Alpha 17 is on public unstable branch

[Batpeter]

I love the idea of naming seasons based on the planet's position in space. Also in many countries on the equator there is no such thing as summer or winter. They still have 4 season but they are simply cold + wet, warm + wet, warm + dry and cold + dry.

[ReZpawner]

I kinda like the idea of having different climates in the months, depending on where you are on the planet. I do wonder if it's something that most people will pick up on though, or if it's something that will go over a lot of people's heads. May I suggest adding a "warm season" or "cold season" tooltip behind it, to clue people in?

Also, Febtober should totally be a thing.

The rewards for the caravan requests though... Do anyone actually bother with them when the rewards are somewhat useless?
250 survival meals for a thrumbo horn doesn't really incentivise me to go on a 7 day trek to some nearby camp - however if they had some neurotrainers, or bionic limbs, I would totally consider it, since they are a lot more valuable to me. As of now, I haven't felt any like I had any reason at all for even setting up a caravan.

Ambrosia - is it intended that we cannot grow it? Could we perhaps be permitted to move the plants or something? They seem like fun, but if one is playing on a cold map, they tend to be of very little use, unless they happen to spawn nearby (which they have yet to do). They also get eaten by animals, so they have a tendency to disappear. I don't even know if they will actually re-spawn, or if them being added is a one-off thing.

TL;DR: Good update. CBA to use caravan because crap rewards. WTB: Ambrosia Plant.

[Mihsan]

I'll take "1st Day of 2nd Quarter" over "1st Day of Aprimay" any day.

I completely agree on that. I play for couple of days with A17 and still cant get used to "Decembary". It makes me cringe a bit every time I look at new season names to be true.

But maybe quarters could have latin names? Like primus, secundus, tertius and quartus.

The rewards for the caravan requests though... Do anyone actually bother with them when the rewards are somewhat useless?

Right now I am making 11 spears to get 4111 units of silver - it seems like a perfect deal to me (because I will make spears out of wood). But many of such deals are sometime useless because I cant even lay my hands on what they are asking for.

[Alenerel]

I'll take "1st Day of 2nd Quarter" over "1st Day of Aprimay" any day.

I completely agree on that. I play for couple of days with A17 and still cant get used to "Decembary". It makes me cringe a bit every time I look at new season names to be true.

I agree with this. I honestly dont understand why these fancy and CONFUSING names. 1st quarter, 2nd quarter, 3rd quarter, 4th quarter sounds good.

PS: megatherium...

[AllenWL]

Currently doing a playthrough where all pawns have the 'wimp' trait to test it out,

One thing I noticed is that wimps get the same 'pain debuff' as other pawns.
For example, if a wimp pawn and a non-wimp pawn both have say, 15% pain, they'll both get 'in little pain, -5'
I think a wimp pawn should get more of a debuff even if it's the same pain, since, well, they're wimps.

[ChJees]

I got one complaint; Apparently having a sterile hospital do diddely in the latest build. Got 4 infections one after the other after a fight.

[AllenWL]

There's dirt in your hospital. You don't just need tiles, you also need to frequently clean it of dirt, blood, etc.
Also, from the look of things it looks like the treatments aren't exactly of the highest quality, which also effects infection rates last I checked.

Although, four does kinda seem like a lot.

[ReZpawner]

Just having the tiles sterile won't help if they are covered in crap

[giltirn]

Not sure if this is a bug or feature, but wild healroot does not seem to spawn in tropical rainforests.

Edit: Couple more observations:
-Typing when naming savegames is slow, with a noticeable delay between pressing the key and the character appearing
-Pawns ordered to prioritize mining only stay at the job for a few seconds before wandering off making it necessary to micromanage a pawn to force them to mine a chunk

[Goldenpotatoes]

Could the caravan requests and bandit/stash events restricted behind requiring a comms console?

There's quite a few events actually that should be placed behind a comms console just for the sheer fact it doesn't make sense otherwise how they'd contact you in the first place. How is an already-established faction somehow getting a hold of this group of stragglers who just recently crashlanded with no means of communication, let alone know they exist currently?

Either have a variant of these events where visitors from that faction come and tell you directly about the deal, or keep it behind the comms console so I'm not sitting here wondering how they're contacting the group that landed a few days ago.

[FCDetonados]

ok tynan i am sure you have already seen the luciferium zombie post on reddit (if you haven't https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/69kquo/ive_created_a_monster/)

i think this is one of those times were you look at a bug and say "yup that's feature"

[Mehni]

The new trading interface is extremely spammy.

I killed a handful of elephants, which led to this: http://i.imgur.com/YNZwz6J.jpg

All of my ~2916 pieces of elephant meat have the exact same amount of hitpoints. This isn't a huge amount of food by any means (day 17), yet it is screen filling.

Please condense the interface and consolidate the stacks. Not every stack of food needs its own separate listing in the trading or caravan screen.

[whitebunny]

I just realized after researching turrets on my most current playthrough, how much of an indirect buff having such strong infections is to what I, PERSONALLY think is downright cheesy and boring automated killboxes.
My go to strat this time around was to make a death corridor from the get go and never looked back, which in turn suddenly made the whole game a lot easier.

My point is, i would like to still have the option of duking it out with my colonists through tactics instead of relying on the distinctly better option of a strategic defense emplacement without feeling like i'm gimping myself too much because a greatbow cut infected my dude which in turn went berserk due to pain and beat the only doctor into a pulp, which then made him hide in his room for a day when i have no one capable of arresting him and reluctantly getting him back to work and you see what i'm getting at here....
Problems with colonists are exponential, turrets getting blown up are not, and it's specially sad because the small squad combat in this game is amazingly fun.

On the subject of season names i'm a very if it ain't broke, don't fix it kind of person, and while it probably makes a lot of sense to have the new naming system, for the average person like me it just obfuscates things, but in the end it's whatever.

On mining i like that i have to micro a bit more an this is just a QOL thing but it would be amazing and make a lot of sense if i could assign a certain pawn to a certain vein and have no one else go at it with these changes, specially since prioritizing someone to mine a node doesn't guarantee that he will stay there until the job is done right now.

Thanks for all your hard work Tygan and co.

[Tynan]

On the subject of season names i'm a very if it ain't broke, don't fix it kind of person, and while it probably makes a lot of sense to have the new naming system, for the average person like me it just obfuscates things, but in the end it's whatever.

But it was broke! It didn't make sense anywhere except in the range of 20 degrees north through 80 degrees north, on planets with default temperature and rainfall settings.

Anyway maybe I'll just change them to standard month names and skip months.

[JimmyAgnt007]

What about a simple day counter, Day 4 and so on.  Then just give warnings when winter is coming.  other seasons as well.  and/or a simple seasonal icon.