Unstable build feedback thread

[Kregoth]

I agree. I'm trying to make it more worthwhile to keep animals for things other than defense or hauling.

Long time player and long time lurker, but couldn't you make it just so that domesticated food sources get more meet? Standard hunting would get you some meat to keep you alive, but domesticated meat gives larger amounts of meet. Honestly it a good reflection on the real world, we bred cows for larger amount of meat. It would make sense if our domesticated animals would produce more meat.

[Penguinmanereikel]

I agree. I'm trying to make it more worthwhile to keep animals for things other than defense or hauling.

I totally agree with the goal, once upon a time I did a ton of analysis and balancing to try to make the farming case viable (several alphas ago), but it's hard as hell to actually get all the balance points working. Especially given how straightforward hunting is, and how manhunter packs deliver mass meat/leather. It's hard for raising animals to compete with that without being ridiculous in other ways.

Hmm...thinking over it, wouldn't the best idea to have a sort of generation level system with farm animals, where animals that spawn from the wild start at level zero, and as animals breed, their kin will be a higher generation level, and as the higher an animal's generation level, the greater returns on animal products like meat, eggs, etc. (or maybe faster rates or higher nutrition value). Perhaps those with differing generation levels will have an increase from the lower level parent, or the average between the parents, to encourage to keep moving onto next generations instead of the same parents over and over. I believe this system would encourage farming to be a stable, controllable, high-yield, albeit slower method of obtaining meat. The yield returned from farming will eventually flatten out over the course of a few generations. Higher generation animals could also possibly sell better.
(i.e. the longer these animals have been farmed over generations, the better)

Or, you could use a different, although more complex, system where every animal has a "fatness" that deterimines the meat yield (and stuff like "lactation factor" for milk producers, or something similar to that), and animal multiple offspring will have varying "fatness" deviating from the average of the parents. The "fatness" is shown on the animal screen and the adults' "fatness" should be the important one for the player to focus on. The player will be encouraged to pick the animals with their preferred traits (like "fatness" which influences meat yield) and make them breed.
(i.e. selective breeding)

Disclaimer: I planned out this idea with turkeys in mind, so results will likely vary if implemented. Perhaps, the increase in yield will be adjusted for those that breed rapidly and those that breed slowly, so that everyone can progress appox. equal rates.

[Greep]

I think the issue is that for animals to be worth it they'd have to give unrealistic meat/leather/wool values (e.g. chickens giving twice the nutrition they eat as opposed to ~30%, which makes no sense).  In the real world, manhunting giant space sloths don't deliver steak, so using real values gives odd results.

[Roolo]

Makes sense. But if domestic animals can't compete with maddened rhino meat, then... don't make them try? Give them reasons to exist that don't have easy substitutes. Hauling, combat, and Boomalopes' chemfuel work this way.
- There's a B18 mod that adds Chocolate Bunnies. Hilarious and unique. Doesn't matter if it's inefficient.
- Nuzzling feels like a random, incidental effect. Instead of a random colonist, pets should only nuzzle their master. That way, I'd feel like I have control over it and be motivated to get a pet for each colonist.
- Playing with a pet could be a recreation source.
- Milk and eggs are just substitutes for meat right now. If they (or chocolate or insect jelly) were required for lavish meals, they would have a distinct, specific purpose.
- If woollen furniture had a comfort bonus, then wool wouldn't just be a substitute for mid-tier leathers.
[..]

While I don't think Rimworld needs chocolate bunny's (I know it was just an example ^^), I really like your other points, especially the highlighted ones, so I'm seconding this. Right now eggs, milk, and insect jelly, while being more valuable, don't really mean much in gameplay terms. Adding them as a requirement for lavish meals, and maybe buffing lavish meals a bit more would make a lot of sense, and would give many players an incentive to keep animals. And of course there are other ways of making the animal products more special, like for instance your woolen furniture example. 

[Greep]

Well geeze... HAPPY BIRTHDAY DUDE!

Edit: drop at edge is still a bit iffy for small maps:


[attachment deleted due to age]

[Bolgfred]

While I don't think Rimworld needs chocolate bunny's (I know it was just an example ^^), I really like your other points, especially the highlighted ones, so I'm seconding this. Right now eggs, milk, and insect jelly, while being more valuable, don't really mean much in gameplay terms. Adding them as a requirement for lavish meals, and maybe buffing lavish meals a bit more would make a lot of sense, and would give many players an incentive to keep animals. And of course there are other ways of making the animal products more special, like for instance your woolen furniture example.

First: You, Sir, you are wrong! We need that bunny.

Secondish I agree that currently there is only a pseudo difference between leather and wool types. At least there are two types: good insulation and bad insulation. Wool chair e.g. could increase comfort temp whilst using it.

Thirdish: Still agree, Milkd and eggs are neither special nor economic enough to become intresting. I could imagine them for cholocate or lavish meals, as this could use not 2 but 3 different incgredients: meat,vegetable and egg/milk

BONUS:
I could imagine a reduced meat value for all animals killed by shooting, or vise versa a loot buff by 50-100% if an animal gets executed instead of hunted. This would make herding better. Could be combined with a stacking +10% per year tamed for meat value and milk/wool production.

[Nynzal]

This is slowly going further off topic, because those are all suggestions - but I wanna throw in there that herding animals is always at a loss of food, simply because it is a living organism that burns energy. Let me lie with this one and say that growing plants and eating them nets you more than ten times the nutrition than feeding it to an animal and eating the meat. Therefore animal products should be a luxury. So I agree with the suggestion to be rquired for lavish meals or wool being special.
Also, great food often is a result of good and varying ingredients and not just by using more of the same

[Tynan]

I do appreciate the creative and energetic discussion, but this is indeed veering a bit off topic.

I'd be happy if someone wanted to start another thread to discuss meat economy, or ways to scale threat strength besides wealth/population.

I don't plan on changing something like this for next build, just because it's too late to be making big destabilizing changes.

Anyway, let's please keep this thread focused on the unstable build feedback.

Thanks to everyone for great feedback as well.

[alfons100]

You know what'd be a neat event, that usually happens for lategame colonies(Or if you're lucky, early in), a Refugee chase quest, except there's a whole group of people being chased, usually 2 to 5 people. These people already has opinions and relations built with eachother, usually +30, +60 or even a lover, there can also be some people who are enemies with eachother who arrive.

Adds some spice with some fresh new characters, of course, the raid you recieve is a little stronger than a single Refugee quest.

[mlzovozlm]

my last run, roughly 2/3 of the team was former pirates so in the late game, all those pirate raids always had at least a few "relative" raiders, the colonists ended up with a bunch of mood debuff of "my xxx died", quite annoying & weird since 3-4 of them actually defected, why'd they actually care about the bunch that chased them away from the faction?

[fecalfrown]

It was changed I think in B18, but it just occurred to me that since the AI core is now quest only, it would be nice if the random mental berserk breaks could be removed. That would open up an interesting choice if you happen to get the quest early (which I have several times in 1.0). You could choose to implant it in a colonist if you're still really far away from being able to build the ship.

[Madman666]

Was interested to see the deep drilling changes people mentioned, only to find out that a half+ a day nets you 30 steel now or 10 uranium (and 7 plasteel. I wonder why not 1? it would be heaps more interesting to see the plasteel mountain slowly grow over years of play). A guy's full day of work hardly bringing over 10 uranium is ridiculous.

Also ai cores now really are quest only and those nasty psychic ships give you 1 advanced component, 100 steel and 30 plasteel instead of a core. Well done, those are now as unrewarding as other threats. I guess next step would really be making manhunters somehow not giving the meat.

[Tass237]

I've been playing on Cassandra Rough, Boreal Forest Flat, Self-Imposed Commitment mode, and I have played ~6 hours in the past 2 days. No Mods.

I really like Incendiary IEDs, but I'm not fond of High-Explosive IEDs. Incendiary ones don't cause much damage to surrounding stone walls, so they can be placed in strategically created locations without lots of repairs needed later. It wasn't obvious at first that IEDs only explode when stepped on, as the description and displayed radius both seem to imply that they would react to nearby traffic that doesn't step directly on them. A description change may be in order.

I like the idea of applying a ~60% butchery product penalty to animals killed by guns or explosions (or maybe a cumulative penalty for each bullet-or-explosion-caused wound on the corpse). It would encourage farm animals, and it would give a benefit to melee draft hunting, which is already more dangerous. This wouldn't require farm animals to have unreasonably higher meat, as it would just represent meat and leather that is unusable due to the physical trauma. Maybe give animals (heck, humans too) another internal organ that is tied to eating%, the intestines, and if it is damaged, you get 80-100% less meat from the corpse, as it is tainted by gut-bacteria. You could also give injuries to that organ a far higher chance to gain an infection, for the same reason.

I recently had the most devious raid (devious from a storyteller perspective) I can recall. 13 pirates crashed directly into several bedrooms, and all but 2 of them were armed with Molotov Cocktails. That, combined with the carpeting meant that the raiders themselves were doomed, but I had a hell of a time fighting the fires started in the bedrooms and nearby stockpiles. I appreciate that there is now an alert in the top left when room heat starts damaging pawns. It alerted me to have others hold open some doors to the (now roofless) sleeping quarters, and the outside.

I finally found a reason to use my resurrector serum, and I'm enjoying the interesting twists it causes. My pawn (who was my best constructor) went from dead from torso damage, to being blind in both eyes. After the long, but reasonable period of resurrection sickness, and once I had given her a bionic eye, I thought I was in the clear. It wasn't until a while later I discovered the new Brain HeDiff Resurrection Psychosis (early) at 11% and growing. I'm glad I noticed it quickly enough that I can take steps to train up her replacement. I love it, and it makes for a great story!

I'm not sure if I think this should be changed, but there is currently no way I can see to tell if a Water-mill generator will be penalized for being too close to another one. The efficiency-nerd in me wishes for more info so I can optimize the space, but the disbelief-suspender in me likes that there is no way to know without resource cost.

I like incorporating marsh/mud/ice/shallow water into my defenses/killbox, but when I play on other biomes, I wish there was a constructable floor that had BAD path cost. Not unreasonably bad, but maybe costing ~6 steel to build (barbed wire?) floor which has the same movement rate as, say, mud.

I have found the deep drill changes to be reasonable, although obviously slower than straight mining. I DO wish the device toggled itself off instead of self-forbidding when it runs out of resources though.

[Firestonezz]

Was interested to see the deep drilling changes people mentioned, only to find out that a half+ a day nets you 30 steel now or 10 uranium (and 7 plasteel. I wonder why not 1? it would be heaps more interesting to see the plasteel mountain slowly grow over years of play). A guy's full day of work hardly bringing over 10 uranium is ridiculous.

Also ai cores now really are quest only and those nasty psychic ships give you 1 advanced component, 100 steel and 30 plasteel instead of a core. Well done, those are now as unrewarding as other threats. I guess next step would really be making manhunters somehow not giving the meat.

A nitpick, but psychic ships didn't drop cores in B18 either.

[Norseman]

I'm wondering if there should be some function/memory to keep room assignments to various colonists when they're out in a caravan. Currently all rooms gets unoccupied the moment they leave, and when they come back they just pick whatever gets handed out to them when they look for a bed.

It's a little nitpicky, but I find it annoying to try and remember who had what room, and continuously emptying the barracks every time a caravan returns to the base.