What Rimworld still needs

[DubskiDude]

I've documented what I've thought to be necessary changes to Rimworld, having put in over 700 hours. I've been meaning to take the most important of my suggested changes and make a more refined thread, so here we go. Note the following isn't very organized and there's quite a lot to it - you've been warned.

- Make "Overhead Mountain" removable. By far my biggest gripe with Rimworld. If you can mine out the entire base of a "mountain", then it's not a mountain. Plus "Overhead Mountain" forever means that hives can spawn there, regardless of whether or not your base is inside or near a mountain. In mountainous maps where there is more mountain than actual land, you have very few options when choosing a location for your base. Digging out a base is just too risky and unreliable, and that should not be the case. There are other ways to bring challenge to mountain bases rather than saying "lol insects spawn there now".

- Nerf Muscle Parasites by removing or reworking specifically the tiredness debuff, which throws the pawn entirely out of whack and forces you to do annoying micromanaging of their schedule. Muscle Parasites consistently put pawns in Extreme Break risk range.

- Doctors should never prioritize anything over doctoring when their priority is set to 1. I've seen my doctors eat, sleep, do joy activities, etc. when there is a patient bleeding on the operating table. Also, tending to all patients first should take priority over feeding a patient. They should also wake up if a hurt pawn enters a hospital bed and treat them. This would cut out a lot of uneccessary micromanaging.

- Pawn schedules in the Restrict tab should not take precedent during a dangerous event or if the pawn has grievous wounds. I've seen my own pawn, who had his arm freshly shot off, doing Joy activities instead of going to a hospital bed to get treated, even with Patient and Bedrest set to 1.

- Pawns with cooking disabled shouldn't be able to have Gourmand trait.

- A pawn's trading effectiveness should appear in the shopping tab (as a percent value or some other indicator).

- Plans for laying conduits are often overlapped and deleted by other structures built on the same tile, i.e. I build a wall and then a conduit, and building the wall deletes the conduit plans.

- Mini turrets should not have minimum range. Autocannons and uranium slug turrets already have a large minimum range, and mini-turrets only keep their usefulness by protecting the more expensive turrets when melee enemies closed the distance. This also means a mini-turret cannot fire back once an nemy is in melee range.

"Jealous" trait should be reworked. If two pawns have Jealous, then a ton of micromanaging is required to make them happy (this is unless Jealous pawns aren't jealous of other jealous pawn's rooms).

- Smoothing floors/walls takes far too long. I almost never smooth rocky surfaces because it's far quicker to just lay wood floors over it.

- Text alerts at the top left of the screen (like animal revenge chance notifcations) overlap the Wildlife tab. Every time you have to wait for the text to disappear in order to select hunt or tame on animals near the top of the list.

- Animal revenge interrupts hunting. I've seen numerous times where a pawn triggers an animal revenge, they kill the animal, then move on to hunt another animal, while leaving the body to rot outside.

- Allow pawns to at least partially haul. Non-hauling pawns have significantly less value, and hunter or cooking pawns who have hauling disabled will still haul animals they kill, but not when you manually tell them to, which doesn't make sense.

- Work priority categories should be adjustable. For example, Art should not be higher priority than cleaning or hauling.

- Trait: Bisexual. This likely has been discussed before, but bisexual pawns currently don't exist. Gay seems like a rare trait, and the one gay pawn you have will not find a lover unless you somehow find another pawn with Gay and is the same gender. Bisexual can fix this and add more variety.

- Trait: Backpacker. Increases pawn carrying capacity when Hauling and caravanning.

- (BUG) Animals that hunt your pawns or colony animals won't be shot by turrets until your pawn damages them.

- Retool pawns running when on fire. One of my pawns caught fire, jumped out from our column of sandbags and literally ran 24 tiles straight at two Lancers, only to have their head blown off.

- "Given Up" doesn't give you enough time to arrest the pawn, especially on larger maps. Pawns just get to leave and you can't do anything about it, especially if your base is near the edge of the map.

- Pawns having a tantrum shouldn't be able to detonate chemfuel/shells/etc by punching them. Even an enraged person would know not to kick things that could explode and kill them.

- (BUG) Colonists constantly stopping construction before completion (deep drills, generators, etc.) to do other things like eat or sleep.

- Cold snaps/cold weather shouldn't evaporate the harvestable resources on plants. The plants should die, i.e. the plant would permanently stop growing and its art would change, but the vegetables that have already grown shouldn't just instantly turn to dust because there's a nip in the air.

- Trait: Outdoorsman. Less mood debuff from being rained on + less movement penalty through swamps/rivers/snow/etc.

- (BUG) Colonists don't rest when they have a life-threatening condition if there are no medical beds (but have regular beds).

- Poison ships should create a green fog (or just take the snow effect and make it green) so the player can see how far the gas has gone.

- Add "Medical Tab" by Fluffy to the main release. The tab works flawlessly, and is a huge help.

- Buff to address "joy deprived" when raiding an enemy base. Raids are more important than playing horseshoes. Also applies to mining trips (i.e. after using the long-range mineral detector).

- Rework or remove "ate without table". Firstly, too many NPCs just forget there's a table(s) available to them, and also, why would someone IRL be sad they ate without one? Doesn't make sense.

- Brawler trait is a ham-fisted way of forcing the player to use a melee-only pawn. "Favored weapon" traits would be better than Brawler trait.

- Friendly fire should be retooled. Ridiculous amounts of friendly fire incidents occur even when they reasonably wouldn't. And here is an example of how poorly friendly fire works:
https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/6y1y1y/yet_another_reason_why_friendly_fire_has_to_go/

- Add market value filter for smithing, destroying, etc. For example, I could set weapons to be smelted, but only if they are lower than a price that I set in the menu. This way I could destroy cheap objects and save space in the immediate.

- Option to spay/neuter animals. Constantly having to micro their newborns that only eat your food is a drag if you don't want them.

- "Doctor needed" event. Thread explaining it can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/6lgqb5/doctor_needed_event_allies_with_ailments_come_to/. Seems to be very well received!

- Animals put into a frenzy due to the "revenge" event should lose their "manhunter" status after downing/killing the pawn that triggered the event. Doesn't make sense that they attack the hunter and then decide to bumrush the colony without any sense of self-preservation.

- Craftables to solve currently unsolvable medical wounds: torn off noses, broken ribs, fractured pelvis/radius/etc. Splints could help a few of these. Plastic surgery would be required for the rest.

- (BUG) Allow pawns to release a sleeping prisoner. If they're currently sleeping, you have to undesignate their bed as a prisoner bed in order to wake them up, and then be allowed to release them.

- Swap the "master" column and the animal follow options column in the Animals tab. Currently, the animal follow options are right next to animal training (making it seem like they're a part of animal training), and that makes it confusing. Having them to the right of the "masters" column would be less confusing. Just a minor aesthetic change for newer players.

- Other faction types besides tribal, outlander, and pirate. Tribals have low tech but high numbers. Outlanders/pirates have medium tech and medium numbers. Why not have an NPC faction (besides Mechanoids) that have low numbers but higher tech? Android/cyborgs or interstellar private military corporations come to mind.

- (BUG) (Possibly fixed?) Colonists won't stay in their hospital bed, even when prioritized and with Patient and Bedrest set to 1. I've seen one get out of bed to change clothes and then not return to bed, even when they have a severe illness. Pawns should also never get out of a hospital bed if prioritized to stay there and are wounded/sick.

- No instant death when a colonist's liver is destroyed/removed. A person can survive about a year without their liver in real life, so instant death due to liver removal doesn't make much sense.

- Work stations should list what skill they require at a glance, for convenience. Machining tables and component assembly benches should say "smithing" right when you click them, drug labs should say "crafting", etc.

- Ability to set a "firefighting" zone. There are some areas that I don't want to designate as a Home zone (colonists would waste time cleaning it), but I WOULD want them to fight a fire there, if there was one.

- "Replace with" command. Say I want to replace my walls for my fridge. Currently it wastes time having a pawn walk to it, deconstruct the wall, and then me having to micromanage them to pick up resources, then walk back to build a new wall; all while my food is rotting. Having a "replace with" command would tell them to grab the necessary items, go to the thing being replaced, deconstruct it, then proceed to build the structure that is replacing it.

- Combine "colored lights" with "microelectronics". Colored lights is only aesthetic and doesn't seem important enough to be its own research item.

- Reduce the time it takes for moisture pumps to increase their radius. They currently run at the speed of smell (1 year to fully convert). Bridges make it slightly less of a problem, but 1 year still seems too long.

- Add an option to allow pawns to turn stone ground into farmable earth. I'm constantly being forced to work around stone ground when planting, and this would fix that entirely. You could also allow fertile ground to be dug up and moved, to be placed over other spots on the ground.

- Setting IEDs next to a crashed ship part should not alert the mechanoids within. How is it that colonists can literally rub their faces on the ship and not cause a mechanoid attack, but the second they build something next to it, all hell breaks loose? IEDs are meant for strategic placement. It effectively makes IEDs vs crashed ships useless, since you can't place them adjacently to said ship to go off when the mechanoids come out. You can also have a pawn haul explosive shells around the ship to be set off with an explosive, and the mechanoids don't care prior to the resulting explosions.

- Increase the detection radius for fire poppers to go off. It seems very wasteful to have to build so many fire poppers to defend a wall or building from potential fire. It should have a 1x1 or 2x2 detection radius, instead of triggering only when fire touches the popper itself. I've never used fire poppers because of this.

- You should be able to prioritize an NPC to sleep. Too many times I've seen an NPC exhausted, but still continue to work, even if they don't have an action prioritized for them. Currently there is no way to tell an NPC to go to bed and fix this.

- NPCs should not drop the item they're hauling when re-prioritized to a different action. For example, a doctor holding medicine will drop their medicine when prioritized to a different patient, or a pawn hauling wood will drop the wood when prioritized to pick up more wood. Pawns should also factor in the item they're holding when performing an action instead of dropping it, or ignoring the fact that they have the resource right in their hands.

- Nerf or remove prisoner execution mood debuff, or extend the time it takes for "guilty" to wear off. If they tried to attack the base, they should be able to be executed with little to no remorse, especially in a harsh environment like Rimworld. If the player can't recruit them or keep them around, they shouldn't get a debuff for executing them. The only other alternative would be to simply not capture downed enemies and let them die out in the field, which seems more cruel than executing them.

- Show NPC skill efficiency percentages next to "overview" stats. NPC efficiency should be there at a glance instead of having to hover over their stats every time. For example, instead of Manipulation just saying "poor", it should say 45% right next to "poor". This would make managing and prioritizing NPCs easier.

- Show skill efficiency with "overview" stats calculated in. Currently I've had to judge an NPCs skill in cooking/crafting/etc by their respective skill level, but their stats like sight, smell, hearing, manipulation, etc. are all factored in to their success rate of that skill. The game doesn't show this on the character page. Currently you can only guesstimate or have to tab out to the wiki to figure it out.

- Fix pod launching. NPCs are massively inefficient at loading pods, because some will load their pod, and then themselves, and just sit there when other pods need help being loaded. NPCs should help each other load all the pods in the launch group and then load themselves in last. This would make it much more efficient, and eliminate the problem of pod loading taking exponentially longer to finish up (the same can be said for forming caravans as well). EDIT: This may have been fixed - let me know if it has.

- NPCs should not shoot "Berserk" NPCs. 9 times out of 10 you want to beat them over the head and send them to the hospital, not riddle them full of bullets, which have a higher chance of permanent damage or death.

- Animals should stay put when being trained or tamed. Same for prisoner colonists. Animals or prisoners walking around aimlessly while they are being handled wastes time.

[DubskiDude]

The following are what I deem to be "minor" suggestions. Not as pressing as the above post, but still very much worth considering.

- Add a structure to allow for an open animal pasture that prevents large animals from crossing (but not pawns), like a rural barbed wire fence.

- Seems that too many prisoner rescue events involve colonists I've banished (who came from refugee events, of which I banished because they're a crap pawn). Also prisoner rescue events are already too risky, and I hardly ever partake because you don't know what pawn you'll get, and caravanning makes it even deadlier.

- Lancers take off limbs too easily. Charge lances pop lungs and kidneys like no one's business, even with good armor.

- Sowing healroot takes too long. Healroot used to be faster before a 1.0 unstable update. Now it takes an unreasonable amount of time to begin growing an essential item. Healroot should also have a requirement of around 7 skill, rather than 8, to sow.

- Animal corpses/skeletons last too long on the map.

- "Lizard skin" should be renamed to "Reptile skin".

- "Sandstorm" event. Applies only to Arid Shrubland/Desert/etc. A weather event similar to a flashstorm, it covers the map in a sandstorm, lowering the sight capability of everything not under a roof. Leaves sand on unroofed locations. Could also possibly reveal mining nodes or items underneath the sand (aka spawning them on sand tiles).

- Barbed-wire fences. Medium-cost trap that lowers movement speed more than sandbags (but lacking projectile protection). May require steel upkeep every few months as the wires rust. Could also be prevented from being built adjacent to walls so that they're less useful for killboxes.

- New raid type: War Beasts. Pirates and Tribals should be able to tame wild animals and use them as cannon fodder. War beasts could include tamed rhinos, elephants, megasloths, bears, cougars, panthers, wargs, wolves, emus, boars, and maybe even thrumbos when raiding. It would make raids more interesting, especially tribal raids.

- New raid type: Bunker Buster. This would involve raiders bringing in a slow-moving tractor-like machine which can do massive "melee" damage to structures, and would primarily be used to break through perimeter walls. Would have high armor and a huge health pool. Could possibly be susceptible to explosives and molotovs.

- (Possibly fixed) Ending ship sequence, in it's current state, is absolutely not worth the time or the hassle. Thread here: https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=42507.0

- "Thief" event. A pawn enters your colony at night to steal items from your storage. Can slip past turrets and defenses, and must be killed or arrested, else you lose the items.

- Allow pawns with guns to fire at close range. Removing this feature is just silly, since there was already touch accuracy involved with firearms. This also makes it almost impossible for non-melee pawns to fight off animals that try to hunt them (manhunter or otherwise).

- (Possibly fixed) Replacing barrels on turrets should cost less. 200 steel for a new sniper turret barrel every 40 shots seems rather steep.

- Randomly generated camps, structures, or abandoned caches that are discovered (rarely) while caravaning. Could contain valuable items, an injured recruitable pawn, or enemies. Something to make caravanning more exciting.

- Randomized and/or better rewards from fallen ships. Steel, components, and one advanced component aren't much of a reward, especially concerning how much trouble fighting mechanoids outside your base can be.

- (Possibly fixed) Social fights, especially with colonists that aren't armed, shouldn't result in destroyed limbs. Broken (and fixable) fingers maybe, but not digits being torn off.

- (BUG) Colonists shouldn't have the option to use a neurotrainer if the associated skill is disabled for them.

- Allow pawns to attempt to snap people out of mental breaks (based on their Social skill). May risk Berserking the pawn, but has a lower chance of doing so when arresting them to snap them out of it.

- Add painkillers that can be crafted at a drug lab, to help with pain (there is currently no option to deal with pain other than a painstopper).

- Buff penoxcycline or switch up its effect. One Penox per colonist per five days, and you don't even know if using it even blocked a disease? It doesn't seem worth the trouble of making unless you're in the jungle.

- Add a late-game multivitamin to automatically boost NPC immunity by 5-10%, or further increase immunity% gain. Would be much more useful than penox.

- (Possibly fixed) Outdoor temperature should rise/fall with the weather, i.e. temperature drops slightly during rain or fog, depending on the biome and time of day.

- Add a "study" option for pawns, or a study bench, which would keep them stationary, sacrificing work they could be doing for accelerated EXP gain in a skill of the player's choice. This would, for example, help train a pawn who is terrible at shooting, but you don't want to risk them getting mauled by wild animals or shot up by raiders.

- Disable "Fire!" alerts when its raining. They're a pointless nuisance, since the fire will go out anyway due to the rain.

- Different stages of Torso Frailty/Hearing Loss/Bad Back/etc. Seems silly that, for example, someone's Moving and Manipulation permanently drops by 30% in one second. It should be more like artery blockages, where it develops in stages.

- Add a 1x1 "short range mineral detector" that can show whether or not mountains or large hills on the map have ore inside them. Similar to a ground-penetrating scanner, but for minables above ground or inside mountains.

- Fire extinguisher item. Would be a better alternative to Fire Poppers, and would allow a pawn to do more than just kick the flames.

- Arresting someone (say, for starting fires or binging) removes the pawn from their previous bed's ownership. This results in their significant other getting a mood debuff because they're not sleeping with them anymore, and you'll have to constantly check the Needs tab and micromanage the pawn back to the correct bed after they're freed.

- Categorize wounds/dismemberments by the limb they're attached to, and not sort by the type of dismemberment. Its slightly confusing to see "left finger, right finger, left femur, right shoulder". A menu with a body silhouette showing what limbs are missing would also be helpful.

- Bigger, more intricate NPC/enemy colonies and camps. As they are now, they seem tiny and disappointing.

- Faction "capitals". Each faction should have a larger, better defended location to serve as their capital, with better trade options and better fortifications. Destroying it could affect morale for every other faction, yield many rewards, and in a few days time, another capital on the world map could be designated for that faction.

- Make an NPC less likely to start a social fight after they're arrested for it, or add a small buff to other colonists when an arrest is made for a fight (to encourage enforcing the law in your settlement).

- Add more traps besides deadfall and IED. The variety of traps currently in Rimworld seems really underwhelming. Some ideas are pitfall traps and moats (adding a speed penalty similar to sandbags), bear traps, or swinging log traps.

- More combat-based challenges in Rimworld. This could be a variety of things, like answering calls for help from friendly factions (i.e. helping break a siege on their camp, attacking a huge mechanoid/bug hive that has spawned on the world map, etc.). Besides animals, mechanoids, and raids, combat events in Rimworld aren't utilized as much as they could be.

- Underground maps. Rimworld is based solely on a flat map currently. Why not add a smaller, more condensed underground map where more treasures can be found? They could even be populated by bug hives, ancient rusted mechanoids, or troglodyte mutants. Caves spawning in mountains doesn't really accomplish this.

- Add a short "Victory!" mood buff when the colonists fend off a raid/siege, or destroy a raider outpost. Colonists should feel good about winning and/or defending their home.

- Nemesis system. This would involve enemy NPCs (or animals) escaping from a fight and retreating off the map, only to have them return a few months later with a "nemesis" buff, which could add damage/armor/etc, and offer better equipment or rewards for killing or capturing them. Killing or capturing them could also net a mood buff.

- Trees, mountains, and foliage should gather snow after it snows. A snowy field with perfectly green trees looks odd.

[DubskiDude]

One quick thing, I'm starting to think Toxic Fallout is too brutal. The fact that you have to keep your colonists under a roof (or risk permanent damage) is one thing, but the fact it kills ALL animals on the map and makes them unbutcherable is too much, since you then have to wait for the fallout to pass and THEN wait for animals to show up again. Every time I've had toxic fallout during early/mid game, my colony has always either starved outright, or lacked food and therefore went crazy. Plus all I want to do when the alert appears is to stop playing, because it's just a hassle rather than a challenge. Not good.

[5thHorseman]

My last toxic fallout I was able to build rooms around my farms, install sun lamps and heaters, and build all the power generators to power them, all with only ONE colonist getting sick, and that was bad luck because they barely got over the danger threshold.

And sure, I wasn't in an ice sheet or desert or anything like that but if I had been, I'd have probably already have had my food growing indoors anyway.

You don't have to stay inside 24/7. You just have to stay inside as much as is possible.