Ludeon Studios has announced the latest update to their early access sci-fi colony management survival sim RimWorld. The Alpha 17 release, titled On The Road, brings with it a large list of new additions, updates, and bug fixes. We’ve taken the time to read through it to highlight some of the changes for you.
Roads & Rivers
With this update worlds will now generate with roads and rivers of varying sizes and types. The five types of roads are: path, dirt road, stone road, ancient asphalt road, and ancient asphalt highway. Some of these roads will have interesting details like concrete barriers or ancient lamp posts that generate beside them. Stone roads can be made of either local stone, or a new flagstone type of terrain. NPCs will tend to arrive and leave via these roads.
Rivers come in four sizes: huge river, large river, river, and creek. They will even generate more frequently in rainy areas and will move towards the sea.
Interestingly, the world generates in chronological order now, with land forming first, followed by rivers, then, similarly to (but not as deep as) Dwarf Fortress, it briefly simulates an ancient society for the purposes of the ruined roads that will traverse the landscape. Finally, the modern roads and settlements form. Pretty neat huh.
World Quests
New world quests can now generate, with destinations comprised of mixing and matching “site parts”, allowing a large number of combinations of sites. New world quests include:
- Item Stash quest: you are told about a stash of randomly generated rewards guarded by a threat that must be defeated.
- Bandit Camp quest: you are tasked with defeating a bandit camp for a reward.
- Caravan request: you are asked to deliver something to a specific location in a set amount of time for a special reward.
- Scanner: A new long-range mineral scanner building scans for lumps of precious resources that must be acquired by caravan.
- Payment Demand: Raiders attack your caravan and demand items or slaves.
More New Things!
New equipment and weapons have been added, including a belt that emits smoke when the wearer is shot to decrease enemy accuracy, a bowler hat, and a new chain shotgun. Characters can now tend to their own wounds, but with reduced effectiveness. When trees, plants, or structures burn, they leave behind ash and/or stumps.
Also, in a move straight out of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the “head butt” attack is now available for when your pawns are missing all other attacking body parts!
And The Rest
Modding has been… modified… to help prevent conflicts between similar mods. Some skills have been changed to increase their relevance. A.I has been tweaked to have more intelligent ranged target selection (it won’t shoot at chickens as much!), increase the danger of sapper groups, make stealth raids against enemy bases more difficult, and reduce the odd attraction of raiders to your doors.
A rather lengthy section of Misc additions include:
- The graphics for plants are different when they are harvest-able – you can see berries, cotton and corn on the plants when ready for picking.
- Tweaked all medical potencies to increase the chance of surgery success.
- Colonists wearing human leather clothes now get a negative thought (unless they have a bloodlust or cannibal trait, in which case they get a mood bonus).
- Manhunter packs can be made of any animal.
- The beauty system is more dependent on art. Furniture has little to no beauty value.
- Fixed various memory leaks.
- Design tweaks to mitigate or prevent exploits.
- Many, many, many other bugfixes, tunings, and redesigns.
Not Compatible With Previous Saves
Due to the large number of changes, previous worlds are not compatible with A17. It will be necessary to start over. However, if you are greatly attached to your A16 world and you play through Steam, you can opt-in to the betas for RimWorld and select a previous version. Also, because of the changes, Ludeon Studios says that A17 is likely to be a bit more difficult and suggests that you drop down a notch in difficulty until you adjust.
As you can see, the changes for RimWorld’s “On The Road” update is quite large and varied. For further information you can go to the Steam page or Ludeon Studios page to see the entire list.
Several of us here have played RimWorld quite extensively and are anxious to dive into this new update and see what has changed. Keep an eye on us at Guided for your survival and horror news, because we are keeping an eye out for you!
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