ASV's Mod Reviews (Latest: Lapelli, Automatons, Beta-Humanoids)

[AcetheSuperVillain]

Sorry if I left anyone hanging.  I stopped playing RimWorld for a while to let 1.1 happen and let the mods catch up, and I kinda forgot about this whole little side project. 

So the next races I want to review are Xen's races.  I have played them extensively in 1.0, but not 1.1.  They have been ported to 1.1, but I haven't played that yet, sorry if there's some important change between the versions. 


Xenn:  https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2018390248
Racc:  https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2018388533
Logann:  https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1120946454
Ferrex:  https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2018387954

These four races are fairly similar.  Each comes with their own starting scenarios a bunch of new back stories that are mostly referential and can be quite humorous, like Mulder, FBI Agent, but they establish a strong character for each race.  Racc are spies and assassins, Loganns are military themed, Ferrex are businessmen and Xenn I've never quite placed, although I guess they're supposed to represent a variety of 80s action movie cliches.  These four races all have lifespans of 1000, which means they tend to have very high skill levels, making them good gets on the rim.  (I'm not sure if there is any extra modding going on to produce this)  All of these races also have a chance to appear with weapons or armor equipped.  I know at least once, I had a wandering Racc appear with her own mini-gun.  Each race also gets its own faction, which are almost always peaceful (I think there's a Bad Xenn faction, but it's rare) filling the generated world with markets for your lovingly grown cocaine. 

Each race comes with a handfull of new technologies, mostly nothing especially advanced, except for the Xenn, who add 2 new charged rifles and some powered armor.  The guns are a heat gun and a cold gun, which cause burns or frostbites instead of normal wounds.  These work much like the taser weapons discussed previously, except with a much higher range and rate of fire, making them fantastic weapons for all occasions.  Loganns have a "healing factor" (based on the X-man, Wolverine, not the animal, they can't do that) which allows them to recover from very serious injuries and sicknesses.  Racc are very fleet of foot, making them great at jobs that involve a lot of walking and they can kite like champs on the battlefield.  I'm a little less familiar with Ferrex, they are less combat oriented, and therefore, I tend to notice them less. 

Overall, I really like these races.  They absolutely give the impression of a powerful, advanced alien race.  It's a little cliche to have these cultures that are kind of one-dimensional, but this is still RimWorld, your alien colonists will rise to whatever challenges Randy throws at them.  There's no question that these races are overpowered, they will make your human colonists and most other alien races seem obsolete, but personally, I think that makes the game more interesting.  You might be more motivated to go on a rescue mission for a Racc agent or willing to spend extra money for a Logann slave.  I can see how some people might feel like Xen's backstories are a little too referential and goofy, it might be immersion breaking for some, but for me, I can usually ignore that or just think of their backstories as alien equivalents to the stories of our human culture.  And since it's the Racc who get the goofiest stories, Racc are supposed to be spies, so I could imagine a Racc colonist just lying about their backstory. 



Xen has a lot of other fun mods on his page that are worth a look.  He's got Argonians, Asari, Star Wars races, Jaffa, Werewolves (like the transforming kind) and some other miscellaneous helpfuls.  There are some vulpine races that kind of match the style of the four races earlier, Frijjid and Fenni, but the artwork is not as good, and they don't add any new tech or interesting lore to the game, so they don't get my recommendation. 

[AcetheSuperVillain]

Been a while, huh?  So I got kind of discouraged when 1.1 crashed all the mods, and then just as the good ones were coming back, I thought 1.2 would do it again, but as it turns out, most 1.1 mods work perfectly in 1.2, so let's maybe pick this up again. 

Project Itzal Guns


https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=1643718814

I was heartbroken when CyberPunk didn't get updated to 1.1 (at first, it is now) so I went looking for other gun collections that might fill the same niche.  Project Itzal kind of does and kind of doesn't.  Like CyberPunk, Itzal is a MASSIVE collection of weapons that kinda drowns out any other collections you have installed.  Unlike CyberPunk, Itzal does not change the game's combat equations, and Itzal guns cover a range of timelines from past to future, but it's mainly modern.  This means that while you can down a sauropod in a few hits from a really good CyberPunk gun, the Itzal arsenal is always kinda "meh" in terms of destructive power.  The guns aren't "better" than the vanilla arsenal, they're just different (for the most part, like I said, it's a massive collection and some of them are more on par with Rimsenal than vanilla, and there are probably a few gems I never encountered in my playthroughs).  And unlike CyberPunk, you can make all the Itzal guns yourself and without any special research projects, which is great. 

Bottom line, if you like Rimworld's vanilla weapon balance, but you want A LOT more variety, Project Itzal is a great choice.  Personally, I still like CyberPunk better, now that it's back, but I have to admit that Project Itzal does offer more variety than CyberPunk, and it's nice to not have pistols and shotguns completely nerfed. 

The guns that I remember most strongly from Project Itzal are the AT cannon, AA cannon, Explosive Sniper Rifle and Aircrew Revolver.  AT and AA are massive guns that fire exploding shells at huge ranges, but they are very slow to fire and reduce movement by 50% and cost a couple hundred plasteel to produce yourself.  Explosive Sniper Rifle is similar but less destructive in exchange for less of the drawbacks.  I recommend grabbing the Misc Turret Mod so that you can mount guns like this into automated turrets or manned guns.  The Aircrew Revolver is a tiny little gun with poor range (although better range than CP pistols) but because of its quick rate of fire, you can often stun-lock enemies and effectively kite melee enemies with it.  It's a great defensive weapon for non-combatant colonists to keep in their pocket just in case.  There's another weapon called the Tanker SMG, which I think is similar, but I rarely find them in my playthroughs. 


PlanetsidePew

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1938353070

"But, Ace," you ask, "what if I do want some unbalanced spaceman guns?"  Then grab the Warhammer guns.  "Less unbalanced than that, maybe?"  Then try PlanetsidePew!  These are allegedly from the game Planetside, which I've never heard of, and as our previous conversation suggested, these guns will give a little more of a spaceman advantage than charge rifles or Rimsenal, without going quite as bonkers as the Adeptus Mechanicus or CyberPunk weapons. 

I don't have a whole lot of specific advice about these weapons, as with Itzal, I generally prefer the bonkers weapon mods or the familiarity of Rimsenal over PlanetsidePew.  You can craft PsP weapons at your base, although I thought the tech tree was a little confusing (possibly just because I was trying several gun mods at once) and the guns cost a lot of rare materials, so as usual, better to farm cocaine and send a caravan to your local outlanders to buy them instead.  I do like the aesthetics of the pack, and it is in a very specific area of balance that I think some players will really like.  Definitely worth a try. 


By the way, also in this area of balance is the Xeva Factions Mod, which I've reviewed previously, but it has been under development since then and is shaping up nicely, especially in that there are a lot more english translations for everything. 



Dubs Bad Hygiene


I've always been suspicious of this mod, but I recently decided to give it a shot and I was pleasantly surprised.  This mod adds the concepts plumbing and bathing.  Your pawns will need running water to clean themselves and use the toilet, or else gain the Bad Hygiene health condition, which will make them more likely to get sick.  Plumbing works like Power, but needs to be connected to a well.  Your pawns can also use natural water, like rivers and ponds. 

Now, I had played another mod called No Water, No Life, which requires you to drink water or die.  It's very simple to get this set up, even in a desert, but it means your pawns need to spend A LOT more time dealing with procuring water.  It was annoying, and you just didn't get anything for putting up with.  Dubs Bad Hygiene has a little bit of the same problem, but it's not as bad as NWNL, and you do get rewarded for putting up with it.  Pawns can get happy moodlets for being clean, and there are new technologies like recreational swimming pools and hot tubs, a washing machine that untaints clothing, various temperature regulating equipment, and even the "fecal sludge" that you collect from latrines and septic tanks can be turned into chemfuel or fertilizers. 

I'm very pleased with this mod so far, but I should disclaim that so far, I've only tried it with the standard crashlanding scenario on a map with a river.  I'll have to see if it stands up to Naked Brutality in an Extreme Desert sometime...

[Canute]

Not to forget Dubs Bad Hygiene add mechanism for heating and cooling as a result that a bath/shower with cold water isn't that enjoyable.
Adding ceiling fan's as light source and cooling.
The water can also be used to water your growing zones to increase the growing. The remain's from the toilets can be used to increase the fertilize of the ground for awhile.

[AcetheSuperVillain]

I've found some new favorite races to play as. 

Lapelli

Race:  https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2025057326
Faction:  https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2025107715
Xeva Faction Body Patch:  https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2229789446

The Lapelli race is by Bichang, who I've mentioned before, a phenomenal artist in the RW modding community.  I call the Lapelli "adorable dragon babies".  The Lapelli don't add any new tech or game mechanics, they're just super cute and cool.  Lapelli aren't especially different from Humans, but they have sharp teeth and claws and are more likely to be born with the Tough and Brawler traits.  Originally, the Lapelli were very prone to wing injuries, simple barfights would often result in them losing these limbs, but as of RW1.2, I think Bichang just removed their wings as a body part entirely. 

Interestingly, Lapelli have a race color slot that you can modify with Prepare Carefully or Change Dresser, but randomly generated Lapelli will always be snow white.  If you like having a special "hero" kind of character, making a custom color Lapelli is a fun way to do it. 

Bichang also does Ferians, I don't have a whole lot to say about them, but if you want the full Bichang cutie experience, check it out:
Race:  https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1611790118 
Faction:  https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1922097212
I think the point of Ferians is that they're supposed to be secretive, without the Ferian Faction mod, their bases are hidden and they don't show up as wanders, raiders or visitors, which I find really annoying. 


Automatons

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2029031687

A super useful race, Automatons are hardworking robots that never need sleep or bedrooms, immune to infections and diseases, and can even survive by eating grass, if they have to.  Automatons sort of meant to be a much much much simpler replacement for the Androids mod, which I find completely inscrutible.  Although you can craft Automaton parts at a Fabrication Bench, they mostly function exactly like humans.  They are very helpful colonists to have, rare enough that they don't make the game too easy (although I suppose that depends on how many races you have installed), and having sentient robots around definitely gives RimWorld more of the classical sci-fi vibe that it really lacks without modding. 

When 1.1 rolled out, Automatons got hit with a bug that made them unable to eat.  As of 1.2 this has been fixed, but keep an eye out.  Automatons are almost human, but different enough that they can get a little buggy. 


Beta-Humanoids

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1654061947

In the past, mega corporations genetically engineered human-animal hybrids that would have additional strengths for colonizing the various environments of hostile alien worlds.  The hybrids were treated as slaves and second class citizens, but on the Rim, they have no master. 

Beta-humanoids adds 11 animal hybrids, Bear, Camel, Gator, Elephant, Elk, Fox, Gazelle, Lynx, Hog, Raccoon, Wolf.  Each comes with advantages and disadvantages, for example, Elephants are larger and hit harder, but consume more food, Gazelles are fast but bad at mining, etc. 

I obviously love animals, and I think the animal-people are super fun, and an easy simple way to add lots of variety to your colonies (and raids) but the animal-races are still very intuitive.  Beta-humanoids appear as starting colonists, wanderers, raiders, outlanders, tribals, everywhere.  There are sliders in the mod settings for each race, so if you don't like Gators, you can just turn them off.  I really like the lore of this mod, and I think it fits in perfectly with a sci-fi world, but also works for fantasy worlds, if you're trying to do a fantasy themed RimWorld game. 

I think it's fair to note that Beta-Humanoids is inspired by Beast Man Tribes mod.  Beast Man Tribes might be worth a look, but I definitely feel like Beta-Humanoids is a 100% improvement.