27Lands

I just watched her gnawing on some raw muffalo meat that another colonist had just finished butchering. WE HAD MEALS IN STORAGE. But she immediately leapt on that bloodied raw steak as soon as she saw it like a frigging’ hyena.

Part 5: building an undersea base!

We return to my as-yet-unrealised dream of a mod that expands upon Rimworld’s ocean biome with a whole new environment, technologies, faction, and integration with both ideology and biotech! Remember none of the stuff proposed here exists yet; I don’t even know how to mod, these are just ideas, so lemme know what you think of them!

While the submarine described in my first post makes it possible to visit the marine world, the Seaborn meme described in my previous post is really what makes building an entire underwater base feasible. 

Agriculture

To start with, the Seaborn meme unlocks a new kind of buildable terrain, comparable to the tunneller meme’s fungal gravel, called Aquaculture Substrate. This can only be placed in underwater environments, and allows you to grow a whole range of new ocean-adapted crops:

Nutrikelp:

A robust, edible seaweed that requires sunlit waters to grow. Looks and smells like cut damp grass when harvested, but has a surprisingly pleasant, spinachy flavour once cooked. 

This is the easiest aquatic food source; very quick to sow and harvest, with a growing time similar to rice. However, it can only be grown, as the text suggests, under sunlight, so is only suitable in the coral reefs. 

Oyster:

A shelled mollusc that is a staple of maritime cultures throughout the anthrosphere.  With their slimy texture and salty flavour, it is commonly said that oysters taste as good raw as cooked. This particular kind of oyster has been bioengineered to grow to great size, and tolerates a variety of different ocean depths. 

These “plants” take longer to plant and harvest, and also take longer to grow, but can be harvested for a special kind of meat, distinct from raw meat or insect meat, which doesn’t give a mood negative when eaten raw. They can also be grown without sunlight, making them suitable for all aquatic biomes, including the abyssal plain and hadean trenches. 

Fabriclam:

A genetically engineered bivalve mollusc, widely cultivated by aquatic civilisations. It secrets strands of mucus that anchor it to the seafloor; when fully grown, these filaments can be harvested and spun into a cloth-like material.

Inspired by real-world sea silk, this yields base game cloth when harvested, so you can clothe your people and even build carpets to beautify your undersea city!

Medicoral:

A soft-bodied coral that secretes a range of antibiotic, anti-inflammatory and regenerative compounds in its mucus, as well as a mild neurotoxin that numbs pain around a wound. These corals are difficult to cultivate, but prized as a natural medicine by tribal and industrial nations alike. 

These are basically an underwater version of healroot in terms of growth time, planting and harvesting, and are partially inspired by many real-world corals with medicinal properties. When harvested, it produces “Coral Medicine”, which has the tend quality of industrial-era medicine, but with the added bonus of setting pain to 0% on whatever body part it is used on until that part is fully-healed! Medicoral can be found growing wild in the coral reef biome, but can be planted in other aquatic biomes as well. 

Venenome:

A bioengineered sea anenome with a venomous sting. Though harmful to most creatures, it induces a lasting high in large animals such as humans.

This is it; the thing you’ve all been waiting for; the aquatic version of Psychite. 

This stuff harvests into an entirely new drug, simply called Venom, which looks like a little severed tentacle wrapped in paper. It functions similarly to smokeleaf; reducing consciousness and move speed while increasing mood and recreation. It also sets talking to zero and reduces eating speed, as I imagine colonists consume this drug by sucking on the tentacles, which numbs their lips and tongues. 

Underwater Infrastructure

Powering an aquatic colony is difficult, as neither solar panels nor wind turbines can be placed underwater, and there are no steam geysers in aquatic biomes. Chemfuel and wood fired generators don’t underwater either, as these rely on burning fuel and, well… you know. Vanometric power cells do work, (it would be pretty crazy if a literal machine god couldn’t make their hardware waterproof) and so does the nuclear reactor added by this mod, (it is intended for use in a submarine after all). However, both are hard to obtain, and the nuclear reactor, as it needs uranium to refuel, isn’t really useful until you’ve unlocked deep drilling, or have built a submarine to harvest resources from the Hadean Trenches. 

(Toxifier generators also work, but are inadvisable, as I think that toxic wastepacks should deteriorate faster and pollute at least 8x as much terrain when they dissolve underwater. This may seem unfair to you mechanitor-lovers out there, but it is actually already true in the base game, and it honestly feels pretty appropriate for a marine biome to be more sensitive to pollution.)

With the Seaborn meme, however, you can build a new power source known as the Tidal Generator. Like the wind turbine, this machine requires cleared space in front and behind it, but provides an uninterrupted 2000W of power, and can be built from ordinary steel and components. 

Another important detail about underwater infrastructure is that power conduits and batteries are much more likely to short circuit in underwater environments, much like they do on land when exposed to rain. Also, fuelled workbenches like the campfire, fuelled smelter and fuelled stove won’t work in these environments, so if you want to play a tribal or medieval colony of Thalassids, you’ll need the brining station:

A medieval workbench that preserves food using concentrated seawater, or brine; prolonging their shelf-life while giving them a rather strong flavour. 

Colonists can research this bench after smithing. The brining station can be used to turn any mix of raw foods into salted meals, which never rot, much like packaged survival meals, but which give a minor mood debuff to colonists that don’t have a Seaborn ideology. A faster, powered version of this workbench is unlocked with electricity, and you’ll certainly want to build it, because you can’t lower temperatures below freezing in underwater environments, so salted meals are the only means of preserving food. 

So, you have all the tools you need to run a fully-underwater colony! You could start as your typical crashlanded colonists, and instead of going to space, you build a submarine and re-settle an ocean tile! Or, you could do the reverse, with a scenario where tou start as a new tribe of thalassids, and have to start on an ocean tile instead of a land tile! Then you could slowly build up an underwater kingdom, before researching the technologies to build a submarine so you can invade the surface! 

I hope you enjoyed what will probably be the last addition to this long, no doubt confusing thread of rambling ideas about a fictional Rimworld mod. I might return to this concept in future, if I ever learn enough about computers to even attempt something like this. Modders, feel free to borrow some of these ideas for your own projects; you guys and your amazing, selfless contributions are maybe the best thing about the gaming community. 

Go to the previous post

Part 4: Meet The Thalassids

This would be the crowning feature of the mod: an entire new xenotype designed for life in the aquatic biomes. A lot of inspiration for these guys comes from the Nereid xenotype of Alpha Genes, but I personally consider my guys to be a little more streamlined (pun intended). The description of the xenotype is as follows:

Thalassid

Amphibious xenonumans created to colonise the ocean planet Wavia. When the prohibitive cost of life support made expanding the early seabed colonies untenable, a new xenotype was created that was capable of living and thriving in aquatic environments unaided. Over time, the thalassids proliferated to such a degree that they outcompeted baseliners on Wavia, and have since spread out into the wider galaxy. It is unknown how many terraformed planets now harbour a hidden population of thalassids in the depths of their seas. Thalassids can survive indefinitely and move swiftly  underwater, and their vision remains sharp in even the darkest depths. However, they are clumsy and uncomfortable when on land, and prefer to avoid visiting terrestrial environments whenever possible. 

Thalassid Genes:

Webbed hands (-1 metabolic efficiency)

A base game gene that buffs moves speed on watery terrain. However, this mod expands upon webbed hands, and now they provide a significant buff to move speed in underwater environments as well. It also allows the carrier to move on deep water tiles, which allows them to just swim right into the ocean and into an aquatic biome without a submarine. Of course, they’ll need underwater protection if they’re going to survive for any length of time in this biome.

Gills (-3 metabolic efficiency)

Carriers of this custom gene develop a highly-efficient set of gills in their thoracic cavity, which allow them to breathe underwater. This gene gives 100% underwater resistance, which means they can survive indefinitely in aquatic biomes.

Dark vision (-1 metabolic efficiency)

Another from the base-game, this gene makes sight unaffected by darkness. A nice bonus to have in most situations, but especially useful for those long expeditions into the poorly-lit abyss.

Mucus coating (+2 metabolic efficiency)

Carriers of this custom gene constantly secrete a layer of mucus from their skin. This causes a constant minor pain effect in non-aquatic environments, but also removes the thought “soaking wet.”

Slow runner (+3 metabolic efficiency)

We all know this base game gene, and usually it’s a pain; a minus -0.2 move speed. However, the “webbed hands” gene now gives a +0.7 buff to moving when on wet terrain or underwater, so overall, thalassids can move 1.5x faster than baseliners in these conditions. 

Cosmetic genes:

Much to the disappointment of some of you, no doubt, (but perhaps to the delight of others, I don’t judge) the appearance of the thalassids is less “beautiful mermaid” and more “weird fishy creature”. I picture them as having deep green, navy blue, purple or wine-red skin, (there aren’t enough colourful xenotypes in my opinion) and having rayed fins on either side of their heads in place of hair. I’d also really like them to have big, bulging eyes. Something like this:

The Thalassids only occur in a new spacer-era faction called the Thalassid Nation. This is a spacer-era faction that uses aquatic weapons, up to and including cavitation guns, and uses flak armour as well as base game power armours (they don’t wear diving suits, I think for fairly obvious reasons). They are hostile by default, but will only send raids if you are in an aquatic biome, and can be befriended and even allied with. The faction’s description goes something like this:

A hidden ultratech nation of the amphibious thalassid xenotype residing deep beneath the planet’s oceans. Their isolation has allowed these people to avoid the technological collapse which befell other factions on this planet, and the thalassids remain as advanced as ever; jealously guarding the wealth of the planet’s seas with their considerable military might. While they do not tolerate airbreathers in their habitat as a rule, a generous enough offer might convince them to allow you entry into their realm. 

The prerequisite ideology of this faction does not have the “supremacist” meme”, (which I do find a little extreme) but instead a new meme: seaborn. This makes colonists prefer to be in an underwater biome, not care about rough living and consider fishing to be sacred. 

The “Seaborn” meme also unlocks a bunch of new buildables, which together make it possible to create a fully self-sustaining community underwater. I will cover these in my next post. 

See Previous Post

Part 3: aquatic weapons and combat Now with added murder!

Continuing my now alarming long series of posts about my as-yet-unrealised idea for a Rimworld mod, which expands the ocean features into a whole new aquatic environment, navigable only by specially-built Submarines. 

I mention gear and armour in an edit made to the original post, so let’s jump right into the weapons system. 

The Underwater condition that applies to all aquatic biomes has an adverse effect on weapons. While melee weapons work just fine, (knives are commonly used by frogmen, after all) guns and other ranged weapons don’t. Water is described as “slowing down arrows to the point of uselessness, stopping gunpowder from igniting and diffusing the energy of charge bolts”. Your crew of mariners will need to craft new, aquatic weapons. 

The harpoon is the simplest aquatic ranged weapon, unlocked with the smithing research and crafted from any of the base-game metals. It works basically like the often-underused pila; a tribal or medieval ranged weapon that tales a significant time to aim.

As you enter the industrial era, you’ll find that each stage of gun research now unlocks a new aquatic weapon. With gunsmithing, you unlock the speargun, which functions basically like a bolt-action rifle; a reasonably strong weapon with a good long range, useful as a hunting weapon as well as for war.

Blowback operation gives you the aquapistol; a quick little number that is basically the aquatic counterpart to the autopistol.

Gas operation unlocks the fletchette driver, which fires a volley of seven sharp projectiles and is very useful against groups of poorly-armoured enemies. 

Precision rifling unlocks the underwater assault rifle, (inspired by the APS Underwater Rifle) which functions fundamentally the same as its terrestrial counterpart. 

Much like underwater guns in real life, all of these guns suffer a significant accuracy penalty out of water. 

Here is where the research tree diverges. After you’ve researched both precision rifling and submarine technology, you can research an entirely new line of spacer-era weapons: Cavitation Projectiles:

Build advanced underwater weapons that use explosive bubbles to superheat projectiles for extra damage.

These guns don’t function at all on land, and need to be crafted from hullplate, plasteel and advanced components, but make up for this with some insane stats. Cavitation weapons cause burn damage as well as sharp damage, and have extremely high armour penetration, allowing them to pierce the toughest suits, burn clean through limbs and even melt through the notoriously heat-resistant shells of mechanoids. They are as follows:

Bubblegun 

A spacer-tech weapon designed for use in underwater environments. By generating and detonating high-pressure bubbles, each shot is both accelerated and superheated to white-hot temperatures. Upon impact, it will burn through armour and flesh alike, causing significant damage.

This baby fires a volley of three shots, so you’d just better pray against friendly fire. Its main weakness is its low maximum range, which more comparable to the chain shotgun at a mere 15 tiles. Let me know in the comments if you think I’m overcompensating here, but I reckon a gun that can rip through power armour and centipedes better than anything in the base game should be balanced accordingly.

Handheld torpedo launcher 

A spacer-tech weapon designed for aquatic environments. Uses cavitation technology to launch a self-propelled mini torpedo, which explodes upon impact. It is heavy and takes a while to aim, but a well-placed shot from this weapon has turned the tide of many a battle. 

This thing is the charge lance of cavitation weapons; very long range, long aiming and cooldown time, but causes a small explosion upon impact. My thinking is that the ideal submarine crew has one guy equipped with the torpedo launcher to soften up the enemy, (literally, it will go through their armour like it’s nothing) before everyone else moves in with bubbleguns to finish them off. 

But who are these enemies? Well, if an hostile faction is industrial or higher, then they can send a new type of raider called a Frogman to assault your submarine in any of the aquatic biomes. The only exception are the Hadean trenches, where raids will never occur unless you somehow manage to kill the Deep Kraken. Frogmen wear diving suits and wield knives or aquatic guns such as the harpoon launcher. If they are from a spacer-tech faction like the pirates or the empire, then a few may spawn wearing Armoured diving suits and wielding cavitation weapons as well. 

Part 2: aquatic mechanics, biomes and creatures Continuing from my last post about a hypothetical Rimworld mod that replaces the featureless sea with a whole new set of aquatic environments.

All aquatic biomes all have the environmental factor “underwater”, comparable to the “vacuum” factor that applies in orbital locations, which applies to anywhere not enclosed in roofs and Hullplate walls. Fires cannot burn underwater, and base game creatures exposed to underwater conditions suffer the “drowning” condition, which lowers breathing and consciousness to 0. It also kills plants, like the vacuum condition does, but more slowly. 

Aquatic biomes also experience less temperature variation than terrestrial biomes; remaining consistently within the range of 1-30°C. (Because ocean obviously isn’t going to drop below freezing)

I have a few ideas for different aquatic biomes, all rich in valuable resources to make building the Submarine worthwhile. Some would contain resources that are unobtainable on land. 

Animals found these biomes are immune to the effects of drowning, but suffer an equally lethal “desiccation” effect when brought into a non-underwater environment. Fish can be found as live animals in these biomes. They are fast, and tend to spawn in very large shoals. When killed, they drop a “fish” food item instead of a normal corpse, making them easy to cook and a great food source.

In aquatic biomes, sunlight is always lower than normal, and while normal plants can’t grow underwater, there are specialised “plant” forms that can grow without sunlight, but only in underwater environments. 

Coral reefs

Max sunlight level: 50%. 

Occurs: ocean tiles directly adjacent to land tiles.

Terrain: rough stone and sand

These are “forests” of Coral fans, which can be harvested for coral; a stony material with strength comparable to limestone and a very high beauty bonus when used to build walls and furniture. This would be the main attraction of the biome, alongside the huge profusion of animal life that can be harvested for food. 

The coral reef biome contains animal versions of all the base-game saltwater fish, which are preyed on by larger animals including sea turtles, stingrays and sharks. Additional flora include sponges, crinoids and sea anemones. 

Abyssal plains 

Max sunlight level: 30% 

Occurs: most ocean tiles.

Terrain: benthic mud 

Nothing grows in this biome, and the benthic mud terrain slows down movement much like normal mud. However, this biome is regularly visited by the enormous wavian leviathans; huge narwhal-like creatures that always attack if provoked and deal a massive amount of damage, but can be hunted for their very valuable tusks, similar to thrumbos with their horns.

This near-mythical sea creature is thought to be a genetic chimaera of narwhal, sperm whale and orca. Created as a war-beast on the ocean planet of Wavia, the Leviathan possesses of unnatural strength, most of which is concentrated in its massive, spiralling tusk. How a population of these mighty beasts established themselves on this Rimworld is uncertain.

Hadean trenches

Max sunlight level: 0%

Occurs: small clusters of ocean tiles, 20 tiles or more from land. 

Terrain: rough stone and lava

This perpetually-dark biome has large geyser-like structures, similar to the base game steam geysers or sulphur vents, called hydrothermal vents. The “plants” of this biome are giant tube worms, which only grow in this biome, and yield a very small amount of meat when harvested, but are otherwise not worth interacting with. 

Slimy bacterial mats also grow here, illuminating the area with green bioluminescence, and serving as food for a variety of deep-sea creatures. 

Swarms of Darkshrimp, lobsters and giant isopods can be found grazing on the bacterial mats. These are non-hostile, aquatic insectoids that will only attack if provoked, but their tough hides and claws mean they are not to be trifled with. 

However, these are just small fry compared to the main feature of the Trenches. 

As soon as your submarine lands in this biome, you receive a message:

As you descend into the trench, your submarine’s sonar detects a massive disturbance nearby. Your arrival has awoken something monstrous from its slumber, and it is coming this way. 

Remain in the trenches biome for more than twelve days, and you face the wrath of the Deep Kraken. 

A massive tentacled beast from the planet Wavia, created as a war beast to rival the leviathan in power, but whose sheer indiscriminate aggression led to the destruction of the very nation that created it. The Deep Kraken uses its many long tentacles, to crush and tear apart its prey, and has been known to drag whales and even entire submarines to a watery grave. Lying dormant for years or even decades at a time to conserve energy, the Deep Kraken awakens only to engage in a devastating feeding frenzy before returning to slumber. Though it prefers the deep sea, stories circulate among tribal nations of the Deep Kraken rising to the surface to decimate coastal communities.

This is the big one; a boss-level creature that makes thrumbos look weak, and will arrive on the map to attack you if you stay too long in the Trenches biome. 

It resembles a huge crown-of-thorns starfish with many writhing arms, and will attack any colonist or colony-built structure on the map as soon as it arrives; including your submarine. Your only options are to fight it or flee the map. Why come to this biome at all then, you ask? If the appeal of the coral reefs is the coral, and the attraction of the abyssal plains is the leviathan tusk, then the lure of the Hadean trenches are its mineral wealth. Gold, plasteel, uranium and silver can all be found in massive quantities here; the lore reason being that they are deposited by volcanic activity. 

You can also find an entirely new relic. Occasionally, a quest will spawn, telling you to go to a Hadean Trench world map tile, where you will find a single giant clam, called the Hades Clam. Your colonists must spend several days attempting to prize open this clam, much like hacking the ancient stockpiles added by Odyssey. This means you have no choice but to fight the Deep-Kraken if you want to obtain what lies within the Clam: the Persephone Pearl.

A huge pearl the size of a human head. It radiates with some inner light, and emits a constant psychic emanation; seeming to act as an organic conduit to a distant archotech being. Tribal nations speak of the Persephone Pearl in hushed whispers, referring to it in their myths as an enchanted artefact that gifts whoever wields it with the power of the sea itself.

Whoever equips this pearl in their utility slot can survive in underwater environments indefinitely. They can also use the pearl as a weapon; any terrestrial creature caught in the AOE of its ranged attack suffers the “psychic drowning” effect, causing them to quickly suffocate. It also acts as a very decent melee weapon, even if it only deals blunt damage.

Thanks for keeping up with my insane, lunatic rambles about a fictional Rimworld mod that could very well never exist! Next post will cover my ideas for underwater gear and weapons!

(As an aside, I don’t think that any tile that counts as a “lake” rather than an “ocean” would be traversable with the Submarine. Unless anyone in the comments has a good idea for a Freshwater Aquatic Biome, let me know!)

Return to Part One

It’s ideas like this that make me rly wanna learn to mod. What about a mod that expands upon Rimworld’s watery tiles and creates a whole new undersea biome? Using similar mechanics to Odyssey’s (incredible) gravship system, your colonists can build a submarine on aquatic tiles and use it to explore the depths of the ocean.

The submarine needs to be built on a specialised foundation which can only be placed on deep water, and needs specialised walls to function; analogous to gravship hull walls and substructure. Unlike these, however, no special hard-to-obtain panels are needed! Instead you have to build the walls and foundation out of a new metallic resource called Hullplate:

An extremely strong alloy of steel with properties that make it resistant to extreme pressures. Used in the construction of marine vehicles.

Hullplate is intermediate between plasteel and steel in terms of hit points, but is significantly heavier that either, and does way less sharp damage compared to steel, so is useless for melee weapons.

To make the submarine go, you need to build propellers (analogous to the gravship thrusters) and ballast tanks (large, steel structures that hullplate foundations have to be built within the radius of). Piloting the submarine is performed at a suitably nautical-looking building called the helm:

A station for piloting a submarine at; equipped with steering wheel, sonar and periscope for a 360° view of the marine environment.

Piloting a submarine requires the same piloting skill as a spaceships. They’re basically the same, aren’t they?

Unlike a gravship, the submarine requires no irreplaceable engine to function. But it does need a power source, and solar panels sure as hell won’t work where you’re going. Instead you need a chemfuel or wood-fired generator, (ideally more than one) or, if you’re feeling brave, a new power source called the nuclear reactor:

A device that generates large amounts of energy by inducing nuclear fission in radioactive elements. Requires uranium to function. Will explode violently if destroyed, releasing lethal amounts of radioactive waste products. “Explode violently” means an explosion comparable to the antigrain warhead, which also leaves the exploded area badly polluted. This baby can run for up to a quadrum without needing to refuel, which compensates for the expensive fuel source which also making it ideal for long missions under the waves. (YES, I KNOW that loads of mods have added nuclear reactors to the game, I have played with VE Power Sources, I just feel my idea would be more fun and balanced for the kind of games I, personally, like to play. You don’t need to call Oskar and have him send a hit squad after me.)

All of this tech (except for maybe the nuclear reactor) would be tied behind a new research called “Subtech”, which requires fabrication to unlock.

Once you have built your Submarine, you need to make sure your colonists aren’t going to instantly die once they enter the deep sea. You need to craft diving suits and diving helmets for them to survive outside the sub, with a new stat, “water resistance”, telling you how good your gear is at keeping out water. Just like vacuum resistance, the more resistant your gear, the longer your colonists can function underwater. Industrial-era diving gear is crafted out of cloth, hullplate and components, and offers poor protection against actual weapons. A stronger version is unlocked with recon armour, called the Triton Suit and Triton helmet, which offers better protection at the cost of requiring plasteel and advanced components to craft. The submarine itself is made liveable with air ducts, which basically works the same as the gravship oxygen pumps; filling a room with air as long as it is properly sealed and roofed.

As always, any modders reading should feel free to co-opt this idea, although I may return to this one day if I ever learn to mod.