What do the DLC's add?

[ImperialForce9]

I'm used to type Paradox DLC's like Stellaris being good, meh, to outright horrible. Or a a Xcom 2 DLC where you are forced to fight boss enemies that react to EVERY action you do instead of after finishing your turn like the rest of the game.

Price whether or not being within reason is another discussion but I'm more interested in what the DLC's actually add.

[brian_va]

https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Royalty_(DLC)

https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Ideology_(DLC)

https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Biotech_(DLC)

[BanDHMO]

You know there are descriptions on each listing what they add, right? And there's a wiki page for each to see details.

If you're asking what people most like about each, here's my take:

Ideology:
- the conflict that arises from pawns with different beliefs. The ability to tweak your pawn's reactions to some questionable actions that cause morale penalties in the base game. This was the first DLC I got and seemed more appealing than Royalty at the time, but in retrospect, it's the least fun.

Royalty:
- The ability to pack a lot of power into one pawn and have a hero or several of the story, as opposed to relying on numbers. Lots of new missions.

Biotech:
- Making and raising new colonists starting as children. Vampires, and genetic manipulation more generally.

[schnappkatze]

I would suggest to not buy the DLCs unless you have played a few dozen hours or more. The base game alone is already very good and you will appreciate what they add a lot more then (and if you get bored before that, it probably doesn't make sense to buy them).

[Doomdrvk]

I know you're looking for personal descriptions of what the dlcs add but the store pages provide you with almost everything in the dlcs. Tynan really doesn't hold back when explaining the dlcs in the store description. Not to mention the trailers hit on a lot of content if you want to see it in a small preview video.

[boytype]

Brian_va's post is a great resource to actually go look at the detailed breakdown of what is in each DLC, but I think what you are looking for is people saying what the most important or impactful gameplay elements that are changed or added are, so you know what the difference will be like if you got a specific DLC.

Ideology: Different furniture, armor, and weapon art types (styles) based on Ideology. Lots of new clothing items. Slavery, new quests, and a super customizable social system that allows you to modify many core game rules to better fit your play style. New Archonexus ending.

Royalty: New faction, lots of new weapons and armor, new Psycast system, Royalty and Rank system that allows you to get promoted through honor, new quests. New bionics and implants. New Ascend to the Stars ending.

Biotech: Reproduction (children), genetics, gene manipulation, mechinator characters who can control mech units w/ large progression system, vampire-esque Sanguophages, new quests, new research and tech related to Mechinators, Sanquos, and Genetics, pollution system with various plants and tech to influence it. No new ending.

[Johnny 5]

I was also curious of this. The DLC all looks completely uninteresting. I got the royalty one with game purchase because I liked the look of the new missions, but it adds very little.

The other 2 (ideology and biotech) seem to offer very very situational content and I can't see any reason why people buy them to be honest.

That said I prefer the whole survival aspect and like using medieval mods etc

[Bathory]

Originally posted by Johnny 5:

The other 2 (ideology and biotech) seem to offer very very situational content and I can't see any reason why people buy them to be honest.

I cannot fathom how you'd think Biotech is situational.

[Johnny 5]

Originally posted by Bathory:

Originally posted by Johnny 5:

The other 2 (ideology and biotech) seem to offer very very situational content and I can't see any reason why people buy them to be honest.

I cannot fathom how you'd think Biotech is situational.

Maybe i'll look into it. What are the quests like?

I'm not interested in making a meme lord child slavery society etc

[kaiyl_kariashi]

Biotech isn't super focused on quests, it has a few, mostly related to pollution or the new mechanitor sub-type (which is also the primary contributor of pollution if over-used, though if you have Ideoligion, transhumanists can also end up making a lot of extra pollution as some of their special building generate a lot of it, but are also more likely to be able to simply ignore it due to their heavy reliance on advanced tech).

It's mostly about genetics, including actually having children. The Gene system itself is fairly complex and mostly end-game outside of party creation as the researchs to actually mess around with genetics post-start are in the 2nd half of the tech tree, though it does spice things up a bit as you no longer have just regular normal humans but essentially aliens, as well as monstrosities made from science going wrong (or right).

The Childhood stuff on the other hand is stuff you can engage with immediately, and quite interesting (depending on how much involvement you want to spend on it, you can end up with quite powerful pawns or just get something more similar to regular random recruits), if you prefer the more sandbox life-sim playstyle. It's still very much one of those, "get it if it's your thing", and safe to skip if you have other interests.

I do think it's overall the best and most meaningfully fleshed out of the three.

Ideoligion is definitely the weakest of the 3 IMO as it's fairly clunky in places (I was under the impression you could alter or make a new religion mid-game but you can only alter a religion if you started with a Fluid religion specifically (which starts weaker than other religions but can be molded over time)) and the choices don't seem to have that much impact outside of a few niches, unless you're playing with only pre-made religions, which can add some extra challenging elements.

The addition of slavery mechanics is the overall main draw as it's an alternative way of recruitment (especially pawns that are impossible to recruit normally) that is usually easier/faster but comes with the cost of potential rebellions in the future. Which can be a nice change of pace to the usual routine, though as mentioned, unless the religion mechanics are REALLY speaking to you, the slavery mechanic essentially has to carry it for you.

Even for someone who likes to RP Ideoligion honestly seems to get in the way more than it helps.

Royalty I consider pretty average but mostly inoffensive since you can largely ignore it if you don't want to engage with it in a given playthrough (it was a bit more annoying on release, but they've tweaked it and largely fixed the short-comings and complaints by this point). The psy-casts are ok, but it's really just a platform for modding as the default Psy-casts, specially the higher tier ones end up feeling really underwhelming by default. The low to mid-tier psycasts definitely feel a lot better compared to the upper ones, which have a couple cool ones but most feel really underwhelming to even go for, where as the lower tiers have a lot of broadly useful abilities even if they aren't particularly flashy outside of the Skip-line of psycasts which are pretty neat.


basically.....Biotech and Royalty both add decent stuff out of the box and add additional frameworks that modders can really go nuts with. (similar things can be had via mods, but not quite as well integrated, and the versions of mods that are able to use the new functionality do feel and work a lot better than the Core version's workarounds).

Idelogion on the other hand is super niche (honestly the only somewhat interesting thing about it that isn't already covered is the quest series you can get on to amass your religion's sacred artifacts (which each require multipart campaigns to track down and seize), though mechanically it's definitely the most underwhelming of the 3 IMO.

[Johnny 5]

Originally posted by kaiyl_kariashi:

Biotech isn't super focused on quests, it has a few, mostly related to pollution or the new mechanitor sub-type (which is also the primary contributor of pollution if over-used, though if you have Ideoligion, transhumanists can also end up making a lot of extra pollution as some of their special building generate a lot of it, but are also more likely to be able to simply ignore it due to their heavy reliance on advanced tech).

It's mostly about genetics, including actually having children. The Gene system itself is fairly complex and mostly end-game outside of party creation as the researchs to actually mess around with genetics post-start are in the 2nd half of the tech tree, though it does spice things up a bit as you no longer have just regular normal humans but essentially aliens, as well as monstrosities made from science going wrong (or right).

The Childhood stuff on the other hand is stuff you can engage with immediately, and quite interesting (depending on how much involvement you want to spend on it, you can end up with quite powerful pawns or just get something more similar to regular random recruits), if you prefer the more sandbox life-sim playstyle. It's still very much one of those, "get it if it's your thing", and safe to skip if you have other interests.

I do think it's overall the best and most meaningfully fleshed out of the three.

Ideoligion is definitely the weakest of the 3 IMO as it's fairly clunky in places (I was under the impression you could alter or make a new religion mid-game but you can only alter a religion if you started with a Fluid religion specifically (which starts weaker than other religions but can be molded over time)) and the choices don't seem to have that much impact outside of a few niches, unless you're playing with only pre-made religions, which can add some extra challenging elements.

The addition of slavery mechanics is the overall main draw as it's an alternative way of recruitment (especially pawns that are impossible to recruit normally) that is usually easier/faster but comes with the cost of potential rebellions in the future. Which can be a nice change of pace to the usual routine, though as mentioned, unless the religion mechanics are REALLY speaking to you, the slavery mechanic essentially has to carry it for you.

Even for someone who likes to RP Ideoligion honestly seems to get in the way more than it helps.

Royalty I consider pretty average but mostly inoffensive since you can largely ignore it if you don't want to engage with it in a given playthrough (it was a bit more annoying on release, but they've tweaked it and largely fixed the short-comings and complaints by this point). The psy-casts are ok, but it's really just a platform for modding as the default Psy-casts, specially the higher tier ones end up feeling really underwhelming by default. The low to mid-tier psycasts definitely feel a lot better compared to the upper ones, which have a couple cool ones but most feel really underwhelming to even go for, where as the lower tiers have a lot of broadly useful abilities even if they aren't particularly flashy outside of the Skip-line of psycasts which are pretty neat.


basically.....Biotech and Royalty both add decent stuff out of the box and add additional frameworks that modders can really go nuts with. (similar things can be had via mods, but not quite as well integrated, and the versions of mods that are able to use the new functionality do feel and work a lot better than the Core version's workarounds).

Idelogion on the other hand is super niche (honestly the only somewhat interesting thing about it that isn't already covered is the quest series you can get on to amass your religion's sacred artifacts (which each require multipart campaigns to track down and seize), though mechanically it's definitely the most underwhelming of the 3 IMO.

Thanks for your helpful response.

Yeah I generally don't get past a couple of years with a colony so I doubt the mods are for me. I prefer the early set up & survival mechanics and dealing with interesting visitors, or occasionally going on my own raid, but I find the mechanics with that awkward enough, so I don;t see the reason to overcomplicate it.

It would be nice if they added a DLC which dealt with factions & making trade and diplomacy more important, or even some sort of camping DLC to make moving around the map more interesting

[Bathory]

Originally posted by Johnny 5:

It would be nice if they added a DLC which dealt with factions & making trade and diplomacy more important, or even some sort of camping DLC to make moving around the map more interesting

Camping: [SYR] Set Up Camp mod is great for setting up temporary camps to help you with that nomad life. Loads of customisation options too- you can make it so campsites are just a tiny empty map which despawn when you leave, for example.
Some stuff you can fiddle with:

• enable/disable events on the map
  
• change the map size
  
• make sites despawn either immediately or after a timer. Base game they're permanent

The Camping Stuff mod adds portable gas stoves, and also deployable tents. Camp Tents mod adds a bunch of little tents, so you can make a neat little mongol village or viking raid.

There are also mods which add quests. One of them visitors have quests, diplomacy, etc. Another one is The Witcher, it adds quests on the world map to wipe out monsters etc.

Diplomacy:
Royalty DLC has a bit of diplomacy stuff. Factions will give you quests to improve diplomatic relations - or harm them. The new Empire faction can grant you tokens to cash in for food, supplies, workers, warriors, and a bunch of other stuff. They can also grant you royal titles. I'm not sure how deep the diplomacy stuff goes, but the in-game lore says it's quite deep- haven't gotten around to exploring it yet.

Another mod you might like is called Vanilla Base Generation Expanded. In a nutshell, this mod makes each faction have interesting and unique bases which also fit their faction - tribal bases look like tribal villages, while spacer bases are high tech.
Why would you care about this? Because you said you liked early game and trading - you can raid these bases and trade with them.

Originally posted by Johnny 5:

I'm not interested in making a meme lord child slavery society etc

Ideology is for most of the meme lord stuff. Cannibal, organ dealing, autobong, slaver patriarchy. But you can do most of that in base game anyway, with the scenario editor.

I like Biotech for the genetic engineering. By default it's basically Dune. But you can use it to make Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Fallout, furry fetish wet dream, vampire hunters, or whatever it is you're into.

You can disable the child stuff. I wasn't into the child thing either at first. It leads to interesting stories though. For example, vistors getting attacked by raiders? Base game I giggle, but with Biotech kids in tow I rush out to help them.