Dubski's Jumbo List: Electric Boogaloo

[DubskiDude]

Now that Royalty is public, I'm safe to post my idea thread once again. Note that the following is an unorganized mess and is intimidating in length (twas spawned by taking random notes whilst playing Rimworld), so be warned!

If you agree, disagree, or want to add more to any point of mine, feel free to contribute! Tempering this list can only make these points more useful.

Here are what I consider ideas of higher importance:

- Specialized limbs like field hand and drill arm should list in the info card that the limb becomes 50% less efficient.

- Failing an installation of a bionic part shouldn't automatically destroy the bionic part. Reducing the part's HP by ~50-75% (so that it would be destroyed if failed again) would be more fair.

- "Doctor Needed" quests, where the primary goal is to treat a sick pawn of their ailments (removing a carcinoma, treating asthma, tending an infection). Reward can be scaled to the success of the treatment given.

- Current outdoor temperature, listed on the right, would better serve the player if it was accompanied by (Chilly), (Freezing), (Hot), etc. under it, depending on the temperature. This would give the player easy to understand information at a glance on whether or not to adjust colony temperature.

- Add a placeable "no-go zone" area that applies to all colonists and colony animals, and keeps them from entering a certain area. This would be more convenient than messing with their allowed areas, because colonists and animals can only have one current allowed area. A general purpose "don't go here" area would be far more helpful. This is especially helpful given that mech clusters are now prevalent.

- "Hungry Varmints" event. A group of rats or other pest animals spawn in your refrigerator, and begin eating your food.

- Allow pawns to automatically be queued multiple objects at a time when constructing, cutting plants, and deconstructing, similar to how queuing floor cleaning works (where the game selects multiple spots to clean). You can only queue the aforementioned tasks one at a time, and it's very tedious to have to micromanage pawns this way, especially when dealing with blighted crops.

- Extreme weather shouldn't evaporate crops. The plants should permanently stop growing, but the crops on the plant that have already grown shouldn't instantly turn to dust because there's a nip in the air. I also believe that extreme weather that would normally kill plants should instead wear their health down, rather than, for example, causing a 150-health corn stalk to instantly disappear with no damage displayed on the plant. Seeing the plants health drop could be an indicator to the player that the current weather isn't hospitable to the plant, and they should act accordingly.

- Add more instances of ancient shrine-like structures. A very fun aspect of Rimworld is opening up ancient dangers, but you'll only get 1-2 of these in a playthrough (unless you make a second colony, but I believe Rimworld wasn't designed for that). Having an "ancient danger found" event, or having a long-range mineral scanner detect it, would give more reason to go on expeditions, add more interesting combat scenarios, and would present more chances to grab rare items and capture pawns.

- Make it easier to continue playing on a map after all pawns have died. If you decide to keep playing, you're stuck waiting for a wanderer to join. If it also triggers a raid, and the pawn you get sucks and you don't want them, it means an automatic save reload, since the raiders will simply light your uninhabited settlement on fire. A few ideas to fix this are allowing another pre-game pawn selection process to occur if your previous pawns are all dead, and prevent raiders from lighting buildings on fire if you have no living pawns whatsoever. Otherwise, there's very little incentive to stick with a map that has been pawn-wiped, and it's a hassle to keep playing.

- Rework Overhead Mountain tiles. They're by far my biggest gripe with Rimworld. They primarily seem to exist to punish mountain base players, and aside from cabin fever, are the only challenge (and an obtuse one, in my opinion). In mountainous maps where there is more mountain than actual land, you have very few options when choosing a location for your base. There are other ways to bring challenge to mountain bases rather than saying "insects spawn here forever", such as a Blight-style mold that spreads fast, affects colonist health, and needs cleanup is one example. Another solution would be to lower the amount of Overhead Mountain tiles that spawn on the outermost edges of hills/mountains, so light digging to expand your colony won't forever be a spawn point for insects.

- 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 out on the operating table. Also, tending to all patients first should take priority over feeding a patient. Doctors should wake up if a hurt pawn enters a hospital bed, and treat them. This would cut out a lot of unnecessary micromanaging.

- Animals that hunt your pawns or colony animals won't be shot by turrets.

- 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.

- Colonists stop halfway through their work to return to the colony to eat, due to them not grabbing a meal, which wastes a lot of time. This is especially so on larger maps.

- Add "Medical Tab" (a mod by Fluffy) to the main release. The tab works flawlessly, and is a huge help. I don't see why Rimworld wouldn't already have it or a similar feature.

- Rework or remove "ate without table". Pawns often don't eat at the colony table to begin with. In my opinion, tables should add a +3 to eating a meal at a table, rather than giving the pawn a -3 when not eating at one.

- Option to spay/neuter animals. Constantly having to micromanage their newborns that only eat your food is a drag if you don't want them, and you'll have to wait for a trader or trade ship to get rid of them. The only other solution is to kill animals by gender, which is a waste.

- Animals during "animal revenge" should lose their manhunter status after downing/killing the pawn that triggered the event. It doesn't make sense that they would attack the hunter and then decide to bumrush the colony without any sense of self-preservation.

- Pawns shouldn't be instantly killed when their liver is removed/destroyed. A person can survive 6-12 months without their liver in real life, so instant death due to liver removal doesn't make much sense.

- "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.

- You should be able to prioritize an NPC to sleep or "take a nap". 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, other than micromanaging their schedule, which is a nuisance.

- NPCs shouldn't 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 they're carrying when prioritized to pick up more wood. Pawns should factor in the item they're holding when performing an action instead of dropping it, instead of ignoring the fact that they have the resource right in their hands.

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

[DubskiDude]

And here are my ideas of slightly lower importance:

- Building the ground-penetrating scanner should reveal 1-3 underground mining spots. I find very often that once I'm at the point in the game where I've finally researched the GPS and built it, I'm out of steel on the map (even in large-sized, large hill maps). Given how slowly the GPS reveals underground minables, the randomness of the minable types, and their random placement around the map, it quickly leads to a steel bottleneck. I feel like either automatically revealing a limited number of steel mining spots when the first GPS is built, or revealing minables closer to the GPS, would help fix this.

- Add a new flower type for plant pots. Very minor, but I always thought it was too bad that there are only two flowers you can plant.

- It would be helpful if stockpile weapon categories could be divided into subcategories like "small arms", "single-use", "rifle", etc. like grenades are. I think this would help a lot with handling stockpiles and shelves.

- Colonists neglect to refill generators due to hauling's low priority (might work better under Basic). This is especially problematic in the early game.

- 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 far too long. This is primarily why I don't play on bog maps, or simply dev tool the terrain into something buildable.

- 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. This seems far more useful than a snow cleaning zone, which can be fixed automatically with a roof.

- Work priority categories should be adjustable. For example, Art should not be higher priority than cleaning or hauling. The player should be able to customize this.

- Text alerts at the top left of the screen, such as animal revenge chance notifications, overlap the Wildlife tab, if there are enough animals on the list. Every time you go to select hunt or tame for an animal near the top of the list, you have to wait until the text disappears.

- "Gourmand" should override a pawn's inability to cook. A pawn with Gourmand who has their cooking skill restricted has all the bad and none of the good.

- Add more terrain challenges. Cultivating and taming the land itself is a fun part of Rimworld, and there seems to be few terrain obstacles to tackle besides water and mountains. Brambles and dense trees that restrict movement and need to be cleared are one example, and could be the basis for "dense forest" or "dense jungle" map types, which would be similar to swamps - just trade marshy soil for impassable trees and foliage that need to be chopped down.

- Slag feels like it takes too long to smelt. I'm constantly deluged with slag throughout a playthrough, be it from drop pods, broken turrets, or cargo pods, and it takes forever to get rid of it all, especially if it involves hauling it to the colony. Slag also never deteriorates on the map. One balance option would be to possibly lower the steel received (20 -> 15) but decrease the time it takes to smelt it.

- Colony animals are able to trip traps. A colony animal can cross a trap accidentally, or move onto a trap that had a dead body under it.

- A message that "enemies have been defeate" from a raid would be very handy. The raiders retreating message fulfills the purpose, but mechanoids don't retreat, and I can only be sure that I've cleared the map of mechanoids only if the music changes.

- Simple clothing like shirts and pants feel like they're tailored too quickly, compared to parkas that feel like they take forever.

- Add a fire extinguisher, or a "nitrogen gun" weapon, which could act as an alternative to Fire Poppers, and would allow a pawn to do more than just kick the flames. As for the nitrogen gun, it could behave exactly like the incendiary launcher, but would fire a projectile that douses flames, leave snow on the impact site, and deal frostbite damage to enemies. It could also slow enemy movement or melee speed temporarily.

- "Slow learner" trait comes off as a little steep. Learning at a quarter of the normal rate makes taking a pawn with this debuff very off-putting.

- "Last Stand" event. If a pawn receives fatal or near-fatal injuries, they continue fighting with a bonus to Shooting and Melee, before passing out or dying a certain amount of time later. This would make pawn deaths more meaningful, and would make for more heroic moments in the game.

- Work stations should list what skill they require at the bottom left, beneath "power needed", for convenience. Machining tables and component assembly benches should say "smithing station" or "crafting station".

- Add a market value filter for smithing, destroying, etc. For example, I set weapons to be smelted, but only if their base cost is lower than a value I set in the menu. That way, cheap items could be destroyed to save space, but expensive items would be left alone.

- Trait: Outdoorsman. Reduced or no mood debuff from being rained on + no movement penalty through swamps/rivers/snow/etc.

- Trait: Backpacker. Increases pawn carrying capacity when Hauling and caravanning. You could also combine Outdoorsman with this trait to make a "Hiker" trait.

- Add a structure to allow for an open animal pasture that prevents large predators from crossing through (but not pawns). This could be solved with a ranch-style fence. Currently Rimworld doesn't allow for an animal pasture without actual walls, which looks odd.

- Animal corpses/skeletons and blood puddles last too long on the map. Often times maps become unnecessarily bloody, seemingly for no reason. Rain and snow affect this slightly, but those happen at random times.

- "Lizardskin" should be renamed to "Reptile skin", because turtles aren't lizards.

- "Sandstorm" event. Would likely only apply to Arid Shrubland/Desert/etc. It could cover the map in a sandstorm, lowering the visibility of all pawns and animals, and would leave cleanable sand piles on unroofed locations. It could also possibly spawn mining nodes or random items that were "hidden underneath" the sand.

- Add an additional trap type besides deadfall and IED. The variety of traps currently in Rimworld seems rather underwhelming. Some ideas could be pitfall traps and moats (adding a speed penalty similar to sandbags), bear traps, or swinging log traps. Barbed-wire fences could also be an option - a medium-cost trap that lowers movement speed more than sandbags, but doesn't give cover. It may require steel upkeep every few months as the wires rust, and might 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. It would make raids more interesting, especially tribal raids, which currently are underwhelming.

- 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. It would likely have high armor and a huge health pool, and could possibly be susceptible to explosives and/or fire. This would give variety to raids, and could be a threat to fortified compound colonies.

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

- Randomly generated camps, structures, or abandoned caches that are discovered rarely while caravanning (somewhat like Oregon Trail), which could contain valuable items, an injured recruitable pawn, or enemies - something to give caravanning more surprises.

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

- Penoxycycline seems underwhelming outside of the jungle. There's really no application for it, as using it 12 times a year to prevent 1 or 2 diseases a year doesn't really justify the neutromine cost.

- 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. The same effect could also be given to the original ground-penetrating scanner.

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

- 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 underground areas. Rimworld is based solely on a flat map currently, and randomly generated underground maps, similar to small maps you find while caravanning, could be a great addition. They could be populated by bug hives, ancient rusted mechanoids, or troglodyte mutants.

- Add a "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.

- Add a "nemesis" system. This would involve enemy NPCs (or animals) escaping from a fight and retreating off the map, only to have them possibly return in a later raid 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 have snow on their art after it snows. A snowy field with perfectly green trees looks odd.

- Extend the time it takes for "guilty" to wear off, and/or reduce the "someone was executed" moodlet. If a raider 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 crueler than executing them.

- Smoothing floors/walls takes far too long. I've literally never bothered with smoothing rocky surfaces, because it's far quicker to just lay wood floors over it.