Alpha 19?

[mumblemumble]

I certainly think regional laws would be a very interesting premise : laws simply acting as an additional pressure by local factions which effects relationships, trade, and other elements. Its not like disobeying a province laws wouldn't be impossible, but doing so might piss people off if caught, and would form certain reactions from groups which would be sanctioned. Like imprisoning drug smugglers on the road, fining people for sexual immorality, and confiscation of prohibited weapons... Not like you couldn't disobey, say "fuck the police" and either intimidate or incapacitate the enforcers, but doing so would cause some pretty heavy ramifications.

.... You could also go for a regional power grab maybe, overthrowing local government and inserting your own, gathering tax wealth, but also being responsible for everything that goes on afterwards.

Maybe a little too civ style, but I like the idea of the somewhat messy law setup.

[Granitecosmos]

There will be no A18 and there definitely will be no A19. RimWorld is in beta development stage now, this is why the current version is labeled B18. The next major release will be B19.   
   
Devs have also stated they will not introduce any new major game mechanics until the official release.

[patoka]

I dont believe we need most of the suggestions for the mere reason of current backstory/lore.
all we know currently is that (in the first scenario) you crash landed and wanna get off the planet as soon as possible. there is no need or time to join local politics, you will always just be a group of survivors fending for themselves.
i guess the rich explorer and the almost eradicated tribe have reasons to stay, but not really to engage in politics. why would a tribe that lost almost all its members to the blood machines or however they were called, care about other outlanders? they are happily off without them. and the other tribes dont seem to be much better because often they are raiders themselves like the pirates.

that said, i would enjoy some more decision making in the story, like when you have to decide if you take the refugee or not, but maybe this time from the other side. the ones that are chasing the refugee ask you to try and hold him up with weapons if needed and that they'll come soon to detain him. you'd get a small reward of 100 silver for this.
that pawn could be a drug, arms or even precious metal (plasteel, (jade,) gold, uranium, silver) smuggler, so if you catch that pawn and decide not to give him or her to the other faction you could keep whatever they were holding of course. arms dealers could retaliate of course, but soon after the other faction would come for the rescue if the charge rifle they were smuggling was too much for your tribal start. even better, if they were smuggling drugs, you wouldnt find anything. you could just detain the pawn no problem and should you decide to keep the pawn, he or she will get certain symptoms that only body transporters have (where you swallow packages with drugs in them, smuggle them and them excrete them. quite dangerous, especially if you get into a fight and the packages explode) so our docs will have something interesting to work on and you'll be rewarded with drugs (everything aside from beer and smokeleaf joints and raw materials is possible, so flake, yayo, wake up, go juice and luciferium)

another possibility would be to have a faction with very good reputation give you an alert that there is a spy amongst us (most likely the last pawn to join) and you were to decide what to do. the spy could decide to join any raiding faction the next time they raid, but you can incapacitate him or her and execute for a mood buff or detain him forever (recruit would be at 100%) or you could just kill him like that but you'd get the usual debuff.

another possibility would be to have a medium group of friendly survivors ask you for safety because they are running from an inferno. soon enough, many tiles all over the border of your map would start to burn, i guess how the rest plays out is obvious.

or maybe some pirates could be chased by an army of mechanoids which hopelessly outshoot the pirates and you could decide to either try and kill both the pirates and the mechs or try to pit them against eachother (eventhough the pirates are fleeing) and try to help kill the mechs or maybe even tell them while they are coming that you'll personally shoot them in the head if they decide to step a foot on your land. actually all these should be options when it pops up: 1) yeah come here we will help you fight them off (but afterwards the remaining pirates turn hostile), 2) ignore message to kill them all, 3) tell them not to come (which in turn gives you two small raids from opposite sides of the map next time out of revenge.
overall, two small raids at once should definitely be an option, not just randy random deciding to screw you over with two full raids

another idea on how to involve more factions would be that certain faction prohibit the use of certain items. some factions ban all drugs, some only the hard drugs and some even just luciferium. if you own drugs that you didnt burn (yes burn, not sell) then you'll get lower faction respect or whatever it is called every so often by friendly factions that prohibit them. you can of course compensate this by donating enough silver as always, which might make up for producing and selling the drugs, just like in real life corruption is worth it for the major drug lords.
or certain factions could dislike the way you dispose of dead bodies. cannibalism would only be tolerated by few tribes, but most will ask you to either make proper graves, sarcophagi, or even cremate them with the according bench. molotov cocktails and letting corpses rot in a corner of the map or in a house for the dead is looked down upon by some factions. letting your animals take care of the dead (by eating them without you chopping their bodies up) would be considered ok by most factions, but then again your animals might take too long feasting upon the corpses and they start to rot or the other factions will get pissed for taking too long for the burials/cremations.

should the sanitary/drinking water mod ever be implemented you could also add that. outlanders wont respect you if you dont have toilets and so on.


tl;dr: i dont think national states are the way to go for RimWorld. more interactions with other factions aside from trading, calling for help and refugee chases would be very nice though.