RimWorld

RimWorld

RimCities
ZzZombo Jan 9, 2020 @ 2:03am
This mod has so much potential...
...but sadly the execution is piss-poor.

* The trading process is tedious. You can no longer trade in the usual way. Traders seem not to accept any goods unless they are directly on the trading colonist. You must find every and each of them in the FoW (!!). Then keep track of them as they scatter all over the map. You have to pick bought items manually one by one. Did I say you have to move all over the map to trade yet? Please, add the vanilla-style trading back.
* The map generation takes may too much time. The generated map doesn't respect the usual restrictions, and results often in items embedded into wals or stone, things build on deep ocean, conduits under mountains and so on. I even had a villager stuck in a wall! The rooms sometimes have designs that make no sense, such as doors placed in a corner, rooms or pathways that are unreachable, disconnected electrical grids, furniture blocking a clear path across the room, the list goes on. Oh, and also the man-constructed things are placed way too close to the map borders, in an area that is off-limits for the player w/o cheats, and you know what? There is a quest to aid in defending a city, with the reward that the city becomes yours if successful. Except a big chunk of the city can not be properly managed. Add a buffer around cities to prevent that.
* You can capture things on the map. It shouldn't be possible to capture allied structures (how does the MP mod handle that, BTW?), period. You can mess with settings of things, like assigning a bed to a colonist, work on workstations, etc.
* Generated prisoners walk around freely, and can open all doors and use all things they have access to, althought their AI pretty much limits them to food, drinks and resting places, because the map is treated as a caravan map, they do not try to escape or riot, but yet again, it's more of a vanilla design flaw that mods should seek to address, not expand on; on the other hand, why even bother adding prisoners at all if they do not behave like actual prisoners in a prison? I'd say just scrap them, they don't even add anything meaningful to the mod's content (you can't free them legitimately, buy them, or otherwise interact other than messing with them like attacking or something) but a bit of flavour? That the mod utterly manages to shatter anyway.
* FoW. One of the biggest gripes I have. If you just remove it on the generated NEUTRAL/ALLIED maps, it instantly raises the usability of the mod by 500%, no kidding. I mean, even enemies somehow know where to send sappers to, although that's just a rubber band mechanic, but visitors of my colony ALWAYS know where to head to in order to eat on my furniture, or how to navigate out of the colony if, say, they just got out of my hospital, so I guess it's only fair that my pawns also get to know the layout of non-hostile cities they visit. Do you realize how long it takes and tedious it is to manage your drafted pawns in order to learn the layout of the map?? And naturaly once arrived, usually they rather not to, but rest, have joy, eat and do other things in general than to walk for half a day more exploring. I no longer bother with that, instantly pause on arrival and turn on the developer mode, then destroy doors of all unexplored rooms in order to reveal the FoW.
* Antisteal mechanic is utter garbage. Why even have silver lying in the open if stealing it is a crime? Secure it properly, put a guard around at the very least. Yes, it should be possible to steal w/o repercussions if you are carefulr or clever. For example, if I simply arm myself with that shiny sniper rifle, then a villager sees me with it carried in the open, he instantly raises the alarm and calls out our thrivery. But if I manage to avoid all of citizens of the city, or carry stolen goodies in inventory, they do not get to know about the robbery. I also should not pick anything in sight of any resident, that is a bad idea too. Right now the system is easy to fool, you can't arm yourself with weapons, wear aparel or upon leaving, take anything not yours in the dialog. The mod doesn't care if the item is loaded into inventory, so you can manually order to pick anything you like, or otherwise is used up, like food or medicine. In fact, you can steal body parts by using them in surgery. The mod does try to prevent that by forbidding all items AND removing the unforbid designator from them, but it's not really consistent, because some items are not forbidden even if they should, plus you can unforbid them if the mod failed to remove the designator, if you use "Priority Haul" from Allow Tool, or use mods that allow to use designators directly (like Dubs Mint Menus IIRC? The one where you can add designators to a right-click radial menu, and I added Unforbid way prior to installing this mod), oh, and with Allow Tool, you can also just Unforbid All.

You can disassemble things, getting them precious resources out of advanced workbenches and stuff. How will they survive without their comms console?? W/o their only workbench to craft both kinds of components??

With mods that allow you to minify things, you can do just that freely. Yay!

BTW, if you did get caught stealing, you shouldn't simply get a hit to relationship. I propose to add a three choice dialog. First option, you agree to be booted out of the city with all stolen goods confiscated. You get a small relationship penalty, and can't reenter the city for a week. Another you agree to leave the map peacefully, and give back the item(s) your pawns had in their inventories or carrying that do not belong to them, but refuse to let them search your caravan for other possible stolen items. You get a moderate relationship hit with all factions allied with that faction, and can't enter any cities belonging to any of them for a week. Third, you refuse to give back anything, this instantly angers the host faction and boots you out of the city with the triggering colonist arrested and held captive until you pacify them somehow; then he will be released. There is also a checkbox that changes the "give back" portion into "pay for", N/A if the third option is chosen. You have to have enough silver to remedy that, or be forced to choose things to give away as gift to cover the cost. This will NOT give the usual relationship boost. If you pay, you still get thrown out of the city, and can't reenter it right away, but suffer half as much of the penalty.