What's your opinion on material refining and processing?

[Wanderer_joins]

There's a mod which allows to simply remove ores. It's slightly slower since you've to buy/ smelt/ dismantle mechanoids, but you can perfectly play it vanilla to add some ressources challenge without being on sea ice.

I'm not a fan of steel and compacted components ores, but i get why they're straightfoward in vanilla.

The third age adds iron and a forge for steel, which makes really sense for a tribal/ medieval playthrough.

[EvadableMoxie]

If you needed benches to refine wood and steel into usable forms then NB becomes basically impossible, and even in regular play you can't just move to a new area  and start building without bringing along refined materials or the refining benches.  I think that would take more away from the game then throwing in additional steps would add.

[RawCode]

game dropped "planks" and similar stuff long ago, overcomplication just for overcomplication is not fun.

we ever have chocolate dropping from trees in form of bars...

[Aerial]

game dropped "planks" and similar stuff long ago, overcomplication just for overcomplication is not fun.

we ever have chocolate dropping from trees in form of bars...

I think it really depends on the player.  Rimworld appeals to a pretty diverse group of gamers.  Some are more colony-manager fans, some are more survival players, some are more action or strategy or RPG.

I lean toward more processing steps, in general, because I like the sense of industriousness and accomplishment when I am able to produce finished goods in my colony.  Chocolate bars dropping from trees and reams of cloth dropping from cotton plants feels cheap in that regard because I didn't have to work for them. 

[Razzoriel]

we ever have chocolate dropping from trees in form of bars...

...which breaks immersion greatly. People would find mixing cocoa with milk a viable middle-of-the-road approach, but oversimplification and overstreamlining alienates the core audience.

[Call me Arty]

game dropped "planks" and similar stuff long ago, overcomplication just for overcomplication is not fun.

we ever have chocolate dropping from trees in form of bars...

I think it really depends on the player.  Rimworld appeals to a pretty diverse group of gamers.  Some are more colony-manager fans, some are more survival players, some are more action or strategy or RPG.

I lean toward more processing steps, in general, because I like the sense of industriousness and accomplishment when I am able to produce finished goods in my colony.  Chocolate bars dropping from trees and reams of cloth dropping from cotton plants feels cheap in that regard because I didn't have to work for them. 

...which breaks immersion greatly. People would find mixing cocoa with milk a viable middle-of-the-road approach, but oversimplification and overstreamlining alienates the core audience.

These are actually some fairly good points. Personally, I like my game as an industrious little ant farm. Maybe it means I should switch to Factorio or Rise to Ruins, but I never put too much care into making the most effective siege bunkers, but good, well, factories with residential areas. As such, I felt kinda bummed by what the game gives me to work with. Beer's nice, gotta grow hops, ferment them in barrels, process wort, make sure the whole thing's all temperature controlled. . . except it's far out-classed by most other forms of silver-making. Shoot a critter, butcher it, sell the leather, pick cotton or devilstrand and you have it ready, smokeleaf is a case of picking and rolling, it lacks the complexity I'm personally seeking. At the same time, I know that there are those who play this more like an RTS, and want expansive, raid-ready bases, where the most effective tactics available take priority. Probably hard to please both.

More importantly, I have a question for the twelve people who like a combination of simplicity and complexity: Where do you draw the line? Do you care about why beer and stonecutting have more of a process then acquiring steel and wood, or is it irrelevant? Is there anything else that you'd like to see more complexity in or something that should be simplified?

[Drewski]

Guys. Guys. Whatever the arguments about complexity vs. simplicity, and I'm of mixed mind, you don't mine steel ore in Rimworld. You mine compacted steel. Probably from old fallen spaceship chunks or an ancient civilization, but that doesn't matter. Steel ore isn't, you know, a thing. Not in real life, and not in Rimworld.

Cotton, chocolate, stone, beer, all that's fine and an interesting discussion, but stop with the "making steel from steel ore would be more realistic and immersive" stuff, because it's silly.

[Blato]

Guys. Guys. Whatever the arguments about complexity vs. simplicity, and I'm of mixed mind, you don't mine steel ore in Rimworld. You mine compacted steel. Probably from old fallen spaceship chunks or an ancient civilization, but that doesn't matter. Steel ore isn't, you know, a thing. Not in real life, and not in Rimworld.

Cotton, chocolate, stone, beer, all that's fine and an interesting discussion, but stop with the "making steel from steel ore would be more realistic and immersive" stuff, because it's silly.

That is a quite valid point, as a realistic approach would be mining iron ore from mountains, extracting iron from rocks, firing wood to make charcoal and then making the iron+carbon alloy known as steel.

Now that would be a long process, i'm in the category of fine as it is because I consider, in RimWorld, wood and steel as basic resources, and as such I don't mind them requiring no refining. Stone on the other hand is purely for construction of tougher structures. (whereas steel is used in everything; weapons, armor, buildings etc.)

[MajorFordson]

I'd like to see metal refinement in-game.

The player can be provided with plenty of early-game, low labor intensity resources through other means - ie ruins on the map, fallen space ship parts etc.

[5thHorseman]

I would buy Factorimworld in a heartbeat.

However, I don't want Factorio in Rimworld and I don't want Rimworld in Factorio. Each simplifies parts that the other complicates, and complicates parts that the other simplifies, and this is perfectly fine.