Rimworld does a lot of things right. From the crafting systems to the construction system to even the job prioritization system. A multitude of systems work in the background while you micromanage some more important tasks that need doing right now. However, not everything is perfect, as can be seen by the mountain of QOL (quality of life) mods in all of my playthroughs. Countless sticking points can turn it from a bit cumbersome into a black hole of free time. One of the worst offenders is the combat system.

The combat system does some things right and by no means is terrible, but it could use a lot of work. It often feels silly or frustrating when your supposedly capable pawn repeatedly misses someone 10 feet away with a shotgun or when their cowboy hat blocks a pistol round (only a slight dramatization). Random chance plays a larger role than I would like, and the combat is anything but deterministic. Save scumming is quite prevelant due to this (and other more important reasons) as even a great strategy can succumb to bad luck. Thus the best strategies are those that reduce the element of chance, often to the detriment of fun or interesting tactics. See the kill box below.

Chance is not the only problem in Rimworld’s combat. Manipulating large numbers of pawns can become extremely cumbersome in the game’s “real-time” combat system. Any experienced Rimworld player will tell you how much time they spend paused in combat to avoid their pawns standing out in the open like goobers, waiting to be blasted. The combat already operates in a pseudo-turn-based style as pawns have cooldown periods after doing most actions that can make the real-time combat feel sluggish and clunky as your pawns stand comatose for a second after doing anything. For those unfamiliar with how Rimworld combat functions, I will explain.

In Rimworld, combat operates with all pawns moving and acting at the same time in a real-time system. Actions have warm-up and cooldown times that cause the pawn to stand there motionless while these timers tick down. Combat often involves two stationary targets trading blows or shots per these timers to create the appearance of turn-based fighting (see melee combat below). As the player, you must manage the positioning and targeting of your pawns so that they avoid lines of fire and keep a distance from melee enemies (unless they are also melee of course). You need to constantly evaluate the safety and efficacy of each of your pawns as they can be quickly killed or downed if outnumbered. This results in constant pausing from too much information and the many inputs needed to decisively win combats without losing any of your colonists.

I propose a proper turn-based system where players can control large numbers of pawns while leveraging the existing combat resolution and order system. Combat would be split into two phases, one for each side. On your turn (player phase) you would step through all of your pawns, giving them orders or allowing them to continue their current orders. You would then press the end turn button which would play a real-time segment where the orders from both sides would be resolved. Each pawn would have several combat points to determine how much they could do on a turn. Combat points would be augmented by health and equipment so that healthy and lightly-equipped pawns could do more. Moving and shooting would cost points so that you would determine the best course of action based on how many points each pawn had.

To reduce the heavy influence of chance, I would incorporate some of the changes made by the Combat Extended Rimworld mod. The core features I would take from the mod are the ballistic model for combat and the reworked armor system. Instead of using pure probability, Combat Extended models the path of each projectile and determines hits based on this. Chance still plays a role in the angle of deviation, but if the projectile collides with a pawn, it’s a hit. And hit location is determined by the height at which it hits the pawn and some random chance. This means fewer pinky toes being shot off by your elite snipers and more lethal hits. Its armor system is a simple model that uses armor thickness and penetration values to determine if an attack will penetrate the armor, deal blunt damage, or deflect. Their model heavily reduces random chance so that when you send your uber-soldier in power armor out, you can be confident that a pirate with a revolver won’t somehow kill them in a few shots.

I’m aware that these changes would require massive overhauls of core game systems, and are likely unplausible (not including the combat extended changes). I am curious to see how it would play out and if it would actually reduce combat time and save scumming. I did not go into depth about the changes as this was more of a thought exercise than a serious plan to change Rimworld. Let me know what you think of these ideas and if you think you have a better solution to Rimworld’s cumbersome combat.