforum.