Inventory Frustrations; or Why Pawns Can Carry Certain Things but Not Others

[Ser Kitteh]

This idea has popped up since I started the threat of why animal beds have quality but bedrolls don't but really has been an issue for sometime since the introduction of caravans.

I think everyone knows how pawn inventory works but as a reminder here's how it does work: pawns have four "slots" to which they use to carry things. These slots are:

1. Clothes: Self explanatory
2. Weapons: Self explanatory
3. Personal : Under the apparel section in the gear tab, these are the pawn's "pockets" so to speak
4. Carry: Carrying items, chunks, hauling stuff, etc.

It is number 3 that is really inconsistent. In caravan trips, the pawn can choose to "pick up" anything and the item is put into their personal inventory. Using the assignment tab pawns can carry a drug item as needed and use it FROM inventory when hitting a certain joy/times a day treshold. Pawns also carry an extra meal with them almost all the time which leads to a miner eating way out of the home zone and having the ate without table debuff.

My biggest issue with personal inventory is the inconsistency of it all. During my latest playthrough, I had the idea of making a lot of go-juice and giving it to all my melee pawns if they ever require a pick-me-up before/during battle. To my surprise, I can't use the assignment tab to have any of them carry it. The only way to make it work is to them to HAVE them consume the go juice at an interval, but I can't have them just carry one around in case of emergencies?

Mind you, raiders in vanilla take drugs before battle all the time and to great effect but I have to fiddle around with stockpile zones if I want my melee fighters to use go juice. Kinda beats the point of drugs like go juice or yayo IMO.

Another issue is with medicine. Pawns must have medicine in their "hands" for them to use it, but the problem is they are incapable of pulling one out of their pockets and using it on others or themselves. Too many times has my combat medic with 20 or so medicine wastes his time patching up others despite having the thing in his pockets in the first place! Same goes with pack animals, pawns are incapable of going to the nearest animals, taking out the medicine and using it to heal.

Lastly, as some posters in the bedroll threads have pointed out, pawns are unable to take out the sleeping bags from their/pack animal inventory and placing it on the ground themselves. Players must annoyingly drop the bedrolls, choose each one to be placed, and force/wait for a pawn to install it.

When B18 came with bedrolls, I thought it a great idea! Makes caravaning more viable. But then I realise I would rather have my pawns have the "slept on the ground debuff" than fiddling about placing bedrolls.

So here are my suggestions which I hope is feasible to actually implement in the game:

1. Players can assign drugs or meals to a pawn and have them just carry it around and use it when they want it. This is already done in game with the "use icon" that's shaped like a bowl, just let our doctors and melee fighters carry go juice just in case.

2. Pawns should take out medicine from their inventory and use it to heal rather than needing players to drop it on the ground.

3. Bedrolls can be "rolled up" and acts as an infinite "consumables". This way pawns sleep automatically pull out their bedrolls from their inventory thus negating the "slept on ground debuff".

Pawn inventory is incredibly tedious to manage and needs a serious rework. It makes the new bedrolls useless, it makes savvy players fiddle about with inventory to use drugs in an emergency and overall, it's utterly frustrating to see Engie heal her teammates without medicine despite having Glitterworld stuff on her.

Travelling is one of the best things to happen in Rimworld but every time I think of raiding I am reminded the hoops I have to jump just so my pawns can take care of themselves better. I hope a few fixes are not too difficult to implement.

Any ideas, suggestions, criticisms are very much welcomed. 

[Call me Arty]

   I'm totally onboard with more quality of life improvements. I've been getting annoyed with fighters having to run all the way back to the store room to grab some of the good stuff for battle, and the amount of colonist's I've scummed back from the void because a doctor wasn't already on top of some medicine.
   I think the bedroll idea needs some work, though. I can already see the threads after it gets hypothetically implemented about colonists getting frostbite because they set-up their bedroll outside of the warm and secure bunker. If you have to select the bedroll to be equipped, and then press some button to have them pick a place to put it, the process hardly seems streamlined.

[TryB4Buy]

Inventory management (Force pick-up/drop) is sorely needed. I trust Tynan will add it one day...

[Ser Kitteh]

Unfortunately beds do not give a "set" temperature. Blankets simply do nothing to keep you warm. Idk how hard it is to apply to bedrolls and beds but I hope it's not too hard to do.

As for colonists auto-using bedrolls, they should have some sort of invisible marker on the best place to unroll it. Say priority is under a roof > indoors > with heat

But then again there's also nothing wrong with sleeping under the stars either. Honestly at this point I hope the very last beta update before release is a massive QoL update so we don't have to rely on mods anymore and make the game run smoother.

[SpaceDorf]

1. Players can assign drugs or meals to a pawn and have them just carry it around and use it when they want it. This is already done in game with the "use icon" that's shaped like a bowl, just let our doctors and melee fighters carry go juice just in case.

This is actually implemented.
In the detail screen for Drug Policies you can set the number of Drugs to be carried in the inventory.

I agree on all other points.

Animal Working has a similiar problem with Food Items the Trainer has in inventory.
Most of the time he takes just enough to train one or two animals then picks up fresh items instead of taking a bigger amount.

[Scrabbling]

1. Players can assign drugs or meals to a pawn and have them just carry it around and use it when they want it. This is already done in game with the "use icon" that's shaped like a bowl, just let our doctors and melee fighters carry go juice just in case.

This is actually implemented.
In the detail screen for Drug Policies you can set the number of Drugs to be carried in the inventory.

I haven't checked but OP stated that you can only use the option in the drug policy screen if you combine it with scheduled consumption. This should still be an ok workaround because the longest interval for scheduled drug use is quite high if I remember correctly but it's still a workaround.

I very much like the limited scope of OP's suggestion. Too many past suggestions requested a completely controllable inventory where you can add everything which would lead to serious balancing issues. Instead this is focused on drugs, medicine and bedrools and I am for it because:
- Drugs can be added via workaround anyhow.
- Bedrolls right now fall short of their purpose.
- Medicine: This is a tricky one. Are we talking about medicine already in the inventory because of caravaning? Then yes, of course a pawn should be able to use it automatically. But this is not trivial because it could be the inventory of the doctor, a fellow colonist or a pack animal. Caravan's would need some sort of virtual stockpile and pawns would need ways to interact with someone else's inventory. If we are instead talking about the ability to assign medicine to a pawn's inventory at will (like drugs) I am not so sure I'd want that because it is the first step of "completely controllable inventory".

[Ser Kitteh]

1. Players can assign drugs or meals to a pawn and have them just carry it around and use it when they want it. This is already done in game with the "use icon" that's shaped like a bowl, just let our doctors and melee fighters carry go juice just in case.

This is actually implemented.
In the detail screen for Drug Policies you can set the number of Drugs to be carried in the inventory.

Well yeah you CAN carry the drugs but I don't want colonists to get go juice every week, I want my melee fighters and doctors to carry them so they can chug a bottle in emergencies.

The longest interval is 8 days IIRC.

I very much like the limited scope of OP's suggestion. Too many past suggestions requested a completely controllable inventory where you can add everything which would lead to serious balancing issues. Instead this is focused on drugs, medicine and bedrools and I am for it because:
- Drugs can be added via workaround anyhow.
- Bedrolls right now fall short of their purpose.
- Medicine: This is a tricky one. Are we talking about medicine already in the inventory because of caravaning? Then yes, of course a pawn should be able to use it automatically. But this is not trivial because it could be the inventory of the doctor, a fellow colonist or a pack animal. Caravan's would need some sort of virtual stockpile and pawns would need ways to interact with someone else's inventory. If we are instead talking about the ability to assign medicine to a pawn's inventory at will (like drugs) I am not so sure I'd want that because it is the first step of "completely controllable inventory".

Thank you!  I'm glad this thread of mine has garnered some interest!

The issue with caravan inventory atm, other than taking too long to pack stuff (there should be a pack priority rather than being put under Hauling), is that pawns dont care who carries their stuff. I've seen one colonist carry 50 survival packages for her alone in a group of 3.

I believe that maybe, we should have a "template" screen of sorts, where we can decide what goes on the animals and what goes on us. Obviously colonists should carry food, weapons, medicine, drugs, etc, but we can dictate our best doctor to carry them. Or maybe each pawn can carry a couple of meds from themselves and the doctor takes it out of their inventory and heals them. This is actually how soldiers do it in some militaries, they have a personal medkit for themselves only and the team medic utilises it.

Again, I don't know how difficult this would be, but at the minimum pawns should take out medicine from animals or other pawns to heal instead of needing us to drop them all the time.

If it's for balance, then maybe it should be only done for raids and travel? I don't have an issue with pawns carrying meds, but some players might so we should absolutely have options I feel!

[Harry_Dicks]

Maybe pawns could have only a couple limited inventory "slots" that we could control. Example, a medicine slot, drug slot, meal slot, animal feed slot (for training), etc. Mods could expand upon this, but vanilla wise it doesn't sound like it would be too unbalanced. I suppose limited to only one thing per slot? Also, when you have a doctor pawn selected and right click a patient, have a new extra option for treating patient with medicine from inventory only.

EDIT: Thinking about this, in my RimWorld fantasy, it is also easy for modders to add onto this. Maybe we could have a TOOL slot, so that I wouldn't have to make all of my tools from Right Tool for the Job sidearms for Simple Sidearms. Maybe the tool slot would allow passive benefits from whatever tool you have in the slot. Pick ax, hammers, regular ax, sheers, whatever! Or you could only get the tool "slot" after you manufacture and equip a tool belt! One tool per belt, maybe?

EDIT2: Further thinking of this, it would be cool to be able to have temporary items that pawns could equip or pass around or something, that would have whatever benefitrs/aura or whatever you wanted from them.

[Uuugggg]

Hello there,

I recently made a mod that allows doctors to use medicine from their inventory -

or a pack animal (who just drops it for the doctor to pick up)

https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=39187.0

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1309994319

[Ser Kitteh]

I love this community. I really do.