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

[Shurp]

I didn't realize how much of a problem that was for me until you just now mentioned it.

I'm convinced this is what drives the "killbox" style of Rimworld play.  Past a certain range your weapons are *completely* useless, so it's critical to keep the enemy in a box within that range.  Remove the range restriction and long range gun duels become feasible with sensible weapons (assault rifles) and impractical but possible with other weapons (pistols, shotguns).  You'll *want* to get them closer, but you don't *have* to.

Ok Shurp, no range restriction, but then the accuracy of the turret at range 26 should be around 1% ! :-)
And no minigun exploid that allow you to aim far behind, to get a higher chance to hit anything on the path.

The Gun_TurretImprovised already has an AccuracyLong of 22%.  I can't imagine it's going to hit often at range 50, especially if the target is behind cover.

And I would love to see the minigun mechanic fixed so that it just sprays bullets in a direction and uses *only* the square pass-through mechanic to hit something.

[Snafu_RW]

FWIW caravan packers already ignore 'forbidden' status of items (at least in stockpiles), unless you're trying to pack those items manually. I use this to ensure my pets don't eat my PSMs while they're 'piled, while still allowing them to haul PSMs to the forbidden stacks

[eugeneb]

If I were to pick one thing, it would be late game challenge. Usually early game is really exciting, mid game is less exciting and late game is pretty boring since my colony is a well oiled machine by that point. I'd add some global events to match preparedness of the colony, something similar to what's already in the game but more extreme: e.g. much colder supervolcano event which affects area and forces you to migrate south or some plant disease that causes increasingly frequent blights. Essentially something that would either force me to adapt hard or take on a migration project. Would be cool to have some unique ones too like a war breaking out and there are waves of pirates fighting each other with you being in the middle sometimes (again - adapt or migrate out of this).

A close second is AI. I know this has been mentioned a lot but I wish AI wouldnt mindlessly march into a killbox and would adopt some human-like tactics. Like splitting in two groups may be with one group keeping killbox busy while another one is punching through wall. Or even better: pretend you are going for a killbox and then air drop more of your men in the middle of the base. I'd also reduce enemy numbers with this, making battles more interesting and challenging rather than being a current murder-fest with killbox. I got bored in the past and tried playing without a killbox but at some point you have to have it because game is scaling difficulty by throwing larger numbers at you and there is no other way to deal with that without being overrun.

[fritzgryphon]

Pirate out-posts and bases not being integrated with the core gameplay.

Attacking outposts and bases is an interesting task, but there's no reason to do it in the course of a normal play-through.  If you conquer a base you might get a small sum of money and some loot, but it's nothing compared to the wealth you would already have by that point.  The risk of caravanning and attacking is huge, both for the raiding party and your home base.  Offensive raids are a fun challenge that could be made an interesting (though perhaps not mandatory) part of a game play-through.

It would be cool if bases would have a persona core, unique items, rare resources, or anything to give the player a reason to do it.  Just like an item stash quest.  Perhaps an event where a pirate faction 'declares war' on the player, followed by increasing attacks, until the player destroyed the pirate's base, or fled to a new tile.

[eugeneb]

I agee, I think whichever way implemented the base relocation quest is so far a missed opportunity for a late game challenge. Ohhh ohh and I also want to have random lootings and destructions happening to the base while away so that I can hide valuables inside mountain sealed behind many doors and later launch a quest to retreive valuables that were left behind. May be even fight some pirates who settled the base or navigate bug-infested decaying ruins.

[Call me Arty]

I agee, I think whichever way implemented the base relocation quest is so far a missed opportunity for a late game challenge. Ohhh ohh and I also want to have random lootings and destructions happening to the base while away so that I can hide valuables inside mountain sealed behind many doors and later launch a quest to retreive valuables that were left behind. May be even fight some pirates who settled the base or navigate bug-infested decaying ruins.

To be honest, I've always liked people's suggestions of legacy modes. Things get overgrown, more dirt roads pop-up, starting-up a lost tribe might even have a couple familiar last names from a previous colony. Hoping the mod or update will come soon.

[TelekineticSloth]

Sheep, rimworld needs sheep

[Call me Arty]

Sheep, rimworld needs sheep

I mean, man of few words, but they're really all you need.

[Gabe Lincoln]

The combat. You have to either cheese the fuck out of it, or have your pawns sit in decent cover and hope they hit the guys coming for them before they get into cover. There's no other option. Yeah sure, gear helps, but that's not really a part of the combat.

[rainwaffles]

For me, the biggest lacking thing is ... the map edge and being bound by one map. I certainly know about caravans, and how they work. I also know you can start more than one colony (ie have 2+ maps going at once). However, if this game was perfect I would expect that if my pawn walked to the very edge of the map they would go to the next map. Why not? Seems natural to me. Of course, you can only see one map at a time, so they would "grey out" at the top, until you selected them, and then you would switch maps and see them. It seems silly to me that a hunter can't go into the next map square to hunt, or to even manually walk a few tiles to get to the nearest town. Also, if you don't like where you start, you could peek into the adjacent tiles and see if you liked those better. Caravans make sense for long journeys, but I want to have the freedom to walk to the next map. I am realistic though - I don't expect this to be added at this stage of development.

I would absolutely love a more seamless way of traveling between maps, because that would open up many new types of content in the game - roads, cars (where it actually makes sense to travel long distances), larger battles/invasions, logistics between parts of the colony, maybe even subjugating existing colonies without actually recruiting the people. There are so many possibilities.

HOWEVER, if we're talking about realistic additions to the game (and not just turning it into Civ), maybe make it possible to travel between adjacent tiles of the world, and add a minimap that shows an overview of all the currently open areas. I think this is still unrealistic, as IIRC the game engine is designed to be single-threaded and having more than a couple of areas open will tank performance.

I guess I just want to act as a lord in my manor that protects surrounding citizenry in exchange for taxes. Sounds like an idea for a mod hmm

[cultist]

To be honest, I've always liked people's suggestions of legacy modes. Things get overgrown, more dirt roads pop-up, starting-up a lost tribe might even have a couple familiar last names from a previous colony. Hoping the mod or update will come soon.

This already kind of happens organically. If you leave the game running after your last pawn dies, a wanderer will eventually "join" and become the start of a new run with all of your research and buildings (assuming the base wasn't destroyed) intact.

[cultist]

In that case I'd love to see the implementation of Ammo.

I'm curious why. I like the Combat Extended Mod (which has a pretty deep ammo system) but all it really amounts to is enormous amounts of microing. It's just another resource box to tick and spreadsheets to make for your pawns. There's also the fact that once you have a steady economy running, it's no longer a resource you're in danger of running out of, but it's still extremely important to manage...

[Bozobub]

I can't agree with ammo, unless the early difficulty curve is HEAVILY rebalanced.  Tribal starts can be challenging enough, as it is, without having to craft arrows .

What I find most lacking in RimWorld is the AI, in general, although that's a VERY difficult nut to crack ("AI is hard" is a cliche for a reason).  It's super-hard to make competent AI, without merely giving it various cheats/"artificial" boosts that aren't available to the player.  That said, it IS often possible to improve a game's AI, with enough work; the "More Naval AI" modmod (yes, "modmod" ) for the absolutely *outstanding* Civ 4: BtS mod "Fall From Heaven 2", is an excellent example of this.

[Boston]

In that case I'd love to see the implementation of Ammo.

I'm curious why. I like the Combat Extended Mod (which has a pretty deep ammo system) but all it really amounts to is enormous amounts of microing. It's just another resource box to tick and spreadsheets to make for your pawns. There's also the fact that once you have a steady economy running, it's no longer a resource you're in danger of running out of, but it's still extremely important to manage...

..... What do you mean, "enormous amounts of microing"? You select how much of each ammunition you want a character to carry in their inventory loadout, and they automatically pick it up as they use ammo.

[Lav]

I really hate the "Green Thumb" trait. What is the purpose of a trait if it doesn't make your character special in some way? All the trait does is a small increase for one skill, and the same can be done by simply increasing the skill. There's absolutely no difference between a Green Thumb with Growing 9 and a generic McDoe with Growing 9. The trait simply adds nothing to the game, and it really should, as it sounds like a pretty nice trait to have in your farmer.

In the same vein, what is the purpose of Cold Snaps and Heat Waves? They would be interesting if they happened randomly, but you're getting them like clockwork. Winter comes, get your obligatory annual Cold Snap. Summer starts, here's your Heat Wave. Absolute predictability of these supposedly "random" events does nothing but increase the temperature range which could be easily achieved by tweaking seasonal temperature ranges directly.

Expanding on that, the frequency of all "random" events detracts a lot from their impact. You don't have to weigh the risks of a possible heat wave against the resources you need to spend to prepare for this possibility. There is no uncertainty at all: take any event in the list, and you are going to be hit with it within a year. Cold snap, heat wave, eclipse, solar flare, psychic drone etc.

Decreasing both frequency and regularity of these events would make their impact much stronger IMHO.