[MOD] (Alpha 7) Neolithic Mod (v.0.96b)

Started by ItchyFlea, November 07, 2014, 12:09:04 AM

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ItchyFlea

Neolithic Mod

Preamble:
Crash-landing on an unknown RimWorld after using escape pods from your ship isn't exactly the most efficient way of colonising a new world. As such, your colonists have been basically thrown back into the stone age. You start with the usual things, except you don't get weapons to start with, and the metal has no use except to be sold for a nice profit.
Mining and Chopping down trees requires the appropriate tool.

Project Goal:
To build a mod that prevents the player from immediately being able to build technological things from the get go, but rather makes them advance up a tech tree. Starting with simple stone tools, and advancing up a tech tree until metalworking becomes accessible.

Current Status:
First Public Release

Mod Team:
ItchyFlea - .XML Code
Duncan - .DLL Code
Shinzy - Some Textures
ToXeye - Pit Texture

Download:
NOTE: This mod makes a huge number of changes to the base game, and as such will be incompatible with most other mods. It has been designed to be played alone without other mods.

How To Play:
This mod is more or less split into ages, you start in the stone age, and can work your way up to the iron age and beyond fairly quickly if your starting location has been kind to you.
I highly recommend choosing a mountainous starting location. (Better chance of tin ore spawning)


  • Differences Between Neolithic Mod and Vanilla RimWorld:
This mod makes a huge number of changes regarding how things are done.
The very first thing you'll probably notice is that the growing zone is gone. You'll have to rely on foraging for food and hunting during the early game. You can craft foraged food into seeds, which you can then use to plant your own food plants. (Plants take about 20 days to mature. Thankfully you can harvest them multiple times.)
You won't be able to mine anything, or chop down trees without the appropriate tool. You'll need deer antlers in order to mine, and a stone axe in order to chop down trees.
Metal that spawns on the map when you start is completely useless. The only thing it can be used for is selling, and since you can't do that until the Iron Age, you might as well ignore it.
If a building requires power, it'll need copper wire. Guess what that's crafted from. (If you guessed wood, this mod might not be for you.)
More information can be found in the project thread, here: https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=3303.0


  • Stone Age:
This is what you start in. I advise that your first port of call is to build a neolithic butchery table, and possibly a neolithic weapons table. Once those are built, make yourself some basic weapons (or just equip a piece of wood) and hunt down a deer or two.
Deer, when butchered with the appropriate bill, give you antlers, which can be used as a pickaxe for mining.
Once you've got a deer antler, get someone to equip it and start mining copper.


  • Copper Age:
You access this pretty much as soon as you've mined your first piece of copper.
In this age you can craft better tools for mining, as well as better weapons for defending yourself against the local wildlife. Once you're in this age, you should look for tin ore. If you're lucky a vein of it will be exposed somewhere. If not, you'll have to mine into a mountain and hope to encounter some.
Copper needs to be smelted into bars before it can be worked into tools and weapons.


  • Bronze Age:
You access this after you've smelted your first bronze ingot.
This age is like the copper age, better tools and weapons. You'll need a decent amount of bronze in order to craft an iron smelter in order to move into the Iron Age.


  • Iron Age:
This is the age where things really kick into gear. Along with even better tools and weapons, you can also craft chainmail armour.
You should also now be able to build things that use/create power.


  • Steel Age:
Just a small upgrade from the Iron Age really. You can craft better tools, weapons and armour in this age.
All my mods are licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International
Ask for permission before using in ModPacks

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ItchyFlea

#1
If you encounter any bugs of any sort, or just get stuck at some point, post below. I haven't written a very good description of how to play, and am generally bad at doing so. So if you wish to write one, I'll post it (with credit of course) in this post below.
If you wish to contribute better textures, please do so. Most of the textures are placeholder and need to be replaced. I can't draw to save myself.
If you wish to propose a better name for the mod, please do so.
All my mods are licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International
Ask for permission before using in ModPacks

Click here for a list of the mods I've created

ZeLolzies


DracoGriffin

I'll have to install a separate RimWorld to fully test this without forgetting some weird setting I changed in the modding folders.

Looks very interesting; what type of feedback are you looking for besides bug reports?
Current Mods (A-Z):
AnimuHair, EdBInterface, Extended Stoneworking, FastFloors, Immersive Pack, kilroy Turret Pack, Modular Tables, MoreHair, MoreHydroponics, PowerSwitch, RecipeNurse, skullywag Pack, SurgeryExtendedAndBionics, Synthmeat, T-Mod Pack

ItchyFlea

Quote from: DracoGriffin on November 07, 2014, 02:13:52 PM
Looks very interesting; what type of feedback are you looking for besides bug reports?
Pretty much anything right now. The mod is mostly complete, it's only missing a few small elements now so balance feedback is one of the major things I'll need.
All my mods are licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International
Ask for permission before using in ModPacks

Click here for a list of the mods I've created

Halinder

Could you boost the stats of the swords/lower the stats of the spears/clubs? Feels kinda backwards when a spear does 1 additional point of damage than a short sword, the only downside being an additional .25 seconds of cooldown.

ItchyFlea

Quote from: Canute on November 07, 2014, 07:45:19 PM
- When the ship metal is useless, you should eliminate it.
- Can you change that the buildings can use any fabric/hide not just with deerhide ?
- What is the different between butcher deer and butcher creature. I don't see any. If there isn't any, you should remove butcher deer.
- Bug: I think the grafic for the the ore's are missing. At last the icon's for copper and iron ore allways change everytime i move the map.
- It has a reason for being there. It just can't be used for anything other than being sold.
- I don't think such a thing is possible in A7. The improvements to the stuff system might make this possible in A8.
- Butcher deer gives you deer antlers when a deer is butchered. Butcher creature doesn't allow such a thing. (Not without a .dll anyway)
- There's an odd bug with RimWorld where the game sometimes needs to be restarted after activating a mod that adds/changes a lot of textures. So this shouldn't occur when you next play the game.

Quote from: Halinder on November 07, 2014, 09:39:52 PM
Could you boost the stats of the swords/lower the stats of the spears/clubs? Feels kinda backwards when a spear does 1 additional point of damage than a short sword, the only downside being an additional .25 seconds of cooldown.
When I added craftable weapons I didn't think to check the weapon stats. Apparently I should have. Will fix.
All my mods are licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International
Ask for permission before using in ModPacks

Click here for a list of the mods I've created

Halinder

Oh, another thing. Iron handaxes and pickaxes use ship metal instead of iron.

DracoGriffin

Well, I just got roflstomped into oblivion very early; I assume I probably shouldn't play with Cassandra on 100% challenge.

Weapons seem very weak; I had a prisoner riot and my colonists with stone axes lost to fists. Also, a ranged weapon is desperately needed for hunting; trying to attack with melee weapons is difficult. I didn't see any options for bows but I saw the tribals carrying them when they raided.

Also, once you reach Iron Age, do you basically do what you normally do in vanilla RimWorld? (E.g., the end-game of this mod is to reach the vanilla RimWorld technology?) I was somewhat hoping the research would be tweaked; making sense to research tin/bronze etc, but making research slower and the vanilla technologies twice/three times as much to prevent players from skipping ahead (although you still need the materials which you can only get step by step as you designed).

Lastly, can you change the raw food thoughts so colonists don't mentally break so easily given the setbacks from the mod? Or maybe a firepit that can at least makes meals that don't give negative thoughts?

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Current Mods (A-Z):
AnimuHair, EdBInterface, Extended Stoneworking, FastFloors, Immersive Pack, kilroy Turret Pack, Modular Tables, MoreHair, MoreHydroponics, PowerSwitch, RecipeNurse, skullywag Pack, SurgeryExtendedAndBionics, Synthmeat, T-Mod Pack

Halinder

First of all, don't use axes or pickaxes -- they're awful at melee.

I had a siege earlier, 1 incendiary mortar against my wooden colony, 6 raiders with pistols, 3 with shives and an axe. Each of my colonists had different sections of chainmail (but none with a complete set) and an assortment of spears with 1 short sword. Chainmail is actually /really/ good, so rush the living crap out of it -- even the coif and shirt are good enough. The melee fighters will overextend to attack you, letting you kill them and probably making the others rush your colony. After the first step recall everyone into you colony and make sure it has a crap ton of small hallways and entrances. You can usually get small amounts to separate and attack different doors if you do this, so picking off each entrance with 2-3 melee fighters gives you their guns to deal with the rest of the attack (I didn't use the pistols, just kept using the tactic as the rush seemed to prevent them from doing any damage).

DracoGriffin

I'm not real keen on micromanaging weapons/tools; so maybe that's why I ended up losing again.

Had a psychic wave that turned all the boomrats hostile (there was a ton on the map); they tore through the doors, having already incapacitated two colonists that were mining and harvesting berries. The last four of my colonists were overrun and somehow a few of the boomrats died (maybe from attacking each other? I couldn't tell) and that lit my wooden fort on fire. So everyone essentially died from fire burning them alive or starvation/infections.

Looks like this mod is just too much for me. :P

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Current Mods (A-Z):
AnimuHair, EdBInterface, Extended Stoneworking, FastFloors, Immersive Pack, kilroy Turret Pack, Modular Tables, MoreHair, MoreHydroponics, PowerSwitch, RecipeNurse, skullywag Pack, SurgeryExtendedAndBionics, Synthmeat, T-Mod Pack

Halinder

Yeah, psychic waves causing animal insanity is possibly the most deadly event there is. If your entire colony is in danger you should probably send one person to the outside to constantly deter at least some of the animals away. If you can't directly face them, you could try kiting them until they starve.

Igabod

Quote from: Halinder on November 07, 2014, 09:39:52 PM
Could you boost the stats of the swords/lower the stats of the spears/clubs? Feels kinda backwards when a spear does 1 additional point of damage than a short sword, the only downside being an additional .25 seconds of cooldown.

In reality a spear is generally more powerful than a short sword. You have MUCH further reach which means more force can be generated. Also, spears are not noticeably slower than swords in real life and can sometimes (in the hands of someone very skilled with spears) be used more effectively than a short sword in 1v1 duels though their real strength lies in fighting on a line. All in all, I think spears should have even more than 1 point of damage more than the short sword. And due to the fact that both sides of the spear can be utilized as a weapon, I don't see any reason there should be less speed than a sword. Also, clubs should do far more damage (though they should have less speed) than short swords.

Just my opinion based upon my years of studying historical combat.

ItchyFlea

Quote from: Halinder on November 07, 2014, 10:09:10 PM
Oh, another thing. Iron handaxes and pickaxes use ship metal instead of iron.
Oops.

Quote from: Igabod on November 08, 2014, 04:34:19 AM
-snip-
My personal experience with medieval weapons mostly agrees with this. However I'm going to tweak the spear to lower it's effectiveness as an early-game weapon.

Can others please give their feedback regarding the weapons balance?
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ItchyFlea

Updated the mod. Changelog below:

Changes:
Spear damage reduced by 2 and cooldown time increased by 10.
Additions:
Raw Fruit/Vegetables and Raw Meat can be cooked at a campfire. The campfire is in the production tab.
All my mods are licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International
Ask for permission before using in ModPacks

Click here for a list of the mods I've created