Beta 19 - Polish the Cannons released!

[RemingtonRyder]

Ah, is that why we no longer have exe files in the Rimworld install folder since Tynan got 64 bit support back up and running?

You should have one executable, yep.

[Tynan]

Thanks guys but let's please keep this a bit more specifically on-topic.

We are not planning to drop 32-bit support. Don't worry. It's not hard for me to support on my end. It was just hell to get it set up to deploy on Steam without breaking old versions. Steam doesn't have any real support for keeping old versions around, everything that's there is a hack derived from the beta-testing system, which has a bunch of built-in assumptions coming from the idea that beta branches are always newer than the default branch - of course for RW they're older.

[Sniper Pilot]

Sorry for my ignorance, but how can I  tell if Rimworld is running in 64bit? or rather how can I switch between 32, 64 and vice-versa?

[Starbug3D]

Sorry for my ignorance, but how can I  tell if Rimworld is running in 64bit? or rather how can I switch between 32, 64 and vice-versa?

When start the game or you are running the game and enter the game menu, it will show you the version and if you're 64-bit.  It will likely either say 32-bit or nothing if 32-bit.

No idea how to run a specific version.

[b0rsuk]

I wish I had time to pour into Rimworld, but hey at least I have a (good) job now. These are very interesting and ambitious changes. Without playing the game, my feelings are:

LIKE:
- opportunistic hauling
- soft sand, impossible to build on. There should be an underground variety, because it's odd you have no constraints in there.
- low tech armor
- less random recruitment
- caravan, transport pods interface improvements
- seasonal trees
- armor rework sounds good, might make power armor better
- wooden bridges. Maybe it's a bit odd they're wooden only(?) but it gives wood a purpose. Also, waterproof conduits. No more battery juggling.
- condensing leathers into several types, patchwork leather
- animal training decay. Simple and elegant! Animals need more of a purpose though. It's bloody hard from interface perspective even to run an animal-centric colony where you limit farming next to 0.
- less busywork with downed enemies (animals, mechanoids)

Unnecessary:
- crafting bionics
- even MOAR turrets
At least now there is hope for early crippled colonists. Unless it's shattered pelvis I guess?

Underwhelming:
- splitting mechanoids. There are so many creative things that could have been done to make them interesting.

Suggestions:
- masterwork/legendary should still very occassionally generate on traders/enemies if you sell/gift them to someone first.

Unadressed:
Hot biomes, especially deserts, are boring and feel undeveloped compared to the cold ones. Snow is an interesting mechanic. Deserts need something to make them interesting. More accurate temperature modeling (shade, higher temperature difference between day&night), something like watering plants, sandstorms that damage structures and increase the need for maintenance.

In general, I feel biomes and the place you settle in have too little impact on how you run a colony. The same ways work everywhere especially once you get to hydroponics.

I think there's still no display for how many days worth of food you have left? And the game has survival elements? Such a basic feature.

Distinctions between factions. Now tribals become more like other factions because they too can tunnel. But two tribes are exactly alike, two outlander factions are exactly alike, two pirate factions are indistinguishable. At the very least they should have favorite apparel colors, favored weapons, sacred animals that influence relations when they die on your map.

Lack of ability to restrict workstations to certain colonists. Sometimes I'd build a tailoring or research bench in someone's bedroom because of time constraints (ice sheet/mining rooms) or because the person is toxic to some other colonists. I want a toggle "restrict to bedrooms' owner" or similar.

[Elendil]

Underwhelming:
- splitting mechanoids. There are so many creative things that could have been done to make them interesting.

Please elaborate.

I find that most mech encounters play out quite differently than they used to. When I attacked my last poison ship, there were three scythers and one lancer (it was a very young colony). I gunned them down with some injuries and the fight was actually pretty interesting. Also now rushing a group of lancers is an option and not suicide. The one thing left that seemed tedious and unfun is when the new event 'the whole raid is one type of enemy' decided to send me 18 centipedes.

[b0rsuk]

I mean there are more possibilities, especially putting more emphasis on the mechanical aspect of mechanoids.

- a mechanoid which mostly hangs back and scavenges parts from downed (destroyed) teammates to repair and/or upgrade itself. It's interesting because it's something no organic enemy could convincingly do.
- a mechanoid which can take over colony machines, especially turrets, and possibly tap into energy grid.
- making mechanoids short circuit in the rain, but only if they're past certain damage threshold. When their external shell is damaged.
- giving centipedes amazing FRONTAL armor and reducing elsewhere. Up to a point it would make fighting them more interesting (and then you can transition into EMP / explosives).
- a mechanoid which attempts to ram into enemies at great speed, but is fairly easy to dodge. If it misses, it continues until it hits an obstacle. This could soon put the said mechanoid behind enemy (your) lines and you'd have to fight at 2 fronts.
- making Centipedes shoot while moving. This would make them a bit more terrifying and less dumb. At times they're too easy to distract.

I've posted all of these and more in various suggestion threads.

[TheVoidDragon]

I mean there are more possibilities, especially putting more emphasis on the mechanical aspect of mechanoids.

- a mechanoid which mostly hangs back and scavenges parts from downed (destroyed) teammates to repair and/or upgrade itself. It's interesting because it's something no organic enemy could convincingly do.
- a mechanoid which can take over colony machines, especially turrets, and possibly tap into energy grid.
- making mechanoids short circuit in the rain, but only if they're past certain damage threshold. When their external shell is damaged.
- giving centipedes amazing FRONTAL armor and reducing elsewhere. Up to a point it would make fighting them more interesting (and then you can transition into EMP / explosives).
- a mechanoid which attempts to ram into enemies at great speed, but is fairly easy to dodge. If it misses, it continues until it hits an obstacle. This could soon put the said mechanoid behind enemy (your) lines and you'd have to fight at 2 fronts.
- making Centipedes shoot while moving. This would make them a bit more terrifying and less dumb. At times they're too easy to distract.

I've posted all of these and more in various suggestion threads.

I think you're missing that the reason the mechanoids were split into two sorts wasn't simply to create more enemy types. It was to balance the one that was there, stopping there being 1 mechanoid that had no real specific function and could do everything pretty well - the change was to make them a bit fairer and make the options available to players more apparent, now there's 2 types with each having a more defined role.

[b0rsuk]

That's fair. The old Scyther didn't really have a weakness - possibly durability. It was killable in melee especially, but very dicey without armor.

[Bolgfred]

My two cents, about the changes I noticed and had an opinion to:

Bridges:
Quick alternative to moisture pumps, basicly a good one, as moisture pumps are not realistic to use for base design.
Anyway they feel too strong for me, as they can be build anywhere and nullify most terrain issues. Could be nerved a little bit.

Message History:
A good step into the right direction for better storytelling. I like to reread things I haven't noticed or forgotten. Anyway, for now it's just for amusement. I never read it for any real purpose. But still, it's cool.

Plate armor
Basicly cool. Sounds like a melee focused armor. Anyway I am not sure if the slower speed is worth the higher resistances.

Wildlife Tab
Cool thing. Very cool. I miss the ability to set auto hunting, like I had it in 'colony manager' but for now the mod is obsolete for me.

Ship Sequence
Very cool. Ship launch now feels more end-boss.

Raid Type:  Multiple groups / Multiple pods
I barely noticed them as they mostly focus to the same targets and end up being like a normal raid. Might be a false feeling, but as said: barely noticed.

Faction relations
Another good step. Combat support is a really nice-to-have. With trades and quests there are enough options to influence relations, which is good. Anyway, all factions feel the same and all factions are the same, as they all provide the same quests and the traders are kind of similar.
Wish there to be a bigger personality to factions.

Watermill
Basicly a nice idea. It's equal to solar and wind in tech level, but doesn't have any of their downsides.
As being a perfect energy source it's endgame viable for me together with geo power.

I am happy with the new leathers. Still they are quite plenty for flavor and color, but they are not that plenty as they feel spammy.

Anyway I am unhappy with the new leathers and devilstrand, as they feel very underpowered for me now. They all have their differences, but they are not that large. I'd wish all leathers/fabric would be more special, having more utility or specialisation.
Currently leather is just a filler until flak armor can be crafted - and that's quite a short period..

opportunistically hauling
Great one. Only problem I had with haul for constructions, is that it seems to have a low priority. Mostly have to assign it manually as people prefer to carry blocks to a storage instead of the next wall blueprint.

[enterprise12]

Since in 0.19 caravaning system became very pretty beneficial to use, I have a QoL suggestion: ability to assign meal types to colonists in the same way I can assign medicine. I find that colonists will eat packaged survival meals that I want to stockpile, and forbiding them is quite burdensome since they can't be moved when forbidden. I also have to babysit my cook and every time he makes a new stack of packaged survival meals I have to forbid them.

I would love to have the option in the assign menu to make colonist eat. Choices could be:

1) any meal (default)
2) any meal but no long-lasting meal
3) fine meal or worse but no long lasting meal
4) simple meal or worse but no long lasting meal
5) raw food only

And while I'm making QoL suggestion, It would spare me a lot of clicking if by hovering over a box in the 'work' menu I could see if colonist has passion for the job. A simple icon of a small flame or large flame. As it is, I always have to click on a colonist a check if he is passionate. At the start of a new game, I always spend 5 min clicking on colonists and the 'work' tab. For hunting it could either show both shooting and animals.

I feel like these two changes would spare me a lot of headache. Anyone else shares the sentiment, or have I been doing it wrong all this time?
Thanks for consideration

I absolutely share this sentiment. It would be very good to have this, indeed.

Agreed! some way to specify what people can or cannot eat!, add it to "Assign" tab

[enterprise12]

Also Tynan!

New Recommendation:
Specify what MATERIAL clothing colonists can wear...ahem
When you have human leather clothing in your cannibal society but you have a special NON cannibal they dont like wearing human leather clothing .
So some cannibals take human leather clothing and normal clothing, i want to restrict them to just human leather clothing for mood boost, leave other clothing for normal colonists!

[Yoshida Keiji]

Let's talk about prison cells.

How do you guys picture a prison cell?

For me, one of the most obvious details is that their door has a lock key, as an average handle on both ways would provide an escape chance. You would of course, lock the door with the corresponding key.

I usually get prisoners to enter berserk mood when their cells are of poor conditions, like a sleeping spot but no bedroll or bed, no table and chair, etc. This is all okay with me, specially at early stage when not even my own colonists have their bedrolls yet.

However something that keeps pissing me off is when I send a builder to repair the door from the outside until the prisoner cools off but... a random pet all of a sudden decides to open the prison door...and either one of these two things happen:

* The pet bites the prisoner to death. (Dev mode > Resurrect)
* The pet gets knocked down and it's body blocks the door from closing and the prisoner escapes.


Why the F do pets open prison cell doors? (The pet is not bonded to the builder either, nor set to follow anyone)

[bootcampvictim]

Awesome work on the changes and fixes. Would have loved to see some work on wild or even tamed animal behavior when a colonist or any other animal gets close. Like if a carnivore got close to a herbivore or if they were being hunted they would flee a certain distance and wouldn't just stand and take the damage. We already have a flee mechanic so would be interesting to see it implemented someday.

[Third_Of_Five]

I've got some suggestions/feedback for B19, now that I've been playing it for a few weeks:

Changes I Don't Like
1. New Comms Console Mechanics I used to be able to order a caravan via the comms console from any faction so long as they didn't hate me. I had to pay a hefty price and lost some goodwill, but it was convenient, and even life-saving. Now, I can't do that unless a faction is already an ally, and even then I still have to fork over the silver and lose goodwill. I like the new faction alliance system in B19, but I don't like the new limitations imposed on the comms console. Can't I at least be able to offer gifts to other factions over the comms console, like I used to?

2. Late-Game Lag is Still a Problem I still have issues with lag in the mid to late game. Nothing too game-breaking, but a few times I've had a large group of animals join my colony and I've had to kill them all because they are lagging my game through sheer numbers. And that was while running Rimworld on my ~$2000 gaming PC. I know that optimization and performance improvements are things that you have mentioned frequently when talking about future updates, so just something to keep in mind.

3. Gourmand is a Death Sentence Tynan, if you're actually reading this and there is one thing that I want you to remember more than any of my other suggestions, it's this; Please, please nerf the Gourmand trait. I get the idea of having a colonist who is a bit of a glutton, but the 150% hunger rate is just absurd. Gourmands are even more dangerous than pyromaniacs now, because they just eat so much food that no matter how useful they are I have no choice but to banish them or let my colony starve. Please rework gourmand so that maybe they are instead picky about their food, or lower the hunger rate to something reasonable like 105%.

Changes I Like
1. The new faction alliance system is much better
2. Being able to lock dev mode
3. The new method for plant growth; I am genuinely glad that the map no longer looks like a barren wasteland after the first winter
4. The tech tree is more balanced
5. Caravans are so much better