What's the most lacking part of Rimworld for you, and how would you improve it?

[sick puppy]

The problem with the current camping mod is, you easyly can exploid it.
You are allways geting a fresh map with flora and fauna for the biome, together with the ruin's and maybe ancient danger.

Yes, the temp. set-up camps are very useful.

true. (also i forgot camping incidents)
but that could be somewhat solved if whenever you started a camp it forced a negative incident that you cannot use for your gains (except if you wanna destroy your own stuff)

as an example most weather incidents would fit perfectly. it could even have a little popup window: "as it turned evening, the clouds turned dark much more quickly than usually and a huge hail storm/lightning storm/tornado started" or "at around midday you noticed how much hotter/colder it was than usual. your best meteorologist, jeff, determined it must be an unusual heatwave/coldsnap" or "suddenly, you came across a whole valley full of dying animals, corpses and even skeletons. you looked around and when you made it to a good place for a lookout and you could finally make out the horizon, you saw that the air around you had a different color. jeff, your chief scientist and researcher quickly figured it must be a large cloud of poisonous gas that kills all animals. you have to find shelter quickly or you'll suffer the same fate" and so on.

that would start off your stay there in a rough way, so in many cases you dont even want to stay there for too long. on the other hand, if your pawns are on the verge of dying for whatever reason and just cant walk on, you might wanna try and push through and struggle your way to survival there.

two downsides to my idea could also be fixed with easy fixes:
first problem is people just fleeing the map and starting a new camp. well, in my version first of all you cant just pack all your crap. you have to form a caravan and move off the map as usual. you would start on the edge of the map aswell though and not in the middle with all your crap scattered. another fix to this problem would be to not make it possible to make camps just anywhere. you still have to be two tiles away from the nearest encampment, be it proper faction bases, pirate camps or your own places. furthermore, a camp has to fall apart first, before you can go camp there again (so that the region can regenerate)
let's say it takes a week. you could also make it one day or a quadrum, doesnt really matter. all that is important that you cant just spam start camp/leave camp to get unlimited resources. maybe even make it impossible to get anything minable in camps aside from rocks and a bit of steel? it is about camping afterall, not making a new forward base.

problem 2 is people camping all around their main base to keep pawn count low to cheese raids and downed/not killed enemy raiders. my solution was always to finally make these stats global and not regional, especially when it is about pawn counts. maybe make it changable in the options, so that if people like to they can still make their imperium of 10 cities and hundreds of pawns (i am currently working on it in my first save game out of boredom. 4 cities, like 50 pawns, ~two infinite caravans.)

important about camps is that they really just have to be camps. the maps MUST be small and contain only few resources. otherwise tribal starts will always just rush the ai ship as soon as it is revealed. (if players even play rimworld like that) it should be mostly used to tend to pawns and animals and maybe to try and recruit prisoners or to do stuff so that mood goes up for a while. not as way to stock up on food to be able to survive for a week with your army of 10 pawns and 20 muffalos in tundra.

ps: holy crap i spammed a lot. imma quit here

pps: in the end there are just too many ways to cheese this game. maybe you dont have to fix these things. maybe just let the cheaters cheat, nobody likes to play with them anyway and everyone else just plays the game properly.

[Kori]

Well, thanks Kori. What about you, what're you missing?

There are mods for almost everything I could wish for, but if I had to name only two features that I'd like to see in vanilla..

edit: I guess there's no need to list features that are already added by mods here

I would like that! More personality for our pawns and watching how they get along with each other would be awesome!

Unlike more weapons or furniture this isn't something that can be added by mods.

Does the mod Psychology not do this to some extent?

It does, but we were talking about interactions between pawns being a bit more visualized, like
-pawns who hang out together bring beer or other social drugs to each other which they consume together
-watching stars or clouds together
-wandering in groups during their joy time
and other small details that make them appear as social beings.

[Hans Lemurson]

Relationships can start over jokes and end over politics,

Politics? What kind of politics could there  possibly be in RimWorld?

"I wonder if sometimes the being that reads our secret thoughts and constantly tramples on our free will to command our bodies like puppets... that it might not always have our best interests at heart."
"Die heretic!"

[Harry_Dicks]

Relationships can start over jokes and end over politics,

Politics? What kind of politics could there  possibly be in RimWorld?

All sorts of interesting politics could be implemented if we had a sort of "Colony Council/Leadership" mod/system where leaders respective roles would have colony wide modifications - positive and negative! I think it would be interesting if besides having a regular leader and/or mayor for a colony, you could also have a pawn you designate as your "ambassador" that would appear on the Factions/Relations tab. Then this pawns actual personality (maybe from Psychology?) would come into play versus other ambassadors personality, and how factions will interact with each other. So if we have a shitty ambassador that is pissing off the pirates and causing them to constantly raid us, then all the pawns in the colony should want this ambassador to be replaced! But what if a pawn is friends or family with this ambassador?! Let us start forming colony wide cliques/gangs!

About the colony council positions - maybe you've got a shitty head engineer, which causes buildings to randomly fail when they shouldn't. This resulted in one of your pawn's embrasure failing on them in the most recent raid, and caused the pawn to take some terrible brain injury. Well, this pawn was also your head doctor, so now the replacement doctor is shit and everyone's medical success/surgery success chances are suffering and new incidents related are popping off. So pawns are pissed at head engineer, because him being shitty caused the head doctor to get wounded, and now everyone is suffering!

I think it would be cool if pawns social system could be tied to different aspects of the colony, and they would hold the respective leaders accountable. Like if your new terrible head doctor stays in the position for too long and too many medical related incidents start happening, then pawns will start to take matters into their own hands. This could be something like they attack the head doctor, forcing a replacement. These sorts of things could be extended into all sorts of awesome social webs and colony wide "cliques".

I remember reading about an update for Dwarf Fortress, and they were talking about these cliques, and how you could essentially have a civil war among your dwarfs? Not sure I'm remembering it all correctly, but that sounding completely off the walls awesome! I want stuff like this in RimWorld. I know with the mod Expanded Incidents, they have a sort of "gang" event that happens. I haven't tried it out yet myself, but it's definitely on my list of what I am going to play with next. Either way, I was thinking about how something like this could be expanded on into a whole new awesome system.

I think the Psychology mod is absolutely amazing, and the author has put in some serious work and polish. The mod looks very professional and feels complete. However, for me personally, it is not what I really want from the social system. Vanilla is not enough, but Psychology is pulling it into a direction that is too niche for me. I don't want to see 20 or so different personality traits that I have no clue what balances exactly against what or how they interact or anything. It's just a bunch of random bars to me (talking about Psychology's traits on individual pawns). Plus, when I have anymore than just a handful of pawns, there is no way in hell I am going to remember what pawns are introverted and what pawns are this and that and whatever.

After thinking about this on some time, I think I want something like what Kori is talking about, but then also some more new systems and things for the pawns to do socially. Just more events and incidents, maybe? Instead of relying on the story teller to pop off a "social event" once every so often, maybe it would be a lot cooler if just the SOCIAL system had it's own sort of storyteller with it's own events that pop off, independent of your regular storyteller and events.

These new "social storyteller" and their events could be going off all the time, maybe one a day or something, I think would add lots of flavor. They don't even have to be really big events, or even warrant a notification to the player. But maybe a couple always has a date night once a week, and they will stroll randomly around the colony together. Then a group of 4 friends all drink beer together, the same group, whenever they get the chance.

Hmm, I'm not sure, but I feel like the more I think about it, that having a separate social storyteller with social events would be interesting. This could also maybe make it a lot easier for modders to add in all sorts of new and interesting social events, that don't have to be these new big things that they have to just kinda hope that Cassandra/Phoebe/Randy decides to make happen.

I should also recommend the mod Razzle Dazzle for anyone interested (and I really wish Several Puffins mods were all B18, they look so freaking amazing). It let's your pawns has performances, theater, stand up comedy, and host radio programs. I haven't messed around with it yet myself, but it looks really interesting. That's the only mod of Several Puffins that's made it to B18 that I've found. His other mods, which I think if they made it to B18, would be really awesome, and I think would satisfy my want to expand upon pawn's social systems.

Check 'em out:

Razzle Dazzle!
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=935948631

Rumours And Deception
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=796643425

Romance Diversified
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=796643583

Rim Disorders (anyone interested might check out Therapy for B18. Same author as Hospitality!)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=833388914

Recon And Discovery
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=935948526

EDIT: Also, I fully understand that a lot of what I proposed is very fanciful and could take a ton of work to implement. I'm sure that any number of the ideas might not even be worth the time required to invest into them to make them work properly and/or actually be fun. I'm just having a good time thinking of stuff I thought might sound interesting

[Call me Arty]

Relationships can start over jokes and end over politics,

Politics? What kind of politics could there  possibly be in RimWorld?

"I wonder if sometimes the being that reads our secret thoughts and constantly tramples on our free will to command our bodies like puppets... that it might not always have our best interests at heart."
"Die heretic!"

Mid/Glitterworld politics, I think. I personally love the idea of people still arguing about politics when they're years away from whatever those politics are.

[dogui]

In my dreams I wish to see a deep improvement of map. To expand colony out of map borders, exploring freely around, creating outpost, wards, strengths, hunter barns, depots. The whole planet to be exploited and used more or less as the world-map of Age of Empires. Places matter. Where to settle, what to do, how to survive make difference. I think that to go beyond the idea of finding all you need to prosper in your own map and some added simple tricks/boring missions  should offer more depth to the game.
Trade: exploit caravans and merchants, creating a deeper relaction between factions. Liberty to join, leave, form a faction from your team. more resources, and complexity in goods creation. Length the goods production chain and multiply the skill.
Survive in nude barracks: quite simply; maintain rich and complex colony: great difficulty, to achieve  only after year of development, clever recruitment, alliances. In a word: politics.

Trade mechanics, basically Civilization saga can be a fair example of how to work.
In general I dream more complexity, more differences, more attinences with a surviving life and survivors communities. Like hundreds, maybe thousands of robinson crusoe on a huge island, where life is hard... and just a bit less hard... and a bit sweetier for the lucky/brave which control key resources.
I know that probably no processor would face a so deep game. I just want to tell what this fantastic game inspire to me.
Ah, last thing: a one player (pawn) arcade formula. You role a pawn and if he dies .. game ends.

[Ser Kitteh]

https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=38011.msg390725#msg390725

Inventory still needs a serious rework. Things like pawns being able to carry drugs just in case, the iffy drop furniture to use bedrolls, etc. It's not a problem for 95% of player who stay at one base but for nomadic playthroughs, inventory management is a huge hassle.

[cultist]

I think Tynan should decide whether or not he wants pawns to have inventories, because what we have now is a system full of arbitrary limitations and flawed logic. Pawns can carry excactly one type of item and hold exactly one meal while they're on the home map... unless they came to you with stuff in their inventory already, then they're allowed more... until they drop it and then magically forget how pockets work. And of course, as soon as they are a designated part of a caravan, they suddenly realize that they can carry food for several weeks, as well as the chairs and tables to eat it off. There is no consistency whatsoever, and it's frustrating. I understand the reasons for not letting pawns carry 6 back-up weapons as well as 4 different kinds of drugs and 15 meals - but at least consider letting pawns fill their inventory with lightweight items temporarily. Add a "pack mule" negative thought for carrying more than a minimum weight. Increase carry limit penalty for bad back/missing limbs. Just do something.

[Harry_Dicks]

https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=38011.msg390725#msg390725

Inventory still needs a serious rework. Things like pawns being able to carry drugs just in case, the iffy drop furniture to use bedrolls, etc. It's not a problem for 95% of player who stay at one base but for nomadic playthroughs, inventory management is a huge hassle.

Hey! Someone actually listened to me!

But I agree. Although the players who don't have any inventory "issues" now, would still benefit from a "limited inventory slots" sort of system that I described, I believe. There is the mod Dubs Rim Kit, which is kinda like what I talked about. I would really recommend it, maybe a different modder could look at it for inspiration, as well.

[Kori]

I know this isn't the solution you are looking for, but everyone who wants real inventory management should try out the Combat Extended mod.
It gives you full control over your inventory with mass and bulk stats, you can order pawns to pick up stuff anytime and you can even create loadouts to tell your medics to always have a set amount of medicine and drugs in their inventory, your tamer to have kibble or whatever you want to do.
If Tynan decides to include this feature to vanilla, please have a look at CE's approach, it's perfect!

[VincentJ]

I red most of the posts here, if I can sum up there's demands for more psychology between characters, whether from the player's settlement whether other factions.
That your starting point really matters, it should not be the same thing where you're surrounded by hostile raiders or by peaceful villagers.

Others reclaims are on inventory, transportation, living like nomads.


For the map things, what bothers me is that's always the same climate : continental. It means -20°C in winter and +40°C in summer.
Personnaly I live in oceanic conditions, in the middle of the Gulf Stream, such temperatures are completely unimaginable. I know it would be a big work, but I'd like to see oceanic areas on the map, with more rain and more easy temperatures.


The most annoying thing according to me, it's the research system : how could you make me believe a single person behing a desk could discover electricity, microprocesors and interplanetary travels WITHOUT A MOVE !
Without asking someone ?

I think a scientist, if he would make new discovers, should recolt analysis on the field, then bring back samples in his lab, speak to visitors, make research projects with other factions (like in a civilization game, your progresses are way more important when you collabore with other countries), investigate ruins of other civilizations (cargo caps when you are tribal for example), and exchange, speak, exchange, speak...
Have events that let you gain more technology points.
You don't speak with a visitor only to make him see you're a friendly person. We don't care about that, it's useless. You welcome him and talk to him to exchange ideas or goods.

And the game should have bathrooms and toilets, which is done with Dub's Bad Hygiene Mod, this adorable mod.

[Kraehe]

I would love if colonists could have children (natural made or Vatgrown). This and Prisoner doors for bigger jails (more than one room) would be my most wanted improvements.

[wwWraith]

More diversified animals. More varied temperature preferences, activity cycles (day/night, dependence on season and weather), aggressiveness (attack/flee/ignore if someone just goes nearby), behavior patterns (tendency to roam far or stay in preferred areas, pack hunting/defense), dens/nests, reproduction and caring for the offsprings, abilities to steal random unsecured things (and eating/hiding them), hiding corpses and other food to eat later, etc.

[BetaSpectre]

Two things both fixed by mods.
Stacking limits - 10 jackets take up the same space as 750 potatoes
Lack of colonist inventory - a colonist can't carry items efficiently like how someone with a backpack should be able to.

[Ser Kitteh]

Glad to see people agreeing on the inventory stuff!

Is it not possible to have a standalone mod to import CE's inventory to vanilla? Because goddamn, the inventory is finnicky. It makes nomadic runs suck, and I'd rather it not suck.