Just how difficult would you like RimWorld to start off?

[Ramsis]

This poll is just as a question on my end. I know we have a lot of Tech Tree Minami players who swear by the sword about how much they love starting from the bare minimum and love working tooth and nail to get to modern day RimWorld. Personally I'd love to go from sticks and stone to Glitterworld at some point but obviously the game itself isn't there and Tynan is trudging as fast as he can on updates.

What are your thoughts?

[Nasikabatrachus]

I'd really like it if the technology and other capabilities available to a colony depended on starting equipment and the knowledge possessed by individual colonists. So instead of being able to just build a battery right off the bat, you can only set one up if you actually have a battery item. Getting further batteries would require knowing how to manufacture one, bartering for one, or finding one. Personally, I was never so interested in the idea of setting up my own array of nuclear reactors and an assembly line, like some mods allow, as I am in the idea of making the best of what you've got and encountering weird sci-fi things in a roguelike way.

If the game doesn't wind up being something like this, you can bet I'll be doing some major modding eventually.

Oh, and tool use. It bugs the heck out of me that there are no tools to use except guns.

[eatKenny]

thing is, in 1-2 years time you cant make a evolution from sticks and stones to plasma gun. so a mega tech tree like game "civilization" seems somehow overwhelming.

[iame6162013]

thing is, in 1-2 years time you cant make a evolution from sticks and stones to plasma gun. so a mega tech tree like game "civilization" seems somehow overwhelming.

well i usually get a rimworld run easily done in a day, Siv takes a month or so, or so they take ages.

[Goo Poni]

I'd like to go from sticks and stones to Glitterworld space-faring capability, personally.

We crash land with little more than a rifle, a couple pistols and some scrap metal from the pods. Arbitrarily wood as well, let's say the impact leveled a bunch of trees. I'd like to have racks of tools so that while I might designate everyone to be a miner, if there's only 4-5 pickaxes, then only 4-5 colonists are gonna be getting to work mining. At the end of the day, they set the tools back on the rack, eat and head to bed. I'm not a big fan of the Swiss Army Knife that everyone keeps in their back pocket, ready to dig, chop, sow, reap and work metal.

I'm also not a big fan of the arbitrary knowledge of something as complex as building an entire geothermal generator. The concept is simple, hot steam drives a turbine that generates electricity. Setting that in stone, nowhere near as simple. The vent must be capped and built over first, a pump installed for constant flow of steam and facilities in place to let the steam cool off or blow off. My colonists have intricate knowledge of how to do that? TTM makes it a little more plausible by requiring that you either buy the main parts of the generator from a trader or that, later down the line, you build one yourself after satisfying the list of requirements beforehand to enable that.

I'd kinda like to have seeds be a thing as long as they can be kept in a vault of sorts for seeds instead of entire generic-tiles-of-space being taken up by 75 wittle seeds on the ground the same way all the guns are just tossed outside and left to rust on the trade beacon.

Going off topic a moment to more general nitpicking, I'd also like for people to not be slowed down by walking over items on the floor unless it's bodies they're trudging over. It's bizarre to watch people do a little jig as they navigate the stockpile like they're playing "the floor is lava". And I'd like the trade beacon's range to be reduced and instead of that to be a trading capacity. Nothing is kept on the beacon's area of influence until traded away, at which point it's taken from the colony stockpiles, placed by the beacon and once all bartered items are in place, beam me up Scotty, with silver and bought items dropped down after. Right now, with the exception of maybe raw food, everything my colony uses just gets dumped outside on the beacon stockpiles. Raiders could come along in the night and jack half the colony's stuff. That'd be made even better by a generous fog of war so you don't get to know raiders jacked your stuff until everyone wakes up the next morning to find it gone.

Back on topic

thing is, in 1-2 years time you cant make a evolution from sticks and stones to plasma gun. so a mega tech tree like game "civilization" seems somehow overwhelming.

I think one has to suspend disbelief the same way one must do when your guys and gals magically assemble a solar array out of generic lumps of metal. Even in TTM, there is not enough research to slow you down and make this seem plausible. If the research tree was padded out to the point of almost becoming bloated, it might seem reasonable. "After some generous thinking on improved mining techniques which have been taught to the colony to let it mine faster (+10% mining speed), plus some more thinking on physics, levers, pulley systems and the like, a colonist has had an idea on how to put together a crude mining shaft. Further research will be required to refine this idea and make it a reality, 0/800 generic units of thought". *research completed* "A colonist has worked out and shared the knowledge of a crude mining shaft. While slower than simply mining from a rocky outcrop or mountainside, a mining shaft will allow colonists to mine stone and metal close to the colony instead of needing to trek into the wilderness. However, these shafts require considerable time to dig in the first place and may prove impractical in the short term if other sources are still readily available". Hell, if you wanted, you could implement a real hefty research tree and then slow it down by way of waiting for a colonist to come up with an idea. If no-one is really good at mining, you might not have anyone think of the mining shaft and thus the option never opens up to you. If you've no good hunters, then who's to know the implications of hunting the wildlife to extinction instead of setting up a pen and herd? Who's gonna teach other colonists how to shoot straight on a range if no-one can shoot straight in the first place? *spitballing*

[ccheuer]

What I would really love to see is that the tech tree requires researching of everything, however, depending on the backgrounds of the people, certain things come pre-researched. For example, if you start with someone with doctoring over 10, then you automatically have a bunch of medical stuff researched. If you start with say a laborer, you already have a bunch of construction researched. This would flesh out the individuality of your people a whole lot more, because as it is, you kinda look for a general competency, whereas this would require you to actually have specialists from the get go.

For even more difficulty, you could tie these automatic unlocks to only maintain the unlock provided the person is still alive/the skill is still high enough. Should those stop being the case, you lose the technology, until you research it officially within the tech tree, and then I would recommend adding in a Library type thing that maintains these technologies.

Then you could even have luddite raids where they try to take out the people that have the highest skills in given categories, and try to burn down your library. But that goes into what I think should be the case for every type of raid. I feel they should have their own unique objectives. I think pirates should try to steal silver off of you, or whatever is valuable. Tribal people should be the luddites, and general tech dudes should just be the basic "we are attacking you" type people.

[Goo Poni]

For even more difficulty, you could tie these automatic unlocks to only maintain the unlock provided the person is still alive/the skill is still high enough. Should those stop being the case, you lose the technology, until you research it officially within the tech tree, and then I would recommend adding in a Library type thing that maintains these technologies.

To iterate upon this, maybe research as a skill should just go away and be something that anyone could do (though this kinda nullifies those colonists with researcher backgrounds...). So if someone is of a requisite level of skill then a few times a day, roll the chance of them coming up with an idea. If they come up with an idea, they can take it to an available research bench (implying you have several for multiple ongoing projects) and commit their idea to paper. At this point, anyone with the respective skill can study this idea with the original person having a boost to their research speed as they're the one who came up with the idea. However, someone more highly skilled could take over the study and might even work faster on it due to their higher skill. A pleb could also contribute but they work it out much slower as they are less skilled. Someone completely incapable of the skill can not work on it at all, what do they know?

Multiple people with the required minimum skill can have a chance of working out an idea so while you may not have higher chance (that's something tied to the idea in question), you have more chances. Once someone comes up with an idea, they can't come up with another till they take the time to put pen to paper and start the project. If a colonist dies without putting pen to paper, the idea is lost entirely.

A research bench can only support one idea at a time, don't want people getting their notes all mixed up. If a bench is destroyed, the idea is lost and the progress reset, anyone with the requisite skill can commit it to paper again immediately as the idea is already known to the colony. Multiple people can come up with the same idea and if they do, the extra people can add their notes to the project and give it a boost in research, governed by their skill. A highly skilled colonist might throw down enough notes to finish simple projects immediately, though for those big advanced projects, it'll just be a dent in the progress. This boost also kickstarts the research so, again, a skilled colonist might be able to completely finish simple research all on their own just by sitting at the bench for a few moments and finalising it.

Then you could even have luddite raids where they try to take out the people that have the highest skills in given categories, and try to burn down your library. But that goes into what I think should be the case for every type of raid. I feel they should have their own unique objectives. I think pirates should try to steal silver off of you, or whatever is valuable. Tribal people should be the luddites, and general tech dudes should just be the basic "we are attacking you" type people.

I don't quite agree with the tribals being luddites as being tribals would imply their intelligence has devolved into blissful ignorance of technology. Them attacking your machinery would be out of spite if they're attacking you for the sake of attacking you because fuck you in particular. If they were trying to make a grab for your resources or fallen colonists, I can't imagine them attacking equipment.

Pirates are very likely to go with the "because fuck you in particular" kind of raid and will torch everything they can and even when they're not and they try to make a grab for resources, they'll probably still torch everything they can.

I would expect luddite attacks to come from those colonies that have devolved from the space age crash landing and are living in 16th-19th century times. They've lost their way and the technology your colony is using is the same stuff that caused them to land here all those years ago. They've probably gone through several generations at this point and the original reasoning has been lost to time. They hate your technology for reasons they cannot provide because they've forgotten why they hate it, only that it caused bad things to them.

Then again, I would not expect such savage attacks from any hostile colony unless they well and truly hate your guts. The current relationships states of "hey, how you doing?" "eh? what do you want?" and especially "piss off" don't quite express that. It goes a lot deeper than "piss off" on the comms when they're raiding you because they want to kill and burn all. At the same time, if you were like two peas in a pod with another colony, I'd expect almost constant visits and trade opportunities coupled with support at nearly every pirate raid with them asking the same of you.

[ccheuer]

The only problem that I see with your suggestion is that over time, the research bench room would get insanely massive. What I would recommend is making it so that a given table can have two projects on it, only one of which is actually being researched, and the other MUST be either unstarted or completed. Once they are complete, you can spend some time to say, make a book, or a digital copy at the upper tiers which would be faster, and then can store that material, opening up that slot again. This would maintain the idea of researchers, because say your main construction dude comes up with an idea while working, he then jots it down on the table, and the researcher actually fleshes it out.

[Ramsis]

The only problem that I see with your suggestion is that over time, the research bench room would get insanely massive. What I would recommend is making it so that a given table can have two projects on it, only one of which is actually being researched, and the other MUST be either unstarted or completed. Once they are complete, you can spend some time to say, make a book, or a digital copy at the upper tiers which would be faster, and then can store that material, opening up that slot again. This would maintain the idea of researchers, because say your main construction dude comes up with an idea while working, he then jots it down on the table, and the researcher actually fleshes it out.

.......


I love you and your big sexy brain!

[Goo Poni]

Ah, I was working on the assumption that once research is complete, the notes are whisked away to the colony god's archives (the player's past research tab in the research UI) and the bench is available for a new idea to be studied upon it. How big the room would need to be would depend on how often new ideas will spring up. If your typical colony (~10 colonists) is constantly full of ideas, yeah, you'd probably have to build an entire laboratory to compensate. But if the research trickles in, not accounting for minimum skills, then at most, you might need 2-4 benches to hold all the currently ongoing projects.

Alternatively, if the notes could be made into a tangible item, you could store them in an actual physical archive when incomplete which would allow you to prioritize different projects to take precedence on a limited number of benches. Take them off the bench and store them until later. My problem here is that you could just accrue all the projects in the game and we'd be back to the current system with a new coat of paint.

EDIT:
Research would probably also need to be bumped up in the prioritization to sit above at least hauling and cleaning. To me, I think that hauling and cleaning are more menial tasks than research and trying to get a colonist to do research at the moment basically entails stripping them of all other duties so they have absolutely nothing else to do. Then again, manual priorities. *shrugs*

[Karn]

Well, I wouldn't limit this to research. I'd like to see some skill requirements for buildings/jobs. Someone with Construction skill at 0 won't be able to build Comm Console. He/she probably have problem even with opening canned food.
Same thing goes for jobs. For example Growing. Person with very small skill wouldn't be able to plant anything or it will die very soon. Trust me, I'm very "skilled" at unintentionally killing plants

[Goo Poni]

I'm on the fence about expanding it to minimum skills for certain jobs within those skill brackets. I play a lot of TTM, if you don't have good crafters, you can basically sod off, nothing is gonna get done. Getting unskilled crafters to be good at it can take months of game time, during which colony growth will be incredibly stale. I wouldn't be a happy camper if my colony rolled over and died because the farmer died and left a bunch of lv3 growers incapable of growing crops.

[ccheuer]

Ah, I was working on the assumption that once research is complete, the notes are whisked away to the colony god's archives (the player's past research tab in the research UI) and the bench is available for a new idea to be studied upon it. How big the room would need to be would depend on how often new ideas will spring up. If your typical colony (~10 colonists) is constantly full of ideas, yeah, you'd probably have to build an entire laboratory to compensate. But if the research trickles in, not accounting for minimum skills, then at most, you might need 2-4 benches to hold all the currently ongoing projects.

Alternatively, if the notes could be made into a tangible item, you could store them in an actual physical archive when incomplete which would allow you to prioritize different projects to take precedence on a limited number of benches. Take them off the bench and store them until later. My problem here is that you could just accrue all the projects in the game and we'd be back to the current system with a new coat of paint.

EDIT:
Research would probably also need to be bumped up in the prioritization to sit above at least hauling and cleaning. To me, I think that hauling and cleaning are more menial tasks than research and trying to get a colonist to do research at the moment basically entails stripping them of all other duties so they have absolutely nothing else to do. Then again, manual priorities. *shrugs*

Except for one key thing. A fire/decent invasion would wipe out all of your progress on research...

[Karn]

If a farmer would die you will still have other options for feeding colonists (foraging, hunting).
I wasn't suggesting that with Growing 3 colonist won't be able to plant anything, but that there will be for example only one type of plant available or something like that.
We have skill requirements for Cooking. So why not for other jobs?

I don't play with TTM and my point of view is from vanilla version.

[BetaSpectre]

The problem I face is adequete metal supply before the legions of hostiles slam against my walls. While reasonably speaking we should start off very basic the fact remains pacing is very important. It already takes forever to build the ship no need to extend that time. If anything we should just keep the status quo with options to pick what tier.of.intellect our colonists hold.