does anyone play without psy powers?

[ambi]

i've owned the royalty dlc for quite awhile but never bothered using the psy powers. from what i seen, it looks immersion breaking, kinda like introducing jedi into the firefly tv series. i like to play as a colony of average people struggling against the odds.

what do you think?

[glass zebra]

Psychic droning, psychic shock/instanity lances, animal pulser and a few other things existed in the game before the DLC. There are a few people who do not like the "magic" feel of the psy power and they have changed the naming/description a bit to make it more in line with the universe, but there are still people who just link it to what they were introduced to by other IPs before.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/294100/discussions/0/3199245116708307965/?ctp=2#c3199245116711566849

[mrChips]

The original kickstarter pitch for Rimworld explicitly mentions Warhammer 40k (where psy powers are very much a thing) as a thematic influence alongside Firefly, and psychic soothes/drones pre-date Royalty so I personally don't see them as a departure from the original vision.

If you are looking for a more gritty space-western style for your colony I totally get why you would not care to use them and I don't think you really disadvantage yourself by doing that. Some of them like berserk pulse are very powerful but a lot of them are really niche or just plain weak, and it takes a lot of investment of time and resources to get the high-level ones in terms of anima tree meditation time, noble requirements, and quest rewards passed up for honour.

[XelNigma]

Unless I'm going tree hippies I often don't get too many psycasts powers. Trying for nobility is much slower than the anima tree and as the difficulty increases it gets too hard to gain honor through anything besides selling slaves.

But man do I love raise wall and skip.

[pauloandrade224]

To be fair tho psionic powers are a bit different from magic since they are actually coming from the psycasts so they are more like ultra advanced Mind tecnology really

[whatamidoing]

Originally posted by pauloandrade224:

To be fair tho psionic powers are a bit different from magic since they are actually coming from the psycasts so they are more like ultra advanced Mind tecnology really

Just technology that violates physics, including the one thing that explicitly has not been violated in the lore primer, FTL travel (most notably with solar pinhole and waterskip).

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Ambigore:

i've owned the royalty dlc for quite awhile but never bothered using the psy powers. from what i seen, it looks immersion breaking, kinda like introducing jedi into the firefly tv series. i like to play as a colony of average people struggling against the odds.

what do you think?

I think you don't remember Firefly very much. That one dude's sister was basically a jedi without the light saber, a mind-reading psychic assassin, and the entire plot is focused around that. The psychic powers in RimWorld are based on the ones in the Firefly universe which is why it's just limited to psychic stuff, and things like skipping is powered by psychically connecting to archotech devices on the planet and making them remotely do the beam it up Scotty.

That said most games I don't play with the powers, they aren't necessary and aren't going to be thematic with every playthrough, that's fine.

[Herald Rejn]

ye, i play for like 300/400hours royalty dlc already and i never get to the point where i have something more than basic psy powers. I can get end game gear and end game colony after 4/5years where royalty is just soooo sloooow that i never get a chance to make pawns that are true good psy fighters.

[Yaldabaoth]

Depends on what kind of colony I play. I played everything from tribal raiders with spears to lovecraftian horror worshippers to an genetic rim animal breeder group to a Rimworld of Magic's D&D group colony. But it's absolutely possible to play without any special powers.

[pauloandrade224]

Originally posted by whatamidoing:

Originally posted by pauloandrade224:

To be fair tho psionic powers are a bit different from magic since they are actually coming from the psycasts so they are more like ultra advanced Mind tecnology really

Just technology that violates physics, including the one thing that explicitly has not been violated in the lore primer, FTL travel (most notably with solar pinhole and waterskip).

Pretty much yeah

[KPJFormat]

Originally posted by whatamidoing:

Originally posted by pauloandrade224:

To be fair tho psionic powers are a bit different from magic since they are actually coming from the psycasts so they are more like ultra advanced Mind tecnology really

Just technology that violates physics, including the one thing that explicitly has not been violated in the lore primer, FTL travel (most notably with solar pinhole and waterskip).

How can you be sure it's faster than light travel? Speed of light would be instant in this game too, in fact it is; when you turn on a light it lights to the extent of its range instantly.


Anyway I usually enjoy having some psychic powers, and I play vanilla. I feel like for the investment to get them, and the lottery of which powers you actually end up with, it's a fun mechanic. I have played colonies without any psy-users (different priorities) and that's fun too, but it just seems like removing a mechanic for me. Like, having drugs available to use for mood reasons is a fun option to have even if I don't always use it, or sometimes enjoy teetotaller colonies/ideologions

[whatamidoing]

Light isn't instant.

[KPJFormat]

Originally posted by whatamidoing:

Light isn't instant.

How fast does it spread per tick?

[whatamidoing]

Apparently slowly enough for FTL travel to not be possible.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fUO3KKbAbTxMP1lqphnnodY0NPoOVblCUkDw-54MDUc/pub

[Overeagerdragon]

Originally posted by Ambigore:

i've owned the royalty dlc for quite awhile but never bothered using the psy powers. from what i seen, it looks immersion breaking, kinda like introducing jedi into the firefly tv series. i like to play as a colony of average people struggling against the odds.

what do you think?

Ehrm....like introducing Jedi into Firefly....

Have you ever SEEN River Tam?

As for playing without Psy powers... I hardly ever do actually use them but that's mainly because before Royalty introduced the "real" psypower I played with Rimworld of Magic and I kinda stuck with that. In honesty; the magic of that mod was way better done than the psypowers of Royalty....

[Astasia]

Originally posted by whatamidoing:

Light isn't instant.

On a planetary scale it basically is. Light can do a loop around the surface of the Earth in under half a second. The skip psycasts probably turn matter from on or under the planet's surface into energy, beam it to the target location and turn it back into matter. It would appear to be instant given the short distances traveled. It's not FTL and doesn't violate any laws of physics.

Solar Pinhole, ya there's a few things about that ability that are questionable. Skipgates sound a lot like wormholes, which technically aren't faster than light, it's bending the universe to make two distant points meet and stepping through a hole between them. It's theoretically possible using Einsteinian physics, no violations required. It's possible the glittertech worlds never had enough energy to make wormholes beyond the planetary system scale and have never used the technology for space travel.