[1.0+] Outer Galaxies (AKA Rimworld 2.0; now with 70's T-levels)

[Razzoriel]

Discord server: https://discord.gg/jSRfp5B

"The Rimworlds? Ah, always a fascinating subject to discuss. When we colonize these places, it is amazing how much of a difference technology makes. And the more advanced gear we give them, obviously, the more successful they are. But it's not a cake recipe. Several Rimworlds were given cutting edge equipment, the latest Glitterworld weaponry, supplies, blueprints... yet they fail to develop and become wastelands in a few years.

The most fascinating discovery we found was that several Rimworlds, in conditions sometimes calculated by our AIs as completely inhospitable, chances of development inferior to 1% in numerous calculations, thriving! With only ancient technology at their disposal! There was a Rimworld we found out that colonists were defending themselves against mechanoids with muskets!! Though we did found out that tribals were also capable of defending themselves from mechanoid raids by sheer numbers (and sometimes, a little hand from nearby colonies), we never thought that it would be possible for colonies to thrive in pre-industrial eras.

My suggestion to this board is to push more of these experiments. We need to quantify and analyze as much data as possible in these Rimworlds. Make tribals advance up to a certain point. Let them taste technology and advance only so far. I predict that in a near future we'll be able to profit from these lands.

-Flynn Trodar, Rimworld researcher


Outer Galaxies is a Rimworld mod which aims to provide to players the best out of every weaponry mod ever created, and a little more. It attempts to create a huge linearity boost to the current game, providing choices and upgrade paths for every single playthrough you get.

Traits
Dozens of new traits that create new choices for you when creating your colonists. Is Brawler too much of a stepback from ranged combat? Do you think you could use gradients in several traits? Or maybe you could use a more origin/history-centric trait for your character, since Beautiful traits in sex slaves do not cut it anymore as the single example.

Weapons
Navigate through human history as you gain several dozen new melee alternatives for your characters, ranging from halberds to katanas, machetes and sledgehammers. Firearms now go from old flintlocks to space-tech laser rifles and gauss weaponry from distant galaxies. Mount a wild west gatling gun to mow down tribals, or a civil-war cannon to blast enemies with a well-placed cannon shot. 

Medicine
Tired of having your colonists losing their fingers and toes? Baffled by how they managed to lose an arm due to a pistol shot or their legs cut off by a prison shiv? Outer Galaxies replace the lost limbs concept by 'mangling'. A mangled limb means it is damaged beyond use, and needs to be surgically reimplanted. Regaining full limb control takes time, as muscle, tendons and nerves need to internally heal. While reattaching an ear is a complex procedure, it is nothing when compared to fully reattaching an arm; permanently losing partial use of the limb is always a looming possibility, but spacer-tech regenerative implanted microchips filled with programmed medical nanobots can fully resolve this issue, with time.

Other mods
Outer Galaxies, as mentioned before, provides textures from several other mods in it, and adapts the item to a more vanilla-centric taste. You'll find, for instance, several weapons from Rimsenal, High Caliber, Project Fallout and Medieval Times. The mod itself does not want to be a mash-up; the items will be re-balanced to be as close to vanilla as possible; your sling won't be as powerful as an AK-47.

Research
Advance in tech levels in specific paths to unlock more recipes. Are you settled in a rimworld with few metals but abundant wood? Maybe you'll find that researching on bowyering might be more profitable than smithing. Are you willing to create a huge powergrid for your colony? Then pondering on researching into either high-initial-cost, low-upkeep renewable or low-initial-cost, high-upkeep non-renewable energy is a necessity.

Compatibility with CCL
Outer Galaxies is aimed to be fully compatible with CCL, taking full advantage of the Combat Realism mechanics. However, knowing that the updates of the game might affect how often the mod will be updated, it is going to take the Combat Realism-route only after the Vanilla-friendly version is released.

Release time
No official date confirmed. Stay tuned.

[Razzoriel]

Weapons ready. Apparel/Buildings/Resources 30% ready. Thank you for all modders who allowed the use of their mods' textures for this huge project.

[Robloxsina66]

so its finish?-

[Razzoriel]

When I begun making this mod, Rimworld was on update 15b. I've already converted it to work with 15d, now I'm making sure it is compatible with update 16, as well as making several graphical changes on textures. The change to how warm-up/cooldown works is not something I'm going to tackle, because it would take too long to rebalance everything, again. It's actually quite good in a sense that not everyone is on-board with the changes.

Several modders are still pending to give their permission on using their own textures, though. Others have asked not to, so I'm looking for some other alternative for the concept.

What I can tell is that all 200+ firearms and 30+ melee weapons are complete and ready to go. Textures, xml, sound effects, all 100% done. Now I'm compiling apparel, fixed weaponry, buildings and technologies. As long as other modders give permission for their works to be implemented, I'm adding it as content. Most of them were very cordial and allowed me to make full use of their textures and code.

There are several concepts other modders offered help with in assemblies, such as tanning and cheesemaking. If those are able to be finished by the time, it'll get added and slightly delay launch for a more complete first version.

If anything, I can get a video showcasing the firearms and their pros/cons. I get that not everyone likes huge weapon mods because it clutters things and makes them actually think about the differences in each firearm, but variety is the spice of life, and this is a very spicy mod.

Finally, making it Combat Realism compatible is going to take a while too. So I'm first releasing it as stand-alone, then next making it compatible with other huge mods such as CR itself and EPOE.

[Razzoriel]

(deleted)

[Robloxsina66]

ok

[Razzoriel]

Fixing several bugs before official release. 0.0.1 won't feature new technologies, buildings or resources, and instead will only increase the amount of weapons in vanilla from ~25 to ~200.

[Robloxsina66]

alright

[Razzoriel]

All Outer Galaxies weapons are now created/ported from other mods and ready for a spin. Everyone who has PM'ed me and who still wants to take them for a ride in development mode can PM me to get a download link. Note that the list will increase as modding continues.

Next steps in the mod are the creation of technology trees, production buildings and resource management, all meant to be very vanilla-like, but at the same time increase the difficulty and general availability of things through diversification. If you don't know what all of that means, download the mod and check the new resources.

WARNING: Several bugs and error messages will pop up when the mod is loaded, but none prevents it from loading.

[AngleWyrm]

Economics of Timelines
The primary resource of most mods is steel, assigned as the bulk of cost by developers for purchasing their stuff. Then there is a tier jump to end-game content where the price of things switches to Plasteel, another form of currency but the conversion mechanics between the two aren't clearly settled.

Money
For a pre-industrial timeline to function, there needs to be a replacement for the steel/Plasteel system. Rocks are an abundant resource, but might force players to only play mountain tiles if they become too reliant on them -- which is a problem with Steel/Plasteel in the current game.

Food might make a good basis for trade as a consumable commodity, because everyone has a (limited) need for it and can therefore accept it as payment.

Timeline
Develop a notion of measuring game time in colonist seasons; what will a colony look like after two seasons have passed? What will it look like after eight seasons? Working backwards from an approximate vision can help develop the costs and tech tree.

[Razzoriel]

Currently, I'm working with three additional resources: Polymer, High-grade Steel (HGS) and Aluminum. Only one will be mineable, which is Aluminum, in the form of Bauxite as ore.

Plasteel, Uranium and other resources will be kept as they are. However, there'll be much more manufactured resources, such as (and not limited to) water, charcoal, alcohol and cordite.

Components will now be divided in six different types: Simple, Standard and Advanced. Also, there'll be the same divisions for Firearm Components. Bottom-line will be; if you want more modern constructions/weapons, you'll need higher-end components. Advanced components will only be craftable after substantial research.

Like Combat Realism, you'll need to craft ammunition for firearms, if you want to craft firearms, that is. Each firearm requires different amounts of ammunition "packs". For measurements, a pistol will need on average two ammunition packs, while assault rifles and submachine guns will often require five. Smelting firearms will return to you half (rounded down) the amount of ammunition it takes to craft it, so you can have ammunition stacks without having to research into and build a reloading industry.

Silver will still be the main money. I'm trying to make the mod as vanilla-friendly as possible, with (many) additional layers of complexity that will feel intuitive for veterans.

I'm aiming for one technology advancement per season here. So if you start a game with a Neolithic village, with zero research (a custom scenario that i'll add with the mod), by the end of the first season, you'll be at Ancient tech. Currently, I'm working with the following tech levels: Neolithic, Ancient, Medieval, Pre-Industrial, Industrial, Modern, Atomic, Digital and Spacer. At Spacer tech, you'll take roughly three seasons, on average, to research and do everything you have to do.

Most of the content, as said multiple times, is firearms and weapons. I'm also adding armor, buildings and functionalities. As said before, I don't own any of the textures in the mod, and it took a long time to get everything from other mods, as well as ask authorization from the original modders. I'm taking longer than expected to finish this due to the sheer volume of background technologies, buildings, resources and functionalities to justify players to be in each tech level.

[Razzoriel]

I never thought that in a firearm-focused mod i'd have more headaches with adding water into cooking recipes than nearly all of the firearms, combined.

Got an artist to help me with the art. As he is finished, I'll open a Paypal donation link for those who want to cover up the costs. Obviously, this is entirely optional for those who play the mod. If the costs for the artwork are paid, I'll use the same amount, again, for more art.

Here's an example of one of his works: a CZ-75 pistol.




[attachment deleted by admin due to age]

[Razzoriel]

Bumping the thread because significant advances were done.

Picture below is the metallurgy/geology of minerals, metals and the sort of Outer Galaxies. Namely, you can mine one of the ~60 ores which have different concentrations of metals in their composition. All ores are near-perfectly mimetized to produce exactly what it would when smelt (Example: Hematite is an ore of Iron,  chemical formula Fe2O3 (70% iron/30% oxygen. It has 35% iron in it, assuming half of the ore is burden).

Nuggets, bars, ingots and coins are part of the metallurgy in Outer Galaxies, and smelting them in different shapes allow you to get more or less out of them; for instance, minting coins produces 100% of the metal's value, but only several metals can be minted.

Metal alloys like rose gold, electrum, and pewter are also present, just like in cuproPanda's metallurgy mod.

[attachment deleted by admin due to age]

[aukave]

Sounds neat, but I doubt it will be very compatible with other mods that touch any of these subjects? Thats a huge downturn for alot of people. When it is released, what if I only want to download the weapons of this mod? Will i be forced to download the (My least favourite part, while a cool idea this will definetly conflict with my current modlist) medical part? Sorry for my bad spelling, im just too lazy to correct it.

[Razzoriel]

Sounds neat, but I doubt it will be very compatible with other mods that touch any of these subjects? Thats a huge downturn for alot of people. When it is released, what if I only want to download the weapons of this mod? Will i be forced to download the (My least favourite part, while a cool idea this will definetly conflict with my current modlist) medical part? Sorry for my bad spelling, im just too lazy to correct it.

Modularity is going to happen once the mod is 100% stable. However, because it is a huge content batch, it is probably going to be "too tightly packed" for vanilla. This being said, I'm developing it with Combat Extended compatibility. There are several aspects of CE which I'm very against (cover systems/shotgun spread behaviour/aiming system), but it adds a lot of what it is in stash.

Also, for those wondering. No, the mod isn't on halt. Right now, I'm planning on adding time period factions. This is the mod's timeline, for those wondering:

5000 BC-2000 BC -> Neolithic
2000 BC-500 AD -> Ancient
500 AD-1400 AD -> Medieval
1400 AD-1600 AD -> Reinassance
1600-1800 -> Pre-Industrial
1800-1910 -> Industrial
1910-1940 -> Modern
1940-1990 -> Atomic
1990-2100 -> Digital
2100- ~  -> Spacer

So far, I've planned 330 technologies, most of them linked to weapon research, but also some related to farming, medicine or production of goods. Obviously, most research projects are very short, being very specific. Because the game will progress much slower, players will find that they will be forced to relocate. This is intentional; relocating bases after your technology becomes better will be a priority.

I'll try to enumerate every point of the mod so far, so that you can know what to expect.