Love this mod, and have had a blast with an overpowered colony playthrough- basically became world police and was loading dropships full of marines to wipe out warbands and protect the alliance of factions I had formed through trading. Just lost my favourite faction that were set to 'random' and had ended up surrounded by enemies- even two roadblocks of marines wasn't enough to protect them!

I'd be interested to know though, what is the current idea for fixing the 'year 3 Jihad' issue? Every game I've had has resulted in one group of factions purging the entire planet without my direct intervention, and I've been trying to think of ways to stop that happening. I think anything that puts hard rules into the simulation would fly in the face of the spirit of the mod, which I wouldn't want to see, as I love the 'free simulation' style. Instead I've been coming up with checks and balances you could add to stop factions dominating, as obviously, it destroys the mod's functionality if the war actually gets won. Given that humanity has been in perpetual war for all of it's history, it wouldn't be too unbelievable to design a simulation geared at a war that can never be won with finality! If I could make some suggestions:

1) Add a mechanic to make settlers become increasingly more expensive the more colonies a faction has, allowing dying factions to bounce back and slowing huge factions from dominating.

2) Allow AI to look at the total power of each faction, and create truces out of self preservation. For example, the AI could check to see the largest threat on the map, and if there is a threat that is more than double it's own power, it would look for mutually hostile factions to offer a truce to. The idea being that if there is a 3 way war between two 400 strength factions and one 1000 strength faction, the two would truce so that their combined 800 power could stand more of a chance.

3) Following on, if you give the AI logic to target it's largest threats, this will further reduce the speed at which factions can dominate, as large players will keep one another in check. While they wear each other down, the smaller factions will build strength, util they themselves become the contenders.

4) Make alliances between powerful factions splinter. Do a global check each week to find the average power level of factions. Put every faction that is 1.5x the average into a list (or some value there about). For each faction in the list, see if they are allied with another faction on that list. If they are, check if any factions in the list are hostile. IF they aren't, this means their alliance is very likely to be the one to wipe everything out by year 3. You could stop that happening by splintering those alliances- if you wanted to give a reason, maybe 'evil' factions turn on eachother out of paranoia or greed to be top dog, whilst 'friendly' alliances perhaps fall apart due to trade disagreements or a human leather hat ethical dilemma.


Just a few ideas, as once the overpowered raids have been balanced out, getting the simulation to be fun, interesting and sustainable will be the last essential thing before this mod can just be slotted into any run, imo!

Thanks for the awesome work on this mod, it's probably the biggest 'wow' change to rimworld that I've seen since SOS2 or Jecrell's run of mods!

@Bear
Thanks for the feedback and the open mind on the spirit of the mod. Personally, I'm not interested in doing a ton of work to simulate the behavior of the storytellers and giving the mod freedom to "go off the tracks" is part of what makes it an interesting concept.

That being said, it has to be balanced with making the mod enjoyable with interesting elements that compliments the rest of the game. To that end, agree that there should be some checks and balances to prevent the inevitable snowballing.

I don't think any of your suggestions are exclusive, and will keep them in mind as the mod develops!

I like the concept of this mod, but I think the biggest issue I have right now is that traveling on the world map is extremely hazardous... the fact that multiple 3000+ power enemies (30-50 wild tribesmen scale) keep stopping my 3 person gang that just wanted to shut down a psychic emitter and stealing everything they have and eventually demanding slave tribute is kinda unfun. I'll basically have to hunker down until I have shuttles from SoS2 if I want to do meaningful world travel -- there's no way I'll be able to bring thirty colonists just to visit the next town over.

Edit: I think something that might help is in relation to the Visibility mechanic of vanilla. Maybe it can modify the chances that the fifty person warband is even going to bother with stopping you to shake you down for two components and fifty berries.

@Torann wonderful to hear my man- it's a truly incredible beta, I can't wait to see how you decide to build out the balance of it! :)