Vanilla Expanded mod integration

[Kane.]

Hi everyone!

I've been tempted to get Rimworld for a while and I finally did it! I saw that there were a lot a mods for the game and even if I'm planning to play the classic experience for a little while, I will probably download a lot of them.

Vanilla Expanded seems like a good package but I wanted to know how good it was integrated in the base game. I mean, does the (huge) package has some compatibility issues (things not working anymore, etc.), any downside, or bug ? Can I install all those mods without fear of breaking my game or ruining the game's already great features?

Thanks!

[Martin Harris]

Some of it I'd argue isn't vanilla friendly at all. Like Mechanoids.

[Kane.]

Why is that ?

[Kane.]

Are there other mods from this package you don't recommend?

[Martin Harris]

Nope, just mechanoids I wouldn't recommend for a very vanilla like playthrough.

It adds mechanics were mechanoids drop in ships on the map, and you have to take them down (some factions do it for you sometimes) or the mechanoid raids get stronger and stronger.

I feel like it doesn't really match the vanilla gameplay but it's alright still.

[Razor 2.3]

Vanilla Expanded is generally compatible with itself. Outside of that, compatibility is not guaranteed. Which is about the most you can expect out of any mod series.

[adobo]

You can disable the Total War mechanic and keep all the buildings. You can still get the mechanoid components from clusters. The best part of the Mechanoid Faction Expanded is everything but the faction.

[Owlchemist]

I've been trying out the vanilla expanded mods for my latest campaign. I'd say they integrate very well into the game in terms of artwork and presentation.

There's so many mods in that set that it's hard to make a sweeping statement for all of them though.

Furniture mods: I think this is the most dicey of the mods as far as balance goes. It adds a lot of functionality that could make the game easier, like the garbage bins and repair shelf, more linkables to boost production, better medical options, etc. All stuff you'll need to work for, sure, but in the end it's going to raise the bar on how easy the game can potentially be if you follow through.

Animal mods: These are all fine IMO. But maybe only install ones relevant to your biome (or ones you'd really wanna import via traders) to avoid game bloat.

Armor and weapons: Not bad. The enemies will have these too, so... With a broader spectrum of armors available, you'll be able to increase pawn defense a bit more vs vanilla, though. I'd compensate by bumping up the difficulty settings a bit. EDIT: I did a tribal start and haven't much experience with the higher tech weapons yet, but most of the low tech stuff seemed fine.

Apparel and clothes: Much like furniture, it's more tools to optimize your pawns and their job. Pretty fun, I think, just keep in mind you're raising the bar on how productive your colony can be, and hence easier.

Traits: Ended up unsubbing from this one. I found the positive traits to be too OP, and the negative traits to just be downright annoying. (I'm also irked that Submissive and Rebel are fourth wall breaking. There are no orders, as the player is but a conscious).

Events: Some good ideas here but I ended up unsubbing because I found the events were either too punishing, too rewarding, or triggering in a way that didn't make sense (like hail during high temperature, or a drought during a rain storm)

Factions: I've only used vikings, settlers and medieval and they're all pretty solid IMO. Good work here.

Plants: Seems good to me, fits right in fine.

[Xscha]

vanilla expanded might look compatible and it is a beautiful set of mods visually, but under the hood they aren't very balanced. most of the weapon mods are unbalanced by being too strong, most prominent examples of that I have are the crossbow from Vanilla weapons expanded. It has something like 66% armor penetration, for comparison a bolt action rifle will get you 13% armor pen... You will consistently see medevial shooters with crossbows pierce space-age military power armor. Second example is all the plasma weapons added where they set people on fire at rates I have never seen, and are just overtuned all around in accuracy and RoF. Everything from the vanilla expanded package also has to do something special; you'd be hard pressed to find an item from the pack that doesn't have it's own silly quirk about it. All of the faction mods besides medevial feel pretty out of place, just by virtue of limitations that the vanilla expanded team did not work around(this isn't an insult, I have no clue if the issues even COULD be worked around, just that they were not). This leads to awkward interactions and visual bugs/discrepancies, things in the realm of getting a raid consisting of space-age marines mixed with bums using muskets.

Vanilla mod expanded is pretty fun if you are not looking for anything remotely close to actual vanilla. Everything from a simple sword added HAS to have a function unique to THAT sword or THAT gun or THAT armor. It'd be fine if it was "X faction has special mechanic" but it's very un-vanilla for every item to be it's own quirky

EDIT: a rifle's armor pen is 27%. Not much better.

[ichifish]

Originally posted by -AWP- peepee man:

vanilla expanded might look compatible and it is a beautiful set of mods visually, but under the hood they aren't very balanced. most of the weapon mods are unbalanced by being too strong, most prominent examples of that I have are the crossbow from Vanilla weapons expanded. It has something like 66% armor penetration, for comparison a bolt action rifle will get you 13% armor pen... You will consistently see medevial shooters with crossbows pierce space-age military power armor. Second example is all the plasma weapons added where they set people on fire at rates I have never seen, and are just overtuned all around in accuracy and RoF. Everything from the vanilla expanded package also has to do something special; you'd be hard pressed to find an item from the pack that doesn't have it's own silly quirk about it. All of the faction mods besides medevial feel pretty out of place, just by virtue of limitations that the vanilla expanded team did not work around(this isn't an insult, I have no clue if the issues even COULD be worked around, just that they were not). This leads to awkward interactions and visual bugs/discrepancies, things in the realm of getting a raid consisting of space-age marines mixed with bums using muskets.

Vanilla mod expanded is pretty fun if you are not looking for anything remotely close to actual vanilla. Everything from a simple sword added HAS to have a function unique to THAT sword or THAT gun or THAT armor. It'd be fine if it was "X faction has special mechanic" but it's very un-vanilla for every item to be it's own quirky

EDIT: a rifle's armor pen is 27%. Not much better.

Yeah, this. ^

While the base game can certainly use some “expanding” and I use VE furniture so that I can make a 1x1 table and square chairs, the mods (like most mods) make the game unbalanced. That’s not necessarily a bad thing -there’s nothing wrong with having any easy run or dialing up the difficulty because mods make it easier, or just throwing a bunch of mods in because they look cool - but the idea that the VE mods balanced is just not correct and the problem is that it takes some experience to figure out how and in what ways the mods are disturbing the balance.

In addition to what’s mentioned above, items added by mods will prevent core items from appearing as regularly and it’s easier to jack your wealth by progressing too rapidly.

As far as I’ve seen, very few mods make the design tenant (Rimworld is a story generator) work better. They mostly clutter it up.

The TD/LR is “figure out what bugs you and find the mod that fixes it, don’t add mods to solve problems you don’t have.”

[Monty]

Vanilla Expanded is about as balanced as you can get as far as mods go. Not perfect but hardly game breaking. Surgery success chance can be maxed with a normal bed, industrial meds and 10 medical skill. Is spending hundreds of steel that could go to weapons or armour so a level 9 pawn can cap really a problem? Kill boxes do more to break balance than a shelf that takes a week to repair an item.

Play the game without mods for a bit to get a feel for the game. Once you have gone through a few colonies, then add some mods that add to the story you want.

[Hoki]

crossbows though take ages to reload which is the intended balancing. if you have a bad shooter then they do more harm than good compared to bows (same tech level).

Vanilla expanded is a great starting point to get into content mods but yea balancing is always an issue when it comes to mods. as soon as you use multiple mods at once you can be sure that the pre-balancing can go down the drain.

VFE-mechanoids is a mod i'd say only belongs into this set of families only because of the team making it. content wise it isnt vanilla anymore. doesnt make it any less intresting though

[Kane.]

Thank you all for your answers! Indeed it seems logical that mods can make the game kind of unbalanced. My plan for the moment is to play the game the way it was intended to be played.
I will then mostly install "cosmetic" mods (furniture which don't really impact gameplay, such as wall lights), and install mods on a case-by-case basis, not the whole package, to make sure they match the vanilla experience.

Thanks for your help!