What's your opinion on material refining and processing?

[Call me Arty]

 There is a tree. We need wood. We chop down that tree and get wood that we can instantly use for wooden floors, weapons, fuel, and furniture. No varnishing or de-barking.

There is some steel ore. We need steel. We mine it, and we instantly get useable steel without the need for special processing, smelting it out of stone, or shaping it into ingots. We can now use it for everything from vitals monitors, to guns, to furniture (again).

Alright, so that's how this game works. We don't need to refine the things we harvest.

There is some stone in the shape of a wall. We need stone walls. So we mine the stone, hope for a chunk, bring it to a stonecutting table, cut said stone chunk, and then it's good to use. Otherwise, it's just glorified rubble.

You see a muffalo. You need food. You hunt the muffalo, haul its body to a freezer, butcher that body, and then collect a bunch of it's bits (potentially more if you want a higher tier of meal) and then cook a meal, rather than just, say, a steak.

Anyways, my point is that the game's a bit inconsistent in this regard. Rather than having to refine all of your materials (similar to Rise of Ruins, which I rather like, though it is on a larger scale as far as workforces go), or having them all readily available, it's a mix of the two. This just seems a bit odd. Personally, I rather like consistency, and would prefer if there were a bit more of a rhyme or reason to how materials could be used. Say what you want about it, but Minecraft's got a good head on it's shoulder in that regard. See a tree? Chop some wood, and logs are good for sturdy structures, making charcoal, and can be processed into planks. Planks are a plentiful and cheap source of building materials, in addition to being part of making tools, furniture, and some structures (like boats, stairs, pressure plates). They can be further refined into sticks for arrows, tool handles, ladders, etc. Point being: Being able to use logs for everything doesn't make too much sense in Rimworld, especially when steel needs less work to use than the stone it's encased in.

What are your guy's opinions on this? The reason this isn't in suggestions is that I don't really have a better idea than what we have. Our current method of stone or meat needing so many more steps than most other resources seems arbitrary, everything just dropping resources when harvested seems silly, and we lack the pure manpower or automation required to handle so much processing dedicated to only a few products. Any ideas on how to improve the process or alter it in some way will probably be ignored for the most part because the devs have better things to do and I'm not one of them are appreciated.

[bbqftw]

With writing, there is a concept that you should be as concise as possible. Similarly, with games, you should not add complexity for complexity (or realisms) sake.

The reason meat processing works is because there are interactions and meaningful choices at every step.

You have an animal corpse. You could eat it directly. This has different benefits and penalties depending on your game state (character traits + incapabilities, your need for leather, your acceptance of a nutrition efficiency hit for speed, your mental break status).

There's less play with butchering, but there are still some choices (in NB butchering spot vs table is also relevant). Practically it provides a space optimization challenge as most high value corpses butcher to multiple stacks.

Finally with cooking you have options for nutrition efficiency/spoilage/mood. With different game states, there are different choices that are optimal. This is probably the step with the most thought involved, and it is the most interesting since unlike the rest of the steps, the solution is not often obvious.

Whether by intent or by accident, its not needless complexity.

In fact, some of the most elegant mechanics in this game are simple - like the zzt event.

You make the argument of realism and inconsistency in a fantasy abstracted world, and frankly realism is worthless without being connected to meaningful gameplay. Your examples don't lead to more meaningful choice, only more tedium.

[Razzoriel]

Never liked the steel ore concept. Refining ore into steel should be a thing.

Trees should have a trunk object that would be "butchered" in a woodcutting station, that then yield usable wood.

[Aerial]

I would enjoy having more raw material processing, as long as it didn't go way overboard.  One of the things I really like about the Vegetable Garden mod is the fact that cotton has to be processed on a loom to get cloth, and rice/corn/wheat are ground into flour for recipes, etc.

I would enjoy similar additions, such as:
1.  tanning hides to get leather
2.  processing raw steel, silver, gold, etc into ingots (and maybe minting into coins before it could be used for currency?)
3.  mining raw metal ingredients (iron, copper, carbon, titanium, bauxite, etc) to make multiple alloys to flesh out the technology levels or even just for diversity

[Call me Arty]

With writing, there is a concept that you should be as concise as possible. Similarly, with games, you should not add complexity for complexity (or realisms) sake.

The reason meat processing works is because there are interactions and meaningful choices at every step.

Could you not argue the same of anything else in the game? Fingers are a part of pawn anatomy, why not simplify it to hands, and hands to arms? There are no bionic hands or hooks (yes, there is the powerclaw, but let's ignore that), just arms. Just have arms affect manipulation, it'd be simpler. There's no sense of smell, so why bother giving pawns noses?

Similarly, stone chunks have minimal use. They're aped by sandbags. Why not just have them bust into bricks based on mining skills? The stonecutting table isn't used for, say, picking the stone off of jade or gold you found until you get to the precious parts, so it's loss wouldn't be significant. If you're going to shoot an animal just to haul it back to a freezer before you take it out, butcher it, and drag it's bits back to the freezer or textile stockpile, why not just have them explode into pieces based on the hunter's shooting skill? Still gotta haul and store the stuff, gotta keep the kitchen clean, it's just shaving what may be an "unnecessarily complex" part of the game out.

My issue is not with overcomplexity or simpleness, but with the uneven distribution of it. Rooms aren't hot, they're 38 degrees Celsius. That's neat, and complex. Meanwhile: Frozen food is as edible as fresh food, rather than needing to thaw so that it tastes better and doesn't break teeth. A microwave or way to cycle food between a freezer and a refrigerator wouldn't be too bizarre, would it? Probably would be in a world where you can perform a medical operation on an infected pinky-toe, but can't repair the wear on a rifle.

[Thane]

With writing, there is a concept that you should be as concise as possible. Similarly, with games, you should not add complexity for complexity (or realisms) sake.

The reason meat processing works is because there are interactions and meaningful choices at every step.

You have an animal corpse. You could eat it directly. This has different benefits and penalties depending on your game state (character traits + incapabilities, your need for leather, your acceptance of a nutrition efficiency hit for speed, your mental break status).

There's less play with butchering, but there are still some choices (in NB butchering spot vs table is also relevant). Practically it provides a space optimization challenge as most high value corpses butcher to multiple stacks.

Finally with cooking you have options for nutrition efficiency/spoilage/mood. With different game states, there are different choices that are optimal. This is probably the step with the most thought involved, and it is the most interesting since unlike the rest of the steps, the solution is not often obvious.

Whether by intent or by accident, its not needless complexity.

In fact, some of the most elegant mechanics in this game are simple - like the zzt event.

You make the argument of realism and inconsistency in a fantasy abstracted world, and frankly realism is worthless without being connected to meaningful gameplay. Your examples don't lead to more meaningful choice, only more tedium.

This right here. If it doesn't add a meaningful choice to gameplay why should we bother with a tedious step? All steel ore would have to be refined for  use so why include refining? Stone chunks provide quick and useful cover aside form being a building material source.

[Call me Arty]

I would enjoy having more raw material processing, as long as it didn't go way overboard.  One of the things I really like about the Vegetable Garden mod is the fact that cotton has to be processed on a loom to get cloth, and rice/corn/wheat are ground into flour for recipes, etc.

How could I forget about Vegetable Garden? That's one of my favorite mods! I can vouch from personal experience that getting a line going for harvesting plant fibers, refining them, and then making your clothes and materials. Same deal for dividing oats between breakfast porridge and flour. It really led to a lot of diversity in my gardens between colonies, seriously, great mod.

[RimJimMcGee]

But the OP's not talking about realism, but consistency: if steel came in ore chunks, then those chunks would provide exactly the same "quick and useful cover" as stone chunks. And chunks themselves aren't used for building, just as the basis for blocks - you could equally well just scatter a "rocks" terrain type which slowed movement and provided cover (like trees do, IIRC) and have mined stone appear as blocks. A world doesn't have to be realistic, but its being internally consistent is, at least for most people, pretty key.

Plus, of course, humans are perfectly capable of building things out of stone chunks, except in Rimworld: if it was possible to build using them, but took longer/was less pretty/less efficient than using blocks (much like in Dwarf Fortress), then the extra step actually does add some decision-making, allow for more flavourful gameplay ("Do I throw up a crappy cairn now or hang on for bricks"; tribal starts having some non-mining option to build settlements that aren't total firetraps, etc), rather than just being map mess or a different, more tedious version of cargo pods containing blocks. I lean towards "make us refine ores", because the whole mining steel/perfectly usable components thing has always bugged me - my headcanon is that these are really old deposits of crashed ships, but it's still weird - but that's up to individual preference; it's just very odd, in terms of in-universe rationalisation and consistency, that it's less effort to make a hut out of space-age composite sticking out of the ground than it is to make a shelter out of rocks which are very roughly the right shape.

Note that this consistency worry doesn't affect, eg, butchering; it's very abstracted, but the assumption is obviously that your butcher also skins the corpses and tans them or that the tailor tans leathers before use - the way mineable resources work is as if butchering worked the same way as now, but for some reason you had to pasteurise the milk before it could be consumed.

[zizard]

Refining steel might also force a lot of changes to the resource requirements of benches. The steel refining bench probably shouldn't use steel, otherwise you could get stuck. But if it uses stone then you can also get stuck because the stone bench takes steel. So either have to change the material cost of multiple buildings or somehow refine steel using only wood.

[RimJimMcGee]

That's true, but then there are other benches which use stuff you might not have/have enough of (the multi-analyser uses gold and plasteel, and a whole load which use components) at a given time, and traders carry steel - admittedly maybe only bulk traders, though I feel like one of the other types does. Alternatively, making the stonecutter's bench not take steel surely isn't a huge change.

I'm not actually fussed one way or the other about the substantive "should steel be usable fresh out the ground" question - like I said, my preference is for a bit more fiddliness, but there are always mods for that - but the inconsistency of some of the resource systems is, at least, a bit disconcerting.

[Call me Arty]

Refining steel might also force a lot of changes to the resource requirements of benches. The steel refining bench probably shouldn't use steel, otherwise you could get stuck. But if it uses stone then you can also get stuck because the stone bench takes steel. So either have to change the material cost of multiple buildings or somehow refine steel using only wood.

We didn't need steel to make steel, nor copper for copper, or any other metal. Pickaxes aren't craftable and will always be with pawns, so a stone furnace wouldn't be impossible. Metallurgy would definitely be a neat addition to the game (Steamworlds are part of the lore, just try and keep me from my copper!).

[bbqftw]

With writing, there is a concept that you should be as concise as possible. Similarly, with games, you should not add complexity for complexity (or realisms) sake.

The reason meat processing works is because there are interactions and meaningful choices at every step.

Could you not argue the same of anything else in the game? Fingers are a part of pawn anatomy, why not simplify it to hands, and hands to arms? There are no bionic hands or hooks (yes, there is the powerclaw, but let's ignore that), just arms. Just have arms affect manipulation, it'd be simpler. There's no sense of smell, so why bother giving pawns noses?

Similarly, stone chunks have minimal use. They're aped by sandbags. Why not just have them bust into bricks based on mining skills? The stonecutting table isn't used for, say, picking the stone off of jade or gold you found until you get to the precious parts, so it's loss wouldn't be significant. If you're going to shoot an animal just to haul it back to a freezer before you take it out, butcher it, and drag it's bits back to the freezer or textile stockpile, why not just have them explode into pieces based on the hunter's shooting skill? Still gotta haul and store the stuff, gotta keep the kitchen clean, it's just shaving what may be an "unnecessarily complex" part of the game out.

My issue is not with overcomplexity or simpleness, but with the uneven distribution of it. Rooms aren't hot, they're 38 degrees Celsius. That's neat, and complex. Meanwhile: Frozen food is as edible as fresh food, rather than needing to thaw so that it tastes better and doesn't break teeth. A microwave or way to cycle food between a freezer and a refrigerator wouldn't be too bizarre, would it? Probably would be in a world where you can perform a medical operation on an infected pinky-toe, but can't repair the wear on a rifle.

exactly, stone cutting falls under the more useless form of complexity. Wouldn't be sad to see it go.

Consistency of realism is a poor reason to make gameplay worse. It sounds like you are underchallenging yourself, but implementing more mechanical requirements isn't going to help that.

[Trystram de Lyonesse]

I don't think that "core" Rimworld experience requires more complexity with refining basic resources. It's a great idea for some huge overhaul mod (and I have some thoughts about it), but it requires total rebalance of everything.
Right now I can point a few major issues with expanded refining:
1) You mentioned manpower problem. Game could became very grindy at start, especially with 1-3 starting colonists. Because of mediate job between collecting resources and construction, you'd likely spend a lot more time before building your basic base. Also tech.level should affect refining, for example bloomery should be initial station for smelting, and it should be slow and ineffective. So we get tedious and long starting phase of game and that's not good.
2) Logistics and stockpiles. Additional resource types will require more place in stockpiles and some hauling jobs as well, so without a solution for compact storage it would be very inconvenient to have a lot of ores, metals, wood resources, etc.
3) As was pointed before, you can end up without means to gain resource to build workbench for  that resource.

And there is consistency with mechanics for stone blocks and animal products, gamewise.
Meat, leather and blocks are "luxury" resources.
Blocks took a lot of time to make, but you get rid of "junk" chunks and receive aesthetics and fireproof buildings.
Hunting is a risk, takes time, requires butchering afterwards, but you get meat for fine and lavish meals and leather for clothes production.

[Call me Arty]

. . .
1) You mentioned manpower problem. Game could became very grindy at start, especially with 1-3 starting colonists. Because of mediate job between collecting resources and construction, you'd likely spend a lot more time before building your basic base. Also tech.level should affect refining, for example bloomery should be initial station for smelting, and it should be slow and ineffective. So we get tedious and long starting phase of game and that's not good.
. . .
3) As was pointed before, you can end up without means to gain resource to build workbench for that resource.

And there is consistency with mechanics for stone blocks and animal products, gamewise.
Meat, leather and blocks are "luxury" resources.
Blocks took a lot of time to make, but you get rid of "junk" chunks and receive aesthetics and fireproof buildings.
Hunting is a risk, takes time, requires butchering afterwards, but you get meat for fine and lavish meals and leather for clothes production.

I'm sure that there will absolutely be those disagreeing with me, but should there not be a larger gap between tech levels? When was the last time that you could remember feeling the impact of a new research going through? By the time you have guns researched, you've probably got a couple decent ones from fighting-off raiders or selling natural resources to traders. Hi-tech research benches and multi-analyzers are nice, but they really only affect how long one or two pawns take to fill a little meter in a cramped room. As it is, the jump from campfires and plate armor to full-colony climate control and automated turrets isn't too much more than a hop. Yes, it is arguable that it's more fitting for a thread requesting more content for the Neolithic and pseudo-medieval technological ages, but I imagine placing an electric smelter in a castle could have a great impact on players, and allow them to better appreciate lower tech levels.

Pawns could starve in some climates without meat, typically in places lacking wood. The butchering spot was made to compensate. As previously mentioned, a clay or stone furnace wouldn't be too hard to imagine. We've already got the electric smelter without a low-tech counterpart, don't we?

I also have a hard time making sense of your "luxury resources" argument. Couldn't you argue that everything's luxury item, if you could describe meat and stone blocks as luxury. Once you've got a wall up and all the trees inside of it harvested, would it not be a risk to venture outside? Vegetables could be a luxury, it's land you could be using for weapons storage, or space for turrets and deadfall traps. I don't see any reason as to why meat should take so much more of a process than, say, wood or steel. You could say it's because you need food to survive, so it shouldn't be easy to come by. By that same logic, you literally can't beat the game without the steel needed for a high-tech research bench, a multi-analyzer, and ship pieces.

[Crow_T]

regarding stonecutting, it's about increasing the cost of a superior material, simple as that. Stone is the strongest easily accessible material and it doesn't burn, it should take some work to utilize it, whereas wood is the weakest and is flammable. Its a cost/benefit decision for players, a game balance, that's all.