[MOD](A9) Cybernetic Storm - Balances and Fix (v3.5 - 19MAR15)

[shhfiftyfive]

As for the surgery issues Shhfiftyfive, two bionic arms + 2 bionic eyes makes everyone more or less a perfect surgeon, if you're really paranoid about death-by-surgery ( which frankly isn't that common ) you can either save scum it or simply bionic up someone you don't care about losing first and then use them for all further surgeries.

no. not a perfect surgeon. in fact. i'll repeat... you will need your dr to be near level 5 skill with the bionics before you reach that success.

a level 1 dr with bionics is an extremely poor choice for a surgeon. trust me. i have done extensive save scumming as a result. instant fatalities from botches surgeries are more common that you would believe.

the problem is right now tynan hasn't released a patch to fix the lack of skill gain for dr's... i wish tynan would announce a 9f, because a dr with burning passion.... not gaining skill... not a fun game.

[Boboid]

I didn't realise the skill increase was so drastic, maybe I will knock off a 0, just increase time for nano and cybernetic but 2000 4000 respectively as you still need crafting 9 then 12 to even start them.

To be clear Dusters and Parkas take somewhere between 330-400 work ( can't remember exactly ) whereas the stone sculpture in my example could take up to 7000 work.
Don't know the tick/work ratio but keep that in mind.

If you set the crafting times to be exactly the same as Dusters (For example) you shouldn't trigger any massive skill inflation.


You can basically have three choices -

1. Leave the crafting time as is (very low) forcing the player to increase their crafting skill by other means
2. Increase the crafting time moderately ( Somewhere in the range of 300-400 work ) which will provide some crafting xp but won't function as an easy xp grind.
3. Increase the crafting time by an exceptionally large amount, slowing the overall speed increase trend but also simultaniously significantly increasing crafting skill.



As for you Shhyfiftyfive - I've done hundreds , literally hundreds of operations in A9, like.. 2% of them were fatal. Maybe 3% of them removed bodyparts that couldn't be replaced in vanilla but since I'm assuming you're playing modded those can be more or less discarded

A 3 skill colonists with 2 bionic arms and 2 eyes sits at 67% chance of operation success before the hospital bed modifier. It's pretty reliable given the infrequency of fatal operations.
And as you already pointed out, you only need about 4-5 skill to increase that % above 100% - Craploads of back-stories have sufficient + medicine skill to push them above that threshold even if the operation was done on the floor.

You'd have to be stupendously unlucky to not gain access to a single colonist with 5 med skill, no access to neurotrainers, and a series of fatal surgeries in a single game.

Push-comes-to-shove you can simply start your colony with a 5 or 6 medicine colonist, problem more or less solved.

Or use one of the 2 or possibly 3 mods floating around that enable medical xp gain.

[10001110]

I think you should be watching the balance not only for the long drag-along-forever runs, but for realistic runs as well - when people actually want to build the ship and finish the game. If item costs and building times are too high, this mod may be quite pointless to play with, since regular replacement limbs and weapons will work just fine, resources and manpower may not be enough to build a single mod item at all. Items are already costly enough, imo (maybe even a little too costly). Having this whole mod just to be able to build one or 2 bionic limbs or weapons on a playthrough, imo, is not very worth it, and dragging the game along for days to get a full Bionic colony yields no real reward.
Also, players might be using other mods that tap into the same resources and manufacturing time, there will not be enough of anything for everything, and that may reduce the desirability of this excellent mod against others.
Through all my playthroughs (this mod has been in all but the first) i have never built a single mod turret, simply because i could never afford it against more important stuff. More Vanilla Turrets end up filling this gap pretty nicely...
It's quite easy to get attached to a playthrough group of colonists and that "perfect" colony, if there will ever be such thing , but dragging the game along just to get them all Bionic limbs\implants and super weapons is nothing close to being game breaking. At that point, the ship can be built at any time, so it doesn't matter. Increasing build costs and manufacturing time will only make the game boring - once you do it once, you've done it, yey...
Here's some things i though about:
Crate requirements for the mod's more advanced research based on ship research items. Ship research and build is Vanilla stuff and the main objective, anyways, it's not fair to make it skippable or not desirable. There is no end game resolution in Cybernetic Storm, anyways, maybe... IF you can come up with some alternative end game where you have 3 fully bionic pawns and the ship built, you could send them to a new random colony in survival mode - required Wave survival mode mod, maybe?
And\Or\Else
Make mod research somewhat random every game:
Create events where research topics can be randomly acquired from captured pawns from pod crashes
And/Or/Else
From pawns on cryos. That would be THE only incentive to crack them open (except the lewt)
And/Or/Else
Make mod reasearch items unlockable through the number of pawns in the colony - for "quality of life" reasons.
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I also thought about another implant you could create, which would permanently buff a pawn's happiness by a certain amount. That would be really cool for those permanently unhappy dudes we really would like to keep... or feel sorry about
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Keep it up 

[elStrages]

Thanks for the input guys. It will really help me Ballance everything. At the moment I'm looking in a 10% increase in time for nano and reduce cost by 10%. And 20% increase in construction time of cybernetics and a 5% decrease in resources. This will hopefully help combat a lot of ballance issues. I will base my increase of off  a half way point on dusters and parkas.
Will look into the turrets. Maybe a 10% nano 20% cyber cost increase against vanilla turrets would be better than current costs.

[kaiserslash]

Could you help me disable the turrets from showing in the game? If not its fine its just i use more vanilla turrets since they work well with the looks of rimworld.  Idk how hard this would be to do.

[elStrages]

Could you help me disable the turrets from showing in the game? If not its fine its just i use more vanilla turrets since they work well with the looks of rimworld.  Idk how hard this would be to do.

wouldn't be too hard, would just be a case of deleting the construction recipe. Only real question is why when there are only two, does it effect your game that much?

[kaiserslash]

Not at all i just dont like clutter on my screen is all.  So is there a way to comment out the turret research or can i just delete it?  I got the recipes gone now.

Do you need a dll to mod or do you just look through the core and figure out what is needed to make different defs?  Im wanting to try and make my own mod, im in school for programming now figured modding would be fun

[elStrages]

Not at all i just dont like clutter on my screen is all.  So is there a way to comment out the turret research or can i just delete it?  I got the recipes gone now.

Do you need a dll to mod or do you just look through the core and figure out what is needed to make different defs?  Im wanting to try and make my own mod, im in school for programming now figured modding would be fun

Yeah you can just delete the turret research too, it doesn't effect anything but turrets i believe. 
As for modding, go for it find something in the game you enjoy and want to expand on and then  get cracking.  Don't even really need to make dll's as you can edit the majority of RimWorld just using the xml files.

[kaiserslash]

Alright ill start looking at stuff tomorrow.  You mind if i refer to you if i need help?  Looking through your files is what made me realize modding in this is plausible for me, it sorta reminded me of html with things like <def><\def> lol

[elStrages]

Alright ill start looking at stuff tomorrow.  You mind if i refer to you if i need help?  Looking through your files is what made me realize modding in this is plausible for me, it sorta reminded me of html with things like <def><\def> lol

Your more than welcome to bud. Just send me a PM if your stuck.

[LordAssault]

What is this section of Races_Humanoid.xml standing for?
  <points>
          <li>
            <loc>(14,0)</loc>
          </li>
etc.

just noticed, that default file has <loc>(60,30)</loc> and your fixed has <loc>(60,50)</loc>
Want to make Glitter Tech mod compatibility and it uses default (60,30) :/
Also added

Code Select Expand

<li>InstallOCExo</li>
  <li>InstallGTEar</li>
  <li>InstallGTEye</li>
  <li>InstallGTArm</li>
  <li>InstallGTHand</li>
  <li>InstallGTLeg</li>
  <li>InstallGTFoot</li>
    <li>InstallGTHeart</li>
  <li>InstallGTLung</li>
  <li>InstallGTKidney</li>
  <li>InstallGTLiver</li>
  <li>InstallGTStomach</li>
  <li>InstallGTDentures</li>
and commented out

Code Select Expand

<li>InstallExoskeletonSuit</li>
because Ykara deleted this item and console is generating errors cuz of this line. That's non critical, but pretty annoying

[elStrages]

im no sure why its not the same as default value, but it can be, I didn't change that on purpose, might have been a accident.
As for the compatibility, the race humanoid xml just needs all the install recipes added to one file and they will be compatible.

[kaiserslash]

Just had a thought for my first little "project".  In order to better understand the defs and everything im going to attempt to make a patch that makes Cybernetic Storm and Combat Realism compatible together.  Figure if i can get that to work then Ill be able to make my own mod.  No idea how long itll take to do since i have a busy schedule but thats my goal anyway.

[Undecided]

Not sure if these have been reported yet, but some minor balancing observations:

Nanotech helmets seem to occasionally appear on pirate raids. Specifically, pirate raids -- the kind that are normally low-tech with simple armored vests, melee weapons, and basic firearms. Might want to check on that.

One other thing: nanoweave seems much too profitable. A nanoweave parka, for example, can sell for up to 1/4th what a grand, marble statue can (~$1000 per parka on average, with max skills). But unlike statues they have an infinitely renewable resource supply, and take far less pawn work to produce.

Since nanoponics bays only require very common resources -- steel and power -- you can start spamming them by early to mid game and produce huge amounts to tailor into clothes then export as a cash crop. Since they require nothing rare to build, you can make them in huge numbers to easily offset the slow growth rare.

I'd strongly recommend increasing the costs or maybe upkeep of the nanoponics bay, since right now it outstrips pretty much any other export for cash. Maybe add at least one rare material to its construction cost (a few units gold or plasteel?) and bump up the electricity usage, or something, just to push this big source of income closer to the end-game.

[shhfiftyfive]

Not sure if these have been reported yet, but some minor balancing observations:

Nanotech helmets seem to occasionally appear on pirate raids. Specifically, pirate raids -- the kind that are normally low-tech with simple armored vests, melee weapons, and basic firearms. Might want to check on that.

the pirate faction isn't a "low tech" faction. they carry good vanilla equipment.

further, if you want to talk about economy balance, you should acknowledge the vanilla game has a problem here too thanks to melee changes.

the pirate faction brings massive profits in vanilla right now due to the faction often being comprised of more than 1/2 melee fighters, which leads to lots of plasteel/silver/uranium weapons, and a ton of power shields. they sell for a lot to the trader.

in alpha 8, not every pirate would have armor vests and good range weapons. but now, every single melee user 100% has a power shield (replaces armor vest slot). and sells for a lot more than a vanilla armor vest to boot... that is guaranteed loads of cash in your pocket. plus they seem to really love plasteel melee weapons. and you know that is profit.

the oversight comes in when the combat trader doesn't have enough cash to buy all your junk melee weapons and shields. then your game gets cluttered with a ton of useless storage you can't find a seller for.