Unstable build feedback thread

[5thHorseman]

Just started my save in the newest build. It told me to expect problems but this one is odd (and amusing) enough to report.

First, when I loaded the save it told me I'd lost, and that maybe some day someone would find use for this place. I opted to continue and all my pawns were fine and kept working.

Second, the first event that came up was a guy getting chased. We offered to help him, and he ran onto the map and seems to already know us. Which is a little weird seeing as he's a tribesman and we just fell from the sky. I know in older versions you can stumble on someone's ex-wife or whatnot, but this seems a bit extreme.



(Both Yoko and Xia are from the original 3, along with Xia's husband who this guy doesn't seem to know)

[XelNigma]

Im playing the unstable and my pawns much rather take the time to walk through 3-4 doors instead of going 4 squares to the right and taking the street.  My entire base is open and set up like a town rather than a complex. so i have buildings and roads all over the place, almost like in a grid.  If pawns could judge going through doors as more of a burden to the path that would be nice. But I have no idea how the AI decides its path.  I just want them to take the roads and pathways when it makes sense. instead of trying to run through 4 doors.

Seeing as unstable is being update so rapidly I figured now would be a good time to speak up.

I'm not going to read through nearly 70 pages of posts to see if this has been discussed already or not, just throwing it out there.

[Boboid]

If you can just kite away from melee guys, turning and shooting them as you run, the game is broken.

About that - This has certainly become easier now that bionics are craftable irrespective of the deadzone change.
Easier still when attacking outposts with a single super-soldier even vs guns. Particularly because enemies prefer to get to cover before taking shots.
It's a little hard to describe so for the sake of brevity I figured I'd just record what I'm talking about.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4ce0J7Tv_k
---
I'm a dumbass and forgot to show wealth/charts while recording so I've dumped them on imgur
https://imgur.com/a/de75tX8

This is probably the.. 15th? outpost I've done this to. They vary in difficulty a bit but frankly they all play out more or less the same. Amusingly a noticeable % of the art in the game now references Ramos taking out outposts on his own.
I know it's a little bit of an obscure balance niche but.. it's there.

Night owl trait should also remove the debuff from being in darkness. If you re used to sleeping the day in, you shouldn't complain about darkness.

It obviously depends on the design of your base and your power concerns but.. there's already a significant reason to light up the majority of your base - Global work speed and movement speed are both reduced by 20% when in the dark. Lamps only cost 30W of power now too.
Even if the moodlet for darkness was removed for night owls it would still be in your best interest to light up the majority of your working/traffic areas. Also being awake during 23-6 gives a whopping +16 mood compared to the -5 from darkness. This tends to lead to more inspirations during the mood peaks this causes. It's quite beneficial in my experience.

Steel is the lifeblood of this game. There should be more ways of getting it.

Have you tried requesting caravans? You can get ~300-350 steel per day just by purchasing it from all 4 factions and keeping their caravan requests on cooldown. Keep in mind that virtually everything can be turned into steel via trade at varying levels of efficiency.
As it stands you can - Mine it, Deep Drill it, Trade for it, Smelt slag, Smelt Weapons, scavenge it from world events (structures).
There are a lot of ways to get steel. Though I'll be damned if I know what you're spending it on. 5 years in and I'm sitting on 4400 steel with mineable steel still on my map and a crapload of deep drilling totally untouched.
And that's only using 2 faction's trade caravans and not at their maximum potential.

The long-range mineral scanner now says in the letter what kind of mineable resource was found.

+ the "Known Threats" piece of interface are freakin' awesome.
No more arriving to a site under-equipped and being forced to leave it, destroying it in the process.
Solved all my risk equation problems with the LRMS

Edit:

I'll say it again mineral scanner should pop a huge steel deposit from time to time instead of everything else.

I forgot to mention, the LRMS can find compacted machinery(components)now. And it can be in fairly gigantic chunks. The largest I've seen so far was 71 pieces of compacted machinery, a whopping 142 components which translates to 1704 steel.

[Ra66itInc]

There's one problem. When ever I drag an item to be built outside the map area, it gave me an error.

Please check it out I guess for this is a simple problem.
Thanks.

[Injured Muffalo]

Simple simple Quality of Life addition, PLEASE:
When I right click to initiate a task, please have that simply automatically OVERRIDE the job set/permissions I have established so that I don't have to go into Jobs/Work and click on OK to do HAUL, and then re click the pawn to simply haul some $h(#! Just make it a one time override and get to work, little pawn.

Related: it would be great if forbidden items were overridden on my click. Still says forbidden, still can't be otherwise touched, but don't need to unforbid and then reforbid afterwards. Minor thing.

[Madman666]

It obviously depends on the design of your base and your power concerns but.. there's already a significant reason to light up the majority of your base - Global work speed and movement speed are both reduced by 20% when in the dark. Lamps only cost 30W of power now too.
Even if the moodlet for darkness was removed for night owls it would still be in your best interest to light up the majority of your working/traffic areas. Also being awake during 23-6 gives a whopping +16 mood compared to the -5 from darkness. This tends to lead to more inspirations during the mood peaks this causes. It's quite beneficial in my experience.

I don't mind the speed and work penalties, those are fine. It just irks me that a night owl person like myself, that actually likes the quiet darkness of night would complain about being in the dark. Its wrong.

Have you tried requesting caravans? You can get ~300-350 steel per day just by purchasing it from all 4 factions and keeping their caravan requests on cooldown. Keep in mind that virtually everything can be turned into steel via trade at varying levels of efficiency.
As it stands you can - Mine it, Deep Drill it, Trade for it, Smelt slag, Smelt Weapons, scavenge it from world events (structures).
There are a lot of ways to get steel. Though I'll be damned if I know what you're spending it on. 5 years in and I'm sitting on 4400 steel with mineable steel still on my map and a crapload of deep drilling totally untouched.
And that's only using 2 faction's trade caravans and not at their maximum potential.

Trade for it. I don't like trading much in RW. Its severely limited in what those picky traders actually want to buy, how much money they have and what they have to sell. Yes i did call caravans, they got their 300 steel to sell. 300 steel... its like 1.5 autocannon recharge or 6 components crafted. Really? Plus you'll always have a net loss unless you travel to their home base and that can just wipe your convoy with one plague if Randy so desires. Big fat "meh". I also don't really try to get allied with anyone - with the relation decay its kind of a pain to maintain. I do gift them some stuff i don't need from time to time, but to purposely try to get allied with 4 factions and having to manage relations with them all, so that i can use their caravan call option? Nah, i am fine without those. I keep one faction happy to be able to call some bullet sponges in case of particularly nasty raids and thats it.

Mine it - if you're on a biggest map possible and it has small or large hills - thats viable, but not for long. And flat maps are mostly just horrible. I like having BIG towns built with many colonists, many houses, benches, ACs... etc. Big base require a ton of steel to function. Surface deposits expire in a blink of an eye. Of course if you play Cassie with 13 guys on a medium or small map, yeah you won't ever feel such greed for steel. But that playstyle is not for me.

Deep drilling got much better, thanks to Tynan's efforts, yes, this now is a viable and convenient source of steel late game, not without its quirks (it occasionally deep drills some insect meat now, but that add to the fun of it).

Smelting hardly gives you jack. You smelt one huge slag chunk into whooping 10 steel. Yay? Hardly viable. Weapons give even less at times...

To scavenge steel from events you actually need to travel (plague dice rolls) and have sufficient inventory space (bringing muffalo, also vulnerable to dice rolls). Earlier version you could have steel spawned on temporary maps, so you could opportunisticly mine it and take it home - now you can't. This option is somewhat viable, but massively inferior to deep drilling. Making long range mineral scanners find steel and letting temporary maps spawn resources would be a nice change.

And thats why i said those problems are subjective. Depending on play style, map size, difficulty, ways to counter different event your colony's steel consumption varies hugely.

[cactusmeat]

Story Post

1.0.1949, Crashlanded, Phoebe, Hard. World seed: butt stuff. settled in Daniel's Joy Forest. Flat temperate forest, year-round growing.

Tater, Marc and Speedy. 3 boys who didnt join the boy scouts.
Tater is a constructor, shooter, clubber, doctor and warden, speedy learns fast but doesn't walk fast.
Marc is a quick sleeper and a night owl, interesting... I'm just glad he's a doctor too.

3 steam vents in very close proximity and a sizable patch of rich soil. That is going to influence where I build stuff.
     The colony is now known as Cabbageton. Sadly we only grow rice.

     Day 5: raid of one club user/goer named Mason. Why else would he have a bowler hat in daniel's joy forest? He's clearly lost after partying too hard. After taking 6 shots we engage him in fisticuffs and capture him.
     Day 6. Escape pod: staggeringly ugly teenage pyro with an alcohol addiction. Free clothes and medicine exp. I'm not desperate for human leather unlike some people.
     Day 10: escape pod 2, electric boogaloo: nimble body purist female who can cook and research! Don't care that they are greedy.
     Day 11: Mason joins. Level 10 cook. He cooks. He sleeps. He cooks again.
     Day 13: Marc gets inspired recruitment. He talks about basic colony things and bores Olesya into joining us, I guess.
     Day 17: I notice Speedy has mined all the requested steel nodes. There's 4000 steel on the ground. Level 10 mining with very neurotic. Explains a bit.
     Day 18: two short bow tribesmen attack. One of them gets 3 bullets in the torso and dies. The other one is a jogger and escapes.
     Day 19: blight on just planted corn. No biggie.
     Day 21: cougar revenge. Tater is apparently a crack shot and hits it 3 times in a row while Olesya runs for her life. Quest appears: Item stash of AI persona core. I'll be honest, I've never been tempted to get that or try for the space ship escape, whether by building or caravaning.
     Day 22: Tater leaves for peace talks. He is so fast on roads I had no idea. Is that just the road bonus or the single person caravan bonus? Later that day a heat wave and eclipse happen at the exact same time. Which is odd, since it does get noticeably cooler during an eclipse. Speedy had a mental break because darkness, but also let's not forget he is very neurotic. Peace talks success, visitors and a trade merchant aaaaaand they are killing each other again. They destroyed my wood picnic table. Tribesmen won the fight losing only one member.
     The unfinished simple helmet looks like a rod?
     Day 25: Muffalo 1 survived the flu.
     Day 30 Perimeter defences are being built out of granite. Base is huge for 5 people.
     Day 32 Walls are ¾ done, raid of 4 short bow users show up. Used the corners of my warehouses as cover, they used the stone blocks that havent moved. While 2 of them left to light my fields on fire I sent my 2 knife users at the 2 still shooting. One tap from each and the raid was over. One escaped, 3 died. I've decided that plate armor is the right research at this point.
     Day 37: escape pod. Female greedy body purist who can grow stuff. I capture her and now a civil outlander union is at war with me. I wish it were more obvious that this happens. Especially since it said space refugee. How exactly are they already in a faction if they aren't from this planet? Still, another pair of hands for me. Gabby has lv 6 social skill, fitting.
     Day 45: my 2 battery 2 windmill set up is no longer adequate. 18 Snowhares begin their assault by all existing in the same tile and trying to bite down a steel door. I restrict every animal and colonist to the home zone which is only inside the walls. Not 2 hours later a local muffalo joins their side. Walls are less useful vs raiders and mechs. Absolutely necessary for manhunter packs.
     I don't have turrets yet, just wondering if they have combat logs.
     Day 46: smokeleaf production is in full swing. Everyone forgets evil rabbits lurk outside the walls.
     Day 50: escape pod. luciferium need, depressive, nonviolent. Three strikes you're out. I'll sell the pills you brought so you won't die for nothing. We just had a party so I can afford to practice reinstalling lungs and kidneys on this poor space refugee. Marc gains 3 levels of medicine in one night. The following day my other 2 doctors copy Marc. I now have 3 level 8 doctors. I also have no regrets.
     Day 51: Boomalope self tame. Okay... will definitely send him into battle at some point.
     Day 52: escape pod from a tribal faction. Already hostile so I capture the person and incur no further penalty, not that the game gave me a rescue option. Gabela is a kind misandrist and joins on day 54.
     Day 61: 11 manhunting emus invade our territory. Hooray for walls and wooden deadfall traps. I cleared trees outside the walls so that fires dont come too close and raiders dont try to fight too far away. The wood from it has been going into upgrading beds dressers and plenty of deadfall traps. Emus found this out the hard way. After the emus were all dead or gone I sent mason out for a peace talks. He'll only be gone 2 days.
     Plate armor construction seems buggy, it doesnt create an unfinished item so once marc stops making it the haulers disassemble it... please fix.
     Day 62: 9 plants got blighted. I don't think this is ever a problem for me. It is annoying and tedious to fix without the mod(s) that allow cutting all blighted plants. I wouldn't miss Blight if it were gone. I have no experience playing cassandra extreme for example, perhaps it can ruin colonies there.
    Turns out mason sucks at peace talks. Oh well. If only he brought a gift that wasnt the agave he found on the side of the road. Halfway home mason is asked to strip naked and give all his stuff to Riesling. Mason won the knife fight. I would have recruited them but they died.
     Day 77: Seige. I'm probably boned. A single autopistol is their highest ranged weapon above a pump shotgun. Delay the mortars. They quickly saw the fight going south and left their steel and meals on the ground. Chased us back to our defenses. We captured 4 of the 13 of them. Only lost the bonded monkey, but even with that Marc is always in "high" spirits. We have 200 joints at the moment.
     Day 79 : sent tater on a peace talks quest 7 hours away. Success! Marc recruited Sonia at .67% chance. More success! Boomalope 2 joins the colony by self taming. Triple Success!
     Day 91: heat wave + party. Marc gets food poisoning, then gets stoned. While the party goes on, nobody bothers to help him. He is maximum chill. The colony learns the ultimate relaxation technique: if you can't move you can only relax.
     Day 93: Zana joins the colony just in time for an infestation. Nobody loses any body parts. Well, except the insects.
     Day 95: cargo pods bring 39 insect jelly. I just got 589, thanks...? Also first zzzzt. I have no idea what triggers that event but it sure is annoying.
     Day 96: trade away 600 insect jelly for masterwork flak jacket, power armor helmet and some medicine. Net worth totals 94000 now. 3 hours later another trader shows up and they start their war over my territory? I really don't know if this is common for everyone...so I nab their weapons and even their meals. Free assault rifle. Bought 2 hens, 2 roosters from the tribe, then I traded 3000 corn for enough rep to be allied with the tribe who won this fight as well. (grenading your allies in the back is not a great tactic)
     I get to thinking a mech ship part is going to land soon, and I still haven't seen a quest or trader with advanced components or gold. Still no multianalyzer. I'd trade for it but I am enemies with the outlander unions.
     Day 102: "Tater called Gabby a manatee, this drove Gabby into a rage and she began a fight"... doesn't line up with the top left thing that said Gabby started a fight with the reason being disfigured. Tater has a frostbite scar on his ear, Gabby has no health issues... They are lying to me like children would.
     Aren't some animals supposed to be nocturnal hunters? Once tamed they would mimic their masters' schedule, right?
     Just looking at cocoa trees I thought they were blighted and I can't imagine searching for blight on them.
     This is the first colony I have had that doesn't have lovers or marriage. Basically ran out of components, have no source of plasteel, have 200 uranium and nothing to do with it.
     Day 114: I have tamed 11 gazelles and I am opening the ancient danger. 1 minigun centipede, 2 melee scythers, place your bets!
     Day 115: tribal shaman merchant brings 150 plasteel and 59 gold. We trade drugs for it. Lots. of. Drugs.
     Day 116: refugee chased at cabbageton. 15 angry dudes vs my 10. Got 6 new gun upgrades and a fresh face in the refugee. I feel like this colony is set and won't die any time soon.

[attachment deleted due to age]

[Neotic]

The description for burning tainted and clean clothes are the same.

[Boboid]

Trade for it. I don't like trading much in RW. Its severely limited in what those picky traders actually want to buy, how much money they have and what they have to sell. Yes i did call caravans, they got their 300 steel to sell. 300 steel... its like 1.5 autocannon recharge or 6 components crafted. Really? Plus you'll always have a net loss unless you travel to their home base and that can just wipe your convoy with one plague if Randy so desires. Big fat "meh". I also don't really try to get allied with anyone - with the relation decay its kind of a pain to maintain.

I get that you dont like trade but.. mathematically it's efficient and effective.

As for picky traders - bulk goods traders aren't particularly picky and it's fairly trivial to learn what they'll buy from you given the new interface which shows exactly that. Moreover you can choose which traders you call in.
They always have 900-1300 silver which is not inconsiderable. Not all trade needs to be done on a massive scale for it to be useful.

As for the amount of steel. It's 1.6 autocannons OR 1 with 120 steel left over. It takes 12 steel per component so 300 steel is 25 components, or 1 autocannon recharge AND 10 components.

As for a "net loss" that's the nature of trade in RW, you pay more for specific things you want, and sell things you don't want at less than their value. That system doesn't mean that all trade is pointless, it just means the efficiency has changed marginally.
Your money is worthless if you're not willing to spend it on the thing you need the most.

As to the amount of steel you can gain this way? It's ~300 per day using all 4 factions request caravan functions on cooldown. That's 18,000 steel per rimworld year or 4,500 per season. It's massive!
Moreover it only costs ~350 silver per caravan called which is overkill and leads to net reputation gain over time, and ~900 to buy their steel. If your steel demands are that high (~300 per day remember) then it stands to reason you have the manpower required to generate ~1250 silver fairly consistently.  Even if it's just via gigantic farm plots/hydroponics.

It's efficient, riskless, and consistent. It's everything you want
Ultimately the equation works out to be " Would you pay ~4 silver for ~1 steel " and if the answer is yes then all you need to do is press a few buttons.
---
I'm getting horrible deja'vu so I'm going to leave the entire trade conversation to rest from here on out.


As to the night owl discussion: Take into consideration that when it's dark in rimworld it's pitch black. When your pawns are complaining about darkness it's because they're in a pitch-black cave under 30kms of rock.
It's not "Bedroom floor by phone-light" dark, it's " I literally can't see my hand pressed up against my nose" dark.

It's a miracle they can do anything at 80% speed and that they only get a -5 moodlet.
I've been known to be nocturnal for a few weeks at a time and I can tell you that if I was forced to have all my curtains closed and my lights off I'd be more than 5% irked about the entire business after 20 minutes.

[Gfurst]

This is probably the.. 15th? outpost I've done this to. They vary in difficulty a bit but frankly they all play out more or less the same. Amusingly a noticeable % of the art in the game now references Ramos taking out outposts on his own.
I know it's a little bit of an obscure balance niche but.. it's there.

Its seems kinda cheezy, though I consider kiting to be a valid tactic, and that pawn would be the definition of a super soldier if there was ever one, I mean, its a transhuman, range only pawn, fully bionic with top gear, so I'd be unsure whether to claim it as broken or not, but then again, depending on difficulty.

Night owl trait should also remove the debuff from being in darkness. If you re used to sleeping the day in, you shouldn't complain about darkness.

It obviously depends on the design of your base and your power concerns but.. there's already a significant reason to light up the majority of your base - Global work speed and movement speed are both reduced by 20% when in the dark. Lamps only cost 30W of power now too.
Even if the moodlet for darkness was removed for night owls it would still be in your best interest to light up the majority of your working/traffic areas. Also being awake during 23-6 gives a whopping +16 mood compared to the -5 from darkness. This tends to lead to more inspirations during the mood peaks this causes. It's quite beneficial in my experience.

But considering that may have do work outside, in the night, I do agree they shouldn't get that mood debuff. However this shouldn't excuse people to properly light their base, and I'm hoping for a cheaper wall lamp and a feature that they light up only when there's someone in the room.

Simple simple Quality of Life addition, PLEASE:
When I right click to initiate a task, please have that simply automatically OVERRIDE the job set/permissions I have established so that I don't have to go into Jobs/Work and click on OK to do HAUL, and then re click the pawn to simply haul some $h(#! Just make it a one time override and get to work, little pawn.

Related: it would be great if forbidden items were overridden on my click. Still says forbidden, still can't be otherwise touched, but don't need to unforbid and then reforbid afterwards. Minor thing.

Disagree on both regards, I fail to see the reason why you override a job permission in any case, specially with hauling, since anyone that can do hauling should already be assigned to it, or in other cases, overriding a non medic or a non crafter and etc. As a matter o fact, I would to not have to manually override anything, and instead focus on fixing issues with working priorities, as was the case with hauling.
I also fail to see why you would need to keep a item forbidden, but then still using it.

Im playing the unstable and my pawns much rather take the time to walk through 3-4 doors instead of going 4 squares to the right and taking the street.  My entire base is open and set up like a town rather than a complex. so i have buildings and roads all over the place, almost like in a grid.  If pawns could judge going through doors as more of a burden to the path that would be nice. But I have no idea how the AI decides its path.  I just want them to take the roads and pathways when it makes sense. instead of trying to run through 4 doors.

It depends on how was your design, and it would to post a picture. But regarding path finding, they will usually just take the fastest path, you can check the walking speed for each path, so if you have autodoors, it might just be that going through the buildings is the fastest path.

[Gfurst]

I also don't really try to get allied with anyone - with the relation decay its kind of a pain to maintain. I do gift them some stuff i don't need from time to time, but to purposely try to get allied with 4 factions and having to manage relations with them all, so that i can use their caravan call option? Nah, i am fine without those.

Btw I need to make a point here, there are five faction, one always hostile pirates, two modern colonist, two tribal, of each one aggressive and one passive. Just making a point here that only the aggressive factions have relationship decay, the other two don't. And overall that looks rather sensible to me.

[Boboid]

This is probably the.. 15th? outpost I've done this to. They vary in difficulty a bit but frankly they all play out more or less the same. Amusingly a noticeable % of the art in the game now references Ramos taking out outposts on his own.
I know it's a little bit of an obscure balance niche but.. it's there.

Its seems kinda cheezy, though I consider kiting to be a valid tactic, and that pawn would be the definition of a super soldier if there was ever one, I mean, its a transhuman, range only pawn, fully bionic with top gear, so I'd be unsure whether to claim it as broken or not, but then again, depending on difficulty.

Oh it's unquestionably exploiting the fact that the AI tries to find cover before opening fire. If it didn't that one guy with a bolt action rifle would've made my life hell.. Which is why I shot him with a charge lance at the start. I've done similar raids where the enemy has had 2-3 sniper rifles, it plays out the same because of the massive windup on the rifles.
As to pawn quality.. It's 5 years in a game where I've only recruited transhumanists with the intention of giving everyone a crapload of bionics. The result is that everyone does a LOT of shooting and work so they all end up being quite high quality.
https://imgur.com/a/AmntBkl
Everyone has at least 1 bionic eye and leg.
Eli has 2 eyes(was my starting colonist, naked brutality start), Lour/minty's both have 1 bionic arm, Fabio has a spine because he had a bad back.
Minty's only just joined the colony so her shooting skill is still garbage. Giving her all the hunting jobs for quite a while.
Edit: Heh forgot that Tobias had a minigun, careful shooter with a minigun isn't particularly efficient just in case anyone was wondering.

But considering that may have do work outside, in the night, I do agree they shouldn't get that mood debuff. However this shouldn't excuse people to properly light their base, and I'm hoping for a cheaper wall lamp and a feature that they light up only when there's someone in the room.

I mean.. there are ways to circumnavigate this if you're willing to spend the time/space. If they have to do growing then you can light up your fields for example. Hunting or hauling outside of usual thoroughfares you're out of luck but as mentioned the night owl bonus is a massive 16.
If darkness is a problem for your night owls then the investment of steel/power for more lights in their areas seems worthwhile as-is.

[Madman666]

I'm getting horrible deja'vu so I'm going to leave the entire trade conversation to rest from here on out.

I was about to suggest dropping the topic as well Our approach to this game is too different.

From mathematical point of view you might be right - if you do it perfectly, train a level 20 talker to minimize losses, raise and maintain relations with 4 factions by gifts and quests, call them each and every day for caravans, finding the money or something to barter with to consistently buy out 300 steel a day - yeah it will be as you said. And the sad part is, that unless you are ready to dump your map at some point, you'll be forced to get steel via trade anyway, once deep drills run out (granted it will take you ages to mine out biggest map).

In earlier alphas once i ran out of steel deposits it usually ended with me consistently trading wooden art (as wood was easy to come by) for money and then buying out all the steel coming my way. I found that kinda boring. I guess i will give trading a run next time, but that won't change the fact that adding steel to temporary maps and scanners is a good idea.

[Greep]

I also don't really try to get allied with anyone - with the relation decay its kind of a pain to maintain. I do gift them some stuff i don't need from time to time, but to purposely try to get allied with 4 factions and having to manage relations with them all, so that i can use their caravan call option? Nah, i am fine without those.

Btw I need to make a point here, there are five faction, one always hostile pirates, two modern colonist, two tribal, of each one aggressive and one passive. Just making a point here that only the aggressive factions have relationship decay, the other two don't. And overall that looks rather sensible to me.

This is true about personalities, but I don't think the part about decay is true.  If you highlight the civil outlander it says it decays when over 50, unfortunately, and hostiles decay when over -80

Edit: Just gave a a faction 300 flake and now they're pretty much my forever ally xD  They sure do like to party.

[Ambaire]

You know, there's a simple solution to this whole steel shortage problem and it's in the vanilla game.

(1) Increase Maximum Number of Colonies to 2 or higher
(2) Form a caravan, travel at least 2 tiles away and create a new settlement
(3) Mine everything of interest at the new settlement
(4) Caravan back, abandon the new settlement, repeat the process

edit: that being said, I've never done this before but I just tested it a few minutes ago and it seems to work.