[mod idea]Time travel and a way that could work inside rimworld

[Bulquerque]

This idea seems kind of realistic to be placed on rimworld
However, I propose a system that could work

This system works as follows:

There is machine A and machine B

Machine A, when activated, creates its save in a "temporal pocket"

Machine B manages to send a settler back in time to the moment saved in the "temporal pocket"

What use would it have?
This could save your colony for example:
A very strong raid found a defect in its defense and managed to kill almost all of its colonists but the only survivor uses machine B to go back in time and correct the defect in the defense thus saving the colony

How to balance?

First, the machines can cost a stupid amount of energy and time to run
Secondly, the settler who went back in time could suffer some kind of temporal disease that quickly ages him or something

thanks for reading :)

[GRIMZY]

or you could load a old save...

[Bulquerque]

Originally posted by krislaastad:

or you could load a old save...

there are differences
Because you will have a new temporary settler and theoretically you could do it in ironman

and also to do for roleplay

[TwisterCat]

I like this idea, +1!

[bulbatrs]

it's way too easy to abuse. want infinite achrolegs? keep sending pawn back with them. 1 becomes 2, 2 becomes 4 etc. I'm sure people would come up with million different ways to abuse it.

[Bulquerque]

Originally posted by bulbatrs:

it's way too easy to abuse. want infinite achrolegs? keep sending pawn back with them. 1 becomes 2, 2 becomes 4 etc. I'm sure people would come up with million different ways to abuse it.

there are several ways to balance

How can you simply not get surgery without this colonist dying

or you can tear off the bionic parts

[Panacea]

Originally posted by bulbatrs:

it's way too easy to abuse. want infinite achrolegs? keep sending pawn back with them. 1 becomes 2, 2 becomes 4 etc. I'm sure people would come up with million different ways to abuse it.

There are plenty of mods out there that are OP or easy to abuse. As long as it doesn't work in multiplayer, who cares how people choose to play their games?

[Luna]

Originally posted by Panacea:

Originally posted by bulbatrs:

it's way too easy to abuse. want infinite achrolegs? keep sending pawn back with them. 1 becomes 2, 2 becomes 4 etc. I'm sure people would come up with million different ways to abuse it.

There are plenty of mods out there that are OP or easy to abuse. As long as it doesn't work in multiplayer, who cares how people choose to play their games?

i enjoy abusing the godmode button while my little people panic with all the incidents i trigger

[Odium]

That is certainly an interesting idea, but I am not sure if it is feasible. Rimworld is notoriously laggy, even in vanilla. This mod would essentially require the game to either keep a mirror version of your colony running in the background all the time for you to go back to. Or it would require the game to more or less take pieces of your new save game and stitch it into your old save game to make that pawn appear to "go back in time."

Don't get me wrong, it would be an awesome thing to see in the game. But it feels like something that would have to have its own game engine designed around it to work.

[GeneralVeers]

I've toyed with this idea in the past--not just as a player, but as a programmer. (I have three pet projects, two strategy games and one bullet-hell shooter)

The idea of time travel in a strategy game just never worked out for me. Mostly because of what Grimzy said. Save file = time travel.

[jacobellinger]

Originally posted by Bulquerque:

This idea seems kind of realistic to be placed on rimworld
However, I propose a system that could work

This system works as follows:

There is machine A and machine B

Machine A, when activated, creates its save in a "temporal pocket"

Machine B manages to send a settler back in time to the moment saved in the "temporal pocket"

What use would it have?
This could save your colony for example:
A very strong raid found a defect in its defense and managed to kill almost all of its colonists but the only survivor uses machine B to go back in time and correct the defect in the defense thus saving the colony

How to balance?

First, the machines can cost a stupid amount of energy and time to run
Secondly, the settler who went back in time could suffer some kind of temporal disease that quickly ages him or something

thanks for reading :)

there is already a mod that gives a bunch of new magic spells and one of them reverses time.

[Astasia]

It's a cool idea, but it would be a ton of effort to make for what amounts to very little functional difference from reloading a save as mentioned. The cost-value ratio is just skewed too heavily. Anyone playing permadeath probably wouldn't be interested in it either as it would defeat the point of the mode regardless of the costs.

You can RP this yourself using a mod like Character Editor which allows you to save characters and import them into other saves. Make some sort of room in your base, maybe use cryptosleep caskets and/or some ship parts to make it expensive, make a save, then if things go wrong limit yourself to reloading to that save and import any characters you want to make the "time travel" trip. You can also use Character Editor to give them health conditions after they make the trip. There's a lot of fun to be had using various mods as tools to create your own rules and scenarios like this.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Bulquerque:

This idea seems kind of realistic to be placed on rimworld
However, I propose a system that could work
...

"...that could work...."

It's a cool notion, but I don't know how or why this "could work." Not saying it couldn't, but more info would definitely be needed. Even "making it look like it really worked" would not be easy at all no matter how many lies the game told you. :)

This is an interesting idea, but it's likely best for a game that's got gameplay structured around using/supporting it.

There have been some games that used time-travel as a plot-point or even connected to some kind of state-change of the current game, but I don't know of any dynamic "sandbox" games that use their own past game-state in that way. They're built for a dynamic environment supporting sandboxy "random progression" with user-choice (open world) sorts of features. It's a "no two game experiences are alike" kind of thing. In a linear kind of "adventure" game, respawning a level to be "like it was" is trivial as all the assets are "canned" anyway. No muss, no fuss, load the old assets with new dialogue/new stuffs and done.

Mechanically, for Rimworld, I think trying to get it to work would cause a modder to go nuts... Not a bunch of games allow mods to access that level of User front-end like that. Can a mod access an in-a-running-game command that forces the game to access a saved game file for info/data? Low level stuff like that isn't often opened up to be fiddled with, 'cause "reasons."

The "export colonist" technique Astasia posted above could be roleplayed like that, though.

Maybe some sort of generated "token" system that could contain current game info and could be read by "A Thing?" The token gets attached to the colonist who's being exported/imported and the "A Thing" can accept/read the changes and... does whatever it does?

[Vardath]

To counter the potential abuse of this mod, the colonists who are sent back in time only get 2 days in game to live then poof out of existence.