Some feedback on A16

[Panzer]

I had some free time during the christmas season and played a lot of rimworld, thought I write down my thoughts and feedback on A16, which is a fantastic update and lit up the rimworld spark in me again

I played a rough randy colony for 50 hrs and am now in year 5, doing caravan shenanigans and assaulting pirate bases, I heard I can wipe the pirate factions by destroying all outposts, how awesome ist that


The first new thing I came across was the option to allow non-deadmans clothes in stockpiles, which boggled my mind a bit, why the hell should there be an option to allow normal clothes? That should be natural, if anything it should be the other way round, an option to control where the worthless raider thrash clothes can be stored.



The next thing I noticed was the now less potent medicine, after my doc sawed a few heads off I realized I now need glitterworld medicine to reliably do surgery, something I didnt need before. Getting those meds wasnt too difficult with ordering caravans and all, but I never managed to get more than 10 units of them stored at all times, I think cassandra players might see more action and therefore need to do more surgery, so slight increase of the amount that traders carry would be nice.

What I also liked was how the medicine stats reflected the technology level, 40% potency for herbals meds, 70% for normal medicine and then a big gap to 160% potency for glitterworld meds, shows how amazingly ahead glitterworld tech is before anything else.

I also liked the slowed healing rate for wounds, a bit more realistic than the old 2 day miracle recovery mechanic. I didnt see any infection happen in my game this time, but that might be due to the fact that I am always quick to treat wounds, also cant talk much about sickness because I didnt see much sickness happening, and I felt those cases werent that much different from before.



Next up is drugs, I like the new drawbacks, feels better now with more risk because the reward was always there. I have my people on a schedule that allows weed and beer every 2-3 days for 3 years now, havent seen any lung cancer but one case of weed addiction after a binge, and some small tolerances now and then.

What suprised me was two of my underage (17-18yo) female colonists developing massive tolerance to alcohol pretty fast and without me noticing, they were on the standard social drugs schedule (1 beer a day and for joy?). Im usually pretty observant, either that went totally past me or it happened way too fast. I then set them on a no drugs schedule, one of them developed liver cirrhosis and soon after liver cancer, so I bought a new liver and switched them out. Oddly enough, the massive tolerance was still there even with the new liver, and caused liver cirrhosis again. So I waited until the tolerance decreased to medium, which took a very long time, and then switched it out a 2nd time.

I think the preset social drugs schedule should be adjusted based on this with underage pawns in mind, less suspecting players might get a bad surprise otherwise. On the other hand, more drama that way

I also noticed animals might gobble up any drugs they may find in their zone and dont care about whether they re forbidden or not, one of my wolf puppies overdosed on go juice that way, a husky later snacked some luciferium and had to be put down after behaving violently because I didnt want to feed him any more expensive lucy. I think animals being able to eat drugs should be mentioned in the learning helper, as well as being able to administer them drugs, wolves on yayo were great for chasing down fleeing raiders ^^



Finally, caravans and droppods, those are freaking awesome, I droppodded into the nearest pirate outpost and wiped like 2 generations of raiders, aunts, fathers, sons and sisters and what not Again though, the learning helper lacked information, e.g. I didnt know at first that reforming the caravan lets you pick up all the stuff on the map, I started to pick up everything manually, which was pretty tedious. Neither did I know that you form a caravan by moving into the green zone on the edge of the map, learned that the hard way.

When I was on the world map, I didnt know that you can merge caravans by selecting both of them when they re on the same tile, the learning helper didnt mention that, the split caravan option also just told me that its possible to merge, but not how, had to google to that in the end, then again, might just be me.

Loading caravans and droppods needs some work, it would be nice to be able to control where there caravan loads, like with the marriage and party spot (I know theres a mod for that, but I feel that should be in the base game).
Colonists seem to ignore their basic needs like rest and food while loading up, I had some super happy colonists go crazy because they had to load 7500 pemmican and forgot to eat and sleep while doing that, therefore delaying the caravan til they snapped out of it. Same with droppods, but a bit more infuriating, 5 of 6 colonists decided to enter the pods and the last guy had to load everything by himself, depending on how large the load is, it becomes a pain in the ass.

I liked the loading interface though, that was pretty straight forward. Navigation on the worldmap as well, the estimates for food and travel time are always accurate.

Joy is a bit of an issue though, depending on the distance, a arriving caravan is always totally joy deprived, it would be nice if they at least have a bit of basic joy so they dont get the -20 for an extended time if unloading takes longer. I also noticed caravan members dont talk to each other while travelling, it would be pretty cool if they would do that or at least when they re resting.

What I would also like to see is to be able to do one of those 24 hrs stops without settling on a tile. I tend to allow 2 colonies and settle with caravans to tend to addictions, to hunt and gather some food, or droppod some in if they re still in range. If I got enough meals and everyone is fine I pack my bags and abandon that "settlement", but cant settle there ever again, which isnt big issue, but it clutters the world map with a trail of abandoned settlements, and thats a bit annoying.


Regarding performance, I get lags when I have big caravans on the worldmap (8+ colonists) and when attacking settlements, crashes sometimes, but I think thats just because my system is beyond outdated (win7 32bit, 4gb ram, old radeon hd4800 series graphics card) and I decided to play on a larger map.


And that concludes my feedback, if anyone wants to comment or add something, go ahead! Cheers!