RimWorld Wiki - User contributions [en]

Healer mech serum

2019-10-27T08:26:34Z

Siggboy: /* Usage strategy */

{{Define|Exotic Item
| always haulable = true
| def name = MechSerumHealer
| description = A one-use super-dose of mechanites tuned to heal health conditions. The mechanites will target and heal the single worst health condition affecting someone at any given time. Works even on health conditions that would otherwise be incurable. The mechanites can even transmute themselves into organic matter, forming new limbs or organs as needed.
| label = healer mech serum
| path cost = 15
| stack limit = 10
| tech level = spacer
| use hit points = true
| flammability base = 0
| deterioration rate base = 2
| market value base = 1000
| max hit points base = 80
| mass = 0.2
| quest item = true
}}
The '''Healer mech serum''' is an item that can be awarded from quests.

Pawns can be directed to use it, or it can be administered by medical procedure. When used, it instantly removes the most severe health problem on the pawn, with only few exceptions. If there are no healable conditions, the serum will still be used up.

== Exceptions ==

Below are the conditions which the serum '''cannot''' treat:
* Luciferium need
* Drug tolerances

To regrow a missing body part, the artificial part has to be removed first (by surgery) before the serum is applied.

Any other condition can be treated, including blood loss, malnutrition, heatstroke/hypothermia, diseases, toxic buildup, even other drug addictions – in many cases you do ''not'' want to treat these conditions with the serum, unless they would lead to certain death. Do not apply the serum unless absolutely certain it will heal the correct condition.

== Strategy ==

Many crippling conditions can only be cured by this item. It should thus be used wisely. Even missing limbs or failed organs can be replaced, while a demented brain can not. The serum should be saved for situations where all other ailments fail, or for situations when the pawn would certainly die if untreated (usually an infection or disease about to become fatal).

Do not expect to find more than a handful of these serums during a playthrough, if even that many.

* Great for colonists with brain damage, dementia and frailty.
** There is no other way to heal these chronic ailments, which can be quite crippling, other than killing the pawn and then applying a [[Resurrector mech serum]], which is another very rare item that can cause adverse side-effects.
** Brain scarring (not dementia or chemical damage) could be treated with [[Luciferium]], which will, however, cause immediate hard dependence on the drug, which is very costly in the long run.
* Repair shattered spines or pelvises to allow colonists to function again (the former can however also be fixed with a [[bionic spine]]).
* Immediately end a colonist's [[Mood#Catatonia|catatonic break]] at quite a cost. Do so when the colonist is vital to your colony's operations -- this should be a very rare occasion.
* Prevent [[Ailments#Resurrection psychosis|resurrection psychosis]] from taking over your resurrected colonist. Do note that resurrection psychosis is not revealed until it reaches its second stage, but will still be cured by using a Healer mech serum if used before it is discovered.
* This is the only option to fix certain Social penalties, such as the Disfigured debuff from a missing nose.

Organs that occur in pairs (kidneys, eyes, ears) will always be healed in pairs (e.g. the serum would cure a cataract in both eyes, not just one). This is quite efficient compared to an organ or limb replacement, if you actually would have to replace two organs.

== Order of conditions treated ==

The serum will heal conditions according to severity, in this order:
# Toxic buildup
# Diseases, in order of severity
# Frail
# Alzheimer's
# Dementia
# Scars on the brain
# Missing body parts
#* Limbs have priority over organs, and legs > shoulders/arms
#* For organs, lungs > kidneys
# Drug addiction
# Scars on other parts

=== Note ===

The game does not necessarily rank the severity of conditions in the same way the player would. This can lead to the "wrong" condition being healed, since the serum only heals one condition. As an example, a "major infection (developed immunity)" is rated ''worse'' by the game than "Alzheimer's (minor)", even though the latter is normally incurable, while the former condition is not even a practical problem. Make sure to check the health condition of the pawn carefully before administering the serum.

== Version history ==

It was added in Beta 18. At that time it could treat injuries and ailments, but could not treat some conditions, notably diseases.

In Beta 19/1.0 its function was expanded such that it can now treat nearly all health conditions.

{{nav/questitems}}

Healer mech serum

2019-10-25T12:53:04Z

Siggboy: /* Exceptions */

{{Define|Exotic Item
| always haulable = true
| def name = MechSerumHealer
| description = A one-use super-dose of mechanites tuned to heal health conditions. The mechanites will target and heal the single worst health condition affecting someone at any given time. Works even on health conditions that would otherwise be incurable. The mechanites can even transmute themselves into organic matter, forming new limbs or organs as needed.
| label = healer mech serum
| path cost = 15
| stack limit = 10
| tech level = spacer
| use hit points = true
| flammability base = 0
| deterioration rate base = 2
| market value base = 1000
| max hit points base = 80
| mass = 0.2
| quest item = true
}}
The '''Healer mech serum''' is an item that can be awarded from quests.

Pawns can be directed to use it, or it can be administered by medical procedure. When used, it instantly removes the most severe health problem on the pawn, with only few exceptions. If there are no healable conditions, the serum will still be used up.

== Exceptions ==

Below are the conditions which the serum '''cannot''' treat:
* Luciferium need
* Drug tolerances

To regrow a missing body part, the artificial part has to be removed first (by surgery) before the serum is applied.

Any other condition can be treated, including blood loss, malnutrition, heatstroke/hypothermia, diseases, toxic buildup, even other drug addictions – in many cases you do ''not'' want to treat these conditions with the serum, unless they would lead to certain death. Do not apply the serum unless absolutely certain it will heal the correct condition.

== Usage strategy ==

Because this is the only item in the game that can cure many otherwise incurable conditions without any adverse effects, it should be used wisely. A missing limb or even a severely damaged spine can be replaced, while a demented brain cannot.

Do not expect to find more than a handful of these serums during a playthrough, if even that many.

* Great for colonists with brain damage, dementia and frailty.
** There is no other way to heal these chronic ailments, which can be quite crippling, other than killing the pawn and then applying a [[Resurrector mech serum]], which is another very rare item that can cause adverse side-effects.
** Brain scarring (not dementia or chemical damage) could be treated with [[Luciferium]], which will, however, cause immediate hard dependence on the drug, which is very costly in the long run.
* Repair shattered spines or pelvises to allow colonists to function again (the former can however also be fixed with a [[bionic spine]]).
* Immediately end a colonist's [[Mood#Catatonia|catatonic break]] at quite a cost. Do so when the colonist is vital to your colony's operations -- this should be a very rare occasion.
* Prevent [[Ailments#Resurrection psychosis|resurrection psychosis]] from taking over your resurrected colonist. Do note that resurrection psychosis is not revealed until it reaches its second stage, but will still be cured by using a Healer mech serum if used before it is discovered.
* This is the only option to fix certain Social penalties, such as the Disfigured debuff from a missing nose.

Organs that occur in pairs (kidneys, eyes, ears) will always be healed in pairs (e.g. the serum would cure a cataract in both eyes, not just one).

== Order of conditions treated ==

The serum will heal conditions according to severity, in this order:
# Diseases, in order of severity
# Frail
# Alzheimer's
# Dementia
# Missing body parts
# Scars

=== Note ===

The game does not necessarily rank the severity of conditions in the same way the player would. This can lead to the "wrong" condition being healed, since the serum only heals one condition. As an example, a "major infection (developed immunity)" is rated ''worse'' by the game than "Alzheimer's (minor)", even though the latter is normally incurable, while the former condition is not even a practical problem. Make sure to check the health condition of the pawn carefully before administering the serum.

== Version history ==

It was added in Beta 18. At that time it could treat injuries and ailments, but could not treat some conditions, notably diseases.

In Beta 19/1.0 its function was expanded such that it can now treat nearly all health conditions.

{{nav/questitems}}

Skills

2019-10-17T04:27:38Z

Siggboy: /* Passion */

{| align=center
| {{Character_Properties_Nav}}
|}
----


{{TOCright}}
Every character in RimWorld has a set of '''skills'''; these skills govern their effectiveness in the relevant tasks. A character may be unable to undertake certain work types due to [[backstories|backstory]] elements, and as such, the relevant skills will be disabled entirely, and show " - " under skills on the Bio tab. Experience points are gained by performing a relevant task or may be boosted by using a [[neurotrainer]].

= Learning skills =
{{see also|Training}}

All skills are acquired and improved by performing their associated work types or tasks. Doing so will earn the character ''experience points'' per skill, which in turn will ''level up'' the skills. The resulting ''skill level'' then improves the performance in all associated tasks and types of work. Skills are levelled up individually, and there is no single "character level" as in many role playing games.

In some cases, special tactics can be employed to more effectively steer the skill training in the colony, especially during periods of low work in colony development. See the [[Training|main article]] on skill training for more information.

== Skills vs work types ==

Skills and work types (or "tasks") are two different, but related, concepts. In some cases, like "mine" (work type) and "mining" (skill), there is an almost perfect correspondence, but in many other cases there is not: the ''work types'' "tailor" and "smith", for example, are associated with the ''crafting skill''. Some tasks listed on the work tab do not even have an associated ''skill'' (eg. "haul", "clean" and "firefight").

The ''Work'' tab, where you assign tasks to colonists, indicates which skills are relevant for a given task (by mousing over a tick box). It also shows you if the colonist has a ''passion'' for those skills (with an icon in the tick box), and if a significant proficiency has already been acquired (by emphasizing the tick box border). All these aspects are important for deciding how to assign tasks and types of work.

In general, you want a colonist to perform tasks they are ''good at'' (it is productive for your colony), as well as tasks they are ''passionate for'' (have them improve the associated skill).

== Game mechanics related to skills and levels ==

Skill levelling in ''Rimworld'' is very similar to many role playing games: ''experience points'' are constantly earned, and the skill is ''levelled up'' when certain thresholds are reached.

Importantly, the effect of a skill improves ''by level'', but it costs more and more XP to gain another level in a skill. This means that '''skill training is more effective the lower the skill level is.'''

As an example, consider the influence of ''mining skill'' on ''mining speed'': 12% additional mining speed is granted (additively, and relative to a "base speed") by each skill level. However, each additional 12% costs more and more XP, which translates into more and more time spent mining. The same principle applies to many other skills, such as researching and the ''intellectual'' skill.

An exception can be made for the '''artisan''' skills: ''crafting'' (ie. smithing and tailoring), ''artistic'' and ''construction''. A high level in these skills allows creating items of exceptional quality (''excellent'' or better), and gives a good chance to create a ''legendary'' item when the pawn is ''inspired''. Items get disproportionately more valuable at high quality levels. This may compensate for the lost efficiency when training a master in a skill.

=== Skill point acquisition strategy ===

The above implies that on average it is better to spread out the skill training over several colonists instead of having only one "expert", except for the artisan professions where it is usually good to have true experts in the colony.

For example, you need to acquire about 150,000 XP to make one colonist a "region-known master" (level 16); the same amount of XP would be enough to have ''three'' colonists at level 9 ("solid professional"). This avoids the risk of losing the only pawn that is capable of the task, and in most cases three level-9 workers are better than a single level-16 expert.

=== Decay ===

Furthermore, there is another mechanic in play called ''decay'': starting at skill level 10, XP points are continously drained away, at a faster and faster rate with higher skill levels. This means that all XP earned after 55,000 total XP is effectively worth ''zero'' (at the limit, that means in the very long term!), because it will disappear. It becomes more and more expensive to even keep a master at his or her current level, let alone have them improve further.

As an example, consider that roughly 3,500 XP is lost per day by a colonist at skill level 20. This usually means that the colonist would have to be applying that skill more or less ''continuously'' during her work hours in order to never lose level 20. In most cases, XP is gained by ''time spent'' on a skill, and not by effective work performed! Working faster does not make it easier or faster to gain XP, or compensate the decay loss.

So the higher you go, the harder it becomes to even maintain the current skill level. This is why actual "legendary masters" are very rare, usually only achievable by colonists who are autistically spamming a single ability (such as ''research'' or crafting artworks).

= List of skills =

Using or applying skills will give ''experience'' in the skill, and improve the character's proficiency. How much experience is gained depends on the ''passion'' for the skill. See [[Skills#Passion|passion]] below.

On this page, where experience gains are listed, an "Interested" passion with 100% skill gain is assumed. Note that this is not the "default" passion; "no passion" at 35% gain is far more common.

== Animals ==
The ''animals'' skill determines how well a character handles wild and domesticated animals, and increases the chance to go undetected while ''hunting'' wild animals.

Higher ''animals'' skill has the following benefits:
* Chance to tame a wild animal increases. Some animals can not even be attempted to be tamed if the ''animals'' skill is too low.
* Chance to successfully train a domesticated animal increases.
* Animal handling, such as ''milking'' and ''shearing'' certain livestock, becomes more efficient, with a lower chance of wasting products.
* Mastering an animal, as in having it follow you and obey your commands, becomes possible for more animal races. The more ''wild'' a race is, the higher the ''animals'' skill required to be assigned its master.
* It becomes less likely for a colonist hunting an animal to be detected by the animal, and the animal retaliating. It still requires ''shooting'' skill for the colonist to be able to kill the animal.

: ''For a list of skills that animals can learn, see the [[list of animal skills]].''

== Artistic ==

The ''artistic'' skill is the proficiency to create [[beauty|beautiful]] works of art at a [[sculptor's table]].

Higher skill makes the artist work faster, and increases the chance for a higher quality, in this case more beautiful, sculpture.

The beauty and market value of sculptures increases tremendously at the highest quality levels. Combined with the fact that trade partners pay more for works of art compared to other items, this makes ''artistic'' a useful skill outside of decorating the home base.

== Construction ==

The ''construction'' skill governs a wide variety of colonist tasks, centered around creating structures in the game world; it is an essential skill in any colony:
* Making all kinds of structures, like furniture, walls, power lines and spaceship parts. If a structure can be placed on the ground in form of a [[blueprint]], its construction is usually facilitated by this skill. Many structures require a minimum skill to make.
* Deconstructing existing structures back into raw materials.
* Building and tearing down roofs.
* Laying and removing flooring, like carpet, concrete and stone tiles.
* Smoothing rock walls and stone floors.

Higher ''construction'' skill will
* allow the construction of more difficult to build structures.
* increase construction speed; the base speed at 0 construction skill is 50%, this is increased additively by 15% for every skill level.
* reduce the chance of a construction effort to be "botched", which will result in some resources going to waste, and require the construction effort to be restarted (ie. all work is wasted). The base chance of success is 75%, increasing by about 3% per skill level to 100% at skill level 8.
* increase the chance to make higher quality items, for items that have a quality rating, such as furniture.

Construction outcomes are influenced by the [[manipulation]] and [[sight]] capacities of the colonist.

Experience is gained continuously while working on a construction project. At 100% work speed this seems to translate to roughly 82 experience per point of work required.

== Cooking ==
The cooking skill affects how long it takes to cook meals and butcher dead creatures, as well as the [[Food Poison Chance]] for the person who eats the meal. It also affects [[Butchery Speed]] and [[Butchery Efficiency]], how much meat is produced when butchering.

Cooking and butchering increase cooking skill. It is also trained by smaking [[smokeleaf joint]]s at a drug lab.

A cooking skill of at least 6 is required to make a [[fine meal]].<br/>
A cooking skill of at least 10 is required to make a [[lavish meal]].

* ''Each skill level increases cooking speed by 11% (additively).''
* ''Each skill level increases butchering speed by 10% (additively).''
* ''Each skill level increases meat and leather amount by 2.5% (additively), up to a maximum of 100%.''

These additive increases are relative to a base value; that means each increase corresponds to a fixed amount.

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Project
! Experience Given Per Task
|-
| Simple Meal
| 60
|-
| Fine Meal
| 110
|-
| Lavish meal
| 160
|-
| Pemmican
| 80
|}

== Crafting ==
The crafting skill affects the [[Menus#Smith|smith]], [[Menus#Tailor|tailor]] and [[Menus#Craft|craft]] work types.

The Crafter's skill is a driving factor in the [[quality]] of crafted [[clothing]] and [[Neolithic Weapons|neolithic weapons]].

The crafting skill determines the time it takes for a colonist to cut stone, extract metal from slag, and disassemble [[mechanoid]]s. It also determines the amount of resources produced.

''Each point decreases crafting time by 10%''

''Each point increases the resource yield by 2.5%''

== Medical ==
{{Main Article|Doctoring}}

The ''Medical'' skill level is the main factor for medical treatment quality and speed, surgery speed and surgery success chance.

Low quality treatment will increase the chance of [[infection]], and the likelihood of permanent health conditions such as ''scars'', in turn leading to chronic pain. Certain scars cause more than 10% pain, permanently weakening the ''consciousness'' of the patient, which reduces their work performance.

Medical ''surgery'', if not successful, can fail in minor or major ways, even causing the death of the patient. The success rate is not only determined by the ''medical'' skill, but also other character stats like ''manipulation'', ''eye sight'' and ''consciousness''. It is not advisable to let an incapacitated doctor perform surgery.

Higher grade [[medicine]] and medical equipment like [[hospital bed]]s and a [[sterile tile|sterile]] environment significantly boost the effectiveness of all medical treatments, independent of the skill level of the doctor.

Medicine can be trained very quickly by performing euthanasia on fast-breeding animals such as chickens. This costs 1 medicine per procedure, but only requires [[herbal medicine]]. The procedure can be scheduled in the respective animal's ''health'' tab, and an animal sleeping spot must be available to perform the euthanasia.

Performing ''surgery'' trains the ''medical'' skill. The amount of XP that is awarded only depends on the duration of the procedure (varying by procedure and ''medical operation speed'' of the surgeon).

== Melee ==
The melee skill determines a characters' chance to:
* Land a hit in melee (''see [[Melee Hit Chance]]'')
* Dodge a melee attack, when not aiming or firing a ranged weapon (''see [[Melee Dodge Chance]]'')
The tables below are post-processed chances for a healthy pawn.

{{col-begin|width=60}}
<div class="center" style="width:auto; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;">'''Chance to hit'''</div>
{| {{STDT| c_12 text-center}}
!Skill Level
!Standard
!Brawler
!Skill Level
!Standard
!Brawler
|-
!0
|50%
|62%
! -
| -
| -
|-
!1
|53%
|65%
!11
|81%
|85%
|-
!2
|56%
|68%
!12
|82%
|86%
|-
!3
|59%
|71%
!13
|83%
|87%
|-
!4
|62%
|74%
!14
|84%
|88%
|-
!5
|65%
|77%
!15
|85%
|89%
|-
!6
|68%
|80%
!16
|86%
|90%
|-
!7
|71%
|81%
!17
|87%
|90.3%
|-
!8
|74%
|82%
!18
|88%
|90.6%
|-
!9
|77%
|83%
!19
|89%
|90.9%
|-
!10
|80%
|84%
!20
|90%
|91.2%
|}

{{col-2|width=60}}
<div class="center" style="width:auto; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;">'''Chance to dodge'''</div>
{| {{STDT| c_12 text-center}}
!Skill Level
!Standard
!Nimble
!Skill Level
!Standard
!Nimble
|-
!0
|0%
|20%
! -
| -
| -
|-
!1
|0%
|22%
!11
|12%
|33%
|-
!2
|0%
|24%
!12
|14%
|33.5%
|-
!3
|0%
|26%
!13
|16%
|34%
|-
!4
|0%
|28%
!14
|18%
|34.5%
|-
!5
|0%
|30%
!15
|20%
|35%
|-
!6
|2%
|30.5%
!16
|22%
|35.5%
|-
!7
|4%
|31%
!17
|24%
|36%
|-
!8
|6%
|31.5%
!18
|26%
|36.5%
|-
!9
|8%
|32%
!19
|28%
|37%
|-
!10
|10%
|32.5%
!20
|30%
|37.5%
|}
{{col-end}}

== Mining ==
The mining skill determines how long it takes for a colonist to mine out each rock, and how much they can obtain from each mineral vein mined.

''Each point increases speed by 15%.''

{| {{STDT| c_12 text-center}}
!Skill Level
!Mining Yield
|-
!0
|60%
|-
!1
|70%
|-
!2
|80%
|-
!3
|85%
|-
!4
|90%
|-
!5
|92%
|-
!6
|95%
|-
!7
|98%
|-
!8 - 20
|100%
|-
|}

== Intellectual ==
This skill affects the speed at which [[research]] is completed.

''Each point increases speed by 15%''

== Plants ==
The plants skill affects how fast a colonist sows and harvests growing zones, hydroponics and flower pots, and how fast trees and other vegetation is cut down.

''Each point increases speed by 12%.''

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Project
! Experience Given Per Task
|-
| Harvesting
| 50
|}

Some plants require a minimum plants skill in order to plant them:
{{#ask: [[Category:Plants]] [[Minimum Required Growing Skill::>1]]
| ?Minimum Required Growing Skill = Required skill |+align=center
| sort=Minimum Required Growing Skill
| order=asc
}}

== Shooting ==
The shooting skill affects a character's [[Shooting Accuracy|accuracy]] with a ranged weapon.

The table below shows post-processed shooting accuracy per tile of distance for each skill level and trait combination, assuming the pawn is healthy:

{| {{STDT| c_12 text-center}}
!Skill Level
!Standard
!Careful Shooter
!Trigger-Happy
!Skill Level
!Standard
!Careful Shooter
!Trigger-Happy
|-
!0
|89%
|94.5%
|84%
! -
| -
| -
| -
|-
!1
|91%
|95%
|85%
!11
|97.25%
|98.333%
|95%
|-
!2
|93%
|95.5%
|86%
!12
|97.5%
|98.5%
|95.5%
|-
!3
|93.5%
|96%
|87%
!13
|97.75%
|98.666%
|96%
|-
!4
|94%
|96.5%
|88%
!14
|98%
|98.833%
|96.5%
|-
!5
|94.5%
|97%
|89%
!15
|98.167%
|99%
|97%
|-
!6
|95%
|97.25%
|91%
!16
|98.333%
|99.125%
|97.25%
|-
!7
|95.5%
|97.5%
|93%
!17
|98.5%
|99.25%
|97.5%
|-
!8
|96%
|97.75%
|93.5%
!18
|98.666%
|99.313%
|97.75%
|-
!9
|96.5%
|98%
|94%
!19
|98.833%
|99.375%
|98%
|-
!10
|97%
|98.167%
|94.5%
!20
|99%
|99.438%
|98.167%
|}

Note that shooting accuracy for the pawn is calculated '''per tile''', meaning that while a trivial increase (like 1% or so) in shooting accuracy may not matter up close, it can make a huge difference in long distances.

For example:
*A colonist with shooting accuracy of 99% has a base accuracy of 72.5% against a target 32 tiles away.
*With 98% accuracy, the base accuracy against the same target becomes only 52.4%.

The base accuracy at various distances are listed when you check the information of a pawn. This can show the actual shooting performance of a pawn, especially at long ranges.

== Social ==
The social skill affects the impact of social interactions on other characters' mood, the impact of gifts on faction relations, the recruitment chance for prisoners and trader prices.
A small amount of experience is gained every time two colonists have a social interaction with each other. Characters have a [[talking]] stat that somehow interacts with this skill

''Each point increases social interaction impact by 10%''

''Each point increases gift impact by 5%''

''Each point increases diplomatic power by 5%''

''Each point makes trade prices 1.5% better''

= Passion =

[[File:Skill acquirement.png|525px|thumb|right|This character is currently learning "construction". The "soft" XP cap of 4000 per day has been reached. This character's skill gains are further modified by the "Fast Learner" trait, and effectively also by the "Neurotic" trait that increases work speed. (The green arrow on the "construction" skill bar is added by the popular "TD Enhancement Pack', and not visible in the unmodified game.)]]

The learning speed in a skill depends on the ''passion'' for the skill. Passions are indicated by a flame icon next to the skill experience bar on the character's ''Bio'' tab.

Most commonly there is no ''passion'' for a skill, and the character learns this skill at 35% of the base rate.

There is absolutely no way to change a character's skill passions in the unmodified game.

There are colonist [[trait]]s that give global bonuses to skill learning: "Too smart" and "Fast Learner" both increase all skill acquirement by 75%. This is independent of the passions for the individual skills. Effects from these traits are not correctly explained in a skill's tooltip information.

''Once colonists have acquired 4000 XP in a skill, per day, further learning of this skill is sharply reduced to 20% of the usual rate.'' This is indicated when mousing over a skill bar in the ''Bio'' tab.

Skill gains from using a [[neurotrainer mech serum]] are influenced by ''passion''. This makes the item a lot more valuable when used by characters with a passion for the associated skill.

== Effect on [[mood]] ==

''Passion'' influences a character's [[mood]]. If the pawn is "interested in" or "burning for" learning a skill, this gives them a substantial mood boost for the duration of the activity.
* ''Interested'' gives +8 mood ("Minor passion for my work").
* ''Burning'' gives +14 mood ("Burning passion for my work").

In some cases this effect is not visible, if the activity is intermittent (such as hunting animals).

The significant mood boosts can be used to keep a pawn from heaving a ''mental break'' by putting them on a task they are passionate for.

== Degrees of ''passion'' ==

The three levels of passion are:

=== None ===
Skills with no flames; can be considered the default passion for a skill, and is the most common. Characters with no passion for a skill only gain experience at 35% of the standard rate.

=== Interested ===
[[File:PassionMinor.png|24px|left]] Skills with one flame. Characters that are ''interested'' in a skill will gain experience at the standard rate of 100%.{{clear}}

=== Burning ===
[[File:PassionMajor.png|24px|left]] Skills with two flames. Characters with a ''burning'' passion for a skill will gain experience at 150% of the standard rate.{{clear}}

= Experience Table =

Level 20 is the highest skill level achievable for a pawn.

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Level
! Name
! Total experience required
! Experience till next level
|-
| -
| Incapable
| -
| -
|-
| 0
| Barely heard of it
| 0
| 1000
|-
| 1
| Utter Beginner
| 1000
| 2000
|-
| 2
| Beginner
| 3000
| 3000
|-
| 3
| Basic Familiarity
| 6000
| 4000
|-
| 4
| Some Familiarity
| 10000
| 5000
|-
| 5
| Significant Familiarity
| 15000
| 6000
|-
| 6
| Capable Amateur
| 21000
| 7000
|-
| 7
| Weak Professional
| 28000
| 8000
|-
| 8
| Employable Professional
| 36000
| 9000
|-
| 9
| Solid Professional
| 45000
| 10000
|-
| 10
| Skilled Professional
| 55000
| 12000
|-
| 11
| Very skilled Professional
| 67000
| 14000
|-
| 12
| Expert
| 81000
| 16000
|-
| 13
| Strong Expert
| 97000
| 18000
|-
| 14
| Master
| 115000
| 20000
|-
| 15
| Strong Master
| 135000
| 22000
|-
| 16
| Region-Known Master
| 157000
| 24000
|-
| 17
| Region-Leading Master
| 181000
| 26000
|-
| 18
| Planet-Known Master
| 207000
| 28000
|-
| 19
| Planet-Leading Master
| 235000
| 30000
|-
| 20
| Legendary Master
| 265000
| 32000
|}

== Experience decay ==

Starting at skill level 10, the experience for a skill will decay automatically until dropping back to level 9. The rate of decay depends on the skill level and increases with level.

Experience decay is an automatic mechanism and is independent of which and how many skills are used – not using or frequently using a skill (or other, unrelated skills) has no effect on the rate of decay, which only depends on the current skill level.

The [[Traits|Great Memory]] trait halves the decay rate for a pawn.

[[Category:Characters]]

Skills

2019-10-17T04:11:32Z

Siggboy: /* Skill point acquisition strategy */

{| align=center
| {{Character_Properties_Nav}}
|}
----


{{TOCright}}
Every character in RimWorld has a set of '''skills'''; these skills govern their effectiveness in the relevant tasks. A character may be unable to undertake certain work types due to [[backstories|backstory]] elements, and as such, the relevant skills will be disabled entirely, and show " - " under skills on the Bio tab. Experience points are gained by performing a relevant task or may be boosted by using a [[neurotrainer]].

= Learning skills =
{{see also|Training}}

All skills are acquired and improved by performing their associated work types or tasks. Doing so will earn the character ''experience points'' per skill, which in turn will ''level up'' the skills. The resulting ''skill level'' then improves the performance in all associated tasks and types of work. Skills are levelled up individually, and there is no single "character level" as in many role playing games.

In some cases, special tactics can be employed to more effectively steer the skill training in the colony, especially during periods of low work in colony development. See the [[Training|main article]] on skill training for more information.

== Skills vs work types ==

Skills and work types (or "tasks") are two different, but related, concepts. In some cases, like "mine" (work type) and "mining" (skill), there is an almost perfect correspondence, but in many other cases there is not: the ''work types'' "tailor" and "smith", for example, are associated with the ''crafting skill''. Some tasks listed on the work tab do not even have an associated ''skill'' (eg. "haul", "clean" and "firefight").

The ''Work'' tab, where you assign tasks to colonists, indicates which skills are relevant for a given task (by mousing over a tick box). It also shows you if the colonist has a ''passion'' for those skills (with an icon in the tick box), and if a significant proficiency has already been acquired (by emphasizing the tick box border). All these aspects are important for deciding how to assign tasks and types of work.

In general, you want a colonist to perform tasks they are ''good at'' (it is productive for your colony), as well as tasks they are ''passionate for'' (have them improve the associated skill).

== Game mechanics related to skills and levels ==

Skill levelling in ''Rimworld'' is very similar to many role playing games: ''experience points'' are constantly earned, and the skill is ''levelled up'' when certain thresholds are reached.

Importantly, the effect of a skill improves ''by level'', but it costs more and more XP to gain another level in a skill. This means that '''skill training is more effective the lower the skill level is.'''

As an example, consider the influence of ''mining skill'' on ''mining speed'': 12% additional mining speed is granted (additively, and relative to a "base speed") by each skill level. However, each additional 12% costs more and more XP, which translates into more and more time spent mining. The same principle applies to many other skills, such as researching and the ''intellectual'' skill.

An exception can be made for the '''artisan''' skills: ''crafting'' (ie. smithing and tailoring), ''artistic'' and ''construction''. A high level in these skills allows creating items of exceptional quality (''excellent'' or better), and gives a good chance to create a ''legendary'' item when the pawn is ''inspired''. Items get disproportionately more valuable at high quality levels. This may compensate for the lost efficiency when training a master in a skill.

=== Skill point acquisition strategy ===

The above implies that on average it is better to spread out the skill training over several colonists instead of having only one "expert", except for the artisan professions where it is usually good to have true experts in the colony.

For example, you need to acquire about 150,000 XP to make one colonist a "region-known master" (level 16); the same amount of XP would be enough to have ''three'' colonists at level 9 ("solid professional"). This avoids the risk of losing the only pawn that is capable of the task, and in most cases three level-9 workers are better than a single level-16 expert.

=== Decay ===

Furthermore, there is another mechanic in play called ''decay'': starting at skill level 10, XP points are continously drained away, at a faster and faster rate with higher skill levels. This means that all XP earned after 55,000 total XP is effectively worth ''zero'' (at the limit, that means in the very long term!), because it will disappear. It becomes more and more expensive to even keep a master at his or her current level, let alone have them improve further.

As an example, consider that roughly 3,500 XP is lost per day by a colonist at skill level 20. This usually means that the colonist would have to be applying that skill more or less ''continuously'' during her work hours in order to never lose level 20. In most cases, XP is gained by ''time spent'' on a skill, and not by effective work performed! Working faster does not make it easier or faster to gain XP, or compensate the decay loss.

So the higher you go, the harder it becomes to even maintain the current skill level. This is why actual "legendary masters" are very rare, usually only achievable by colonists who are autistically spamming a single ability (such as ''research'' or crafting artworks).

= List of skills =

Using or applying skills will give ''experience'' in the skill, and improve the character's proficiency. How much experience is gained depends on the ''passion'' for the skill. See [[Skills#Passion|passion]] below.

On this page, where experience gains are listed, an "Interested" passion with 100% skill gain is assumed. Note that this is not the "default" passion; "no passion" at 35% gain is far more common.

== Animals ==
The ''animals'' skill determines how well a character handles wild and domesticated animals, and increases the chance to go undetected while ''hunting'' wild animals.

Higher ''animals'' skill has the following benefits:
* Chance to tame a wild animal increases. Some animals can not even be attempted to be tamed if the ''animals'' skill is too low.
* Chance to successfully train a domesticated animal increases.
* Animal handling, such as ''milking'' and ''shearing'' certain livestock, becomes more efficient, with a lower chance of wasting products.
* Mastering an animal, as in having it follow you and obey your commands, becomes possible for more animal races. The more ''wild'' a race is, the higher the ''animals'' skill required to be assigned its master.
* It becomes less likely for a colonist hunting an animal to be detected by the animal, and the animal retaliating. It still requires ''shooting'' skill for the colonist to be able to kill the animal.

: ''For a list of skills that animals can learn, see the [[list of animal skills]].''

== Artistic ==

The ''artistic'' skill is the proficiency to create [[beauty|beautiful]] works of art at a [[sculptor's table]].

Higher skill makes the artist work faster, and increases the chance for a higher quality, in this case more beautiful, sculpture.

The beauty and market value of sculptures increases tremendously at the highest quality levels. Combined with the fact that trade partners pay more for works of art compared to other items, this makes ''artistic'' a useful skill outside of decorating the home base.

== Construction ==

The ''construction'' skill governs a wide variety of colonist tasks, centered around creating structures in the game world; it is an essential skill in any colony:
* Making all kinds of structures, like furniture, walls, power lines and spaceship parts. If a structure can be placed on the ground in form of a [[blueprint]], its construction is usually facilitated by this skill. Many structures require a minimum skill to make.
* Deconstructing existing structures back into raw materials.
* Building and tearing down roofs.
* Laying and removing flooring, like carpet, concrete and stone tiles.
* Smoothing rock walls and stone floors.

Higher ''construction'' skill will
* allow the construction of more difficult to build structures.
* increase construction speed; the base speed at 0 construction skill is 50%, this is increased additively by 15% for every skill level.
* reduce the chance of a construction effort to be "botched", which will result in some resources going to waste, and require the construction effort to be restarted (ie. all work is wasted). The base chance of success is 75%, increasing by about 3% per skill level to 100% at skill level 8.
* increase the chance to make higher quality items, for items that have a quality rating, such as furniture.

Construction outcomes are influenced by the [[manipulation]] and [[sight]] capacities of the colonist.

Experience is gained continuously while working on a construction project. At 100% work speed this seems to translate to roughly 82 experience per point of work required.

== Cooking ==
The cooking skill affects how long it takes to cook meals and butcher dead creatures, as well as the [[Food Poison Chance]] for the person who eats the meal. It also affects [[Butchery Speed]] and [[Butchery Efficiency]], how much meat is produced when butchering.

Cooking and butchering increase cooking skill. It is also trained by smaking [[smokeleaf joint]]s at a drug lab.

A cooking skill of at least 6 is required to make a [[fine meal]].<br/>
A cooking skill of at least 10 is required to make a [[lavish meal]].

* ''Each skill level increases cooking speed by 11% (additively).''
* ''Each skill level increases butchering speed by 10% (additively).''
* ''Each skill level increases meat and leather amount by 2.5% (additively), up to a maximum of 100%.''

These additive increases are relative to a base value; that means each increase corresponds to a fixed amount.

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Project
! Experience Given Per Task
|-
| Simple Meal
| 60
|-
| Fine Meal
| 110
|-
| Lavish meal
| 160
|-
| Pemmican
| 80
|}

== Crafting ==
The crafting skill affects the [[Menus#Smith|smith]], [[Menus#Tailor|tailor]] and [[Menus#Craft|craft]] work types.

The Crafter's skill is a driving factor in the [[quality]] of crafted [[clothing]] and [[Neolithic Weapons|neolithic weapons]].

The crafting skill determines the time it takes for a colonist to cut stone, extract metal from slag, and disassemble [[mechanoid]]s. It also determines the amount of resources produced.

''Each point decreases crafting time by 10%''

''Each point increases the resource yield by 2.5%''

== Medical ==
{{Main Article|Doctoring}}

The ''Medical'' skill level is the main factor for medical treatment quality and speed, surgery speed and surgery success chance.

Low quality treatment will increase the chance of [[infection]], and the likelihood of permanent health conditions such as ''scars'', in turn leading to chronic pain. Certain scars cause more than 10% pain, permanently weakening the ''consciousness'' of the patient, which reduces their work performance.

Medical ''surgery'', if not successful, can fail in minor or major ways, even causing the death of the patient. The success rate is not only determined by the ''medical'' skill, but also other character stats like ''manipulation'', ''eye sight'' and ''consciousness''. It is not advisable to let an incapacitated doctor perform surgery.

Higher grade [[medicine]] and medical equipment like [[hospital bed]]s and a [[sterile tile|sterile]] environment significantly boost the effectiveness of all medical treatments, independent of the skill level of the doctor.

Medicine can be trained very quickly by performing euthanasia on fast-breeding animals such as chickens. This costs 1 medicine per procedure, but only requires [[herbal medicine]]. The procedure can be scheduled in the respective animal's ''health'' tab, and an animal sleeping spot must be available to perform the euthanasia.

Performing ''surgery'' trains the ''medical'' skill. The amount of XP that is awarded only depends on the duration of the procedure (varying by procedure and ''medical operation speed'' of the surgeon).

== Melee ==
The melee skill determines a characters' chance to:
* Land a hit in melee (''see [[Melee Hit Chance]]'')
* Dodge a melee attack, when not aiming or firing a ranged weapon (''see [[Melee Dodge Chance]]'')
The tables below are post-processed chances for a healthy pawn.

{{col-begin|width=60}}
<div class="center" style="width:auto; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;">'''Chance to hit'''</div>
{| {{STDT| c_12 text-center}}
!Skill Level
!Standard
!Brawler
!Skill Level
!Standard
!Brawler
|-
!0
|50%
|62%
! -
| -
| -
|-
!1
|53%
|65%
!11
|81%
|85%
|-
!2
|56%
|68%
!12
|82%
|86%
|-
!3
|59%
|71%
!13
|83%
|87%
|-
!4
|62%
|74%
!14
|84%
|88%
|-
!5
|65%
|77%
!15
|85%
|89%
|-
!6
|68%
|80%
!16
|86%
|90%
|-
!7
|71%
|81%
!17
|87%
|90.3%
|-
!8
|74%
|82%
!18
|88%
|90.6%
|-
!9
|77%
|83%
!19
|89%
|90.9%
|-
!10
|80%
|84%
!20
|90%
|91.2%
|}

{{col-2|width=60}}
<div class="center" style="width:auto; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;">'''Chance to dodge'''</div>
{| {{STDT| c_12 text-center}}
!Skill Level
!Standard
!Nimble
!Skill Level
!Standard
!Nimble
|-
!0
|0%
|20%
! -
| -
| -
|-
!1
|0%
|22%
!11
|12%
|33%
|-
!2
|0%
|24%
!12
|14%
|33.5%
|-
!3
|0%
|26%
!13
|16%
|34%
|-
!4
|0%
|28%
!14
|18%
|34.5%
|-
!5
|0%
|30%
!15
|20%
|35%
|-
!6
|2%
|30.5%
!16
|22%
|35.5%
|-
!7
|4%
|31%
!17
|24%
|36%
|-
!8
|6%
|31.5%
!18
|26%
|36.5%
|-
!9
|8%
|32%
!19
|28%
|37%
|-
!10
|10%
|32.5%
!20
|30%
|37.5%
|}
{{col-end}}

== Mining ==
The mining skill determines how long it takes for a colonist to mine out each rock, and how much they can obtain from each mineral vein mined.

''Each point increases speed by 15%.''

{| {{STDT| c_12 text-center}}
!Skill Level
!Mining Yield
|-
!0
|60%
|-
!1
|70%
|-
!2
|80%
|-
!3
|85%
|-
!4
|90%
|-
!5
|92%
|-
!6
|95%
|-
!7
|98%
|-
!8 - 20
|100%
|-
|}

== Intellectual ==
This skill affects the speed at which [[research]] is completed.

''Each point increases speed by 15%''

== Plants ==
The plants skill affects how fast a colonist sows and harvests growing zones, hydroponics and flower pots, and how fast trees and other vegetation is cut down.

''Each point increases speed by 12%.''

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Project
! Experience Given Per Task
|-
| Harvesting
| 50
|}

Some plants require a minimum plants skill in order to plant them:
{{#ask: [[Category:Plants]] [[Minimum Required Growing Skill::>1]]
| ?Minimum Required Growing Skill = Required skill |+align=center
| sort=Minimum Required Growing Skill
| order=asc
}}

== Shooting ==
The shooting skill affects a character's [[Shooting Accuracy|accuracy]] with a ranged weapon.

The table below shows post-processed shooting accuracy per tile of distance for each skill level and trait combination, assuming the pawn is healthy:

{| {{STDT| c_12 text-center}}
!Skill Level
!Standard
!Careful Shooter
!Trigger-Happy
!Skill Level
!Standard
!Careful Shooter
!Trigger-Happy
|-
!0
|89%
|94.5%
|84%
! -
| -
| -
| -
|-
!1
|91%
|95%
|85%
!11
|97.25%
|98.333%
|95%
|-
!2
|93%
|95.5%
|86%
!12
|97.5%
|98.5%
|95.5%
|-
!3
|93.5%
|96%
|87%
!13
|97.75%
|98.666%
|96%
|-
!4
|94%
|96.5%
|88%
!14
|98%
|98.833%
|96.5%
|-
!5
|94.5%
|97%
|89%
!15
|98.167%
|99%
|97%
|-
!6
|95%
|97.25%
|91%
!16
|98.333%
|99.125%
|97.25%
|-
!7
|95.5%
|97.5%
|93%
!17
|98.5%
|99.25%
|97.5%
|-
!8
|96%
|97.75%
|93.5%
!18
|98.666%
|99.313%
|97.75%
|-
!9
|96.5%
|98%
|94%
!19
|98.833%
|99.375%
|98%
|-
!10
|97%
|98.167%
|94.5%
!20
|99%
|99.438%
|98.167%
|}

Note that shooting accuracy for the pawn is calculated '''per tile''', meaning that while a trivial increase (like 1% or so) in shooting accuracy may not matter up close, it can make a huge difference in long distances.

For example:
*A colonist with shooting accuracy of 99% has a base accuracy of 72.5% against a target 32 tiles away.
*With 98% accuracy, the base accuracy against the same target becomes only 52.4%.

The base accuracy at various distances are listed when you check the information of a pawn. This can show the actual shooting performance of a pawn, especially at long ranges.

== Social ==
The social skill affects the impact of social interactions on other characters' mood, the impact of gifts on faction relations, the recruitment chance for prisoners and trader prices.
A small amount of experience is gained every time two colonists have a social interaction with each other. Characters have a [[talking]] stat that somehow interacts with this skill

''Each point increases social interaction impact by 10%''

''Each point increases gift impact by 5%''

''Each point increases diplomatic power by 5%''

''Each point makes trade prices 1.5% better''

= Passion =

[[File:Skill acquirement.png|525px|thumb|right|This character is currently learning "construction". The "soft" XP cap of 4000 per day has been reached. This character's skill gains are further modified by the "Fast Learner" trait, and effectively also by the "Neurotic" trait that increases work speed. (The green arrow on the "construction" skill bar is added by the popular "TD Enhancement Pack', and not visible in the unmodified game.)]]

How fast a character gains proficiency (experience points) in a skill depends on the ''passion'' for the skill. Passions are indicated by a flame icon next to the skill experience bar on the character's ''Bio'' tab.

Most commonly there is no ''passion'' for a skill, and the character learns this skill at 35% of the base rate.

There is absolutely no way to change a character's skill passions in the unmodified game.

There are colonist [[trait]]s that give global bonuses to skill learning: "Too smart" and "Fast Learner" both increase all skill acquirement by 75%. This is independent of the passions for the individual skills. Effects from these traits are not correctly explained in a skill's tooltip information.

''Once colonists have acquired 4000 XP in a skill, per day, further learning of this skill is sharply reduced to 20% of the usual rate.'' This is indicated when mousing over a skill bar in the ''Bio'' tab.

Skill gains from using a [[neurotrainer mech serum]] are influenced by ''passion''. This makes the item a lot more valuable when used by characters with a passion for the associated skill.

== Effect on [[mood]] ==

''Passion'' influences a character's [[mood]]. If the pawn is "interested in" or "burning for" learning a skill, this gives them a substantial mood boost for the duration of the activity.
* ''Interested'' gives +8 mood ("Minor passion for my work").
* ''Burning'' gives +14 mood ("Burning passion for my work").

In some cases this effect is not visible, if the activity is intermittent (such as hunting animals).

The significant mood boosts can be used to keep a pawn from heaving a ''mental break'' by putting them on a task they are passionate for.

== Degrees of ''passion'' ==

The three levels of passion are:

=== None ===
Skills with no flames; can be considered the default passion for a skill, and is the most common. Characters with no passion for a skill only gain experience at 35% of the standard rate.

=== Interested ===
[[File:PassionMinor.png|24px|left]] Skills with one flame. Characters that are ''interested'' in a skill will gain experience at the standard rate of 100%.{{clear}}

=== Burning ===
[[File:PassionMajor.png|24px|left]] Skills with two flames. Characters with a ''burning'' passion for a skill will gain experience at 150% of the standard rate.{{clear}}

= Experience Table =

Level 20 is the highest skill level achievable for a pawn.

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Level
! Name
! Total experience required
! Experience till next level
|-
| -
| Incapable
| -
| -
|-
| 0
| Barely heard of it
| 0
| 1000
|-
| 1
| Utter Beginner
| 1000
| 2000
|-
| 2
| Beginner
| 3000
| 3000
|-
| 3
| Basic Familiarity
| 6000
| 4000
|-
| 4
| Some Familiarity
| 10000
| 5000
|-
| 5
| Significant Familiarity
| 15000
| 6000
|-
| 6
| Capable Amateur
| 21000
| 7000
|-
| 7
| Weak Professional
| 28000
| 8000
|-
| 8
| Employable Professional
| 36000
| 9000
|-
| 9
| Solid Professional
| 45000
| 10000
|-
| 10
| Skilled Professional
| 55000
| 12000
|-
| 11
| Very skilled Professional
| 67000
| 14000
|-
| 12
| Expert
| 81000
| 16000
|-
| 13
| Strong Expert
| 97000
| 18000
|-
| 14
| Master
| 115000
| 20000
|-
| 15
| Strong Master
| 135000
| 22000
|-
| 16
| Region-Known Master
| 157000
| 24000
|-
| 17
| Region-Leading Master
| 181000
| 26000
|-
| 18
| Planet-Known Master
| 207000
| 28000
|-
| 19
| Planet-Leading Master
| 235000
| 30000
|-
| 20
| Legendary Master
| 265000
| 32000
|}

== Experience decay ==

Starting at skill level 10, the experience for a skill will decay automatically until dropping back to level 9. The rate of decay depends on the skill level and increases with level.

Experience decay is an automatic mechanism and is independent of which and how many skills are used – not using or frequently using a skill (or other, unrelated skills) has no effect on the rate of decay, which only depends on the current skill level.

The [[Traits|Great Memory]] trait halves the decay rate for a pawn.

[[Category:Characters]]

Skills

2019-10-17T04:10:09Z

Siggboy: /* Game mechanics related to skills and levels */

{| align=center
| {{Character_Properties_Nav}}
|}
----


{{TOCright}}
Every character in RimWorld has a set of '''skills'''; these skills govern their effectiveness in the relevant tasks. A character may be unable to undertake certain work types due to [[backstories|backstory]] elements, and as such, the relevant skills will be disabled entirely, and show " - " under skills on the Bio tab. Experience points are gained by performing a relevant task or may be boosted by using a [[neurotrainer]].

= Learning skills =
{{see also|Training}}

All skills are acquired and improved by performing their associated work types or tasks. Doing so will earn the character ''experience points'' per skill, which in turn will ''level up'' the skills. The resulting ''skill level'' then improves the performance in all associated tasks and types of work. Skills are levelled up individually, and there is no single "character level" as in many role playing games.

In some cases, special tactics can be employed to more effectively steer the skill training in the colony, especially during periods of low work in colony development. See the [[Training|main article]] on skill training for more information.

== Skills vs work types ==

Skills and work types (or "tasks") are two different, but related, concepts. In some cases, like "mine" (work type) and "mining" (skill), there is an almost perfect correspondence, but in many other cases there is not: the ''work types'' "tailor" and "smith", for example, are associated with the ''crafting skill''. Some tasks listed on the work tab do not even have an associated ''skill'' (eg. "haul", "clean" and "firefight").

The ''Work'' tab, where you assign tasks to colonists, indicates which skills are relevant for a given task (by mousing over a tick box). It also shows you if the colonist has a ''passion'' for those skills (with an icon in the tick box), and if a significant proficiency has already been acquired (by emphasizing the tick box border). All these aspects are important for deciding how to assign tasks and types of work.

In general, you want a colonist to perform tasks they are ''good at'' (it is productive for your colony), as well as tasks they are ''passionate for'' (have them improve the associated skill).

== Game mechanics related to skills and levels ==

Skill levelling in ''Rimworld'' is very similar to many role playing games: ''experience points'' are constantly earned, and the skill is ''levelled up'' when certain thresholds are reached.

Importantly, the effect of a skill improves ''by level'', but it costs more and more XP to gain another level in a skill. This means that '''skill training is more effective the lower the skill level is.'''

As an example, consider the influence of ''mining skill'' on ''mining speed'': 12% additional mining speed is granted (additively, and relative to a "base speed") by each skill level. However, each additional 12% costs more and more XP, which translates into more and more time spent mining. The same principle applies to many other skills, such as researching and the ''intellectual'' skill.

An exception can be made for the '''artisan''' skills: ''crafting'' (ie. smithing and tailoring), ''artistic'' and ''construction''. A high level in these skills allows creating items of exceptional quality (''excellent'' or better), and gives a good chance to create a ''legendary'' item when the pawn is ''inspired''. Items get disproportionately more valuable at high quality levels. This may compensate for the lost efficiency when training a master in a skill.

=== Skill point acquisition strategy ===

The above implies that on average it is better to spread out the skill training over several colonists instead of having only one "expert". You probably still want masters in certain skills, but investment in skill mastery always comes at the opportunity cost of some productivity loss.

For example, you need to acquire about 150,000 XP to make one colonist a "region-known master" (level 16); the same amount of XP would be enough to have ''three'' colonists at level 9 ("solid professional"). This avoids the risk of losing the only pawn that is capable of the task, and in most cases three level-9 workers are better than a single level-16 expert.

=== Decay ===

Furthermore, there is another mechanic in play called ''decay'': starting at skill level 10, XP points are continously drained away, at a faster and faster rate with higher skill levels. This means that all XP earned after 55,000 total XP is effectively worth ''zero'' (at the limit, that means in the very long term!), because it will disappear. It becomes more and more expensive to even keep a master at his or her current level, let alone have them improve further.

As an example, consider that roughly 3,500 XP is lost per day by a colonist at skill level 20. This usually means that the colonist would have to be applying that skill more or less ''continuously'' during her work hours in order to never lose level 20. In most cases, XP is gained by ''time spent'' on a skill, and not by effective work performed! Working faster does not make it easier or faster to gain XP, or compensate the decay loss.

So the higher you go, the harder it becomes to even maintain the current skill level. This is why actual "legendary masters" are very rare, usually only achievable by colonists who are autistically spamming a single ability (such as ''research'' or crafting artworks).

= List of skills =

Using or applying skills will give ''experience'' in the skill, and improve the character's proficiency. How much experience is gained depends on the ''passion'' for the skill. See [[Skills#Passion|passion]] below.

On this page, where experience gains are listed, an "Interested" passion with 100% skill gain is assumed. Note that this is not the "default" passion; "no passion" at 35% gain is far more common.

== Animals ==
The ''animals'' skill determines how well a character handles wild and domesticated animals, and increases the chance to go undetected while ''hunting'' wild animals.

Higher ''animals'' skill has the following benefits:
* Chance to tame a wild animal increases. Some animals can not even be attempted to be tamed if the ''animals'' skill is too low.
* Chance to successfully train a domesticated animal increases.
* Animal handling, such as ''milking'' and ''shearing'' certain livestock, becomes more efficient, with a lower chance of wasting products.
* Mastering an animal, as in having it follow you and obey your commands, becomes possible for more animal races. The more ''wild'' a race is, the higher the ''animals'' skill required to be assigned its master.
* It becomes less likely for a colonist hunting an animal to be detected by the animal, and the animal retaliating. It still requires ''shooting'' skill for the colonist to be able to kill the animal.

: ''For a list of skills that animals can learn, see the [[list of animal skills]].''

== Artistic ==

The ''artistic'' skill is the proficiency to create [[beauty|beautiful]] works of art at a [[sculptor's table]].

Higher skill makes the artist work faster, and increases the chance for a higher quality, in this case more beautiful, sculpture.

The beauty and market value of sculptures increases tremendously at the highest quality levels. Combined with the fact that trade partners pay more for works of art compared to other items, this makes ''artistic'' a useful skill outside of decorating the home base.

== Construction ==

The ''construction'' skill governs a wide variety of colonist tasks, centered around creating structures in the game world; it is an essential skill in any colony:
* Making all kinds of structures, like furniture, walls, power lines and spaceship parts. If a structure can be placed on the ground in form of a [[blueprint]], its construction is usually facilitated by this skill. Many structures require a minimum skill to make.
* Deconstructing existing structures back into raw materials.
* Building and tearing down roofs.
* Laying and removing flooring, like carpet, concrete and stone tiles.
* Smoothing rock walls and stone floors.

Higher ''construction'' skill will
* allow the construction of more difficult to build structures.
* increase construction speed; the base speed at 0 construction skill is 50%, this is increased additively by 15% for every skill level.
* reduce the chance of a construction effort to be "botched", which will result in some resources going to waste, and require the construction effort to be restarted (ie. all work is wasted). The base chance of success is 75%, increasing by about 3% per skill level to 100% at skill level 8.
* increase the chance to make higher quality items, for items that have a quality rating, such as furniture.

Construction outcomes are influenced by the [[manipulation]] and [[sight]] capacities of the colonist.

Experience is gained continuously while working on a construction project. At 100% work speed this seems to translate to roughly 82 experience per point of work required.

== Cooking ==
The cooking skill affects how long it takes to cook meals and butcher dead creatures, as well as the [[Food Poison Chance]] for the person who eats the meal. It also affects [[Butchery Speed]] and [[Butchery Efficiency]], how much meat is produced when butchering.

Cooking and butchering increase cooking skill. It is also trained by smaking [[smokeleaf joint]]s at a drug lab.

A cooking skill of at least 6 is required to make a [[fine meal]].<br/>
A cooking skill of at least 10 is required to make a [[lavish meal]].

* ''Each skill level increases cooking speed by 11% (additively).''
* ''Each skill level increases butchering speed by 10% (additively).''
* ''Each skill level increases meat and leather amount by 2.5% (additively), up to a maximum of 100%.''

These additive increases are relative to a base value; that means each increase corresponds to a fixed amount.

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Project
! Experience Given Per Task
|-
| Simple Meal
| 60
|-
| Fine Meal
| 110
|-
| Lavish meal
| 160
|-
| Pemmican
| 80
|}

== Crafting ==
The crafting skill affects the [[Menus#Smith|smith]], [[Menus#Tailor|tailor]] and [[Menus#Craft|craft]] work types.

The Crafter's skill is a driving factor in the [[quality]] of crafted [[clothing]] and [[Neolithic Weapons|neolithic weapons]].

The crafting skill determines the time it takes for a colonist to cut stone, extract metal from slag, and disassemble [[mechanoid]]s. It also determines the amount of resources produced.

''Each point decreases crafting time by 10%''

''Each point increases the resource yield by 2.5%''

== Medical ==
{{Main Article|Doctoring}}

The ''Medical'' skill level is the main factor for medical treatment quality and speed, surgery speed and surgery success chance.

Low quality treatment will increase the chance of [[infection]], and the likelihood of permanent health conditions such as ''scars'', in turn leading to chronic pain. Certain scars cause more than 10% pain, permanently weakening the ''consciousness'' of the patient, which reduces their work performance.

Medical ''surgery'', if not successful, can fail in minor or major ways, even causing the death of the patient. The success rate is not only determined by the ''medical'' skill, but also other character stats like ''manipulation'', ''eye sight'' and ''consciousness''. It is not advisable to let an incapacitated doctor perform surgery.

Higher grade [[medicine]] and medical equipment like [[hospital bed]]s and a [[sterile tile|sterile]] environment significantly boost the effectiveness of all medical treatments, independent of the skill level of the doctor.

Medicine can be trained very quickly by performing euthanasia on fast-breeding animals such as chickens. This costs 1 medicine per procedure, but only requires [[herbal medicine]]. The procedure can be scheduled in the respective animal's ''health'' tab, and an animal sleeping spot must be available to perform the euthanasia.

Performing ''surgery'' trains the ''medical'' skill. The amount of XP that is awarded only depends on the duration of the procedure (varying by procedure and ''medical operation speed'' of the surgeon).

== Melee ==
The melee skill determines a characters' chance to:
* Land a hit in melee (''see [[Melee Hit Chance]]'')
* Dodge a melee attack, when not aiming or firing a ranged weapon (''see [[Melee Dodge Chance]]'')
The tables below are post-processed chances for a healthy pawn.

{{col-begin|width=60}}
<div class="center" style="width:auto; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;">'''Chance to hit'''</div>
{| {{STDT| c_12 text-center}}
!Skill Level
!Standard
!Brawler
!Skill Level
!Standard
!Brawler
|-
!0
|50%
|62%
! -
| -
| -
|-
!1
|53%
|65%
!11
|81%
|85%
|-
!2
|56%
|68%
!12
|82%
|86%
|-
!3
|59%
|71%
!13
|83%
|87%
|-
!4
|62%
|74%
!14
|84%
|88%
|-
!5
|65%
|77%
!15
|85%
|89%
|-
!6
|68%
|80%
!16
|86%
|90%
|-
!7
|71%
|81%
!17
|87%
|90.3%
|-
!8
|74%
|82%
!18
|88%
|90.6%
|-
!9
|77%
|83%
!19
|89%
|90.9%
|-
!10
|80%
|84%
!20
|90%
|91.2%
|}

{{col-2|width=60}}
<div class="center" style="width:auto; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;">'''Chance to dodge'''</div>
{| {{STDT| c_12 text-center}}
!Skill Level
!Standard
!Nimble
!Skill Level
!Standard
!Nimble
|-
!0
|0%
|20%
! -
| -
| -
|-
!1
|0%
|22%
!11
|12%
|33%
|-
!2
|0%
|24%
!12
|14%
|33.5%
|-
!3
|0%
|26%
!13
|16%
|34%
|-
!4
|0%
|28%
!14
|18%
|34.5%
|-
!5
|0%
|30%
!15
|20%
|35%
|-
!6
|2%
|30.5%
!16
|22%
|35.5%
|-
!7
|4%
|31%
!17
|24%
|36%
|-
!8
|6%
|31.5%
!18
|26%
|36.5%
|-
!9
|8%
|32%
!19
|28%
|37%
|-
!10
|10%
|32.5%
!20
|30%
|37.5%
|}
{{col-end}}

== Mining ==
The mining skill determines how long it takes for a colonist to mine out each rock, and how much they can obtain from each mineral vein mined.

''Each point increases speed by 15%.''

{| {{STDT| c_12 text-center}}
!Skill Level
!Mining Yield
|-
!0
|60%
|-
!1
|70%
|-
!2
|80%
|-
!3
|85%
|-
!4
|90%
|-
!5
|92%
|-
!6
|95%
|-
!7
|98%
|-
!8 - 20
|100%
|-
|}

== Intellectual ==
This skill affects the speed at which [[research]] is completed.

''Each point increases speed by 15%''

== Plants ==
The plants skill affects how fast a colonist sows and harvests growing zones, hydroponics and flower pots, and how fast trees and other vegetation is cut down.

''Each point increases speed by 12%.''

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Project
! Experience Given Per Task
|-
| Harvesting
| 50
|}

Some plants require a minimum plants skill in order to plant them:
{{#ask: [[Category:Plants]] [[Minimum Required Growing Skill::>1]]
| ?Minimum Required Growing Skill = Required skill |+align=center
| sort=Minimum Required Growing Skill
| order=asc
}}

== Shooting ==
The shooting skill affects a character's [[Shooting Accuracy|accuracy]] with a ranged weapon.

The table below shows post-processed shooting accuracy per tile of distance for each skill level and trait combination, assuming the pawn is healthy:

{| {{STDT| c_12 text-center}}
!Skill Level
!Standard
!Careful Shooter
!Trigger-Happy
!Skill Level
!Standard
!Careful Shooter
!Trigger-Happy
|-
!0
|89%
|94.5%
|84%
! -
| -
| -
| -
|-
!1
|91%
|95%
|85%
!11
|97.25%
|98.333%
|95%
|-
!2
|93%
|95.5%
|86%
!12
|97.5%
|98.5%
|95.5%
|-
!3
|93.5%
|96%
|87%
!13
|97.75%
|98.666%
|96%
|-
!4
|94%
|96.5%
|88%
!14
|98%
|98.833%
|96.5%
|-
!5
|94.5%
|97%
|89%
!15
|98.167%
|99%
|97%
|-
!6
|95%
|97.25%
|91%
!16
|98.333%
|99.125%
|97.25%
|-
!7
|95.5%
|97.5%
|93%
!17
|98.5%
|99.25%
|97.5%
|-
!8
|96%
|97.75%
|93.5%
!18
|98.666%
|99.313%
|97.75%
|-
!9
|96.5%
|98%
|94%
!19
|98.833%
|99.375%
|98%
|-
!10
|97%
|98.167%
|94.5%
!20
|99%
|99.438%
|98.167%
|}

Note that shooting accuracy for the pawn is calculated '''per tile''', meaning that while a trivial increase (like 1% or so) in shooting accuracy may not matter up close, it can make a huge difference in long distances.

For example:
*A colonist with shooting accuracy of 99% has a base accuracy of 72.5% against a target 32 tiles away.
*With 98% accuracy, the base accuracy against the same target becomes only 52.4%.

The base accuracy at various distances are listed when you check the information of a pawn. This can show the actual shooting performance of a pawn, especially at long ranges.

== Social ==
The social skill affects the impact of social interactions on other characters' mood, the impact of gifts on faction relations, the recruitment chance for prisoners and trader prices.
A small amount of experience is gained every time two colonists have a social interaction with each other. Characters have a [[talking]] stat that somehow interacts with this skill

''Each point increases social interaction impact by 10%''

''Each point increases gift impact by 5%''

''Each point increases diplomatic power by 5%''

''Each point makes trade prices 1.5% better''

= Passion =

[[File:Skill acquirement.png|525px|thumb|right|This character is currently learning "construction". The "soft" XP cap of 4000 per day has been reached. This character's skill gains are further modified by the "Fast Learner" trait, and effectively also by the "Neurotic" trait that increases work speed. (The green arrow on the "construction" skill bar is added by the popular "TD Enhancement Pack', and not visible in the unmodified game.)]]

How fast a character gains proficiency (experience points) in a skill depends on the ''passion'' for the skill. Passions are indicated by a flame icon next to the skill experience bar on the character's ''Bio'' tab.

Most commonly there is no ''passion'' for a skill, and the character learns this skill at 35% of the base rate.

There is absolutely no way to change a character's skill passions in the unmodified game.

There are colonist [[trait]]s that give global bonuses to skill learning: "Too smart" and "Fast Learner" both increase all skill acquirement by 75%. This is independent of the passions for the individual skills. Effects from these traits are not correctly explained in a skill's tooltip information.

''Once colonists have acquired 4000 XP in a skill, per day, further learning of this skill is sharply reduced to 20% of the usual rate.'' This is indicated when mousing over a skill bar in the ''Bio'' tab.

Skill gains from using a [[neurotrainer mech serum]] are influenced by ''passion''. This makes the item a lot more valuable when used by characters with a passion for the associated skill.

== Effect on [[mood]] ==

''Passion'' influences a character's [[mood]]. If the pawn is "interested in" or "burning for" learning a skill, this gives them a substantial mood boost for the duration of the activity.
* ''Interested'' gives +8 mood ("Minor passion for my work").
* ''Burning'' gives +14 mood ("Burning passion for my work").

In some cases this effect is not visible, if the activity is intermittent (such as hunting animals).

The significant mood boosts can be used to keep a pawn from heaving a ''mental break'' by putting them on a task they are passionate for.

== Degrees of ''passion'' ==

The three levels of passion are:

=== None ===
Skills with no flames; can be considered the default passion for a skill, and is the most common. Characters with no passion for a skill only gain experience at 35% of the standard rate.

=== Interested ===
[[File:PassionMinor.png|24px|left]] Skills with one flame. Characters that are ''interested'' in a skill will gain experience at the standard rate of 100%.{{clear}}

=== Burning ===
[[File:PassionMajor.png|24px|left]] Skills with two flames. Characters with a ''burning'' passion for a skill will gain experience at 150% of the standard rate.{{clear}}

= Experience Table =

Level 20 is the highest skill level achievable for a pawn.

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Level
! Name
! Total experience required
! Experience till next level
|-
| -
| Incapable
| -
| -
|-
| 0
| Barely heard of it
| 0
| 1000
|-
| 1
| Utter Beginner
| 1000
| 2000
|-
| 2
| Beginner
| 3000
| 3000
|-
| 3
| Basic Familiarity
| 6000
| 4000
|-
| 4
| Some Familiarity
| 10000
| 5000
|-
| 5
| Significant Familiarity
| 15000
| 6000
|-
| 6
| Capable Amateur
| 21000
| 7000
|-
| 7
| Weak Professional
| 28000
| 8000
|-
| 8
| Employable Professional
| 36000
| 9000
|-
| 9
| Solid Professional
| 45000
| 10000
|-
| 10
| Skilled Professional
| 55000
| 12000
|-
| 11
| Very skilled Professional
| 67000
| 14000
|-
| 12
| Expert
| 81000
| 16000
|-
| 13
| Strong Expert
| 97000
| 18000
|-
| 14
| Master
| 115000
| 20000
|-
| 15
| Strong Master
| 135000
| 22000
|-
| 16
| Region-Known Master
| 157000
| 24000
|-
| 17
| Region-Leading Master
| 181000
| 26000
|-
| 18
| Planet-Known Master
| 207000
| 28000
|-
| 19
| Planet-Leading Master
| 235000
| 30000
|-
| 20
| Legendary Master
| 265000
| 32000
|}

== Experience decay ==

Starting at skill level 10, the experience for a skill will decay automatically until dropping back to level 9. The rate of decay depends on the skill level and increases with level.

Experience decay is an automatic mechanism and is independent of which and how many skills are used – not using or frequently using a skill (or other, unrelated skills) has no effect on the rate of decay, which only depends on the current skill level.

The [[Traits|Great Memory]] trait halves the decay rate for a pawn.

[[Category:Characters]]

Skills

2019-10-17T04:09:34Z

Siggboy: /* Game mechanics related to skills and levels */

{| align=center
| {{Character_Properties_Nav}}
|}
----


{{TOCright}}
Every character in RimWorld has a set of '''skills'''; these skills govern their effectiveness in the relevant tasks. A character may be unable to undertake certain work types due to [[backstories|backstory]] elements, and as such, the relevant skills will be disabled entirely, and show " - " under skills on the Bio tab. Experience points are gained by performing a relevant task or may be boosted by using a [[neurotrainer]].

= Learning skills =
{{see also|Training}}

All skills are acquired and improved by performing their associated work types or tasks. Doing so will earn the character ''experience points'' per skill, which in turn will ''level up'' the skills. The resulting ''skill level'' then improves the performance in all associated tasks and types of work. Skills are levelled up individually, and there is no single "character level" as in many role playing games.

In some cases, special tactics can be employed to more effectively steer the skill training in the colony, especially during periods of low work in colony development. See the [[Training|main article]] on skill training for more information.

== Skills vs work types ==

Skills and work types (or "tasks") are two different, but related, concepts. In some cases, like "mine" (work type) and "mining" (skill), there is an almost perfect correspondence, but in many other cases there is not: the ''work types'' "tailor" and "smith", for example, are associated with the ''crafting skill''. Some tasks listed on the work tab do not even have an associated ''skill'' (eg. "haul", "clean" and "firefight").

The ''Work'' tab, where you assign tasks to colonists, indicates which skills are relevant for a given task (by mousing over a tick box). It also shows you if the colonist has a ''passion'' for those skills (with an icon in the tick box), and if a significant proficiency has already been acquired (by emphasizing the tick box border). All these aspects are important for deciding how to assign tasks and types of work.

In general, you want a colonist to perform tasks they are ''good at'' (it is productive for your colony), as well as tasks they are ''passionate for'' (have them improve the associated skill).

== Game mechanics related to skills and levels ==

Skill levelling in ''Rimworld'' is very similar to many role playing games: ''experience points'' are constantly earned, and the skill is ''levelled up'' when certain thresholds are reached.

Importantly, the effect of a skill improves ''by level'', but it costs more and more XP to gain another level in a skill. This means that '''skill training is more effective the lower the skill level is.'''

As an example, consider the influence of ''mining skill'' on ''mining speed'': 12% additional mining speed is granted (additively, and relative to a "base speed") by each skill level. However, each additional 12% costs more and more XP, which translates into more and more time spent mining. The same principle applies to many other skills, such as researching and the ''intellectual'' skill.

An exception can be made for the '''artisan''' skills: crafting (ie. smithing and tailoring), artistic and construction. A high level in these skills allows creating items of exceptional quality (''excellent'' or better), and gives a good chance to create a ''legendary'' item when the pawn is ''inspired''. Items get disproportionately more valuable at high quality levels. This may compensate for the lost efficiency when training a master in a skill.

=== Skill point acquisition strategy ===

The above implies that on average it is better to spread out the skill training over several colonists instead of having only one "expert". You probably still want masters in certain skills, but investment in skill mastery always comes at the opportunity cost of some productivity loss.

For example, you need to acquire about 150,000 XP to make one colonist a "region-known master" (level 16); the same amount of XP would be enough to have ''three'' colonists at level 9 ("solid professional"). This avoids the risk of losing the only pawn that is capable of the task, and in most cases three level-9 workers are better than a single level-16 expert.

=== Decay ===

Furthermore, there is another mechanic in play called ''decay'': starting at skill level 10, XP points are continously drained away, at a faster and faster rate with higher skill levels. This means that all XP earned after 55,000 total XP is effectively worth ''zero'' (at the limit, that means in the very long term!), because it will disappear. It becomes more and more expensive to even keep a master at his or her current level, let alone have them improve further.

As an example, consider that roughly 3,500 XP is lost per day by a colonist at skill level 20. This usually means that the colonist would have to be applying that skill more or less ''continuously'' during her work hours in order to never lose level 20. In most cases, XP is gained by ''time spent'' on a skill, and not by effective work performed! Working faster does not make it easier or faster to gain XP, or compensate the decay loss.

So the higher you go, the harder it becomes to even maintain the current skill level. This is why actual "legendary masters" are very rare, usually only achievable by colonists who are autistically spamming a single ability (such as ''research'' or crafting artworks).

= List of skills =

Using or applying skills will give ''experience'' in the skill, and improve the character's proficiency. How much experience is gained depends on the ''passion'' for the skill. See [[Skills#Passion|passion]] below.

On this page, where experience gains are listed, an "Interested" passion with 100% skill gain is assumed. Note that this is not the "default" passion; "no passion" at 35% gain is far more common.

== Animals ==
The ''animals'' skill determines how well a character handles wild and domesticated animals, and increases the chance to go undetected while ''hunting'' wild animals.

Higher ''animals'' skill has the following benefits:
* Chance to tame a wild animal increases. Some animals can not even be attempted to be tamed if the ''animals'' skill is too low.
* Chance to successfully train a domesticated animal increases.
* Animal handling, such as ''milking'' and ''shearing'' certain livestock, becomes more efficient, with a lower chance of wasting products.
* Mastering an animal, as in having it follow you and obey your commands, becomes possible for more animal races. The more ''wild'' a race is, the higher the ''animals'' skill required to be assigned its master.
* It becomes less likely for a colonist hunting an animal to be detected by the animal, and the animal retaliating. It still requires ''shooting'' skill for the colonist to be able to kill the animal.

: ''For a list of skills that animals can learn, see the [[list of animal skills]].''

== Artistic ==

The ''artistic'' skill is the proficiency to create [[beauty|beautiful]] works of art at a [[sculptor's table]].

Higher skill makes the artist work faster, and increases the chance for a higher quality, in this case more beautiful, sculpture.

The beauty and market value of sculptures increases tremendously at the highest quality levels. Combined with the fact that trade partners pay more for works of art compared to other items, this makes ''artistic'' a useful skill outside of decorating the home base.

== Construction ==

The ''construction'' skill governs a wide variety of colonist tasks, centered around creating structures in the game world; it is an essential skill in any colony:
* Making all kinds of structures, like furniture, walls, power lines and spaceship parts. If a structure can be placed on the ground in form of a [[blueprint]], its construction is usually facilitated by this skill. Many structures require a minimum skill to make.
* Deconstructing existing structures back into raw materials.
* Building and tearing down roofs.
* Laying and removing flooring, like carpet, concrete and stone tiles.
* Smoothing rock walls and stone floors.

Higher ''construction'' skill will
* allow the construction of more difficult to build structures.
* increase construction speed; the base speed at 0 construction skill is 50%, this is increased additively by 15% for every skill level.
* reduce the chance of a construction effort to be "botched", which will result in some resources going to waste, and require the construction effort to be restarted (ie. all work is wasted). The base chance of success is 75%, increasing by about 3% per skill level to 100% at skill level 8.
* increase the chance to make higher quality items, for items that have a quality rating, such as furniture.

Construction outcomes are influenced by the [[manipulation]] and [[sight]] capacities of the colonist.

Experience is gained continuously while working on a construction project. At 100% work speed this seems to translate to roughly 82 experience per point of work required.

== Cooking ==
The cooking skill affects how long it takes to cook meals and butcher dead creatures, as well as the [[Food Poison Chance]] for the person who eats the meal. It also affects [[Butchery Speed]] and [[Butchery Efficiency]], how much meat is produced when butchering.

Cooking and butchering increase cooking skill. It is also trained by smaking [[smokeleaf joint]]s at a drug lab.

A cooking skill of at least 6 is required to make a [[fine meal]].<br/>
A cooking skill of at least 10 is required to make a [[lavish meal]].

* ''Each skill level increases cooking speed by 11% (additively).''
* ''Each skill level increases butchering speed by 10% (additively).''
* ''Each skill level increases meat and leather amount by 2.5% (additively), up to a maximum of 100%.''

These additive increases are relative to a base value; that means each increase corresponds to a fixed amount.

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Project
! Experience Given Per Task
|-
| Simple Meal
| 60
|-
| Fine Meal
| 110
|-
| Lavish meal
| 160
|-
| Pemmican
| 80
|}

== Crafting ==
The crafting skill affects the [[Menus#Smith|smith]], [[Menus#Tailor|tailor]] and [[Menus#Craft|craft]] work types.

The Crafter's skill is a driving factor in the [[quality]] of crafted [[clothing]] and [[Neolithic Weapons|neolithic weapons]].

The crafting skill determines the time it takes for a colonist to cut stone, extract metal from slag, and disassemble [[mechanoid]]s. It also determines the amount of resources produced.

''Each point decreases crafting time by 10%''

''Each point increases the resource yield by 2.5%''

== Medical ==
{{Main Article|Doctoring}}

The ''Medical'' skill level is the main factor for medical treatment quality and speed, surgery speed and surgery success chance.

Low quality treatment will increase the chance of [[infection]], and the likelihood of permanent health conditions such as ''scars'', in turn leading to chronic pain. Certain scars cause more than 10% pain, permanently weakening the ''consciousness'' of the patient, which reduces their work performance.

Medical ''surgery'', if not successful, can fail in minor or major ways, even causing the death of the patient. The success rate is not only determined by the ''medical'' skill, but also other character stats like ''manipulation'', ''eye sight'' and ''consciousness''. It is not advisable to let an incapacitated doctor perform surgery.

Higher grade [[medicine]] and medical equipment like [[hospital bed]]s and a [[sterile tile|sterile]] environment significantly boost the effectiveness of all medical treatments, independent of the skill level of the doctor.

Medicine can be trained very quickly by performing euthanasia on fast-breeding animals such as chickens. This costs 1 medicine per procedure, but only requires [[herbal medicine]]. The procedure can be scheduled in the respective animal's ''health'' tab, and an animal sleeping spot must be available to perform the euthanasia.

Performing ''surgery'' trains the ''medical'' skill. The amount of XP that is awarded only depends on the duration of the procedure (varying by procedure and ''medical operation speed'' of the surgeon).

== Melee ==
The melee skill determines a characters' chance to:
* Land a hit in melee (''see [[Melee Hit Chance]]'')
* Dodge a melee attack, when not aiming or firing a ranged weapon (''see [[Melee Dodge Chance]]'')
The tables below are post-processed chances for a healthy pawn.

{{col-begin|width=60}}
<div class="center" style="width:auto; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;">'''Chance to hit'''</div>
{| {{STDT| c_12 text-center}}
!Skill Level
!Standard
!Brawler
!Skill Level
!Standard
!Brawler
|-
!0
|50%
|62%
! -
| -
| -
|-
!1
|53%
|65%
!11
|81%
|85%
|-
!2
|56%
|68%
!12
|82%
|86%
|-
!3
|59%
|71%
!13
|83%
|87%
|-
!4
|62%
|74%
!14
|84%
|88%
|-
!5
|65%
|77%
!15
|85%
|89%
|-
!6
|68%
|80%
!16
|86%
|90%
|-
!7
|71%
|81%
!17
|87%
|90.3%
|-
!8
|74%
|82%
!18
|88%
|90.6%
|-
!9
|77%
|83%
!19
|89%
|90.9%
|-
!10
|80%
|84%
!20
|90%
|91.2%
|}

{{col-2|width=60}}
<div class="center" style="width:auto; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;">'''Chance to dodge'''</div>
{| {{STDT| c_12 text-center}}
!Skill Level
!Standard
!Nimble
!Skill Level
!Standard
!Nimble
|-
!0
|0%
|20%
! -
| -
| -
|-
!1
|0%
|22%
!11
|12%
|33%
|-
!2
|0%
|24%
!12
|14%
|33.5%
|-
!3
|0%
|26%
!13
|16%
|34%
|-
!4
|0%
|28%
!14
|18%
|34.5%
|-
!5
|0%
|30%
!15
|20%
|35%
|-
!6
|2%
|30.5%
!16
|22%
|35.5%
|-
!7
|4%
|31%
!17
|24%
|36%
|-
!8
|6%
|31.5%
!18
|26%
|36.5%
|-
!9
|8%
|32%
!19
|28%
|37%
|-
!10
|10%
|32.5%
!20
|30%
|37.5%
|}
{{col-end}}

== Mining ==
The mining skill determines how long it takes for a colonist to mine out each rock, and how much they can obtain from each mineral vein mined.

''Each point increases speed by 15%.''

{| {{STDT| c_12 text-center}}
!Skill Level
!Mining Yield
|-
!0
|60%
|-
!1
|70%
|-
!2
|80%
|-
!3
|85%
|-
!4
|90%
|-
!5
|92%
|-
!6
|95%
|-
!7
|98%
|-
!8 - 20
|100%
|-
|}

== Intellectual ==
This skill affects the speed at which [[research]] is completed.

''Each point increases speed by 15%''

== Plants ==
The plants skill affects how fast a colonist sows and harvests growing zones, hydroponics and flower pots, and how fast trees and other vegetation is cut down.

''Each point increases speed by 12%.''

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Project
! Experience Given Per Task
|-
| Harvesting
| 50
|}

Some plants require a minimum plants skill in order to plant them:
{{#ask: [[Category:Plants]] [[Minimum Required Growing Skill::>1]]
| ?Minimum Required Growing Skill = Required skill |+align=center
| sort=Minimum Required Growing Skill
| order=asc
}}

== Shooting ==
The shooting skill affects a character's [[Shooting Accuracy|accuracy]] with a ranged weapon.

The table below shows post-processed shooting accuracy per tile of distance for each skill level and trait combination, assuming the pawn is healthy:

{| {{STDT| c_12 text-center}}
!Skill Level
!Standard
!Careful Shooter
!Trigger-Happy
!Skill Level
!Standard
!Careful Shooter
!Trigger-Happy
|-
!0
|89%
|94.5%
|84%
! -
| -
| -
| -
|-
!1
|91%
|95%
|85%
!11
|97.25%
|98.333%
|95%
|-
!2
|93%
|95.5%
|86%
!12
|97.5%
|98.5%
|95.5%
|-
!3
|93.5%
|96%
|87%
!13
|97.75%
|98.666%
|96%
|-
!4
|94%
|96.5%
|88%
!14
|98%
|98.833%
|96.5%
|-
!5
|94.5%
|97%
|89%
!15
|98.167%
|99%
|97%
|-
!6
|95%
|97.25%
|91%
!16
|98.333%
|99.125%
|97.25%
|-
!7
|95.5%
|97.5%
|93%
!17
|98.5%
|99.25%
|97.5%
|-
!8
|96%
|97.75%
|93.5%
!18
|98.666%
|99.313%
|97.75%
|-
!9
|96.5%
|98%
|94%
!19
|98.833%
|99.375%
|98%
|-
!10
|97%
|98.167%
|94.5%
!20
|99%
|99.438%
|98.167%
|}

Note that shooting accuracy for the pawn is calculated '''per tile''', meaning that while a trivial increase (like 1% or so) in shooting accuracy may not matter up close, it can make a huge difference in long distances.

For example:
*A colonist with shooting accuracy of 99% has a base accuracy of 72.5% against a target 32 tiles away.
*With 98% accuracy, the base accuracy against the same target becomes only 52.4%.

The base accuracy at various distances are listed when you check the information of a pawn. This can show the actual shooting performance of a pawn, especially at long ranges.

== Social ==
The social skill affects the impact of social interactions on other characters' mood, the impact of gifts on faction relations, the recruitment chance for prisoners and trader prices.
A small amount of experience is gained every time two colonists have a social interaction with each other. Characters have a [[talking]] stat that somehow interacts with this skill

''Each point increases social interaction impact by 10%''

''Each point increases gift impact by 5%''

''Each point increases diplomatic power by 5%''

''Each point makes trade prices 1.5% better''

= Passion =

[[File:Skill acquirement.png|525px|thumb|right|This character is currently learning "construction". The "soft" XP cap of 4000 per day has been reached. This character's skill gains are further modified by the "Fast Learner" trait, and effectively also by the "Neurotic" trait that increases work speed. (The green arrow on the "construction" skill bar is added by the popular "TD Enhancement Pack', and not visible in the unmodified game.)]]

How fast a character gains proficiency (experience points) in a skill depends on the ''passion'' for the skill. Passions are indicated by a flame icon next to the skill experience bar on the character's ''Bio'' tab.

Most commonly there is no ''passion'' for a skill, and the character learns this skill at 35% of the base rate.

There is absolutely no way to change a character's skill passions in the unmodified game.

There are colonist [[trait]]s that give global bonuses to skill learning: "Too smart" and "Fast Learner" both increase all skill acquirement by 75%. This is independent of the passions for the individual skills. Effects from these traits are not correctly explained in a skill's tooltip information.

''Once colonists have acquired 4000 XP in a skill, per day, further learning of this skill is sharply reduced to 20% of the usual rate.'' This is indicated when mousing over a skill bar in the ''Bio'' tab.

Skill gains from using a [[neurotrainer mech serum]] are influenced by ''passion''. This makes the item a lot more valuable when used by characters with a passion for the associated skill.

== Effect on [[mood]] ==

''Passion'' influences a character's [[mood]]. If the pawn is "interested in" or "burning for" learning a skill, this gives them a substantial mood boost for the duration of the activity.
* ''Interested'' gives +8 mood ("Minor passion for my work").
* ''Burning'' gives +14 mood ("Burning passion for my work").

In some cases this effect is not visible, if the activity is intermittent (such as hunting animals).

The significant mood boosts can be used to keep a pawn from heaving a ''mental break'' by putting them on a task they are passionate for.

== Degrees of ''passion'' ==

The three levels of passion are:

=== None ===
Skills with no flames; can be considered the default passion for a skill, and is the most common. Characters with no passion for a skill only gain experience at 35% of the standard rate.

=== Interested ===
[[File:PassionMinor.png|24px|left]] Skills with one flame. Characters that are ''interested'' in a skill will gain experience at the standard rate of 100%.{{clear}}

=== Burning ===
[[File:PassionMajor.png|24px|left]] Skills with two flames. Characters with a ''burning'' passion for a skill will gain experience at 150% of the standard rate.{{clear}}

= Experience Table =

Level 20 is the highest skill level achievable for a pawn.

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Level
! Name
! Total experience required
! Experience till next level
|-
| -
| Incapable
| -
| -
|-
| 0
| Barely heard of it
| 0
| 1000
|-
| 1
| Utter Beginner
| 1000
| 2000
|-
| 2
| Beginner
| 3000
| 3000
|-
| 3
| Basic Familiarity
| 6000
| 4000
|-
| 4
| Some Familiarity
| 10000
| 5000
|-
| 5
| Significant Familiarity
| 15000
| 6000
|-
| 6
| Capable Amateur
| 21000
| 7000
|-
| 7
| Weak Professional
| 28000
| 8000
|-
| 8
| Employable Professional
| 36000
| 9000
|-
| 9
| Solid Professional
| 45000
| 10000
|-
| 10
| Skilled Professional
| 55000
| 12000
|-
| 11
| Very skilled Professional
| 67000
| 14000
|-
| 12
| Expert
| 81000
| 16000
|-
| 13
| Strong Expert
| 97000
| 18000
|-
| 14
| Master
| 115000
| 20000
|-
| 15
| Strong Master
| 135000
| 22000
|-
| 16
| Region-Known Master
| 157000
| 24000
|-
| 17
| Region-Leading Master
| 181000
| 26000
|-
| 18
| Planet-Known Master
| 207000
| 28000
|-
| 19
| Planet-Leading Master
| 235000
| 30000
|-
| 20
| Legendary Master
| 265000
| 32000
|}

== Experience decay ==

Starting at skill level 10, the experience for a skill will decay automatically until dropping back to level 9. The rate of decay depends on the skill level and increases with level.

Experience decay is an automatic mechanism and is independent of which and how many skills are used – not using or frequently using a skill (or other, unrelated skills) has no effect on the rate of decay, which only depends on the current skill level.

The [[Traits|Great Memory]] trait halves the decay rate for a pawn.

[[Category:Characters]]

Skills

2019-10-17T04:04:35Z

Siggboy: /* Skill point acquisition strategy */

{| align=center
| {{Character_Properties_Nav}}
|}
----


{{TOCright}}
Every character in RimWorld has a set of '''skills'''; these skills govern their effectiveness in the relevant tasks. A character may be unable to undertake certain work types due to [[backstories|backstory]] elements, and as such, the relevant skills will be disabled entirely, and show " - " under skills on the Bio tab. Experience points are gained by performing a relevant task or may be boosted by using a [[neurotrainer]].

= Learning skills =
{{see also|Training}}

All skills are acquired and improved by performing their associated work types or tasks. Doing so will earn the character ''experience points'' per skill, which in turn will ''level up'' the skills. The resulting ''skill level'' then improves the performance in all associated tasks and types of work. Skills are levelled up individually, and there is no single "character level" as in many role playing games.

In some cases, special tactics can be employed to more effectively steer the skill training in the colony, especially during periods of low work in colony development. See the [[Training|main article]] on skill training for more information.

== Skills vs work types ==

Skills and work types (or "tasks") are two different, but related, concepts. In some cases, like "mine" (work type) and "mining" (skill), there is an almost perfect correspondence, but in many other cases there is not: the ''work types'' "tailor" and "smith", for example, are associated with the ''crafting skill''. Some tasks listed on the work tab do not even have an associated ''skill'' (eg. "haul", "clean" and "firefight").

The ''Work'' tab, where you assign tasks to colonists, indicates which skills are relevant for a given task (by mousing over a tick box). It also shows you if the colonist has a ''passion'' for those skills (with an icon in the tick box), and if a significant proficiency has already been acquired (by emphasizing the tick box border). All these aspects are important for deciding how to assign tasks and types of work.

In general, you want a colonist to perform tasks they are ''good at'' (it is productive for your colony), as well as tasks they are ''passionate for'' (have them improve the associated skill).

== Game mechanics related to skills and levels ==

Skill levelling in ''Rimworld'' is very similar to many role playing games: ''experience points'' are constantly earned, and the skill is ''levelled up'' when certain thresholds are reached.

Importantly, the effect of a skill improves ''by level'', but it costs more and more XP to gain another level in a skill. This means that '''skill training is more effective the lower the skill level is.'''

As an example, consider the influence of ''mining skill'' on ''mining speed'': 12% additional mining speed is granted (additively, and relative to a "base speed") by each skill level. However, each additional 12% costs more and more XP, which translates into more and more time spent mining. The same principle applies to many other skills, such as researching and the ''intellectual'' skill.

=== Skill point acquisition strategy ===

The above implies that on average it is better to spread out the skill training over several colonists instead of having only one "expert". You probably still want masters in certain skills, but investment in skill mastery always comes at the opportunity cost of some productivity loss.

For example, you need to acquire about 150,000 XP to make one colonist a "region-known master" (level 16); the same amount of XP would be enough to have ''three'' colonists at level 9 ("solid professional"). This avoids the risk of losing the only pawn that is capable of the task, and in most cases three level-9 workers are better than a single level-16 expert.

=== Decay ===

Furthermore, there is another mechanic in play called ''decay'': starting at skill level 10, XP points are continously drained away, at a faster and faster rate with higher skill levels. This means that all XP earned after 55,000 total XP is effectively worth ''zero'' (at the limit, that means in the very long term!), because it will disappear. It becomes more and more expensive to even keep a master at his or her current level, let alone have them improve further.

As an example, consider that roughly 3,500 XP is lost per day by a colonist at skill level 20. This usually means that the colonist would have to be applying that skill more or less ''continuously'' during her work hours in order to never lose level 20. In most cases, XP is gained by ''time spent'' on a skill, and not by effective work performed! Working faster does not make it easier or faster to gain XP, or compensate the decay loss.

So the higher you go, the harder it becomes to even maintain the current skill level. This is why actual "legendary masters" are very rare, usually only achievable by colonists who are autistically spamming a single ability (such as ''research'' or crafting artworks).

= List of skills =

Using or applying skills will give ''experience'' in the skill, and improve the character's proficiency. How much experience is gained depends on the ''passion'' for the skill. See [[Skills#Passion|passion]] below.

On this page, where experience gains are listed, an "Interested" passion with 100% skill gain is assumed. Note that this is not the "default" passion; "no passion" at 35% gain is far more common.

== Animals ==
The ''animals'' skill determines how well a character handles wild and domesticated animals, and increases the chance to go undetected while ''hunting'' wild animals.

Higher ''animals'' skill has the following benefits:
* Chance to tame a wild animal increases. Some animals can not even be attempted to be tamed if the ''animals'' skill is too low.
* Chance to successfully train a domesticated animal increases.
* Animal handling, such as ''milking'' and ''shearing'' certain livestock, becomes more efficient, with a lower chance of wasting products.
* Mastering an animal, as in having it follow you and obey your commands, becomes possible for more animal races. The more ''wild'' a race is, the higher the ''animals'' skill required to be assigned its master.
* It becomes less likely for a colonist hunting an animal to be detected by the animal, and the animal retaliating. It still requires ''shooting'' skill for the colonist to be able to kill the animal.

: ''For a list of skills that animals can learn, see the [[list of animal skills]].''

== Artistic ==

The ''artistic'' skill is the proficiency to create [[beauty|beautiful]] works of art at a [[sculptor's table]].

Higher skill makes the artist work faster, and increases the chance for a higher quality, in this case more beautiful, sculpture.

The beauty and market value of sculptures increases tremendously at the highest quality levels. Combined with the fact that trade partners pay more for works of art compared to other items, this makes ''artistic'' a useful skill outside of decorating the home base.

== Construction ==

The ''construction'' skill governs a wide variety of colonist tasks, centered around creating structures in the game world; it is an essential skill in any colony:
* Making all kinds of structures, like furniture, walls, power lines and spaceship parts. If a structure can be placed on the ground in form of a [[blueprint]], its construction is usually facilitated by this skill. Many structures require a minimum skill to make.
* Deconstructing existing structures back into raw materials.
* Building and tearing down roofs.
* Laying and removing flooring, like carpet, concrete and stone tiles.
* Smoothing rock walls and stone floors.

Higher ''construction'' skill will
* allow the construction of more difficult to build structures.
* increase construction speed; the base speed at 0 construction skill is 50%, this is increased additively by 15% for every skill level.
* reduce the chance of a construction effort to be "botched", which will result in some resources going to waste, and require the construction effort to be restarted (ie. all work is wasted). The base chance of success is 75%, increasing by about 3% per skill level to 100% at skill level 8.
* increase the chance to make higher quality items, for items that have a quality rating, such as furniture.

Construction outcomes are influenced by the [[manipulation]] and [[sight]] capacities of the colonist.

Experience is gained continuously while working on a construction project. At 100% work speed this seems to translate to roughly 82 experience per point of work required.

== Cooking ==
The cooking skill affects how long it takes to cook meals and butcher dead creatures, as well as the [[Food Poison Chance]] for the person who eats the meal. It also affects [[Butchery Speed]] and [[Butchery Efficiency]], how much meat is produced when butchering.

Cooking and butchering increase cooking skill. It is also trained by smaking [[smokeleaf joint]]s at a drug lab.

A cooking skill of at least 6 is required to make a [[fine meal]].<br/>
A cooking skill of at least 10 is required to make a [[lavish meal]].

* ''Each skill level increases cooking speed by 11% (additively).''
* ''Each skill level increases butchering speed by 10% (additively).''
* ''Each skill level increases meat and leather amount by 2.5% (additively), up to a maximum of 100%.''

These additive increases are relative to a base value; that means each increase corresponds to a fixed amount.

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Project
! Experience Given Per Task
|-
| Simple Meal
| 60
|-
| Fine Meal
| 110
|-
| Lavish meal
| 160
|-
| Pemmican
| 80
|}

== Crafting ==
The crafting skill affects the [[Menus#Smith|smith]], [[Menus#Tailor|tailor]] and [[Menus#Craft|craft]] work types.

The Crafter's skill is a driving factor in the [[quality]] of crafted [[clothing]] and [[Neolithic Weapons|neolithic weapons]].

The crafting skill determines the time it takes for a colonist to cut stone, extract metal from slag, and disassemble [[mechanoid]]s. It also determines the amount of resources produced.

''Each point decreases crafting time by 10%''

''Each point increases the resource yield by 2.5%''

== Medical ==
{{Main Article|Doctoring}}

The ''Medical'' skill level is the main factor for medical treatment quality and speed, surgery speed and surgery success chance.

Low quality treatment will increase the chance of [[infection]], and the likelihood of permanent health conditions such as ''scars'', in turn leading to chronic pain. Certain scars cause more than 10% pain, permanently weakening the ''consciousness'' of the patient, which reduces their work performance.

Medical ''surgery'', if not successful, can fail in minor or major ways, even causing the death of the patient. The success rate is not only determined by the ''medical'' skill, but also other character stats like ''manipulation'', ''eye sight'' and ''consciousness''. It is not advisable to let an incapacitated doctor perform surgery.

Higher grade [[medicine]] and medical equipment like [[hospital bed]]s and a [[sterile tile|sterile]] environment significantly boost the effectiveness of all medical treatments, independent of the skill level of the doctor.

Medicine can be trained very quickly by performing euthanasia on fast-breeding animals such as chickens. This costs 1 medicine per procedure, but only requires [[herbal medicine]]. The procedure can be scheduled in the respective animal's ''health'' tab, and an animal sleeping spot must be available to perform the euthanasia.

Performing ''surgery'' trains the ''medical'' skill. The amount of XP that is awarded only depends on the duration of the procedure (varying by procedure and ''medical operation speed'' of the surgeon).

== Melee ==
The melee skill determines a characters' chance to:
* Land a hit in melee (''see [[Melee Hit Chance]]'')
* Dodge a melee attack, when not aiming or firing a ranged weapon (''see [[Melee Dodge Chance]]'')
The tables below are post-processed chances for a healthy pawn.

{{col-begin|width=60}}
<div class="center" style="width:auto; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;">'''Chance to hit'''</div>
{| {{STDT| c_12 text-center}}
!Skill Level
!Standard
!Brawler
!Skill Level
!Standard
!Brawler
|-
!0
|50%
|62%
! -
| -
| -
|-
!1
|53%
|65%
!11
|81%
|85%
|-
!2
|56%
|68%
!12
|82%
|86%
|-
!3
|59%
|71%
!13
|83%
|87%
|-
!4
|62%
|74%
!14
|84%
|88%
|-
!5
|65%
|77%
!15
|85%
|89%
|-
!6
|68%
|80%
!16
|86%
|90%
|-
!7
|71%
|81%
!17
|87%
|90.3%
|-
!8
|74%
|82%
!18
|88%
|90.6%
|-
!9
|77%
|83%
!19
|89%
|90.9%
|-
!10
|80%
|84%
!20
|90%
|91.2%
|}

{{col-2|width=60}}
<div class="center" style="width:auto; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;">'''Chance to dodge'''</div>
{| {{STDT| c_12 text-center}}
!Skill Level
!Standard
!Nimble
!Skill Level
!Standard
!Nimble
|-
!0
|0%
|20%
! -
| -
| -
|-
!1
|0%
|22%
!11
|12%
|33%
|-
!2
|0%
|24%
!12
|14%
|33.5%
|-
!3
|0%
|26%
!13
|16%
|34%
|-
!4
|0%
|28%
!14
|18%
|34.5%
|-
!5
|0%
|30%
!15
|20%
|35%
|-
!6
|2%
|30.5%
!16
|22%
|35.5%
|-
!7
|4%
|31%
!17
|24%
|36%
|-
!8
|6%
|31.5%
!18
|26%
|36.5%
|-
!9
|8%
|32%
!19
|28%
|37%
|-
!10
|10%
|32.5%
!20
|30%
|37.5%
|}
{{col-end}}

== Mining ==
The mining skill determines how long it takes for a colonist to mine out each rock, and how much they can obtain from each mineral vein mined.

''Each point increases speed by 15%.''

{| {{STDT| c_12 text-center}}
!Skill Level
!Mining Yield
|-
!0
|60%
|-
!1
|70%
|-
!2
|80%
|-
!3
|85%
|-
!4
|90%
|-
!5
|92%
|-
!6
|95%
|-
!7
|98%
|-
!8 - 20
|100%
|-
|}

== Intellectual ==
This skill affects the speed at which [[research]] is completed.

''Each point increases speed by 15%''

== Plants ==
The plants skill affects how fast a colonist sows and harvests growing zones, hydroponics and flower pots, and how fast trees and other vegetation is cut down.

''Each point increases speed by 12%.''

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Project
! Experience Given Per Task
|-
| Harvesting
| 50
|}

Some plants require a minimum plants skill in order to plant them:
{{#ask: [[Category:Plants]] [[Minimum Required Growing Skill::>1]]
| ?Minimum Required Growing Skill = Required skill |+align=center
| sort=Minimum Required Growing Skill
| order=asc
}}

== Shooting ==
The shooting skill affects a character's [[Shooting Accuracy|accuracy]] with a ranged weapon.

The table below shows post-processed shooting accuracy per tile of distance for each skill level and trait combination, assuming the pawn is healthy:

{| {{STDT| c_12 text-center}}
!Skill Level
!Standard
!Careful Shooter
!Trigger-Happy
!Skill Level
!Standard
!Careful Shooter
!Trigger-Happy
|-
!0
|89%
|94.5%
|84%
! -
| -
| -
| -
|-
!1
|91%
|95%
|85%
!11
|97.25%
|98.333%
|95%
|-
!2
|93%
|95.5%
|86%
!12
|97.5%
|98.5%
|95.5%
|-
!3
|93.5%
|96%
|87%
!13
|97.75%
|98.666%
|96%
|-
!4
|94%
|96.5%
|88%
!14
|98%
|98.833%
|96.5%
|-
!5
|94.5%
|97%
|89%
!15
|98.167%
|99%
|97%
|-
!6
|95%
|97.25%
|91%
!16
|98.333%
|99.125%
|97.25%
|-
!7
|95.5%
|97.5%
|93%
!17
|98.5%
|99.25%
|97.5%
|-
!8
|96%
|97.75%
|93.5%
!18
|98.666%
|99.313%
|97.75%
|-
!9
|96.5%
|98%
|94%
!19
|98.833%
|99.375%
|98%
|-
!10
|97%
|98.167%
|94.5%
!20
|99%
|99.438%
|98.167%
|}

Note that shooting accuracy for the pawn is calculated '''per tile''', meaning that while a trivial increase (like 1% or so) in shooting accuracy may not matter up close, it can make a huge difference in long distances.

For example:
*A colonist with shooting accuracy of 99% has a base accuracy of 72.5% against a target 32 tiles away.
*With 98% accuracy, the base accuracy against the same target becomes only 52.4%.

The base accuracy at various distances are listed when you check the information of a pawn. This can show the actual shooting performance of a pawn, especially at long ranges.

== Social ==
The social skill affects the impact of social interactions on other characters' mood, the impact of gifts on faction relations, the recruitment chance for prisoners and trader prices.
A small amount of experience is gained every time two colonists have a social interaction with each other. Characters have a [[talking]] stat that somehow interacts with this skill

''Each point increases social interaction impact by 10%''

''Each point increases gift impact by 5%''

''Each point increases diplomatic power by 5%''

''Each point makes trade prices 1.5% better''

= Passion =

[[File:Skill acquirement.png|525px|thumb|right|This character is currently learning "construction". The "soft" XP cap of 4000 per day has been reached. This character's skill gains are further modified by the "Fast Learner" trait, and effectively also by the "Neurotic" trait that increases work speed. (The green arrow on the "construction" skill bar is added by the popular "TD Enhancement Pack', and not visible in the unmodified game.)]]

How fast a character gains proficiency (experience points) in a skill depends on the ''passion'' for the skill. Passions are indicated by a flame icon next to the skill experience bar on the character's ''Bio'' tab.

Most commonly there is no ''passion'' for a skill, and the character learns this skill at 35% of the base rate.

There is absolutely no way to change a character's skill passions in the unmodified game.

There are colonist [[trait]]s that give global bonuses to skill learning: "Too smart" and "Fast Learner" both increase all skill acquirement by 75%. This is independent of the passions for the individual skills. Effects from these traits are not correctly explained in a skill's tooltip information.

''Once colonists have acquired 4000 XP in a skill, per day, further learning of this skill is sharply reduced to 20% of the usual rate.'' This is indicated when mousing over a skill bar in the ''Bio'' tab.

Skill gains from using a [[neurotrainer mech serum]] are influenced by ''passion''. This makes the item a lot more valuable when used by characters with a passion for the associated skill.

== Effect on [[mood]] ==

''Passion'' influences a character's [[mood]]. If the pawn is "interested in" or "burning for" learning a skill, this gives them a substantial mood boost for the duration of the activity.
* ''Interested'' gives +8 mood ("Minor passion for my work").
* ''Burning'' gives +14 mood ("Burning passion for my work").

In some cases this effect is not visible, if the activity is intermittent (such as hunting animals).

The significant mood boosts can be used to keep a pawn from heaving a ''mental break'' by putting them on a task they are passionate for.

== Degrees of ''passion'' ==

The three levels of passion are:

=== None ===
Skills with no flames; can be considered the default passion for a skill, and is the most common. Characters with no passion for a skill only gain experience at 35% of the standard rate.

=== Interested ===
[[File:PassionMinor.png|24px|left]] Skills with one flame. Characters that are ''interested'' in a skill will gain experience at the standard rate of 100%.{{clear}}

=== Burning ===
[[File:PassionMajor.png|24px|left]] Skills with two flames. Characters with a ''burning'' passion for a skill will gain experience at 150% of the standard rate.{{clear}}

= Experience Table =

Level 20 is the highest skill level achievable for a pawn.

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Level
! Name
! Total experience required
! Experience till next level
|-
| -
| Incapable
| -
| -
|-
| 0
| Barely heard of it
| 0
| 1000
|-
| 1
| Utter Beginner
| 1000
| 2000
|-
| 2
| Beginner
| 3000
| 3000
|-
| 3
| Basic Familiarity
| 6000
| 4000
|-
| 4
| Some Familiarity
| 10000
| 5000
|-
| 5
| Significant Familiarity
| 15000
| 6000
|-
| 6
| Capable Amateur
| 21000
| 7000
|-
| 7
| Weak Professional
| 28000
| 8000
|-
| 8
| Employable Professional
| 36000
| 9000
|-
| 9
| Solid Professional
| 45000
| 10000
|-
| 10
| Skilled Professional
| 55000
| 12000
|-
| 11
| Very skilled Professional
| 67000
| 14000
|-
| 12
| Expert
| 81000
| 16000
|-
| 13
| Strong Expert
| 97000
| 18000
|-
| 14
| Master
| 115000
| 20000
|-
| 15
| Strong Master
| 135000
| 22000
|-
| 16
| Region-Known Master
| 157000
| 24000
|-
| 17
| Region-Leading Master
| 181000
| 26000
|-
| 18
| Planet-Known Master
| 207000
| 28000
|-
| 19
| Planet-Leading Master
| 235000
| 30000
|-
| 20
| Legendary Master
| 265000
| 32000
|}

== Experience decay ==

Starting at skill level 10, the experience for a skill will decay automatically until dropping back to level 9. The rate of decay depends on the skill level and increases with level.

Experience decay is an automatic mechanism and is independent of which and how many skills are used – not using or frequently using a skill (or other, unrelated skills) has no effect on the rate of decay, which only depends on the current skill level.

The [[Traits|Great Memory]] trait halves the decay rate for a pawn.

[[Category:Characters]]

Nutrient paste dispenser

2019-10-17T01:41:03Z

Siggboy: /* Manually producing meals */

<onlyinclude>
{{infobox main|production|
|name = Nutrient paste dispenser
|image = Nutrient paste dispenser.png|Nutrient paste dispenser
|imagesize = 240px
|description = Synthesizes nutrient paste from organic feedstocks. It consumes less ingredients and time than any other meal production method - but nobody likes eating nutrient paste. Accepts raw food, but not rough plant matter like hay.
|type = Production
|type2 = Food
|placeable = Yes
|size = 3|4
|hp = 350
|power = - 200
|buy = {{icon|metal|90}} + {{icon|component|3}}
|sell = {{icon|metal|45}}}}
</onlyinclude>

{{info|The '''nutrient paste dispenser''' is an electrical device that converts [[raw food]] placed in an adjacent [[hopper]] into [[nutrient paste meal]]s; the machine accepts all food except [[hay]]. The meals are produced on demand, when a colonist or prisoner uses the machine. No work bills or tasks can be performed at the machine, and no skills are necessary to use it. Animals can not use the machine, but will eat the produced meals if they are fed to them by other means.}}

== Usage ==
The paste dispenser will be used automatically if it is available, accessible and powered up. Pawns will always prefer a more tasty food, and only use the dispenser if no better option is available. Colonists will access the dispenser in order to produce food to be fed to prisoners or patients (if no better food is available).

It is possible to trick a pawn into producing an arbitrary amount of meals (see below).

At least one [[hopper]] needs to be attached to the dispenser, and the hopper needs to be filled with sufficient raw food to produce at least one meal. All food except ''hay'' is usable by the machine, but only raw food can actually be delivered to the hoppers directly. Hoppers act like ''storage zones'', and are configured in the same way. Colonists will deliver food to the hopper as a hauling task, just like supplying storage zones with items.

'''Note 1:''' ''Unbutchered bodies will be consumed by the machine, and only a single meal will be produced. The body will disappear without trace''. If you build hoppers, eg. inside a freezer room, on top of an existing corpse, the corpse will be fed through the hopper into the paste dispenser. Make sure to clear any space for a new hopper if you do not want this to happen.

'''Note 2:''' Related to the above, the machine will consume ''any'' type of food (except hay), including all biological corpses as well as [[kibble]], if the food happens to lie on top of a hopper. It is possible to force food on top of a hopper by taking it to a pawn's inventory (form a temporary caravan), and then manually dropping it in front of the hopper (the hopper needs to be directly south of the pawn). This allows for reprocessing meals (removing any ingredient penalties), as well as producing meals out of kibble (which will not carry the usual kibble penalty). This can safely be considered an exploit of game mechanics, as it is probably not intended for the dispenser to even process these types of food at all.

The dispenser will process ''insect meat'' and ''human meat'' at the full nutritional value, but eating the produced meals will incur the same mood effects as if the ingredients were cooked (eg. ''Cooked cannibalism'' for a nutrient paste meal made from human meat).

The paste dispenser acts like a wall that will separate rooms. Usually one will put the rear end (where the hoppers are attached) inside a refrigerated zone, so the raw ingredients will not spoil. The length of the device even allows for refrigerated and non-refrigerated hoppers on the same machine.

If the front end of the machine is inside a prison cell, only prisoners will be allowed to use it, just like with food that is stored in the prison cell. This is indicated by the front of the machine turning from green too yellow, like beds do. If the front of the machine is yellow, it is reserved for prisoner use. If you want to feed nutrient paste to prisoners, but avoid building a dedicated paste dispenser for the prison room, you can use the manual production method described below, and then deliver the produced meals to the prisoners just like other food.

<gallery widths="300px" heights="300px" class="center" mode="nolines">
File:Nutrient paste dispenser no hopper.png|'''When you build a NPD, the game will notify a hopper is needed'''
File:Hopper storage cropped.png|'''Hopper storage menu to select ingredients'''
File:Nutrient paste dispenser with hopper.png|'''Hopper mouse indicator will turn from red to green for correct placement and colonists will pick NP meals from the dispenser'''
</gallery>

== Strategy ==
The nutrient paste dispenser is helpful, but not necessary for survival, unless the colony is in an extremely unforgiving environment, such as an ''ice sheet''.

It is ''by far'' the most efficient way to prepare raw food in the game, increasing the nutritional value of its raw inputs by 200%. The nutrient paste dispenser never causes food poisoning, and will always instantly produce food on demand, as long as raw ingredients are available.

Building a paste dispenser early on will speed up colony development substantially. This is because it not only makes a cook unnecessary, it also uses the raw food far more efficiently than cooking does. Therefore, far fewer work hours will be required to produce the raw food (from hunting animals or growing plants). Also, early colonies often struggle with ''food poisoning'', especially if no competent cook is available. This, too, is completely avoided if a dispenser is used exclusively.

However, consuming a nutrient paste meal gives your colonist an [[Thoughts#Ate awful meal|''“Ate awful meal”'']] bad thought, reducing mood by -4 (this is still better than the -7 mood [[Thoughts#Ate raw food|''"Ate raw food"'']] thought). Compared to preparing [[fine meal]]s for your colonists at all times, you will incur a net -9 mood penalty if you only serve nutrient paste; this is a substantial drawback of the dispenser. Especially at higher difficulties it might not be practical to use only nutrient paste for an entire campaign (this depends on how well colonist mood is managed in other areas).

In any case, having a paste dispenser as a backup food source is highly recommended for most colonies. Ensuring sufficient food supplies gets more and more difficult in a growing colony, and the food supply chain is easily interrupted. A paste dispenser helps tremendously in these situations, as it can be stocked with slow spoiling food, and the only event that always disables it is the ''Solar Flare''; it is therefore a very reliable food source.

The paste dispenser also makes it a lot easier to keep animals that need to be fed by the colonists (such as dogs and grazing animals off the growing season). Feeding animals with paste requires some occasional micro-management to create meal reserves, since animals can not trigger the dispenser themselves.

Be aware that converting human or insect meat to a nutrient paste meal does not mask its origins. Doing so results in all appropriate bad thoughts hitting at once.

== Manually producing meals ==
Using the paste dispenser is an automatic task that can not be explicitely triggered. It is still possible to make a pawn produce as many meals as you want, until the machine runs out of raw food to process.

You need at least one pawn to be hungry enough to demand a meal. This will happen at least once per day, per pawn.

Forcing the pawn to create meals exploits the fact that a pawn stops their current action when they are ''drafted''. We also need to keep the colonist away from any food, so they will be forced to keep producing new meals at the paste dispenser.

=== Method 1: using a special zone restriction (recommended) ===
The following method uses a 1-tile zone restriction that is placed in the middle of the dispenser. This is the easiest method for producing more than one stack of meals at a time. In detail:
# Create a new '''area''' that covers exactly 1 tile in the center of the main body of the nutrient paste dispenser (as shown in the screenshot). ''The exact location of this area matters'', in order for the pawn to be able to path to the paste dispenser.
# When one of your colonists (it does not matter which one) becomes hungry, and is about to eat a meal, '''pause''' the game and '''restrict''' the pawn to the area created in step one. You might also have to draft and undraft the colonist so he will stop the current action. '''The pawn will now be unable to do anything except produce meals at the paste dispenser''', due to the zone restriction he is now under. He will even be unable to grab meals that are right on top of him, including the ones he produces from the machine!
# Wait for the colonist to walk up to the paste dispenser and draw a meal from the machine. '''Pause''' the game again at this point.
# To start mass producing meals, simply '''draft''' and '''undraft''' the pawn as many times as desired. Each cycle will instantly procure another meal from the dispenser, using up some of the resources from the hoppers. The meal is not consumed by the colonist, because drafting him will make him drop the meal on the floor, where it will be out of reach (due to the zone restriction). You can hold down the ''draft'' hotkey to rapidly mass produce meals.
# When you are finished, simply undraft the pawn a final time and remove the zone restriction from him. Done.

The entire process will require no in-game time, since the game is paused all the way.

''Notes'':
* If you wait a little to long with pausing the game, after the pawn has produced a meal, they will move away from the dispenser and consume the meal (ignoring the zone restriction). This is not a problem: simply draft and undraft the pawn, they will drop the meal on the ground and you can resume again at step 3 above.
* Pawns may prefer to eat meals that are already made, and not use the paste dispenser in those situations, depending on several factors that are difficult to control. If you want to protect your bulk-produced meals from colonists, you have to forbid the stacks or exclude the colonists from the area they are stored in. Domesticated animals will not eat from forbidden stacks, so an exclusion zone has to be used to reserve the food for animals.
* Many pawns want to eat after getting up in the morning. This makes it easier to watch for hungry pawns if you plan to mass produce some meals.

<gallery widths="400px" heights="400px" mode="nolines">
File:Mass dispense (before).png|The pawn is restricted to a 1-by-1 tile wide area which is placed in the middle of the nutrient paste dispenser. The precise location of the zone is important. The pawn will now produce meals indefinitely when drafted and undrafted in front of the dispenser (while there is material on top of the hoppers).
File:Mass dispense (after).png|This is the state after all hoppers are depleted. The pawn is now surrounded by stacks of nutrient paste meals. He is still unable to eat any of them, due to the zone restriction (which can now be removed and the pawn undrafted). Note that none of the meal stacks are forbidden, because that is not necessary with this method.
</gallery>

Now you can have as many nutrient paste meals as your heart desires!
Enough to take with you on cold journeys!
Enough to make an emergency food stockpile!
Enough to use as animal fodder!

=== Method 2: manually forbidding stacks (casual use) ===
If you do not want to deal with zone restrictions, you proceed as in method 1, but then you have to '''forbid''' any new meal stacks that are created, before continuing to cycle the drafting. This method is a little inconvenient if you want to produce more than a single stack of meals, or if you repeat the process regularly (eg. to produce animal food).
<gallery widths="300px" heights="300px" mode="nolines">
File:Rimworld Nutrient Paste Start.jpg|The pawn has just grabbed a meal from the dispenser, and wants to eat it. The game is paused at this point. If you draft the pawn now, he will drop the meal on the floor.
File:Rimworld Nutrient Paste Middle.jpg|This is how it looks like after a couple of stacks have been produced, simply by drafting and undrafting the pawn. The game remains paused all the way. When a new stack appears, it has to be forbidden for the process to continue.
File:Rimworld Nutrient Paste End.jpg|Beyond 3 tiles, you do not even need to forbid stacks any more.
</gallery>
{{nav|production|wide}}

[[Category:Production]]
[[Category:Food]]

Nutrient paste meal

2019-10-17T01:13:15Z

Siggboy:

{{Define|Meal
| always haulable = true
| def name = MealNutrientPaste
| description = A synthetic mixture of protein, carbohydrates, and vitamins, amino acids and minerals. Everything the body needs, and absolutely disgusting.
| draw gui overlay = true
| graphic class = Graphic_Single
| graphic path = Things/Item/Meal/NutrientPaste
| label = nutrient paste meal
| parent name = MealRottable
| path cost = 15
| resource readout priority = Last
| selectable = true
| social properness matters = true
| stack limit = 10
| thing class = Meal
| ticker type = Rare
| eat effect = EatVegetarian
| ingested direct thought = AteNutrientPasteMeal
| max num to ingest at once = 1
| nutrition = 0.90
| sound eat = Meal_Eat
| taste = Awful
| joy offset = -0.04
| preferability = Awful
| use hit points = true
| deterioration rate base = 10
| flammability base = 1.0
| market value base = 15
| max hit points base = 50
| mass = 0.44
}}

A '''nutrient paste meal''' is produced from a [[nutrient paste dispenser]], using raw food ingredients worth 0.3 points of nutrition (ie. the raw nutrition is tripled). When consumed, it gives a -4 mood penalty ("[[Thoughts#Eating|Ate awful meal]]"). The meals are dispensed on demand, and no cooking skill is required.

Nutrient paste meals never cause [[Ailments#Food Poisoning|food poisoning]].

Both herbivorous and carnivorous animals will eat nutrient paste meals without penalty, ''no matter what the raw ingredients were''. This makes nutrient paste the most efficient animal food, but in practice this requires to manually [[Nutrient paste dispenser#Manually producing meals|trick a nutrient paste dispenser into producing food in bulk]] (which may be considered a mild exploit of game mechanics).

The mood penalty from eating the meal is offset by several substantial benefits:

* Nutrient paste is far more efficient than any other food type, at a 300% conversion rate from raw food to meals (''simple'' and ''fine'' meals only convert at 180%).
* It never causes [[Ailments#Food Poisoning|food poisoning]], while cooked meals always carry at least a small chance of food poisoning.
* No cooking is necessary, completely avoiding the otherwise required work force and infrastructure, as well as the need for a competent cook.

Stonecutter's table

2019-10-15T02:51:54Z

Siggboy: /* Usage */

<onlyinclude>
{{infobox main|production|
|name = Stonecutter's table
|image = TableStonecutter.png|Stonecutter's table
|imagesize = 192px
|description = A work table equipped to cut rough stone into usable blocks.
|type = Production
|type2 = Resources
|placeable = Yes
|rotateable = Yes
|size = 1|3
|hp = 180
|speed =
|time =
|yield =
|power =
|facility = tool cabinet
|buy = {{icon|buildingmat|105}}
|sell =
}}</onlyinclude>
{{Info|This table is used to cut [[rock chunk]]s into [[stone blocks]]. Stonecutting is a [[Skills#crafting|crafting]] task, but gives no experience points. Each rock chunk will make 20 stone blocks, and the crafting skill level of the pawn does not influence the yield. Stonecutter's tables are considered dirty, and have a [[Room stats#Cleanliness|cleanliness]] of -5.}}

A '''stonecutter's table''' can be made out of various materials.
{| {{STDT| sortable c_25 text-center}}
! Material !! Steel Cost !! Cost !! Hit Points !! Flammability (%) || Beauty
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Steel || 105 {{Icon Small|steel}} || - || 180 || 20 || 0
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Plasteel || 30 {{Icon Small|steel}} || 75 {{Icon Small|plasteel}} || 505 || 10 || 0
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Wood || 30 {{Icon Small|steel}} || 75 {{Icon Small|wood}} || 90 || 100 || 0
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Gold || 30 {{Icon Small|steel}} || 750 {{Icon Small|gold}} || 108 || 20 || 0
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Silver || 30 {{Icon Small|steel}} || 750 {{Icon Small|silver}} || 126 || 20 || 0
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Uranium || 30 {{Icon Small|steel}} || 75 {{Icon Small|uranium}} || 450 || 0 || 0
|}

== Usage ==
Work bills can be created at the stonecutter's table for each kind of rock chunk, as well as a special bill that will use any type of rock chunk available. In order to any of several types of stone block, it is easiest to create the universal work bill, and then select only the desired rock types from the list of allowed ingredients.

Chunks for the active work bills are hauled automatically from the entire map, even if they're not marked for hauling. This can be avoided by reducing the ingredient radius on the work bills. It is more efficient to create a dumping stockpile zone close to the work station, and adjust the ingredient radius accordingly. Especially when creating an infinite work bill, your pawns will eventually travel very far to gather the remaining rock chunks, unless the ingredient radius has been limited manually.

When setting up the work bills, keep in mind that the task count lists the amount of ''chunks'' that are cut, not the amount of stone blocks produced. So in order to produce 100 stone blocks, a bill of 5 work units has to be set up, each producing 20 stone blocks.

{{nav|production|wide}}
[[Category:Production]]
[[Category:Resources]]

Stonecutter's table

2019-10-15T02:50:19Z

Siggboy:

<onlyinclude>
{{infobox main|production|
|name = Stonecutter's table
|image = TableStonecutter.png|Stonecutter's table
|imagesize = 192px
|description = A work table equipped to cut rough stone into usable blocks.
|type = Production
|type2 = Resources
|placeable = Yes
|rotateable = Yes
|size = 1|3
|hp = 180
|speed =
|time =
|yield =
|power =
|facility = tool cabinet
|buy = {{icon|buildingmat|105}}
|sell =
}}</onlyinclude>
{{Info|This table is used to cut [[rock chunk]]s into [[stone blocks]]. Stonecutting is a [[Skills#crafting|crafting]] task, but gives no experience points. Each rock chunk will make 20 stone blocks, and the crafting skill level of the pawn does not influence the yield. Stonecutter's tables are considered dirty, and have a [[Room stats#Cleanliness|cleanliness]] of -5.}}

A '''stonecutter's table''' can be made out of various materials.
{| {{STDT| sortable c_25 text-center}}
! Material !! Steel Cost !! Cost !! Hit Points !! Flammability (%) || Beauty
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Steel || 105 {{Icon Small|steel}} || - || 180 || 20 || 0
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Plasteel || 30 {{Icon Small|steel}} || 75 {{Icon Small|plasteel}} || 505 || 10 || 0
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Wood || 30 {{Icon Small|steel}} || 75 {{Icon Small|wood}} || 90 || 100 || 0
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Gold || 30 {{Icon Small|steel}} || 750 {{Icon Small|gold}} || 108 || 20 || 0
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Silver || 30 {{Icon Small|steel}} || 750 {{Icon Small|silver}} || 126 || 20 || 0
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Uranium || 30 {{Icon Small|steel}} || 75 {{Icon Small|uranium}} || 450 || 0 || 0
|}

== Usage ==
Work bills can be created at the stonecutter's table for each kind of rock chunk, as well as a special bill that will use any type of rock chunk available. In order to any of several types of stone block, it is easiest to create the universal work bill, and then select only the desired rock types from the list of allowed ingredients.

Chunks for the active work bills are hauled automatically from the entire map, even if they're not marked for hauling. This can be avoided by reducing the ingredient radius on the work bills. It is more efficient to create a dumping stockpile zone close to the work station, and adjust the ingredient radius accordingly.

When setting up the work bills, keep in mind that the task count lists the amount of ''chunks'' that are cut, not the amount of stone blocks produced. So in order to produce 100 stone blocks, a bill of 5 work units has to be set up, each producing 20 stone blocks.

{{nav|production|wide}}
[[Category:Production]]
[[Category:Resources]]

Stonecutter's table

2019-10-15T02:49:07Z

Siggboy: /* Usage */

<onlyinclude>
{{infobox main|production|
|name = Stonecutter's table
|image = TableStonecutter.png|Stonecutter's table
|imagesize = 192px
|description = A work table equipped to cut rough stone into usable blocks.
|type = Production
|type2 = Resources
|placeable = Yes
|rotateable = Yes
|size = 1|3
|hp = 180
|speed =
|time =
|yield =
|power =
|facility = tool cabinet
|buy = {{icon|buildingmat|105}}
|sell =
}}</onlyinclude>
{{Info|This table is used to cut [[rock chunk]]s into [[stone blocks]]. Stonecutting is a [[Skills#crafting|crafting]] task, but gives no experience points. Each rock chunk will make 20 stone blocks, and the crafting skill level of the pawn does not influence the yield. Stonecutter's tables are considered dirty, and have a [[Room stats#Cleanliness|cleanliness]] of -5.}}

== Usage ==
Work bills can be created at the stonecutter's table for each kind of rock chunk, as well as a special bill that will use any type of rock chunk available. In order to any of several types of stone block, it is easiest to create the universal work bill, and then select only the desired rock types from the list of allowed ingredients.

Chunks for the active work bills are hauled automatically from the entire map, even if they're not marked for hauling. This can be avoided by reducing the ingredient radius on the work bills. It is more efficient to create a dumping stockpile zone close to the work station, and adjust the ingredient radius accordingly.

When setting up the work bills, keep in mind that the task count lists the amount of ''chunks'' that are cut, not the amount of stone blocks produced. So in order to produce 100 stone blocks, a bill of 5 work units has to be set up, each producing 20 stone blocks.

A '''stonecutter's table''' can be made out of various materials.
{| {{STDT| sortable c_25 text-center}}
! Material !! Steel Cost !! Cost !! Hit Points !! Flammability (%) || Beauty
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Steel || 105 {{Icon Small|steel}} || - || 180 || 20 || 0
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Plasteel || 30 {{Icon Small|steel}} || 75 {{Icon Small|plasteel}} || 505 || 10 || 0
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Wood || 30 {{Icon Small|steel}} || 75 {{Icon Small|wood}} || 90 || 100 || 0
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Gold || 30 {{Icon Small|steel}} || 750 {{Icon Small|gold}} || 108 || 20 || 0
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Silver || 30 {{Icon Small|steel}} || 750 {{Icon Small|silver}} || 126 || 20 || 0
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Uranium || 30 {{Icon Small|steel}} || 75 {{Icon Small|uranium}} || 450 || 0 || 0
|}

{{nav|production|wide}}
[[Category:Production]]
[[Category:Resources]]

Stonecutter's table

2019-10-15T02:48:11Z

Siggboy: /* Usage */

<onlyinclude>
{{infobox main|production|
|name = Stonecutter's table
|image = TableStonecutter.png|Stonecutter's table
|imagesize = 192px
|description = A work table equipped to cut rough stone into usable blocks.
|type = Production
|type2 = Resources
|placeable = Yes
|rotateable = Yes
|size = 1|3
|hp = 180
|speed =
|time =
|yield =
|power =
|facility = tool cabinet
|buy = {{icon|buildingmat|105}}
|sell =
}}</onlyinclude>
{{Info|This table is used to cut [[rock chunk]]s into [[stone blocks]]. Stonecutting is a [[Skills#crafting|crafting]] task, but gives no experience points. Each rock chunk will make 20 stone blocks, and the crafting skill level of the pawn does not influence the yield. Stonecutter's tables are considered dirty, and have a [[Room stats#Cleanliness|cleanliness]] of -5.}}

== Usage ==
Work bills can be created at the stonecutter's table for each kind of rock chunk, as well as a special bill that will use any type of rock chunk available. In order to any of several types of stone block, it is easiest to create the universal work bill, and then select only the desired rock types from the list of allowed ingredients.

Chunks are hauled automatically from the entire map, even if they're not marked for hauling. This can be avoided by reducing the ingredient radius on the work bills. It is more efficient to create a dumping stockpile zone close to the work station, and adjust the ingredient radius accordingly.

When setting up the work bills, keep in mind that the task count lists the amount of ''chunks'' that are cut, not the amount of stone blocks produced. So in order to produce 100 stone blocks, a bill of 5 work units has to be set up, each producing 20 stone blocks.

A '''stonecutter's table''' can be made out of various materials.
{| {{STDT| sortable c_25 text-center}}
! Material !! Steel Cost !! Cost !! Hit Points !! Flammability (%) || Beauty
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Steel || 105 {{Icon Small|steel}} || - || 180 || 20 || 0
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Plasteel || 30 {{Icon Small|steel}} || 75 {{Icon Small|plasteel}} || 505 || 10 || 0
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Wood || 30 {{Icon Small|steel}} || 75 {{Icon Small|wood}} || 90 || 100 || 0
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Gold || 30 {{Icon Small|steel}} || 750 {{Icon Small|gold}} || 108 || 20 || 0
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Silver || 30 {{Icon Small|steel}} || 750 {{Icon Small|silver}} || 126 || 20 || 0
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Uranium || 30 {{Icon Small|steel}} || 75 {{Icon Small|uranium}} || 450 || 0 || 0
|}

{{nav|production|wide}}
[[Category:Production]]
[[Category:Resources]]

Stonecutter's table

2019-10-15T02:43:56Z

Siggboy:

<onlyinclude>
{{infobox main|production|
|name = Stonecutter's table
|image = TableStonecutter.png|Stonecutter's table
|imagesize = 192px
|description = A work table equipped to cut rough stone into usable blocks.
|type = Production
|type2 = Resources
|placeable = Yes
|rotateable = Yes
|size = 1|3
|hp = 180
|speed =
|time =
|yield =
|power =
|facility = tool cabinet
|buy = {{icon|buildingmat|105}}
|sell =
}}</onlyinclude>
{{Info|This table is used to cut [[rock chunk]]s into [[stone blocks]]. Stonecutting is a [[Skills#crafting|crafting]] task, but gives no experience points. Each rock chunk will make 20 stone blocks, and the crafting skill level of the pawn does not influence the yield. Stonecutter's tables are considered dirty, and have a [[Room stats#Cleanliness|cleanliness]] of -5.}}

== Usage ==
Work bills can be created at the stonecutter's table for each kind of rock chunk, as well as a special bill that will use any type of rock chunk available. In order to produce several types of stone block, and exclude the rest, it is easiest to create the universal work bill, and then select only the desired rock chunk from the list of allowed ingredients.

Chunks are hauled automatically from the entire map, even if they're not marked for hauling. This can be avoided by reducing the ingredient radius on the work bills. It is more efficient to create a dumping stockpile zone close to the work station, and adjust the ingredient radius accordingly.

When setting up the work bills, keep in mind that the task count lists the amount of ''chunks'' that are cut, not the amount of stone blocks produced. So in order to produce 100 stone blocks, a bill of 5 work units has to be set up, each producing 20 stone blocks.

A '''stonecutter's table''' can be made out of various materials.
{| {{STDT| sortable c_25 text-center}}
! Material !! Steel Cost !! Cost !! Hit Points !! Flammability (%) || Beauty
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Steel || 105 {{Icon Small|steel}} || - || 180 || 20 || 0
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Plasteel || 30 {{Icon Small|steel}} || 75 {{Icon Small|plasteel}} || 505 || 10 || 0
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Wood || 30 {{Icon Small|steel}} || 75 {{Icon Small|wood}} || 90 || 100 || 0
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Gold || 30 {{Icon Small|steel}} || 750 {{Icon Small|gold}} || 108 || 20 || 0
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Silver || 30 {{Icon Small|steel}} || 750 {{Icon Small|silver}} || 126 || 20 || 0
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Uranium || 30 {{Icon Small|steel}} || 75 {{Icon Small|uranium}} || 450 || 0 || 0
|}

{{nav|production|wide}}
[[Category:Production]]
[[Category:Resources]]

Stonecutter's table

2019-10-15T02:43:11Z

Siggboy:

<onlyinclude>
{{infobox main|production|
|name = Stonecutter's table
|image = TableStonecutter.png|Stonecutter's table
|imagesize = 192px
|description = A work table equipped to cut rough stone into usable blocks.
|type = Production
|type2 = Resources
|placeable = Yes
|rotateable = Yes
|size = 1|3
|hp = 180
|speed =
|time =
|yield =
|power =
|facility = tool cabinet
|buy = {{icon|buildingmat|105}}
|sell =
}}</onlyinclude>
{{Info|This table is used to cut [[rock chunk]]s into [[stone blocks]]. Stonecutting is a [[crafting]] task, but gives no experience points. Each rock chunk will make 20 stone blocks, and the crafting skill level of the pawn does not influence the yield. Stonecutter's tables are considered dirty, and have a [[Room stats#Cleanliness|cleanliness]] of -5.}}

== Usage ==
Work bills can be created at the stonecutter's table for each kind of rock chunk, as well as a special bill that will use any type of rock chunk available. In order to produce several types of stone block, and exclude the rest, it is easiest to create the universal work bill, and then select only the desired rock chunk from the list of allowed ingredients.

Chunks are hauled automatically from the entire map, even if they're not marked for hauling. This can be avoided by reducing the ingredient radius on the work bills. It is more efficient to create a dumping stockpile zone close to the work station, and adjust the ingredient radius accordingly.

When setting up the work bills, keep in mind that the task count lists the amount of ''chunks'' that are cut, not the amount of stone blocks produced. So in order to produce 100 stone blocks, a bill of 5 work units has to be set up, each producing 20 stone blocks.

A '''stonecutter's table''' can be made out of various materials.
{| {{STDT| sortable c_25 text-center}}
! Material !! Steel Cost !! Cost !! Hit Points !! Flammability (%) || Beauty
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Steel || 105 {{Icon Small|steel}} || - || 180 || 20 || 0
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Plasteel || 30 {{Icon Small|steel}} || 75 {{Icon Small|plasteel}} || 505 || 10 || 0
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Wood || 30 {{Icon Small|steel}} || 75 {{Icon Small|wood}} || 90 || 100 || 0
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Gold || 30 {{Icon Small|steel}} || 750 {{Icon Small|gold}} || 108 || 20 || 0
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Silver || 30 {{Icon Small|steel}} || 750 {{Icon Small|silver}} || 126 || 20 || 0
|-
| style="text-align:left;" | Uranium || 30 {{Icon Small|steel}} || 75 {{Icon Small|uranium}} || 450 || 0 || 0
|}

{{nav|production|wide}}
[[Category:Production]]
[[Category:Resources]]

Training

2019-10-12T19:59:20Z

Siggboy: /* Intellectual */

<div style="float: right; margin-left: 2em;">__TOC__</div>

All skills in ''Rimworld'' improve simply while they are used; there is nothing special that needs to be done in addition to that. If a colonist is assigned to a task (via the ''Work'' tab) with a sufficiently high priority, they will eventually perform it and gain skill points.

In a few cases it is not obvious that a specific task trains a seemingly unrelated ability:
* Making ''smokeleaf joints'' requires and trains ''cooking'' (not crafting).
* Making medicine and hard drugs (''flake'', ''yayo'', etc.) requires and trains ''intellectual'' (not crafting).
* Cutting stone blocks does not train any skill (but requires crafting to be allowed as a task).
* Making [[Kibble]] is done at the butchering table, but requires and trains cooking.
* Butchering a dead animal is a cooking activity.
* Brewing beer is a cooking task (not crafting, which would be plausible)
* Many construction tasks could plausibly instead be crafting, smithing or tailoring tasks.
* Smithing and tailoring are actually sub-skills of crafting, but do not have their own skill level.

This article talks about a few special ways to forcibly train colonists in certain skills. This is usually only necessary and recommended if you need a certain ability on a colonist, but do not want to use this person for productive work. Normally this is because an untrained worker would be a liability – for example, an untrained cook can cause food poisoning, and an untrained miner can waste valuable resources while trying to extract them.

'''If you train a colonist by letting them do busy work, or monkey business, you are wasting one of the most valuable colony resources, namely work hours.''' Only do that if you really have to.

Even a colonist that is bad at everything, and passionate for nothing (these exist...) should be a hauler and cleaner, or maybe the guy who fulfills that caravan trade request 5 days away, before you let them repair a mountain stone face for days just to get them 3 levels of construction.

== Using temporary zone restrictions to direct colonists ==

A technique that is mentioned a few times in this article, is to create a zone only to restrict a colonist to a very specific area, in order to force them to perform a task.

As an example, consider colonist "Molly", who you want to smooth the floor in your freezer in the next few days, and ''do nothing else''. In this case, you will create a new [[zone]] for Molly, containing exactly these areas in your base:

* the area where the work needs to happen (freezer in this example)
* Molly's bedroom (so she can go to rest as usual)
* the recreation area and dining table
* a place where food is stored (maybe not necessary in this example, because the freezer is already covered)

These areas ''do not have to be adjacent'' (connected). The zone can be composed of several disconnected areas.

Now you restrict Molly to this newly created zone. She can now still move between those areas, but in order to perform a task, she needs to be inside one of them, that is, inside the zone. This means she will not use any skills outside the temporary zone, and you will not need to manipulate her work tab to keep her from doing anything but smooth the freezer floor.

This is a very effective method, not just for training, but for prioritizing important work in general.

== Combat training ==
If you feel you are not prepared for the next raid, you can train a few combat abilities. This will always need to be done manually, ie. with the trainee drafted (except for hunting). That means you can not manage the colony in the mean time, and it can be difficult to train more than one colonist at a time. This probably means a net loss of productivity in your colony, so only do it if you feel it is really necessary.

=== Shooting ===
The best way to train shooting is to assign the colonist to the "hunting" task. Giving them a long-range weapon, for example a [[bolt-action rifle]] makes hunting safer, because animals are less likely to enrage and retaliate if shot at from long range. To be safe, only hunt passive animals that will never retaliate.

Deliberately damaging your own structures or buildings does not improve your shooting skill.

Giving a really bad shooter a weapon not suited for the task, such as a [[machine pistol]] of "awful" quality, means that they will possibly hunt for a ''long'' time before actually killing the animal. Do not expect a colonist that you train this way to be very productive for the colony.

==== Aggravating animals ====
Outside of hunting, some resilient animals such as the [[Megasloth]], [[Rhinoceros]] and [[Thrumbo]] can give a lot of shooting skill by kiting them, and slowly shooting them to death with a low DPS weapon. You need to be very careful with this approach, because those animals do a lot of damage if given the chance to get into your melee range.

This is a special case of deliberately slow "hunting".

The best weapon types for this tactic are weapons with a fast windup and high shot frequency, not too short a range, and low damage. This makes you use the skill more often, by firing more shots, and has your "training dummy" last longer from low damage.

This approach does require extensive micromanagement, and you won't be able to perform other manual tasks in the colony in the meantime. It is even possible that actually killing the animal will take so long that your colonist will pass out from exhaustion or go into starvation. You ''must'' have a capable shooter available to finish off the animal and end the training if necessary.

=== Melee ===
Fighting anything with melee attacks will increase the ''melee'' skill. ''Hunting'' with melee attacks works, but animals are prone to fighting back so be warned (this is true even for animals that never retaliate when hunted from range). You will have to draft the colonist and "hunt" the animal manually by attacking it. An undrafted colonist will not ''hunt'' if they are lacking a ranged weapon.

If you want to train a character this way, use the best possible armor so they will take less damage from the animal. Taking no damage at all is usually not possible, so do not train a colonist that you require to be in good shape; they will at least have a few bruises for a couple of days, reducing their manipulation skills and movement ability. Also be aware that attacking herd animals (like muffalos and wild boars) can enrage the ''entire herd'', usually leading to a heavily injured colonist, or worse.

Tamed animals will fight back, so they are not safe training dummies; they can however be kept in a controlled environment which makes them more convenient targets. There is also no risk of an entire herd taking revenge for you hurting their friend. You can patch up the animal you just abused afterwards, which will train the ''medical'' skill.

Using melee attacks does raise the skill very quickly, and you will hit the "soft" XP cap of 4000 points in a matter of a few attacks. Disengage afterwards, because training over the soft cap is not efficient.

To level melee more safely, take prisoners who are incapable of "Violent" and repeatedly punch, then heal them in their prison cell. To avoid accidentally killing your prisoners, use fists only with neither a melee nor ranged weapon equipped. Carefully watch the health of the prisoner pausing the game between each punch if needed. A colonist with no weapon (not even a ranged weapon) does up to 7 base blunt damage per punch (see [[Weapons#Base Melee Stats|Base Melee Stats]] for details), so when any single body part falls below 8 hp remaining, stop and allow the prisoner to heal. This will allow you to train medical skill as well.

== Construction ==
Construction is already trained quite efficiently by simply using the skill, since construction is such a common activity in an expanding colony.

Smoothing walls and floors counts as construction, is very time consuming, and does have no quality penalty associated with it. It is maybe the best way to train a low skilled worker, without the risk of wasting materials or creating bad products. Having your apprentices do the smoothing keeps the master constructors free for more demanding work. Restrict the trainee colonists to the respective areas by creating a temporary zone, and let them do wall and floor smoothing exclusively for a while.

Making furniture is not the best way to train construction, because colonists with low skill will produce low quality furniture, which has then to be deconstructed and re-built, wasting material in the process. You can, however, keep deconstructing and reconstructing the furniture until the desired quality level is produced, if you do not mind losing some resources along the way; the popular mod ''Quality Builder'' helps tremendously.

If you are about to build a lot of walls in the colony, you can temporarily take your capable builders '''off''' the construction task, and let only your trainees build the walls and roofs. Walls do not have a quality stat, so it is not possible to create bad products. The apprentices will take a little longer, and probably "botch" construction several times, but the end result will be the same.

Do not train construction when high value material is involved, such as cloth (for carpets) or components (when making things like power generators). If the colonist "botches" construction in these cases, a fair amount of material will be irretrievably wasted; only do this if you have plenty of surplus so it would not matter.

=== Repairing things to learn construction ===
'''Only do this with a colonist that really needs to be up to speed in construction ''now'', if you have absolutely no other suitable construction work to do at the moment. Repairing structures just for training is probably the worst kind of monkey business you could give to your colonists, and a horrible waste of work hours.'''

You can damage structures, usually purpose-built stone walls, deliberately by damaging them with melee attacks, shots or grenade blasts, and then have your construction builders repair them.

This will not train shooting skill. Use the shooters only to damage the structure, then undraft them and have them resume their regular colony duties. Of course the shooters could be the very same people who will do the repair work just after. Shooting skill does not matter much in this case, as pretty much everybody is able to hit a wall from point blank range...

* By far the best approach is to ''smooth'' any stone wall, damage it, and repair it. Smoothed walls count as constructed walls, so they can be repaired. A smoothed granite wall does have 900 hitpoints, almost as much as a [[plasteel]] wall. Smoothing the wall will be training ''construction'' as well, hitting two birds with a single stone.
* Designate the colonists you intend to train so that they can only repair. Create a [[zone]] around the training area, and the general facilities of the base, then restrict the trainees to this zone.
* Skill training becomes much less effective after 4000 XP has been acquired in a skill during a day. Take the trainees off the training task by removing their zone restriction after the XP cap has been reached for the day.

== Mining ==
Unskilled miners will let resources go to waste if they mine an ore vein. You can check a colonists [[Mining Yield| mining yield]] stat to see if they are already at 100%. If they're not, do not use them to extract valuable resources from a mountain.

To train these people, restrict them to a temporary zone with a mining job in it that does not include any valuable ores (even [[steel]] will become valuable eventually, make no mistake...). If you dig into a mountain face randomly, be aware that this could become a space for [[infestation]]s to spawn if the location is too close to your colony.

If you have developed [[Deep drill| deep drilling]] already, you can let your apprentice miners work the drills. Waste of resources is usually not a problem anymore at this point.

== Cooking ==
The ''cooking'' skill level is increased by ''butchering'', ''cooking'' meals at a stove or campfire, and also by making [[smokeleaf joint]]s. If an unskilled cook prepares meals, they carry an increased risk of [[food poisoning]]. This is a fairly disrupting condition that should be avoided, so it is not optimal to train a new cook by letting them prepare meals.

=== Making kibble ===
[[Kibble]] never carries food poisoning, making it a safe practice food. It is highly profitable to make kibble if you have ''insect meat'' or ''human meat'', and [[hay]] – even if there are no animals to feed – because all kibble has the same market value, no matter the ingredients.

=== Making smokeleaf joints ===
Rolling [[smokeleaf joint]]s out of [[smokeleaf leaves]] is a cooking activity. Joints obviously can not carry food poisoning, making it a safe task to train any cook. Be aware that the value added by making joints from leaves is not work efficient, so outside of training cooks or making the joints for personal use it is better to sell your leaves directly.

Set up a dedicated work bill at the drug lab, and ''restrict it to the character that you would like to train in cooking''. The character needs to have priority to "Craft" things on the work tab. Make sure the drug lab is not occupied by other tasks; the easiest way is to put the smokeleaf job in the first slot on the list of bills.

This strategy requires ''drug production'' to be researched, and to grow or buy [[smokeleaf leaves]]. The latter is, of course, a way to train the ''plants'' skill (sowing ''smokeleaf'' only requires 4 ''plants'' skill). Smokeleaf products have good recreational and cash (trade) value.

Training cooks with smokeleaf is an excellent strategy.

== Plants (growing) ==

Letting an unskilled grower harvest your fields will waste some of the product; check the [[harvest yield]] stat of the colonist. If you need to avoid this, you will have to create a – possibly large – restriction zone to keep this colonist out of the area that they must not harvest. Allow them areas where sowing needs to happen.

Chopping trees is a good way to train ''plants''. Disallow the task ("plant cut" in the work tab) for your skilled growers, so your trainees will get more opportunities to chop wood.

If you are growing plants that only skilled workers can sow (like [[Devilstrand]] and [[Healroot]]), make sure that your trainees will sow ''all the other fields''. Do not let your skilled growers take that work away from them. Again, you will probably need to use restriction zones or work tab micromanagement to facilitate this.

The ''Work Tab'' addon by ''Fluffy'' makes partitioning the growing tasks a ''lot'' easier, avoiding the use of temporary zone restrictions.

== Crafting ==

The only way to practice crafting is to make things, either at a crafting spot, tailoring bench or smithy. Fabrication benches are only usable by already skilled crafters. Drug production and brewing does ''not'' train crafting.

If you have no good crafters yet, you will produce many items of "poor" or "awful" quality. It is not possible to retrieve raw materials from ''crafted'' items (unlike ''constructed'' items) – after you have crafted an item, you have to either use it or sell it as it is. This means you should not use any valuable materials, such as [[Thrumbofur]], [[Megasloth wool]], [[Hyperweave]] or [[Plasteel]] to practice crafting. Only let your most competent people handle these super-valuable materials.

''Weapons are not a good item class to practice crafting'', because they only sell for 20% of the normal price. This is good for game balance, because a lot of weapons are dropped during raids, but it means that it is practically impossible to make money from crafted weaponry. Only craft weapons that you expect to use.

This leaves ''armor items'' and ''clothing'': armor requires valuable ingredients, so '''usually crafting is practiced making clothes'''.

Crafted items get a ''market value'' that is composed of
* the work invested into making the item
* the value of the raw materials used
* the [[quality]] of the item

The market value multiplier for "awful" items is 50%, for "poor" items it is 75%. In those cases it would have been better to sell the raw materials instead of the item! To cut your inevitable losses, '''only use the cheapest material you can find if you expect to produce a lot of bad quality stuff'''. Good candidates are [[birdskin]], [[pigskin]], [[lightleather]], [[patchleather]] and [[plainleather]]. In particular, do ''not'' use [[cloth]] (needs to be bought or grown) or [[human leather]] (too expensive).

To further limit your losses, you can slow down the work deliberately, by crafting under poor conditions (outside, in the dark, not using electricity, in the cold, ...). Skill experience is granted ''over time'' and not ''by work units''. Crafting as slowly as possible means you will waste less material in the same time span. Only do this while crafting at level 5 or lower; from level 6, you can expect to [[quality|at least break even on average with regards to material cost]].

If you have a competent crafter (level 8 or higher) that you want to train further, one good way is to let them make [[advanced component]]s at a fabrication bench. You will need a lot more ''advanced components'' to build the space ship than you can usually buy from traders, so making them early is never a waste of effort. They do not have a quality rating, as long as your crafter can make them you will get full value. Likewise, bionic limbs and organs can be made by anyone who meets the skill requirement, but it is difficult to know in advance which ones you will need (''arms'' are never useless, however).

== Artistic ==

There is not much to be said about training ''artistic'' crafting; just have your aspiring artist craft as many sculptures as possible.

"Awful" sculptures have a ''negative'' beauty value, so they actually make the environment more ugly. Great to put into the bedrooms of [[traits|ascetic]] colonists, but should be deconstructed otherwise.

Use the material that you can spare the most of; wood is often a good choice. [[Jade]] has the best balance of beauty and availability, so it should be reserved for more capable, possibly [[mental inspiration|inspired]] artists.

== Medical ==

There is something that a typical ''Rimworld'' campaign never lacks: work for your doctors and surgeons. It is still possible to get some extra training.

Performing any type of '''surgery''' is staggeringly efficient for training ''medical'': performing surgery awards 16 times as much XP (per time spent) as other work. This includes all kinds of body part replacements, organ harvesting, euthanizing humans ''and animals''.

* If you have human "patients", '''install and remove jaw dentures'''. This requires medical skill 2, no material except medicine, and the patient has no risk of dying on the table. It will leave the person permanently mangled, lowering their market value (which is not important unless you want to sell the person into slavery). Do not do it to healthy colonists or prisoners you plan to recruit. This procedure as well as leg replacements are ''not'' counted as ''organ harvesting'', even if performed on a healthy patient.

* If human subjects are not available, you can '''euthanize animals'''. This is a shorter procedure than the jaw replacement (worth only a third of the XP) but it has no medical skill requirement. This is great for training completely unskilled doctors. A failed procedure is both unlikely and of no consequence. You can euthanize one of your tame animals, or "rescue" a hunted (downed) animal, just to euthanize it straight away. Tame chickens are the best source of animals, because you usually want to weed out the males, and euthanizing a freshly hatched chick will give the same XP as any other animal would. ''Only use herbal medicine'' for this procedure; better medicine is not required and would be straight up wasted.

* Organ harvesting is also great training, and can be done three times per customer, eg. by taking a kidney, half a lung and a heart. It is strongly [[Human Resources|frowned upon]] by most colonists. It is also profitable, but only do it if you can afford the colony-wide mood penalty, which lasts for 8 days.

The XP granted by a surgical procedure depends on work speed of the pawn, work units required and skill passion. For reference: at 100% ''medical operation speed'' and ''Interested'' passion, 2,000 XP are granted from performing a leg replacement.

'''Note:''' because performing surgery gives so much XP, a single colonist will hit the soft learning cap of 4,000 XP per day rather quickly. Spread out the procedures over multiple doctors and days.

== Social ==
Each social chat with a colonist gives 4 ''social'' XP per per speech balloon at ''Interested'' passion and neutral mood modifier.

Having a friendly chat with a prisoner in order to convince him or her to join the colony gives roughly 50 ''social'' XP at ''Interested'' passion, per speech balloon. If you are recruiting prisoners, only assign the "Wardening" work type to the colonists whose social skill you want to improve. The ''Work Tab'' mod (or a similar mod) allows more control over the various tasks related to wardening, so it is recommended to make this more viable in normal colony operation.

Setting the prisoner interaction mode to "Reduce resistance" (and not "Recruit") will allow wardens to keep having conversations indefinitely, allowing skill training. However, this costs a lot of food over time to keep the prisoner alive. Only do this with prisoners you do not want as colonists; recruit them immediately otherwise, so they become productive and improve their skills.

== Intellectual ==
''Intellectual'' skill is gained by doing research, and by making hard drugs and medicine. There are no special techniques available to make this more efficient. All research done is equally valuable, and neither medicine nor drugs have a quality rating; this means that who you employ for these jobs only influences how long it takes to finish them.

Usually your colony will want to research new technologies, so there is normally no question how to employ pawns with intellectual skill or interest.

Crafting [[wake-up]], [[flake]] and [[go-juice]] are all very profitable, so this is recommended if you do not need another researcher at the time, and can stock up on [[neutroamine]] and [[psychoid leaves]].

== Animals ==

The ''animals'' skill is very versatile, and can be trained in various ways.

There are two animals related tasks where unskilled colonists can be a liability:
* Failed tame attempts may cause the animal to retaliate; this often leads to the animal handler getting injured, usually as far away from the base as possible...
* Milking or shearing animals can fail, resulting in ''all'' of the product going to waste; this is especially painful when shearing (gathering wool), because wool takes many days to grow back.

Because of this it is best to let unskilled animal handlers only ''train animals'' that are already domesticated. If this fails, some food will be wasted, and the animal might lose some training from decay, but nothing worse will happen. Only your qualified animal handlers should be allowed to milk, shear or tame wild animals.

It is very finicky to assign all your animal handlers to the jobs best suited for them. It can be done with a lot of manipulation of temporary zone restrictions, but the recommended way is to install a mod like ''Work Tab'': it allows for fine-grained control of the various animals related sub-tasks.

<references />

{{nav/guides}}

[[Category:Game mechanics]]

Training

2019-10-12T19:55:42Z

Siggboy: /* Making smokeleaf joints */

<div style="float: right; margin-left: 2em;">__TOC__</div>

All skills in ''Rimworld'' improve simply while they are used; there is nothing special that needs to be done in addition to that. If a colonist is assigned to a task (via the ''Work'' tab) with a sufficiently high priority, they will eventually perform it and gain skill points.

In a few cases it is not obvious that a specific task trains a seemingly unrelated ability:
* Making ''smokeleaf joints'' requires and trains ''cooking'' (not crafting).
* Making medicine and hard drugs (''flake'', ''yayo'', etc.) requires and trains ''intellectual'' (not crafting).
* Cutting stone blocks does not train any skill (but requires crafting to be allowed as a task).
* Making [[Kibble]] is done at the butchering table, but requires and trains cooking.
* Butchering a dead animal is a cooking activity.
* Brewing beer is a cooking task (not crafting, which would be plausible)
* Many construction tasks could plausibly instead be crafting, smithing or tailoring tasks.
* Smithing and tailoring are actually sub-skills of crafting, but do not have their own skill level.

This article talks about a few special ways to forcibly train colonists in certain skills. This is usually only necessary and recommended if you need a certain ability on a colonist, but do not want to use this person for productive work. Normally this is because an untrained worker would be a liability – for example, an untrained cook can cause food poisoning, and an untrained miner can waste valuable resources while trying to extract them.

'''If you train a colonist by letting them do busy work, or monkey business, you are wasting one of the most valuable colony resources, namely work hours.''' Only do that if you really have to.

Even a colonist that is bad at everything, and passionate for nothing (these exist...) should be a hauler and cleaner, or maybe the guy who fulfills that caravan trade request 5 days away, before you let them repair a mountain stone face for days just to get them 3 levels of construction.

== Using temporary zone restrictions to direct colonists ==

A technique that is mentioned a few times in this article, is to create a zone only to restrict a colonist to a very specific area, in order to force them to perform a task.

As an example, consider colonist "Molly", who you want to smooth the floor in your freezer in the next few days, and ''do nothing else''. In this case, you will create a new [[zone]] for Molly, containing exactly these areas in your base:

* the area where the work needs to happen (freezer in this example)
* Molly's bedroom (so she can go to rest as usual)
* the recreation area and dining table
* a place where food is stored (maybe not necessary in this example, because the freezer is already covered)

These areas ''do not have to be adjacent'' (connected). The zone can be composed of several disconnected areas.

Now you restrict Molly to this newly created zone. She can now still move between those areas, but in order to perform a task, she needs to be inside one of them, that is, inside the zone. This means she will not use any skills outside the temporary zone, and you will not need to manipulate her work tab to keep her from doing anything but smooth the freezer floor.

This is a very effective method, not just for training, but for prioritizing important work in general.

== Combat training ==
If you feel you are not prepared for the next raid, you can train a few combat abilities. This will always need to be done manually, ie. with the trainee drafted (except for hunting). That means you can not manage the colony in the mean time, and it can be difficult to train more than one colonist at a time. This probably means a net loss of productivity in your colony, so only do it if you feel it is really necessary.

=== Shooting ===
The best way to train shooting is to assign the colonist to the "hunting" task. Giving them a long-range weapon, for example a [[bolt-action rifle]] makes hunting safer, because animals are less likely to enrage and retaliate if shot at from long range. To be safe, only hunt passive animals that will never retaliate.

Deliberately damaging your own structures or buildings does not improve your shooting skill.

Giving a really bad shooter a weapon not suited for the task, such as a [[machine pistol]] of "awful" quality, means that they will possibly hunt for a ''long'' time before actually killing the animal. Do not expect a colonist that you train this way to be very productive for the colony.

==== Aggravating animals ====
Outside of hunting, some resilient animals such as the [[Megasloth]], [[Rhinoceros]] and [[Thrumbo]] can give a lot of shooting skill by kiting them, and slowly shooting them to death with a low DPS weapon. You need to be very careful with this approach, because those animals do a lot of damage if given the chance to get into your melee range.

This is a special case of deliberately slow "hunting".

The best weapon types for this tactic are weapons with a fast windup and high shot frequency, not too short a range, and low damage. This makes you use the skill more often, by firing more shots, and has your "training dummy" last longer from low damage.

This approach does require extensive micromanagement, and you won't be able to perform other manual tasks in the colony in the meantime. It is even possible that actually killing the animal will take so long that your colonist will pass out from exhaustion or go into starvation. You ''must'' have a capable shooter available to finish off the animal and end the training if necessary.

=== Melee ===
Fighting anything with melee attacks will increase the ''melee'' skill. ''Hunting'' with melee attacks works, but animals are prone to fighting back so be warned (this is true even for animals that never retaliate when hunted from range). You will have to draft the colonist and "hunt" the animal manually by attacking it. An undrafted colonist will not ''hunt'' if they are lacking a ranged weapon.

If you want to train a character this way, use the best possible armor so they will take less damage from the animal. Taking no damage at all is usually not possible, so do not train a colonist that you require to be in good shape; they will at least have a few bruises for a couple of days, reducing their manipulation skills and movement ability. Also be aware that attacking herd animals (like muffalos and wild boars) can enrage the ''entire herd'', usually leading to a heavily injured colonist, or worse.

Tamed animals will fight back, so they are not safe training dummies; they can however be kept in a controlled environment which makes them more convenient targets. There is also no risk of an entire herd taking revenge for you hurting their friend. You can patch up the animal you just abused afterwards, which will train the ''medical'' skill.

Using melee attacks does raise the skill very quickly, and you will hit the "soft" XP cap of 4000 points in a matter of a few attacks. Disengage afterwards, because training over the soft cap is not efficient.

To level melee more safely, take prisoners who are incapable of "Violent" and repeatedly punch, then heal them in their prison cell. To avoid accidentally killing your prisoners, use fists only with neither a melee nor ranged weapon equipped. Carefully watch the health of the prisoner pausing the game between each punch if needed. A colonist with no weapon (not even a ranged weapon) does up to 7 base blunt damage per punch (see [[Weapons#Base Melee Stats|Base Melee Stats]] for details), so when any single body part falls below 8 hp remaining, stop and allow the prisoner to heal. This will allow you to train medical skill as well.

== Construction ==
Construction is already trained quite efficiently by simply using the skill, since construction is such a common activity in an expanding colony.

Smoothing walls and floors counts as construction, is very time consuming, and does have no quality penalty associated with it. It is maybe the best way to train a low skilled worker, without the risk of wasting materials or creating bad products. Having your apprentices do the smoothing keeps the master constructors free for more demanding work. Restrict the trainee colonists to the respective areas by creating a temporary zone, and let them do wall and floor smoothing exclusively for a while.

Making furniture is not the best way to train construction, because colonists with low skill will produce low quality furniture, which has then to be deconstructed and re-built, wasting material in the process. You can, however, keep deconstructing and reconstructing the furniture until the desired quality level is produced, if you do not mind losing some resources along the way; the popular mod ''Quality Builder'' helps tremendously.

If you are about to build a lot of walls in the colony, you can temporarily take your capable builders '''off''' the construction task, and let only your trainees build the walls and roofs. Walls do not have a quality stat, so it is not possible to create bad products. The apprentices will take a little longer, and probably "botch" construction several times, but the end result will be the same.

Do not train construction when high value material is involved, such as cloth (for carpets) or components (when making things like power generators). If the colonist "botches" construction in these cases, a fair amount of material will be irretrievably wasted; only do this if you have plenty of surplus so it would not matter.

=== Repairing things to learn construction ===
'''Only do this with a colonist that really needs to be up to speed in construction ''now'', if you have absolutely no other suitable construction work to do at the moment. Repairing structures just for training is probably the worst kind of monkey business you could give to your colonists, and a horrible waste of work hours.'''

You can damage structures, usually purpose-built stone walls, deliberately by damaging them with melee attacks, shots or grenade blasts, and then have your construction builders repair them.

This will not train shooting skill. Use the shooters only to damage the structure, then undraft them and have them resume their regular colony duties. Of course the shooters could be the very same people who will do the repair work just after. Shooting skill does not matter much in this case, as pretty much everybody is able to hit a wall from point blank range...

* By far the best approach is to ''smooth'' any stone wall, damage it, and repair it. Smoothed walls count as constructed walls, so they can be repaired. A smoothed granite wall does have 900 hitpoints, almost as much as a [[plasteel]] wall. Smoothing the wall will be training ''construction'' as well, hitting two birds with a single stone.
* Designate the colonists you intend to train so that they can only repair. Create a [[zone]] around the training area, and the general facilities of the base, then restrict the trainees to this zone.
* Skill training becomes much less effective after 4000 XP has been acquired in a skill during a day. Take the trainees off the training task by removing their zone restriction after the XP cap has been reached for the day.

== Mining ==
Unskilled miners will let resources go to waste if they mine an ore vein. You can check a colonists [[Mining Yield| mining yield]] stat to see if they are already at 100%. If they're not, do not use them to extract valuable resources from a mountain.

To train these people, restrict them to a temporary zone with a mining job in it that does not include any valuable ores (even [[steel]] will become valuable eventually, make no mistake...). If you dig into a mountain face randomly, be aware that this could become a space for [[infestation]]s to spawn if the location is too close to your colony.

If you have developed [[Deep drill| deep drilling]] already, you can let your apprentice miners work the drills. Waste of resources is usually not a problem anymore at this point.

== Cooking ==
The ''cooking'' skill level is increased by ''butchering'', ''cooking'' meals at a stove or campfire, and also by making [[smokeleaf joint]]s. If an unskilled cook prepares meals, they carry an increased risk of [[food poisoning]]. This is a fairly disrupting condition that should be avoided, so it is not optimal to train a new cook by letting them prepare meals.

=== Making kibble ===
[[Kibble]] never carries food poisoning, making it a safe practice food. It is highly profitable to make kibble if you have ''insect meat'' or ''human meat'', and [[hay]] – even if there are no animals to feed – because all kibble has the same market value, no matter the ingredients.

=== Making smokeleaf joints ===
Rolling [[smokeleaf joint]]s out of [[smokeleaf leaves]] is a cooking activity. Joints obviously can not carry food poisoning, making it a safe task to train any cook. Be aware that the value added by making joints from leaves is not work efficient, so outside of training cooks or making the joints for personal use it is better to sell your leaves directly.

Set up a dedicated work bill at the drug lab, and ''restrict it to the character that you would like to train in cooking''. The character needs to have priority to "Craft" things on the work tab. Make sure the drug lab is not occupied by other tasks; the easiest way is to put the smokeleaf job in the first slot on the list of bills.

This strategy requires ''drug production'' to be researched, and to grow or buy [[smokeleaf leaves]]. The latter is, of course, a way to train the ''plants'' skill (sowing ''smokeleaf'' only requires 4 ''plants'' skill). Smokeleaf products have good recreational and cash (trade) value.

Training cooks with smokeleaf is an excellent strategy.

== Plants (growing) ==

Letting an unskilled grower harvest your fields will waste some of the product; check the [[harvest yield]] stat of the colonist. If you need to avoid this, you will have to create a – possibly large – restriction zone to keep this colonist out of the area that they must not harvest. Allow them areas where sowing needs to happen.

Chopping trees is a good way to train ''plants''. Disallow the task ("plant cut" in the work tab) for your skilled growers, so your trainees will get more opportunities to chop wood.

If you are growing plants that only skilled workers can sow (like [[Devilstrand]] and [[Healroot]]), make sure that your trainees will sow ''all the other fields''. Do not let your skilled growers take that work away from them. Again, you will probably need to use restriction zones or work tab micromanagement to facilitate this.

The ''Work Tab'' addon by ''Fluffy'' makes partitioning the growing tasks a ''lot'' easier, avoiding the use of temporary zone restrictions.

== Crafting ==

The only way to practice crafting is to make things, either at a crafting spot, tailoring bench or smithy. Fabrication benches are only usable by already skilled crafters. Drug production and brewing does ''not'' train crafting.

If you have no good crafters yet, you will produce many items of "poor" or "awful" quality. It is not possible to retrieve raw materials from ''crafted'' items (unlike ''constructed'' items) – after you have crafted an item, you have to either use it or sell it as it is. This means you should not use any valuable materials, such as [[Thrumbofur]], [[Megasloth wool]], [[Hyperweave]] or [[Plasteel]] to practice crafting. Only let your most competent people handle these super-valuable materials.

''Weapons are not a good item class to practice crafting'', because they only sell for 20% of the normal price. This is good for game balance, because a lot of weapons are dropped during raids, but it means that it is practically impossible to make money from crafted weaponry. Only craft weapons that you expect to use.

This leaves ''armor items'' and ''clothing'': armor requires valuable ingredients, so '''usually crafting is practiced making clothes'''.

Crafted items get a ''market value'' that is composed of
* the work invested into making the item
* the value of the raw materials used
* the [[quality]] of the item

The market value multiplier for "awful" items is 50%, for "poor" items it is 75%. In those cases it would have been better to sell the raw materials instead of the item! To cut your inevitable losses, '''only use the cheapest material you can find if you expect to produce a lot of bad quality stuff'''. Good candidates are [[birdskin]], [[pigskin]], [[lightleather]], [[patchleather]] and [[plainleather]]. In particular, do ''not'' use [[cloth]] (needs to be bought or grown) or [[human leather]] (too expensive).

To further limit your losses, you can slow down the work deliberately, by crafting under poor conditions (outside, in the dark, not using electricity, in the cold, ...). Skill experience is granted ''over time'' and not ''by work units''. Crafting as slowly as possible means you will waste less material in the same time span. Only do this while crafting at level 5 or lower; from level 6, you can expect to [[quality|at least break even on average with regards to material cost]].

If you have a competent crafter (level 8 or higher) that you want to train further, one good way is to let them make [[advanced component]]s at a fabrication bench. You will need a lot more ''advanced components'' to build the space ship than you can usually buy from traders, so making them early is never a waste of effort. They do not have a quality rating, as long as your crafter can make them you will get full value. Likewise, bionic limbs and organs can be made by anyone who meets the skill requirement, but it is difficult to know in advance which ones you will need (''arms'' are never useless, however).

== Artistic ==

There is not much to be said about training ''artistic'' crafting; just have your aspiring artist craft as many sculptures as possible.

"Awful" sculptures have a ''negative'' beauty value, so they actually make the environment more ugly. Great to put into the bedrooms of [[traits|ascetic]] colonists, but should be deconstructed otherwise.

Use the material that you can spare the most of; wood is often a good choice. [[Jade]] has the best balance of beauty and availability, so it should be reserved for more capable, possibly [[mental inspiration|inspired]] artists.

== Medical ==

There is something that a typical ''Rimworld'' campaign never lacks: work for your doctors and surgeons. It is still possible to get some extra training.

Performing any type of '''surgery''' is staggeringly efficient for training ''medical'': performing surgery awards 16 times as much XP (per time spent) as other work. This includes all kinds of body part replacements, organ harvesting, euthanizing humans ''and animals''.

* If you have human "patients", '''install and remove jaw dentures'''. This requires medical skill 2, no material except medicine, and the patient has no risk of dying on the table. It will leave the person permanently mangled, lowering their market value (which is not important unless you want to sell the person into slavery). Do not do it to healthy colonists or prisoners you plan to recruit. This procedure as well as leg replacements are ''not'' counted as ''organ harvesting'', even if performed on a healthy patient.

* If human subjects are not available, you can '''euthanize animals'''. This is a shorter procedure than the jaw replacement (worth only a third of the XP) but it has no medical skill requirement. This is great for training completely unskilled doctors. A failed procedure is both unlikely and of no consequence. You can euthanize one of your tame animals, or "rescue" a hunted (downed) animal, just to euthanize it straight away. Tame chickens are the best source of animals, because you usually want to weed out the males, and euthanizing a freshly hatched chick will give the same XP as any other animal would. ''Only use herbal medicine'' for this procedure; better medicine is not required and would be straight up wasted.

* Organ harvesting is also great training, and can be done three times per customer, eg. by taking a kidney, half a lung and a heart. It is strongly [[Human Resources|frowned upon]] by most colonists. It is also profitable, but only do it if you can afford the colony-wide mood penalty, which lasts for 8 days.

The XP granted by a surgical procedure depends on work speed of the pawn, work units required and skill passion. For reference: at 100% ''medical operation speed'' and ''Interested'' passion, 2,000 XP are granted from performing a leg replacement.

'''Note:''' because performing surgery gives so much XP, a single colonist will hit the soft learning cap of 4,000 XP per day rather quickly. Spread out the procedures over multiple doctors and days.

== Social ==
Each social chat with a colonist gives 4 ''social'' XP per per speech balloon at ''Interested'' passion and neutral mood modifier.

Having a friendly chat with a prisoner in order to convince him or her to join the colony gives roughly 50 ''social'' XP at ''Interested'' passion, per speech balloon. If you are recruiting prisoners, only assign the "Wardening" work type to the colonists whose social skill you want to improve. The ''Work Tab'' mod (or a similar mod) allows more control over the various tasks related to wardening, so it is recommended to make this more viable in normal colony operation.

Setting the prisoner interaction mode to "Reduce resistance" (and not "Recruit") will allow wardens to keep having conversations indefinitely, allowing skill training. However, this costs a lot of food over time to keep the prisoner alive. Only do this with prisoners you do not want as colonists; recruit them immediately otherwise, so they become productive and improve their skills.

== Intellectual ==

''Intellectual'' skill is gained by doing research, and by making hard drugs and medicine. There are no special techniques available to make this more efficient. All research done is equally valuable, and neither medicine nor drugs have a quality rating; this means that who you employ for these jobs only influences how long it takes to finish them.

== Animals ==

The ''animals'' skill is very versatile, and can be trained in various ways.

There are two animals related tasks where unskilled colonists can be a liability:
* Failed tame attempts may cause the animal to retaliate; this often leads to the animal handler getting injured, usually as far away from the base as possible...
* Milking or shearing animals can fail, resulting in ''all'' of the product going to waste; this is especially painful when shearing (gathering wool), because wool takes many days to grow back.

Because of this it is best to let unskilled animal handlers only ''train animals'' that are already domesticated. If this fails, some food will be wasted, and the animal might lose some training from decay, but nothing worse will happen. Only your qualified animal handlers should be allowed to milk, shear or tame wild animals.

It is very finicky to assign all your animal handlers to the jobs best suited for them. It can be done with a lot of manipulation of temporary zone restrictions, but the recommended way is to install a mod like ''Work Tab'': it allows for fine-grained control of the various animals related sub-tasks.

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[[Category:Game mechanics]]

Training

2019-10-12T19:54:38Z

Siggboy: /* Cooking */

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All skills in ''Rimworld'' improve simply while they are used; there is nothing special that needs to be done in addition to that. If a colonist is assigned to a task (via the ''Work'' tab) with a sufficiently high priority, they will eventually perform it and gain skill points.

In a few cases it is not obvious that a specific task trains a seemingly unrelated ability:
* Making ''smokeleaf joints'' requires and trains ''cooking'' (not crafting).
* Making medicine and hard drugs (''flake'', ''yayo'', etc.) requires and trains ''intellectual'' (not crafting).
* Cutting stone blocks does not train any skill (but requires crafting to be allowed as a task).
* Making [[Kibble]] is done at the butchering table, but requires and trains cooking.
* Butchering a dead animal is a cooking activity.
* Brewing beer is a cooking task (not crafting, which would be plausible)
* Many construction tasks could plausibly instead be crafting, smithing or tailoring tasks.
* Smithing and tailoring are actually sub-skills of crafting, but do not have their own skill level.

This article talks about a few special ways to forcibly train colonists in certain skills. This is usually only necessary and recommended if you need a certain ability on a colonist, but do not want to use this person for productive work. Normally this is because an untrained worker would be a liability – for example, an untrained cook can cause food poisoning, and an untrained miner can waste valuable resources while trying to extract them.

'''If you train a colonist by letting them do busy work, or monkey business, you are wasting one of the most valuable colony resources, namely work hours.''' Only do that if you really have to.

Even a colonist that is bad at everything, and passionate for nothing (these exist...) should be a hauler and cleaner, or maybe the guy who fulfills that caravan trade request 5 days away, before you let them repair a mountain stone face for days just to get them 3 levels of construction.

== Using temporary zone restrictions to direct colonists ==

A technique that is mentioned a few times in this article, is to create a zone only to restrict a colonist to a very specific area, in order to force them to perform a task.

As an example, consider colonist "Molly", who you want to smooth the floor in your freezer in the next few days, and ''do nothing else''. In this case, you will create a new [[zone]] for Molly, containing exactly these areas in your base:

* the area where the work needs to happen (freezer in this example)
* Molly's bedroom (so she can go to rest as usual)
* the recreation area and dining table
* a place where food is stored (maybe not necessary in this example, because the freezer is already covered)

These areas ''do not have to be adjacent'' (connected). The zone can be composed of several disconnected areas.

Now you restrict Molly to this newly created zone. She can now still move between those areas, but in order to perform a task, she needs to be inside one of them, that is, inside the zone. This means she will not use any skills outside the temporary zone, and you will not need to manipulate her work tab to keep her from doing anything but smooth the freezer floor.

This is a very effective method, not just for training, but for prioritizing important work in general.

== Combat training ==
If you feel you are not prepared for the next raid, you can train a few combat abilities. This will always need to be done manually, ie. with the trainee drafted (except for hunting). That means you can not manage the colony in the mean time, and it can be difficult to train more than one colonist at a time. This probably means a net loss of productivity in your colony, so only do it if you feel it is really necessary.

=== Shooting ===
The best way to train shooting is to assign the colonist to the "hunting" task. Giving them a long-range weapon, for example a [[bolt-action rifle]] makes hunting safer, because animals are less likely to enrage and retaliate if shot at from long range. To be safe, only hunt passive animals that will never retaliate.

Deliberately damaging your own structures or buildings does not improve your shooting skill.

Giving a really bad shooter a weapon not suited for the task, such as a [[machine pistol]] of "awful" quality, means that they will possibly hunt for a ''long'' time before actually killing the animal. Do not expect a colonist that you train this way to be very productive for the colony.

==== Aggravating animals ====
Outside of hunting, some resilient animals such as the [[Megasloth]], [[Rhinoceros]] and [[Thrumbo]] can give a lot of shooting skill by kiting them, and slowly shooting them to death with a low DPS weapon. You need to be very careful with this approach, because those animals do a lot of damage if given the chance to get into your melee range.

This is a special case of deliberately slow "hunting".

The best weapon types for this tactic are weapons with a fast windup and high shot frequency, not too short a range, and low damage. This makes you use the skill more often, by firing more shots, and has your "training dummy" last longer from low damage.

This approach does require extensive micromanagement, and you won't be able to perform other manual tasks in the colony in the meantime. It is even possible that actually killing the animal will take so long that your colonist will pass out from exhaustion or go into starvation. You ''must'' have a capable shooter available to finish off the animal and end the training if necessary.

=== Melee ===
Fighting anything with melee attacks will increase the ''melee'' skill. ''Hunting'' with melee attacks works, but animals are prone to fighting back so be warned (this is true even for animals that never retaliate when hunted from range). You will have to draft the colonist and "hunt" the animal manually by attacking it. An undrafted colonist will not ''hunt'' if they are lacking a ranged weapon.

If you want to train a character this way, use the best possible armor so they will take less damage from the animal. Taking no damage at all is usually not possible, so do not train a colonist that you require to be in good shape; they will at least have a few bruises for a couple of days, reducing their manipulation skills and movement ability. Also be aware that attacking herd animals (like muffalos and wild boars) can enrage the ''entire herd'', usually leading to a heavily injured colonist, or worse.

Tamed animals will fight back, so they are not safe training dummies; they can however be kept in a controlled environment which makes them more convenient targets. There is also no risk of an entire herd taking revenge for you hurting their friend. You can patch up the animal you just abused afterwards, which will train the ''medical'' skill.

Using melee attacks does raise the skill very quickly, and you will hit the "soft" XP cap of 4000 points in a matter of a few attacks. Disengage afterwards, because training over the soft cap is not efficient.

To level melee more safely, take prisoners who are incapable of "Violent" and repeatedly punch, then heal them in their prison cell. To avoid accidentally killing your prisoners, use fists only with neither a melee nor ranged weapon equipped. Carefully watch the health of the prisoner pausing the game between each punch if needed. A colonist with no weapon (not even a ranged weapon) does up to 7 base blunt damage per punch (see [[Weapons#Base Melee Stats|Base Melee Stats]] for details), so when any single body part falls below 8 hp remaining, stop and allow the prisoner to heal. This will allow you to train medical skill as well.

== Construction ==
Construction is already trained quite efficiently by simply using the skill, since construction is such a common activity in an expanding colony.

Smoothing walls and floors counts as construction, is very time consuming, and does have no quality penalty associated with it. It is maybe the best way to train a low skilled worker, without the risk of wasting materials or creating bad products. Having your apprentices do the smoothing keeps the master constructors free for more demanding work. Restrict the trainee colonists to the respective areas by creating a temporary zone, and let them do wall and floor smoothing exclusively for a while.

Making furniture is not the best way to train construction, because colonists with low skill will produce low quality furniture, which has then to be deconstructed and re-built, wasting material in the process. You can, however, keep deconstructing and reconstructing the furniture until the desired quality level is produced, if you do not mind losing some resources along the way; the popular mod ''Quality Builder'' helps tremendously.

If you are about to build a lot of walls in the colony, you can temporarily take your capable builders '''off''' the construction task, and let only your trainees build the walls and roofs. Walls do not have a quality stat, so it is not possible to create bad products. The apprentices will take a little longer, and probably "botch" construction several times, but the end result will be the same.

Do not train construction when high value material is involved, such as cloth (for carpets) or components (when making things like power generators). If the colonist "botches" construction in these cases, a fair amount of material will be irretrievably wasted; only do this if you have plenty of surplus so it would not matter.

=== Repairing things to learn construction ===
'''Only do this with a colonist that really needs to be up to speed in construction ''now'', if you have absolutely no other suitable construction work to do at the moment. Repairing structures just for training is probably the worst kind of monkey business you could give to your colonists, and a horrible waste of work hours.'''

You can damage structures, usually purpose-built stone walls, deliberately by damaging them with melee attacks, shots or grenade blasts, and then have your construction builders repair them.

This will not train shooting skill. Use the shooters only to damage the structure, then undraft them and have them resume their regular colony duties. Of course the shooters could be the very same people who will do the repair work just after. Shooting skill does not matter much in this case, as pretty much everybody is able to hit a wall from point blank range...

* By far the best approach is to ''smooth'' any stone wall, damage it, and repair it. Smoothed walls count as constructed walls, so they can be repaired. A smoothed granite wall does have 900 hitpoints, almost as much as a [[plasteel]] wall. Smoothing the wall will be training ''construction'' as well, hitting two birds with a single stone.
* Designate the colonists you intend to train so that they can only repair. Create a [[zone]] around the training area, and the general facilities of the base, then restrict the trainees to this zone.
* Skill training becomes much less effective after 4000 XP has been acquired in a skill during a day. Take the trainees off the training task by removing their zone restriction after the XP cap has been reached for the day.

== Mining ==
Unskilled miners will let resources go to waste if they mine an ore vein. You can check a colonists [[Mining Yield| mining yield]] stat to see if they are already at 100%. If they're not, do not use them to extract valuable resources from a mountain.

To train these people, restrict them to a temporary zone with a mining job in it that does not include any valuable ores (even [[steel]] will become valuable eventually, make no mistake...). If you dig into a mountain face randomly, be aware that this could become a space for [[infestation]]s to spawn if the location is too close to your colony.

If you have developed [[Deep drill| deep drilling]] already, you can let your apprentice miners work the drills. Waste of resources is usually not a problem anymore at this point.

== Cooking ==
The ''cooking'' skill level is increased by ''butchering'', ''cooking'' meals at a stove or campfire, and also by making [[smokeleaf joint]]s. If an unskilled cook prepares meals, they carry an increased risk of [[food poisoning]]. This is a fairly disrupting condition that should be avoided, so it is not optimal to train a new cook by letting them prepare meals.

=== Making kibble ===
[[Kibble]] never carries food poisoning, making it a safe practice food. It is highly profitable to make kibble if you have ''insect meat'' or ''human meat'', and [[hay]] – even if there are no animals to feed – because all kibble has the same market value, no matter the ingredients.

=== Making smokeleaf joints ===
Rolling [[smokeleaf joint]]s out of [[smokeleaf leave]]s is a cooking activity. Joints obviously can not carry food poisoning, making it a safe task to train any cook. Be aware that the value added by making joints from leaves is not work efficient, so outside of training cooks or making the joints for personal use it is better to sell your leaves directly.

Set up a dedicated work bill at the drug lab, and ''restrict it to the character that you would like to train in cooking''. The character needs to have priority to "Craft" things on the work tab. Make sure the drug lab is not occupied by other tasks; the easiest way is to put the smokeleaf job in the first slot on the list of bills.

This strategy requires ''drug production'' to be researched, and to grow or buy [[smokeleaf leaves]]. The latter is, of course, a way to train the ''plants'' skill (sowing ''smokeleaf'' only requires 4 ''plants'' skill). Smokeleaf products have good recreational and cash (trade) value.

Training cooks with smokeleaf is an excellent strategy.

== Plants (growing) ==

Letting an unskilled grower harvest your fields will waste some of the product; check the [[harvest yield]] stat of the colonist. If you need to avoid this, you will have to create a – possibly large – restriction zone to keep this colonist out of the area that they must not harvest. Allow them areas where sowing needs to happen.

Chopping trees is a good way to train ''plants''. Disallow the task ("plant cut" in the work tab) for your skilled growers, so your trainees will get more opportunities to chop wood.

If you are growing plants that only skilled workers can sow (like [[Devilstrand]] and [[Healroot]]), make sure that your trainees will sow ''all the other fields''. Do not let your skilled growers take that work away from them. Again, you will probably need to use restriction zones or work tab micromanagement to facilitate this.

The ''Work Tab'' addon by ''Fluffy'' makes partitioning the growing tasks a ''lot'' easier, avoiding the use of temporary zone restrictions.

== Crafting ==

The only way to practice crafting is to make things, either at a crafting spot, tailoring bench or smithy. Fabrication benches are only usable by already skilled crafters. Drug production and brewing does ''not'' train crafting.

If you have no good crafters yet, you will produce many items of "poor" or "awful" quality. It is not possible to retrieve raw materials from ''crafted'' items (unlike ''constructed'' items) – after you have crafted an item, you have to either use it or sell it as it is. This means you should not use any valuable materials, such as [[Thrumbofur]], [[Megasloth wool]], [[Hyperweave]] or [[Plasteel]] to practice crafting. Only let your most competent people handle these super-valuable materials.

''Weapons are not a good item class to practice crafting'', because they only sell for 20% of the normal price. This is good for game balance, because a lot of weapons are dropped during raids, but it means that it is practically impossible to make money from crafted weaponry. Only craft weapons that you expect to use.

This leaves ''armor items'' and ''clothing'': armor requires valuable ingredients, so '''usually crafting is practiced making clothes'''.

Crafted items get a ''market value'' that is composed of
* the work invested into making the item
* the value of the raw materials used
* the [[quality]] of the item

The market value multiplier for "awful" items is 50%, for "poor" items it is 75%. In those cases it would have been better to sell the raw materials instead of the item! To cut your inevitable losses, '''only use the cheapest material you can find if you expect to produce a lot of bad quality stuff'''. Good candidates are [[birdskin]], [[pigskin]], [[lightleather]], [[patchleather]] and [[plainleather]]. In particular, do ''not'' use [[cloth]] (needs to be bought or grown) or [[human leather]] (too expensive).

To further limit your losses, you can slow down the work deliberately, by crafting under poor conditions (outside, in the dark, not using electricity, in the cold, ...). Skill experience is granted ''over time'' and not ''by work units''. Crafting as slowly as possible means you will waste less material in the same time span. Only do this while crafting at level 5 or lower; from level 6, you can expect to [[quality|at least break even on average with regards to material cost]].

If you have a competent crafter (level 8 or higher) that you want to train further, one good way is to let them make [[advanced component]]s at a fabrication bench. You will need a lot more ''advanced components'' to build the space ship than you can usually buy from traders, so making them early is never a waste of effort. They do not have a quality rating, as long as your crafter can make them you will get full value. Likewise, bionic limbs and organs can be made by anyone who meets the skill requirement, but it is difficult to know in advance which ones you will need (''arms'' are never useless, however).

== Artistic ==

There is not much to be said about training ''artistic'' crafting; just have your aspiring artist craft as many sculptures as possible.

"Awful" sculptures have a ''negative'' beauty value, so they actually make the environment more ugly. Great to put into the bedrooms of [[traits|ascetic]] colonists, but should be deconstructed otherwise.

Use the material that you can spare the most of; wood is often a good choice. [[Jade]] has the best balance of beauty and availability, so it should be reserved for more capable, possibly [[mental inspiration|inspired]] artists.

== Medical ==

There is something that a typical ''Rimworld'' campaign never lacks: work for your doctors and surgeons. It is still possible to get some extra training.

Performing any type of '''surgery''' is staggeringly efficient for training ''medical'': performing surgery awards 16 times as much XP (per time spent) as other work. This includes all kinds of body part replacements, organ harvesting, euthanizing humans ''and animals''.

* If you have human "patients", '''install and remove jaw dentures'''. This requires medical skill 2, no material except medicine, and the patient has no risk of dying on the table. It will leave the person permanently mangled, lowering their market value (which is not important unless you want to sell the person into slavery). Do not do it to healthy colonists or prisoners you plan to recruit. This procedure as well as leg replacements are ''not'' counted as ''organ harvesting'', even if performed on a healthy patient.

* If human subjects are not available, you can '''euthanize animals'''. This is a shorter procedure than the jaw replacement (worth only a third of the XP) but it has no medical skill requirement. This is great for training completely unskilled doctors. A failed procedure is both unlikely and of no consequence. You can euthanize one of your tame animals, or "rescue" a hunted (downed) animal, just to euthanize it straight away. Tame chickens are the best source of animals, because you usually want to weed out the males, and euthanizing a freshly hatched chick will give the same XP as any other animal would. ''Only use herbal medicine'' for this procedure; better medicine is not required and would be straight up wasted.

* Organ harvesting is also great training, and can be done three times per customer, eg. by taking a kidney, half a lung and a heart. It is strongly [[Human Resources|frowned upon]] by most colonists. It is also profitable, but only do it if you can afford the colony-wide mood penalty, which lasts for 8 days.

The XP granted by a surgical procedure depends on work speed of the pawn, work units required and skill passion. For reference: at 100% ''medical operation speed'' and ''Interested'' passion, 2,000 XP are granted from performing a leg replacement.

'''Note:''' because performing surgery gives so much XP, a single colonist will hit the soft learning cap of 4,000 XP per day rather quickly. Spread out the procedures over multiple doctors and days.

== Social ==
Each social chat with a colonist gives 4 ''social'' XP per per speech balloon at ''Interested'' passion and neutral mood modifier.

Having a friendly chat with a prisoner in order to convince him or her to join the colony gives roughly 50 ''social'' XP at ''Interested'' passion, per speech balloon. If you are recruiting prisoners, only assign the "Wardening" work type to the colonists whose social skill you want to improve. The ''Work Tab'' mod (or a similar mod) allows more control over the various tasks related to wardening, so it is recommended to make this more viable in normal colony operation.

Setting the prisoner interaction mode to "Reduce resistance" (and not "Recruit") will allow wardens to keep having conversations indefinitely, allowing skill training. However, this costs a lot of food over time to keep the prisoner alive. Only do this with prisoners you do not want as colonists; recruit them immediately otherwise, so they become productive and improve their skills.

== Intellectual ==

''Intellectual'' skill is gained by doing research, and by making hard drugs and medicine. There are no special techniques available to make this more efficient. All research done is equally valuable, and neither medicine nor drugs have a quality rating; this means that who you employ for these jobs only influences how long it takes to finish them.

== Animals ==

The ''animals'' skill is very versatile, and can be trained in various ways.

There are two animals related tasks where unskilled colonists can be a liability:
* Failed tame attempts may cause the animal to retaliate; this often leads to the animal handler getting injured, usually as far away from the base as possible...
* Milking or shearing animals can fail, resulting in ''all'' of the product going to waste; this is especially painful when shearing (gathering wool), because wool takes many days to grow back.

Because of this it is best to let unskilled animal handlers only ''train animals'' that are already domesticated. If this fails, some food will be wasted, and the animal might lose some training from decay, but nothing worse will happen. Only your qualified animal handlers should be allowed to milk, shear or tame wild animals.

It is very finicky to assign all your animal handlers to the jobs best suited for them. It can be done with a lot of manipulation of temporary zone restrictions, but the recommended way is to install a mod like ''Work Tab'': it allows for fine-grained control of the various animals related sub-tasks.

<references />

{{nav/guides}}

[[Category:Game mechanics]]

Training

2019-10-12T19:43:28Z

Siggboy: /* Medical */

<div style="float: right; margin-left: 2em;">__TOC__</div>

All skills in ''Rimworld'' improve simply while they are used; there is nothing special that needs to be done in addition to that. If a colonist is assigned to a task (via the ''Work'' tab) with a sufficiently high priority, they will eventually perform it and gain skill points.

In a few cases it is not obvious that a specific task trains a seemingly unrelated ability:
* Making ''smokeleaf joints'' requires and trains ''cooking'' (not crafting).
* Making medicine and hard drugs (''flake'', ''yayo'', etc.) requires and trains ''intellectual'' (not crafting).
* Cutting stone blocks does not train any skill (but requires crafting to be allowed as a task).
* Making [[Kibble]] is done at the butchering table, but requires and trains cooking.
* Butchering a dead animal is a cooking activity.
* Brewing beer is a cooking task (not crafting, which would be plausible)
* Many construction tasks could plausibly instead be crafting, smithing or tailoring tasks.
* Smithing and tailoring are actually sub-skills of crafting, but do not have their own skill level.

This article talks about a few special ways to forcibly train colonists in certain skills. This is usually only necessary and recommended if you need a certain ability on a colonist, but do not want to use this person for productive work. Normally this is because an untrained worker would be a liability – for example, an untrained cook can cause food poisoning, and an untrained miner can waste valuable resources while trying to extract them.

'''If you train a colonist by letting them do busy work, or monkey business, you are wasting one of the most valuable colony resources, namely work hours.''' Only do that if you really have to.

Even a colonist that is bad at everything, and passionate for nothing (these exist...) should be a hauler and cleaner, or maybe the guy who fulfills that caravan trade request 5 days away, before you let them repair a mountain stone face for days just to get them 3 levels of construction.

== Using temporary zone restrictions to direct colonists ==

A technique that is mentioned a few times in this article, is to create a zone only to restrict a colonist to a very specific area, in order to force them to perform a task.

As an example, consider colonist "Molly", who you want to smooth the floor in your freezer in the next few days, and ''do nothing else''. In this case, you will create a new [[zone]] for Molly, containing exactly these areas in your base:

* the area where the work needs to happen (freezer in this example)
* Molly's bedroom (so she can go to rest as usual)
* the recreation area and dining table
* a place where food is stored (maybe not necessary in this example, because the freezer is already covered)

These areas ''do not have to be adjacent'' (connected). The zone can be composed of several disconnected areas.

Now you restrict Molly to this newly created zone. She can now still move between those areas, but in order to perform a task, she needs to be inside one of them, that is, inside the zone. This means she will not use any skills outside the temporary zone, and you will not need to manipulate her work tab to keep her from doing anything but smooth the freezer floor.

This is a very effective method, not just for training, but for prioritizing important work in general.

== Combat training ==
If you feel you are not prepared for the next raid, you can train a few combat abilities. This will always need to be done manually, ie. with the trainee drafted (except for hunting). That means you can not manage the colony in the mean time, and it can be difficult to train more than one colonist at a time. This probably means a net loss of productivity in your colony, so only do it if you feel it is really necessary.

=== Shooting ===
The best way to train shooting is to assign the colonist to the "hunting" task. Giving them a long-range weapon, for example a [[bolt-action rifle]] makes hunting safer, because animals are less likely to enrage and retaliate if shot at from long range. To be safe, only hunt passive animals that will never retaliate.

Deliberately damaging your own structures or buildings does not improve your shooting skill.

Giving a really bad shooter a weapon not suited for the task, such as a [[machine pistol]] of "awful" quality, means that they will possibly hunt for a ''long'' time before actually killing the animal. Do not expect a colonist that you train this way to be very productive for the colony.

==== Aggravating animals ====
Outside of hunting, some resilient animals such as the [[Megasloth]], [[Rhinoceros]] and [[Thrumbo]] can give a lot of shooting skill by kiting them, and slowly shooting them to death with a low DPS weapon. You need to be very careful with this approach, because those animals do a lot of damage if given the chance to get into your melee range.

This is a special case of deliberately slow "hunting".

The best weapon types for this tactic are weapons with a fast windup and high shot frequency, not too short a range, and low damage. This makes you use the skill more often, by firing more shots, and has your "training dummy" last longer from low damage.

This approach does require extensive micromanagement, and you won't be able to perform other manual tasks in the colony in the meantime. It is even possible that actually killing the animal will take so long that your colonist will pass out from exhaustion or go into starvation. You ''must'' have a capable shooter available to finish off the animal and end the training if necessary.

=== Melee ===
Fighting anything with melee attacks will increase the ''melee'' skill. ''Hunting'' with melee attacks works, but animals are prone to fighting back so be warned (this is true even for animals that never retaliate when hunted from range). You will have to draft the colonist and "hunt" the animal manually by attacking it. An undrafted colonist will not ''hunt'' if they are lacking a ranged weapon.

If you want to train a character this way, use the best possible armor so they will take less damage from the animal. Taking no damage at all is usually not possible, so do not train a colonist that you require to be in good shape; they will at least have a few bruises for a couple of days, reducing their manipulation skills and movement ability. Also be aware that attacking herd animals (like muffalos and wild boars) can enrage the ''entire herd'', usually leading to a heavily injured colonist, or worse.

Tamed animals will fight back, so they are not safe training dummies; they can however be kept in a controlled environment which makes them more convenient targets. There is also no risk of an entire herd taking revenge for you hurting their friend. You can patch up the animal you just abused afterwards, which will train the ''medical'' skill.

Using melee attacks does raise the skill very quickly, and you will hit the "soft" XP cap of 4000 points in a matter of a few attacks. Disengage afterwards, because training over the soft cap is not efficient.

To level melee more safely, take prisoners who are incapable of "Violent" and repeatedly punch, then heal them in their prison cell. To avoid accidentally killing your prisoners, use fists only with neither a melee nor ranged weapon equipped. Carefully watch the health of the prisoner pausing the game between each punch if needed. A colonist with no weapon (not even a ranged weapon) does up to 7 base blunt damage per punch (see [[Weapons#Base Melee Stats|Base Melee Stats]] for details), so when any single body part falls below 8 hp remaining, stop and allow the prisoner to heal. This will allow you to train medical skill as well.

== Construction ==
Construction is already trained quite efficiently by simply using the skill, since construction is such a common activity in an expanding colony.

Smoothing walls and floors counts as construction, is very time consuming, and does have no quality penalty associated with it. It is maybe the best way to train a low skilled worker, without the risk of wasting materials or creating bad products. Having your apprentices do the smoothing keeps the master constructors free for more demanding work. Restrict the trainee colonists to the respective areas by creating a temporary zone, and let them do wall and floor smoothing exclusively for a while.

Making furniture is not the best way to train construction, because colonists with low skill will produce low quality furniture, which has then to be deconstructed and re-built, wasting material in the process. You can, however, keep deconstructing and reconstructing the furniture until the desired quality level is produced, if you do not mind losing some resources along the way; the popular mod ''Quality Builder'' helps tremendously.

If you are about to build a lot of walls in the colony, you can temporarily take your capable builders '''off''' the construction task, and let only your trainees build the walls and roofs. Walls do not have a quality stat, so it is not possible to create bad products. The apprentices will take a little longer, and probably "botch" construction several times, but the end result will be the same.

Do not train construction when high value material is involved, such as cloth (for carpets) or components (when making things like power generators). If the colonist "botches" construction in these cases, a fair amount of material will be irretrievably wasted; only do this if you have plenty of surplus so it would not matter.

=== Repairing things to learn construction ===
'''Only do this with a colonist that really needs to be up to speed in construction ''now'', if you have absolutely no other suitable construction work to do at the moment. Repairing structures just for training is probably the worst kind of monkey business you could give to your colonists, and a horrible waste of work hours.'''

You can damage structures, usually purpose-built stone walls, deliberately by damaging them with melee attacks, shots or grenade blasts, and then have your construction builders repair them.

This will not train shooting skill. Use the shooters only to damage the structure, then undraft them and have them resume their regular colony duties. Of course the shooters could be the very same people who will do the repair work just after. Shooting skill does not matter much in this case, as pretty much everybody is able to hit a wall from point blank range...

* By far the best approach is to ''smooth'' any stone wall, damage it, and repair it. Smoothed walls count as constructed walls, so they can be repaired. A smoothed granite wall does have 900 hitpoints, almost as much as a [[plasteel]] wall. Smoothing the wall will be training ''construction'' as well, hitting two birds with a single stone.
* Designate the colonists you intend to train so that they can only repair. Create a [[zone]] around the training area, and the general facilities of the base, then restrict the trainees to this zone.
* Skill training becomes much less effective after 4000 XP has been acquired in a skill during a day. Take the trainees off the training task by removing their zone restriction after the XP cap has been reached for the day.

== Mining ==
Unskilled miners will let resources go to waste if they mine an ore vein. You can check a colonists [[Mining Yield| mining yield]] stat to see if they are already at 100%. If they're not, do not use them to extract valuable resources from a mountain.

To train these people, restrict them to a temporary zone with a mining job in it that does not include any valuable ores (even [[steel]] will become valuable eventually, make no mistake...). If you dig into a mountain face randomly, be aware that this could become a space for [[infestation]]s to spawn if the location is too close to your colony.

If you have developed [[Deep drill| deep drilling]] already, you can let your apprentice miners work the drills. Waste of resources is usually not a problem anymore at this point.

== Cooking ==
The ''cooking'' skill level is increased by ''butchering'', ''cooking'' meals at a stove or campfire, and also by making [[smokeleaf joint]]s. If an unskilled cook prepares meals, they carry an increased risk of [[food poisoning]]. This is a fairly disrupting condition that should be avoided, so it is not optimal to train a new cook by letting them prepare meals.

=== Making smokeleaf joints ===
If a colonist has low skill but high [[Skills#Passion|passion]] for cooking, you should train them as an additional cook. The downside is that meals prepared by this character, while he or she is still learning, carry a high chance of [[food poisoning]].

Cooks can, however, also be trained by having them make [[smokeleaf joint]]s out of [[Smokeleaf leaves|leaves]] at a [[drug lab]]. This will train cooking just as fast as preparing meals, without the risk of making anybody sick.

Set up a dedicated work bill at the drug lab, and ''restrict it to the character that you would like to train in cooking''. The character needs to have priority to "Craft" things on the work tab. Make sure the drug lab is not occupied by other tasks; the easiest way is to put the smokeleaf job in the first slot on the list of bills.

This strategy requires ''drug production'' to be researched, and to grow or buy [[smokeleaf leaves]]. The latter is, of course, a way to train the ''plants'' skill (sowing ''smokeleaf'' only requires 4 ''plants'' skill). Smokeleaf products have good recreational and cash (trade) value.

Training cooks with smokeleaf is an excellent strategy.

== Plants (growing) ==

Letting an unskilled grower harvest your fields will waste some of the product; check the [[harvest yield]] stat of the colonist. If you need to avoid this, you will have to create a – possibly large – restriction zone to keep this colonist out of the area that they must not harvest. Allow them areas where sowing needs to happen.

Chopping trees is a good way to train ''plants''. Disallow the task ("plant cut" in the work tab) for your skilled growers, so your trainees will get more opportunities to chop wood.

If you are growing plants that only skilled workers can sow (like [[Devilstrand]] and [[Healroot]]), make sure that your trainees will sow ''all the other fields''. Do not let your skilled growers take that work away from them. Again, you will probably need to use restriction zones or work tab micromanagement to facilitate this.

The ''Work Tab'' addon by ''Fluffy'' makes partitioning the growing tasks a ''lot'' easier, avoiding the use of temporary zone restrictions.

== Crafting ==

The only way to practice crafting is to make things, either at a crafting spot, tailoring bench or smithy. Fabrication benches are only usable by already skilled crafters. Drug production and brewing does ''not'' train crafting.

If you have no good crafters yet, you will produce many items of "poor" or "awful" quality. It is not possible to retrieve raw materials from ''crafted'' items (unlike ''constructed'' items) – after you have crafted an item, you have to either use it or sell it as it is. This means you should not use any valuable materials, such as [[Thrumbofur]], [[Megasloth wool]], [[Hyperweave]] or [[Plasteel]] to practice crafting. Only let your most competent people handle these super-valuable materials.

''Weapons are not a good item class to practice crafting'', because they only sell for 20% of the normal price. This is good for game balance, because a lot of weapons are dropped during raids, but it means that it is practically impossible to make money from crafted weaponry. Only craft weapons that you expect to use.

This leaves ''armor items'' and ''clothing'': armor requires valuable ingredients, so '''usually crafting is practiced making clothes'''.

Crafted items get a ''market value'' that is composed of
* the work invested into making the item
* the value of the raw materials used
* the [[quality]] of the item

The market value multiplier for "awful" items is 50%, for "poor" items it is 75%. In those cases it would have been better to sell the raw materials instead of the item! To cut your inevitable losses, '''only use the cheapest material you can find if you expect to produce a lot of bad quality stuff'''. Good candidates are [[birdskin]], [[pigskin]], [[lightleather]], [[patchleather]] and [[plainleather]]. In particular, do ''not'' use [[cloth]] (needs to be bought or grown) or [[human leather]] (too expensive).

To further limit your losses, you can slow down the work deliberately, by crafting under poor conditions (outside, in the dark, not using electricity, in the cold, ...). Skill experience is granted ''over time'' and not ''by work units''. Crafting as slowly as possible means you will waste less material in the same time span. Only do this while crafting at level 5 or lower; from level 6, you can expect to [[quality|at least break even on average with regards to material cost]].

If you have a competent crafter (level 8 or higher) that you want to train further, one good way is to let them make [[advanced component]]s at a fabrication bench. You will need a lot more ''advanced components'' to build the space ship than you can usually buy from traders, so making them early is never a waste of effort. They do not have a quality rating, as long as your crafter can make them you will get full value. Likewise, bionic limbs and organs can be made by anyone who meets the skill requirement, but it is difficult to know in advance which ones you will need (''arms'' are never useless, however).

== Artistic ==

There is not much to be said about training ''artistic'' crafting; just have your aspiring artist craft as many sculptures as possible.

"Awful" sculptures have a ''negative'' beauty value, so they actually make the environment more ugly. Great to put into the bedrooms of [[traits|ascetic]] colonists, but should be deconstructed otherwise.

Use the material that you can spare the most of; wood is often a good choice. [[Jade]] has the best balance of beauty and availability, so it should be reserved for more capable, possibly [[mental inspiration|inspired]] artists.

== Medical ==

There is something that a typical ''Rimworld'' campaign never lacks: work for your doctors and surgeons. It is still possible to get some extra training.

Performing any type of '''surgery''' is staggeringly efficient for training ''medical'': performing surgery awards 16 times as much XP (per time spent) as other work. This includes all kinds of body part replacements, organ harvesting, euthanizing humans ''and animals''.

* If you have human "patients", '''install and remove jaw dentures'''. This requires medical skill 2, no material except medicine, and the patient has no risk of dying on the table. It will leave the person permanently mangled, lowering their market value (which is not important unless you want to sell the person into slavery). Do not do it to healthy colonists or prisoners you plan to recruit. This procedure as well as leg replacements are ''not'' counted as ''organ harvesting'', even if performed on a healthy patient.

* If human subjects are not available, you can '''euthanize animals'''. This is a shorter procedure than the jaw replacement (worth only a third of the XP) but it has no medical skill requirement. This is great for training completely unskilled doctors. A failed procedure is both unlikely and of no consequence. You can euthanize one of your tame animals, or "rescue" a hunted (downed) animal, just to euthanize it straight away. Tame chickens are the best source of animals, because you usually want to weed out the males, and euthanizing a freshly hatched chick will give the same XP as any other animal would. ''Only use herbal medicine'' for this procedure; better medicine is not required and would be straight up wasted.

* Organ harvesting is also great training, and can be done three times per customer, eg. by taking a kidney, half a lung and a heart. It is strongly [[Human Resources|frowned upon]] by most colonists. It is also profitable, but only do it if you can afford the colony-wide mood penalty, which lasts for 8 days.

The XP granted by a surgical procedure depends on work speed of the pawn, work units required and skill passion. For reference: at 100% ''medical operation speed'' and ''Interested'' passion, 2,000 XP are granted from performing a leg replacement.

'''Note:''' because performing surgery gives so much XP, a single colonist will hit the soft learning cap of 4,000 XP per day rather quickly. Spread out the procedures over multiple doctors and days.

== Social ==
Each social chat with a colonist gives 4 ''social'' XP per per speech balloon at ''Interested'' passion and neutral mood modifier.

Having a friendly chat with a prisoner in order to convince him or her to join the colony gives roughly 50 ''social'' XP at ''Interested'' passion, per speech balloon. If you are recruiting prisoners, only assign the "Wardening" work type to the colonists whose social skill you want to improve. The ''Work Tab'' mod (or a similar mod) allows more control over the various tasks related to wardening, so it is recommended to make this more viable in normal colony operation.

Setting the prisoner interaction mode to "Reduce resistance" (and not "Recruit") will allow wardens to keep having conversations indefinitely, allowing skill training. However, this costs a lot of food over time to keep the prisoner alive. Only do this with prisoners you do not want as colonists; recruit them immediately otherwise, so they become productive and improve their skills.

== Intellectual ==

''Intellectual'' skill is gained by doing research, and by making hard drugs and medicine. There are no special techniques available to make this more efficient. All research done is equally valuable, and neither medicine nor drugs have a quality rating; this means that who you employ for these jobs only influences how long it takes to finish them.

== Animals ==

The ''animals'' skill is very versatile, and can be trained in various ways.

There are two animals related tasks where unskilled colonists can be a liability:
* Failed tame attempts may cause the animal to retaliate; this often leads to the animal handler getting injured, usually as far away from the base as possible...
* Milking or shearing animals can fail, resulting in ''all'' of the product going to waste; this is especially painful when shearing (gathering wool), because wool takes many days to grow back.

Because of this it is best to let unskilled animal handlers only ''train animals'' that are already domesticated. If this fails, some food will be wasted, and the animal might lose some training from decay, but nothing worse will happen. Only your qualified animal handlers should be allowed to milk, shear or tame wild animals.

It is very finicky to assign all your animal handlers to the jobs best suited for them. It can be done with a lot of manipulation of temporary zone restrictions, but the recommended way is to install a mod like ''Work Tab'': it allows for fine-grained control of the various animals related sub-tasks.

<references />

{{nav/guides}}

[[Category:Game mechanics]]

Training

2019-10-12T19:40:37Z

Siggboy: /* Medical */

<div style="float: right; margin-left: 2em;">__TOC__</div>

All skills in ''Rimworld'' improve simply while they are used; there is nothing special that needs to be done in addition to that. If a colonist is assigned to a task (via the ''Work'' tab) with a sufficiently high priority, they will eventually perform it and gain skill points.

In a few cases it is not obvious that a specific task trains a seemingly unrelated ability:
* Making ''smokeleaf joints'' requires and trains ''cooking'' (not crafting).
* Making medicine and hard drugs (''flake'', ''yayo'', etc.) requires and trains ''intellectual'' (not crafting).
* Cutting stone blocks does not train any skill (but requires crafting to be allowed as a task).
* Making [[Kibble]] is done at the butchering table, but requires and trains cooking.
* Butchering a dead animal is a cooking activity.
* Brewing beer is a cooking task (not crafting, which would be plausible)
* Many construction tasks could plausibly instead be crafting, smithing or tailoring tasks.
* Smithing and tailoring are actually sub-skills of crafting, but do not have their own skill level.

This article talks about a few special ways to forcibly train colonists in certain skills. This is usually only necessary and recommended if you need a certain ability on a colonist, but do not want to use this person for productive work. Normally this is because an untrained worker would be a liability – for example, an untrained cook can cause food poisoning, and an untrained miner can waste valuable resources while trying to extract them.

'''If you train a colonist by letting them do busy work, or monkey business, you are wasting one of the most valuable colony resources, namely work hours.''' Only do that if you really have to.

Even a colonist that is bad at everything, and passionate for nothing (these exist...) should be a hauler and cleaner, or maybe the guy who fulfills that caravan trade request 5 days away, before you let them repair a mountain stone face for days just to get them 3 levels of construction.

== Using temporary zone restrictions to direct colonists ==

A technique that is mentioned a few times in this article, is to create a zone only to restrict a colonist to a very specific area, in order to force them to perform a task.

As an example, consider colonist "Molly", who you want to smooth the floor in your freezer in the next few days, and ''do nothing else''. In this case, you will create a new [[zone]] for Molly, containing exactly these areas in your base:

* the area where the work needs to happen (freezer in this example)
* Molly's bedroom (so she can go to rest as usual)
* the recreation area and dining table
* a place where food is stored (maybe not necessary in this example, because the freezer is already covered)

These areas ''do not have to be adjacent'' (connected). The zone can be composed of several disconnected areas.

Now you restrict Molly to this newly created zone. She can now still move between those areas, but in order to perform a task, she needs to be inside one of them, that is, inside the zone. This means she will not use any skills outside the temporary zone, and you will not need to manipulate her work tab to keep her from doing anything but smooth the freezer floor.

This is a very effective method, not just for training, but for prioritizing important work in general.

== Combat training ==
If you feel you are not prepared for the next raid, you can train a few combat abilities. This will always need to be done manually, ie. with the trainee drafted (except for hunting). That means you can not manage the colony in the mean time, and it can be difficult to train more than one colonist at a time. This probably means a net loss of productivity in your colony, so only do it if you feel it is really necessary.

=== Shooting ===
The best way to train shooting is to assign the colonist to the "hunting" task. Giving them a long-range weapon, for example a [[bolt-action rifle]] makes hunting safer, because animals are less likely to enrage and retaliate if shot at from long range. To be safe, only hunt passive animals that will never retaliate.

Deliberately damaging your own structures or buildings does not improve your shooting skill.

Giving a really bad shooter a weapon not suited for the task, such as a [[machine pistol]] of "awful" quality, means that they will possibly hunt for a ''long'' time before actually killing the animal. Do not expect a colonist that you train this way to be very productive for the colony.

==== Aggravating animals ====
Outside of hunting, some resilient animals such as the [[Megasloth]], [[Rhinoceros]] and [[Thrumbo]] can give a lot of shooting skill by kiting them, and slowly shooting them to death with a low DPS weapon. You need to be very careful with this approach, because those animals do a lot of damage if given the chance to get into your melee range.

This is a special case of deliberately slow "hunting".

The best weapon types for this tactic are weapons with a fast windup and high shot frequency, not too short a range, and low damage. This makes you use the skill more often, by firing more shots, and has your "training dummy" last longer from low damage.

This approach does require extensive micromanagement, and you won't be able to perform other manual tasks in the colony in the meantime. It is even possible that actually killing the animal will take so long that your colonist will pass out from exhaustion or go into starvation. You ''must'' have a capable shooter available to finish off the animal and end the training if necessary.

=== Melee ===
Fighting anything with melee attacks will increase the ''melee'' skill. ''Hunting'' with melee attacks works, but animals are prone to fighting back so be warned (this is true even for animals that never retaliate when hunted from range). You will have to draft the colonist and "hunt" the animal manually by attacking it. An undrafted colonist will not ''hunt'' if they are lacking a ranged weapon.

If you want to train a character this way, use the best possible armor so they will take less damage from the animal. Taking no damage at all is usually not possible, so do not train a colonist that you require to be in good shape; they will at least have a few bruises for a couple of days, reducing their manipulation skills and movement ability. Also be aware that attacking herd animals (like muffalos and wild boars) can enrage the ''entire herd'', usually leading to a heavily injured colonist, or worse.

Tamed animals will fight back, so they are not safe training dummies; they can however be kept in a controlled environment which makes them more convenient targets. There is also no risk of an entire herd taking revenge for you hurting their friend. You can patch up the animal you just abused afterwards, which will train the ''medical'' skill.

Using melee attacks does raise the skill very quickly, and you will hit the "soft" XP cap of 4000 points in a matter of a few attacks. Disengage afterwards, because training over the soft cap is not efficient.

To level melee more safely, take prisoners who are incapable of "Violent" and repeatedly punch, then heal them in their prison cell. To avoid accidentally killing your prisoners, use fists only with neither a melee nor ranged weapon equipped. Carefully watch the health of the prisoner pausing the game between each punch if needed. A colonist with no weapon (not even a ranged weapon) does up to 7 base blunt damage per punch (see [[Weapons#Base Melee Stats|Base Melee Stats]] for details), so when any single body part falls below 8 hp remaining, stop and allow the prisoner to heal. This will allow you to train medical skill as well.

== Construction ==
Construction is already trained quite efficiently by simply using the skill, since construction is such a common activity in an expanding colony.

Smoothing walls and floors counts as construction, is very time consuming, and does have no quality penalty associated with it. It is maybe the best way to train a low skilled worker, without the risk of wasting materials or creating bad products. Having your apprentices do the smoothing keeps the master constructors free for more demanding work. Restrict the trainee colonists to the respective areas by creating a temporary zone, and let them do wall and floor smoothing exclusively for a while.

Making furniture is not the best way to train construction, because colonists with low skill will produce low quality furniture, which has then to be deconstructed and re-built, wasting material in the process. You can, however, keep deconstructing and reconstructing the furniture until the desired quality level is produced, if you do not mind losing some resources along the way; the popular mod ''Quality Builder'' helps tremendously.

If you are about to build a lot of walls in the colony, you can temporarily take your capable builders '''off''' the construction task, and let only your trainees build the walls and roofs. Walls do not have a quality stat, so it is not possible to create bad products. The apprentices will take a little longer, and probably "botch" construction several times, but the end result will be the same.

Do not train construction when high value material is involved, such as cloth (for carpets) or components (when making things like power generators). If the colonist "botches" construction in these cases, a fair amount of material will be irretrievably wasted; only do this if you have plenty of surplus so it would not matter.

=== Repairing things to learn construction ===
'''Only do this with a colonist that really needs to be up to speed in construction ''now'', if you have absolutely no other suitable construction work to do at the moment. Repairing structures just for training is probably the worst kind of monkey business you could give to your colonists, and a horrible waste of work hours.'''

You can damage structures, usually purpose-built stone walls, deliberately by damaging them with melee attacks, shots or grenade blasts, and then have your construction builders repair them.

This will not train shooting skill. Use the shooters only to damage the structure, then undraft them and have them resume their regular colony duties. Of course the shooters could be the very same people who will do the repair work just after. Shooting skill does not matter much in this case, as pretty much everybody is able to hit a wall from point blank range...

* By far the best approach is to ''smooth'' any stone wall, damage it, and repair it. Smoothed walls count as constructed walls, so they can be repaired. A smoothed granite wall does have 900 hitpoints, almost as much as a [[plasteel]] wall. Smoothing the wall will be training ''construction'' as well, hitting two birds with a single stone.
* Designate the colonists you intend to train so that they can only repair. Create a [[zone]] around the training area, and the general facilities of the base, then restrict the trainees to this zone.
* Skill training becomes much less effective after 4000 XP has been acquired in a skill during a day. Take the trainees off the training task by removing their zone restriction after the XP cap has been reached for the day.

== Mining ==
Unskilled miners will let resources go to waste if they mine an ore vein. You can check a colonists [[Mining Yield| mining yield]] stat to see if they are already at 100%. If they're not, do not use them to extract valuable resources from a mountain.

To train these people, restrict them to a temporary zone with a mining job in it that does not include any valuable ores (even [[steel]] will become valuable eventually, make no mistake...). If you dig into a mountain face randomly, be aware that this could become a space for [[infestation]]s to spawn if the location is too close to your colony.

If you have developed [[Deep drill| deep drilling]] already, you can let your apprentice miners work the drills. Waste of resources is usually not a problem anymore at this point.

== Cooking ==
The ''cooking'' skill level is increased by ''butchering'', ''cooking'' meals at a stove or campfire, and also by making [[smokeleaf joint]]s. If an unskilled cook prepares meals, they carry an increased risk of [[food poisoning]]. This is a fairly disrupting condition that should be avoided, so it is not optimal to train a new cook by letting them prepare meals.

=== Making smokeleaf joints ===
If a colonist has low skill but high [[Skills#Passion|passion]] for cooking, you should train them as an additional cook. The downside is that meals prepared by this character, while he or she is still learning, carry a high chance of [[food poisoning]].

Cooks can, however, also be trained by having them make [[smokeleaf joint]]s out of [[Smokeleaf leaves|leaves]] at a [[drug lab]]. This will train cooking just as fast as preparing meals, without the risk of making anybody sick.

Set up a dedicated work bill at the drug lab, and ''restrict it to the character that you would like to train in cooking''. The character needs to have priority to "Craft" things on the work tab. Make sure the drug lab is not occupied by other tasks; the easiest way is to put the smokeleaf job in the first slot on the list of bills.

This strategy requires ''drug production'' to be researched, and to grow or buy [[smokeleaf leaves]]. The latter is, of course, a way to train the ''plants'' skill (sowing ''smokeleaf'' only requires 4 ''plants'' skill). Smokeleaf products have good recreational and cash (trade) value.

Training cooks with smokeleaf is an excellent strategy.

== Plants (growing) ==

Letting an unskilled grower harvest your fields will waste some of the product; check the [[harvest yield]] stat of the colonist. If you need to avoid this, you will have to create a – possibly large – restriction zone to keep this colonist out of the area that they must not harvest. Allow them areas where sowing needs to happen.

Chopping trees is a good way to train ''plants''. Disallow the task ("plant cut" in the work tab) for your skilled growers, so your trainees will get more opportunities to chop wood.

If you are growing plants that only skilled workers can sow (like [[Devilstrand]] and [[Healroot]]), make sure that your trainees will sow ''all the other fields''. Do not let your skilled growers take that work away from them. Again, you will probably need to use restriction zones or work tab micromanagement to facilitate this.

The ''Work Tab'' addon by ''Fluffy'' makes partitioning the growing tasks a ''lot'' easier, avoiding the use of temporary zone restrictions.

== Crafting ==

The only way to practice crafting is to make things, either at a crafting spot, tailoring bench or smithy. Fabrication benches are only usable by already skilled crafters. Drug production and brewing does ''not'' train crafting.

If you have no good crafters yet, you will produce many items of "poor" or "awful" quality. It is not possible to retrieve raw materials from ''crafted'' items (unlike ''constructed'' items) – after you have crafted an item, you have to either use it or sell it as it is. This means you should not use any valuable materials, such as [[Thrumbofur]], [[Megasloth wool]], [[Hyperweave]] or [[Plasteel]] to practice crafting. Only let your most competent people handle these super-valuable materials.

''Weapons are not a good item class to practice crafting'', because they only sell for 20% of the normal price. This is good for game balance, because a lot of weapons are dropped during raids, but it means that it is practically impossible to make money from crafted weaponry. Only craft weapons that you expect to use.

This leaves ''armor items'' and ''clothing'': armor requires valuable ingredients, so '''usually crafting is practiced making clothes'''.

Crafted items get a ''market value'' that is composed of
* the work invested into making the item
* the value of the raw materials used
* the [[quality]] of the item

The market value multiplier for "awful" items is 50%, for "poor" items it is 75%. In those cases it would have been better to sell the raw materials instead of the item! To cut your inevitable losses, '''only use the cheapest material you can find if you expect to produce a lot of bad quality stuff'''. Good candidates are [[birdskin]], [[pigskin]], [[lightleather]], [[patchleather]] and [[plainleather]]. In particular, do ''not'' use [[cloth]] (needs to be bought or grown) or [[human leather]] (too expensive).

To further limit your losses, you can slow down the work deliberately, by crafting under poor conditions (outside, in the dark, not using electricity, in the cold, ...). Skill experience is granted ''over time'' and not ''by work units''. Crafting as slowly as possible means you will waste less material in the same time span. Only do this while crafting at level 5 or lower; from level 6, you can expect to [[quality|at least break even on average with regards to material cost]].

If you have a competent crafter (level 8 or higher) that you want to train further, one good way is to let them make [[advanced component]]s at a fabrication bench. You will need a lot more ''advanced components'' to build the space ship than you can usually buy from traders, so making them early is never a waste of effort. They do not have a quality rating, as long as your crafter can make them you will get full value. Likewise, bionic limbs and organs can be made by anyone who meets the skill requirement, but it is difficult to know in advance which ones you will need (''arms'' are never useless, however).

== Artistic ==

There is not much to be said about training ''artistic'' crafting; just have your aspiring artist craft as many sculptures as possible.

"Awful" sculptures have a ''negative'' beauty value, so they actually make the environment more ugly. Great to put into the bedrooms of [[traits|ascetic]] colonists, but should be deconstructed otherwise.

Use the material that you can spare the most of; wood is often a good choice. [[Jade]] has the best balance of beauty and availability, so it should be reserved for more capable, possibly [[mental inspiration|inspired]] artists.

== Medical ==

There is something that a typical ''Rimworld'' campaign never lacks: work for your doctors and surgeons. It is still possible to get some extra training.

Performing any type of '''surgery''' is staggeringly efficient for training ''medical'': performing surgery awards 16 times as much XP (per time spent) as other work. This includes all kinds of body part replacements, organ harvesting, euthanizing humans ''and animals''.

* If you have human "patients", '''install and remove jaw dentures'''. This requires medical skill 2, no material except medicine, and the patient has no risk of dying on the table. It will leave the person permanently mangled, lowering their market value (which is not important unless you want to sell the person into slavery). Do not do it to healthy colonists or prisoners you plan to recruit. This procedure as well as leg replacements are ''not'' counted as ''organ harvesting'', even if performed on a healthy patient.

* If human subjects are not available, you can '''euthanize animals'''. This is a shorter procedure than the jaw replacement (worth only a third of the XP) but it has no medical skill requirement. This is great for training completely unskilled doctors. A failed procedure is both unlikely and of no consequence. You can euthanize one of your tame animals, or "rescue" a hunted (downed) animal, just to euthanize it straight away. Chickens are a great choice, and euthanizing freshly hatched chicks is OK because the size of the animal does not matter with regards to XP earned. ''Only use herbal medicine'' for this procedure; better medicine is not required and would be straight up wasted.

* Organ harvesting is also great training, and can be done three times per customer, eg. by taking a kidney, half a lung and a heart. It is strongly [[Human Resources|frowned upon]] by most colonists. It is also profitable, but only do it if you can afford the colony-wide mood penalty, which lasts for 8 days.

The XP granted by a surgical procedure depends on work speed of the pawn, work units required and skill passion. For reference: at 100% ''medical operation speed'' and ''Interested'' passion, 2,000 XP are granted from performing a leg replacement.

'''Note:''' because performing surgery gives so much XP, a single colonist will hit the soft learning cap of 4,000 XP per day rather quickly. Spread out the procedures over multiple doctors and days.

== Social ==
Each social chat with a colonist gives 4 ''social'' XP per per speech balloon at ''Interested'' passion and neutral mood modifier.

Having a friendly chat with a prisoner in order to convince him or her to join the colony gives roughly 50 ''social'' XP at ''Interested'' passion, per speech balloon. If you are recruiting prisoners, only assign the "Wardening" work type to the colonists whose social skill you want to improve. The ''Work Tab'' mod (or a similar mod) allows more control over the various tasks related to wardening, so it is recommended to make this more viable in normal colony operation.

Setting the prisoner interaction mode to "Reduce resistance" (and not "Recruit") will allow wardens to keep having conversations indefinitely, allowing skill training. However, this costs a lot of food over time to keep the prisoner alive. Only do this with prisoners you do not want as colonists; recruit them immediately otherwise, so they become productive and improve their skills.

== Intellectual ==

''Intellectual'' skill is gained by doing research, and by making hard drugs and medicine. There are no special techniques available to make this more efficient. All research done is equally valuable, and neither medicine nor drugs have a quality rating; this means that who you employ for these jobs only influences how long it takes to finish them.

== Animals ==

The ''animals'' skill is very versatile, and can be trained in various ways.

There are two animals related tasks where unskilled colonists can be a liability:
* Failed tame attempts may cause the animal to retaliate; this often leads to the animal handler getting injured, usually as far away from the base as possible...
* Milking or shearing animals can fail, resulting in ''all'' of the product going to waste; this is especially painful when shearing (gathering wool), because wool takes many days to grow back.

Because of this it is best to let unskilled animal handlers only ''train animals'' that are already domesticated. If this fails, some food will be wasted, and the animal might lose some training from decay, but nothing worse will happen. Only your qualified animal handlers should be allowed to milk, shear or tame wild animals.

It is very finicky to assign all your animal handlers to the jobs best suited for them. It can be done with a lot of manipulation of temporary zone restrictions, but the recommended way is to install a mod like ''Work Tab'': it allows for fine-grained control of the various animals related sub-tasks.

<references />

{{nav/guides}}

[[Category:Game mechanics]]

Battery

2019-10-12T19:26:29Z

Siggboy: /* Batteries as power supplies */

{{infobox main|building|
|name = Battery
|image = Battery.jpg|Battery
|description = Stores electricity when there is excess power and yields it when there is not. Warning - charged batteries tend to explode when heated or wet.
|type = Buildings
|type2 = Power
|placeable = Yes
|size = 1|2
|hp = 100
|efficiency = 50%
|power =
|buy = {{icon|metal|70}} {{icon|component|2}}
|sell = {{icon|metal|52.5}} + {{icon|component|1.5}}
|beauty = -15
|mass base = 20
|cover = 0.4
}}<onlyinclude>
{{Info|The ''battery'' is an electric device that can even out the power supply on an electric grid. It will provide enough power to compensate for any deficit, while charge remains. If there is surplus power, the battery will recharge, but only at 50% efficiency (half the energy is lost). The charge capacity is 600 Watt-days. Batteries self-discharge at a rate of 5 W, even while disconnected, and need to be operated under a roof to keep them dry (rain or snowfall will quickly cause an explosion).}}

== Usage ==
'''Batteries are built, moved and stored like other kinds of movable furniture.''' They will keep their charge while stored ("minified") or disconnected, only discharging at the normal rate of 5 W (self-discharge).

With regards to power production, they behave like the other electric buildings in the game. All power consumers can connect to batteries in the same way as to other power sources: within a 5-tile radius, a device can directly connect to a battery (or array of batteries), without power conduits in between.

In order to charge a battery, it has to be directly connected to a power grid with excess power. It is not possible to connect to batteries "through" power consumers (this is because consumers can not be connected to more than one power grid at the same time).

Just like the other power producing buildings, a battery '''acts as a power conduit''' on the 2 tiles it covers.

Installed batteries '''can not be switched off manually'''. As long as at least one consumer is connected, the battery will provide power during a deficit, and also be vulnerable to the short-circuit event.

Installed batteries '''need to be kept dry'''. If outdoors, a roof has to be built over the tiles occupied by the battery. If a battery becomes wet (either due to rain or snowfall), there is a very high chance of a short circuit, causing an explosion and fire (probably spreading to adjacent batteries and connected devices). At least the rain will usually extinguish the fire...

Damage to a battery does not change its other properties and does not cause discharge (eg. a 1 hitpoint battery has the same capacity and wattage as a 100 hitpoint battery).

== Batteries as power supplies ==
Consumers can connect to batteries directly, up to a distance of 5 tiles away, by using the ''reconnect'' action on the consumer until it is connected to the battery.

The battery can also be connected to a power grid like any other power generator. Simply placing the battery next to a generator, power conduit, switch or another battery will connect it to the respective power grid.

As a power supply, the battery behaves just like any other power source in the game (eg. generators or solar panels), but each battery will deliver an unlimited amount of power. This means that any ''wattage'' can be delivered until the battery is completely discharged. It makes the battery not only convenient as buffers for wind turbines and solar panels, but also to cover arbitrary spikes in power usage, usually caused by turret arrays and other heavy power consumers that are only brought on-line sporadically.

The power output of a battery is theoretically unlimited. Even a huge colony that demands, say, 30,000 W of power can be powered by a single battery (but only for about 1 in-game hour if the battery is fully charged). Adding more batteries is only necessary to lengthen the time span.

If more than one battery is on the same power grid, all batteries with remaining charge will share the power load evenly.

The maximum amount of energy provided per battery is 600 Wd (''watt-days'') for a fully charged battery. Eg. if exactly 595 W were drawn, a single battery would last exactly 1 in-game day (taking into account the 5 W of self-discharge). If only 295 W are drawn, it lasts for 2 days, etc. Since maximum power draw is unlimited it is – theoretically – possible to empty a full battery in 1 tick of game time (instantly).

A disconnected battery will discharge at a rate of 5 W. This means that a fully charged battery can be stored for 120 days (1 in-game year) until depleted.

== Charging ==
Batteries charge automatically while connected to a power grid with excess power. Selecting the battery will show the current charge status in the information window.

The power used for charging is unlimited, ie. charging batteries will always draw all power that is not used by other consumers, so they never cause a power deficiency on the grid. All batteries on a grid will share charging power fairly.

Only half the power used for charging is stored as energy, ie. the ''charge efficiency'' is 50%. In other words, to fully charge an empty battery, 1200 Wd of energy must be provided (in addition to a constant 5 W to cover the self-discharge), but only 600 Wd will get stored.

As an example, connecting an empty battery to a power grid with exactly 1205 W of available power will charge it to full in exactly 1 in-game day. If more power was available, charging would complete more quickly. 5 W of charging power would keep the battery at exactly the present charge level, merely nullifying the self-discharge.

In practice, the self-discharge can usually be ignored.

== Constructing, moving and storing ==
Batteries behave exactly like other furniture items in the game: they have to be constructed on solid terrain, using the construction skill. It takes 14 work units to build, and can be done even at construction level 0.

After construction, they can be uninstalled like furniture, and then moved to storage, taken to a character's inventory or on a caravan. Uninstalling and reinstalling does not cause additional charge loss, beyond the 5 W of self-discharge that always applies.

It is possible to take charged batteries on caravans as a power source for camps and newly founded colonies.

Batteries that are not installed can be stored in the open, also in rain or snowfall, as they can not short circuit. Like other furniture, they are not subject to ''decay''.

== Hazards ==
'''Batteries are very likely to explode in rain and snowfall'''. This can be completely avoided by keeping installed batteries under a roof; keeping them indoors is not necessary. The resulting explosion will not cause any discharge, but it will heavily damage the battery, and possibly surrounding structures as well, also causing a fire.

'''Batteries make the [[Events#Faulty Conduit Explosion|short circuit]] event ("Zztt...") more dangerous:''' all affected batteries will instantly discharge, causing an explosion in addition to the fire that is normally caused by the event. The more batteries are connected, the larger the explosion. ''Note that the event is unrelated to batteries'' – it can still happen if no batteries are connected, but will then only cause a small fire and no explosion. Empty batteries will not affect the event.

Note that it is not the batteries that explode, but a random area around the affected power-conduit. This could be right next to a battery, or a long distance away from it.

The short circuit event can be completely avoided if there are no ''power conduits'' connected to the battery. You can disconnect the batteries from the main power grid with a power switch. The switch needs to be placed directly next to the battery array, separating the power conduits on the main grid from the batteries. The batteries are only protected if the switch is turned off, separating the connection. This makes the solution impractical for batteries that need to be always online.

[[File:Zero_conduit_freezer.jpg|300px|thumb|right|The batteries in this setup connect directly to the wind turbine and the attached coolers, without any power conduits. This completely avoids the random short circuit event ("Zztt...") in this power network.]]

It is also possible to completely avoid building any ''power conduits'' at all. This is only feasible for small, self-contained installations. The batteries themselves, as well as other power generating buildings, have built-in power conduits, but these are immune to short circuits. Because consumers can directly connect to batteries (and other power generators) over a 5-tile distance, you can construct conduit-free power grids with some careful planning.

If the above measures are impractical, [[firefoam popper]]s should be installed where an explosion would cause a lot of damage, such as inside a hydroponics facility or a storage area.

Battery performance is not affected by temperature. Somewhat contrary to the in-game description, the battery is not more susceptible to heat than other, comparable flammable structures. Even the most extreme heat waves will not make a battery explode or catch fire. It is therefore not necessary to keep batteries climatized.

== Strategy ==
Batteries are useful in most colonies, even if the colony does not rely on unstable power sources like [[solar panel]]s and [[wind turbine]]s.

If only renewable energy is used, at least one battery is mandatory, because sufficient power supply can never be guaranteed. Solar panels produce no power during the night and during an eclipse, and wind turbines are completely unreliable. If the colony has no other backup power source, it is highly recommended to keep some additional batteries behind a [[power switch]] on a separate network (see ''Hazards'' above), so they can be brought online in the case of a ''short circuit'' event.

Alternatively, some batteries can also be stored in a warehouse, and then placed down anywhere on the power grid on demand. This makes switches unnecessary.

Batteries can also be used to make fueled generators more economical. These generators provide constant power, but they also burn their fuel at a constant rate – no matter how much power is actually used. If you connect some batteries, you can at least catch half of the otherwise wasted energy, and then disable the generator until the batteries run dry. This will save 100% of the fuel for the time the generator is offline. This is especially helpful in the early game, where you might not even have enough power draw to fully load a single generator, and fuel will be usually scarce as well.

The energy stored by even a single battery is very high. 600 Wd are enough to power, for example, three [[cooler]]s at full power draw for an entire day, with no other source of power available. Therefore, building a lot of batteries ("just to be safe") is not necessary, or even harmful. Unless you take complex and expensive measures to avoid the ''short circuit'' event, having too many batteries online is a liability. Examine closely how much energy storage you need, and do not build more than that.

When you calculate the battery capacity that is necessary when using renewable energy, keep in mind that charge efficiency is only 50%. That is, only half of any excess energy will be effectively usable. This is particularly relevant when planning a greenhouse setup, of [[hydroponics basin]]s and a [[sun lamp]]. The ''sun lamp'' will draw 2900 W during the day, and 0 W during the night, for an average demand of 1450 W. However, it is not sufficient to generate only 1450 W at all times, hoping that a 3-battery array will even out the difference in power draw. This is because during the night, only half of the extra 1450 W will effectively charge the batteries, storing 8,700 Wh of energy (~360 Wd). This will only be enough to power the sun-lamp for 6 hours during the day. For the remaining 6 hours, the missing 1450 W will have to be provided by other means (usually a solar panel). Simply adding more batteries will not change this. Two batteries will provide enough buffering in this scenario.

The example setup, including 24 hydroponics basins, can be fully powered by one geothermal generator and a solar panel, connected to a single buffer battery.

Even in colonies that do not use wind or solar energy, batteries are useful to cover spikes in power usage, usually caused by turret arrays and devices like crematoriums, smelters and mineral scanners that are only brought online intermittently. A battery can cover arbitrarily high power needs, the size of the array only changes for how long that is possible.

As an example, an array of 20 mini-turrets and 4 autocannon turrets draws 3200 W of power. Instead of building another geothermal generator that would cover this, even a single charged battery can power this entire setup for more than 4 in-game hours. An array of 5 batteries can power the defenses for an entire in-game day. The battery array should be isolated with two power switches from the security grid and main power grid. This makes it then also very easy to power the entire setup with a single switch, as well as keep the batteries safe from the ''short circuit'' event.

</onlyinclude>
{{nav|power|wide}}
[[Category:Buildings]]
[[Category:Power]]

Battery

2019-10-12T19:24:01Z

Siggboy: /* Charging */

{{infobox main|building|
|name = Battery
|image = Battery.jpg|Battery
|description = Stores electricity when there is excess power and yields it when there is not. Warning - charged batteries tend to explode when heated or wet.
|type = Buildings
|type2 = Power
|placeable = Yes
|size = 1|2
|hp = 100
|efficiency = 50%
|power =
|buy = {{icon|metal|70}} {{icon|component|2}}
|sell = {{icon|metal|52.5}} + {{icon|component|1.5}}
|beauty = -15
|mass base = 20
|cover = 0.4
}}<onlyinclude>
{{Info|The ''battery'' is an electric device that can even out the power supply on an electric grid. It will provide enough power to compensate for any deficit, while charge remains. If there is surplus power, the battery will recharge, but only at 50% efficiency (half the energy is lost). The charge capacity is 600 Watt-days. Batteries self-discharge at a rate of 5 W, even while disconnected, and need to be operated under a roof to keep them dry (rain or snowfall will quickly cause an explosion).}}

== Usage ==
'''Batteries are built, moved and stored like other kinds of movable furniture.''' They will keep their charge while stored ("minified") or disconnected, only discharging at the normal rate of 5 W (self-discharge).

With regards to power production, they behave like the other electric buildings in the game. All power consumers can connect to batteries in the same way as to other power sources: within a 5-tile radius, a device can directly connect to a battery (or array of batteries), without power conduits in between.

In order to charge a battery, it has to be directly connected to a power grid with excess power. It is not possible to connect to batteries "through" power consumers (this is because consumers can not be connected to more than one power grid at the same time).

Just like the other power producing buildings, a battery '''acts as a power conduit''' on the 2 tiles it covers.

Installed batteries '''can not be switched off manually'''. As long as at least one consumer is connected, the battery will provide power during a deficit, and also be vulnerable to the short-circuit event.

Installed batteries '''need to be kept dry'''. If outdoors, a roof has to be built over the tiles occupied by the battery. If a battery becomes wet (either due to rain or snowfall), there is a very high chance of a short circuit, causing an explosion and fire (probably spreading to adjacent batteries and connected devices). At least the rain will usually extinguish the fire...

Damage to a battery does not change its other properties and does not cause discharge (eg. a 1 hitpoint battery has the same capacity and wattage as a 100 hitpoint battery).

== Batteries as power supplies ==
Consumers can connect to batteries directly, up to a distance of 5 tiles away, by using the ''reconnect'' action on the consumer until it is connected to the battery.

As a power supply, the battery behaves just like any other power source in the game (eg. generators or solar panels), but each battery will deliver an unlimited amount of power. This means that any ''wattage'' can be delivered until the battery is completely discharged. It makes the battery not only convenient as buffers for wind turbines and solar panels, but also to cover arbitrary spikes in power usage, usually caused by turret arrays and other heavy power consumers that are only brought on-line sporadically.

The power output of a battery is theoretically unlimited. Even a huge colony that demands, say, 30,000 W of power can be powered by a single battery (but only for about 1 in-game hour if the battery is fully charged). Adding more batteries is only necessary to lengthen the time span.

If more than one battery is on the same power grid, all batteries with remaining charge will share the power load evenly.

The maximum amount of energy provided per battery is 600 Wd (''watt-days'') for a fully charged battery. Eg. if exactly 595 W were drawn, a single battery would last exactly 1 in-game day (taking into account the 5 W of self-discharge). If only 295 W are drawn, it lasts for 2 days, etc. Since maximum power draw is unlimited it is – theoretically – possible to empty a full battery in 1 tick of game time (instantly).

A disconnected battery will discharge at a rate of 5 W. This means that a fully charged battery can be stored for 120 days (1 in-game year) until depleted.

== Charging ==
Batteries charge automatically while connected to a power grid with excess power. Selecting the battery will show the current charge status in the information window.

The power used for charging is unlimited, ie. charging batteries will always draw all power that is not used by other consumers, so they never cause a power deficiency on the grid. All batteries on a grid will share charging power fairly.

Only half the power used for charging is stored as energy, ie. the ''charge efficiency'' is 50%. In other words, to fully charge an empty battery, 1200 Wd of energy must be provided (in addition to a constant 5 W to cover the self-discharge), but only 600 Wd will get stored.

As an example, connecting an empty battery to a power grid with exactly 1205 W of available power will charge it to full in exactly 1 in-game day. If more power was available, charging would complete more quickly. 5 W of charging power would keep the battery at exactly the present charge level, merely nullifying the self-discharge.

In practice, the self-discharge can usually be ignored.

== Constructing, moving and storing ==
Batteries behave exactly like other furniture items in the game: they have to be constructed on solid terrain, using the construction skill. It takes 14 work units to build, and can be done even at construction level 0.

After construction, they can be uninstalled like furniture, and then moved to storage, taken to a character's inventory or on a caravan. Uninstalling and reinstalling does not cause additional charge loss, beyond the 5 W of self-discharge that always applies.

It is possible to take charged batteries on caravans as a power source for camps and newly founded colonies.

Batteries that are not installed can be stored in the open, also in rain or snowfall, as they can not short circuit. Like other furniture, they are not subject to ''decay''.

== Hazards ==
'''Batteries are very likely to explode in rain and snowfall'''. This can be completely avoided by keeping installed batteries under a roof; keeping them indoors is not necessary. The resulting explosion will not cause any discharge, but it will heavily damage the battery, and possibly surrounding structures as well, also causing a fire.

'''Batteries make the [[Events#Faulty Conduit Explosion|short circuit]] event ("Zztt...") more dangerous:''' all affected batteries will instantly discharge, causing an explosion in addition to the fire that is normally caused by the event. The more batteries are connected, the larger the explosion. ''Note that the event is unrelated to batteries'' – it can still happen if no batteries are connected, but will then only cause a small fire and no explosion. Empty batteries will not affect the event.

Note that it is not the batteries that explode, but a random area around the affected power-conduit. This could be right next to a battery, or a long distance away from it.

The short circuit event can be completely avoided if there are no ''power conduits'' connected to the battery. You can disconnect the batteries from the main power grid with a power switch. The switch needs to be placed directly next to the battery array, separating the power conduits on the main grid from the batteries. The batteries are only protected if the switch is turned off, separating the connection. This makes the solution impractical for batteries that need to be always online.

[[File:Zero_conduit_freezer.jpg|300px|thumb|right|The batteries in this setup connect directly to the wind turbine and the attached coolers, without any power conduits. This completely avoids the random short circuit event ("Zztt...") in this power network.]]

It is also possible to completely avoid building any ''power conduits'' at all. This is only feasible for small, self-contained installations. The batteries themselves, as well as other power generating buildings, have built-in power conduits, but these are immune to short circuits. Because consumers can directly connect to batteries (and other power generators) over a 5-tile distance, you can construct conduit-free power grids with some careful planning.

If the above measures are impractical, [[firefoam popper]]s should be installed where an explosion would cause a lot of damage, such as inside a hydroponics facility or a storage area.

Battery performance is not affected by temperature. Somewhat contrary to the in-game description, the battery is not more susceptible to heat than other, comparable flammable structures. Even the most extreme heat waves will not make a battery explode or catch fire. It is therefore not necessary to keep batteries climatized.

== Strategy ==
Batteries are useful in most colonies, even if the colony does not rely on unstable power sources like [[solar panel]]s and [[wind turbine]]s.

If only renewable energy is used, at least one battery is mandatory, because sufficient power supply can never be guaranteed. Solar panels produce no power during the night and during an eclipse, and wind turbines are completely unreliable. If the colony has no other backup power source, it is highly recommended to keep some additional batteries behind a [[power switch]] on a separate network (see ''Hazards'' above), so they can be brought online in the case of a ''short circuit'' event.

Alternatively, some batteries can also be stored in a warehouse, and then placed down anywhere on the power grid on demand. This makes switches unnecessary.

Batteries can also be used to make fueled generators more economical. These generators provide constant power, but they also burn their fuel at a constant rate – no matter how much power is actually used. If you connect some batteries, you can at least catch half of the otherwise wasted energy, and then disable the generator until the batteries run dry. This will save 100% of the fuel for the time the generator is offline. This is especially helpful in the early game, where you might not even have enough power draw to fully load a single generator, and fuel will be usually scarce as well.

The energy stored by even a single battery is very high. 600 Wd are enough to power, for example, three [[cooler]]s at full power draw for an entire day, with no other source of power available. Therefore, building a lot of batteries ("just to be safe") is not necessary, or even harmful. Unless you take complex and expensive measures to avoid the ''short circuit'' event, having too many batteries online is a liability. Examine closely how much energy storage you need, and do not build more than that.

When you calculate the battery capacity that is necessary when using renewable energy, keep in mind that charge efficiency is only 50%. That is, only half of any excess energy will be effectively usable. This is particularly relevant when planning a greenhouse setup, of [[hydroponics basin]]s and a [[sun lamp]]. The ''sun lamp'' will draw 2900 W during the day, and 0 W during the night, for an average demand of 1450 W. However, it is not sufficient to generate only 1450 W at all times, hoping that a 3-battery array will even out the difference in power draw. This is because during the night, only half of the extra 1450 W will effectively charge the batteries, storing 8,700 Wh of energy (~360 Wd). This will only be enough to power the sun-lamp for 6 hours during the day. For the remaining 6 hours, the missing 1450 W will have to be provided by other means (usually a solar panel). Simply adding more batteries will not change this. Two batteries will provide enough buffering in this scenario.

The example setup, including 24 hydroponics basins, can be fully powered by one geothermal generator and a solar panel, connected to a single buffer battery.

Even in colonies that do not use wind or solar energy, batteries are useful to cover spikes in power usage, usually caused by turret arrays and devices like crematoriums, smelters and mineral scanners that are only brought online intermittently. A battery can cover arbitrarily high power needs, the size of the array only changes for how long that is possible.

As an example, an array of 20 mini-turrets and 4 autocannon turrets draws 3200 W of power. Instead of building another geothermal generator that would cover this, even a single charged battery can power this entire setup for more than 4 in-game hours. An array of 5 batteries can power the defenses for an entire in-game day. The battery array should be isolated with two power switches from the security grid and main power grid. This makes it then also very easy to power the entire setup with a single switch, as well as keep the batteries safe from the ''short circuit'' event.

</onlyinclude>
{{nav|power|wide}}
[[Category:Buildings]]
[[Category:Power]]

Battery

2019-10-12T19:22:44Z

Siggboy: /* Charging */

{{infobox main|building|
|name = Battery
|image = Battery.jpg|Battery
|description = Stores electricity when there is excess power and yields it when there is not. Warning - charged batteries tend to explode when heated or wet.
|type = Buildings
|type2 = Power
|placeable = Yes
|size = 1|2
|hp = 100
|efficiency = 50%
|power =
|buy = {{icon|metal|70}} {{icon|component|2}}
|sell = {{icon|metal|52.5}} + {{icon|component|1.5}}
|beauty = -15
|mass base = 20
|cover = 0.4
}}<onlyinclude>
{{Info|The ''battery'' is an electric device that can even out the power supply on an electric grid. It will provide enough power to compensate for any deficit, while charge remains. If there is surplus power, the battery will recharge, but only at 50% efficiency (half the energy is lost). The charge capacity is 600 Watt-days. Batteries self-discharge at a rate of 5 W, even while disconnected, and need to be operated under a roof to keep them dry (rain or snowfall will quickly cause an explosion).}}

== Usage ==
'''Batteries are built, moved and stored like other kinds of movable furniture.''' They will keep their charge while stored ("minified") or disconnected, only discharging at the normal rate of 5 W (self-discharge).

With regards to power production, they behave like the other electric buildings in the game. All power consumers can connect to batteries in the same way as to other power sources: within a 5-tile radius, a device can directly connect to a battery (or array of batteries), without power conduits in between.

In order to charge a battery, it has to be directly connected to a power grid with excess power. It is not possible to connect to batteries "through" power consumers (this is because consumers can not be connected to more than one power grid at the same time).

Just like the other power producing buildings, a battery '''acts as a power conduit''' on the 2 tiles it covers.

Installed batteries '''can not be switched off manually'''. As long as at least one consumer is connected, the battery will provide power during a deficit, and also be vulnerable to the short-circuit event.

Installed batteries '''need to be kept dry'''. If outdoors, a roof has to be built over the tiles occupied by the battery. If a battery becomes wet (either due to rain or snowfall), there is a very high chance of a short circuit, causing an explosion and fire (probably spreading to adjacent batteries and connected devices). At least the rain will usually extinguish the fire...

Damage to a battery does not change its other properties and does not cause discharge (eg. a 1 hitpoint battery has the same capacity and wattage as a 100 hitpoint battery).

== Batteries as power supplies ==
Consumers can connect to batteries directly, up to a distance of 5 tiles away, by using the ''reconnect'' action on the consumer until it is connected to the battery.

As a power supply, the battery behaves just like any other power source in the game (eg. generators or solar panels), but each battery will deliver an unlimited amount of power. This means that any ''wattage'' can be delivered until the battery is completely discharged. It makes the battery not only convenient as buffers for wind turbines and solar panels, but also to cover arbitrary spikes in power usage, usually caused by turret arrays and other heavy power consumers that are only brought on-line sporadically.

The power output of a battery is theoretically unlimited. Even a huge colony that demands, say, 30,000 W of power can be powered by a single battery (but only for about 1 in-game hour if the battery is fully charged). Adding more batteries is only necessary to lengthen the time span.

If more than one battery is on the same power grid, all batteries with remaining charge will share the power load evenly.

The maximum amount of energy provided per battery is 600 Wd (''watt-days'') for a fully charged battery. Eg. if exactly 595 W were drawn, a single battery would last exactly 1 in-game day (taking into account the 5 W of self-discharge). If only 295 W are drawn, it lasts for 2 days, etc. Since maximum power draw is unlimited it is – theoretically – possible to empty a full battery in 1 tick of game time (instantly).

A disconnected battery will discharge at a rate of 5 W. This means that a fully charged battery can be stored for 120 days (1 in-game year) until depleted.

== Charging ==
Batteries charge automatically while connected to a power grid with excess power. Selecting the battery will show the current charge status in the information window.

The power used for charging is unlimited, ie. charging batteries will always draw all power that is not used by other consumers, so they never cause a power deficiency on the grid. All batteries on a grid will share charging power fairly.

Only half the power used for charging is stored as energy, ie. the ''charge efficiency'' is 50%. In other words, to fully charge an empty battery, 1200 Wd of energy must be provided (in addition to a constant 5 W to cover the self-discharge).

As an example, connecting an empty battery to a power grid with exactly 1205 W of available power will charge it to full in exactly 1 in-game day. If more power was available, charging would complete more quickly. 5 W of charging power would keep the battery at exactly the present charge level, merely nullifying the self-discharge.

In practice, the self-discharge can usually be ignored.

== Constructing, moving and storing ==
Batteries behave exactly like other furniture items in the game: they have to be constructed on solid terrain, using the construction skill. It takes 14 work units to build, and can be done even at construction level 0.

After construction, they can be uninstalled like furniture, and then moved to storage, taken to a character's inventory or on a caravan. Uninstalling and reinstalling does not cause additional charge loss, beyond the 5 W of self-discharge that always applies.

It is possible to take charged batteries on caravans as a power source for camps and newly founded colonies.

Batteries that are not installed can be stored in the open, also in rain or snowfall, as they can not short circuit. Like other furniture, they are not subject to ''decay''.

== Hazards ==
'''Batteries are very likely to explode in rain and snowfall'''. This can be completely avoided by keeping installed batteries under a roof; keeping them indoors is not necessary. The resulting explosion will not cause any discharge, but it will heavily damage the battery, and possibly surrounding structures as well, also causing a fire.

'''Batteries make the [[Events#Faulty Conduit Explosion|short circuit]] event ("Zztt...") more dangerous:''' all affected batteries will instantly discharge, causing an explosion in addition to the fire that is normally caused by the event. The more batteries are connected, the larger the explosion. ''Note that the event is unrelated to batteries'' – it can still happen if no batteries are connected, but will then only cause a small fire and no explosion. Empty batteries will not affect the event.

Note that it is not the batteries that explode, but a random area around the affected power-conduit. This could be right next to a battery, or a long distance away from it.

The short circuit event can be completely avoided if there are no ''power conduits'' connected to the battery. You can disconnect the batteries from the main power grid with a power switch. The switch needs to be placed directly next to the battery array, separating the power conduits on the main grid from the batteries. The batteries are only protected if the switch is turned off, separating the connection. This makes the solution impractical for batteries that need to be always online.

[[File:Zero_conduit_freezer.jpg|300px|thumb|right|The batteries in this setup connect directly to the wind turbine and the attached coolers, without any power conduits. This completely avoids the random short circuit event ("Zztt...") in this power network.]]

It is also possible to completely avoid building any ''power conduits'' at all. This is only feasible for small, self-contained installations. The batteries themselves, as well as other power generating buildings, have built-in power conduits, but these are immune to short circuits. Because consumers can directly connect to batteries (and other power generators) over a 5-tile distance, you can construct conduit-free power grids with some careful planning.

If the above measures are impractical, [[firefoam popper]]s should be installed where an explosion would cause a lot of damage, such as inside a hydroponics facility or a storage area.

Battery performance is not affected by temperature. Somewhat contrary to the in-game description, the battery is not more susceptible to heat than other, comparable flammable structures. Even the most extreme heat waves will not make a battery explode or catch fire. It is therefore not necessary to keep batteries climatized.

== Strategy ==
Batteries are useful in most colonies, even if the colony does not rely on unstable power sources like [[solar panel]]s and [[wind turbine]]s.

If only renewable energy is used, at least one battery is mandatory, because sufficient power supply can never be guaranteed. Solar panels produce no power during the night and during an eclipse, and wind turbines are completely unreliable. If the colony has no other backup power source, it is highly recommended to keep some additional batteries behind a [[power switch]] on a separate network (see ''Hazards'' above), so they can be brought online in the case of a ''short circuit'' event.

Alternatively, some batteries can also be stored in a warehouse, and then placed down anywhere on the power grid on demand. This makes switches unnecessary.

Batteries can also be used to make fueled generators more economical. These generators provide constant power, but they also burn their fuel at a constant rate – no matter how much power is actually used. If you connect some batteries, you can at least catch half of the otherwise wasted energy, and then disable the generator until the batteries run dry. This will save 100% of the fuel for the time the generator is offline. This is especially helpful in the early game, where you might not even have enough power draw to fully load a single generator, and fuel will be usually scarce as well.

The energy stored by even a single battery is very high. 600 Wd are enough to power, for example, three [[cooler]]s at full power draw for an entire day, with no other source of power available. Therefore, building a lot of batteries ("just to be safe") is not necessary, or even harmful. Unless you take complex and expensive measures to avoid the ''short circuit'' event, having too many batteries online is a liability. Examine closely how much energy storage you need, and do not build more than that.

When you calculate the battery capacity that is necessary when using renewable energy, keep in mind that charge efficiency is only 50%. That is, only half of any excess energy will be effectively usable. This is particularly relevant when planning a greenhouse setup, of [[hydroponics basin]]s and a [[sun lamp]]. The ''sun lamp'' will draw 2900 W during the day, and 0 W during the night, for an average demand of 1450 W. However, it is not sufficient to generate only 1450 W at all times, hoping that a 3-battery array will even out the difference in power draw. This is because during the night, only half of the extra 1450 W will effectively charge the batteries, storing 8,700 Wh of energy (~360 Wd). This will only be enough to power the sun-lamp for 6 hours during the day. For the remaining 6 hours, the missing 1450 W will have to be provided by other means (usually a solar panel). Simply adding more batteries will not change this. Two batteries will provide enough buffering in this scenario.

The example setup, including 24 hydroponics basins, can be fully powered by one geothermal generator and a solar panel, connected to a single buffer battery.

Even in colonies that do not use wind or solar energy, batteries are useful to cover spikes in power usage, usually caused by turret arrays and devices like crematoriums, smelters and mineral scanners that are only brought online intermittently. A battery can cover arbitrarily high power needs, the size of the array only changes for how long that is possible.

As an example, an array of 20 mini-turrets and 4 autocannon turrets draws 3200 W of power. Instead of building another geothermal generator that would cover this, even a single charged battery can power this entire setup for more than 4 in-game hours. An array of 5 batteries can power the defenses for an entire in-game day. The battery array should be isolated with two power switches from the security grid and main power grid. This makes it then also very easy to power the entire setup with a single switch, as well as keep the batteries safe from the ''short circuit'' event.

</onlyinclude>
{{nav|power|wide}}
[[Category:Buildings]]
[[Category:Power]]

Battery

2019-10-12T19:22:02Z

Siggboy: /* Charging */

{{infobox main|building|
|name = Battery
|image = Battery.jpg|Battery
|description = Stores electricity when there is excess power and yields it when there is not. Warning - charged batteries tend to explode when heated or wet.
|type = Buildings
|type2 = Power
|placeable = Yes
|size = 1|2
|hp = 100
|efficiency = 50%
|power =
|buy = {{icon|metal|70}} {{icon|component|2}}
|sell = {{icon|metal|52.5}} + {{icon|component|1.5}}
|beauty = -15
|mass base = 20
|cover = 0.4
}}<onlyinclude>
{{Info|The ''battery'' is an electric device that can even out the power supply on an electric grid. It will provide enough power to compensate for any deficit, while charge remains. If there is surplus power, the battery will recharge, but only at 50% efficiency (half the energy is lost). The charge capacity is 600 Watt-days. Batteries self-discharge at a rate of 5 W, even while disconnected, and need to be operated under a roof to keep them dry (rain or snowfall will quickly cause an explosion).}}

== Usage ==
'''Batteries are built, moved and stored like other kinds of movable furniture.''' They will keep their charge while stored ("minified") or disconnected, only discharging at the normal rate of 5 W (self-discharge).

With regards to power production, they behave like the other electric buildings in the game. All power consumers can connect to batteries in the same way as to other power sources: within a 5-tile radius, a device can directly connect to a battery (or array of batteries), without power conduits in between.

In order to charge a battery, it has to be directly connected to a power grid with excess power. It is not possible to connect to batteries "through" power consumers (this is because consumers can not be connected to more than one power grid at the same time).

Just like the other power producing buildings, a battery '''acts as a power conduit''' on the 2 tiles it covers.

Installed batteries '''can not be switched off manually'''. As long as at least one consumer is connected, the battery will provide power during a deficit, and also be vulnerable to the short-circuit event.

Installed batteries '''need to be kept dry'''. If outdoors, a roof has to be built over the tiles occupied by the battery. If a battery becomes wet (either due to rain or snowfall), there is a very high chance of a short circuit, causing an explosion and fire (probably spreading to adjacent batteries and connected devices). At least the rain will usually extinguish the fire...

Damage to a battery does not change its other properties and does not cause discharge (eg. a 1 hitpoint battery has the same capacity and wattage as a 100 hitpoint battery).

== Batteries as power supplies ==
Consumers can connect to batteries directly, up to a distance of 5 tiles away, by using the ''reconnect'' action on the consumer until it is connected to the battery.

As a power supply, the battery behaves just like any other power source in the game (eg. generators or solar panels), but each battery will deliver an unlimited amount of power. This means that any ''wattage'' can be delivered until the battery is completely discharged. It makes the battery not only convenient as buffers for wind turbines and solar panels, but also to cover arbitrary spikes in power usage, usually caused by turret arrays and other heavy power consumers that are only brought on-line sporadically.

The power output of a battery is theoretically unlimited. Even a huge colony that demands, say, 30,000 W of power can be powered by a single battery (but only for about 1 in-game hour if the battery is fully charged). Adding more batteries is only necessary to lengthen the time span.

If more than one battery is on the same power grid, all batteries with remaining charge will share the power load evenly.

The maximum amount of energy provided per battery is 600 Wd (''watt-days'') for a fully charged battery. Eg. if exactly 595 W were drawn, a single battery would last exactly 1 in-game day (taking into account the 5 W of self-discharge). If only 295 W are drawn, it lasts for 2 days, etc. Since maximum power draw is unlimited it is – theoretically – possible to empty a full battery in 1 tick of game time (instantly).

A disconnected battery will discharge at a rate of 5 W. This means that a fully charged battery can be stored for 120 days (1 in-game year) until depleted.

== Charging ==
Batteries charge automatically while connected to a power grid with excess power. Selecting the battery will show the current charge status in the information window.

The power used for charging is unlimited, ie. charging batteries will always draw all power that is not used by other consumers, so they never cause a power deficiency on the grid. All batteries on a gridd will evenly share charging power

Only half the power used for charging is stored as energy, ie. the ''charge efficiency'' is 50%. In other words, to fully charge an empty battery, 1200 Wd of energy must be provided (in addition to a constant 5 W to cover the self-discharge).

As an example, connecting an empty battery to a power grid with exactly 1205 W of available power will charge it to full in exactly 1 in-game day. If more power was available, charging would complete more quickly. 5 W of charging power would keep the battery at exactly the present charge level, merely nullifying the self-discharge.

In practice, the self-discharge can usually be ignored.

== Constructing, moving and storing ==
Batteries behave exactly like other furniture items in the game: they have to be constructed on solid terrain, using the construction skill. It takes 14 work units to build, and can be done even at construction level 0.

After construction, they can be uninstalled like furniture, and then moved to storage, taken to a character's inventory or on a caravan. Uninstalling and reinstalling does not cause additional charge loss, beyond the 5 W of self-discharge that always applies.

It is possible to take charged batteries on caravans as a power source for camps and newly founded colonies.

Batteries that are not installed can be stored in the open, also in rain or snowfall, as they can not short circuit. Like other furniture, they are not subject to ''decay''.

== Hazards ==
'''Batteries are very likely to explode in rain and snowfall'''. This can be completely avoided by keeping installed batteries under a roof; keeping them indoors is not necessary. The resulting explosion will not cause any discharge, but it will heavily damage the battery, and possibly surrounding structures as well, also causing a fire.

'''Batteries make the [[Events#Faulty Conduit Explosion|short circuit]] event ("Zztt...") more dangerous:''' all affected batteries will instantly discharge, causing an explosion in addition to the fire that is normally caused by the event. The more batteries are connected, the larger the explosion. ''Note that the event is unrelated to batteries'' – it can still happen if no batteries are connected, but will then only cause a small fire and no explosion. Empty batteries will not affect the event.

Note that it is not the batteries that explode, but a random area around the affected power-conduit. This could be right next to a battery, or a long distance away from it.

The short circuit event can be completely avoided if there are no ''power conduits'' connected to the battery. You can disconnect the batteries from the main power grid with a power switch. The switch needs to be placed directly next to the battery array, separating the power conduits on the main grid from the batteries. The batteries are only protected if the switch is turned off, separating the connection. This makes the solution impractical for batteries that need to be always online.

[[File:Zero_conduit_freezer.jpg|300px|thumb|right|The batteries in this setup connect directly to the wind turbine and the attached coolers, without any power conduits. This completely avoids the random short circuit event ("Zztt...") in this power network.]]

It is also possible to completely avoid building any ''power conduits'' at all. This is only feasible for small, self-contained installations. The batteries themselves, as well as other power generating buildings, have built-in power conduits, but these are immune to short circuits. Because consumers can directly connect to batteries (and other power generators) over a 5-tile distance, you can construct conduit-free power grids with some careful planning.

If the above measures are impractical, [[firefoam popper]]s should be installed where an explosion would cause a lot of damage, such as inside a hydroponics facility or a storage area.

Battery performance is not affected by temperature. Somewhat contrary to the in-game description, the battery is not more susceptible to heat than other, comparable flammable structures. Even the most extreme heat waves will not make a battery explode or catch fire. It is therefore not necessary to keep batteries climatized.

== Strategy ==
Batteries are useful in most colonies, even if the colony does not rely on unstable power sources like [[solar panel]]s and [[wind turbine]]s.

If only renewable energy is used, at least one battery is mandatory, because sufficient power supply can never be guaranteed. Solar panels produce no power during the night and during an eclipse, and wind turbines are completely unreliable. If the colony has no other backup power source, it is highly recommended to keep some additional batteries behind a [[power switch]] on a separate network (see ''Hazards'' above), so they can be brought online in the case of a ''short circuit'' event.

Alternatively, some batteries can also be stored in a warehouse, and then placed down anywhere on the power grid on demand. This makes switches unnecessary.

Batteries can also be used to make fueled generators more economical. These generators provide constant power, but they also burn their fuel at a constant rate – no matter how much power is actually used. If you connect some batteries, you can at least catch half of the otherwise wasted energy, and then disable the generator until the batteries run dry. This will save 100% of the fuel for the time the generator is offline. This is especially helpful in the early game, where you might not even have enough power draw to fully load a single generator, and fuel will be usually scarce as well.

The energy stored by even a single battery is very high. 600 Wd are enough to power, for example, three [[cooler]]s at full power draw for an entire day, with no other source of power available. Therefore, building a lot of batteries ("just to be safe") is not necessary, or even harmful. Unless you take complex and expensive measures to avoid the ''short circuit'' event, having too many batteries online is a liability. Examine closely how much energy storage you need, and do not build more than that.

When you calculate the battery capacity that is necessary when using renewable energy, keep in mind that charge efficiency is only 50%. That is, only half of any excess energy will be effectively usable. This is particularly relevant when planning a greenhouse setup, of [[hydroponics basin]]s and a [[sun lamp]]. The ''sun lamp'' will draw 2900 W during the day, and 0 W during the night, for an average demand of 1450 W. However, it is not sufficient to generate only 1450 W at all times, hoping that a 3-battery array will even out the difference in power draw. This is because during the night, only half of the extra 1450 W will effectively charge the batteries, storing 8,700 Wh of energy (~360 Wd). This will only be enough to power the sun-lamp for 6 hours during the day. For the remaining 6 hours, the missing 1450 W will have to be provided by other means (usually a solar panel). Simply adding more batteries will not change this. Two batteries will provide enough buffering in this scenario.

The example setup, including 24 hydroponics basins, can be fully powered by one geothermal generator and a solar panel, connected to a single buffer battery.

Even in colonies that do not use wind or solar energy, batteries are useful to cover spikes in power usage, usually caused by turret arrays and devices like crematoriums, smelters and mineral scanners that are only brought online intermittently. A battery can cover arbitrarily high power needs, the size of the array only changes for how long that is possible.

As an example, an array of 20 mini-turrets and 4 autocannon turrets draws 3200 W of power. Instead of building another geothermal generator that would cover this, even a single charged battery can power this entire setup for more than 4 in-game hours. An array of 5 batteries can power the defenses for an entire in-game day. The battery array should be isolated with two power switches from the security grid and main power grid. This makes it then also very easy to power the entire setup with a single switch, as well as keep the batteries safe from the ''short circuit'' event.

</onlyinclude>
{{nav|power|wide}}
[[Category:Buildings]]
[[Category:Power]]

Battery

2019-10-12T19:14:13Z

Siggboy:

{{infobox main|building|
|name = Battery
|image = Battery.jpg|Battery
|description = Stores electricity when there is excess power and yields it when there is not. Warning - charged batteries tend to explode when heated or wet.
|type = Buildings
|type2 = Power
|placeable = Yes
|size = 1|2
|hp = 100
|efficiency = 50%
|power =
|buy = {{icon|metal|70}} {{icon|component|2}}
|sell = {{icon|metal|52.5}} + {{icon|component|1.5}}
|beauty = -15
|mass base = 20
|cover = 0.4
}}<onlyinclude>
{{Info|The ''battery'' is an electric device that can even out the power supply on an electric grid. It will provide enough power to compensate for any deficit, while charge remains. If there is surplus power, the battery will recharge, but only at 50% efficiency (half the energy is lost). The charge capacity is 600 Watt-days. Batteries self-discharge at a rate of 5 W, even while disconnected, and need to be operated under a roof to keep them dry (rain or snowfall will quickly cause an explosion).}}

== Usage ==
'''Batteries are built, moved and stored like other kinds of movable furniture.''' They will keep their charge while stored ("minified") or disconnected, only discharging at the normal rate of 5 W (self-discharge).

With regards to power production, they behave like the other electric buildings in the game. All power consumers can connect to batteries in the same way as to other power sources: within a 5-tile radius, a device can directly connect to a battery (or array of batteries), without power conduits in between.

In order to charge a battery, it has to be directly connected to a power grid with excess power. It is not possible to connect to batteries "through" power consumers (this is because consumers can not be connected to more than one power grid at the same time).

Just like the other power producing buildings, a battery '''acts as a power conduit''' on the 2 tiles it covers.

Installed batteries '''can not be switched off manually'''. As long as at least one consumer is connected, the battery will provide power during a deficit, and also be vulnerable to the short-circuit event.

Installed batteries '''need to be kept dry'''. If outdoors, a roof has to be built over the tiles occupied by the battery. If a battery becomes wet (either due to rain or snowfall), there is a very high chance of a short circuit, causing an explosion and fire (probably spreading to adjacent batteries and connected devices). At least the rain will usually extinguish the fire...

Damage to a battery does not change its other properties and does not cause discharge (eg. a 1 hitpoint battery has the same capacity and wattage as a 100 hitpoint battery).

== Batteries as power supplies ==
Consumers can connect to batteries directly, up to a distance of 5 tiles away, by using the ''reconnect'' action on the consumer until it is connected to the battery.

As a power supply, the battery behaves just like any other power source in the game (eg. generators or solar panels), but each battery will deliver an unlimited amount of power. This means that any ''wattage'' can be delivered until the battery is completely discharged. It makes the battery not only convenient as buffers for wind turbines and solar panels, but also to cover arbitrary spikes in power usage, usually caused by turret arrays and other heavy power consumers that are only brought on-line sporadically.

The power output of a battery is theoretically unlimited. Even a huge colony that demands, say, 30,000 W of power can be powered by a single battery (but only for about 1 in-game hour if the battery is fully charged). Adding more batteries is only necessary to lengthen the time span.

If more than one battery is on the same power grid, all batteries with remaining charge will share the power load evenly.

The maximum amount of energy provided per battery is 600 Wd (''watt-days'') for a fully charged battery. Eg. if exactly 595 W were drawn, a single battery would last exactly 1 in-game day (taking into account the 5 W of self-discharge). If only 295 W are drawn, it lasts for 2 days, etc. Since maximum power draw is unlimited it is – theoretically – possible to empty a full battery in 1 tick of game time (instantly).

A disconnected battery will discharge at a rate of 5 W. This means that a fully charged battery can be stored for 120 days (1 in-game year) until depleted.

== Charging ==
A battery will automatically keep charging while it is connected to a power grid with excess power available. Selecting the battery will show the current charge status in the information window.

The power used for charging is unlimited; charging batteries will always draw all available power, but never cause a power deficiency on the grid.

All batteries in a power grid will evenly share the excess power for charging, but can only use half of it (the charge efficiency is 50%). In other words, to fully charge an empty battery, 1200 Wd of energy have to be provided, as well as 5 W extra to cover the self-discharge.

As an example, connecting an empty battery to a power grid with exactly 1205 W of available power will charge it to full in exactly 1 in-game day. If more power was available, charging would complete more quickly. 5 W of charging power would keep the battery at exactly the present charge level, merely nullifying the self-discharge.

In practice, the self-discharge can mostly be disregarded.

== Constructing, moving and storing ==
Batteries behave exactly like other furniture items in the game: they have to be constructed on solid terrain, using the construction skill. It takes 14 work units to build, and can be done even at construction level 0.

After construction, they can be uninstalled like furniture, and then moved to storage, taken to a character's inventory or on a caravan. Uninstalling and reinstalling does not cause additional charge loss, beyond the 5 W of self-discharge that always applies.

It is possible to take charged batteries on caravans as a power source for camps and newly founded colonies.

Batteries that are not installed can be stored in the open, also in rain or snowfall, as they can not short circuit. Like other furniture, they are not subject to ''decay''.

== Hazards ==
'''Batteries are very likely to explode in rain and snowfall'''. This can be completely avoided by keeping installed batteries under a roof; keeping them indoors is not necessary. The resulting explosion will not cause any discharge, but it will heavily damage the battery, and possibly surrounding structures as well, also causing a fire.

'''Batteries make the [[Events#Faulty Conduit Explosion|short circuit]] event ("Zztt...") more dangerous:''' all affected batteries will instantly discharge, causing an explosion in addition to the fire that is normally caused by the event. The more batteries are connected, the larger the explosion. ''Note that the event is unrelated to batteries'' – it can still happen if no batteries are connected, but will then only cause a small fire and no explosion. Empty batteries will not affect the event.

Note that it is not the batteries that explode, but a random area around the affected power-conduit. This could be right next to a battery, or a long distance away from it.

The short circuit event can be completely avoided if there are no ''power conduits'' connected to the battery. You can disconnect the batteries from the main power grid with a power switch. The switch needs to be placed directly next to the battery array, separating the power conduits on the main grid from the batteries. The batteries are only protected if the switch is turned off, separating the connection. This makes the solution impractical for batteries that need to be always online.

[[File:Zero_conduit_freezer.jpg|300px|thumb|right|The batteries in this setup connect directly to the wind turbine and the attached coolers, without any power conduits. This completely avoids the random short circuit event ("Zztt...") in this power network.]]

It is also possible to completely avoid building any ''power conduits'' at all. This is only feasible for small, self-contained installations. The batteries themselves, as well as other power generating buildings, have built-in power conduits, but these are immune to short circuits. Because consumers can directly connect to batteries (and other power generators) over a 5-tile distance, you can construct conduit-free power grids with some careful planning.

If the above measures are impractical, [[firefoam popper]]s should be installed where an explosion would cause a lot of damage, such as inside a hydroponics facility or a storage area.

Battery performance is not affected by temperature. Somewhat contrary to the in-game description, the battery is not more susceptible to heat than other, comparable flammable structures. Even the most extreme heat waves will not make a battery explode or catch fire. It is therefore not necessary to keep batteries climatized.

== Strategy ==
Batteries are useful in most colonies, even if the colony does not rely on unstable power sources like [[solar panel]]s and [[wind turbine]]s.

If only renewable energy is used, at least one battery is mandatory, because sufficient power supply can never be guaranteed. Solar panels produce no power during the night and during an eclipse, and wind turbines are completely unreliable. If the colony has no other backup power source, it is highly recommended to keep some additional batteries behind a [[power switch]] on a separate network (see ''Hazards'' above), so they can be brought online in the case of a ''short circuit'' event.

Alternatively, some batteries can also be stored in a warehouse, and then placed down anywhere on the power grid on demand. This makes switches unnecessary.

Batteries can also be used to make fueled generators more economical. These generators provide constant power, but they also burn their fuel at a constant rate – no matter how much power is actually used. If you connect some batteries, you can at least catch half of the otherwise wasted energy, and then disable the generator until the batteries run dry. This will save 100% of the fuel for the time the generator is offline. This is especially helpful in the early game, where you might not even have enough power draw to fully load a single generator, and fuel will be usually scarce as well.

The energy stored by even a single battery is very high. 600 Wd are enough to power, for example, three [[cooler]]s at full power draw for an entire day, with no other source of power available. Therefore, building a lot of batteries ("just to be safe") is not necessary, or even harmful. Unless you take complex and expensive measures to avoid the ''short circuit'' event, having too many batteries online is a liability. Examine closely how much energy storage you need, and do not build more than that.

When you calculate the battery capacity that is necessary when using renewable energy, keep in mind that charge efficiency is only 50%. That is, only half of any excess energy will be effectively usable. This is particularly relevant when planning a greenhouse setup, of [[hydroponics basin]]s and a [[sun lamp]]. The ''sun lamp'' will draw 2900 W during the day, and 0 W during the night, for an average demand of 1450 W. However, it is not sufficient to generate only 1450 W at all times, hoping that a 3-battery array will even out the difference in power draw. This is because during the night, only half of the extra 1450 W will effectively charge the batteries, storing 8,700 Wh of energy (~360 Wd). This will only be enough to power the sun-lamp for 6 hours during the day. For the remaining 6 hours, the missing 1450 W will have to be provided by other means (usually a solar panel). Simply adding more batteries will not change this. Two batteries will provide enough buffering in this scenario.

The example setup, including 24 hydroponics basins, can be fully powered by one geothermal generator and a solar panel, connected to a single buffer battery.

Even in colonies that do not use wind or solar energy, batteries are useful to cover spikes in power usage, usually caused by turret arrays and devices like crematoriums, smelters and mineral scanners that are only brought online intermittently. A battery can cover arbitrarily high power needs, the size of the array only changes for how long that is possible.

As an example, an array of 20 mini-turrets and 4 autocannon turrets draws 3200 W of power. Instead of building another geothermal generator that would cover this, even a single charged battery can power this entire setup for more than 4 in-game hours. An array of 5 batteries can power the defenses for an entire in-game day. The battery array should be isolated with two power switches from the security grid and main power grid. This makes it then also very easy to power the entire setup with a single switch, as well as keep the batteries safe from the ''short circuit'' event.

</onlyinclude>
{{nav|power|wide}}
[[Category:Buildings]]
[[Category:Power]]

Training

2019-10-12T08:28:16Z

Siggboy: /* Medical */

<div style="float: right; margin-left: 2em;">__TOC__</div>

All skills in ''Rimworld'' improve simply while they are used; there is nothing special that needs to be done in addition to that. If a colonist is assigned to a task (via the ''Work'' tab) with a sufficiently high priority, they will eventually perform it and gain skill points.

In a few cases it is not obvious that a specific task trains a seemingly unrelated ability:
* Making ''smokeleaf joints'' requires and trains ''cooking'' (not crafting).
* Making medicine and hard drugs (''flake'', ''yayo'', etc.) requires and trains ''intellectual'' (not crafting).
* Cutting stone blocks does not train any skill (but requires crafting to be allowed as a task).
* Making [[Kibble]] is done at the butchering table, but requires and trains cooking.
* Butchering a dead animal is a cooking activity.
* Brewing beer is a cooking task (not crafting, which would be plausible)
* Many construction tasks could plausibly instead be crafting, smithing or tailoring tasks.
* Smithing and tailoring are actually sub-skills of crafting, but do not have their own skill level.

This article talks about a few special ways to forcibly train colonists in certain skills. This is usually only necessary and recommended if you need a certain ability on a colonist, but do not want to use this person for productive work. Normally this is because an untrained worker would be a liability – for example, an untrained cook can cause food poisoning, and an untrained miner can waste valuable resources while trying to extract them.

'''If you train a colonist by letting them do busy work, or monkey business, you are wasting one of the most valuable colony resources, namely work hours.''' Only do that if you really have to.

Even a colonist that is bad at everything, and passionate for nothing (these exist...) should be a hauler and cleaner, or maybe the guy who fulfills that caravan trade request 5 days away, before you let them repair a mountain stone face for days just to get them 3 levels of construction.

== Using temporary zone restrictions to direct colonists ==

A technique that is mentioned a few times in this article, is to create a zone only to restrict a colonist to a very specific area, in order to force them to perform a task.

As an example, consider colonist "Molly", who you want to smooth the floor in your freezer in the next few days, and ''do nothing else''. In this case, you will create a new [[zone]] for Molly, containing exactly these areas in your base:

* the area where the work needs to happen (freezer in this example)
* Molly's bedroom (so she can go to rest as usual)
* the recreation area and dining table
* a place where food is stored (maybe not necessary in this example, because the freezer is already covered)

These areas ''do not have to be adjacent'' (connected). The zone can be composed of several disconnected areas.

Now you restrict Molly to this newly created zone. She can now still move between those areas, but in order to perform a task, she needs to be inside one of them, that is, inside the zone. This means she will not use any skills outside the temporary zone, and you will not need to manipulate her work tab to keep her from doing anything but smooth the freezer floor.

This is a very effective method, not just for training, but for prioritizing important work in general.

== Combat training ==
If you feel you are not prepared for the next raid, you can train a few combat abilities. This will always need to be done manually, ie. with the trainee drafted (except for hunting). That means you can not manage the colony in the mean time, and it can be difficult to train more than one colonist at a time. This probably means a net loss of productivity in your colony, so only do it if you feel it is really necessary.

=== Shooting ===
The best way to train shooting is to assign the colonist to the "hunting" task. Giving them a long-range weapon, for example a [[bolt-action rifle]] makes hunting safer, because animals are less likely to enrage and retaliate if shot at from long range. To be safe, only hunt passive animals that will never retaliate.

Deliberately damaging your own structures or buildings does not improve your shooting skill.

Giving a really bad shooter a weapon not suited for the task, such as a [[machine pistol]] of "awful" quality, means that they will possibly hunt for a ''long'' time before actually killing the animal. Do not expect a colonist that you train this way to be very productive for the colony.

==== Aggravating animals ====
Outside of hunting, some resilient animals such as the [[Megasloth]], [[Rhinoceros]] and [[Thrumbo]] can give a lot of shooting skill by kiting them, and slowly shooting them to death with a low DPS weapon. You need to be very careful with this approach, because those animals do a lot of damage if given the chance to get into your melee range.

This is a special case of deliberately slow "hunting".

The best weapon types for this tactic are weapons with a fast windup and high shot frequency, not too short a range, and low damage. This makes you use the skill more often, by firing more shots, and has your "training dummy" last longer from low damage.

This approach does require extensive micromanagement, and you won't be able to perform other manual tasks in the colony in the meantime. It is even possible that actually killing the animal will take so long that your colonist will pass out from exhaustion or go into starvation. You ''must'' have a capable shooter available to finish off the animal and end the training if necessary.

=== Melee ===
Fighting anything with melee attacks will increase the ''melee'' skill. ''Hunting'' with melee attacks works, but animals are prone to fighting back so be warned (this is true even for animals that never retaliate when hunted from range). You will have to draft the colonist and "hunt" the animal manually by attacking it. An undrafted colonist will not ''hunt'' if they are lacking a ranged weapon.

If you want to train a character this way, use the best possible armor so they will take less damage from the animal. Taking no damage at all is usually not possible, so do not train a colonist that you require to be in good shape; they will at least have a few bruises for a couple of days, reducing their manipulation skills and movement ability. Also be aware that attacking herd animals (like muffalos and wild boars) can enrage the ''entire herd'', usually leading to a heavily injured colonist, or worse.

Tamed animals will fight back, so they are not safe training dummies; they can however be kept in a controlled environment which makes them more convenient targets. There is also no risk of an entire herd taking revenge for you hurting their friend. You can patch up the animal you just abused afterwards, which will train the ''medical'' skill.

Using melee attacks does raise the skill very quickly, and you will hit the "soft" XP cap of 4000 points in a matter of a few attacks. Disengage afterwards, because training over the soft cap is not efficient.

To level melee more safely, take prisoners who are incapable of "Violent" and repeatedly punch, then heal them in their prison cell. To avoid accidentally killing your prisoners, use fists only with neither a melee nor ranged weapon equipped. Carefully watch the health of the prisoner pausing the game between each punch if needed. A colonist with no weapon (not even a ranged weapon) does up to 7 base blunt damage per punch (see [[Weapons#Base Melee Stats|Base Melee Stats]] for details), so when any single body part falls below 8 hp remaining, stop and allow the prisoner to heal. This will allow you to train medical skill as well.

== Construction ==
Construction is already trained quite efficiently by simply using the skill, since construction is such a common activity in an expanding colony.

Smoothing walls and floors counts as construction, is very time consuming, and does have no quality penalty associated with it. It is maybe the best way to train a low skilled worker, without the risk of wasting materials or creating bad products. Having your apprentices do the smoothing keeps the master constructors free for more demanding work. Restrict the trainee colonists to the respective areas by creating a temporary zone, and let them do wall and floor smoothing exclusively for a while.

Making furniture is not the best way to train construction, because colonists with low skill will produce low quality furniture, which has then to be deconstructed and re-built, wasting material in the process. You can, however, keep deconstructing and reconstructing the furniture until the desired quality level is produced, if you do not mind losing some resources along the way; the popular mod ''Quality Builder'' helps tremendously.

If you are about to build a lot of walls in the colony, you can temporarily take your capable builders '''off''' the construction task, and let only your trainees build the walls and roofs. Walls do not have a quality stat, so it is not possible to create bad products. The apprentices will take a little longer, and probably "botch" construction several times, but the end result will be the same.

Do not train construction when high value material is involved, such as cloth (for carpets) or components (when making things like power generators). If the colonist "botches" construction in these cases, a fair amount of material will be irretrievably wasted; only do this if you have plenty of surplus so it would not matter.

=== Repairing things to learn construction ===
'''Only do this with a colonist that really needs to be up to speed in construction ''now'', if you have absolutely no other suitable construction work to do at the moment. Repairing structures just for training is probably the worst kind of monkey business you could give to your colonists, and a horrible waste of work hours.'''

You can damage structures, usually purpose-built stone walls, deliberately by damaging them with melee attacks, shots or grenade blasts, and then have your construction builders repair them.

This will not train shooting skill. Use the shooters only to damage the structure, then undraft them and have them resume their regular colony duties. Of course the shooters could be the very same people who will do the repair work just after. Shooting skill does not matter much in this case, as pretty much everybody is able to hit a wall from point blank range...

* By far the best approach is to ''smooth'' any stone wall, damage it, and repair it. Smoothed walls count as constructed walls, so they can be repaired. A smoothed granite wall does have 900 hitpoints, almost as much as a [[plasteel]] wall. Smoothing the wall will be training ''construction'' as well, hitting two birds with a single stone.
* Designate the colonists you intend to train so that they can only repair. Create a [[zone]] around the training area, and the general facilities of the base, then restrict the trainees to this zone.
* Skill training becomes much less effective after 4000 XP has been acquired in a skill during a day. Take the trainees off the training task by removing their zone restriction after the XP cap has been reached for the day.

== Mining ==
Unskilled miners will let resources go to waste if they mine an ore vein. You can check a colonists [[Mining Yield| mining yield]] stat to see if they are already at 100%. If they're not, do not use them to extract valuable resources from a mountain.

To train these people, restrict them to a temporary zone with a mining job in it that does not include any valuable ores (even [[steel]] will become valuable eventually, make no mistake...). If you dig into a mountain face randomly, be aware that this could become a space for [[infestation]]s to spawn if the location is too close to your colony.

If you have developed [[Deep drill| deep drilling]] already, you can let your apprentice miners work the drills. Waste of resources is usually not a problem anymore at this point.

== Cooking ==
The ''cooking'' skill level is increased by ''butchering'', ''cooking'' meals at a stove or campfire, and also by making [[smokeleaf joint]]s. If an unskilled cook prepares meals, they carry an increased risk of [[food poisoning]]. This is a fairly disrupting condition that should be avoided, so it is not optimal to train a new cook by letting them prepare meals.

=== Making smokeleaf joints ===
If a colonist has low skill but high [[Skills#Passion|passion]] for cooking, you should train them as an additional cook. The downside is that meals prepared by this character, while he or she is still learning, carry a high chance of [[food poisoning]].

Cooks can, however, also be trained by having them make [[smokeleaf joint]]s out of [[Smokeleaf leaves|leaves]] at a [[drug lab]]. This will train cooking just as fast as preparing meals, without the risk of making anybody sick.

Set up a dedicated work bill at the drug lab, and ''restrict it to the character that you would like to train in cooking''. The character needs to have priority to "Craft" things on the work tab. Make sure the drug lab is not occupied by other tasks; the easiest way is to put the smokeleaf job in the first slot on the list of bills.

This strategy requires ''drug production'' to be researched, and to grow or buy [[smokeleaf leaves]]. The latter is, of course, a way to train the ''plants'' skill (sowing ''smokeleaf'' only requires 4 ''plants'' skill). Smokeleaf products have good recreational and cash (trade) value.

Training cooks with smokeleaf is an excellent strategy.

== Plants (growing) ==

Letting an unskilled grower harvest your fields will waste some of the product; check the [[harvest yield]] stat of the colonist. If you need to avoid this, you will have to create a – possibly large – restriction zone to keep this colonist out of the area that they must not harvest. Allow them areas where sowing needs to happen.

Chopping trees is a good way to train ''plants''. Disallow the task ("plant cut" in the work tab) for your skilled growers, so your trainees will get more opportunities to chop wood.

If you are growing plants that only skilled workers can sow (like [[Devilstrand]] and [[Healroot]]), make sure that your trainees will sow ''all the other fields''. Do not let your skilled growers take that work away from them. Again, you will probably need to use restriction zones or work tab micromanagement to facilitate this.

The ''Work Tab'' addon by ''Fluffy'' makes partitioning the growing tasks a ''lot'' easier, avoiding the use of temporary zone restrictions.

== Crafting ==

The only way to practice crafting is to make things, either at a crafting spot, tailoring bench or smithy. Fabrication benches are only usable by already skilled crafters. Drug production and brewing does ''not'' train crafting.

If you have no good crafters yet, you will produce many items of "poor" or "awful" quality. It is not possible to retrieve raw materials from ''crafted'' items (unlike ''constructed'' items) – after you have crafted an item, you have to either use it or sell it as it is. This means you should not use any valuable materials, such as [[Thrumbofur]], [[Megasloth wool]], [[Hyperweave]] or [[Plasteel]] to practice crafting. Only let your most competent people handle these super-valuable materials.

''Weapons are not a good item class to practice crafting'', because they only sell for 20% of the normal price. This is good for game balance, because a lot of weapons are dropped during raids, but it means that it is practically impossible to make money from crafted weaponry. Only craft weapons that you expect to use.

This leaves ''armor items'' and ''clothing'': armor requires valuable ingredients, so '''usually crafting is practiced making clothes'''.

Crafted items get a ''market value'' that is composed of
* the work invested into making the item
* the value of the raw materials used
* the [[quality]] of the item

The market value multiplier for "awful" items is 50%, for "poor" items it is 75%. In those cases it would have been better to sell the raw materials instead of the item! To cut your inevitable losses, '''only use the cheapest material you can find if you expect to produce a lot of bad quality stuff'''. Good candidates are [[birdskin]], [[pigskin]], [[lightleather]], [[patchleather]] and [[plainleather]]. In particular, do ''not'' use [[cloth]] (needs to be bought or grown) or [[human leather]] (too expensive).

To further limit your losses, you can slow down the work deliberately, by crafting under poor conditions (outside, in the dark, not using electricity, in the cold, ...). Skill experience is granted ''over time'' and not ''by work units''. Crafting as slowly as possible means you will waste less material in the same time span. Only do this while crafting at level 5 or lower; from level 6, you can expect to [[quality|at least break even on average with regards to material cost]].

If you have a competent crafter (level 8 or higher) that you want to train further, one good way is to let them make [[advanced component]]s at a fabrication bench. You will need a lot more ''advanced components'' to build the space ship than you can usually buy from traders, so making them early is never a waste of effort. They do not have a quality rating, as long as your crafter can make them you will get full value. Likewise, bionic limbs and organs can be made by anyone who meets the skill requirement, but it is difficult to know in advance which ones you will need (''arms'' are never useless, however).

== Artistic ==

There is not much to be said about training ''artistic'' crafting; just have your aspiring artist craft as many sculptures as possible.

"Awful" sculptures have a ''negative'' beauty value, so they actually make the environment more ugly. Great to put into the bedrooms of [[traits|ascetic]] colonists, but should be deconstructed otherwise.

Use the material that you can spare the most of; wood is often a good choice. [[Jade]] has the best balance of beauty and availability, so it should be reserved for more capable, possibly [[mental inspiration|inspired]] artists.

== Medical ==

There is something that a typical ''Rimworld'' campaign never lacks: work for your doctors and surgeons. It is still possible to get some extra training.

Performing any type of '''surgery''' is staggeringly efficient for training ''medical'': performing surgery awards 16 times as much XP (per time spent) as other work. This includes all kinds of body part replacements, organ harvesting, euthanizing humans ''and animals''.

* If you have human "patients", '''install and remove jaw dentures'''. This requires medical skill 2, no material except medicine, and the patient has no risk of dying on the table. It will leave the person permanently mangled, lowering their market value (which is not important unless you want to sell the person into slavery). Do not do it to healthy colonists or prisoners you plan to recruit. This procedure as well as leg replacements are ''not'' counted as ''organ harvesting'', even if performed on a healthy patient.

* If human subjects are not available, you can '''euthanize animals'''. This is a shorter procedure than the jaw replacement, so it yields only a third of the XP, but it has no medical skill requirement. This is great for training completely unskilled doctors. A failed procedure is both unlikely and of no consequence. You can euthanize one of your tame animals, or "rescue" a hunted (downed) animal, just to euthanize it straight away. Chickens are a great choice, and euthanizing freshly hatched chicks is OK because the size of the animal does not matter with regards to XP earned. ''Only use herbal medicine'' for this procedure; better medicine is not required and would be straight up wasted.

* Organ harvesting is also great training, and can be done three times per customer, eg. by taking a kidney, half a lung and a heart. It is strongly [[Human Resources|frowned upon]] by most colonists. It is also profitable, but only do it if you can afford the colony-wide mood penalty, which lasts for 8 days.

The XP granted by a surgical procedure depends on work speed of the pawn, work units required and skill passion. For reference: at 100% ''medical operation speed'' and ''Interested'' passion, 2,000 XP are granted from performing a leg replacement.

'''Note:''' because performing surgery gives so much XP, a single colonist will hit the soft learning cap of 4,000 XP per day rather quickly. Spread out the procedures over multiple doctors and days.

== Social ==
Each social chat with a colonist gives 4 ''social'' XP per per speech balloon at ''Interested'' passion and neutral mood modifier.

Having a friendly chat with a prisoner in order to convince him or her to join the colony gives roughly 50 ''social'' XP at ''Interested'' passion, per speech balloon. If you are recruiting prisoners, only assign the "Wardening" work type to the colonists whose social skill you want to improve. The ''Work Tab'' mod (or a similar mod) allows more control over the various tasks related to wardening, so it is recommended to make this more viable in normal colony operation.

Setting the prisoner interaction mode to "Reduce resistance" (and not "Recruit") will allow wardens to keep having conversations indefinitely, allowing skill training. However, this costs a lot of food over time to keep the prisoner alive. Only do this with prisoners you do not want as colonists; recruit them immediately otherwise, so they become productive and improve their skills.

== Intellectual ==

''Intellectual'' skill is gained by doing research, and by making hard drugs and medicine. There are no special techniques available to make this more efficient. All research done is equally valuable, and neither medicine nor drugs have a quality rating; this means that who you employ for these jobs only influences how long it takes to finish them.

== Animals ==

The ''animals'' skill is very versatile, and can be trained in various ways.

There are two animals related tasks where unskilled colonists can be a liability:
* Failed tame attempts may cause the animal to retaliate; this often leads to the animal handler getting injured, usually as far away from the base as possible...
* Milking or shearing animals can fail, resulting in ''all'' of the product going to waste; this is especially painful when shearing (gathering wool), because wool takes many days to grow back.

Because of this it is best to let unskilled animal handlers only ''train animals'' that are already domesticated. If this fails, some food will be wasted, and the animal might lose some training from decay, but nothing worse will happen. Only your qualified animal handlers should be allowed to milk, shear or tame wild animals.

It is very finicky to assign all your animal handlers to the jobs best suited for them. It can be done with a lot of manipulation of temporary zone restrictions, but the recommended way is to install a mod like ''Work Tab'': it allows for fine-grained control of the various animals related sub-tasks.

<references />

{{nav/guides}}

[[Category:Game mechanics]]

Battery

2019-10-12T02:01:45Z

Siggboy: /* Hazards */

{{infobox main|building|
|name = Battery
|image = Battery.jpg|Battery
|description = Stores electricity when there is excess power and yields it when there is not. Warning - charged batteries tend to explode when heated or wet.
|type = Buildings
|type2 = Power
|placeable = Yes
|size = 1|2
|hp = 100
|efficiency = 50%
|power =
|buy = {{icon|metal|70}} {{icon|component|2}}
|sell = {{icon|metal|52.5}} + {{icon|component|1.5}}
|beauty = -15
|mass base = 20
|cover = 0.4
}}<onlyinclude>
{{Info|The ''battery'' is an electric device that can store energy and provide power. Energy is stored while there is a surplus on the connected electric grid; the charge capacity is 600 Wd (''watt days''). Each battery provides an unlimited amount of power if there is a deficit, until discharged. Charging power is unlimited as well, but happens at only 50% efficiency, ie. half the energy provided is lost. Batteries self-discharge at a rate of 5 W, even while disconnected. Batteries need to be operated under a roof, or they will frequently short circuit in rain or snowfall, causing an explosion.}}

== Usage ==
'''Batteries are built, moved and stored like other kinds of movable furniture.''' They will keep their charge while stored ("minified") or disconnected, only discharging at the normal rate of 5 W (self-discharge).

With regards to power production, they behave like the other electric buildings in the game. All power consumers can connect to batteries in the same way as to other power sources: within a 5-tile radius, a device can directly connect to a battery (or array of batteries), without power conduits in between.

In order to charge a battery, it has to be directly connected to a power grid with excess power. It is not possible to connect to batteries "through" power consumers (this is because consumers can not be connected to more than one power grid at the same time).

Just like the other power producing buildings, a battery '''acts as a power conduit''' on the 2 tiles it covers.

Installed batteries '''can not be switched off manually'''. As long as at least one consumer is connected, the battery will provide power during a deficit, and also be vulnerable to the short-circuit event.

Installed batteries '''need to be kept dry'''. If outdoors, a roof has to be built over the tiles occupied by the battery. If a battery becomes wet (either due to rain or snowfall), there is a very high chance of a short circuit, causing an explosion and fire (probably spreading to adjacent batteries and connected devices). At least the rain will usually extinguish the fire...

Damage to a battery does not change its other properties and does not cause discharge (eg. a 1 hitpoint battery has the same capacity and wattage as a 100 hitpoint battery).

== Batteries as power supplies ==
Consumers can connect to batteries directly, up to a distance of 5 tiles away, by using the ''reconnect'' action on the consumer until it is connected to the battery.

As a power supply, the battery behaves just like any other power source in the game (eg. generators or solar panels), but each battery will deliver an unlimited amount of power. This means that any ''wattage'' can be delivered until the battery is completely discharged. It makes the battery not only convenient as buffers for wind turbines and solar panels, but also to cover arbitrary spikes in power usage, usually caused by turret arrays and other heavy power consumers that are only brought on-line sporadically.

The power output of a battery is theoretically unlimited. Even a huge colony that demands, say, 30,000 W of power can be powered by a single battery (but only for about 1 in-game hour if the battery is fully charged). Adding more batteries is only necessary to lengthen the time span.

If more than one battery is on the same power grid, all batteries with remaining charge will share the power load evenly.

The maximum amount of energy provided per battery is 600 Wd (''watt-days'') for a fully charged battery. Eg. if exactly 595 W were drawn, a single battery would last exactly 1 in-game day (taking into account the 5 W of self-discharge). If only 295 W are drawn, it lasts for 2 days, etc. Since maximum power draw is unlimited it is – theoretically – possible to empty a full battery in 1 tick of game time (instantly).

A disconnected battery will discharge at a rate of 5 W. This means that a fully charged battery can be stored for 120 days (1 in-game year) until depleted.

== Charging ==
A battery will automatically keep charging while it is connected to a power grid with excess power available. Selecting the battery will show the current charge status in the information window.

The power used for charging is unlimited; charging batteries will always draw all available power, but never cause a power deficiency on the grid.

All batteries in a power grid will evenly share the excess power for charging, but can only use half of it (the charge efficiency is 50%). In other words, to fully charge an empty battery, 1200 Wd of energy have to be provided, as well as 5 W extra to cover the self-discharge.

As an example, connecting an empty battery to a power grid with exactly 1205 W of available power will charge it to full in exactly 1 in-game day. If more power was available, charging would complete more quickly. 5 W of charging power would keep the battery at exactly the present charge level, merely nullifying the self-discharge.

In practice, the self-discharge can mostly be disregarded.

== Constructing, moving and storing ==
Batteries behave exactly like other furniture items in the game: they have to be constructed on solid terrain, using the construction skill. It takes 14 work units to build, and can be done even at construction level 0.

After construction, they can be uninstalled like furniture, and then moved to storage, taken to a character's inventory or on a caravan. Uninstalling and reinstalling does not cause additional charge loss, beyond the 5 W of self-discharge that always applies.

It is possible to take charged batteries on caravans as a power source for camps and newly founded colonies.

Batteries that are not installed can be stored in the open, also in rain or snowfall, as they can not short circuit. Like other furniture, they are not subject to ''decay''.

== Hazards ==
'''Batteries are very likely to explode in rain and snowfall'''. This can be completely avoided by keeping installed batteries under a roof; keeping them indoors is not necessary. The resulting explosion will not cause any discharge, but it will heavily damage the battery, and possibly surrounding structures as well, also causing a fire.

'''Batteries make the [[Events#Faulty Conduit Explosion|short circuit]] event ("Zztt...") more dangerous:''' all affected batteries will instantly discharge, causing an explosion in addition to the fire that is normally caused by the event. The more batteries are connected, the larger the explosion. ''Note that the event is unrelated to batteries'' – it can still happen if no batteries are connected, but will then only cause a small fire and no explosion. Empty batteries will not affect the event.

Note that it is not the batteries that explode, but a random area around the affected power-conduit. This could be right next to a battery, or a long distance away from it.

The short circuit event can be completely avoided if there are no ''power conduits'' connected to the battery. You can disconnect the batteries from the main power grid with a power switch. The switch needs to be placed directly next to the battery array, separating the power conduits on the main grid from the batteries. The batteries are only protected if the switch is turned off, separating the connection. This makes the solution impractical for batteries that need to be always online.

[[File:Zero_conduit_freezer.jpg|300px|thumb|right|The batteries in this setup connect directly to the wind turbine and the attached coolers, without any power conduits. This completely avoids the random short circuit event ("Zztt...") in this power network.]]

It is also possible to completely avoid building any ''power conduits'' at all. This is only feasible for small, self-contained installations. The batteries themselves, as well as other power generating buildings, have built-in power conduits, but these are immune to short circuits. Because consumers can directly connect to batteries (and other power generators) over a 5-tile distance, you can construct conduit-free power grids with some careful planning.

If the above measures are impractical, [[firefoam popper]]s should be installed where an explosion would cause a lot of damage, such as inside a hydroponics facility or a storage area.

Battery performance is not affected by temperature. Somewhat contrary to the in-game description, the battery is not more susceptible to heat than other, comparable flammable structures. Even the most extreme heat waves will not make a battery explode or catch fire. It is therefore not necessary to keep batteries climatized.

== Strategy ==
Batteries are useful in most colonies, even if the colony does not rely on unstable power sources like [[solar panel]]s and [[wind turbine]]s.

If only renewable energy is used, at least one battery is mandatory, because sufficient power supply can never be guaranteed. Solar panels produce no power during the night and during an eclipse, and wind turbines are completely unreliable. If the colony has no other backup power source, it is highly recommended to keep some additional batteries behind a [[power switch]] on a separate network (see ''Hazards'' above), so they can be brought online in the case of a ''short circuit'' event.

Alternatively, some batteries can also be stored in a warehouse, and then placed down anywhere on the power grid on demand. This makes switches unnecessary.

Batteries can also be used to make fueled generators more economical. These generators provide constant power, but they also burn their fuel at a constant rate – no matter how much power is actually used. If you connect some batteries, you can at least catch half of the otherwise wasted energy, and then disable the generator until the batteries run dry. This will save 100% of the fuel for the time the generator is offline. This is especially helpful in the early game, where you might not even have enough power draw to fully load a single generator, and fuel will be usually scarce as well.

The energy stored by even a single battery is very high. 600 Wd are enough to power, for example, three [[cooler]]s at full power draw for an entire day, with no other source of power available. Therefore, building a lot of batteries ("just to be safe") is not necessary, or even harmful. Unless you take complex and expensive measures to avoid the ''short circuit'' event, having too many batteries online is a liability. Examine closely how much energy storage you need, and do not build more than that.

When you calculate the battery capacity that is necessary when using renewable energy, keep in mind that charge efficiency is only 50%. That is, only half of any excess energy will be effectively usable. This is particularly relevant when planning a greenhouse setup, of [[hydroponics basin]]s and a [[sun lamp]]. The ''sun lamp'' will draw 2900 W during the day, and 0 W during the night, for an average demand of 1450 W. However, it is not sufficient to generate only 1450 W at all times, hoping that a 3-battery array will even out the difference in power draw. This is because during the night, only half of the extra 1450 W will effectively charge the batteries, storing 8,700 Wh of energy (~360 Wd). This will only be enough to power the sun-lamp for 6 hours during the day. For the remaining 6 hours, the missing 1450 W will have to be provided by other means (usually a solar panel). Simply adding more batteries will not change this. Two batteries will provide enough buffering in this scenario.

The example setup, including 24 hydroponics basins, can be fully powered by one geothermal generator and a solar panel, connected to a single buffer battery.

Even in colonies that do not use wind or solar energy, batteries are useful to cover spikes in power usage, usually caused by turret arrays and devices like crematoriums, smelters and mineral scanners that are only brought online intermittently. A battery can cover arbitrarily high power needs, the size of the array only changes for how long that is possible.

As an example, an array of 20 mini-turrets and 4 autocannon turrets draws 3200 W of power. Instead of building another geothermal generator that would cover this, even a single charged battery can power this entire setup for more than 4 in-game hours. An array of 5 batteries can power the defenses for an entire in-game day. The battery array should be isolated with two power switches from the security grid and main power grid. This makes it then also very easy to power the entire setup with a single switch, as well as keep the batteries safe from the ''short circuit'' event.

</onlyinclude>
{{nav|power|wide}}
[[Category:Buildings]]
[[Category:Power]]

Battery

2019-10-12T02:00:25Z

Siggboy: /* Hazards */

{{infobox main|building|
|name = Battery
|image = Battery.jpg|Battery
|description = Stores electricity when there is excess power and yields it when there is not. Warning - charged batteries tend to explode when heated or wet.
|type = Buildings
|type2 = Power
|placeable = Yes
|size = 1|2
|hp = 100
|efficiency = 50%
|power =
|buy = {{icon|metal|70}} {{icon|component|2}}
|sell = {{icon|metal|52.5}} + {{icon|component|1.5}}
|beauty = -15
|mass base = 20
|cover = 0.4
}}<onlyinclude>
{{Info|The ''battery'' is an electric device that can store energy and provide power. Energy is stored while there is a surplus on the connected electric grid; the charge capacity is 600 Wd (''watt days''). Each battery provides an unlimited amount of power if there is a deficit, until discharged. Charging power is unlimited as well, but happens at only 50% efficiency, ie. half the energy provided is lost. Batteries self-discharge at a rate of 5 W, even while disconnected. Batteries need to be operated under a roof, or they will frequently short circuit in rain or snowfall, causing an explosion.}}

== Usage ==
'''Batteries are built, moved and stored like other kinds of movable furniture.''' They will keep their charge while stored ("minified") or disconnected, only discharging at the normal rate of 5 W (self-discharge).

With regards to power production, they behave like the other electric buildings in the game. All power consumers can connect to batteries in the same way as to other power sources: within a 5-tile radius, a device can directly connect to a battery (or array of batteries), without power conduits in between.

In order to charge a battery, it has to be directly connected to a power grid with excess power. It is not possible to connect to batteries "through" power consumers (this is because consumers can not be connected to more than one power grid at the same time).

Just like the other power producing buildings, a battery '''acts as a power conduit''' on the 2 tiles it covers.

Installed batteries '''can not be switched off manually'''. As long as at least one consumer is connected, the battery will provide power during a deficit, and also be vulnerable to the short-circuit event.

Installed batteries '''need to be kept dry'''. If outdoors, a roof has to be built over the tiles occupied by the battery. If a battery becomes wet (either due to rain or snowfall), there is a very high chance of a short circuit, causing an explosion and fire (probably spreading to adjacent batteries and connected devices). At least the rain will usually extinguish the fire...

Damage to a battery does not change its other properties and does not cause discharge (eg. a 1 hitpoint battery has the same capacity and wattage as a 100 hitpoint battery).

== Batteries as power supplies ==
Consumers can connect to batteries directly, up to a distance of 5 tiles away, by using the ''reconnect'' action on the consumer until it is connected to the battery.

As a power supply, the battery behaves just like any other power source in the game (eg. generators or solar panels), but each battery will deliver an unlimited amount of power. This means that any ''wattage'' can be delivered until the battery is completely discharged. It makes the battery not only convenient as buffers for wind turbines and solar panels, but also to cover arbitrary spikes in power usage, usually caused by turret arrays and other heavy power consumers that are only brought on-line sporadically.

The power output of a battery is theoretically unlimited. Even a huge colony that demands, say, 30,000 W of power can be powered by a single battery (but only for about 1 in-game hour if the battery is fully charged). Adding more batteries is only necessary to lengthen the time span.

If more than one battery is on the same power grid, all batteries with remaining charge will share the power load evenly.

The maximum amount of energy provided per battery is 600 Wd (''watt-days'') for a fully charged battery. Eg. if exactly 595 W were drawn, a single battery would last exactly 1 in-game day (taking into account the 5 W of self-discharge). If only 295 W are drawn, it lasts for 2 days, etc. Since maximum power draw is unlimited it is – theoretically – possible to empty a full battery in 1 tick of game time (instantly).

A disconnected battery will discharge at a rate of 5 W. This means that a fully charged battery can be stored for 120 days (1 in-game year) until depleted.

== Charging ==
A battery will automatically keep charging while it is connected to a power grid with excess power available. Selecting the battery will show the current charge status in the information window.

The power used for charging is unlimited; charging batteries will always draw all available power, but never cause a power deficiency on the grid.

All batteries in a power grid will evenly share the excess power for charging, but can only use half of it (the charge efficiency is 50%). In other words, to fully charge an empty battery, 1200 Wd of energy have to be provided, as well as 5 W extra to cover the self-discharge.

As an example, connecting an empty battery to a power grid with exactly 1205 W of available power will charge it to full in exactly 1 in-game day. If more power was available, charging would complete more quickly. 5 W of charging power would keep the battery at exactly the present charge level, merely nullifying the self-discharge.

In practice, the self-discharge can mostly be disregarded.

== Constructing, moving and storing ==
Batteries behave exactly like other furniture items in the game: they have to be constructed on solid terrain, using the construction skill. It takes 14 work units to build, and can be done even at construction level 0.

After construction, they can be uninstalled like furniture, and then moved to storage, taken to a character's inventory or on a caravan. Uninstalling and reinstalling does not cause additional charge loss, beyond the 5 W of self-discharge that always applies.

It is possible to take charged batteries on caravans as a power source for camps and newly founded colonies.

Batteries that are not installed can be stored in the open, also in rain or snowfall, as they can not short circuit. Like other furniture, they are not subject to ''decay''.

== Hazards ==
'''Batteries are very likely to explode in rain and snowfall'''. This can be completely avoided by keeping installed batteries under a roof; keeping them indoors is not necessary. The resulting explosion will not cause any discharge, but it will heavily damage the battery, and possibly surrounding structures as well, also causing a fire.

'''Batteries make the [[Events#Faulty Conduit Explosion|short circuit]] event ("Zztt...") more dangerous:''' all affected batteries will instantly discharge, causing an explosion in addition to the fire that is normally caused by the event. The more batteries are connected, the larger the explosion. ''Note that the event is unrelated to batteries'' – it can still happen if no batteries are connected, but will then only cause a small fire and no explosion. Empty batteries will not affect the event.

Note that it is not the batteries that explode, but a random area around the affected power-conduit. This could be right next to a battery, or a long distance away from it.

The short circuit event can be completely avoided if there are no ''power conduits'' connected to the battery. You can disconnect the batteries from the main power grid with a power switch. The switch needs to be placed directly next to the battery array, separating the power conduits on the main grid from the batteries. The batteries are only protected if the switch is turned off, separating the connection. This makes the solution impractical for batteries that need to be always online.

[[File:Zero_conduit_freezer.jpg|300px|thumb|right|The batteries in this setup connect directly to the wind turbine and the attached coolers, without any power conduits. This completely avoids the random short circuit event ("Zztt...") in this power network.]]

It is also possible to completely avoid building any ''power conduits'' at all. This is usually only practical for smaller, self-contained grids. The batteries themselves, as well as other power generating buildings, have built-in power conduits, but these are not susceptible to short circuits. Because consumers can directly connect to batteries (and other power generators) over a 5-tile distance, you can construct conduit-free power grids with some careful planning.

If the above measures are impractical, [[firefoam popper]]s should be installed where an explosion would cause a lot of damage, such as inside a hydroponics facility or a storage area.

Battery performance is not affected by temperature. Somewhat contrary to the in-game description, the battery is not more susceptible to heat than other, comparable flammable structures. Even the most extreme heat waves will not make a battery explode or catch fire. It is therefore not necessary to keep batteries climatized.

== Strategy ==
Batteries are useful in most colonies, even if the colony does not rely on unstable power sources like [[solar panel]]s and [[wind turbine]]s.

If only renewable energy is used, at least one battery is mandatory, because sufficient power supply can never be guaranteed. Solar panels produce no power during the night and during an eclipse, and wind turbines are completely unreliable. If the colony has no other backup power source, it is highly recommended to keep some additional batteries behind a [[power switch]] on a separate network (see ''Hazards'' above), so they can be brought online in the case of a ''short circuit'' event.

Alternatively, some batteries can also be stored in a warehouse, and then placed down anywhere on the power grid on demand. This makes switches unnecessary.

Batteries can also be used to make fueled generators more economical. These generators provide constant power, but they also burn their fuel at a constant rate – no matter how much power is actually used. If you connect some batteries, you can at least catch half of the otherwise wasted energy, and then disable the generator until the batteries run dry. This will save 100% of the fuel for the time the generator is offline. This is especially helpful in the early game, where you might not even have enough power draw to fully load a single generator, and fuel will be usually scarce as well.

The energy stored by even a single battery is very high. 600 Wd are enough to power, for example, three [[cooler]]s at full power draw for an entire day, with no other source of power available. Therefore, building a lot of batteries ("just to be safe") is not necessary, or even harmful. Unless you take complex and expensive measures to avoid the ''short circuit'' event, having too many batteries online is a liability. Examine closely how much energy storage you need, and do not build more than that.

When you calculate the battery capacity that is necessary when using renewable energy, keep in mind that charge efficiency is only 50%. That is, only half of any excess energy will be effectively usable. This is particularly relevant when planning a greenhouse setup, of [[hydroponics basin]]s and a [[sun lamp]]. The ''sun lamp'' will draw 2900 W during the day, and 0 W during the night, for an average demand of 1450 W. However, it is not sufficient to generate only 1450 W at all times, hoping that a 3-battery array will even out the difference in power draw. This is because during the night, only half of the extra 1450 W will effectively charge the batteries, storing 8,700 Wh of energy (~360 Wd). This will only be enough to power the sun-lamp for 6 hours during the day. For the remaining 6 hours, the missing 1450 W will have to be provided by other means (usually a solar panel). Simply adding more batteries will not change this. Two batteries will provide enough buffering in this scenario.

The example setup, including 24 hydroponics basins, can be fully powered by one geothermal generator and a solar panel, connected to a single buffer battery.

Even in colonies that do not use wind or solar energy, batteries are useful to cover spikes in power usage, usually caused by turret arrays and devices like crematoriums, smelters and mineral scanners that are only brought online intermittently. A battery can cover arbitrarily high power needs, the size of the array only changes for how long that is possible.

As an example, an array of 20 mini-turrets and 4 autocannon turrets draws 3200 W of power. Instead of building another geothermal generator that would cover this, even a single charged battery can power this entire setup for more than 4 in-game hours. An array of 5 batteries can power the defenses for an entire in-game day. The battery array should be isolated with two power switches from the security grid and main power grid. This makes it then also very easy to power the entire setup with a single switch, as well as keep the batteries safe from the ''short circuit'' event.

</onlyinclude>
{{nav|power|wide}}
[[Category:Buildings]]
[[Category:Power]]

Battery

2019-10-12T01:59:17Z

Siggboy: /* Hazards */

{{infobox main|building|
|name = Battery
|image = Battery.jpg|Battery
|description = Stores electricity when there is excess power and yields it when there is not. Warning - charged batteries tend to explode when heated or wet.
|type = Buildings
|type2 = Power
|placeable = Yes
|size = 1|2
|hp = 100
|efficiency = 50%
|power =
|buy = {{icon|metal|70}} {{icon|component|2}}
|sell = {{icon|metal|52.5}} + {{icon|component|1.5}}
|beauty = -15
|mass base = 20
|cover = 0.4
}}<onlyinclude>
{{Info|The ''battery'' is an electric device that can store energy and provide power. Energy is stored while there is a surplus on the connected electric grid; the charge capacity is 600 Wd (''watt days''). Each battery provides an unlimited amount of power if there is a deficit, until discharged. Charging power is unlimited as well, but happens at only 50% efficiency, ie. half the energy provided is lost. Batteries self-discharge at a rate of 5 W, even while disconnected. Batteries need to be operated under a roof, or they will frequently short circuit in rain or snowfall, causing an explosion.}}

== Usage ==
'''Batteries are built, moved and stored like other kinds of movable furniture.''' They will keep their charge while stored ("minified") or disconnected, only discharging at the normal rate of 5 W (self-discharge).

With regards to power production, they behave like the other electric buildings in the game. All power consumers can connect to batteries in the same way as to other power sources: within a 5-tile radius, a device can directly connect to a battery (or array of batteries), without power conduits in between.

In order to charge a battery, it has to be directly connected to a power grid with excess power. It is not possible to connect to batteries "through" power consumers (this is because consumers can not be connected to more than one power grid at the same time).

Just like the other power producing buildings, a battery '''acts as a power conduit''' on the 2 tiles it covers.

Installed batteries '''can not be switched off manually'''. As long as at least one consumer is connected, the battery will provide power during a deficit, and also be vulnerable to the short-circuit event.

Installed batteries '''need to be kept dry'''. If outdoors, a roof has to be built over the tiles occupied by the battery. If a battery becomes wet (either due to rain or snowfall), there is a very high chance of a short circuit, causing an explosion and fire (probably spreading to adjacent batteries and connected devices). At least the rain will usually extinguish the fire...

Damage to a battery does not change its other properties and does not cause discharge (eg. a 1 hitpoint battery has the same capacity and wattage as a 100 hitpoint battery).

== Batteries as power supplies ==
Consumers can connect to batteries directly, up to a distance of 5 tiles away, by using the ''reconnect'' action on the consumer until it is connected to the battery.

As a power supply, the battery behaves just like any other power source in the game (eg. generators or solar panels), but each battery will deliver an unlimited amount of power. This means that any ''wattage'' can be delivered until the battery is completely discharged. It makes the battery not only convenient as buffers for wind turbines and solar panels, but also to cover arbitrary spikes in power usage, usually caused by turret arrays and other heavy power consumers that are only brought on-line sporadically.

The power output of a battery is theoretically unlimited. Even a huge colony that demands, say, 30,000 W of power can be powered by a single battery (but only for about 1 in-game hour if the battery is fully charged). Adding more batteries is only necessary to lengthen the time span.

If more than one battery is on the same power grid, all batteries with remaining charge will share the power load evenly.

The maximum amount of energy provided per battery is 600 Wd (''watt-days'') for a fully charged battery. Eg. if exactly 595 W were drawn, a single battery would last exactly 1 in-game day (taking into account the 5 W of self-discharge). If only 295 W are drawn, it lasts for 2 days, etc. Since maximum power draw is unlimited it is – theoretically – possible to empty a full battery in 1 tick of game time (instantly).

A disconnected battery will discharge at a rate of 5 W. This means that a fully charged battery can be stored for 120 days (1 in-game year) until depleted.

== Charging ==
A battery will automatically keep charging while it is connected to a power grid with excess power available. Selecting the battery will show the current charge status in the information window.

The power used for charging is unlimited; charging batteries will always draw all available power, but never cause a power deficiency on the grid.

All batteries in a power grid will evenly share the excess power for charging, but can only use half of it (the charge efficiency is 50%). In other words, to fully charge an empty battery, 1200 Wd of energy have to be provided, as well as 5 W extra to cover the self-discharge.

As an example, connecting an empty battery to a power grid with exactly 1205 W of available power will charge it to full in exactly 1 in-game day. If more power was available, charging would complete more quickly. 5 W of charging power would keep the battery at exactly the present charge level, merely nullifying the self-discharge.

In practice, the self-discharge can mostly be disregarded.

== Constructing, moving and storing ==
Batteries behave exactly like other furniture items in the game: they have to be constructed on solid terrain, using the construction skill. It takes 14 work units to build, and can be done even at construction level 0.

After construction, they can be uninstalled like furniture, and then moved to storage, taken to a character's inventory or on a caravan. Uninstalling and reinstalling does not cause additional charge loss, beyond the 5 W of self-discharge that always applies.

It is possible to take charged batteries on caravans as a power source for camps and newly founded colonies.

Batteries that are not installed can be stored in the open, also in rain or snowfall, as they can not short circuit. Like other furniture, they are not subject to ''decay''.

== Hazards ==
'''Batteries are very likely to explode in rain and snowfall'''. This can be completely avoided by keeping installed batteries under a roof; keeping them indoors is not necessary. The resulting explosion will not cause any discharge, but it will heavily damage the battery, and possibly surrounding structures as well, also causing a fire.

'''Batteries make the [[Events#Faulty Conduit Explosion|short circuit]] event ("Zztt...") more dangerous:''' all affected batteries will instantly discharge, causing an explosion in addition to the fire that is normally caused by the event. The more batteries are connected, the larger the explosion. ''Note that the event is unrelated to batteries'' – it can still happen if no batteries are connected, but will then only cause a small fire and no explosion. Empty batteries will not affect the event.

Note that it is not the batteries that explode, but a random area around the affected power-conduit. This could be right next to a battery, or a long distance away from it.

The short circuit event can be completely avoided if there are no ''power conduits'' connected to the battery. You can disconnect the batteries from the main power grid with a power switch. The switch needs to be placed directly next to the battery array, separating the power conduits on the main grid from the batteries.

[[File:Zero_conduit_freezer.jpg|300px|thumb|right|The batteries in this setup connect directly to the wind turbine and the attached coolers, without any power conduits. This completely avoids the random short circuit event ("Zztt...") in this power network.]]

It is also possible to completely avoid building any ''power conduits'' at all. This is usually only practical for smaller, self-contained grids. The batteries themselves, as well as other power generating buildings, have built-in power conduits, but these are not susceptible to short circuits. Because consumers can directly connect to batteries (and other power generators) over a 5-tile distance, you can construct conduit-free power grids with some careful planning.

If the above measures are impractical, [[firefoam popper]]s should be installed where an explosion would cause a lot of damage, such as inside a hydroponics facility or a storage area.

Battery performance is not affected by temperature. Somewhat contrary to the in-game description, the battery is not more susceptible to heat than other, comparable flammable structures. Even the most extreme heat waves will not make a battery explode or catch fire. It is therefore not necessary to keep batteries climatized.

== Strategy ==
Batteries are useful in most colonies, even if the colony does not rely on unstable power sources like [[solar panel]]s and [[wind turbine]]s.

If only renewable energy is used, at least one battery is mandatory, because sufficient power supply can never be guaranteed. Solar panels produce no power during the night and during an eclipse, and wind turbines are completely unreliable. If the colony has no other backup power source, it is highly recommended to keep some additional batteries behind a [[power switch]] on a separate network (see ''Hazards'' above), so they can be brought online in the case of a ''short circuit'' event.

Alternatively, some batteries can also be stored in a warehouse, and then placed down anywhere on the power grid on demand. This makes switches unnecessary.

Batteries can also be used to make fueled generators more economical. These generators provide constant power, but they also burn their fuel at a constant rate – no matter how much power is actually used. If you connect some batteries, you can at least catch half of the otherwise wasted energy, and then disable the generator until the batteries run dry. This will save 100% of the fuel for the time the generator is offline. This is especially helpful in the early game, where you might not even have enough power draw to fully load a single generator, and fuel will be usually scarce as well.

The energy stored by even a single battery is very high. 600 Wd are enough to power, for example, three [[cooler]]s at full power draw for an entire day, with no other source of power available. Therefore, building a lot of batteries ("just to be safe") is not necessary, or even harmful. Unless you take complex and expensive measures to avoid the ''short circuit'' event, having too many batteries online is a liability. Examine closely how much energy storage you need, and do not build more than that.

When you calculate the battery capacity that is necessary when using renewable energy, keep in mind that charge efficiency is only 50%. That is, only half of any excess energy will be effectively usable. This is particularly relevant when planning a greenhouse setup, of [[hydroponics basin]]s and a [[sun lamp]]. The ''sun lamp'' will draw 2900 W during the day, and 0 W during the night, for an average demand of 1450 W. However, it is not sufficient to generate only 1450 W at all times, hoping that a 3-battery array will even out the difference in power draw. This is because during the night, only half of the extra 1450 W will effectively charge the batteries, storing 8,700 Wh of energy (~360 Wd). This will only be enough to power the sun-lamp for 6 hours during the day. For the remaining 6 hours, the missing 1450 W will have to be provided by other means (usually a solar panel). Simply adding more batteries will not change this. Two batteries will provide enough buffering in this scenario.

The example setup, including 24 hydroponics basins, can be fully powered by one geothermal generator and a solar panel, connected to a single buffer battery.

Even in colonies that do not use wind or solar energy, batteries are useful to cover spikes in power usage, usually caused by turret arrays and devices like crematoriums, smelters and mineral scanners that are only brought online intermittently. A battery can cover arbitrarily high power needs, the size of the array only changes for how long that is possible.

As an example, an array of 20 mini-turrets and 4 autocannon turrets draws 3200 W of power. Instead of building another geothermal generator that would cover this, even a single charged battery can power this entire setup for more than 4 in-game hours. An array of 5 batteries can power the defenses for an entire in-game day. The battery array should be isolated with two power switches from the security grid and main power grid. This makes it then also very easy to power the entire setup with a single switch, as well as keep the batteries safe from the ''short circuit'' event.

</onlyinclude>
{{nav|power|wide}}
[[Category:Buildings]]
[[Category:Power]]

Battery

2019-10-12T01:57:35Z

Siggboy: /* Hazards */

{{infobox main|building|
|name = Battery
|image = Battery.jpg|Battery
|description = Stores electricity when there is excess power and yields it when there is not. Warning - charged batteries tend to explode when heated or wet.
|type = Buildings
|type2 = Power
|placeable = Yes
|size = 1|2
|hp = 100
|efficiency = 50%
|power =
|buy = {{icon|metal|70}} {{icon|component|2}}
|sell = {{icon|metal|52.5}} + {{icon|component|1.5}}
|beauty = -15
|mass base = 20
|cover = 0.4
}}<onlyinclude>
{{Info|The ''battery'' is an electric device that can store energy and provide power. Energy is stored while there is a surplus on the connected electric grid; the charge capacity is 600 Wd (''watt days''). Each battery provides an unlimited amount of power if there is a deficit, until discharged. Charging power is unlimited as well, but happens at only 50% efficiency, ie. half the energy provided is lost. Batteries self-discharge at a rate of 5 W, even while disconnected. Batteries need to be operated under a roof, or they will frequently short circuit in rain or snowfall, causing an explosion.}}

== Usage ==
'''Batteries are built, moved and stored like other kinds of movable furniture.''' They will keep their charge while stored ("minified") or disconnected, only discharging at the normal rate of 5 W (self-discharge).

With regards to power production, they behave like the other electric buildings in the game. All power consumers can connect to batteries in the same way as to other power sources: within a 5-tile radius, a device can directly connect to a battery (or array of batteries), without power conduits in between.

In order to charge a battery, it has to be directly connected to a power grid with excess power. It is not possible to connect to batteries "through" power consumers (this is because consumers can not be connected to more than one power grid at the same time).

Just like the other power producing buildings, a battery '''acts as a power conduit''' on the 2 tiles it covers.

Installed batteries '''can not be switched off manually'''. As long as at least one consumer is connected, the battery will provide power during a deficit, and also be vulnerable to the short-circuit event.

Installed batteries '''need to be kept dry'''. If outdoors, a roof has to be built over the tiles occupied by the battery. If a battery becomes wet (either due to rain or snowfall), there is a very high chance of a short circuit, causing an explosion and fire (probably spreading to adjacent batteries and connected devices). At least the rain will usually extinguish the fire...

Damage to a battery does not change its other properties and does not cause discharge (eg. a 1 hitpoint battery has the same capacity and wattage as a 100 hitpoint battery).

== Batteries as power supplies ==
Consumers can connect to batteries directly, up to a distance of 5 tiles away, by using the ''reconnect'' action on the consumer until it is connected to the battery.

As a power supply, the battery behaves just like any other power source in the game (eg. generators or solar panels), but each battery will deliver an unlimited amount of power. This means that any ''wattage'' can be delivered until the battery is completely discharged. It makes the battery not only convenient as buffers for wind turbines and solar panels, but also to cover arbitrary spikes in power usage, usually caused by turret arrays and other heavy power consumers that are only brought on-line sporadically.

The power output of a battery is theoretically unlimited. Even a huge colony that demands, say, 30,000 W of power can be powered by a single battery (but only for about 1 in-game hour if the battery is fully charged). Adding more batteries is only necessary to lengthen the time span.

If more than one battery is on the same power grid, all batteries with remaining charge will share the power load evenly.

The maximum amount of energy provided per battery is 600 Wd (''watt-days'') for a fully charged battery. Eg. if exactly 595 W were drawn, a single battery would last exactly 1 in-game day (taking into account the 5 W of self-discharge). If only 295 W are drawn, it lasts for 2 days, etc. Since maximum power draw is unlimited it is – theoretically – possible to empty a full battery in 1 tick of game time (instantly).

A disconnected battery will discharge at a rate of 5 W. This means that a fully charged battery can be stored for 120 days (1 in-game year) until depleted.

== Charging ==
A battery will automatically keep charging while it is connected to a power grid with excess power available. Selecting the battery will show the current charge status in the information window.

The power used for charging is unlimited; charging batteries will always draw all available power, but never cause a power deficiency on the grid.

All batteries in a power grid will evenly share the excess power for charging, but can only use half of it (the charge efficiency is 50%). In other words, to fully charge an empty battery, 1200 Wd of energy have to be provided, as well as 5 W extra to cover the self-discharge.

As an example, connecting an empty battery to a power grid with exactly 1205 W of available power will charge it to full in exactly 1 in-game day. If more power was available, charging would complete more quickly. 5 W of charging power would keep the battery at exactly the present charge level, merely nullifying the self-discharge.

In practice, the self-discharge can mostly be disregarded.

== Constructing, moving and storing ==
Batteries behave exactly like other furniture items in the game: they have to be constructed on solid terrain, using the construction skill. It takes 14 work units to build, and can be done even at construction level 0.

After construction, they can be uninstalled like furniture, and then moved to storage, taken to a character's inventory or on a caravan. Uninstalling and reinstalling does not cause additional charge loss, beyond the 5 W of self-discharge that always applies.

It is possible to take charged batteries on caravans as a power source for camps and newly founded colonies.

Batteries that are not installed can be stored in the open, also in rain or snowfall, as they can not short circuit. Like other furniture, they are not subject to ''decay''.

== Hazards ==
'''Batteries are very likely to explode in rain and snowfall'''. This can be completely avoided by keeping installed batteries under a roof; keeping them indoors is not necessary. The resulting explosion will not cause any discharge, but it will heavily damage the battery, and possibly surrounding structures as well, also causing a fire.

'''Batteries make the [[Events#Faulty Conduit Explosion|short circuit]] event ("Zztt...") more dangerous:''' all affected batteries will instantly discharge, causing an explosion in addition to the fire that is normally caused by the event. The more batteries are connected, the larger the explosion. ''Note that the event is unrelated to batteries'' – it can still happen if no batteries are connected, but will then only cause a small fire and no explosion. Empty batteries will not affect the event.

Note that it is not the batteries that explode, but a random area around the affected power-conduit. This could be right next to a battery, or a long distance away from it.

The short circuit event can be completely avoided if there are no ''power conduits'' connected to the battery. You can disconnect the batteries from the main power grid, with a power switch. The switch needs to be placed directly next to the battery arrays.

[[File:Zero_conduit_freezer.jpg|300px|thumb|right|The batteries in this setup connect directly to the wind turbine and the attached coolers, without any power conduits. This completely avoids the random short circuit event ("Zztt...") in this power network.]]

It is also possible to completely avoid building any ''power conduits'' at all. This is usually only practical for smaller, self-contained grids. The batteries themselves, as well as other power generating buildings, have built-in power conduits, but these are not susceptible to short circuits. Because consumers can directly connect to batteries (and other power generators) over a 5-tile distance, you can construct conduit-free power grids with some careful planning.

If the above measures are impractical, [[firefoam popper]]s should be installed where an explosion would cause a lot of damage, such as inside a hydroponics facility or a storage area.

Battery performance is not affected by temperature. Somewhat contrary to the in-game description, the battery is not more susceptible to heat than other, comparable flammable structures. Even the most extreme heat waves will not make a battery explode or catch fire. It is therefore not necessary to keep batteries climatized.

== Strategy ==
Batteries are useful in most colonies, even if the colony does not rely on unstable power sources like [[solar panel]]s and [[wind turbine]]s.

If only renewable energy is used, at least one battery is mandatory, because sufficient power supply can never be guaranteed. Solar panels produce no power during the night and during an eclipse, and wind turbines are completely unreliable. If the colony has no other backup power source, it is highly recommended to keep some additional batteries behind a [[power switch]] on a separate network (see ''Hazards'' above), so they can be brought online in the case of a ''short circuit'' event.

Alternatively, some batteries can also be stored in a warehouse, and then placed down anywhere on the power grid on demand. This makes switches unnecessary.

Batteries can also be used to make fueled generators more economical. These generators provide constant power, but they also burn their fuel at a constant rate – no matter how much power is actually used. If you connect some batteries, you can at least catch half of the otherwise wasted energy, and then disable the generator until the batteries run dry. This will save 100% of the fuel for the time the generator is offline. This is especially helpful in the early game, where you might not even have enough power draw to fully load a single generator, and fuel will be usually scarce as well.

The energy stored by even a single battery is very high. 600 Wd are enough to power, for example, three [[cooler]]s at full power draw for an entire day, with no other source of power available. Therefore, building a lot of batteries ("just to be safe") is not necessary, or even harmful. Unless you take complex and expensive measures to avoid the ''short circuit'' event, having too many batteries online is a liability. Examine closely how much energy storage you need, and do not build more than that.

When you calculate the battery capacity that is necessary when using renewable energy, keep in mind that charge efficiency is only 50%. That is, only half of any excess energy will be effectively usable. This is particularly relevant when planning a greenhouse setup, of [[hydroponics basin]]s and a [[sun lamp]]. The ''sun lamp'' will draw 2900 W during the day, and 0 W during the night, for an average demand of 1450 W. However, it is not sufficient to generate only 1450 W at all times, hoping that a 3-battery array will even out the difference in power draw. This is because during the night, only half of the extra 1450 W will effectively charge the batteries, storing 8,700 Wh of energy (~360 Wd). This will only be enough to power the sun-lamp for 6 hours during the day. For the remaining 6 hours, the missing 1450 W will have to be provided by other means (usually a solar panel). Simply adding more batteries will not change this. Two batteries will provide enough buffering in this scenario.

The example setup, including 24 hydroponics basins, can be fully powered by one geothermal generator and a solar panel, connected to a single buffer battery.

Even in colonies that do not use wind or solar energy, batteries are useful to cover spikes in power usage, usually caused by turret arrays and devices like crematoriums, smelters and mineral scanners that are only brought online intermittently. A battery can cover arbitrarily high power needs, the size of the array only changes for how long that is possible.

As an example, an array of 20 mini-turrets and 4 autocannon turrets draws 3200 W of power. Instead of building another geothermal generator that would cover this, even a single charged battery can power this entire setup for more than 4 in-game hours. An array of 5 batteries can power the defenses for an entire in-game day. The battery array should be isolated with two power switches from the security grid and main power grid. This makes it then also very easy to power the entire setup with a single switch, as well as keep the batteries safe from the ''short circuit'' event.

</onlyinclude>
{{nav|power|wide}}
[[Category:Buildings]]
[[Category:Power]]

Training

2019-10-12T01:41:05Z

Siggboy: /* Medical */

<div style="float: right; margin-left: 2em;">__TOC__</div>

All skills in ''Rimworld'' improve simply while they are used; there is nothing special that needs to be done in addition to that. If a colonist is assigned to a task (via the ''Work'' tab) with a sufficiently high priority, they will eventually perform it and gain skill points.

In a few cases it is not obvious that a specific task trains a seemingly unrelated ability:
* Making ''smokeleaf joints'' requires and trains ''cooking'' (not crafting).
* Making medicine and hard drugs (''flake'', ''yayo'', etc.) requires and trains ''intellectual'' (not crafting).
* Cutting stone blocks does not train any skill (but requires crafting to be allowed as a task).
* Making [[Kibble]] is done at the butchering table, but requires and trains cooking.
* Butchering a dead animal is a cooking activity.
* Brewing beer is a cooking task (not crafting, which would be plausible)
* Many construction tasks could plausibly instead be crafting, smithing or tailoring tasks.
* Smithing and tailoring are actually sub-skills of crafting, but do not have their own skill level.

This article talks about a few special ways to forcibly train colonists in certain skills. This is usually only necessary and recommended if you need a certain ability on a colonist, but do not want to use this person for productive work. Normally this is because an untrained worker would be a liability – for example, an untrained cook can cause food poisoning, and an untrained miner can waste valuable resources while trying to extract them.

'''If you train a colonist by letting them do busy work, or monkey business, you are wasting one of the most valuable colony resources, namely work hours.''' Only do that if you really have to.

Even a colonist that is bad at everything, and passionate for nothing (these exist...) should be a hauler and cleaner, or maybe the guy who fulfills that caravan trade request 5 days away, before you let them repair a mountain stone face for days just to get them 3 levels of construction.

== Using temporary zone restrictions to direct colonists ==

A technique that is mentioned a few times in this article, is to create a zone only to restrict a colonist to a very specific area, in order to force them to perform a task.

As an example, consider colonist "Molly", who you want to smooth the floor in your freezer in the next few days, and ''do nothing else''. In this case, you will create a new [[zone]] for Molly, containing exactly these areas in your base:

* the area where the work needs to happen (freezer in this example)
* Molly's bedroom (so she can go to rest as usual)
* the recreation area and dining table
* a place where food is stored (maybe not necessary in this example, because the freezer is already covered)

These areas ''do not have to be adjacent'' (connected). The zone can be composed of several disconnected areas.

Now you restrict Molly to this newly created zone. She can now still move between those areas, but in order to perform a task, she needs to be inside one of them, that is, inside the zone. This means she will not use any skills outside the temporary zone, and you will not need to manipulate her work tab to keep her from doing anything but smooth the freezer floor.

This is a very effective method, not just for training, but for prioritizing important work in general.

== Combat training ==
If you feel you are not prepared for the next raid, you can train a few combat abilities. This will always need to be done manually, ie. with the trainee drafted (except for hunting). That means you can not manage the colony in the mean time, and it can be difficult to train more than one colonist at a time. This probably means a net loss of productivity in your colony, so only do it if you feel it is really necessary.

=== Shooting ===
The best way to train shooting is to assign the colonist to the "hunting" task. Giving them a long-range weapon, for example a [[bolt-action rifle]] makes hunting safer, because animals are less likely to enrage and retaliate if shot at from long range. To be safe, only hunt passive animals that will never retaliate.

Deliberately damaging your own structures or buildings does not improve your shooting skill.

Giving a really bad shooter a weapon not suited for the task, such as a [[machine pistol]] of "awful" quality, means that they will possibly hunt for a ''long'' time before actually killing the animal. Do not expect a colonist that you train this way to be very productive for the colony.

==== Aggravating animals ====
Outside of hunting, some resilient animals such as the [[Megasloth]], [[Rhinoceros]] and [[Thrumbo]] can give a lot of shooting skill by kiting them, and slowly shooting them to death with a low DPS weapon. You need to be very careful with this approach, because those animals do a lot of damage if given the chance to get into your melee range.

This is a special case of deliberately slow "hunting".

The best weapon types for this tactic are weapons with a fast windup and high shot frequency, not too short a range, and low damage. This makes you use the skill more often, by firing more shots, and has your "training dummy" last longer from low damage.

This approach does require extensive micromanagement, and you won't be able to perform other manual tasks in the colony in the meantime. It is even possible that actually killing the animal will take so long that your colonist will pass out from exhaustion or go into starvation. You ''must'' have a capable shooter available to finish off the animal and end the training if necessary.

=== Melee ===
Fighting anything with melee attacks will increase the ''melee'' skill. ''Hunting'' with melee attacks works, but animals are prone to fighting back so be warned (this is true even for animals that never retaliate when hunted from range). You will have to draft the colonist and "hunt" the animal manually by attacking it. An undrafted colonist will not ''hunt'' if they are lacking a ranged weapon.

If you want to train a character this way, use the best possible armor so they will take less damage from the animal. Taking no damage at all is usually not possible, so do not train a colonist that you require to be in good shape; they will at least have a few bruises for a couple of days, reducing their manipulation skills and movement ability. Also be aware that attacking herd animals (like muffalos and wild boars) can enrage the ''entire herd'', usually leading to a heavily injured colonist, or worse.

Tamed animals will fight back, so they are not safe training dummies; they can however be kept in a controlled environment which makes them more convenient targets. There is also no risk of an entire herd taking revenge for you hurting their friend. You can patch up the animal you just abused afterwards, which will train the ''medical'' skill.

Using melee attacks does raise the skill very quickly, and you will hit the "soft" XP cap of 4000 points in a matter of a few attacks. Disengage afterwards, because training over the soft cap is not efficient.

To level melee more safely, take prisoners who are incapable of "Violent" and repeatedly punch, then heal them in their prison cell. To avoid accidentally killing your prisoners, use fists only with neither a melee nor ranged weapon equipped. Carefully watch the health of the prisoner pausing the game between each punch if needed. A colonist with no weapon (not even a ranged weapon) does up to 7 base blunt damage per punch (see [[Weapons#Base Melee Stats|Base Melee Stats]] for details), so when any single body part falls below 8 hp remaining, stop and allow the prisoner to heal. This will allow you to train medical skill as well.

== Construction ==
Construction is already trained quite efficiently by simply using the skill, since construction is such a common activity in an expanding colony.

Smoothing walls and floors counts as construction, is very time consuming, and does have no quality penalty associated with it. It is maybe the best way to train a low skilled worker, without the risk of wasting materials or creating bad products. Having your apprentices do the smoothing keeps the master constructors free for more demanding work. Restrict the trainee colonists to the respective areas by creating a temporary zone, and let them do wall and floor smoothing exclusively for a while.

Making furniture is not the best way to train construction, because colonists with low skill will produce low quality furniture, which has then to be deconstructed and re-built, wasting material in the process. You can, however, keep deconstructing and reconstructing the furniture until the desired quality level is produced, if you do not mind losing some resources along the way; the popular mod ''Quality Builder'' helps tremendously.

If you are about to build a lot of walls in the colony, you can temporarily take your capable builders '''off''' the construction task, and let only your trainees build the walls and roofs. Walls do not have a quality stat, so it is not possible to create bad products. The apprentices will take a little longer, and probably "botch" construction several times, but the end result will be the same.

Do not train construction when high value material is involved, such as cloth (for carpets) or components (when making things like power generators). If the colonist "botches" construction in these cases, a fair amount of material will be irretrievably wasted; only do this if you have plenty of surplus so it would not matter.

=== Repairing things to learn construction ===
'''Only do this with a colonist that really needs to be up to speed in construction ''now'', if you have absolutely no other suitable construction work to do at the moment. Repairing structures just for training is probably the worst kind of monkey business you could give to your colonists, and a horrible waste of work hours.'''

You can damage structures, usually purpose-built stone walls, deliberately by damaging them with melee attacks, shots or grenade blasts, and then have your construction builders repair them.

This will not train shooting skill. Use the shooters only to damage the structure, then undraft them and have them resume their regular colony duties. Of course the shooters could be the very same people who will do the repair work just after. Shooting skill does not matter much in this case, as pretty much everybody is able to hit a wall from point blank range...

* By far the best approach is to ''smooth'' any stone wall, damage it, and repair it. Smoothed walls count as constructed walls, so they can be repaired. A smoothed granite wall does have 900 hitpoints, almost as much as a [[plasteel]] wall. Smoothing the wall will be training ''construction'' as well, hitting two birds with a single stone.
* Designate the colonists you intend to train so that they can only repair. Create a [[zone]] around the training area, and the general facilities of the base, then restrict the trainees to this zone.
* Skill training becomes much less effective after 4000 XP has been acquired in a skill during a day. Take the trainees off the training task by removing their zone restriction after the XP cap has been reached for the day.

== Mining ==
Unskilled miners will let resources go to waste if they mine an ore vein. You can check a colonists [[Mining Yield| mining yield]] stat to see if they are already at 100%. If they're not, do not use them to extract valuable resources from a mountain.

To train these people, restrict them to a temporary zone with a mining job in it that does not include any valuable ores (even [[steel]] will become valuable eventually, make no mistake...). If you dig into a mountain face randomly, be aware that this could become a space for [[infestation]]s to spawn if the location is too close to your colony.

If you have developed [[Deep drill| deep drilling]] already, you can let your apprentice miners work the drills. Waste of resources is usually not a problem anymore at this point.

== Cooking ==
The ''cooking'' skill level is increased by ''butchering'', ''cooking'' meals at a stove or campfire, and also by making [[smokeleaf joint]]s. If an unskilled cook prepares meals, they carry an increased risk of [[food poisoning]]. This is a fairly disrupting condition that should be avoided, so it is not optimal to train a new cook by letting them prepare meals.

=== Making smokeleaf joints ===
If a colonist has low skill but high [[Skills#Passion|passion]] for cooking, you should train them as an additional cook. The downside is that meals prepared by this character, while he or she is still learning, carry a high chance of [[food poisoning]].

Cooks can, however, also be trained by having them make [[smokeleaf joint]]s out of [[Smokeleaf leaves|leaves]] at a [[drug lab]]. This will train cooking just as fast as preparing meals, without the risk of making anybody sick.

Set up a dedicated work bill at the drug lab, and ''restrict it to the character that you would like to train in cooking''. The character needs to have priority to "Craft" things on the work tab. Make sure the drug lab is not occupied by other tasks; the easiest way is to put the smokeleaf job in the first slot on the list of bills.

This strategy requires ''drug production'' to be researched, and to grow or buy [[smokeleaf leaves]]. The latter is, of course, a way to train the ''plants'' skill (sowing ''smokeleaf'' only requires 4 ''plants'' skill). Smokeleaf products have good recreational and cash (trade) value.

Training cooks with smokeleaf is an excellent strategy.

== Plants (growing) ==

Letting an unskilled grower harvest your fields will waste some of the product; check the [[harvest yield]] stat of the colonist. If you need to avoid this, you will have to create a – possibly large – restriction zone to keep this colonist out of the area that they must not harvest. Allow them areas where sowing needs to happen.

Chopping trees is a good way to train ''plants''. Disallow the task ("plant cut" in the work tab) for your skilled growers, so your trainees will get more opportunities to chop wood.

If you are growing plants that only skilled workers can sow (like [[Devilstrand]] and [[Healroot]]), make sure that your trainees will sow ''all the other fields''. Do not let your skilled growers take that work away from them. Again, you will probably need to use restriction zones or work tab micromanagement to facilitate this.

The ''Work Tab'' addon by ''Fluffy'' makes partitioning the growing tasks a ''lot'' easier, avoiding the use of temporary zone restrictions.

== Crafting ==

The only way to practice crafting is to make things, either at a crafting spot, tailoring bench or smithy. Fabrication benches are only usable by already skilled crafters. Drug production and brewing does ''not'' train crafting.

If you have no good crafters yet, you will produce many items of "poor" or "awful" quality. It is not possible to retrieve raw materials from ''crafted'' items (unlike ''constructed'' items) – after you have crafted an item, you have to either use it or sell it as it is. This means you should not use any valuable materials, such as [[Thrumbofur]], [[Megasloth wool]], [[Hyperweave]] or [[Plasteel]] to practice crafting. Only let your most competent people handle these super-valuable materials.

''Weapons are not a good item class to practice crafting'', because they only sell for 20% of the normal price. This is good for game balance, because a lot of weapons are dropped during raids, but it means that it is practically impossible to make money from crafted weaponry. Only craft weapons that you expect to use.

This leaves ''armor items'' and ''clothing'': armor requires valuable ingredients, so '''usually crafting is practiced making clothes'''.

Crafted items get a ''market value'' that is composed of
* the work invested into making the item
* the value of the raw materials used
* the [[quality]] of the item

The market value multiplier for "awful" items is 50%, for "poor" items it is 75%. In those cases it would have been better to sell the raw materials instead of the item! To cut your inevitable losses, '''only use the cheapest material you can find if you expect to produce a lot of bad quality stuff'''. Good candidates are [[birdskin]], [[pigskin]], [[lightleather]], [[patchleather]] and [[plainleather]]. In particular, do ''not'' use [[cloth]] (needs to be bought or grown) or [[human leather]] (too expensive).

To further limit your losses, you can slow down the work deliberately, by crafting under poor conditions (outside, in the dark, not using electricity, in the cold, ...). Skill experience is granted ''over time'' and not ''by work units''. Crafting as slowly as possible means you will waste less material in the same time span. Only do this while crafting at level 5 or lower; from level 6, you can expect to [[quality|at least break even on average with regards to material cost]].

If you have a competent crafter (level 8 or higher) that you want to train further, one good way is to let them make [[advanced component]]s at a fabrication bench. You will need a lot more ''advanced components'' to build the space ship than you can usually buy from traders, so making them early is never a waste of effort. They do not have a quality rating, as long as your crafter can make them you will get full value. Likewise, bionic limbs and organs can be made by anyone who meets the skill requirement, but it is difficult to know in advance which ones you will need (''arms'' are never useless, however).

== Artistic ==

There is not much to be said about training ''artistic'' crafting; just have your aspiring artist craft as many sculptures as possible.

"Awful" sculptures have a ''negative'' beauty value, so they actually make the environment more ugly. Great to put into the bedrooms of [[traits|ascetic]] colonists, but should be deconstructed otherwise.

Use the material that you can spare the most of; wood is often a good choice. [[Jade]] has the best balance of beauty and availability, so it should be reserved for more capable, possibly [[mental inspiration|inspired]] artists.

== Medical ==

There is something that a typical ''Rimworld'' campaign never lacks: work for your doctors and surgeons. It is still possible to get some extra training.

Performing any type of surgery is staggeringly efficient for training ''medical'', because all surgeries award 16 (sixteen) times as much XP per work unit as other kinds of work. This includes performing all kinds of body part replacements, organ harvesting, and euthanizing humans ''and animals''.

* If you have human "patients", it is best to '''install and remove jaw dentures'''. This can be done at medical skill 2, only requires medicine, and the patient has no risk of dying on the table. It will leave the person permanently mangled, lowering their market value (which is not important unless you want to sell the person alive). Do not do it to healthy colonists or prisoners you plan to recruit, but of course it's perfect to perform on colonists who already have a destroyed jaw. This procedure as well as leg replacements are ''not'' counted under ''organ harvesting'', even if performed on a healthy patient.

* If human subjects are not available, you can '''euthanize animals'''. This gives a third of the XP of a denture procedure, but has no medical skill requirement. A failed procedure is both unlikely and of no consequence. This is great for training completely unskilled doctors. Which animal you euthanize does not matter, and it does not have to be a tame animal. You can "rescue" a hunted animal to an animal bed, just to euthanize it straight after. If you want to breed training animals, chickens are the best choice (euthanizing freshly hatched chicks is OK, the size of the animal does not matter). ''Only use herbal medicine'' for this procedure; better medicine is not required and would be straight up wasted.

* Organ harvesting is also great training, and can be done three times per customer, eg. by taking a kidney, half a lung and a heart. It is strongly [[Human Resources|frowned upon]] by most colonists. It is also profitable, but only do it if you can afford the colony-wide mood penalty, which lasts for 8 days.

The XP granted by a surgical procedure depends on work speed of the pawn, work units required and skill passion. For reference: at 100% ''medical operation speed'' and ''Interested'' passion, 2,000 XP are granted from performing a leg replacement.

'''Note:''' because performing surgery gives so much XP, a single colonist will hit the soft learning cap of 4,000 XP per day rather quickly. Spread out the procedures over multiple doctors and days.

== Social ==
Each social chat with a colonist gives 4 ''social'' XP per per speech balloon at ''Interested'' passion and neutral mood modifier.

Having a friendly chat with a prisoner in order to convince him or her to join the colony gives roughly 50 ''social'' XP at ''Interested'' passion, per speech balloon. If you are recruiting prisoners, only assign the "Wardening" work type to the colonists whose social skill you want to improve. The ''Work Tab'' mod (or a similar mod) allows more control over the various tasks related to wardening, so it is recommended to make this more viable in normal colony operation.

Setting the prisoner interaction mode to "Reduce resistance" (and not "Recruit") will allow wardens to keep having conversations indefinitely, allowing skill training. However, this costs a lot of food over time to keep the prisoner alive. Only do this with prisoners you do not want as colonists; recruit them immediately otherwise, so they become productive and improve their skills.

== Intellectual ==

''Intellectual'' skill is gained by doing research, and by making hard drugs and medicine. There are no special techniques available to make this more efficient. All research done is equally valuable, and neither medicine nor drugs have a quality rating; this means that who you employ for these jobs only influences how long it takes to finish them.

== Animals ==

The ''animals'' skill is very versatile, and can be trained in various ways.

There are two animals related tasks where unskilled colonists can be a liability:
* Failed tame attempts may cause the animal to retaliate; this often leads to the animal handler getting injured, usually as far away from the base as possible...
* Milking or shearing animals can fail, resulting in ''all'' of the product going to waste; this is especially painful when shearing (gathering wool), because wool takes many days to grow back.

Because of this it is best to let unskilled animal handlers only ''train animals'' that are already domesticated. If this fails, some food will be wasted, and the animal might lose some training from decay, but nothing worse will happen. Only your qualified animal handlers should be allowed to milk, shear or tame wild animals.

It is very finicky to assign all your animal handlers to the jobs best suited for them. It can be done with a lot of manipulation of temporary zone restrictions, but the recommended way is to install a mod like ''Work Tab'': it allows for fine-grained control of the various animals related sub-tasks.

<references />

{{nav/guides}}

[[Category:Game mechanics]]

Training

2019-10-12T01:39:28Z

Siggboy: /* Medical */

<div style="float: right; margin-left: 2em;">__TOC__</div>

All skills in ''Rimworld'' improve simply while they are used; there is nothing special that needs to be done in addition to that. If a colonist is assigned to a task (via the ''Work'' tab) with a sufficiently high priority, they will eventually perform it and gain skill points.

In a few cases it is not obvious that a specific task trains a seemingly unrelated ability:
* Making ''smokeleaf joints'' requires and trains ''cooking'' (not crafting).
* Making medicine and hard drugs (''flake'', ''yayo'', etc.) requires and trains ''intellectual'' (not crafting).
* Cutting stone blocks does not train any skill (but requires crafting to be allowed as a task).
* Making [[Kibble]] is done at the butchering table, but requires and trains cooking.
* Butchering a dead animal is a cooking activity.
* Brewing beer is a cooking task (not crafting, which would be plausible)
* Many construction tasks could plausibly instead be crafting, smithing or tailoring tasks.
* Smithing and tailoring are actually sub-skills of crafting, but do not have their own skill level.

This article talks about a few special ways to forcibly train colonists in certain skills. This is usually only necessary and recommended if you need a certain ability on a colonist, but do not want to use this person for productive work. Normally this is because an untrained worker would be a liability – for example, an untrained cook can cause food poisoning, and an untrained miner can waste valuable resources while trying to extract them.

'''If you train a colonist by letting them do busy work, or monkey business, you are wasting one of the most valuable colony resources, namely work hours.''' Only do that if you really have to.

Even a colonist that is bad at everything, and passionate for nothing (these exist...) should be a hauler and cleaner, or maybe the guy who fulfills that caravan trade request 5 days away, before you let them repair a mountain stone face for days just to get them 3 levels of construction.

== Using temporary zone restrictions to direct colonists ==

A technique that is mentioned a few times in this article, is to create a zone only to restrict a colonist to a very specific area, in order to force them to perform a task.

As an example, consider colonist "Molly", who you want to smooth the floor in your freezer in the next few days, and ''do nothing else''. In this case, you will create a new [[zone]] for Molly, containing exactly these areas in your base:

* the area where the work needs to happen (freezer in this example)
* Molly's bedroom (so she can go to rest as usual)
* the recreation area and dining table
* a place where food is stored (maybe not necessary in this example, because the freezer is already covered)

These areas ''do not have to be adjacent'' (connected). The zone can be composed of several disconnected areas.

Now you restrict Molly to this newly created zone. She can now still move between those areas, but in order to perform a task, she needs to be inside one of them, that is, inside the zone. This means she will not use any skills outside the temporary zone, and you will not need to manipulate her work tab to keep her from doing anything but smooth the freezer floor.

This is a very effective method, not just for training, but for prioritizing important work in general.

== Combat training ==
If you feel you are not prepared for the next raid, you can train a few combat abilities. This will always need to be done manually, ie. with the trainee drafted (except for hunting). That means you can not manage the colony in the mean time, and it can be difficult to train more than one colonist at a time. This probably means a net loss of productivity in your colony, so only do it if you feel it is really necessary.

=== Shooting ===
The best way to train shooting is to assign the colonist to the "hunting" task. Giving them a long-range weapon, for example a [[bolt-action rifle]] makes hunting safer, because animals are less likely to enrage and retaliate if shot at from long range. To be safe, only hunt passive animals that will never retaliate.

Deliberately damaging your own structures or buildings does not improve your shooting skill.

Giving a really bad shooter a weapon not suited for the task, such as a [[machine pistol]] of "awful" quality, means that they will possibly hunt for a ''long'' time before actually killing the animal. Do not expect a colonist that you train this way to be very productive for the colony.

==== Aggravating animals ====
Outside of hunting, some resilient animals such as the [[Megasloth]], [[Rhinoceros]] and [[Thrumbo]] can give a lot of shooting skill by kiting them, and slowly shooting them to death with a low DPS weapon. You need to be very careful with this approach, because those animals do a lot of damage if given the chance to get into your melee range.

This is a special case of deliberately slow "hunting".

The best weapon types for this tactic are weapons with a fast windup and high shot frequency, not too short a range, and low damage. This makes you use the skill more often, by firing more shots, and has your "training dummy" last longer from low damage.

This approach does require extensive micromanagement, and you won't be able to perform other manual tasks in the colony in the meantime. It is even possible that actually killing the animal will take so long that your colonist will pass out from exhaustion or go into starvation. You ''must'' have a capable shooter available to finish off the animal and end the training if necessary.

=== Melee ===
Fighting anything with melee attacks will increase the ''melee'' skill. ''Hunting'' with melee attacks works, but animals are prone to fighting back so be warned (this is true even for animals that never retaliate when hunted from range). You will have to draft the colonist and "hunt" the animal manually by attacking it. An undrafted colonist will not ''hunt'' if they are lacking a ranged weapon.

If you want to train a character this way, use the best possible armor so they will take less damage from the animal. Taking no damage at all is usually not possible, so do not train a colonist that you require to be in good shape; they will at least have a few bruises for a couple of days, reducing their manipulation skills and movement ability. Also be aware that attacking herd animals (like muffalos and wild boars) can enrage the ''entire herd'', usually leading to a heavily injured colonist, or worse.

Tamed animals will fight back, so they are not safe training dummies; they can however be kept in a controlled environment which makes them more convenient targets. There is also no risk of an entire herd taking revenge for you hurting their friend. You can patch up the animal you just abused afterwards, which will train the ''medical'' skill.

Using melee attacks does raise the skill very quickly, and you will hit the "soft" XP cap of 4000 points in a matter of a few attacks. Disengage afterwards, because training over the soft cap is not efficient.

To level melee more safely, take prisoners who are incapable of "Violent" and repeatedly punch, then heal them in their prison cell. To avoid accidentally killing your prisoners, use fists only with neither a melee nor ranged weapon equipped. Carefully watch the health of the prisoner pausing the game between each punch if needed. A colonist with no weapon (not even a ranged weapon) does up to 7 base blunt damage per punch (see [[Weapons#Base Melee Stats|Base Melee Stats]] for details), so when any single body part falls below 8 hp remaining, stop and allow the prisoner to heal. This will allow you to train medical skill as well.

== Construction ==
Construction is already trained quite efficiently by simply using the skill, since construction is such a common activity in an expanding colony.

Smoothing walls and floors counts as construction, is very time consuming, and does have no quality penalty associated with it. It is maybe the best way to train a low skilled worker, without the risk of wasting materials or creating bad products. Having your apprentices do the smoothing keeps the master constructors free for more demanding work. Restrict the trainee colonists to the respective areas by creating a temporary zone, and let them do wall and floor smoothing exclusively for a while.

Making furniture is not the best way to train construction, because colonists with low skill will produce low quality furniture, which has then to be deconstructed and re-built, wasting material in the process. You can, however, keep deconstructing and reconstructing the furniture until the desired quality level is produced, if you do not mind losing some resources along the way; the popular mod ''Quality Builder'' helps tremendously.

If you are about to build a lot of walls in the colony, you can temporarily take your capable builders '''off''' the construction task, and let only your trainees build the walls and roofs. Walls do not have a quality stat, so it is not possible to create bad products. The apprentices will take a little longer, and probably "botch" construction several times, but the end result will be the same.

Do not train construction when high value material is involved, such as cloth (for carpets) or components (when making things like power generators). If the colonist "botches" construction in these cases, a fair amount of material will be irretrievably wasted; only do this if you have plenty of surplus so it would not matter.

=== Repairing things to learn construction ===
'''Only do this with a colonist that really needs to be up to speed in construction ''now'', if you have absolutely no other suitable construction work to do at the moment. Repairing structures just for training is probably the worst kind of monkey business you could give to your colonists, and a horrible waste of work hours.'''

You can damage structures, usually purpose-built stone walls, deliberately by damaging them with melee attacks, shots or grenade blasts, and then have your construction builders repair them.

This will not train shooting skill. Use the shooters only to damage the structure, then undraft them and have them resume their regular colony duties. Of course the shooters could be the very same people who will do the repair work just after. Shooting skill does not matter much in this case, as pretty much everybody is able to hit a wall from point blank range...

* By far the best approach is to ''smooth'' any stone wall, damage it, and repair it. Smoothed walls count as constructed walls, so they can be repaired. A smoothed granite wall does have 900 hitpoints, almost as much as a [[plasteel]] wall. Smoothing the wall will be training ''construction'' as well, hitting two birds with a single stone.
* Designate the colonists you intend to train so that they can only repair. Create a [[zone]] around the training area, and the general facilities of the base, then restrict the trainees to this zone.
* Skill training becomes much less effective after 4000 XP has been acquired in a skill during a day. Take the trainees off the training task by removing their zone restriction after the XP cap has been reached for the day.

== Mining ==
Unskilled miners will let resources go to waste if they mine an ore vein. You can check a colonists [[Mining Yield| mining yield]] stat to see if they are already at 100%. If they're not, do not use them to extract valuable resources from a mountain.

To train these people, restrict them to a temporary zone with a mining job in it that does not include any valuable ores (even [[steel]] will become valuable eventually, make no mistake...). If you dig into a mountain face randomly, be aware that this could become a space for [[infestation]]s to spawn if the location is too close to your colony.

If you have developed [[Deep drill| deep drilling]] already, you can let your apprentice miners work the drills. Waste of resources is usually not a problem anymore at this point.

== Cooking ==
The ''cooking'' skill level is increased by ''butchering'', ''cooking'' meals at a stove or campfire, and also by making [[smokeleaf joint]]s. If an unskilled cook prepares meals, they carry an increased risk of [[food poisoning]]. This is a fairly disrupting condition that should be avoided, so it is not optimal to train a new cook by letting them prepare meals.

=== Making smokeleaf joints ===
If a colonist has low skill but high [[Skills#Passion|passion]] for cooking, you should train them as an additional cook. The downside is that meals prepared by this character, while he or she is still learning, carry a high chance of [[food poisoning]].

Cooks can, however, also be trained by having them make [[smokeleaf joint]]s out of [[Smokeleaf leaves|leaves]] at a [[drug lab]]. This will train cooking just as fast as preparing meals, without the risk of making anybody sick.

Set up a dedicated work bill at the drug lab, and ''restrict it to the character that you would like to train in cooking''. The character needs to have priority to "Craft" things on the work tab. Make sure the drug lab is not occupied by other tasks; the easiest way is to put the smokeleaf job in the first slot on the list of bills.

This strategy requires ''drug production'' to be researched, and to grow or buy [[smokeleaf leaves]]. The latter is, of course, a way to train the ''plants'' skill (sowing ''smokeleaf'' only requires 4 ''plants'' skill). Smokeleaf products have good recreational and cash (trade) value.

Training cooks with smokeleaf is an excellent strategy.

== Plants (growing) ==

Letting an unskilled grower harvest your fields will waste some of the product; check the [[harvest yield]] stat of the colonist. If you need to avoid this, you will have to create a – possibly large – restriction zone to keep this colonist out of the area that they must not harvest. Allow them areas where sowing needs to happen.

Chopping trees is a good way to train ''plants''. Disallow the task ("plant cut" in the work tab) for your skilled growers, so your trainees will get more opportunities to chop wood.

If you are growing plants that only skilled workers can sow (like [[Devilstrand]] and [[Healroot]]), make sure that your trainees will sow ''all the other fields''. Do not let your skilled growers take that work away from them. Again, you will probably need to use restriction zones or work tab micromanagement to facilitate this.

The ''Work Tab'' addon by ''Fluffy'' makes partitioning the growing tasks a ''lot'' easier, avoiding the use of temporary zone restrictions.

== Crafting ==

The only way to practice crafting is to make things, either at a crafting spot, tailoring bench or smithy. Fabrication benches are only usable by already skilled crafters. Drug production and brewing does ''not'' train crafting.

If you have no good crafters yet, you will produce many items of "poor" or "awful" quality. It is not possible to retrieve raw materials from ''crafted'' items (unlike ''constructed'' items) – after you have crafted an item, you have to either use it or sell it as it is. This means you should not use any valuable materials, such as [[Thrumbofur]], [[Megasloth wool]], [[Hyperweave]] or [[Plasteel]] to practice crafting. Only let your most competent people handle these super-valuable materials.

''Weapons are not a good item class to practice crafting'', because they only sell for 20% of the normal price. This is good for game balance, because a lot of weapons are dropped during raids, but it means that it is practically impossible to make money from crafted weaponry. Only craft weapons that you expect to use.

This leaves ''armor items'' and ''clothing'': armor requires valuable ingredients, so '''usually crafting is practiced making clothes'''.

Crafted items get a ''market value'' that is composed of
* the work invested into making the item
* the value of the raw materials used
* the [[quality]] of the item

The market value multiplier for "awful" items is 50%, for "poor" items it is 75%. In those cases it would have been better to sell the raw materials instead of the item! To cut your inevitable losses, '''only use the cheapest material you can find if you expect to produce a lot of bad quality stuff'''. Good candidates are [[birdskin]], [[pigskin]], [[lightleather]], [[patchleather]] and [[plainleather]]. In particular, do ''not'' use [[cloth]] (needs to be bought or grown) or [[human leather]] (too expensive).

To further limit your losses, you can slow down the work deliberately, by crafting under poor conditions (outside, in the dark, not using electricity, in the cold, ...). Skill experience is granted ''over time'' and not ''by work units''. Crafting as slowly as possible means you will waste less material in the same time span. Only do this while crafting at level 5 or lower; from level 6, you can expect to [[quality|at least break even on average with regards to material cost]].

If you have a competent crafter (level 8 or higher) that you want to train further, one good way is to let them make [[advanced component]]s at a fabrication bench. You will need a lot more ''advanced components'' to build the space ship than you can usually buy from traders, so making them early is never a waste of effort. They do not have a quality rating, as long as your crafter can make them you will get full value. Likewise, bionic limbs and organs can be made by anyone who meets the skill requirement, but it is difficult to know in advance which ones you will need (''arms'' are never useless, however).

== Artistic ==

There is not much to be said about training ''artistic'' crafting; just have your aspiring artist craft as many sculptures as possible.

"Awful" sculptures have a ''negative'' beauty value, so they actually make the environment more ugly. Great to put into the bedrooms of [[traits|ascetic]] colonists, but should be deconstructed otherwise.

Use the material that you can spare the most of; wood is often a good choice. [[Jade]] has the best balance of beauty and availability, so it should be reserved for more capable, possibly [[mental inspiration|inspired]] artists.

== Medical ==

There is something that a typical ''Rimworld'' campaign never lacks: work for your doctors and surgeons. It is still possible to get some extra training.

Performing any type of surgery is staggeringly efficient for training ''medical'', because all surgeries award 16 (sixteen) times as much XP per work unit as other kinds of work. This includes performing all kinds of body part replacements, organ harvesting, and euthanizing humans ''and animals''.

* If you have human "patients", it is best to '''install and remove jaw dentures'''. This can be done at medical skill 2, only requires medicine, and the patient has no risk of dying on the table. It will leave the person permanently mangled, lowering their market value (which is not important unless you want to sell the person alive). Do not do it to healthy colonists or prisoners you plan to recruit, but of course it's perfect to perform on colonists who already have a destroyed jaw. This procedure as well as leg replacements are ''not'' counted under ''organ harvesting'', even if performed on a healthy patient.

* If human subjects are not available, you can '''euthanize animals'''. This gives a third of the XP of a denture procedure, but has no medical skill requirement. A failed procedure is both unlikely and of no consequence. This is great for training completely unskilled doctors. Which animal you euthanize does not matter, and it does not have to be a tame animal. You can "rescue" a hunted animal to an animal bed, just to euthanize it straight after. If you want to breed training animals, chickens are the best choice (euthanizing freshly hatched chicks is OK, the size of the animal does not matter).

* Organ harvesting is also great training, and can be done three times per customer, eg. by taking a kidney, half a lung and a heart. It is strongly [[Human Resources|frowned upon]] by most colonists. It is also profitable, but only do it if you can afford the colony-wide mood penalty, which lasts for 8 days.

The XP granted by a surgical procedure depends on work speed of the pawn, work units required and skill passion. For reference: at 100% ''medical operation speed'' and ''Interested'' passion, 2,000 XP are granted from performing a leg replacement.

'''Note:''' because performing surgery gives so much XP, a single colonist will hit the soft learning cap of 4,000 XP per day rather quickly. Spread out the procedures over multiple doctors and days.

== Social ==
Each social chat with a colonist gives 4 ''social'' XP per per speech balloon at ''Interested'' passion and neutral mood modifier.

Having a friendly chat with a prisoner in order to convince him or her to join the colony gives roughly 50 ''social'' XP at ''Interested'' passion, per speech balloon. If you are recruiting prisoners, only assign the "Wardening" work type to the colonists whose social skill you want to improve. The ''Work Tab'' mod (or a similar mod) allows more control over the various tasks related to wardening, so it is recommended to make this more viable in normal colony operation.

Setting the prisoner interaction mode to "Reduce resistance" (and not "Recruit") will allow wardens to keep having conversations indefinitely, allowing skill training. However, this costs a lot of food over time to keep the prisoner alive. Only do this with prisoners you do not want as colonists; recruit them immediately otherwise, so they become productive and improve their skills.

== Intellectual ==

''Intellectual'' skill is gained by doing research, and by making hard drugs and medicine. There are no special techniques available to make this more efficient. All research done is equally valuable, and neither medicine nor drugs have a quality rating; this means that who you employ for these jobs only influences how long it takes to finish them.

== Animals ==

The ''animals'' skill is very versatile, and can be trained in various ways.

There are two animals related tasks where unskilled colonists can be a liability:
* Failed tame attempts may cause the animal to retaliate; this often leads to the animal handler getting injured, usually as far away from the base as possible...
* Milking or shearing animals can fail, resulting in ''all'' of the product going to waste; this is especially painful when shearing (gathering wool), because wool takes many days to grow back.

Because of this it is best to let unskilled animal handlers only ''train animals'' that are already domesticated. If this fails, some food will be wasted, and the animal might lose some training from decay, but nothing worse will happen. Only your qualified animal handlers should be allowed to milk, shear or tame wild animals.

It is very finicky to assign all your animal handlers to the jobs best suited for them. It can be done with a lot of manipulation of temporary zone restrictions, but the recommended way is to install a mod like ''Work Tab'': it allows for fine-grained control of the various animals related sub-tasks.

<references />

{{nav/guides}}

[[Category:Game mechanics]]

Training

2019-10-12T01:38:54Z

Siggboy: /* Medical */

<div style="float: right; margin-left: 2em;">__TOC__</div>

All skills in ''Rimworld'' improve simply while they are used; there is nothing special that needs to be done in addition to that. If a colonist is assigned to a task (via the ''Work'' tab) with a sufficiently high priority, they will eventually perform it and gain skill points.

In a few cases it is not obvious that a specific task trains a seemingly unrelated ability:
* Making ''smokeleaf joints'' requires and trains ''cooking'' (not crafting).
* Making medicine and hard drugs (''flake'', ''yayo'', etc.) requires and trains ''intellectual'' (not crafting).
* Cutting stone blocks does not train any skill (but requires crafting to be allowed as a task).
* Making [[Kibble]] is done at the butchering table, but requires and trains cooking.
* Butchering a dead animal is a cooking activity.
* Brewing beer is a cooking task (not crafting, which would be plausible)
* Many construction tasks could plausibly instead be crafting, smithing or tailoring tasks.
* Smithing and tailoring are actually sub-skills of crafting, but do not have their own skill level.

This article talks about a few special ways to forcibly train colonists in certain skills. This is usually only necessary and recommended if you need a certain ability on a colonist, but do not want to use this person for productive work. Normally this is because an untrained worker would be a liability – for example, an untrained cook can cause food poisoning, and an untrained miner can waste valuable resources while trying to extract them.

'''If you train a colonist by letting them do busy work, or monkey business, you are wasting one of the most valuable colony resources, namely work hours.''' Only do that if you really have to.

Even a colonist that is bad at everything, and passionate for nothing (these exist...) should be a hauler and cleaner, or maybe the guy who fulfills that caravan trade request 5 days away, before you let them repair a mountain stone face for days just to get them 3 levels of construction.

== Using temporary zone restrictions to direct colonists ==

A technique that is mentioned a few times in this article, is to create a zone only to restrict a colonist to a very specific area, in order to force them to perform a task.

As an example, consider colonist "Molly", who you want to smooth the floor in your freezer in the next few days, and ''do nothing else''. In this case, you will create a new [[zone]] for Molly, containing exactly these areas in your base:

* the area where the work needs to happen (freezer in this example)
* Molly's bedroom (so she can go to rest as usual)
* the recreation area and dining table
* a place where food is stored (maybe not necessary in this example, because the freezer is already covered)

These areas ''do not have to be adjacent'' (connected). The zone can be composed of several disconnected areas.

Now you restrict Molly to this newly created zone. She can now still move between those areas, but in order to perform a task, she needs to be inside one of them, that is, inside the zone. This means she will not use any skills outside the temporary zone, and you will not need to manipulate her work tab to keep her from doing anything but smooth the freezer floor.

This is a very effective method, not just for training, but for prioritizing important work in general.

== Combat training ==
If you feel you are not prepared for the next raid, you can train a few combat abilities. This will always need to be done manually, ie. with the trainee drafted (except for hunting). That means you can not manage the colony in the mean time, and it can be difficult to train more than one colonist at a time. This probably means a net loss of productivity in your colony, so only do it if you feel it is really necessary.

=== Shooting ===
The best way to train shooting is to assign the colonist to the "hunting" task. Giving them a long-range weapon, for example a [[bolt-action rifle]] makes hunting safer, because animals are less likely to enrage and retaliate if shot at from long range. To be safe, only hunt passive animals that will never retaliate.

Deliberately damaging your own structures or buildings does not improve your shooting skill.

Giving a really bad shooter a weapon not suited for the task, such as a [[machine pistol]] of "awful" quality, means that they will possibly hunt for a ''long'' time before actually killing the animal. Do not expect a colonist that you train this way to be very productive for the colony.

==== Aggravating animals ====
Outside of hunting, some resilient animals such as the [[Megasloth]], [[Rhinoceros]] and [[Thrumbo]] can give a lot of shooting skill by kiting them, and slowly shooting them to death with a low DPS weapon. You need to be very careful with this approach, because those animals do a lot of damage if given the chance to get into your melee range.

This is a special case of deliberately slow "hunting".

The best weapon types for this tactic are weapons with a fast windup and high shot frequency, not too short a range, and low damage. This makes you use the skill more often, by firing more shots, and has your "training dummy" last longer from low damage.

This approach does require extensive micromanagement, and you won't be able to perform other manual tasks in the colony in the meantime. It is even possible that actually killing the animal will take so long that your colonist will pass out from exhaustion or go into starvation. You ''must'' have a capable shooter available to finish off the animal and end the training if necessary.

=== Melee ===
Fighting anything with melee attacks will increase the ''melee'' skill. ''Hunting'' with melee attacks works, but animals are prone to fighting back so be warned (this is true even for animals that never retaliate when hunted from range). You will have to draft the colonist and "hunt" the animal manually by attacking it. An undrafted colonist will not ''hunt'' if they are lacking a ranged weapon.

If you want to train a character this way, use the best possible armor so they will take less damage from the animal. Taking no damage at all is usually not possible, so do not train a colonist that you require to be in good shape; they will at least have a few bruises for a couple of days, reducing their manipulation skills and movement ability. Also be aware that attacking herd animals (like muffalos and wild boars) can enrage the ''entire herd'', usually leading to a heavily injured colonist, or worse.

Tamed animals will fight back, so they are not safe training dummies; they can however be kept in a controlled environment which makes them more convenient targets. There is also no risk of an entire herd taking revenge for you hurting their friend. You can patch up the animal you just abused afterwards, which will train the ''medical'' skill.

Using melee attacks does raise the skill very quickly, and you will hit the "soft" XP cap of 4000 points in a matter of a few attacks. Disengage afterwards, because training over the soft cap is not efficient.

To level melee more safely, take prisoners who are incapable of "Violent" and repeatedly punch, then heal them in their prison cell. To avoid accidentally killing your prisoners, use fists only with neither a melee nor ranged weapon equipped. Carefully watch the health of the prisoner pausing the game between each punch if needed. A colonist with no weapon (not even a ranged weapon) does up to 7 base blunt damage per punch (see [[Weapons#Base Melee Stats|Base Melee Stats]] for details), so when any single body part falls below 8 hp remaining, stop and allow the prisoner to heal. This will allow you to train medical skill as well.

== Construction ==
Construction is already trained quite efficiently by simply using the skill, since construction is such a common activity in an expanding colony.

Smoothing walls and floors counts as construction, is very time consuming, and does have no quality penalty associated with it. It is maybe the best way to train a low skilled worker, without the risk of wasting materials or creating bad products. Having your apprentices do the smoothing keeps the master constructors free for more demanding work. Restrict the trainee colonists to the respective areas by creating a temporary zone, and let them do wall and floor smoothing exclusively for a while.

Making furniture is not the best way to train construction, because colonists with low skill will produce low quality furniture, which has then to be deconstructed and re-built, wasting material in the process. You can, however, keep deconstructing and reconstructing the furniture until the desired quality level is produced, if you do not mind losing some resources along the way; the popular mod ''Quality Builder'' helps tremendously.

If you are about to build a lot of walls in the colony, you can temporarily take your capable builders '''off''' the construction task, and let only your trainees build the walls and roofs. Walls do not have a quality stat, so it is not possible to create bad products. The apprentices will take a little longer, and probably "botch" construction several times, but the end result will be the same.

Do not train construction when high value material is involved, such as cloth (for carpets) or components (when making things like power generators). If the colonist "botches" construction in these cases, a fair amount of material will be irretrievably wasted; only do this if you have plenty of surplus so it would not matter.

=== Repairing things to learn construction ===
'''Only do this with a colonist that really needs to be up to speed in construction ''now'', if you have absolutely no other suitable construction work to do at the moment. Repairing structures just for training is probably the worst kind of monkey business you could give to your colonists, and a horrible waste of work hours.'''

You can damage structures, usually purpose-built stone walls, deliberately by damaging them with melee attacks, shots or grenade blasts, and then have your construction builders repair them.

This will not train shooting skill. Use the shooters only to damage the structure, then undraft them and have them resume their regular colony duties. Of course the shooters could be the very same people who will do the repair work just after. Shooting skill does not matter much in this case, as pretty much everybody is able to hit a wall from point blank range...

* By far the best approach is to ''smooth'' any stone wall, damage it, and repair it. Smoothed walls count as constructed walls, so they can be repaired. A smoothed granite wall does have 900 hitpoints, almost as much as a [[plasteel]] wall. Smoothing the wall will be training ''construction'' as well, hitting two birds with a single stone.
* Designate the colonists you intend to train so that they can only repair. Create a [[zone]] around the training area, and the general facilities of the base, then restrict the trainees to this zone.
* Skill training becomes much less effective after 4000 XP has been acquired in a skill during a day. Take the trainees off the training task by removing their zone restriction after the XP cap has been reached for the day.

== Mining ==
Unskilled miners will let resources go to waste if they mine an ore vein. You can check a colonists [[Mining Yield| mining yield]] stat to see if they are already at 100%. If they're not, do not use them to extract valuable resources from a mountain.

To train these people, restrict them to a temporary zone with a mining job in it that does not include any valuable ores (even [[steel]] will become valuable eventually, make no mistake...). If you dig into a mountain face randomly, be aware that this could become a space for [[infestation]]s to spawn if the location is too close to your colony.

If you have developed [[Deep drill| deep drilling]] already, you can let your apprentice miners work the drills. Waste of resources is usually not a problem anymore at this point.

== Cooking ==
The ''cooking'' skill level is increased by ''butchering'', ''cooking'' meals at a stove or campfire, and also by making [[smokeleaf joint]]s. If an unskilled cook prepares meals, they carry an increased risk of [[food poisoning]]. This is a fairly disrupting condition that should be avoided, so it is not optimal to train a new cook by letting them prepare meals.

=== Making smokeleaf joints ===
If a colonist has low skill but high [[Skills#Passion|passion]] for cooking, you should train them as an additional cook. The downside is that meals prepared by this character, while he or she is still learning, carry a high chance of [[food poisoning]].

Cooks can, however, also be trained by having them make [[smokeleaf joint]]s out of [[Smokeleaf leaves|leaves]] at a [[drug lab]]. This will train cooking just as fast as preparing meals, without the risk of making anybody sick.

Set up a dedicated work bill at the drug lab, and ''restrict it to the character that you would like to train in cooking''. The character needs to have priority to "Craft" things on the work tab. Make sure the drug lab is not occupied by other tasks; the easiest way is to put the smokeleaf job in the first slot on the list of bills.

This strategy requires ''drug production'' to be researched, and to grow or buy [[smokeleaf leaves]]. The latter is, of course, a way to train the ''plants'' skill (sowing ''smokeleaf'' only requires 4 ''plants'' skill). Smokeleaf products have good recreational and cash (trade) value.

Training cooks with smokeleaf is an excellent strategy.

== Plants (growing) ==

Letting an unskilled grower harvest your fields will waste some of the product; check the [[harvest yield]] stat of the colonist. If you need to avoid this, you will have to create a – possibly large – restriction zone to keep this colonist out of the area that they must not harvest. Allow them areas where sowing needs to happen.

Chopping trees is a good way to train ''plants''. Disallow the task ("plant cut" in the work tab) for your skilled growers, so your trainees will get more opportunities to chop wood.

If you are growing plants that only skilled workers can sow (like [[Devilstrand]] and [[Healroot]]), make sure that your trainees will sow ''all the other fields''. Do not let your skilled growers take that work away from them. Again, you will probably need to use restriction zones or work tab micromanagement to facilitate this.

The ''Work Tab'' addon by ''Fluffy'' makes partitioning the growing tasks a ''lot'' easier, avoiding the use of temporary zone restrictions.

== Crafting ==

The only way to practice crafting is to make things, either at a crafting spot, tailoring bench or smithy. Fabrication benches are only usable by already skilled crafters. Drug production and brewing does ''not'' train crafting.

If you have no good crafters yet, you will produce many items of "poor" or "awful" quality. It is not possible to retrieve raw materials from ''crafted'' items (unlike ''constructed'' items) – after you have crafted an item, you have to either use it or sell it as it is. This means you should not use any valuable materials, such as [[Thrumbofur]], [[Megasloth wool]], [[Hyperweave]] or [[Plasteel]] to practice crafting. Only let your most competent people handle these super-valuable materials.

''Weapons are not a good item class to practice crafting'', because they only sell for 20% of the normal price. This is good for game balance, because a lot of weapons are dropped during raids, but it means that it is practically impossible to make money from crafted weaponry. Only craft weapons that you expect to use.

This leaves ''armor items'' and ''clothing'': armor requires valuable ingredients, so '''usually crafting is practiced making clothes'''.

Crafted items get a ''market value'' that is composed of
* the work invested into making the item
* the value of the raw materials used
* the [[quality]] of the item

The market value multiplier for "awful" items is 50%, for "poor" items it is 75%. In those cases it would have been better to sell the raw materials instead of the item! To cut your inevitable losses, '''only use the cheapest material you can find if you expect to produce a lot of bad quality stuff'''. Good candidates are [[birdskin]], [[pigskin]], [[lightleather]], [[patchleather]] and [[plainleather]]. In particular, do ''not'' use [[cloth]] (needs to be bought or grown) or [[human leather]] (too expensive).

To further limit your losses, you can slow down the work deliberately, by crafting under poor conditions (outside, in the dark, not using electricity, in the cold, ...). Skill experience is granted ''over time'' and not ''by work units''. Crafting as slowly as possible means you will waste less material in the same time span. Only do this while crafting at level 5 or lower; from level 6, you can expect to [[quality|at least break even on average with regards to material cost]].

If you have a competent crafter (level 8 or higher) that you want to train further, one good way is to let them make [[advanced component]]s at a fabrication bench. You will need a lot more ''advanced components'' to build the space ship than you can usually buy from traders, so making them early is never a waste of effort. They do not have a quality rating, as long as your crafter can make them you will get full value. Likewise, bionic limbs and organs can be made by anyone who meets the skill requirement, but it is difficult to know in advance which ones you will need (''arms'' are never useless, however).

== Artistic ==

There is not much to be said about training ''artistic'' crafting; just have your aspiring artist craft as many sculptures as possible.

"Awful" sculptures have a ''negative'' beauty value, so they actually make the environment more ugly. Great to put into the bedrooms of [[traits|ascetic]] colonists, but should be deconstructed otherwise.

Use the material that you can spare the most of; wood is often a good choice. [[Jade]] has the best balance of beauty and availability, so it should be reserved for more capable, possibly [[mental inspiration|inspired]] artists.

== Medical ==

There is something that a typical ''Rimworld'' campaign never lacks: work for your doctors and surgeons. It is still possible to get some extra training.

Performing any type of surgery is staggeringly efficient for training ''medical'', because all surgeries award 16 (sixteen) times as much XP per work unit as other kinds of work. This includes performing all kinds of body part replacements, organ harvesting, and euthanizing humans ''and animals''.

* If you have human "patients", it is best to '''install and remove jaw dentures'''. This can be done at medical skill 2, only requires medicine, and the patient has no risk of dying on the table. It will leave the person permanently mangled, lowering their market value (which is not important unless you want to sell the person alive). Do not do it to healthy colonists or prisoners you plan to recruit, but of course it's perfect to perform on colonists who already have a destroyed jaw. This procedure as well as leg replacements are ''not'' counted under ''organ harvesting'', even if performed on a healthy patient.

* If human subjects are not available, you can '''euthanize animals'''. This gives a third of the XP of a denture procedure, but has no medical skill requirement. A failed procedure is both unlikely and of no consequence. This is great for training completely unskilled doctors. Which animal you euthanize does not matter, and it does not have to be a tame animal. You can "rescue" a hunted animal to an animal bed, just to euthanize it straight after. If you want to breed training animals, chickens are the best choice (euthanizing freshly hatched chicks is OK, the size of the animal does not matter).

* Organ harvesting is also great training, and can be done three times per customer, eg. by taking a kidney, half a lung and a heart. It is strongly [[Human Resources|frowned upon]] by most colonists. It is also profitable, but only do it if you can afford the colony-wide mood penalty, which lasts for 8 days.

The XP granted by a surgical procedure depends on work speed of the pawn, work units required, medical skill and skill passion. For reference: at 100% ''medical operation speed'' and ''Interested'' passion, 2,000 XP are granted from performing a leg replacement.

'''Note:''' because performing surgery gives so much XP, a single colonist will hit the soft learning cap of 4,000 XP per day rather quickly. Spread out the procedures over multiple doctors and days.

== Social ==
Each social chat with a colonist gives 4 ''social'' XP per per speech balloon at ''Interested'' passion and neutral mood modifier.

Having a friendly chat with a prisoner in order to convince him or her to join the colony gives roughly 50 ''social'' XP at ''Interested'' passion, per speech balloon. If you are recruiting prisoners, only assign the "Wardening" work type to the colonists whose social skill you want to improve. The ''Work Tab'' mod (or a similar mod) allows more control over the various tasks related to wardening, so it is recommended to make this more viable in normal colony operation.

Setting the prisoner interaction mode to "Reduce resistance" (and not "Recruit") will allow wardens to keep having conversations indefinitely, allowing skill training. However, this costs a lot of food over time to keep the prisoner alive. Only do this with prisoners you do not want as colonists; recruit them immediately otherwise, so they become productive and improve their skills.

== Intellectual ==

''Intellectual'' skill is gained by doing research, and by making hard drugs and medicine. There are no special techniques available to make this more efficient. All research done is equally valuable, and neither medicine nor drugs have a quality rating; this means that who you employ for these jobs only influences how long it takes to finish them.

== Animals ==

The ''animals'' skill is very versatile, and can be trained in various ways.

There are two animals related tasks where unskilled colonists can be a liability:
* Failed tame attempts may cause the animal to retaliate; this often leads to the animal handler getting injured, usually as far away from the base as possible...
* Milking or shearing animals can fail, resulting in ''all'' of the product going to waste; this is especially painful when shearing (gathering wool), because wool takes many days to grow back.

Because of this it is best to let unskilled animal handlers only ''train animals'' that are already domesticated. If this fails, some food will be wasted, and the animal might lose some training from decay, but nothing worse will happen. Only your qualified animal handlers should be allowed to milk, shear or tame wild animals.

It is very finicky to assign all your animal handlers to the jobs best suited for them. It can be done with a lot of manipulation of temporary zone restrictions, but the recommended way is to install a mod like ''Work Tab'': it allows for fine-grained control of the various animals related sub-tasks.

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[[Category:Game mechanics]]

Training

2019-10-12T01:36:59Z

Siggboy: /* Crafting */

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All skills in ''Rimworld'' improve simply while they are used; there is nothing special that needs to be done in addition to that. If a colonist is assigned to a task (via the ''Work'' tab) with a sufficiently high priority, they will eventually perform it and gain skill points.

In a few cases it is not obvious that a specific task trains a seemingly unrelated ability:
* Making ''smokeleaf joints'' requires and trains ''cooking'' (not crafting).
* Making medicine and hard drugs (''flake'', ''yayo'', etc.) requires and trains ''intellectual'' (not crafting).
* Cutting stone blocks does not train any skill (but requires crafting to be allowed as a task).
* Making [[Kibble]] is done at the butchering table, but requires and trains cooking.
* Butchering a dead animal is a cooking activity.
* Brewing beer is a cooking task (not crafting, which would be plausible)
* Many construction tasks could plausibly instead be crafting, smithing or tailoring tasks.
* Smithing and tailoring are actually sub-skills of crafting, but do not have their own skill level.

This article talks about a few special ways to forcibly train colonists in certain skills. This is usually only necessary and recommended if you need a certain ability on a colonist, but do not want to use this person for productive work. Normally this is because an untrained worker would be a liability – for example, an untrained cook can cause food poisoning, and an untrained miner can waste valuable resources while trying to extract them.

'''If you train a colonist by letting them do busy work, or monkey business, you are wasting one of the most valuable colony resources, namely work hours.''' Only do that if you really have to.

Even a colonist that is bad at everything, and passionate for nothing (these exist...) should be a hauler and cleaner, or maybe the guy who fulfills that caravan trade request 5 days away, before you let them repair a mountain stone face for days just to get them 3 levels of construction.

== Using temporary zone restrictions to direct colonists ==

A technique that is mentioned a few times in this article, is to create a zone only to restrict a colonist to a very specific area, in order to force them to perform a task.

As an example, consider colonist "Molly", who you want to smooth the floor in your freezer in the next few days, and ''do nothing else''. In this case, you will create a new [[zone]] for Molly, containing exactly these areas in your base:

* the area where the work needs to happen (freezer in this example)
* Molly's bedroom (so she can go to rest as usual)
* the recreation area and dining table
* a place where food is stored (maybe not necessary in this example, because the freezer is already covered)

These areas ''do not have to be adjacent'' (connected). The zone can be composed of several disconnected areas.

Now you restrict Molly to this newly created zone. She can now still move between those areas, but in order to perform a task, she needs to be inside one of them, that is, inside the zone. This means she will not use any skills outside the temporary zone, and you will not need to manipulate her work tab to keep her from doing anything but smooth the freezer floor.

This is a very effective method, not just for training, but for prioritizing important work in general.

== Combat training ==
If you feel you are not prepared for the next raid, you can train a few combat abilities. This will always need to be done manually, ie. with the trainee drafted (except for hunting). That means you can not manage the colony in the mean time, and it can be difficult to train more than one colonist at a time. This probably means a net loss of productivity in your colony, so only do it if you feel it is really necessary.

=== Shooting ===
The best way to train shooting is to assign the colonist to the "hunting" task. Giving them a long-range weapon, for example a [[bolt-action rifle]] makes hunting safer, because animals are less likely to enrage and retaliate if shot at from long range. To be safe, only hunt passive animals that will never retaliate.

Deliberately damaging your own structures or buildings does not improve your shooting skill.

Giving a really bad shooter a weapon not suited for the task, such as a [[machine pistol]] of "awful" quality, means that they will possibly hunt for a ''long'' time before actually killing the animal. Do not expect a colonist that you train this way to be very productive for the colony.

==== Aggravating animals ====
Outside of hunting, some resilient animals such as the [[Megasloth]], [[Rhinoceros]] and [[Thrumbo]] can give a lot of shooting skill by kiting them, and slowly shooting them to death with a low DPS weapon. You need to be very careful with this approach, because those animals do a lot of damage if given the chance to get into your melee range.

This is a special case of deliberately slow "hunting".

The best weapon types for this tactic are weapons with a fast windup and high shot frequency, not too short a range, and low damage. This makes you use the skill more often, by firing more shots, and has your "training dummy" last longer from low damage.

This approach does require extensive micromanagement, and you won't be able to perform other manual tasks in the colony in the meantime. It is even possible that actually killing the animal will take so long that your colonist will pass out from exhaustion or go into starvation. You ''must'' have a capable shooter available to finish off the animal and end the training if necessary.

=== Melee ===
Fighting anything with melee attacks will increase the ''melee'' skill. ''Hunting'' with melee attacks works, but animals are prone to fighting back so be warned (this is true even for animals that never retaliate when hunted from range). You will have to draft the colonist and "hunt" the animal manually by attacking it. An undrafted colonist will not ''hunt'' if they are lacking a ranged weapon.

If you want to train a character this way, use the best possible armor so they will take less damage from the animal. Taking no damage at all is usually not possible, so do not train a colonist that you require to be in good shape; they will at least have a few bruises for a couple of days, reducing their manipulation skills and movement ability. Also be aware that attacking herd animals (like muffalos and wild boars) can enrage the ''entire herd'', usually leading to a heavily injured colonist, or worse.

Tamed animals will fight back, so they are not safe training dummies; they can however be kept in a controlled environment which makes them more convenient targets. There is also no risk of an entire herd taking revenge for you hurting their friend. You can patch up the animal you just abused afterwards, which will train the ''medical'' skill.

Using melee attacks does raise the skill very quickly, and you will hit the "soft" XP cap of 4000 points in a matter of a few attacks. Disengage afterwards, because training over the soft cap is not efficient.

To level melee more safely, take prisoners who are incapable of "Violent" and repeatedly punch, then heal them in their prison cell. To avoid accidentally killing your prisoners, use fists only with neither a melee nor ranged weapon equipped. Carefully watch the health of the prisoner pausing the game between each punch if needed. A colonist with no weapon (not even a ranged weapon) does up to 7 base blunt damage per punch (see [[Weapons#Base Melee Stats|Base Melee Stats]] for details), so when any single body part falls below 8 hp remaining, stop and allow the prisoner to heal. This will allow you to train medical skill as well.

== Construction ==
Construction is already trained quite efficiently by simply using the skill, since construction is such a common activity in an expanding colony.

Smoothing walls and floors counts as construction, is very time consuming, and does have no quality penalty associated with it. It is maybe the best way to train a low skilled worker, without the risk of wasting materials or creating bad products. Having your apprentices do the smoothing keeps the master constructors free for more demanding work. Restrict the trainee colonists to the respective areas by creating a temporary zone, and let them do wall and floor smoothing exclusively for a while.

Making furniture is not the best way to train construction, because colonists with low skill will produce low quality furniture, which has then to be deconstructed and re-built, wasting material in the process. You can, however, keep deconstructing and reconstructing the furniture until the desired quality level is produced, if you do not mind losing some resources along the way; the popular mod ''Quality Builder'' helps tremendously.

If you are about to build a lot of walls in the colony, you can temporarily take your capable builders '''off''' the construction task, and let only your trainees build the walls and roofs. Walls do not have a quality stat, so it is not possible to create bad products. The apprentices will take a little longer, and probably "botch" construction several times, but the end result will be the same.

Do not train construction when high value material is involved, such as cloth (for carpets) or components (when making things like power generators). If the colonist "botches" construction in these cases, a fair amount of material will be irretrievably wasted; only do this if you have plenty of surplus so it would not matter.

=== Repairing things to learn construction ===
'''Only do this with a colonist that really needs to be up to speed in construction ''now'', if you have absolutely no other suitable construction work to do at the moment. Repairing structures just for training is probably the worst kind of monkey business you could give to your colonists, and a horrible waste of work hours.'''

You can damage structures, usually purpose-built stone walls, deliberately by damaging them with melee attacks, shots or grenade blasts, and then have your construction builders repair them.

This will not train shooting skill. Use the shooters only to damage the structure, then undraft them and have them resume their regular colony duties. Of course the shooters could be the very same people who will do the repair work just after. Shooting skill does not matter much in this case, as pretty much everybody is able to hit a wall from point blank range...

* By far the best approach is to ''smooth'' any stone wall, damage it, and repair it. Smoothed walls count as constructed walls, so they can be repaired. A smoothed granite wall does have 900 hitpoints, almost as much as a [[plasteel]] wall. Smoothing the wall will be training ''construction'' as well, hitting two birds with a single stone.
* Designate the colonists you intend to train so that they can only repair. Create a [[zone]] around the training area, and the general facilities of the base, then restrict the trainees to this zone.
* Skill training becomes much less effective after 4000 XP has been acquired in a skill during a day. Take the trainees off the training task by removing their zone restriction after the XP cap has been reached for the day.

== Mining ==
Unskilled miners will let resources go to waste if they mine an ore vein. You can check a colonists [[Mining Yield| mining yield]] stat to see if they are already at 100%. If they're not, do not use them to extract valuable resources from a mountain.

To train these people, restrict them to a temporary zone with a mining job in it that does not include any valuable ores (even [[steel]] will become valuable eventually, make no mistake...). If you dig into a mountain face randomly, be aware that this could become a space for [[infestation]]s to spawn if the location is too close to your colony.

If you have developed [[Deep drill| deep drilling]] already, you can let your apprentice miners work the drills. Waste of resources is usually not a problem anymore at this point.

== Cooking ==
The ''cooking'' skill level is increased by ''butchering'', ''cooking'' meals at a stove or campfire, and also by making [[smokeleaf joint]]s. If an unskilled cook prepares meals, they carry an increased risk of [[food poisoning]]. This is a fairly disrupting condition that should be avoided, so it is not optimal to train a new cook by letting them prepare meals.

=== Making smokeleaf joints ===
If a colonist has low skill but high [[Skills#Passion|passion]] for cooking, you should train them as an additional cook. The downside is that meals prepared by this character, while he or she is still learning, carry a high chance of [[food poisoning]].

Cooks can, however, also be trained by having them make [[smokeleaf joint]]s out of [[Smokeleaf leaves|leaves]] at a [[drug lab]]. This will train cooking just as fast as preparing meals, without the risk of making anybody sick.

Set up a dedicated work bill at the drug lab, and ''restrict it to the character that you would like to train in cooking''. The character needs to have priority to "Craft" things on the work tab. Make sure the drug lab is not occupied by other tasks; the easiest way is to put the smokeleaf job in the first slot on the list of bills.

This strategy requires ''drug production'' to be researched, and to grow or buy [[smokeleaf leaves]]. The latter is, of course, a way to train the ''plants'' skill (sowing ''smokeleaf'' only requires 4 ''plants'' skill). Smokeleaf products have good recreational and cash (trade) value.

Training cooks with smokeleaf is an excellent strategy.

== Plants (growing) ==

Letting an unskilled grower harvest your fields will waste some of the product; check the [[harvest yield]] stat of the colonist. If you need to avoid this, you will have to create a – possibly large – restriction zone to keep this colonist out of the area that they must not harvest. Allow them areas where sowing needs to happen.

Chopping trees is a good way to train ''plants''. Disallow the task ("plant cut" in the work tab) for your skilled growers, so your trainees will get more opportunities to chop wood.

If you are growing plants that only skilled workers can sow (like [[Devilstrand]] and [[Healroot]]), make sure that your trainees will sow ''all the other fields''. Do not let your skilled growers take that work away from them. Again, you will probably need to use restriction zones or work tab micromanagement to facilitate this.

The ''Work Tab'' addon by ''Fluffy'' makes partitioning the growing tasks a ''lot'' easier, avoiding the use of temporary zone restrictions.

== Crafting ==

The only way to practice crafting is to make things, either at a crafting spot, tailoring bench or smithy. Fabrication benches are only usable by already skilled crafters. Drug production and brewing does ''not'' train crafting.

If you have no good crafters yet, you will produce many items of "poor" or "awful" quality. It is not possible to retrieve raw materials from ''crafted'' items (unlike ''constructed'' items) – after you have crafted an item, you have to either use it or sell it as it is. This means you should not use any valuable materials, such as [[Thrumbofur]], [[Megasloth wool]], [[Hyperweave]] or [[Plasteel]] to practice crafting. Only let your most competent people handle these super-valuable materials.

''Weapons are not a good item class to practice crafting'', because they only sell for 20% of the normal price. This is good for game balance, because a lot of weapons are dropped during raids, but it means that it is practically impossible to make money from crafted weaponry. Only craft weapons that you expect to use.

This leaves ''armor items'' and ''clothing'': armor requires valuable ingredients, so '''usually crafting is practiced making clothes'''.

Crafted items get a ''market value'' that is composed of
* the work invested into making the item
* the value of the raw materials used
* the [[quality]] of the item

The market value multiplier for "awful" items is 50%, for "poor" items it is 75%. In those cases it would have been better to sell the raw materials instead of the item! To cut your inevitable losses, '''only use the cheapest material you can find if you expect to produce a lot of bad quality stuff'''. Good candidates are [[birdskin]], [[pigskin]], [[lightleather]], [[patchleather]] and [[plainleather]]. In particular, do ''not'' use [[cloth]] (needs to be bought or grown) or [[human leather]] (too expensive).

To further limit your losses, you can slow down the work deliberately, by crafting under poor conditions (outside, in the dark, not using electricity, in the cold, ...). Skill experience is granted ''over time'' and not ''by work units''. Crafting as slowly as possible means you will waste less material in the same time span. Only do this while crafting at level 5 or lower; from level 6, you can expect to [[quality|at least break even on average with regards to material cost]].

If you have a competent crafter (level 8 or higher) that you want to train further, one good way is to let them make [[advanced component]]s at a fabrication bench. You will need a lot more ''advanced components'' to build the space ship than you can usually buy from traders, so making them early is never a waste of effort. They do not have a quality rating, as long as your crafter can make them you will get full value. Likewise, bionic limbs and organs can be made by anyone who meets the skill requirement, but it is difficult to know in advance which ones you will need (''arms'' are never useless, however).

== Artistic ==

There is not much to be said about training ''artistic'' crafting; just have your aspiring artist craft as many sculptures as possible.

"Awful" sculptures have a ''negative'' beauty value, so they actually make the environment more ugly. Great to put into the bedrooms of [[traits|ascetic]] colonists, but should be deconstructed otherwise.

Use the material that you can spare the most of; wood is often a good choice. [[Jade]] has the best balance of beauty and availability, so it should be reserved for more capable, possibly [[mental inspiration|inspired]] artists.

== Medical ==

There is something that a typical ''Rimworld'' campaign never lacks: work for your doctors and surgeons. It is still possible to get some extra training.

Performing any type of surgery is staggeringly efficient for training ''medical'', because all surgeries award 16 (sixteen) times as much XP per work unit as other kinds of work. This includes performing all kinds of body part replacements, organ harvesting, and euthanizing humans ''and animals''.

* If you have human "patients", it is best to '''install and remove jaw dentures'''. This can be done at medical skill 2, only requires medicine, and the patient has no risk of dying on the table. It will leave the person permanently mangled, lowering their market value (which is not important unless you want to sell the person alive). Do not do it to healthy colonists or prisoners you plan to recruit, but of course it's perfect to perform on colonists who already have a destroyed jaw. This procedure as well as leg replacements are ''not'' counted under ''organ harvesting'', even if performed on a healthy patient.

* If human subjects are not available, you can '''euthanize animals'''. This gives a third of the XP of a denture procedure, but has no medical skill requirement. A failed procedure is both unlikely and of no consequence. This is great for training completely unskilled doctors. Which animal you euthanize does not matter, and it does not have to be a tame animal. You can "rescue" a hunted animal to an animal bed, just to euthanize it straight after. If you want to breed training animals, chickens are the best choice (euthanizing freshly hatched chicks is OK, the size of the animal does not matter).

* Organ harvesting is also great training, and can be done three times per customer, eg. by taking a kidney, half a lung and a heart. It is strongly [[Human Resources|frowned upon]] by most colonists. It is also profitable, but only do it if you can afford the colony-wide mood penalty, which lasts for 8 days.

The XP granted by a surgical procedure depends on its duration, which is a function of work required, medical skill
and skill passion. For reference: at 100% ''medical operation speed'' and ''Interested'' passion, 2,000 XP are granted from performing a leg replacement.

'''Note:''' because performing surgery gives so much XP, a single colonist will hit the soft learning cap of 4,000 XP per day rather quickly. Spread out the procedures over multiple doctors and days.

== Social ==
Each social chat with a colonist gives 4 ''social'' XP per per speech balloon at ''Interested'' passion and neutral mood modifier.

Having a friendly chat with a prisoner in order to convince him or her to join the colony gives roughly 50 ''social'' XP at ''Interested'' passion, per speech balloon. If you are recruiting prisoners, only assign the "Wardening" work type to the colonists whose social skill you want to improve. The ''Work Tab'' mod (or a similar mod) allows more control over the various tasks related to wardening, so it is recommended to make this more viable in normal colony operation.

Setting the prisoner interaction mode to "Reduce resistance" (and not "Recruit") will allow wardens to keep having conversations indefinitely, allowing skill training. However, this costs a lot of food over time to keep the prisoner alive. Only do this with prisoners you do not want as colonists; recruit them immediately otherwise, so they become productive and improve their skills.

== Intellectual ==

''Intellectual'' skill is gained by doing research, and by making hard drugs and medicine. There are no special techniques available to make this more efficient. All research done is equally valuable, and neither medicine nor drugs have a quality rating; this means that who you employ for these jobs only influences how long it takes to finish them.

== Animals ==

The ''animals'' skill is very versatile, and can be trained in various ways.

There are two animals related tasks where unskilled colonists can be a liability:
* Failed tame attempts may cause the animal to retaliate; this often leads to the animal handler getting injured, usually as far away from the base as possible...
* Milking or shearing animals can fail, resulting in ''all'' of the product going to waste; this is especially painful when shearing (gathering wool), because wool takes many days to grow back.

Because of this it is best to let unskilled animal handlers only ''train animals'' that are already domesticated. If this fails, some food will be wasted, and the animal might lose some training from decay, but nothing worse will happen. Only your qualified animal handlers should be allowed to milk, shear or tame wild animals.

It is very finicky to assign all your animal handlers to the jobs best suited for them. It can be done with a lot of manipulation of temporary zone restrictions, but the recommended way is to install a mod like ''Work Tab'': it allows for fine-grained control of the various animals related sub-tasks.

<references />

{{nav/guides}}

[[Category:Game mechanics]]

Training

2019-10-12T01:31:29Z

Siggboy: /* Medical */

<div style="float: right; margin-left: 2em;">__TOC__</div>

All skills in ''Rimworld'' improve simply while they are used; there is nothing special that needs to be done in addition to that. If a colonist is assigned to a task (via the ''Work'' tab) with a sufficiently high priority, they will eventually perform it and gain skill points.

In a few cases it is not obvious that a specific task trains a seemingly unrelated ability:
* Making ''smokeleaf joints'' requires and trains ''cooking'' (not crafting).
* Making medicine and hard drugs (''flake'', ''yayo'', etc.) requires and trains ''intellectual'' (not crafting).
* Cutting stone blocks does not train any skill (but requires crafting to be allowed as a task).
* Making [[Kibble]] is done at the butchering table, but requires and trains cooking.
* Butchering a dead animal is a cooking activity.
* Brewing beer is a cooking task (not crafting, which would be plausible)
* Many construction tasks could plausibly instead be crafting, smithing or tailoring tasks.
* Smithing and tailoring are actually sub-skills of crafting, but do not have their own skill level.

This article talks about a few special ways to forcibly train colonists in certain skills. This is usually only necessary and recommended if you need a certain ability on a colonist, but do not want to use this person for productive work. Normally this is because an untrained worker would be a liability – for example, an untrained cook can cause food poisoning, and an untrained miner can waste valuable resources while trying to extract them.

'''If you train a colonist by letting them do busy work, or monkey business, you are wasting one of the most valuable colony resources, namely work hours.''' Only do that if you really have to.

Even a colonist that is bad at everything, and passionate for nothing (these exist...) should be a hauler and cleaner, or maybe the guy who fulfills that caravan trade request 5 days away, before you let them repair a mountain stone face for days just to get them 3 levels of construction.

== Using temporary zone restrictions to direct colonists ==

A technique that is mentioned a few times in this article, is to create a zone only to restrict a colonist to a very specific area, in order to force them to perform a task.

As an example, consider colonist "Molly", who you want to smooth the floor in your freezer in the next few days, and ''do nothing else''. In this case, you will create a new [[zone]] for Molly, containing exactly these areas in your base:

* the area where the work needs to happen (freezer in this example)
* Molly's bedroom (so she can go to rest as usual)
* the recreation area and dining table
* a place where food is stored (maybe not necessary in this example, because the freezer is already covered)

These areas ''do not have to be adjacent'' (connected). The zone can be composed of several disconnected areas.

Now you restrict Molly to this newly created zone. She can now still move between those areas, but in order to perform a task, she needs to be inside one of them, that is, inside the zone. This means she will not use any skills outside the temporary zone, and you will not need to manipulate her work tab to keep her from doing anything but smooth the freezer floor.

This is a very effective method, not just for training, but for prioritizing important work in general.

== Combat training ==
If you feel you are not prepared for the next raid, you can train a few combat abilities. This will always need to be done manually, ie. with the trainee drafted (except for hunting). That means you can not manage the colony in the mean time, and it can be difficult to train more than one colonist at a time. This probably means a net loss of productivity in your colony, so only do it if you feel it is really necessary.

=== Shooting ===
The best way to train shooting is to assign the colonist to the "hunting" task. Giving them a long-range weapon, for example a [[bolt-action rifle]] makes hunting safer, because animals are less likely to enrage and retaliate if shot at from long range. To be safe, only hunt passive animals that will never retaliate.

Deliberately damaging your own structures or buildings does not improve your shooting skill.

Giving a really bad shooter a weapon not suited for the task, such as a [[machine pistol]] of "awful" quality, means that they will possibly hunt for a ''long'' time before actually killing the animal. Do not expect a colonist that you train this way to be very productive for the colony.

==== Aggravating animals ====
Outside of hunting, some resilient animals such as the [[Megasloth]], [[Rhinoceros]] and [[Thrumbo]] can give a lot of shooting skill by kiting them, and slowly shooting them to death with a low DPS weapon. You need to be very careful with this approach, because those animals do a lot of damage if given the chance to get into your melee range.

This is a special case of deliberately slow "hunting".

The best weapon types for this tactic are weapons with a fast windup and high shot frequency, not too short a range, and low damage. This makes you use the skill more often, by firing more shots, and has your "training dummy" last longer from low damage.

This approach does require extensive micromanagement, and you won't be able to perform other manual tasks in the colony in the meantime. It is even possible that actually killing the animal will take so long that your colonist will pass out from exhaustion or go into starvation. You ''must'' have a capable shooter available to finish off the animal and end the training if necessary.

=== Melee ===
Fighting anything with melee attacks will increase the ''melee'' skill. ''Hunting'' with melee attacks works, but animals are prone to fighting back so be warned (this is true even for animals that never retaliate when hunted from range). You will have to draft the colonist and "hunt" the animal manually by attacking it. An undrafted colonist will not ''hunt'' if they are lacking a ranged weapon.

If you want to train a character this way, use the best possible armor so they will take less damage from the animal. Taking no damage at all is usually not possible, so do not train a colonist that you require to be in good shape; they will at least have a few bruises for a couple of days, reducing their manipulation skills and movement ability. Also be aware that attacking herd animals (like muffalos and wild boars) can enrage the ''entire herd'', usually leading to a heavily injured colonist, or worse.

Tamed animals will fight back, so they are not safe training dummies; they can however be kept in a controlled environment which makes them more convenient targets. There is also no risk of an entire herd taking revenge for you hurting their friend. You can patch up the animal you just abused afterwards, which will train the ''medical'' skill.

Using melee attacks does raise the skill very quickly, and you will hit the "soft" XP cap of 4000 points in a matter of a few attacks. Disengage afterwards, because training over the soft cap is not efficient.

To level melee more safely, take prisoners who are incapable of "Violent" and repeatedly punch, then heal them in their prison cell. To avoid accidentally killing your prisoners, use fists only with neither a melee nor ranged weapon equipped. Carefully watch the health of the prisoner pausing the game between each punch if needed. A colonist with no weapon (not even a ranged weapon) does up to 7 base blunt damage per punch (see [[Weapons#Base Melee Stats|Base Melee Stats]] for details), so when any single body part falls below 8 hp remaining, stop and allow the prisoner to heal. This will allow you to train medical skill as well.

== Construction ==
Construction is already trained quite efficiently by simply using the skill, since construction is such a common activity in an expanding colony.

Smoothing walls and floors counts as construction, is very time consuming, and does have no quality penalty associated with it. It is maybe the best way to train a low skilled worker, without the risk of wasting materials or creating bad products. Having your apprentices do the smoothing keeps the master constructors free for more demanding work. Restrict the trainee colonists to the respective areas by creating a temporary zone, and let them do wall and floor smoothing exclusively for a while.

Making furniture is not the best way to train construction, because colonists with low skill will produce low quality furniture, which has then to be deconstructed and re-built, wasting material in the process. You can, however, keep deconstructing and reconstructing the furniture until the desired quality level is produced, if you do not mind losing some resources along the way; the popular mod ''Quality Builder'' helps tremendously.

If you are about to build a lot of walls in the colony, you can temporarily take your capable builders '''off''' the construction task, and let only your trainees build the walls and roofs. Walls do not have a quality stat, so it is not possible to create bad products. The apprentices will take a little longer, and probably "botch" construction several times, but the end result will be the same.

Do not train construction when high value material is involved, such as cloth (for carpets) or components (when making things like power generators). If the colonist "botches" construction in these cases, a fair amount of material will be irretrievably wasted; only do this if you have plenty of surplus so it would not matter.

=== Repairing things to learn construction ===
'''Only do this with a colonist that really needs to be up to speed in construction ''now'', if you have absolutely no other suitable construction work to do at the moment. Repairing structures just for training is probably the worst kind of monkey business you could give to your colonists, and a horrible waste of work hours.'''

You can damage structures, usually purpose-built stone walls, deliberately by damaging them with melee attacks, shots or grenade blasts, and then have your construction builders repair them.

This will not train shooting skill. Use the shooters only to damage the structure, then undraft them and have them resume their regular colony duties. Of course the shooters could be the very same people who will do the repair work just after. Shooting skill does not matter much in this case, as pretty much everybody is able to hit a wall from point blank range...

* By far the best approach is to ''smooth'' any stone wall, damage it, and repair it. Smoothed walls count as constructed walls, so they can be repaired. A smoothed granite wall does have 900 hitpoints, almost as much as a [[plasteel]] wall. Smoothing the wall will be training ''construction'' as well, hitting two birds with a single stone.
* Designate the colonists you intend to train so that they can only repair. Create a [[zone]] around the training area, and the general facilities of the base, then restrict the trainees to this zone.
* Skill training becomes much less effective after 4000 XP has been acquired in a skill during a day. Take the trainees off the training task by removing their zone restriction after the XP cap has been reached for the day.

== Mining ==
Unskilled miners will let resources go to waste if they mine an ore vein. You can check a colonists [[Mining Yield| mining yield]] stat to see if they are already at 100%. If they're not, do not use them to extract valuable resources from a mountain.

To train these people, restrict them to a temporary zone with a mining job in it that does not include any valuable ores (even [[steel]] will become valuable eventually, make no mistake...). If you dig into a mountain face randomly, be aware that this could become a space for [[infestation]]s to spawn if the location is too close to your colony.

If you have developed [[Deep drill| deep drilling]] already, you can let your apprentice miners work the drills. Waste of resources is usually not a problem anymore at this point.

== Cooking ==
The ''cooking'' skill level is increased by ''butchering'', ''cooking'' meals at a stove or campfire, and also by making [[smokeleaf joint]]s. If an unskilled cook prepares meals, they carry an increased risk of [[food poisoning]]. This is a fairly disrupting condition that should be avoided, so it is not optimal to train a new cook by letting them prepare meals.

=== Making smokeleaf joints ===
If a colonist has low skill but high [[Skills#Passion|passion]] for cooking, you should train them as an additional cook. The downside is that meals prepared by this character, while he or she is still learning, carry a high chance of [[food poisoning]].

Cooks can, however, also be trained by having them make [[smokeleaf joint]]s out of [[Smokeleaf leaves|leaves]] at a [[drug lab]]. This will train cooking just as fast as preparing meals, without the risk of making anybody sick.

Set up a dedicated work bill at the drug lab, and ''restrict it to the character that you would like to train in cooking''. The character needs to have priority to "Craft" things on the work tab. Make sure the drug lab is not occupied by other tasks; the easiest way is to put the smokeleaf job in the first slot on the list of bills.

This strategy requires ''drug production'' to be researched, and to grow or buy [[smokeleaf leaves]]. The latter is, of course, a way to train the ''plants'' skill (sowing ''smokeleaf'' only requires 4 ''plants'' skill). Smokeleaf products have good recreational and cash (trade) value.

Training cooks with smokeleaf is an excellent strategy.

== Plants (growing) ==

Letting an unskilled grower harvest your fields will waste some of the product; check the [[harvest yield]] stat of the colonist. If you need to avoid this, you will have to create a – possibly large – restriction zone to keep this colonist out of the area that they must not harvest. Allow them areas where sowing needs to happen.

Chopping trees is a good way to train ''plants''. Disallow the task ("plant cut" in the work tab) for your skilled growers, so your trainees will get more opportunities to chop wood.

If you are growing plants that only skilled workers can sow (like [[Devilstrand]] and [[Healroot]]), make sure that your trainees will sow ''all the other fields''. Do not let your skilled growers take that work away from them. Again, you will probably need to use restriction zones or work tab micromanagement to facilitate this.

The ''Work Tab'' addon by ''Fluffy'' makes partitioning the growing tasks a ''lot'' easier, avoiding the use of temporary zone restrictions.

== Crafting ==

The only way to practice crafting is to make things, either at a crafting spot, tailoring bench or smithy. Fabrication benches are only usable by already skilled crafters. Drug production and brewing does ''not'' train crafting.

If you have no good crafters yet, you will produce many items of "poor" or "awful" quality. It is not possible to retrieve raw materials from ''crafted'' items (unlike ''constructed'' items) – after you have crafted an item, you have to either use it or sell it as it is. This means you should not use any valuable materials, such as [[Thrumbofur]], [[Megasloth wool]], [[Hyperweave]] or [[Plasteel]] to practice crafting. Only let your most competent people handle these super-valuable materials.

''Weapons are not a good item class to practice crafting'', because they only sell for 20% of the normal price. This is good for game balance, because a lot of weapons are dropped during raids, but it means that it is practically impossible to make money from crafted weaponry. Only craft weapons that you expect to use.

This leaves ''armor items'' and ''clothing'': armor requires valuable ingredients, so '''usually crafting is practiced making clothes'''.

Crafted items get a ''market value'' that is composed of
* the work invested into making the item
* the value of the raw materials used
* the [[quality]] of the item

The market value multiplier for "awful" items is 50%, for "poor" items it is 75%. In those cases it would have been better to sell the raw materials instead of the item! To cut your inevitable losses, '''only use the cheapest material you can find if you expect to produce a lot of bad quality stuff'''. Good candidates are [[birdskin]], [[pigskin]], [[lightleather]], [[patchleather]] and [[plainleather]]. In particular, do ''not'' use [[cloth]] (needs to be bought or grown) or [[human leather]] (too expensive).

To further limit your losses, you can slow down the work deliberately, by crafting under poor conditions (outside, in the dark, not using electricity, in the cold, ...). Skill experience is granted ''over time'' and not ''by work units''. Crafting as slowly as possible means you will waste less material in the same time span. Only do this while crafting at level 5 or lower; from level 6, you can expect to [[quality|at least break even on average with regards to material cost]].

If you have a competent crafter (level 8 or higher) that you want to train further, one good way is to let them make [[advanced component]]s at a fabrication bench. You will need a lot more ''advanced components'' to build the space ship than you can usually buy from traders, so making them early is never a waste of effort. They do not have a quality rating, as long as your crafter can make them you will get full value. Likewise, bionic limbs and organs can be made by anyone who meets the skill requirement, but it is difficult to know in advance which ones you will need.

== Artistic ==

There is not much to be said about training ''artistic'' crafting; just have your aspiring artist craft as many sculptures as possible.

"Awful" sculptures have a ''negative'' beauty value, so they actually make the environment more ugly. Great to put into the bedrooms of [[traits|ascetic]] colonists, but should be deconstructed otherwise.

Use the material that you can spare the most of; wood is often a good choice. [[Jade]] has the best balance of beauty and availability, so it should be reserved for more capable, possibly [[mental inspiration|inspired]] artists.

== Medical ==

There is something that a typical ''Rimworld'' campaign never lacks: work for your doctors and surgeons. It is still possible to get some extra training.

Performing any type of surgery is staggeringly efficient for training ''medical'', because all surgeries award 16 (sixteen) times as much XP per work unit as other kinds of work. This includes performing all kinds of body part replacements, organ harvesting, and euthanizing humans ''and animals''.

* If you have human "patients", it is best to '''install and remove jaw dentures'''. This can be done at medical skill 2, only requires medicine, and the patient has no risk of dying on the table. It will leave the person permanently mangled, lowering their market value (which is not important unless you want to sell the person alive). Do not do it to healthy colonists or prisoners you plan to recruit, but of course it's perfect to perform on colonists who already have a destroyed jaw. This procedure as well as leg replacements are ''not'' counted under ''organ harvesting'', even if performed on a healthy patient.

* If human subjects are not available, you can '''euthanize animals'''. This gives a third of the XP of a denture procedure, but has no medical skill requirement. A failed procedure is both unlikely and of no consequence. This is great for training completely unskilled doctors. Which animal you euthanize does not matter, and it does not have to be a tame animal. You can "rescue" a hunted animal to an animal bed, just to euthanize it straight after. If you want to breed training animals, chickens are the best choice (euthanizing freshly hatched chicks is OK, the size of the animal does not matter).

* Organ harvesting is also great training, and can be done three times per customer, eg. by taking a kidney, half a lung and a heart. It is strongly [[Human Resources|frowned upon]] by most colonists. It is also profitable, but only do it if you can afford the colony-wide mood penalty, which lasts for 8 days.

The XP granted by a surgical procedure depends on its duration, which is a function of work required, medical skill
and skill passion. For reference: at 100% ''medical operation speed'' and ''Interested'' passion, 2,000 XP are granted from performing a leg replacement.

'''Note:''' because performing surgery gives so much XP, a single colonist will hit the soft learning cap of 4,000 XP per day rather quickly. Spread out the procedures over multiple doctors and days.

== Social ==
Each social chat with a colonist gives 4 ''social'' XP per per speech balloon at ''Interested'' passion and neutral mood modifier.

Having a friendly chat with a prisoner in order to convince him or her to join the colony gives roughly 50 ''social'' XP at ''Interested'' passion, per speech balloon. If you are recruiting prisoners, only assign the "Wardening" work type to the colonists whose social skill you want to improve. The ''Work Tab'' mod (or a similar mod) allows more control over the various tasks related to wardening, so it is recommended to make this more viable in normal colony operation.

Setting the prisoner interaction mode to "Reduce resistance" (and not "Recruit") will allow wardens to keep having conversations indefinitely, allowing skill training. However, this costs a lot of food over time to keep the prisoner alive. Only do this with prisoners you do not want as colonists; recruit them immediately otherwise, so they become productive and improve their skills.

== Intellectual ==

''Intellectual'' skill is gained by doing research, and by making hard drugs and medicine. There are no special techniques available to make this more efficient. All research done is equally valuable, and neither medicine nor drugs have a quality rating; this means that who you employ for these jobs only influences how long it takes to finish them.

== Animals ==

The ''animals'' skill is very versatile, and can be trained in various ways.

There are two animals related tasks where unskilled colonists can be a liability:
* Failed tame attempts may cause the animal to retaliate; this often leads to the animal handler getting injured, usually as far away from the base as possible...
* Milking or shearing animals can fail, resulting in ''all'' of the product going to waste; this is especially painful when shearing (gathering wool), because wool takes many days to grow back.

Because of this it is best to let unskilled animal handlers only ''train animals'' that are already domesticated. If this fails, some food will be wasted, and the animal might lose some training from decay, but nothing worse will happen. Only your qualified animal handlers should be allowed to milk, shear or tame wild animals.

It is very finicky to assign all your animal handlers to the jobs best suited for them. It can be done with a lot of manipulation of temporary zone restrictions, but the recommended way is to install a mod like ''Work Tab'': it allows for fine-grained control of the various animals related sub-tasks.

<references />

{{nav/guides}}

[[Category:Game mechanics]]

Training

2019-10-12T01:29:39Z

Siggboy: /* Medical */

<div style="float: right; margin-left: 2em;">__TOC__</div>

All skills in ''Rimworld'' improve simply while they are used; there is nothing special that needs to be done in addition to that. If a colonist is assigned to a task (via the ''Work'' tab) with a sufficiently high priority, they will eventually perform it and gain skill points.

In a few cases it is not obvious that a specific task trains a seemingly unrelated ability:
* Making ''smokeleaf joints'' requires and trains ''cooking'' (not crafting).
* Making medicine and hard drugs (''flake'', ''yayo'', etc.) requires and trains ''intellectual'' (not crafting).
* Cutting stone blocks does not train any skill (but requires crafting to be allowed as a task).
* Making [[Kibble]] is done at the butchering table, but requires and trains cooking.
* Butchering a dead animal is a cooking activity.
* Brewing beer is a cooking task (not crafting, which would be plausible)
* Many construction tasks could plausibly instead be crafting, smithing or tailoring tasks.
* Smithing and tailoring are actually sub-skills of crafting, but do not have their own skill level.

This article talks about a few special ways to forcibly train colonists in certain skills. This is usually only necessary and recommended if you need a certain ability on a colonist, but do not want to use this person for productive work. Normally this is because an untrained worker would be a liability – for example, an untrained cook can cause food poisoning, and an untrained miner can waste valuable resources while trying to extract them.

'''If you train a colonist by letting them do busy work, or monkey business, you are wasting one of the most valuable colony resources, namely work hours.''' Only do that if you really have to.

Even a colonist that is bad at everything, and passionate for nothing (these exist...) should be a hauler and cleaner, or maybe the guy who fulfills that caravan trade request 5 days away, before you let them repair a mountain stone face for days just to get them 3 levels of construction.

== Using temporary zone restrictions to direct colonists ==

A technique that is mentioned a few times in this article, is to create a zone only to restrict a colonist to a very specific area, in order to force them to perform a task.

As an example, consider colonist "Molly", who you want to smooth the floor in your freezer in the next few days, and ''do nothing else''. In this case, you will create a new [[zone]] for Molly, containing exactly these areas in your base:

* the area where the work needs to happen (freezer in this example)
* Molly's bedroom (so she can go to rest as usual)
* the recreation area and dining table
* a place where food is stored (maybe not necessary in this example, because the freezer is already covered)

These areas ''do not have to be adjacent'' (connected). The zone can be composed of several disconnected areas.

Now you restrict Molly to this newly created zone. She can now still move between those areas, but in order to perform a task, she needs to be inside one of them, that is, inside the zone. This means she will not use any skills outside the temporary zone, and you will not need to manipulate her work tab to keep her from doing anything but smooth the freezer floor.

This is a very effective method, not just for training, but for prioritizing important work in general.

== Combat training ==
If you feel you are not prepared for the next raid, you can train a few combat abilities. This will always need to be done manually, ie. with the trainee drafted (except for hunting). That means you can not manage the colony in the mean time, and it can be difficult to train more than one colonist at a time. This probably means a net loss of productivity in your colony, so only do it if you feel it is really necessary.

=== Shooting ===
The best way to train shooting is to assign the colonist to the "hunting" task. Giving them a long-range weapon, for example a [[bolt-action rifle]] makes hunting safer, because animals are less likely to enrage and retaliate if shot at from long range. To be safe, only hunt passive animals that will never retaliate.

Deliberately damaging your own structures or buildings does not improve your shooting skill.

Giving a really bad shooter a weapon not suited for the task, such as a [[machine pistol]] of "awful" quality, means that they will possibly hunt for a ''long'' time before actually killing the animal. Do not expect a colonist that you train this way to be very productive for the colony.

==== Aggravating animals ====
Outside of hunting, some resilient animals such as the [[Megasloth]], [[Rhinoceros]] and [[Thrumbo]] can give a lot of shooting skill by kiting them, and slowly shooting them to death with a low DPS weapon. You need to be very careful with this approach, because those animals do a lot of damage if given the chance to get into your melee range.

This is a special case of deliberately slow "hunting".

The best weapon types for this tactic are weapons with a fast windup and high shot frequency, not too short a range, and low damage. This makes you use the skill more often, by firing more shots, and has your "training dummy" last longer from low damage.

This approach does require extensive micromanagement, and you won't be able to perform other manual tasks in the colony in the meantime. It is even possible that actually killing the animal will take so long that your colonist will pass out from exhaustion or go into starvation. You ''must'' have a capable shooter available to finish off the animal and end the training if necessary.

=== Melee ===
Fighting anything with melee attacks will increase the ''melee'' skill. ''Hunting'' with melee attacks works, but animals are prone to fighting back so be warned (this is true even for animals that never retaliate when hunted from range). You will have to draft the colonist and "hunt" the animal manually by attacking it. An undrafted colonist will not ''hunt'' if they are lacking a ranged weapon.

If you want to train a character this way, use the best possible armor so they will take less damage from the animal. Taking no damage at all is usually not possible, so do not train a colonist that you require to be in good shape; they will at least have a few bruises for a couple of days, reducing their manipulation skills and movement ability. Also be aware that attacking herd animals (like muffalos and wild boars) can enrage the ''entire herd'', usually leading to a heavily injured colonist, or worse.

Tamed animals will fight back, so they are not safe training dummies; they can however be kept in a controlled environment which makes them more convenient targets. There is also no risk of an entire herd taking revenge for you hurting their friend. You can patch up the animal you just abused afterwards, which will train the ''medical'' skill.

Using melee attacks does raise the skill very quickly, and you will hit the "soft" XP cap of 4000 points in a matter of a few attacks. Disengage afterwards, because training over the soft cap is not efficient.

To level melee more safely, take prisoners who are incapable of "Violent" and repeatedly punch, then heal them in their prison cell. To avoid accidentally killing your prisoners, use fists only with neither a melee nor ranged weapon equipped. Carefully watch the health of the prisoner pausing the game between each punch if needed. A colonist with no weapon (not even a ranged weapon) does up to 7 base blunt damage per punch (see [[Weapons#Base Melee Stats|Base Melee Stats]] for details), so when any single body part falls below 8 hp remaining, stop and allow the prisoner to heal. This will allow you to train medical skill as well.

== Construction ==
Construction is already trained quite efficiently by simply using the skill, since construction is such a common activity in an expanding colony.

Smoothing walls and floors counts as construction, is very time consuming, and does have no quality penalty associated with it. It is maybe the best way to train a low skilled worker, without the risk of wasting materials or creating bad products. Having your apprentices do the smoothing keeps the master constructors free for more demanding work. Restrict the trainee colonists to the respective areas by creating a temporary zone, and let them do wall and floor smoothing exclusively for a while.

Making furniture is not the best way to train construction, because colonists with low skill will produce low quality furniture, which has then to be deconstructed and re-built, wasting material in the process. You can, however, keep deconstructing and reconstructing the furniture until the desired quality level is produced, if you do not mind losing some resources along the way; the popular mod ''Quality Builder'' helps tremendously.

If you are about to build a lot of walls in the colony, you can temporarily take your capable builders '''off''' the construction task, and let only your trainees build the walls and roofs. Walls do not have a quality stat, so it is not possible to create bad products. The apprentices will take a little longer, and probably "botch" construction several times, but the end result will be the same.

Do not train construction when high value material is involved, such as cloth (for carpets) or components (when making things like power generators). If the colonist "botches" construction in these cases, a fair amount of material will be irretrievably wasted; only do this if you have plenty of surplus so it would not matter.

=== Repairing things to learn construction ===
'''Only do this with a colonist that really needs to be up to speed in construction ''now'', if you have absolutely no other suitable construction work to do at the moment. Repairing structures just for training is probably the worst kind of monkey business you could give to your colonists, and a horrible waste of work hours.'''

You can damage structures, usually purpose-built stone walls, deliberately by damaging them with melee attacks, shots or grenade blasts, and then have your construction builders repair them.

This will not train shooting skill. Use the shooters only to damage the structure, then undraft them and have them resume their regular colony duties. Of course the shooters could be the very same people who will do the repair work just after. Shooting skill does not matter much in this case, as pretty much everybody is able to hit a wall from point blank range...

* By far the best approach is to ''smooth'' any stone wall, damage it, and repair it. Smoothed walls count as constructed walls, so they can be repaired. A smoothed granite wall does have 900 hitpoints, almost as much as a [[plasteel]] wall. Smoothing the wall will be training ''construction'' as well, hitting two birds with a single stone.
* Designate the colonists you intend to train so that they can only repair. Create a [[zone]] around the training area, and the general facilities of the base, then restrict the trainees to this zone.
* Skill training becomes much less effective after 4000 XP has been acquired in a skill during a day. Take the trainees off the training task by removing their zone restriction after the XP cap has been reached for the day.

== Mining ==
Unskilled miners will let resources go to waste if they mine an ore vein. You can check a colonists [[Mining Yield| mining yield]] stat to see if they are already at 100%. If they're not, do not use them to extract valuable resources from a mountain.

To train these people, restrict them to a temporary zone with a mining job in it that does not include any valuable ores (even [[steel]] will become valuable eventually, make no mistake...). If you dig into a mountain face randomly, be aware that this could become a space for [[infestation]]s to spawn if the location is too close to your colony.

If you have developed [[Deep drill| deep drilling]] already, you can let your apprentice miners work the drills. Waste of resources is usually not a problem anymore at this point.

== Cooking ==
The ''cooking'' skill level is increased by ''butchering'', ''cooking'' meals at a stove or campfire, and also by making [[smokeleaf joint]]s. If an unskilled cook prepares meals, they carry an increased risk of [[food poisoning]]. This is a fairly disrupting condition that should be avoided, so it is not optimal to train a new cook by letting them prepare meals.

=== Making smokeleaf joints ===
If a colonist has low skill but high [[Skills#Passion|passion]] for cooking, you should train them as an additional cook. The downside is that meals prepared by this character, while he or she is still learning, carry a high chance of [[food poisoning]].

Cooks can, however, also be trained by having them make [[smokeleaf joint]]s out of [[Smokeleaf leaves|leaves]] at a [[drug lab]]. This will train cooking just as fast as preparing meals, without the risk of making anybody sick.

Set up a dedicated work bill at the drug lab, and ''restrict it to the character that you would like to train in cooking''. The character needs to have priority to "Craft" things on the work tab. Make sure the drug lab is not occupied by other tasks; the easiest way is to put the smokeleaf job in the first slot on the list of bills.

This strategy requires ''drug production'' to be researched, and to grow or buy [[smokeleaf leaves]]. The latter is, of course, a way to train the ''plants'' skill (sowing ''smokeleaf'' only requires 4 ''plants'' skill). Smokeleaf products have good recreational and cash (trade) value.

Training cooks with smokeleaf is an excellent strategy.

== Plants (growing) ==

Letting an unskilled grower harvest your fields will waste some of the product; check the [[harvest yield]] stat of the colonist. If you need to avoid this, you will have to create a – possibly large – restriction zone to keep this colonist out of the area that they must not harvest. Allow them areas where sowing needs to happen.

Chopping trees is a good way to train ''plants''. Disallow the task ("plant cut" in the work tab) for your skilled growers, so your trainees will get more opportunities to chop wood.

If you are growing plants that only skilled workers can sow (like [[Devilstrand]] and [[Healroot]]), make sure that your trainees will sow ''all the other fields''. Do not let your skilled growers take that work away from them. Again, you will probably need to use restriction zones or work tab micromanagement to facilitate this.

The ''Work Tab'' addon by ''Fluffy'' makes partitioning the growing tasks a ''lot'' easier, avoiding the use of temporary zone restrictions.

== Crafting ==

The only way to practice crafting is to make things, either at a crafting spot, tailoring bench or smithy. Fabrication benches are only usable by already skilled crafters. Drug production and brewing does ''not'' train crafting.

If you have no good crafters yet, you will produce many items of "poor" or "awful" quality. It is not possible to retrieve raw materials from ''crafted'' items (unlike ''constructed'' items) – after you have crafted an item, you have to either use it or sell it as it is. This means you should not use any valuable materials, such as [[Thrumbofur]], [[Megasloth wool]], [[Hyperweave]] or [[Plasteel]] to practice crafting. Only let your most competent people handle these super-valuable materials.

''Weapons are not a good item class to practice crafting'', because they only sell for 20% of the normal price. This is good for game balance, because a lot of weapons are dropped during raids, but it means that it is practically impossible to make money from crafted weaponry. Only craft weapons that you expect to use.

This leaves ''armor items'' and ''clothing'': armor requires valuable ingredients, so '''usually crafting is practiced making clothes'''.

Crafted items get a ''market value'' that is composed of
* the work invested into making the item
* the value of the raw materials used
* the [[quality]] of the item

The market value multiplier for "awful" items is 50%, for "poor" items it is 75%. In those cases it would have been better to sell the raw materials instead of the item! To cut your inevitable losses, '''only use the cheapest material you can find if you expect to produce a lot of bad quality stuff'''. Good candidates are [[birdskin]], [[pigskin]], [[lightleather]], [[patchleather]] and [[plainleather]]. In particular, do ''not'' use [[cloth]] (needs to be bought or grown) or [[human leather]] (too expensive).

To further limit your losses, you can slow down the work deliberately, by crafting under poor conditions (outside, in the dark, not using electricity, in the cold, ...). Skill experience is granted ''over time'' and not ''by work units''. Crafting as slowly as possible means you will waste less material in the same time span. Only do this while crafting at level 5 or lower; from level 6, you can expect to [[quality|at least break even on average with regards to material cost]].

If you have a competent crafter (level 8 or higher) that you want to train further, one good way is to let them make [[advanced component]]s at a fabrication bench. You will need a lot more ''advanced components'' to build the space ship than you can usually buy from traders, so making them early is never a waste of effort. They do not have a quality rating, as long as your crafter can make them you will get full value. Likewise, bionic limbs and organs can be made by anyone who meets the skill requirement, but it is difficult to know in advance which ones you will need.

== Artistic ==

There is not much to be said about training ''artistic'' crafting; just have your aspiring artist craft as many sculptures as possible.

"Awful" sculptures have a ''negative'' beauty value, so they actually make the environment more ugly. Great to put into the bedrooms of [[traits|ascetic]] colonists, but should be deconstructed otherwise.

Use the material that you can spare the most of; wood is often a good choice. [[Jade]] has the best balance of beauty and availability, so it should be reserved for more capable, possibly [[mental inspiration|inspired]] artists.

== Medical ==

There is something that a typical ''Rimworld'' campaign never lacks: work for your doctors and surgeons. It is still possible to get some extra training.

Performing any type of surgery is staggeringly efficient for training ''medical'', because all surgeries award 16 (sixteen) times as much XP per work unit as other kinds of work. This includes performing all kinds of body part replacements, organ harvesting, and euthanizing humans ''and animals''.

* If you have human "patients", it is best to '''install and remove jaw dentures'''. This can be done at medical skill 2, only requires medicine, and the patient has no risk of dying on the table. It will leave the person permanently mangled, lowering their market value (which is not important unless you want to sell the person alive). Do not do it to healthy colonists or prisoners you plan to recruit, but of course it's perfect to perform on colonists who already have a destroyed jaw. This procedure as well as leg replacements are ''not'' counted under ''organ harvesting'', even if performed on a healthy patient.

* If human subjects are not available, you can '''euthanize animals'''. This gives a third of the XP of a denture procedure, but has no medical skill requirement. A failed procedure is both unlikely and of no consequence. This is great for training completely unskilled doctors. Which animal you euthanize does not matter, and it does not have to be a tame animal. You can "rescue" a hunted animal to an animal bed, just to euthanize it straight after. If you want to breed training animals, chickens are the best choice (euthanizing freshly hatched chicks is OK, the size of the animal does not matter).

Organ harvesting can be done three times per customer, eg. by taking a kidney, half a lung and a heart. It is strongly [[Human Resources|frowned upon]] by most colonists. It is also profitable, but only do it if you can afford the colony-wide mood penalty, which lasts for 8 days.

The XP granted by a surgical procedure depends on its duration, which is a function of work required, medical skill
and skill passion. For reference: at 100% ''medical operation speed'' and ''Interested'' passion, 2,000 XP are granted from performing a leg replacement.

'''Note:''' because performing surgery gives so much XP, a single colonist will hit the soft learning cap of 4,000 XP per day rather quickly. Spread out the procedures over multiple doctors and days.

== Social ==
Each social chat with a colonist gives 4 ''social'' XP per per speech balloon at ''Interested'' passion and neutral mood modifier.

Having a friendly chat with a prisoner in order to convince him or her to join the colony gives roughly 50 ''social'' XP at ''Interested'' passion, per speech balloon. If you are recruiting prisoners, only assign the "Wardening" work type to the colonists whose social skill you want to improve. The ''Work Tab'' mod (or a similar mod) allows more control over the various tasks related to wardening, so it is recommended to make this more viable in normal colony operation.

Setting the prisoner interaction mode to "Reduce resistance" (and not "Recruit") will allow wardens to keep having conversations indefinitely, allowing skill training. However, this costs a lot of food over time to keep the prisoner alive. Only do this with prisoners you do not want as colonists; recruit them immediately otherwise, so they become productive and improve their skills.

== Intellectual ==

''Intellectual'' skill is gained by doing research, and by making hard drugs and medicine. There are no special techniques available to make this more efficient. All research done is equally valuable, and neither medicine nor drugs have a quality rating; this means that who you employ for these jobs only influences how long it takes to finish them.

== Animals ==

The ''animals'' skill is very versatile, and can be trained in various ways.

There are two animals related tasks where unskilled colonists can be a liability:
* Failed tame attempts may cause the animal to retaliate; this often leads to the animal handler getting injured, usually as far away from the base as possible...
* Milking or shearing animals can fail, resulting in ''all'' of the product going to waste; this is especially painful when shearing (gathering wool), because wool takes many days to grow back.

Because of this it is best to let unskilled animal handlers only ''train animals'' that are already domesticated. If this fails, some food will be wasted, and the animal might lose some training from decay, but nothing worse will happen. Only your qualified animal handlers should be allowed to milk, shear or tame wild animals.

It is very finicky to assign all your animal handlers to the jobs best suited for them. It can be done with a lot of manipulation of temporary zone restrictions, but the recommended way is to install a mod like ''Work Tab'': it allows for fine-grained control of the various animals related sub-tasks.

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[[Category:Game mechanics]]

Training

2019-10-12T01:29:09Z

Siggboy: /* Medical */

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All skills in ''Rimworld'' improve simply while they are used; there is nothing special that needs to be done in addition to that. If a colonist is assigned to a task (via the ''Work'' tab) with a sufficiently high priority, they will eventually perform it and gain skill points.

In a few cases it is not obvious that a specific task trains a seemingly unrelated ability:
* Making ''smokeleaf joints'' requires and trains ''cooking'' (not crafting).
* Making medicine and hard drugs (''flake'', ''yayo'', etc.) requires and trains ''intellectual'' (not crafting).
* Cutting stone blocks does not train any skill (but requires crafting to be allowed as a task).
* Making [[Kibble]] is done at the butchering table, but requires and trains cooking.
* Butchering a dead animal is a cooking activity.
* Brewing beer is a cooking task (not crafting, which would be plausible)
* Many construction tasks could plausibly instead be crafting, smithing or tailoring tasks.
* Smithing and tailoring are actually sub-skills of crafting, but do not have their own skill level.

This article talks about a few special ways to forcibly train colonists in certain skills. This is usually only necessary and recommended if you need a certain ability on a colonist, but do not want to use this person for productive work. Normally this is because an untrained worker would be a liability – for example, an untrained cook can cause food poisoning, and an untrained miner can waste valuable resources while trying to extract them.

'''If you train a colonist by letting them do busy work, or monkey business, you are wasting one of the most valuable colony resources, namely work hours.''' Only do that if you really have to.

Even a colonist that is bad at everything, and passionate for nothing (these exist...) should be a hauler and cleaner, or maybe the guy who fulfills that caravan trade request 5 days away, before you let them repair a mountain stone face for days just to get them 3 levels of construction.

== Using temporary zone restrictions to direct colonists ==

A technique that is mentioned a few times in this article, is to create a zone only to restrict a colonist to a very specific area, in order to force them to perform a task.

As an example, consider colonist "Molly", who you want to smooth the floor in your freezer in the next few days, and ''do nothing else''. In this case, you will create a new [[zone]] for Molly, containing exactly these areas in your base:

* the area where the work needs to happen (freezer in this example)
* Molly's bedroom (so she can go to rest as usual)
* the recreation area and dining table
* a place where food is stored (maybe not necessary in this example, because the freezer is already covered)

These areas ''do not have to be adjacent'' (connected). The zone can be composed of several disconnected areas.

Now you restrict Molly to this newly created zone. She can now still move between those areas, but in order to perform a task, she needs to be inside one of them, that is, inside the zone. This means she will not use any skills outside the temporary zone, and you will not need to manipulate her work tab to keep her from doing anything but smooth the freezer floor.

This is a very effective method, not just for training, but for prioritizing important work in general.

== Combat training ==
If you feel you are not prepared for the next raid, you can train a few combat abilities. This will always need to be done manually, ie. with the trainee drafted (except for hunting). That means you can not manage the colony in the mean time, and it can be difficult to train more than one colonist at a time. This probably means a net loss of productivity in your colony, so only do it if you feel it is really necessary.

=== Shooting ===
The best way to train shooting is to assign the colonist to the "hunting" task. Giving them a long-range weapon, for example a [[bolt-action rifle]] makes hunting safer, because animals are less likely to enrage and retaliate if shot at from long range. To be safe, only hunt passive animals that will never retaliate.

Deliberately damaging your own structures or buildings does not improve your shooting skill.

Giving a really bad shooter a weapon not suited for the task, such as a [[machine pistol]] of "awful" quality, means that they will possibly hunt for a ''long'' time before actually killing the animal. Do not expect a colonist that you train this way to be very productive for the colony.

==== Aggravating animals ====
Outside of hunting, some resilient animals such as the [[Megasloth]], [[Rhinoceros]] and [[Thrumbo]] can give a lot of shooting skill by kiting them, and slowly shooting them to death with a low DPS weapon. You need to be very careful with this approach, because those animals do a lot of damage if given the chance to get into your melee range.

This is a special case of deliberately slow "hunting".

The best weapon types for this tactic are weapons with a fast windup and high shot frequency, not too short a range, and low damage. This makes you use the skill more often, by firing more shots, and has your "training dummy" last longer from low damage.

This approach does require extensive micromanagement, and you won't be able to perform other manual tasks in the colony in the meantime. It is even possible that actually killing the animal will take so long that your colonist will pass out from exhaustion or go into starvation. You ''must'' have a capable shooter available to finish off the animal and end the training if necessary.

=== Melee ===
Fighting anything with melee attacks will increase the ''melee'' skill. ''Hunting'' with melee attacks works, but animals are prone to fighting back so be warned (this is true even for animals that never retaliate when hunted from range). You will have to draft the colonist and "hunt" the animal manually by attacking it. An undrafted colonist will not ''hunt'' if they are lacking a ranged weapon.

If you want to train a character this way, use the best possible armor so they will take less damage from the animal. Taking no damage at all is usually not possible, so do not train a colonist that you require to be in good shape; they will at least have a few bruises for a couple of days, reducing their manipulation skills and movement ability. Also be aware that attacking herd animals (like muffalos and wild boars) can enrage the ''entire herd'', usually leading to a heavily injured colonist, or worse.

Tamed animals will fight back, so they are not safe training dummies; they can however be kept in a controlled environment which makes them more convenient targets. There is also no risk of an entire herd taking revenge for you hurting their friend. You can patch up the animal you just abused afterwards, which will train the ''medical'' skill.

Using melee attacks does raise the skill very quickly, and you will hit the "soft" XP cap of 4000 points in a matter of a few attacks. Disengage afterwards, because training over the soft cap is not efficient.

To level melee more safely, take prisoners who are incapable of "Violent" and repeatedly punch, then heal them in their prison cell. To avoid accidentally killing your prisoners, use fists only with neither a melee nor ranged weapon equipped. Carefully watch the health of the prisoner pausing the game between each punch if needed. A colonist with no weapon (not even a ranged weapon) does up to 7 base blunt damage per punch (see [[Weapons#Base Melee Stats|Base Melee Stats]] for details), so when any single body part falls below 8 hp remaining, stop and allow the prisoner to heal. This will allow you to train medical skill as well.

== Construction ==
Construction is already trained quite efficiently by simply using the skill, since construction is such a common activity in an expanding colony.

Smoothing walls and floors counts as construction, is very time consuming, and does have no quality penalty associated with it. It is maybe the best way to train a low skilled worker, without the risk of wasting materials or creating bad products. Having your apprentices do the smoothing keeps the master constructors free for more demanding work. Restrict the trainee colonists to the respective areas by creating a temporary zone, and let them do wall and floor smoothing exclusively for a while.

Making furniture is not the best way to train construction, because colonists with low skill will produce low quality furniture, which has then to be deconstructed and re-built, wasting material in the process. You can, however, keep deconstructing and reconstructing the furniture until the desired quality level is produced, if you do not mind losing some resources along the way; the popular mod ''Quality Builder'' helps tremendously.

If you are about to build a lot of walls in the colony, you can temporarily take your capable builders '''off''' the construction task, and let only your trainees build the walls and roofs. Walls do not have a quality stat, so it is not possible to create bad products. The apprentices will take a little longer, and probably "botch" construction several times, but the end result will be the same.

Do not train construction when high value material is involved, such as cloth (for carpets) or components (when making things like power generators). If the colonist "botches" construction in these cases, a fair amount of material will be irretrievably wasted; only do this if you have plenty of surplus so it would not matter.

=== Repairing things to learn construction ===
'''Only do this with a colonist that really needs to be up to speed in construction ''now'', if you have absolutely no other suitable construction work to do at the moment. Repairing structures just for training is probably the worst kind of monkey business you could give to your colonists, and a horrible waste of work hours.'''

You can damage structures, usually purpose-built stone walls, deliberately by damaging them with melee attacks, shots or grenade blasts, and then have your construction builders repair them.

This will not train shooting skill. Use the shooters only to damage the structure, then undraft them and have them resume their regular colony duties. Of course the shooters could be the very same people who will do the repair work just after. Shooting skill does not matter much in this case, as pretty much everybody is able to hit a wall from point blank range...

* By far the best approach is to ''smooth'' any stone wall, damage it, and repair it. Smoothed walls count as constructed walls, so they can be repaired. A smoothed granite wall does have 900 hitpoints, almost as much as a [[plasteel]] wall. Smoothing the wall will be training ''construction'' as well, hitting two birds with a single stone.
* Designate the colonists you intend to train so that they can only repair. Create a [[zone]] around the training area, and the general facilities of the base, then restrict the trainees to this zone.
* Skill training becomes much less effective after 4000 XP has been acquired in a skill during a day. Take the trainees off the training task by removing their zone restriction after the XP cap has been reached for the day.

== Mining ==
Unskilled miners will let resources go to waste if they mine an ore vein. You can check a colonists [[Mining Yield| mining yield]] stat to see if they are already at 100%. If they're not, do not use them to extract valuable resources from a mountain.

To train these people, restrict them to a temporary zone with a mining job in it that does not include any valuable ores (even [[steel]] will become valuable eventually, make no mistake...). If you dig into a mountain face randomly, be aware that this could become a space for [[infestation]]s to spawn if the location is too close to your colony.

If you have developed [[Deep drill| deep drilling]] already, you can let your apprentice miners work the drills. Waste of resources is usually not a problem anymore at this point.

== Cooking ==
The ''cooking'' skill level is increased by ''butchering'', ''cooking'' meals at a stove or campfire, and also by making [[smokeleaf joint]]s. If an unskilled cook prepares meals, they carry an increased risk of [[food poisoning]]. This is a fairly disrupting condition that should be avoided, so it is not optimal to train a new cook by letting them prepare meals.

=== Making smokeleaf joints ===
If a colonist has low skill but high [[Skills#Passion|passion]] for cooking, you should train them as an additional cook. The downside is that meals prepared by this character, while he or she is still learning, carry a high chance of [[food poisoning]].

Cooks can, however, also be trained by having them make [[smokeleaf joint]]s out of [[Smokeleaf leaves|leaves]] at a [[drug lab]]. This will train cooking just as fast as preparing meals, without the risk of making anybody sick.

Set up a dedicated work bill at the drug lab, and ''restrict it to the character that you would like to train in cooking''. The character needs to have priority to "Craft" things on the work tab. Make sure the drug lab is not occupied by other tasks; the easiest way is to put the smokeleaf job in the first slot on the list of bills.

This strategy requires ''drug production'' to be researched, and to grow or buy [[smokeleaf leaves]]. The latter is, of course, a way to train the ''plants'' skill (sowing ''smokeleaf'' only requires 4 ''plants'' skill). Smokeleaf products have good recreational and cash (trade) value.

Training cooks with smokeleaf is an excellent strategy.

== Plants (growing) ==

Letting an unskilled grower harvest your fields will waste some of the product; check the [[harvest yield]] stat of the colonist. If you need to avoid this, you will have to create a – possibly large – restriction zone to keep this colonist out of the area that they must not harvest. Allow them areas where sowing needs to happen.

Chopping trees is a good way to train ''plants''. Disallow the task ("plant cut" in the work tab) for your skilled growers, so your trainees will get more opportunities to chop wood.

If you are growing plants that only skilled workers can sow (like [[Devilstrand]] and [[Healroot]]), make sure that your trainees will sow ''all the other fields''. Do not let your skilled growers take that work away from them. Again, you will probably need to use restriction zones or work tab micromanagement to facilitate this.

The ''Work Tab'' addon by ''Fluffy'' makes partitioning the growing tasks a ''lot'' easier, avoiding the use of temporary zone restrictions.

== Crafting ==

The only way to practice crafting is to make things, either at a crafting spot, tailoring bench or smithy. Fabrication benches are only usable by already skilled crafters. Drug production and brewing does ''not'' train crafting.

If you have no good crafters yet, you will produce many items of "poor" or "awful" quality. It is not possible to retrieve raw materials from ''crafted'' items (unlike ''constructed'' items) – after you have crafted an item, you have to either use it or sell it as it is. This means you should not use any valuable materials, such as [[Thrumbofur]], [[Megasloth wool]], [[Hyperweave]] or [[Plasteel]] to practice crafting. Only let your most competent people handle these super-valuable materials.

''Weapons are not a good item class to practice crafting'', because they only sell for 20% of the normal price. This is good for game balance, because a lot of weapons are dropped during raids, but it means that it is practically impossible to make money from crafted weaponry. Only craft weapons that you expect to use.

This leaves ''armor items'' and ''clothing'': armor requires valuable ingredients, so '''usually crafting is practiced making clothes'''.

Crafted items get a ''market value'' that is composed of
* the work invested into making the item
* the value of the raw materials used
* the [[quality]] of the item

The market value multiplier for "awful" items is 50%, for "poor" items it is 75%. In those cases it would have been better to sell the raw materials instead of the item! To cut your inevitable losses, '''only use the cheapest material you can find if you expect to produce a lot of bad quality stuff'''. Good candidates are [[birdskin]], [[pigskin]], [[lightleather]], [[patchleather]] and [[plainleather]]. In particular, do ''not'' use [[cloth]] (needs to be bought or grown) or [[human leather]] (too expensive).

To further limit your losses, you can slow down the work deliberately, by crafting under poor conditions (outside, in the dark, not using electricity, in the cold, ...). Skill experience is granted ''over time'' and not ''by work units''. Crafting as slowly as possible means you will waste less material in the same time span. Only do this while crafting at level 5 or lower; from level 6, you can expect to [[quality|at least break even on average with regards to material cost]].

If you have a competent crafter (level 8 or higher) that you want to train further, one good way is to let them make [[advanced component]]s at a fabrication bench. You will need a lot more ''advanced components'' to build the space ship than you can usually buy from traders, so making them early is never a waste of effort. They do not have a quality rating, as long as your crafter can make them you will get full value. Likewise, bionic limbs and organs can be made by anyone who meets the skill requirement, but it is difficult to know in advance which ones you will need.

== Artistic ==

There is not much to be said about training ''artistic'' crafting; just have your aspiring artist craft as many sculptures as possible.

"Awful" sculptures have a ''negative'' beauty value, so they actually make the environment more ugly. Great to put into the bedrooms of [[traits|ascetic]] colonists, but should be deconstructed otherwise.

Use the material that you can spare the most of; wood is often a good choice. [[Jade]] has the best balance of beauty and availability, so it should be reserved for more capable, possibly [[mental inspiration|inspired]] artists.

== Medical ==

There is something that a typical ''Rimworld'' campaign never lacks: work for your doctors and surgeons. It is still possible to get some extra training.

Performing any type of surgery is staggeringly efficient for training ''medical'', because all surgeries award 16 (sixteen) times as much XP per work unit as other kinds of work. This includes performing all kinds of body part replacements, organ harvesting, and euthanizing humans ''and animals''.

* If you have human "patients", it is best to '''install and remove jaw dentures'''. This can be done at medical skill 2, only requires medicine, and the patient has no risk of dying on the table. It will leave the person permanently mangled, lowering their market value (which is not important unless you want to sell the person alive). Do not do it to healthy colonists or prisoners you plan to recruit, but of course it's perfect to perform on colonists who already have a destroyed jaw. This procedure (as well as leg replacements) are ''not'' counted under ''organ harvesting''.

* If human subjects are not available, you can '''euthanize animals'''. This gives a third of the XP of a denture procedure, but has no medical skill requirement. A failed procedure is both unlikely and of no consequence. This is great for training completely unskilled doctors. Which animal you euthanize does not matter, and it does not have to be a tame animal. You can "rescue" a hunted animal to an animal bed, just to euthanize it straight after. If you want to breed training animals, chickens are the best choice (euthanizing freshly hatched chicks is OK, the size of the animal does not matter).

Organ harvesting can be done three times per customer, eg. by taking a kidney, half a lung and a heart. It is strongly [[Human Resources|frowned upon]] by most colonists. It is also profitable, but only do it if you can afford the colony-wide mood penalty, which lasts for 8 days.

The XP granted by a surgical procedure depends on its duration, which is a function of work required, medical skill
and skill passion. For reference: at 100% ''medical operation speed'' and ''Interested'' passion, 2,000 XP are granted from performing a leg replacement.

'''Note:''' because performing surgery gives so much XP, a single colonist will hit the soft learning cap of 4,000 XP per day rather quickly. Spread out the procedures over multiple doctors and days.

== Social ==
Each social chat with a colonist gives 4 ''social'' XP per per speech balloon at ''Interested'' passion and neutral mood modifier.

Having a friendly chat with a prisoner in order to convince him or her to join the colony gives roughly 50 ''social'' XP at ''Interested'' passion, per speech balloon. If you are recruiting prisoners, only assign the "Wardening" work type to the colonists whose social skill you want to improve. The ''Work Tab'' mod (or a similar mod) allows more control over the various tasks related to wardening, so it is recommended to make this more viable in normal colony operation.

Setting the prisoner interaction mode to "Reduce resistance" (and not "Recruit") will allow wardens to keep having conversations indefinitely, allowing skill training. However, this costs a lot of food over time to keep the prisoner alive. Only do this with prisoners you do not want as colonists; recruit them immediately otherwise, so they become productive and improve their skills.

== Intellectual ==

''Intellectual'' skill is gained by doing research, and by making hard drugs and medicine. There are no special techniques available to make this more efficient. All research done is equally valuable, and neither medicine nor drugs have a quality rating; this means that who you employ for these jobs only influences how long it takes to finish them.

== Animals ==

The ''animals'' skill is very versatile, and can be trained in various ways.

There are two animals related tasks where unskilled colonists can be a liability:
* Failed tame attempts may cause the animal to retaliate; this often leads to the animal handler getting injured, usually as far away from the base as possible...
* Milking or shearing animals can fail, resulting in ''all'' of the product going to waste; this is especially painful when shearing (gathering wool), because wool takes many days to grow back.

Because of this it is best to let unskilled animal handlers only ''train animals'' that are already domesticated. If this fails, some food will be wasted, and the animal might lose some training from decay, but nothing worse will happen. Only your qualified animal handlers should be allowed to milk, shear or tame wild animals.

It is very finicky to assign all your animal handlers to the jobs best suited for them. It can be done with a lot of manipulation of temporary zone restrictions, but the recommended way is to install a mod like ''Work Tab'': it allows for fine-grained control of the various animals related sub-tasks.

<references />

{{nav/guides}}

[[Category:Game mechanics]]

Training

2019-10-12T01:26:40Z

Siggboy: /* Medical */

<div style="float: right; margin-left: 2em;">__TOC__</div>

All skills in ''Rimworld'' improve simply while they are used; there is nothing special that needs to be done in addition to that. If a colonist is assigned to a task (via the ''Work'' tab) with a sufficiently high priority, they will eventually perform it and gain skill points.

In a few cases it is not obvious that a specific task trains a seemingly unrelated ability:
* Making ''smokeleaf joints'' requires and trains ''cooking'' (not crafting).
* Making medicine and hard drugs (''flake'', ''yayo'', etc.) requires and trains ''intellectual'' (not crafting).
* Cutting stone blocks does not train any skill (but requires crafting to be allowed as a task).
* Making [[Kibble]] is done at the butchering table, but requires and trains cooking.
* Butchering a dead animal is a cooking activity.
* Brewing beer is a cooking task (not crafting, which would be plausible)
* Many construction tasks could plausibly instead be crafting, smithing or tailoring tasks.
* Smithing and tailoring are actually sub-skills of crafting, but do not have their own skill level.

This article talks about a few special ways to forcibly train colonists in certain skills. This is usually only necessary and recommended if you need a certain ability on a colonist, but do not want to use this person for productive work. Normally this is because an untrained worker would be a liability – for example, an untrained cook can cause food poisoning, and an untrained miner can waste valuable resources while trying to extract them.

'''If you train a colonist by letting them do busy work, or monkey business, you are wasting one of the most valuable colony resources, namely work hours.''' Only do that if you really have to.

Even a colonist that is bad at everything, and passionate for nothing (these exist...) should be a hauler and cleaner, or maybe the guy who fulfills that caravan trade request 5 days away, before you let them repair a mountain stone face for days just to get them 3 levels of construction.

== Using temporary zone restrictions to direct colonists ==

A technique that is mentioned a few times in this article, is to create a zone only to restrict a colonist to a very specific area, in order to force them to perform a task.

As an example, consider colonist "Molly", who you want to smooth the floor in your freezer in the next few days, and ''do nothing else''. In this case, you will create a new [[zone]] for Molly, containing exactly these areas in your base:

* the area where the work needs to happen (freezer in this example)
* Molly's bedroom (so she can go to rest as usual)
* the recreation area and dining table
* a place where food is stored (maybe not necessary in this example, because the freezer is already covered)

These areas ''do not have to be adjacent'' (connected). The zone can be composed of several disconnected areas.

Now you restrict Molly to this newly created zone. She can now still move between those areas, but in order to perform a task, she needs to be inside one of them, that is, inside the zone. This means she will not use any skills outside the temporary zone, and you will not need to manipulate her work tab to keep her from doing anything but smooth the freezer floor.

This is a very effective method, not just for training, but for prioritizing important work in general.

== Combat training ==
If you feel you are not prepared for the next raid, you can train a few combat abilities. This will always need to be done manually, ie. with the trainee drafted (except for hunting). That means you can not manage the colony in the mean time, and it can be difficult to train more than one colonist at a time. This probably means a net loss of productivity in your colony, so only do it if you feel it is really necessary.

=== Shooting ===
The best way to train shooting is to assign the colonist to the "hunting" task. Giving them a long-range weapon, for example a [[bolt-action rifle]] makes hunting safer, because animals are less likely to enrage and retaliate if shot at from long range. To be safe, only hunt passive animals that will never retaliate.

Deliberately damaging your own structures or buildings does not improve your shooting skill.

Giving a really bad shooter a weapon not suited for the task, such as a [[machine pistol]] of "awful" quality, means that they will possibly hunt for a ''long'' time before actually killing the animal. Do not expect a colonist that you train this way to be very productive for the colony.

==== Aggravating animals ====
Outside of hunting, some resilient animals such as the [[Megasloth]], [[Rhinoceros]] and [[Thrumbo]] can give a lot of shooting skill by kiting them, and slowly shooting them to death with a low DPS weapon. You need to be very careful with this approach, because those animals do a lot of damage if given the chance to get into your melee range.

This is a special case of deliberately slow "hunting".

The best weapon types for this tactic are weapons with a fast windup and high shot frequency, not too short a range, and low damage. This makes you use the skill more often, by firing more shots, and has your "training dummy" last longer from low damage.

This approach does require extensive micromanagement, and you won't be able to perform other manual tasks in the colony in the meantime. It is even possible that actually killing the animal will take so long that your colonist will pass out from exhaustion or go into starvation. You ''must'' have a capable shooter available to finish off the animal and end the training if necessary.

=== Melee ===
Fighting anything with melee attacks will increase the ''melee'' skill. ''Hunting'' with melee attacks works, but animals are prone to fighting back so be warned (this is true even for animals that never retaliate when hunted from range). You will have to draft the colonist and "hunt" the animal manually by attacking it. An undrafted colonist will not ''hunt'' if they are lacking a ranged weapon.

If you want to train a character this way, use the best possible armor so they will take less damage from the animal. Taking no damage at all is usually not possible, so do not train a colonist that you require to be in good shape; they will at least have a few bruises for a couple of days, reducing their manipulation skills and movement ability. Also be aware that attacking herd animals (like muffalos and wild boars) can enrage the ''entire herd'', usually leading to a heavily injured colonist, or worse.

Tamed animals will fight back, so they are not safe training dummies; they can however be kept in a controlled environment which makes them more convenient targets. There is also no risk of an entire herd taking revenge for you hurting their friend. You can patch up the animal you just abused afterwards, which will train the ''medical'' skill.

Using melee attacks does raise the skill very quickly, and you will hit the "soft" XP cap of 4000 points in a matter of a few attacks. Disengage afterwards, because training over the soft cap is not efficient.

To level melee more safely, take prisoners who are incapable of "Violent" and repeatedly punch, then heal them in their prison cell. To avoid accidentally killing your prisoners, use fists only with neither a melee nor ranged weapon equipped. Carefully watch the health of the prisoner pausing the game between each punch if needed. A colonist with no weapon (not even a ranged weapon) does up to 7 base blunt damage per punch (see [[Weapons#Base Melee Stats|Base Melee Stats]] for details), so when any single body part falls below 8 hp remaining, stop and allow the prisoner to heal. This will allow you to train medical skill as well.

== Construction ==
Construction is already trained quite efficiently by simply using the skill, since construction is such a common activity in an expanding colony.

Smoothing walls and floors counts as construction, is very time consuming, and does have no quality penalty associated with it. It is maybe the best way to train a low skilled worker, without the risk of wasting materials or creating bad products. Having your apprentices do the smoothing keeps the master constructors free for more demanding work. Restrict the trainee colonists to the respective areas by creating a temporary zone, and let them do wall and floor smoothing exclusively for a while.

Making furniture is not the best way to train construction, because colonists with low skill will produce low quality furniture, which has then to be deconstructed and re-built, wasting material in the process. You can, however, keep deconstructing and reconstructing the furniture until the desired quality level is produced, if you do not mind losing some resources along the way; the popular mod ''Quality Builder'' helps tremendously.

If you are about to build a lot of walls in the colony, you can temporarily take your capable builders '''off''' the construction task, and let only your trainees build the walls and roofs. Walls do not have a quality stat, so it is not possible to create bad products. The apprentices will take a little longer, and probably "botch" construction several times, but the end result will be the same.

Do not train construction when high value material is involved, such as cloth (for carpets) or components (when making things like power generators). If the colonist "botches" construction in these cases, a fair amount of material will be irretrievably wasted; only do this if you have plenty of surplus so it would not matter.

=== Repairing things to learn construction ===
'''Only do this with a colonist that really needs to be up to speed in construction ''now'', if you have absolutely no other suitable construction work to do at the moment. Repairing structures just for training is probably the worst kind of monkey business you could give to your colonists, and a horrible waste of work hours.'''

You can damage structures, usually purpose-built stone walls, deliberately by damaging them with melee attacks, shots or grenade blasts, and then have your construction builders repair them.

This will not train shooting skill. Use the shooters only to damage the structure, then undraft them and have them resume their regular colony duties. Of course the shooters could be the very same people who will do the repair work just after. Shooting skill does not matter much in this case, as pretty much everybody is able to hit a wall from point blank range...

* By far the best approach is to ''smooth'' any stone wall, damage it, and repair it. Smoothed walls count as constructed walls, so they can be repaired. A smoothed granite wall does have 900 hitpoints, almost as much as a [[plasteel]] wall. Smoothing the wall will be training ''construction'' as well, hitting two birds with a single stone.
* Designate the colonists you intend to train so that they can only repair. Create a [[zone]] around the training area, and the general facilities of the base, then restrict the trainees to this zone.
* Skill training becomes much less effective after 4000 XP has been acquired in a skill during a day. Take the trainees off the training task by removing their zone restriction after the XP cap has been reached for the day.

== Mining ==
Unskilled miners will let resources go to waste if they mine an ore vein. You can check a colonists [[Mining Yield| mining yield]] stat to see if they are already at 100%. If they're not, do not use them to extract valuable resources from a mountain.

To train these people, restrict them to a temporary zone with a mining job in it that does not include any valuable ores (even [[steel]] will become valuable eventually, make no mistake...). If you dig into a mountain face randomly, be aware that this could become a space for [[infestation]]s to spawn if the location is too close to your colony.

If you have developed [[Deep drill| deep drilling]] already, you can let your apprentice miners work the drills. Waste of resources is usually not a problem anymore at this point.

== Cooking ==
The ''cooking'' skill level is increased by ''butchering'', ''cooking'' meals at a stove or campfire, and also by making [[smokeleaf joint]]s. If an unskilled cook prepares meals, they carry an increased risk of [[food poisoning]]. This is a fairly disrupting condition that should be avoided, so it is not optimal to train a new cook by letting them prepare meals.

=== Making smokeleaf joints ===
If a colonist has low skill but high [[Skills#Passion|passion]] for cooking, you should train them as an additional cook. The downside is that meals prepared by this character, while he or she is still learning, carry a high chance of [[food poisoning]].

Cooks can, however, also be trained by having them make [[smokeleaf joint]]s out of [[Smokeleaf leaves|leaves]] at a [[drug lab]]. This will train cooking just as fast as preparing meals, without the risk of making anybody sick.

Set up a dedicated work bill at the drug lab, and ''restrict it to the character that you would like to train in cooking''. The character needs to have priority to "Craft" things on the work tab. Make sure the drug lab is not occupied by other tasks; the easiest way is to put the smokeleaf job in the first slot on the list of bills.

This strategy requires ''drug production'' to be researched, and to grow or buy [[smokeleaf leaves]]. The latter is, of course, a way to train the ''plants'' skill (sowing ''smokeleaf'' only requires 4 ''plants'' skill). Smokeleaf products have good recreational and cash (trade) value.

Training cooks with smokeleaf is an excellent strategy.

== Plants (growing) ==

Letting an unskilled grower harvest your fields will waste some of the product; check the [[harvest yield]] stat of the colonist. If you need to avoid this, you will have to create a – possibly large – restriction zone to keep this colonist out of the area that they must not harvest. Allow them areas where sowing needs to happen.

Chopping trees is a good way to train ''plants''. Disallow the task ("plant cut" in the work tab) for your skilled growers, so your trainees will get more opportunities to chop wood.

If you are growing plants that only skilled workers can sow (like [[Devilstrand]] and [[Healroot]]), make sure that your trainees will sow ''all the other fields''. Do not let your skilled growers take that work away from them. Again, you will probably need to use restriction zones or work tab micromanagement to facilitate this.

The ''Work Tab'' addon by ''Fluffy'' makes partitioning the growing tasks a ''lot'' easier, avoiding the use of temporary zone restrictions.

== Crafting ==

The only way to practice crafting is to make things, either at a crafting spot, tailoring bench or smithy. Fabrication benches are only usable by already skilled crafters. Drug production and brewing does ''not'' train crafting.

If you have no good crafters yet, you will produce many items of "poor" or "awful" quality. It is not possible to retrieve raw materials from ''crafted'' items (unlike ''constructed'' items) – after you have crafted an item, you have to either use it or sell it as it is. This means you should not use any valuable materials, such as [[Thrumbofur]], [[Megasloth wool]], [[Hyperweave]] or [[Plasteel]] to practice crafting. Only let your most competent people handle these super-valuable materials.

''Weapons are not a good item class to practice crafting'', because they only sell for 20% of the normal price. This is good for game balance, because a lot of weapons are dropped during raids, but it means that it is practically impossible to make money from crafted weaponry. Only craft weapons that you expect to use.

This leaves ''armor items'' and ''clothing'': armor requires valuable ingredients, so '''usually crafting is practiced making clothes'''.

Crafted items get a ''market value'' that is composed of
* the work invested into making the item
* the value of the raw materials used
* the [[quality]] of the item

The market value multiplier for "awful" items is 50%, for "poor" items it is 75%. In those cases it would have been better to sell the raw materials instead of the item! To cut your inevitable losses, '''only use the cheapest material you can find if you expect to produce a lot of bad quality stuff'''. Good candidates are [[birdskin]], [[pigskin]], [[lightleather]], [[patchleather]] and [[plainleather]]. In particular, do ''not'' use [[cloth]] (needs to be bought or grown) or [[human leather]] (too expensive).

To further limit your losses, you can slow down the work deliberately, by crafting under poor conditions (outside, in the dark, not using electricity, in the cold, ...). Skill experience is granted ''over time'' and not ''by work units''. Crafting as slowly as possible means you will waste less material in the same time span. Only do this while crafting at level 5 or lower; from level 6, you can expect to [[quality|at least break even on average with regards to material cost]].

If you have a competent crafter (level 8 or higher) that you want to train further, one good way is to let them make [[advanced component]]s at a fabrication bench. You will need a lot more ''advanced components'' to build the space ship than you can usually buy from traders, so making them early is never a waste of effort. They do not have a quality rating, as long as your crafter can make them you will get full value. Likewise, bionic limbs and organs can be made by anyone who meets the skill requirement, but it is difficult to know in advance which ones you will need.

== Artistic ==

There is not much to be said about training ''artistic'' crafting; just have your aspiring artist craft as many sculptures as possible.

"Awful" sculptures have a ''negative'' beauty value, so they actually make the environment more ugly. Great to put into the bedrooms of [[traits|ascetic]] colonists, but should be deconstructed otherwise.

Use the material that you can spare the most of; wood is often a good choice. [[Jade]] has the best balance of beauty and availability, so it should be reserved for more capable, possibly [[mental inspiration|inspired]] artists.

== Medical ==

There is something that a typical ''Rimworld'' campaign never lacks: work for your doctors and surgeons. It is still possible to get some extra training.

Performing any type of surgery is staggeringly efficient for training ''medical'', because all surgeries award 16 (sixteen) times as much XP per work unit as other kinds of work. This includes performing all kinds of body part replacements, organ harvesting, and euthanizing humans ''and animals''.

* If you have human "patients", it is best to '''install and remove jaw dentures'''. This can be done at medical skill 2, only requires medicine, and the patient has no risk of dying on the table. It will leave the person permanently mangled, lowering their market value (which is not important unless you want to sell the person alive).

* If human subjects are not available, you can '''euthanize animals'''. This gives a third of the XP of a denture procedure, but has no medical skill requirement. A failed procedure is both unlikely and of no consequence. This is great for training completely unskilled doctors. Which animal you euthanize does not matter, and it does not have to be a tame animal. You can "rescue" a hunted animal to an animal bed, just to euthanize it straight after. If you want to breed training animals, chickens are the best choice (euthanizing freshly hatched chicks is OK, the size of the animal does not matter).

Organ harvesting can be done three times per customer, eg. by taking a kidney, half a lung and a heart. It is strongly [[Human Resources|frowned upon]] by most colonists. It is also profitable, but only do it if you can afford the colony-wide mood penalty, which lasts for 8 days.

The XP granted by a surgical procedure depends on its duration, which is a function of work required, medical skill
and skill passion. For reference: at 100% ''medical operation speed'' and ''Interested'' passion, 2,000 XP are granted from performing a leg replacement.

'''Note:''' because performing surgery gives so much XP, a single colonist will hit the soft learning cap of 4,000 XP per day rather quickly. Spread out the procedures over multiple doctors and days.

== Social ==
Each social chat with a colonist gives 4 ''social'' XP per per speech balloon at ''Interested'' passion and neutral mood modifier.

Having a friendly chat with a prisoner in order to convince him or her to join the colony gives roughly 50 ''social'' XP at ''Interested'' passion, per speech balloon. If you are recruiting prisoners, only assign the "Wardening" work type to the colonists whose social skill you want to improve. The ''Work Tab'' mod (or a similar mod) allows more control over the various tasks related to wardening, so it is recommended to make this more viable in normal colony operation.

Setting the prisoner interaction mode to "Reduce resistance" (and not "Recruit") will allow wardens to keep having conversations indefinitely, allowing skill training. However, this costs a lot of food over time to keep the prisoner alive. Only do this with prisoners you do not want as colonists; recruit them immediately otherwise, so they become productive and improve their skills.

== Intellectual ==

''Intellectual'' skill is gained by doing research, and by making hard drugs and medicine. There are no special techniques available to make this more efficient. All research done is equally valuable, and neither medicine nor drugs have a quality rating; this means that who you employ for these jobs only influences how long it takes to finish them.

== Animals ==

The ''animals'' skill is very versatile, and can be trained in various ways.

There are two animals related tasks where unskilled colonists can be a liability:
* Failed tame attempts may cause the animal to retaliate; this often leads to the animal handler getting injured, usually as far away from the base as possible...
* Milking or shearing animals can fail, resulting in ''all'' of the product going to waste; this is especially painful when shearing (gathering wool), because wool takes many days to grow back.

Because of this it is best to let unskilled animal handlers only ''train animals'' that are already domesticated. If this fails, some food will be wasted, and the animal might lose some training from decay, but nothing worse will happen. Only your qualified animal handlers should be allowed to milk, shear or tame wild animals.

It is very finicky to assign all your animal handlers to the jobs best suited for them. It can be done with a lot of manipulation of temporary zone restrictions, but the recommended way is to install a mod like ''Work Tab'': it allows for fine-grained control of the various animals related sub-tasks.

<references />

{{nav/guides}}

[[Category:Game mechanics]]

Battery

2019-10-11T00:54:37Z

Siggboy: /* Batteries as power supplies */

{{infobox main|building|
|name = Battery
|image = Battery.jpg|Battery
|description = Stores electricity when there is excess power and yields it when there is not. Warning - charged batteries tend to explode when heated or wet.
|type = Buildings
|type2 = Power
|placeable = Yes
|size = 1|2
|hp = 100
|efficiency = 50%
|power =
|buy = {{icon|metal|70}} {{icon|component|2}}
|sell = {{icon|metal|52.5}} + {{icon|component|1.5}}
|beauty = -15
|mass base = 20
|cover = 0.4
}}<onlyinclude>
{{Info|The ''battery'' is an electric device that can store energy and provide power. Energy is stored while there is a surplus on the connected electric grid; the charge capacity is 600 Wd (''watt days''). Each battery provides an unlimited amount of power if there is a deficit, until discharged. Charging power is unlimited as well, but happens at only 50% efficiency, ie. half the energy provided is lost. Batteries self-discharge at a rate of 5 W, even while disconnected. Batteries need to be operated under a roof, or they will frequently short circuit in rain or snowfall, causing an explosion.}}

== Usage ==
'''Batteries are built, moved and stored like other kinds of movable furniture.''' They will keep their charge while stored ("minified") or disconnected, only discharging at the normal rate of 5 W (self-discharge).

With regards to power production, they behave like the other electric buildings in the game. All power consumers can connect to batteries in the same way as to other power sources: within a 5-tile radius, a device can directly connect to a battery (or array of batteries), without power conduits in between.

In order to charge a battery, it has to be directly connected to a power grid with excess power. It is not possible to connect to batteries "through" power consumers (this is because consumers can not be connected to more than one power grid at the same time).

Just like the other power producing buildings, a battery '''acts as a power conduit''' on the 2 tiles it covers.

Installed batteries '''can not be switched off manually'''. As long as at least one consumer is connected, the battery will provide power during a deficit, and also be vulnerable to the short-circuit event.

Installed batteries '''need to be kept dry'''. If outdoors, a roof has to be built over the tiles occupied by the battery. If a battery becomes wet (either due to rain or snowfall), there is a very high chance of a short circuit, causing an explosion and fire (probably spreading to adjacent batteries and connected devices). At least the rain will usually extinguish the fire...

Damage to a battery does not change its other properties and does not cause discharge (eg. a 1 hitpoint battery has the same capacity and wattage as a 100 hitpoint battery).

== Batteries as power supplies ==
Consumers can connect to batteries directly, up to a distance of 5 tiles away, by using the ''reconnect'' action on the consumer until it is connected to the battery.

As a power supply, the battery behaves just like any other power source in the game (eg. generators or solar panels), but each battery will deliver an unlimited amount of power. This means that any ''wattage'' can be delivered until the battery is completely discharged. It makes the battery not only convenient as buffers for wind turbines and solar panels, but also to cover arbitrary spikes in power usage, usually caused by turret arrays and other heavy power consumers that are only brought on-line sporadically.

The power output of a battery is theoretically unlimited. Even a huge colony that demands, say, 30,000 W of power can be powered by a single battery (but only for about 1 in-game hour if the battery is fully charged). Adding more batteries is only necessary to lengthen the time span.

If more than one battery is on the same power grid, all batteries with remaining charge will share the power load evenly.

The maximum amount of energy provided per battery is 600 Wd (''watt-days'') for a fully charged battery. Eg. if exactly 595 W were drawn, a single battery would last exactly 1 in-game day (taking into account the 5 W of self-discharge). If only 295 W are drawn, it lasts for 2 days, etc. Since maximum power draw is unlimited it is – theoretically – possible to empty a full battery in 1 tick of game time (instantly).

A disconnected battery will discharge at a rate of 5 W. This means that a fully charged battery can be stored for 120 days (1 in-game year) until depleted.

== Charging ==
A battery will automatically keep charging while it is connected to a power grid with excess power available. Selecting the battery will show the current charge status in the information window.

The power used for charging is unlimited; charging batteries will always draw all available power, but never cause a power deficiency on the grid.

All batteries in a power grid will evenly share the excess power for charging, but can only use half of it (the charge efficiency is 50%). In other words, to fully charge an empty battery, 1200 Wd of energy have to be provided, as well as 5 W extra to cover the self-discharge.

As an example, connecting an empty battery to a power grid with exactly 1205 W of available power will charge it to full in exactly 1 in-game day. If more power was available, charging would complete more quickly. 5 W of charging power would keep the battery at exactly the present charge level, merely nullifying the self-discharge.

In practice, the self-discharge can mostly be disregarded.

== Constructing, moving and storing ==
Batteries behave exactly like other furniture items in the game: they have to be constructed on solid terrain, using the construction skill. It takes 14 work units to build, and can be done even at construction level 0.

After construction, they can be uninstalled like furniture, and then moved to storage, taken to a character's inventory or on a caravan. Uninstalling and reinstalling does not cause additional charge loss, beyond the 5 W of self-discharge that always applies.

It is possible to take charged batteries on caravans as a power source for camps and newly founded colonies.

Batteries that are not installed can be stored in the open, also in rain or snowfall, as they can not short circuit. Like other furniture, they are not subject to ''decay''.

== Hazards ==
'''Batteries are very likely to explode in rain and snowfall'''. This can be completely avoided by keeping installed batteries under a roof; keeping them indoors is not necessary. The resulting explosion will not cause any discharge, but it will heavily damage the battery, and possibly surrounding structures as well, also causing a fire.

'''Batteries make the [[Events#Faulty Conduit Explosion|short circuit]] event ("Zztt...") more dangerous:''' all affected batteries will instantly discharge, causing an explosion in addition to the fire that is normally caused by the event. The more batteries are connected, the larger the explosion. ''Note that the event is unrelated to batteries'' – it can still happen if no batteries are connected, but will then only cause a small fire and no explosion. Empty batteries will not affect the event.

Note that it is not the batteries that explode, but the area around the power-conduit that is affected. This could be right next to a battery, but it is never the battery itself that causes the explosion.

While it is possible to lay the power conduits only under fireproof walls, this will not avoid the explosion damage, and any fires that might start as a result.

To mitigate the hazard from the ''short circuit'' event, batteries can be intermittently disconnected from the grid, and only brought online on demand. Note that for this measure to be effective, ''not a single power conduit must be on the disconnected power grid''. The short circuit event is related to the [[power conduit]]s – '''if no powered conduits are on a network, the event can not occur on this network'''. So in order to effectively protect the batteries, a [[power switch]] must be placed ''directly adjacent'' to the battery array, with no other power conduits directly connecting to the batteries. It is also possible to place the batteries adjacent to a power generator, and then decouple the generator with a switch – again, no power conduits can be behind the switch.

[[File:Zero_conduit_freezer.jpg|300px|thumb|right|The batteries in this setup connect directly to the wind turbine and the attached coolers, without any power conduits. This completely avoids the random short circuit event ("Zztt...") in this power network.]]

It is also possible to completely avoid building any ''power conduits'' at all. This is usually only practical for smaller, self-contained grids. The batteries themselves, as well as other power generating buildings, have built-in power conduits that are not susceptible to short circuits. If you can bridge any distances by these means alone, you can create a power grid that is completely safe.

If the above measures are impractical, [[firefoam popper]]s should be installed where an explosion would cause a lot of damage, such as a hydroponics facility or a storage area.

Battery performance is not affected by temperature, but like many other structures they are highly flammable and may catch fire if the surrounding temperature is very high. Somewhat contrary to the in-game description, the battery is not more susceptible to heat than other, comparable flammable structures. Even the most extreme heat waves will not make a battery explode or catch fire. It is therefore not necessary to keep batteries climatized.

== Strategy ==
Batteries are useful in most colonies, even if the colony does not rely on unstable power sources like [[solar panel]]s and [[wind turbine]]s.

If only renewable energy is used, at least one battery is mandatory, because sufficient power supply can never be guaranteed. Solar panels produce no power during the night and during an eclipse, and wind turbines are completely unreliable. If the colony has no other backup power source, it is highly recommended to keep some additional batteries behind a [[power switch]] on a separate network (see ''Hazards'' above), so they can be brought online in the case of a ''short circuit'' event.

Alternatively, some batteries can also be stored in a warehouse, and then placed down anywhere on the power grid on demand. This makes switches unnecessary.

Batteries can also be used to make fueled generators more economical. These generators provide constant power, but they also burn their fuel at a constant rate – no matter how much power is actually used. If you connect some batteries, you can at least catch half of the otherwise wasted energy, and then disable the generator until the batteries run dry. This will save 100% of the fuel for the time the generator is offline. This is especially helpful in the early game, where you might not even have enough power draw to fully load a single generator, and fuel will be usually scarce as well.

The energy stored by even a single battery is very high. 600 Wd are enough to power, for example, three [[cooler]]s at full power draw for an entire day, with no other source of power available. Therefore, building a lot of batteries ("just to be safe") is not necessary, or even harmful. Unless you take complex and expensive measures to avoid the ''short circuit'' event, having too many batteries online is a liability. Examine closely how much energy storage you need, and do not build more than that.

When you calculate the battery capacity that is necessary when using renewable energy, keep in mind that charge efficiency is only 50%. That is, only half of any excess energy will be effectively usable. This is particularly relevant when planning a greenhouse setup, of [[hydroponics basin]]s and a [[sun lamp]]. The ''sun lamp'' will draw 2900 W during the day, and 0 W during the night, for an average demand of 1450 W. However, it is not sufficient to generate only 1450 W at all times, hoping that a 3-battery array will even out the difference in power draw. This is because during the night, only half of the extra 1450 W will effectively charge the batteries, storing 8,700 Wh of energy (~360 Wd). This will only be enough to power the sun-lamp for 6 hours during the day. For the remaining 6 hours, the missing 1450 W will have to be provided by other means (usually a solar panel). Simply adding more batteries will not change this. Two batteries will provide enough buffering in this scenario.

The example setup, including 24 hydroponics basins, can be fully powered by one geothermal generator and a solar panel, connected to a single buffer battery.

Even in colonies that do not use wind or solar energy, batteries are useful to cover spikes in power usage, usually caused by turret arrays and devices like crematoriums, smelters and mineral scanners that are only brought online intermittently. A battery can cover arbitrarily high power needs, the size of the array only changes for how long that is possible.

As an example, an array of 20 mini-turrets and 4 autocannon turrets draws 3200 W of power. Instead of building another geothermal generator that would cover this, even a single charged battery can power this entire setup for more than 4 in-game hours. An array of 5 batteries can power the defenses for an entire in-game day. The battery array should be isolated with two power switches from the security grid and main power grid. This makes it then also very easy to power the entire setup with a single switch, as well as keep the batteries safe from the ''short circuit'' event.

</onlyinclude>
{{nav|power|wide}}
[[Category:Buildings]]
[[Category:Power]]

Battery

2019-10-11T00:35:08Z

Siggboy: /* Batteries as power supplies */

{{infobox main|building|
|name = Battery
|image = Battery.jpg|Battery
|description = Stores electricity when there is excess power and yields it when there is not. Warning - charged batteries tend to explode when heated or wet.
|type = Buildings
|type2 = Power
|placeable = Yes
|size = 1|2
|hp = 100
|efficiency = 50%
|power =
|buy = {{icon|metal|70}} {{icon|component|2}}
|sell = {{icon|metal|52.5}} + {{icon|component|1.5}}
|beauty = -15
|mass base = 20
|cover = 0.4
}}<onlyinclude>
{{Info|The ''battery'' is an electric device that can store energy and provide power. Energy is stored while there is a surplus on the connected electric grid; the charge capacity is 600 Wd (''watt days''). Each battery provides an unlimited amount of power if there is a deficit, until discharged. Charging power is unlimited as well, but happens at only 50% efficiency, ie. half the energy provided is lost. Batteries self-discharge at a rate of 5 W, even while disconnected. Batteries need to be operated under a roof, or they will frequently short circuit in rain or snowfall, causing an explosion.}}

== Usage ==
'''Batteries are built, moved and stored like other kinds of movable furniture.''' They will keep their charge while stored ("minified") or disconnected, only discharging at the normal rate of 5 W (self-discharge).

With regards to power production, they behave like the other electric buildings in the game. All power consumers can connect to batteries in the same way as to other power sources: within a 5-tile radius, a device can directly connect to a battery (or array of batteries), without power conduits in between.

In order to charge a battery, it has to be directly connected to a power grid with excess power. It is not possible to connect to batteries "through" power consumers (this is because consumers can not be connected to more than one power grid at the same time).

Just like the other power producing buildings, a battery '''acts as a power conduit''' on the 2 tiles it covers.

Installed batteries '''can not be switched off manually'''. As long as at least one consumer is connected, the battery will provide power during a deficit, and also be vulnerable to the short-circuit event.

Installed batteries '''need to be kept dry'''. If outdoors, a roof has to be built over the tiles occupied by the battery. If a battery becomes wet (either due to rain or snowfall), there is a very high chance of a short circuit, causing an explosion and fire (probably spreading to adjacent batteries and connected devices). At least the rain will usually extinguish the fire...

Damage to a battery does not change its other properties and does not cause discharge (eg. a 1 hitpoint battery has the same capacity and wattage as a 100 hitpoint battery).

== Batteries as power supplies ==
As a power supply, the battery behaves just like any other power source in the game (eg. generators or solar panels), but each battery will deliver an unlimited amount of power. This means that any ''wattage'' can be delivered until the battery is completely discharged. It makes the battery not only convenient as buffers for wind turbines and solar panels, but also to cover arbitrary spikes in power usage, usually caused by turret arrays and other heavy power consumers that are only brought on-line sporadically.

The power output of a battery is theoretically unlimited. Even a huge colony that demands, say, 30,000 W of power can be powered by a single battery (but only for about 1 in-game hour if the battery is fully charged). Adding more batteries is only necessary to lengthen the time span.

If more than one battery is on the same power grid, all batteries with remaining charge will share the power load evenly.

The maximum amount of energy provided per battery is 600 Wd (''watt-days'') for a fully charged battery. Eg. if exactly 595 W were drawn, a single battery would last exactly 1 in-game day (taking into account the 5 W of self-discharge). If only 295 W are drawn, it lasts for 2 days, etc. Since maximum power draw is unlimited it is – theoretically – possible to empty a full battery in 1 tick of game time (instantly).

A disconnected battery will discharge at a rate of 5 W. This means that a fully charged battery can be stored for 120 days (1 in-game year) until depleted.

== Charging ==
A battery will automatically keep charging while it is connected to a power grid with excess power available. Selecting the battery will show the current charge status in the information window.

The power used for charging is unlimited; charging batteries will always draw all available power, but never cause a power deficiency on the grid.

All batteries in a power grid will evenly share the excess power for charging, but can only use half of it (the charge efficiency is 50%). In other words, to fully charge an empty battery, 1200 Wd of energy have to be provided, as well as 5 W extra to cover the self-discharge.

As an example, connecting an empty battery to a power grid with exactly 1205 W of available power will charge it to full in exactly 1 in-game day. If more power was available, charging would complete more quickly. 5 W of charging power would keep the battery at exactly the present charge level, merely nullifying the self-discharge.

In practice, the self-discharge can mostly be disregarded.

== Constructing, moving and storing ==
Batteries behave exactly like other furniture items in the game: they have to be constructed on solid terrain, using the construction skill. It takes 14 work units to build, and can be done even at construction level 0.

After construction, they can be uninstalled like furniture, and then moved to storage, taken to a character's inventory or on a caravan. Uninstalling and reinstalling does not cause additional charge loss, beyond the 5 W of self-discharge that always applies.

It is possible to take charged batteries on caravans as a power source for camps and newly founded colonies.

Batteries that are not installed can be stored in the open, also in rain or snowfall, as they can not short circuit. Like other furniture, they are not subject to ''decay''.

== Hazards ==
'''Batteries are very likely to explode in rain and snowfall'''. This can be completely avoided by keeping installed batteries under a roof; keeping them indoors is not necessary. The resulting explosion will not cause any discharge, but it will heavily damage the battery, and possibly surrounding structures as well, also causing a fire.

'''Batteries make the [[Events#Faulty Conduit Explosion|short circuit]] event ("Zztt...") more dangerous:''' all affected batteries will instantly discharge, causing an explosion in addition to the fire that is normally caused by the event. The more batteries are connected, the larger the explosion. ''Note that the event is unrelated to batteries'' – it can still happen if no batteries are connected, but will then only cause a small fire and no explosion. Empty batteries will not affect the event.

Note that it is not the batteries that explode, but the area around the power-conduit that is affected. This could be right next to a battery, but it is never the battery itself that causes the explosion.

While it is possible to lay the power conduits only under fireproof walls, this will not avoid the explosion damage, and any fires that might start as a result.

To mitigate the hazard from the ''short circuit'' event, batteries can be intermittently disconnected from the grid, and only brought online on demand. Note that for this measure to be effective, ''not a single power conduit must be on the disconnected power grid''. The short circuit event is related to the [[power conduit]]s – '''if no powered conduits are on a network, the event can not occur on this network'''. So in order to effectively protect the batteries, a [[power switch]] must be placed ''directly adjacent'' to the battery array, with no other power conduits directly connecting to the batteries. It is also possible to place the batteries adjacent to a power generator, and then decouple the generator with a switch – again, no power conduits can be behind the switch.

[[File:Zero_conduit_freezer.jpg|300px|thumb|right|The batteries in this setup connect directly to the wind turbine and the attached coolers, without any power conduits. This completely avoids the random short circuit event ("Zztt...") in this power network.]]

It is also possible to completely avoid building any ''power conduits'' at all. This is usually only practical for smaller, self-contained grids. The batteries themselves, as well as other power generating buildings, have built-in power conduits that are not susceptible to short circuits. If you can bridge any distances by these means alone, you can create a power grid that is completely safe.

If the above measures are impractical, [[firefoam popper]]s should be installed where an explosion would cause a lot of damage, such as a hydroponics facility or a storage area.

Battery performance is not affected by temperature, but like many other structures they are highly flammable and may catch fire if the surrounding temperature is very high. Somewhat contrary to the in-game description, the battery is not more susceptible to heat than other, comparable flammable structures. Even the most extreme heat waves will not make a battery explode or catch fire. It is therefore not necessary to keep batteries climatized.

== Strategy ==
Batteries are useful in most colonies, even if the colony does not rely on unstable power sources like [[solar panel]]s and [[wind turbine]]s.

If only renewable energy is used, at least one battery is mandatory, because sufficient power supply can never be guaranteed. Solar panels produce no power during the night and during an eclipse, and wind turbines are completely unreliable. If the colony has no other backup power source, it is highly recommended to keep some additional batteries behind a [[power switch]] on a separate network (see ''Hazards'' above), so they can be brought online in the case of a ''short circuit'' event.

Alternatively, some batteries can also be stored in a warehouse, and then placed down anywhere on the power grid on demand. This makes switches unnecessary.

Batteries can also be used to make fueled generators more economical. These generators provide constant power, but they also burn their fuel at a constant rate – no matter how much power is actually used. If you connect some batteries, you can at least catch half of the otherwise wasted energy, and then disable the generator until the batteries run dry. This will save 100% of the fuel for the time the generator is offline. This is especially helpful in the early game, where you might not even have enough power draw to fully load a single generator, and fuel will be usually scarce as well.

The energy stored by even a single battery is very high. 600 Wd are enough to power, for example, three [[cooler]]s at full power draw for an entire day, with no other source of power available. Therefore, building a lot of batteries ("just to be safe") is not necessary, or even harmful. Unless you take complex and expensive measures to avoid the ''short circuit'' event, having too many batteries online is a liability. Examine closely how much energy storage you need, and do not build more than that.

When you calculate the battery capacity that is necessary when using renewable energy, keep in mind that charge efficiency is only 50%. That is, only half of any excess energy will be effectively usable. This is particularly relevant when planning a greenhouse setup, of [[hydroponics basin]]s and a [[sun lamp]]. The ''sun lamp'' will draw 2900 W during the day, and 0 W during the night, for an average demand of 1450 W. However, it is not sufficient to generate only 1450 W at all times, hoping that a 3-battery array will even out the difference in power draw. This is because during the night, only half of the extra 1450 W will effectively charge the batteries, storing 8,700 Wh of energy (~360 Wd). This will only be enough to power the sun-lamp for 6 hours during the day. For the remaining 6 hours, the missing 1450 W will have to be provided by other means (usually a solar panel). Simply adding more batteries will not change this. Two batteries will provide enough buffering in this scenario.

The example setup, including 24 hydroponics basins, can be fully powered by one geothermal generator and a solar panel, connected to a single buffer battery.

Even in colonies that do not use wind or solar energy, batteries are useful to cover spikes in power usage, usually caused by turret arrays and devices like crematoriums, smelters and mineral scanners that are only brought online intermittently. A battery can cover arbitrarily high power needs, the size of the array only changes for how long that is possible.

As an example, an array of 20 mini-turrets and 4 autocannon turrets draws 3200 W of power. Instead of building another geothermal generator that would cover this, even a single charged battery can power this entire setup for more than 4 in-game hours. An array of 5 batteries can power the defenses for an entire in-game day. The battery array should be isolated with two power switches from the security grid and main power grid. This makes it then also very easy to power the entire setup with a single switch, as well as keep the batteries safe from the ''short circuit'' event.

</onlyinclude>
{{nav|power|wide}}
[[Category:Buildings]]
[[Category:Power]]

Battery

2019-10-11T00:29:38Z

Siggboy: /* Usage */

{{infobox main|building|
|name = Battery
|image = Battery.jpg|Battery
|description = Stores electricity when there is excess power and yields it when there is not. Warning - charged batteries tend to explode when heated or wet.
|type = Buildings
|type2 = Power
|placeable = Yes
|size = 1|2
|hp = 100
|efficiency = 50%
|power =
|buy = {{icon|metal|70}} {{icon|component|2}}
|sell = {{icon|metal|52.5}} + {{icon|component|1.5}}
|beauty = -15
|mass base = 20
|cover = 0.4
}}<onlyinclude>
{{Info|The ''battery'' is an electric device that can store energy and provide power. Energy is stored while there is a surplus on the connected electric grid; the charge capacity is 600 Wd (''watt days''). Each battery provides an unlimited amount of power if there is a deficit, until discharged. Charging power is unlimited as well, but happens at only 50% efficiency, ie. half the energy provided is lost. Batteries self-discharge at a rate of 5 W, even while disconnected. Batteries need to be operated under a roof, or they will frequently short circuit in rain or snowfall, causing an explosion.}}

== Usage ==
'''Batteries are built, moved and stored like other kinds of movable furniture.''' They will keep their charge while stored ("minified") or disconnected, only discharging at the normal rate of 5 W (self-discharge).

With regards to power production, they behave like the other electric buildings in the game. All power consumers can connect to batteries in the same way as to other power sources: within a 5-tile radius, a device can directly connect to a battery (or array of batteries), without power conduits in between.

In order to charge a battery, it has to be directly connected to a power grid with excess power. It is not possible to connect to batteries "through" power consumers (this is because consumers can not be connected to more than one power grid at the same time).

Just like the other power producing buildings, a battery '''acts as a power conduit''' on the 2 tiles it covers.

Installed batteries '''can not be switched off manually'''. As long as at least one consumer is connected, the battery will provide power during a deficit, and also be vulnerable to the short-circuit event.

Installed batteries '''need to be kept dry'''. If outdoors, a roof has to be built over the tiles occupied by the battery. If a battery becomes wet (either due to rain or snowfall), there is a very high chance of a short circuit, causing an explosion and fire (probably spreading to adjacent batteries and connected devices). At least the rain will usually extinguish the fire...

Damage to a battery does not change its other properties and does not cause discharge (eg. a 1 hitpoint battery has the same capacity and wattage as a 100 hitpoint battery).

== Batteries as power supplies ==
As a power supply, the battery behaves just like any other power source in the game (eg. generators or solar panels), but each battery will deliver an unlimited amount of power. This means that any ''wattage'' can be delivered until the battery is completely discharged. It makes the battery not only convenient as buffers for wind turbines and solar panels, but also to cover arbitrary spikes in power usage, usually caused by turret arrays and other heavy power consumers that are only brought on-line sporadically.

The power output of a battery is theoretically unlimited. Even a huge colony that demands, say, 30,000 W of power can be powered by a single battery (but only for about 1 in-game hour if the battery is fully charged). Adding more batteries is only necessary to lengthen the time span.

If more than one battery is on the same power grid, all batteries with remaining charge will share the power load evenly.

The maximum amount of charge provided is 600 Wd (''watt-days''). Discharge time only depends on the power that is drawn. Eg. if exactly 595 W were drawn, a single battery would last exactly 1 in-game day (5 W of self-discharge have to be added). If only 295 W are drawn, it lasts for 2 days, etc. The maximum power draw is unlimited, so it is – theoretically – possible to empty a full battery in 1 tick of game time (instantly).

A disconnected battery will discharge at a rate of 5 W. This means that a fully charged battery can be stored for 120 days (1 in-game year) until depleted.

== Charging ==
A battery will automatically keep charging while it is connected to a power grid with excess power available. Selecting the battery will show the current charge status in the information window.

The power used for charging is unlimited; charging batteries will always draw all available power, but never cause a power deficiency on the grid.

All batteries in a power grid will evenly share the excess power for charging, but can only use half of it (the charge efficiency is 50%). In other words, to fully charge an empty battery, 1200 Wd of energy have to be provided, as well as 5 W extra to cover the self-discharge.

As an example, connecting an empty battery to a power grid with exactly 1205 W of available power will charge it to full in exactly 1 in-game day. If more power was available, charging would complete more quickly. 5 W of charging power would keep the battery at exactly the present charge level, merely nullifying the self-discharge.

In practice, the self-discharge can mostly be disregarded.

== Constructing, moving and storing ==
Batteries behave exactly like other furniture items in the game: they have to be constructed on solid terrain, using the construction skill. It takes 14 work units to build, and can be done even at construction level 0.

After construction, they can be uninstalled like furniture, and then moved to storage, taken to a character's inventory or on a caravan. Uninstalling and reinstalling does not cause additional charge loss, beyond the 5 W of self-discharge that always applies.

It is possible to take charged batteries on caravans as a power source for camps and newly founded colonies.

Batteries that are not installed can be stored in the open, also in rain or snowfall, as they can not short circuit. Like other furniture, they are not subject to ''decay''.

== Hazards ==
'''Batteries are very likely to explode in rain and snowfall'''. This can be completely avoided by keeping installed batteries under a roof; keeping them indoors is not necessary. The resulting explosion will not cause any discharge, but it will heavily damage the battery, and possibly surrounding structures as well, also causing a fire.

'''Batteries make the [[Events#Faulty Conduit Explosion|short circuit]] event ("Zztt...") more dangerous:''' all affected batteries will instantly discharge, causing an explosion in addition to the fire that is normally caused by the event. The more batteries are connected, the larger the explosion. ''Note that the event is unrelated to batteries'' – it can still happen if no batteries are connected, but will then only cause a small fire and no explosion. Empty batteries will not affect the event.

Note that it is not the batteries that explode, but the area around the power-conduit that is affected. This could be right next to a battery, but it is never the battery itself that causes the explosion.

While it is possible to lay the power conduits only under fireproof walls, this will not avoid the explosion damage, and any fires that might start as a result.

To mitigate the hazard from the ''short circuit'' event, batteries can be intermittently disconnected from the grid, and only brought online on demand. Note that for this measure to be effective, ''not a single power conduit must be on the disconnected power grid''. The short circuit event is related to the [[power conduit]]s – '''if no powered conduits are on a network, the event can not occur on this network'''. So in order to effectively protect the batteries, a [[power switch]] must be placed ''directly adjacent'' to the battery array, with no other power conduits directly connecting to the batteries. It is also possible to place the batteries adjacent to a power generator, and then decouple the generator with a switch – again, no power conduits can be behind the switch.

[[File:Zero_conduit_freezer.jpg|300px|thumb|right|The batteries in this setup connect directly to the wind turbine and the attached coolers, without any power conduits. This completely avoids the random short circuit event ("Zztt...") in this power network.]]

It is also possible to completely avoid building any ''power conduits'' at all. This is usually only practical for smaller, self-contained grids. The batteries themselves, as well as other power generating buildings, have built-in power conduits that are not susceptible to short circuits. If you can bridge any distances by these means alone, you can create a power grid that is completely safe.

If the above measures are impractical, [[firefoam popper]]s should be installed where an explosion would cause a lot of damage, such as a hydroponics facility or a storage area.

Battery performance is not affected by temperature, but like many other structures they are highly flammable and may catch fire if the surrounding temperature is very high. Somewhat contrary to the in-game description, the battery is not more susceptible to heat than other, comparable flammable structures. Even the most extreme heat waves will not make a battery explode or catch fire. It is therefore not necessary to keep batteries climatized.

== Strategy ==
Batteries are useful in most colonies, even if the colony does not rely on unstable power sources like [[solar panel]]s and [[wind turbine]]s.

If only renewable energy is used, at least one battery is mandatory, because sufficient power supply can never be guaranteed. Solar panels produce no power during the night and during an eclipse, and wind turbines are completely unreliable. If the colony has no other backup power source, it is highly recommended to keep some additional batteries behind a [[power switch]] on a separate network (see ''Hazards'' above), so they can be brought online in the case of a ''short circuit'' event.

Alternatively, some batteries can also be stored in a warehouse, and then placed down anywhere on the power grid on demand. This makes switches unnecessary.

Batteries can also be used to make fueled generators more economical. These generators provide constant power, but they also burn their fuel at a constant rate – no matter how much power is actually used. If you connect some batteries, you can at least catch half of the otherwise wasted energy, and then disable the generator until the batteries run dry. This will save 100% of the fuel for the time the generator is offline. This is especially helpful in the early game, where you might not even have enough power draw to fully load a single generator, and fuel will be usually scarce as well.

The energy stored by even a single battery is very high. 600 Wd are enough to power, for example, three [[cooler]]s at full power draw for an entire day, with no other source of power available. Therefore, building a lot of batteries ("just to be safe") is not necessary, or even harmful. Unless you take complex and expensive measures to avoid the ''short circuit'' event, having too many batteries online is a liability. Examine closely how much energy storage you need, and do not build more than that.

When you calculate the battery capacity that is necessary when using renewable energy, keep in mind that charge efficiency is only 50%. That is, only half of any excess energy will be effectively usable. This is particularly relevant when planning a greenhouse setup, of [[hydroponics basin]]s and a [[sun lamp]]. The ''sun lamp'' will draw 2900 W during the day, and 0 W during the night, for an average demand of 1450 W. However, it is not sufficient to generate only 1450 W at all times, hoping that a 3-battery array will even out the difference in power draw. This is because during the night, only half of the extra 1450 W will effectively charge the batteries, storing 8,700 Wh of energy (~360 Wd). This will only be enough to power the sun-lamp for 6 hours during the day. For the remaining 6 hours, the missing 1450 W will have to be provided by other means (usually a solar panel). Simply adding more batteries will not change this. Two batteries will provide enough buffering in this scenario.

The example setup, including 24 hydroponics basins, can be fully powered by one geothermal generator and a solar panel, connected to a single buffer battery.

Even in colonies that do not use wind or solar energy, batteries are useful to cover spikes in power usage, usually caused by turret arrays and devices like crematoriums, smelters and mineral scanners that are only brought online intermittently. A battery can cover arbitrarily high power needs, the size of the array only changes for how long that is possible.

As an example, an array of 20 mini-turrets and 4 autocannon turrets draws 3200 W of power. Instead of building another geothermal generator that would cover this, even a single charged battery can power this entire setup for more than 4 in-game hours. An array of 5 batteries can power the defenses for an entire in-game day. The battery array should be isolated with two power switches from the security grid and main power grid. This makes it then also very easy to power the entire setup with a single switch, as well as keep the batteries safe from the ''short circuit'' event.

</onlyinclude>
{{nav|power|wide}}
[[Category:Buildings]]
[[Category:Power]]

Battery

2019-10-11T00:28:30Z

Siggboy: /* Usage */

{{infobox main|building|
|name = Battery
|image = Battery.jpg|Battery
|description = Stores electricity when there is excess power and yields it when there is not. Warning - charged batteries tend to explode when heated or wet.
|type = Buildings
|type2 = Power
|placeable = Yes
|size = 1|2
|hp = 100
|efficiency = 50%
|power =
|buy = {{icon|metal|70}} {{icon|component|2}}
|sell = {{icon|metal|52.5}} + {{icon|component|1.5}}
|beauty = -15
|mass base = 20
|cover = 0.4
}}<onlyinclude>
{{Info|The ''battery'' is an electric device that can store energy and provide power. Energy is stored while there is a surplus on the connected electric grid; the charge capacity is 600 Wd (''watt days''). Each battery provides an unlimited amount of power if there is a deficit, until discharged. Charging power is unlimited as well, but happens at only 50% efficiency, ie. half the energy provided is lost. Batteries self-discharge at a rate of 5 W, even while disconnected. Batteries need to be operated under a roof, or they will frequently short circuit in rain or snowfall, causing an explosion.}}

== Usage ==
'''Batteries are built, moved and stored like other kinds of movable furniture.''' They will keep their charge while stored ("minified") or disconnected, only discharging at the normal rate of 5 W (self-discharge).

With regards to power production, they behave like the other electric buildings in the game. All power consumers can connect to batteries in the same way as to other power sources: within a 5-tile radius, all consumers can directly connect to a battery (or array of batteries), without any power conduits in between.

In order to charge a battery, it has to be directly connected to a power grid with excess power. It is not possible to connect to batteries "through" power consumers (this is because consumers can not be connected to more than one power grid at the same time).

Just like the other power producing buildings, a battery '''acts as a power conduit''' on the 2 tiles it covers.

Installed batteries '''can not be switched off manually'''. As long as at least one consumer is connected, the battery will provide power during a deficit, and also be vulnerable to the short-circuit event.

Installed batteries '''need to be kept dry'''. If outdoors, a roof has to be built over the tiles occupied by the battery. If a battery becomes wet (either due to rain or snowfall), there is a very high chance of a short circuit, causing an explosion and fire (probably spreading to adjacent batteries and connected devices). At least the rain will usually extinguish the fire...

Damage to a battery does not change its other properties and does not cause discharge (eg. a 1 hitpoint battery has the same capacity and wattage as a 100 hitpoint battery).

== Batteries as power supplies ==
As a power supply, the battery behaves just like any other power source in the game (eg. generators or solar panels), but each battery will deliver an unlimited amount of power. This means that any ''wattage'' can be delivered until the battery is completely discharged. It makes the battery not only convenient as buffers for wind turbines and solar panels, but also to cover arbitrary spikes in power usage, usually caused by turret arrays and other heavy power consumers that are only brought on-line sporadically.

The power output of a battery is theoretically unlimited. Even a huge colony that demands, say, 30,000 W of power can be powered by a single battery (but only for about 1 in-game hour if the battery is fully charged). Adding more batteries is only necessary to lengthen the time span.

If more than one battery is on the same power grid, all batteries with remaining charge will share the power load evenly.

The maximum amount of charge provided is 600 Wd (''watt-days''). Discharge time only depends on the power that is drawn. Eg. if exactly 595 W were drawn, a single battery would last exactly 1 in-game day (5 W of self-discharge have to be added). If only 295 W are drawn, it lasts for 2 days, etc. The maximum power draw is unlimited, so it is – theoretically – possible to empty a full battery in 1 tick of game time (instantly).

A disconnected battery will discharge at a rate of 5 W. This means that a fully charged battery can be stored for 120 days (1 in-game year) until depleted.

== Charging ==
A battery will automatically keep charging while it is connected to a power grid with excess power available. Selecting the battery will show the current charge status in the information window.

The power used for charging is unlimited; charging batteries will always draw all available power, but never cause a power deficiency on the grid.

All batteries in a power grid will evenly share the excess power for charging, but can only use half of it (the charge efficiency is 50%). In other words, to fully charge an empty battery, 1200 Wd of energy have to be provided, as well as 5 W extra to cover the self-discharge.

As an example, connecting an empty battery to a power grid with exactly 1205 W of available power will charge it to full in exactly 1 in-game day. If more power was available, charging would complete more quickly. 5 W of charging power would keep the battery at exactly the present charge level, merely nullifying the self-discharge.

In practice, the self-discharge can mostly be disregarded.

== Constructing, moving and storing ==
Batteries behave exactly like other furniture items in the game: they have to be constructed on solid terrain, using the construction skill. It takes 14 work units to build, and can be done even at construction level 0.

After construction, they can be uninstalled like furniture, and then moved to storage, taken to a character's inventory or on a caravan. Uninstalling and reinstalling does not cause additional charge loss, beyond the 5 W of self-discharge that always applies.

It is possible to take charged batteries on caravans as a power source for camps and newly founded colonies.

Batteries that are not installed can be stored in the open, also in rain or snowfall, as they can not short circuit. Like other furniture, they are not subject to ''decay''.

== Hazards ==
'''Batteries are very likely to explode in rain and snowfall'''. This can be completely avoided by keeping installed batteries under a roof; keeping them indoors is not necessary. The resulting explosion will not cause any discharge, but it will heavily damage the battery, and possibly surrounding structures as well, also causing a fire.

'''Batteries make the [[Events#Faulty Conduit Explosion|short circuit]] event ("Zztt...") more dangerous:''' all affected batteries will instantly discharge, causing an explosion in addition to the fire that is normally caused by the event. The more batteries are connected, the larger the explosion. ''Note that the event is unrelated to batteries'' – it can still happen if no batteries are connected, but will then only cause a small fire and no explosion. Empty batteries will not affect the event.

Note that it is not the batteries that explode, but the area around the power-conduit that is affected. This could be right next to a battery, but it is never the battery itself that causes the explosion.

While it is possible to lay the power conduits only under fireproof walls, this will not avoid the explosion damage, and any fires that might start as a result.

To mitigate the hazard from the ''short circuit'' event, batteries can be intermittently disconnected from the grid, and only brought online on demand. Note that for this measure to be effective, ''not a single power conduit must be on the disconnected power grid''. The short circuit event is related to the [[power conduit]]s – '''if no powered conduits are on a network, the event can not occur on this network'''. So in order to effectively protect the batteries, a [[power switch]] must be placed ''directly adjacent'' to the battery array, with no other power conduits directly connecting to the batteries. It is also possible to place the batteries adjacent to a power generator, and then decouple the generator with a switch – again, no power conduits can be behind the switch.

[[File:Zero_conduit_freezer.jpg|300px|thumb|right|The batteries in this setup connect directly to the wind turbine and the attached coolers, without any power conduits. This completely avoids the random short circuit event ("Zztt...") in this power network.]]

It is also possible to completely avoid building any ''power conduits'' at all. This is usually only practical for smaller, self-contained grids. The batteries themselves, as well as other power generating buildings, have built-in power conduits that are not susceptible to short circuits. If you can bridge any distances by these means alone, you can create a power grid that is completely safe.

If the above measures are impractical, [[firefoam popper]]s should be installed where an explosion would cause a lot of damage, such as a hydroponics facility or a storage area.

Battery performance is not affected by temperature, but like many other structures they are highly flammable and may catch fire if the surrounding temperature is very high. Somewhat contrary to the in-game description, the battery is not more susceptible to heat than other, comparable flammable structures. Even the most extreme heat waves will not make a battery explode or catch fire. It is therefore not necessary to keep batteries climatized.

== Strategy ==
Batteries are useful in most colonies, even if the colony does not rely on unstable power sources like [[solar panel]]s and [[wind turbine]]s.

If only renewable energy is used, at least one battery is mandatory, because sufficient power supply can never be guaranteed. Solar panels produce no power during the night and during an eclipse, and wind turbines are completely unreliable. If the colony has no other backup power source, it is highly recommended to keep some additional batteries behind a [[power switch]] on a separate network (see ''Hazards'' above), so they can be brought online in the case of a ''short circuit'' event.

Alternatively, some batteries can also be stored in a warehouse, and then placed down anywhere on the power grid on demand. This makes switches unnecessary.

Batteries can also be used to make fueled generators more economical. These generators provide constant power, but they also burn their fuel at a constant rate – no matter how much power is actually used. If you connect some batteries, you can at least catch half of the otherwise wasted energy, and then disable the generator until the batteries run dry. This will save 100% of the fuel for the time the generator is offline. This is especially helpful in the early game, where you might not even have enough power draw to fully load a single generator, and fuel will be usually scarce as well.

The energy stored by even a single battery is very high. 600 Wd are enough to power, for example, three [[cooler]]s at full power draw for an entire day, with no other source of power available. Therefore, building a lot of batteries ("just to be safe") is not necessary, or even harmful. Unless you take complex and expensive measures to avoid the ''short circuit'' event, having too many batteries online is a liability. Examine closely how much energy storage you need, and do not build more than that.

When you calculate the battery capacity that is necessary when using renewable energy, keep in mind that charge efficiency is only 50%. That is, only half of any excess energy will be effectively usable. This is particularly relevant when planning a greenhouse setup, of [[hydroponics basin]]s and a [[sun lamp]]. The ''sun lamp'' will draw 2900 W during the day, and 0 W during the night, for an average demand of 1450 W. However, it is not sufficient to generate only 1450 W at all times, hoping that a 3-battery array will even out the difference in power draw. This is because during the night, only half of the extra 1450 W will effectively charge the batteries, storing 8,700 Wh of energy (~360 Wd). This will only be enough to power the sun-lamp for 6 hours during the day. For the remaining 6 hours, the missing 1450 W will have to be provided by other means (usually a solar panel). Simply adding more batteries will not change this. Two batteries will provide enough buffering in this scenario.

The example setup, including 24 hydroponics basins, can be fully powered by one geothermal generator and a solar panel, connected to a single buffer battery.

Even in colonies that do not use wind or solar energy, batteries are useful to cover spikes in power usage, usually caused by turret arrays and devices like crematoriums, smelters and mineral scanners that are only brought online intermittently. A battery can cover arbitrarily high power needs, the size of the array only changes for how long that is possible.

As an example, an array of 20 mini-turrets and 4 autocannon turrets draws 3200 W of power. Instead of building another geothermal generator that would cover this, even a single charged battery can power this entire setup for more than 4 in-game hours. An array of 5 batteries can power the defenses for an entire in-game day. The battery array should be isolated with two power switches from the security grid and main power grid. This makes it then also very easy to power the entire setup with a single switch, as well as keep the batteries safe from the ''short circuit'' event.

</onlyinclude>
{{nav|power|wide}}
[[Category:Buildings]]
[[Category:Power]]

Battery

2019-10-11T00:27:45Z

Siggboy: /* Usage */

{{infobox main|building|
|name = Battery
|image = Battery.jpg|Battery
|description = Stores electricity when there is excess power and yields it when there is not. Warning - charged batteries tend to explode when heated or wet.
|type = Buildings
|type2 = Power
|placeable = Yes
|size = 1|2
|hp = 100
|efficiency = 50%
|power =
|buy = {{icon|metal|70}} {{icon|component|2}}
|sell = {{icon|metal|52.5}} + {{icon|component|1.5}}
|beauty = -15
|mass base = 20
|cover = 0.4
}}<onlyinclude>
{{Info|The ''battery'' is an electric device that can store energy and provide power. Energy is stored while there is a surplus on the connected electric grid; the charge capacity is 600 Wd (''watt days''). Each battery provides an unlimited amount of power if there is a deficit, until discharged. Charging power is unlimited as well, but happens at only 50% efficiency, ie. half the energy provided is lost. Batteries self-discharge at a rate of 5 W, even while disconnected. Batteries need to be operated under a roof, or they will frequently short circuit in rain or snowfall, causing an explosion.}}

== Usage ==
'''Batteries are built, moved and stored like other kinds of movable furniture.''' They will keep their charge while stored ("minified") or disconnected, only discharging at the normal rate of 5 W (self-discharge).

With regards to power production, they behave like the other electric buildings in the game. All power consumers can connect to batteries in the same way as to other power sources: within a 5-tile radius, all consumers can directly connect to a battery (or array of batteries), without any power conduits in between.

In order to charge a battery, it has to be directly connected to a power grid with excess power. It is not possible to connect to batteries "through" power consumers (this is because consumers can not be connected to more than one power grid at the same time).

Just like the other power producing buildings, a battery '''acts as a power conduit''' on the 2 tiles it covers.

Installed batteries '''can not be switched off manually'''. As long as at least one consumer is connected, the battery will provide power during a deficit, and also be vulnerable to the short-circuit event.

Installed batteries '''need to be kept dry'''. If outdoors, a roof has to be built over the tiles occupied by the battery. If a battery becomes wet (either due to rain or snowfall), there is a very high chance of a short circuit, causing an explosion and fire (probably spreading to adjacent batteries and connected devices). At least the rain will usually extinguish the fire...

Damage to a battery does not change it other properties and does not lose charge (eg. a 1 hitpoint battery has the same capacity and wattage as a 100 hitpoint battery).

== Batteries as power supplies ==
As a power supply, the battery behaves just like any other power source in the game (eg. generators or solar panels), but each battery will deliver an unlimited amount of power. This means that any ''wattage'' can be delivered until the battery is completely discharged. It makes the battery not only convenient as buffers for wind turbines and solar panels, but also to cover arbitrary spikes in power usage, usually caused by turret arrays and other heavy power consumers that are only brought on-line sporadically.

The power output of a battery is theoretically unlimited. Even a huge colony that demands, say, 30,000 W of power can be powered by a single battery (but only for about 1 in-game hour if the battery is fully charged). Adding more batteries is only necessary to lengthen the time span.

If more than one battery is on the same power grid, all batteries with remaining charge will share the power load evenly.

The maximum amount of charge provided is 600 Wd (''watt-days''). Discharge time only depends on the power that is drawn. Eg. if exactly 595 W were drawn, a single battery would last exactly 1 in-game day (5 W of self-discharge have to be added). If only 295 W are drawn, it lasts for 2 days, etc. The maximum power draw is unlimited, so it is – theoretically – possible to empty a full battery in 1 tick of game time (instantly).

A disconnected battery will discharge at a rate of 5 W. This means that a fully charged battery can be stored for 120 days (1 in-game year) until depleted.

== Charging ==
A battery will automatically keep charging while it is connected to a power grid with excess power available. Selecting the battery will show the current charge status in the information window.

The power used for charging is unlimited; charging batteries will always draw all available power, but never cause a power deficiency on the grid.

All batteries in a power grid will evenly share the excess power for charging, but can only use half of it (the charge efficiency is 50%). In other words, to fully charge an empty battery, 1200 Wd of energy have to be provided, as well as 5 W extra to cover the self-discharge.

As an example, connecting an empty battery to a power grid with exactly 1205 W of available power will charge it to full in exactly 1 in-game day. If more power was available, charging would complete more quickly. 5 W of charging power would keep the battery at exactly the present charge level, merely nullifying the self-discharge.

In practice, the self-discharge can mostly be disregarded.

== Constructing, moving and storing ==
Batteries behave exactly like other furniture items in the game: they have to be constructed on solid terrain, using the construction skill. It takes 14 work units to build, and can be done even at construction level 0.

After construction, they can be uninstalled like furniture, and then moved to storage, taken to a character's inventory or on a caravan. Uninstalling and reinstalling does not cause additional charge loss, beyond the 5 W of self-discharge that always applies.

It is possible to take charged batteries on caravans as a power source for camps and newly founded colonies.

Batteries that are not installed can be stored in the open, also in rain or snowfall, as they can not short circuit. Like other furniture, they are not subject to ''decay''.

== Hazards ==
'''Batteries are very likely to explode in rain and snowfall'''. This can be completely avoided by keeping installed batteries under a roof; keeping them indoors is not necessary. The resulting explosion will not cause any discharge, but it will heavily damage the battery, and possibly surrounding structures as well, also causing a fire.

'''Batteries make the [[Events#Faulty Conduit Explosion|short circuit]] event ("Zztt...") more dangerous:''' all affected batteries will instantly discharge, causing an explosion in addition to the fire that is normally caused by the event. The more batteries are connected, the larger the explosion. ''Note that the event is unrelated to batteries'' – it can still happen if no batteries are connected, but will then only cause a small fire and no explosion. Empty batteries will not affect the event.

Note that it is not the batteries that explode, but the area around the power-conduit that is affected. This could be right next to a battery, but it is never the battery itself that causes the explosion.

While it is possible to lay the power conduits only under fireproof walls, this will not avoid the explosion damage, and any fires that might start as a result.

To mitigate the hazard from the ''short circuit'' event, batteries can be intermittently disconnected from the grid, and only brought online on demand. Note that for this measure to be effective, ''not a single power conduit must be on the disconnected power grid''. The short circuit event is related to the [[power conduit]]s – '''if no powered conduits are on a network, the event can not occur on this network'''. So in order to effectively protect the batteries, a [[power switch]] must be placed ''directly adjacent'' to the battery array, with no other power conduits directly connecting to the batteries. It is also possible to place the batteries adjacent to a power generator, and then decouple the generator with a switch – again, no power conduits can be behind the switch.

[[File:Zero_conduit_freezer.jpg|300px|thumb|right|The batteries in this setup connect directly to the wind turbine and the attached coolers, without any power conduits. This completely avoids the random short circuit event ("Zztt...") in this power network.]]

It is also possible to completely avoid building any ''power conduits'' at all. This is usually only practical for smaller, self-contained grids. The batteries themselves, as well as other power generating buildings, have built-in power conduits that are not susceptible to short circuits. If you can bridge any distances by these means alone, you can create a power grid that is completely safe.

If the above measures are impractical, [[firefoam popper]]s should be installed where an explosion would cause a lot of damage, such as a hydroponics facility or a storage area.

Battery performance is not affected by temperature, but like many other structures they are highly flammable and may catch fire if the surrounding temperature is very high. Somewhat contrary to the in-game description, the battery is not more susceptible to heat than other, comparable flammable structures. Even the most extreme heat waves will not make a battery explode or catch fire. It is therefore not necessary to keep batteries climatized.

== Strategy ==
Batteries are useful in most colonies, even if the colony does not rely on unstable power sources like [[solar panel]]s and [[wind turbine]]s.

If only renewable energy is used, at least one battery is mandatory, because sufficient power supply can never be guaranteed. Solar panels produce no power during the night and during an eclipse, and wind turbines are completely unreliable. If the colony has no other backup power source, it is highly recommended to keep some additional batteries behind a [[power switch]] on a separate network (see ''Hazards'' above), so they can be brought online in the case of a ''short circuit'' event.

Alternatively, some batteries can also be stored in a warehouse, and then placed down anywhere on the power grid on demand. This makes switches unnecessary.

Batteries can also be used to make fueled generators more economical. These generators provide constant power, but they also burn their fuel at a constant rate – no matter how much power is actually used. If you connect some batteries, you can at least catch half of the otherwise wasted energy, and then disable the generator until the batteries run dry. This will save 100% of the fuel for the time the generator is offline. This is especially helpful in the early game, where you might not even have enough power draw to fully load a single generator, and fuel will be usually scarce as well.

The energy stored by even a single battery is very high. 600 Wd are enough to power, for example, three [[cooler]]s at full power draw for an entire day, with no other source of power available. Therefore, building a lot of batteries ("just to be safe") is not necessary, or even harmful. Unless you take complex and expensive measures to avoid the ''short circuit'' event, having too many batteries online is a liability. Examine closely how much energy storage you need, and do not build more than that.

When you calculate the battery capacity that is necessary when using renewable energy, keep in mind that charge efficiency is only 50%. That is, only half of any excess energy will be effectively usable. This is particularly relevant when planning a greenhouse setup, of [[hydroponics basin]]s and a [[sun lamp]]. The ''sun lamp'' will draw 2900 W during the day, and 0 W during the night, for an average demand of 1450 W. However, it is not sufficient to generate only 1450 W at all times, hoping that a 3-battery array will even out the difference in power draw. This is because during the night, only half of the extra 1450 W will effectively charge the batteries, storing 8,700 Wh of energy (~360 Wd). This will only be enough to power the sun-lamp for 6 hours during the day. For the remaining 6 hours, the missing 1450 W will have to be provided by other means (usually a solar panel). Simply adding more batteries will not change this. Two batteries will provide enough buffering in this scenario.

The example setup, including 24 hydroponics basins, can be fully powered by one geothermal generator and a solar panel, connected to a single buffer battery.

Even in colonies that do not use wind or solar energy, batteries are useful to cover spikes in power usage, usually caused by turret arrays and devices like crematoriums, smelters and mineral scanners that are only brought online intermittently. A battery can cover arbitrarily high power needs, the size of the array only changes for how long that is possible.

As an example, an array of 20 mini-turrets and 4 autocannon turrets draws 3200 W of power. Instead of building another geothermal generator that would cover this, even a single charged battery can power this entire setup for more than 4 in-game hours. An array of 5 batteries can power the defenses for an entire in-game day. The battery array should be isolated with two power switches from the security grid and main power grid. This makes it then also very easy to power the entire setup with a single switch, as well as keep the batteries safe from the ''short circuit'' event.

</onlyinclude>
{{nav|power|wide}}
[[Category:Buildings]]
[[Category:Power]]

Battery

2019-10-11T00:14:00Z

Siggboy: /* Strategy */

{{infobox main|building|
|name = Battery
|image = Battery.jpg|Battery
|description = Stores electricity when there is excess power and yields it when there is not. Warning - charged batteries tend to explode when heated or wet.
|type = Buildings
|type2 = Power
|placeable = Yes
|size = 1|2
|hp = 100
|efficiency = 50%
|power =
|buy = {{icon|metal|70}} {{icon|component|2}}
|sell = {{icon|metal|52.5}} + {{icon|component|1.5}}
|beauty = -15
|mass base = 20
|cover = 0.4
}}<onlyinclude>
{{Info|The ''battery'' is an electric device that can store energy and provide power. Energy is stored while there is a surplus on the connected electric grid; the charge capacity is 600 Wd (''watt days''). Each battery provides an unlimited amount of power if there is a deficit, until discharged. Charging power is unlimited as well, but happens at only 50% efficiency, ie. half the energy provided is lost. Batteries self-discharge at a rate of 5 W, even while disconnected. Batteries need to be operated under a roof, or they will frequently short circuit in rain or snowfall, causing an explosion.}}

== Usage ==
'''Batteries are built, moved and stored like other kinds of movable furniture.''' They will keep their charge while stored ("minified") or disconnected, only discharging at the normal rate of 5 W (self-discharge).

With regards to power production, they behave like the other electric buildings in the game. All power consumers can connect to batteries in the same way as to other power sources: within a 5-tile radius, all consumers can directly connect to a battery (or array of batteries), without any power conduits in between.

In order to charge a battery, it has to be directly connected to a power grid with excess power. It is not possible to connect to batteries "through" power consumers (this is because consumers can not be connected to more than one power grid at the same time).

Just like the other power producing buildings, a battery '''acts as a power conduit''' on the 2 tiles it covers.

Installed batteries '''can not be switched off manually'''. As long as at least one consumer is connected, the battery will provide power during a deficit, and also be vulnerable to the short-circuit event.

Installed batteries '''need to be kept dry'''. If outdoors, a roof has to be built over the tiles occupied by the battery. If a battery becomes wet (either due to rain or snowfall), there is a very high chance of a short circuit, causing and explosion and fire damage (possibly spreading to adjacent batteries and connected devices).

Damage to a battery does not change it other properties and does not lose charge (eg. a 1 hitpoint battery has the same capacity and wattage as a 100 hitpoint battery).

== Batteries as power supplies ==
As a power supply, the battery behaves just like any other power source in the game (eg. generators or solar panels), but each battery will deliver an unlimited amount of power. This means that any ''wattage'' can be delivered until the battery is completely discharged. It makes the battery not only convenient as buffers for wind turbines and solar panels, but also to cover arbitrary spikes in power usage, usually caused by turret arrays and other heavy power consumers that are only brought on-line sporadically.

The power output of a battery is theoretically unlimited. Even a huge colony that demands, say, 30,000 W of power can be powered by a single battery (but only for about 1 in-game hour if the battery is fully charged). Adding more batteries is only necessary to lengthen the time span.

If more than one battery is on the same power grid, all batteries with remaining charge will share the power load evenly.

The maximum amount of charge provided is 600 Wd (''watt-days''). Discharge time only depends on the power that is drawn. Eg. if exactly 595 W were drawn, a single battery would last exactly 1 in-game day (5 W of self-discharge have to be added). If only 295 W are drawn, it lasts for 2 days, etc. The maximum power draw is unlimited, so it is – theoretically – possible to empty a full battery in 1 tick of game time (instantly).

A disconnected battery will discharge at a rate of 5 W. This means that a fully charged battery can be stored for 120 days (1 in-game year) until depleted.

== Charging ==
A battery will automatically keep charging while it is connected to a power grid with excess power available. Selecting the battery will show the current charge status in the information window.

The power used for charging is unlimited; charging batteries will always draw all available power, but never cause a power deficiency on the grid.

All batteries in a power grid will evenly share the excess power for charging, but can only use half of it (the charge efficiency is 50%). In other words, to fully charge an empty battery, 1200 Wd of energy have to be provided, as well as 5 W extra to cover the self-discharge.

As an example, connecting an empty battery to a power grid with exactly 1205 W of available power will charge it to full in exactly 1 in-game day. If more power was available, charging would complete more quickly. 5 W of charging power would keep the battery at exactly the present charge level, merely nullifying the self-discharge.

In practice, the self-discharge can mostly be disregarded.

== Constructing, moving and storing ==
Batteries behave exactly like other furniture items in the game: they have to be constructed on solid terrain, using the construction skill. It takes 14 work units to build, and can be done even at construction level 0.

After construction, they can be uninstalled like furniture, and then moved to storage, taken to a character's inventory or on a caravan. Uninstalling and reinstalling does not cause additional charge loss, beyond the 5 W of self-discharge that always applies.

It is possible to take charged batteries on caravans as a power source for camps and newly founded colonies.

Batteries that are not installed can be stored in the open, also in rain or snowfall, as they can not short circuit. Like other furniture, they are not subject to ''decay''.

== Hazards ==
'''Batteries are very likely to explode in rain and snowfall'''. This can be completely avoided by keeping installed batteries under a roof; keeping them indoors is not necessary. The resulting explosion will not cause any discharge, but it will heavily damage the battery, and possibly surrounding structures as well, also causing a fire.

'''Batteries make the [[Events#Faulty Conduit Explosion|short circuit]] event ("Zztt...") more dangerous:''' all affected batteries will instantly discharge, causing an explosion in addition to the fire that is normally caused by the event. The more batteries are connected, the larger the explosion. ''Note that the event is unrelated to batteries'' – it can still happen if no batteries are connected, but will then only cause a small fire and no explosion. Empty batteries will not affect the event.

Note that it is not the batteries that explode, but the area around the power-conduit that is affected. This could be right next to a battery, but it is never the battery itself that causes the explosion.

While it is possible to lay the power conduits only under fireproof walls, this will not avoid the explosion damage, and any fires that might start as a result.

To mitigate the hazard from the ''short circuit'' event, batteries can be intermittently disconnected from the grid, and only brought online on demand. Note that for this measure to be effective, ''not a single power conduit must be on the disconnected power grid''. The short circuit event is related to the [[power conduit]]s – '''if no powered conduits are on a network, the event can not occur on this network'''. So in order to effectively protect the batteries, a [[power switch]] must be placed ''directly adjacent'' to the battery array, with no other power conduits directly connecting to the batteries. It is also possible to place the batteries adjacent to a power generator, and then decouple the generator with a switch – again, no power conduits can be behind the switch.

[[File:Zero_conduit_freezer.jpg|300px|thumb|right|The batteries in this setup connect directly to the wind turbine and the attached coolers, without any power conduits. This completely avoids the random short circuit event ("Zztt...") in this power network.]]

It is also possible to completely avoid building any ''power conduits'' at all. This is usually only practical for smaller, self-contained grids. The batteries themselves, as well as other power generating buildings, have built-in power conduits that are not susceptible to short circuits. If you can bridge any distances by these means alone, you can create a power grid that is completely safe.

If the above measures are impractical, [[firefoam popper]]s should be installed where an explosion would cause a lot of damage, such as a hydroponics facility or a storage area.

Battery performance is not affected by temperature, but like many other structures they are highly flammable and may catch fire if the surrounding temperature is very high. Somewhat contrary to the in-game description, the battery is not more susceptible to heat than other, comparable flammable structures. Even the most extreme heat waves will not make a battery explode or catch fire. It is therefore not necessary to keep batteries climatized.

== Strategy ==
Batteries are useful in most colonies, even if the colony does not rely on unstable power sources like [[solar panel]]s and [[wind turbine]]s.

If only renewable energy is used, at least one battery is mandatory, because sufficient power supply can never be guaranteed. Solar panels produce no power during the night and during an eclipse, and wind turbines are completely unreliable. If the colony has no other backup power source, it is highly recommended to keep some additional batteries behind a [[power switch]] on a separate network (see ''Hazards'' above), so they can be brought online in the case of a ''short circuit'' event.

Alternatively, some batteries can also be stored in a warehouse, and then placed down anywhere on the power grid on demand. This makes switches unnecessary.

Batteries can also be used to make fueled generators more economical. These generators provide constant power, but they also burn their fuel at a constant rate – no matter how much power is actually used. If you connect some batteries, you can at least catch half of the otherwise wasted energy, and then disable the generator until the batteries run dry. This will save 100% of the fuel for the time the generator is offline. This is especially helpful in the early game, where you might not even have enough power draw to fully load a single generator, and fuel will be usually scarce as well.

The energy stored by even a single battery is very high. 600 Wd are enough to power, for example, three [[cooler]]s at full power draw for an entire day, with no other source of power available. Therefore, building a lot of batteries ("just to be safe") is not necessary, or even harmful. Unless you take complex and expensive measures to avoid the ''short circuit'' event, having too many batteries online is a liability. Examine closely how much energy storage you need, and do not build more than that.

When you calculate the battery capacity that is necessary when using renewable energy, keep in mind that charge efficiency is only 50%. That is, only half of any excess energy will be effectively usable. This is particularly relevant when planning a greenhouse setup, of [[hydroponics basin]]s and a [[sun lamp]]. The ''sun lamp'' will draw 2900 W during the day, and 0 W during the night, for an average demand of 1450 W. However, it is not sufficient to generate only 1450 W at all times, hoping that a 3-battery array will even out the difference in power draw. This is because during the night, only half of the extra 1450 W will effectively charge the batteries, storing 8,700 Wh of energy (~360 Wd). This will only be enough to power the sun-lamp for 6 hours during the day. For the remaining 6 hours, the missing 1450 W will have to be provided by other means (usually a solar panel). Simply adding more batteries will not change this. Two batteries will provide enough buffering in this scenario.

The example setup, including 24 hydroponics basins, can be fully powered by one geothermal generator and a solar panel, connected to a single buffer battery.

Even in colonies that do not use wind or solar energy, batteries are useful to cover spikes in power usage, usually caused by turret arrays and devices like crematoriums, smelters and mineral scanners that are only brought online intermittently. A battery can cover arbitrarily high power needs, the size of the array only changes for how long that is possible.

As an example, an array of 20 mini-turrets and 4 autocannon turrets draws 3200 W of power. Instead of building another geothermal generator that would cover this, even a single charged battery can power this entire setup for more than 4 in-game hours. An array of 5 batteries can power the defenses for an entire in-game day. The battery array should be isolated with two power switches from the security grid and main power grid. This makes it then also very easy to power the entire setup with a single switch, as well as keep the batteries safe from the ''short circuit'' event.

</onlyinclude>
{{nav|power|wide}}
[[Category:Buildings]]
[[Category:Power]]

Battery

2019-10-11T00:12:04Z

Siggboy: /* Strategy */

{{infobox main|building|
|name = Battery
|image = Battery.jpg|Battery
|description = Stores electricity when there is excess power and yields it when there is not. Warning - charged batteries tend to explode when heated or wet.
|type = Buildings
|type2 = Power
|placeable = Yes
|size = 1|2
|hp = 100
|efficiency = 50%
|power =
|buy = {{icon|metal|70}} {{icon|component|2}}
|sell = {{icon|metal|52.5}} + {{icon|component|1.5}}
|beauty = -15
|mass base = 20
|cover = 0.4
}}<onlyinclude>
{{Info|The ''battery'' is an electric device that can store energy and provide power. Energy is stored while there is a surplus on the connected electric grid; the charge capacity is 600 Wd (''watt days''). Each battery provides an unlimited amount of power if there is a deficit, until discharged. Charging power is unlimited as well, but happens at only 50% efficiency, ie. half the energy provided is lost. Batteries self-discharge at a rate of 5 W, even while disconnected. Batteries need to be operated under a roof, or they will frequently short circuit in rain or snowfall, causing an explosion.}}

== Usage ==
'''Batteries are built, moved and stored like other kinds of movable furniture.''' They will keep their charge while stored ("minified") or disconnected, only discharging at the normal rate of 5 W (self-discharge).

With regards to power production, they behave like the other electric buildings in the game. All power consumers can connect to batteries in the same way as to other power sources: within a 5-tile radius, all consumers can directly connect to a battery (or array of batteries), without any power conduits in between.

In order to charge a battery, it has to be directly connected to a power grid with excess power. It is not possible to connect to batteries "through" power consumers (this is because consumers can not be connected to more than one power grid at the same time).

Just like the other power producing buildings, a battery '''acts as a power conduit''' on the 2 tiles it covers.

Installed batteries '''can not be switched off manually'''. As long as at least one consumer is connected, the battery will provide power during a deficit, and also be vulnerable to the short-circuit event.

Installed batteries '''need to be kept dry'''. If outdoors, a roof has to be built over the tiles occupied by the battery. If a battery becomes wet (either due to rain or snowfall), there is a very high chance of a short circuit, causing and explosion and fire damage (possibly spreading to adjacent batteries and connected devices).

Damage to a battery does not change it other properties and does not lose charge (eg. a 1 hitpoint battery has the same capacity and wattage as a 100 hitpoint battery).

== Batteries as power supplies ==
As a power supply, the battery behaves just like any other power source in the game (eg. generators or solar panels), but each battery will deliver an unlimited amount of power. This means that any ''wattage'' can be delivered until the battery is completely discharged. It makes the battery not only convenient as buffers for wind turbines and solar panels, but also to cover arbitrary spikes in power usage, usually caused by turret arrays and other heavy power consumers that are only brought on-line sporadically.

The power output of a battery is theoretically unlimited. Even a huge colony that demands, say, 30,000 W of power can be powered by a single battery (but only for about 1 in-game hour if the battery is fully charged). Adding more batteries is only necessary to lengthen the time span.

If more than one battery is on the same power grid, all batteries with remaining charge will share the power load evenly.

The maximum amount of charge provided is 600 Wd (''watt-days''). Discharge time only depends on the power that is drawn. Eg. if exactly 595 W were drawn, a single battery would last exactly 1 in-game day (5 W of self-discharge have to be added). If only 295 W are drawn, it lasts for 2 days, etc. The maximum power draw is unlimited, so it is – theoretically – possible to empty a full battery in 1 tick of game time (instantly).

A disconnected battery will discharge at a rate of 5 W. This means that a fully charged battery can be stored for 120 days (1 in-game year) until depleted.

== Charging ==
A battery will automatically keep charging while it is connected to a power grid with excess power available. Selecting the battery will show the current charge status in the information window.

The power used for charging is unlimited; charging batteries will always draw all available power, but never cause a power deficiency on the grid.

All batteries in a power grid will evenly share the excess power for charging, but can only use half of it (the charge efficiency is 50%). In other words, to fully charge an empty battery, 1200 Wd of energy have to be provided, as well as 5 W extra to cover the self-discharge.

As an example, connecting an empty battery to a power grid with exactly 1205 W of available power will charge it to full in exactly 1 in-game day. If more power was available, charging would complete more quickly. 5 W of charging power would keep the battery at exactly the present charge level, merely nullifying the self-discharge.

In practice, the self-discharge can mostly be disregarded.

== Constructing, moving and storing ==
Batteries behave exactly like other furniture items in the game: they have to be constructed on solid terrain, using the construction skill. It takes 14 work units to build, and can be done even at construction level 0.

After construction, they can be uninstalled like furniture, and then moved to storage, taken to a character's inventory or on a caravan. Uninstalling and reinstalling does not cause additional charge loss, beyond the 5 W of self-discharge that always applies.

It is possible to take charged batteries on caravans as a power source for camps and newly founded colonies.

Batteries that are not installed can be stored in the open, also in rain or snowfall, as they can not short circuit. Like other furniture, they are not subject to ''decay''.

== Hazards ==
'''Batteries are very likely to explode in rain and snowfall'''. This can be completely avoided by keeping installed batteries under a roof; keeping them indoors is not necessary. The resulting explosion will not cause any discharge, but it will heavily damage the battery, and possibly surrounding structures as well, also causing a fire.

'''Batteries make the [[Events#Faulty Conduit Explosion|short circuit]] event ("Zztt...") more dangerous:''' all affected batteries will instantly discharge, causing an explosion in addition to the fire that is normally caused by the event. The more batteries are connected, the larger the explosion. ''Note that the event is unrelated to batteries'' – it can still happen if no batteries are connected, but will then only cause a small fire and no explosion. Empty batteries will not affect the event.

Note that it is not the batteries that explode, but the area around the power-conduit that is affected. This could be right next to a battery, but it is never the battery itself that causes the explosion.

While it is possible to lay the power conduits only under fireproof walls, this will not avoid the explosion damage, and any fires that might start as a result.

To mitigate the hazard from the ''short circuit'' event, batteries can be intermittently disconnected from the grid, and only brought online on demand. Note that for this measure to be effective, ''not a single power conduit must be on the disconnected power grid''. The short circuit event is related to the [[power conduit]]s – '''if no powered conduits are on a network, the event can not occur on this network'''. So in order to effectively protect the batteries, a [[power switch]] must be placed ''directly adjacent'' to the battery array, with no other power conduits directly connecting to the batteries. It is also possible to place the batteries adjacent to a power generator, and then decouple the generator with a switch – again, no power conduits can be behind the switch.

[[File:Zero_conduit_freezer.jpg|300px|thumb|right|The batteries in this setup connect directly to the wind turbine and the attached coolers, without any power conduits. This completely avoids the random short circuit event ("Zztt...") in this power network.]]

It is also possible to completely avoid building any ''power conduits'' at all. This is usually only practical for smaller, self-contained grids. The batteries themselves, as well as other power generating buildings, have built-in power conduits that are not susceptible to short circuits. If you can bridge any distances by these means alone, you can create a power grid that is completely safe.

If the above measures are impractical, [[firefoam popper]]s should be installed where an explosion would cause a lot of damage, such as a hydroponics facility or a storage area.

Battery performance is not affected by temperature, but like many other structures they are highly flammable and may catch fire if the surrounding temperature is very high. Somewhat contrary to the in-game description, the battery is not more susceptible to heat than other, comparable flammable structures. Even the most extreme heat waves will not make a battery explode or catch fire. It is therefore not necessary to keep batteries climatized.

== Strategy ==
Batteries are useful in most colonies, even if the colony does not rely on unstable power sources like [[solar panel]]s and [[wind turbine]]s.

If only renewable energy is used, at least one battery is mandatory, because sufficient power supply can never be guaranteed. Solar panels produce no power during the night and during an eclipse, and wind turbines are completely unreliable. If the colony has no other backup power source, it is highly recommended to keep some additional batteries behind a [[power switch]] on a separate network (see ''Hazards'' above), so they can be brought online in the case of a ''short circuit'' event.

Alternatively, some batteries can also be stored in a warehouse, and then placed down anywhere on the power grid on demand. This makes switches unnecessary.

Batteries can also be used to make fueled generators more economical. These generators provide constant power, but they also burn their fuel at a constant rate – no matter how much power is actually used. If you connect some batteries, you can catch at least half of the excess power, and then disable the generator until the batteries run dry. This will safe 100% of the fuel for the time the generator is offline. In the early game, saving fuel in this way can be very helpful.

The energy stored by even a single battery is very high. 600 Wd are enough to power, for example, three [[cooler]]s at full power draw for an entire day, with no other source of power available. Therefore, building a lot of batteries ("just to be safe") is not necessary, or even harmful. Unless you take complex and expensive measures to avoid the ''short circuit'' event, having too many batteries online is a liability. Examine closely how much energy storage you need, and do not build more than that.

When you calculate the battery capacity that is necessary when using renewable energy, keep in mind that charge efficiency is only 50%. That is, only half of any excess energy will be effectively usable. This is particularly relevant when planning a greenhouse setup, of [[hydroponics basin]]s and a [[sun lamp]]. The ''sun lamp'' will draw 2900 W during the day, and 0 W during the night, for an average demand of 1450 W. However, it is not sufficient to generate only 1450 W at all times, hoping that a 3-battery array will even out the difference in power draw. This is because during the night, only half of the extra 1450 W will effectively charge the batteries, storing 8,700 Wh of energy (~360 Wd). This will only be enough to power the sun-lamp for 6 hours during the day. For the remaining 6 hours, the missing 1450 W will have to be provided by other means (usually a solar panel). Simply adding more batteries will not change this. Two batteries will provide enough buffering in this scenario.

The example setup, including 24 hydroponics basins, can be fully powered by one geothermal generator and a solar panel, connected to a single buffer battery.

Even in colonies that do not use wind or solar energy, batteries are useful to cover spikes in power usage, usually caused by turret arrays and devices like crematoriums, smelters and mineral scanners that are only brought online intermittently. A battery can cover arbitrarily high power needs, the size of the array only changes for how long that is possible.

As an example, an array of 20 mini-turrets and 4 autocannon turrets draws 3200 W of power. Instead of building another geothermal generator that would cover this, even a single charged battery can power this entire setup for more than 4 in-game hours. An array of 5 batteries can power the defenses for an entire in-game day. The battery array should be isolated with two power switches from the security grid and main power grid. This makes it then also very easy to power the entire setup with a single switch, as well as keep the batteries safe from the ''short circuit'' event.

</onlyinclude>
{{nav|power|wide}}
[[Category:Buildings]]
[[Category:Power]]

Battery

2019-10-11T00:08:28Z

Siggboy: /* Strategy */

{{infobox main|building|
|name = Battery
|image = Battery.jpg|Battery
|description = Stores electricity when there is excess power and yields it when there is not. Warning - charged batteries tend to explode when heated or wet.
|type = Buildings
|type2 = Power
|placeable = Yes
|size = 1|2
|hp = 100
|efficiency = 50%
|power =
|buy = {{icon|metal|70}} {{icon|component|2}}
|sell = {{icon|metal|52.5}} + {{icon|component|1.5}}
|beauty = -15
|mass base = 20
|cover = 0.4
}}<onlyinclude>
{{Info|The ''battery'' is an electric device that can store energy and provide power. Energy is stored while there is a surplus on the connected electric grid; the charge capacity is 600 Wd (''watt days''). Each battery provides an unlimited amount of power if there is a deficit, until discharged. Charging power is unlimited as well, but happens at only 50% efficiency, ie. half the energy provided is lost. Batteries self-discharge at a rate of 5 W, even while disconnected. Batteries need to be operated under a roof, or they will frequently short circuit in rain or snowfall, causing an explosion.}}

== Usage ==
'''Batteries are built, moved and stored like other kinds of movable furniture.''' They will keep their charge while stored ("minified") or disconnected, only discharging at the normal rate of 5 W (self-discharge).

With regards to power production, they behave like the other electric buildings in the game. All power consumers can connect to batteries in the same way as to other power sources: within a 5-tile radius, all consumers can directly connect to a battery (or array of batteries), without any power conduits in between.

In order to charge a battery, it has to be directly connected to a power grid with excess power. It is not possible to connect to batteries "through" power consumers (this is because consumers can not be connected to more than one power grid at the same time).

Just like the other power producing buildings, a battery '''acts as a power conduit''' on the 2 tiles it covers.

Installed batteries '''can not be switched off manually'''. As long as at least one consumer is connected, the battery will provide power during a deficit, and also be vulnerable to the short-circuit event.

Installed batteries '''need to be kept dry'''. If outdoors, a roof has to be built over the tiles occupied by the battery. If a battery becomes wet (either due to rain or snowfall), there is a very high chance of a short circuit, causing and explosion and fire damage (possibly spreading to adjacent batteries and connected devices).

Damage to a battery does not change it other properties and does not lose charge (eg. a 1 hitpoint battery has the same capacity and wattage as a 100 hitpoint battery).

== Batteries as power supplies ==
As a power supply, the battery behaves just like any other power source in the game (eg. generators or solar panels), but each battery will deliver an unlimited amount of power. This means that any ''wattage'' can be delivered until the battery is completely discharged. It makes the battery not only convenient as buffers for wind turbines and solar panels, but also to cover arbitrary spikes in power usage, usually caused by turret arrays and other heavy power consumers that are only brought on-line sporadically.

The power output of a battery is theoretically unlimited. Even a huge colony that demands, say, 30,000 W of power can be powered by a single battery (but only for about 1 in-game hour if the battery is fully charged). Adding more batteries is only necessary to lengthen the time span.

If more than one battery is on the same power grid, all batteries with remaining charge will share the power load evenly.

The maximum amount of charge provided is 600 Wd (''watt-days''). Discharge time only depends on the power that is drawn. Eg. if exactly 595 W were drawn, a single battery would last exactly 1 in-game day (5 W of self-discharge have to be added). If only 295 W are drawn, it lasts for 2 days, etc. The maximum power draw is unlimited, so it is – theoretically – possible to empty a full battery in 1 tick of game time (instantly).

A disconnected battery will discharge at a rate of 5 W. This means that a fully charged battery can be stored for 120 days (1 in-game year) until depleted.

== Charging ==
A battery will automatically keep charging while it is connected to a power grid with excess power available. Selecting the battery will show the current charge status in the information window.

The power used for charging is unlimited; charging batteries will always draw all available power, but never cause a power deficiency on the grid.

All batteries in a power grid will evenly share the excess power for charging, but can only use half of it (the charge efficiency is 50%). In other words, to fully charge an empty battery, 1200 Wd of energy have to be provided, as well as 5 W extra to cover the self-discharge.

As an example, connecting an empty battery to a power grid with exactly 1205 W of available power will charge it to full in exactly 1 in-game day. If more power was available, charging would complete more quickly. 5 W of charging power would keep the battery at exactly the present charge level, merely nullifying the self-discharge.

In practice, the self-discharge can mostly be disregarded.

== Constructing, moving and storing ==
Batteries behave exactly like other furniture items in the game: they have to be constructed on solid terrain, using the construction skill. It takes 14 work units to build, and can be done even at construction level 0.

After construction, they can be uninstalled like furniture, and then moved to storage, taken to a character's inventory or on a caravan. Uninstalling and reinstalling does not cause additional charge loss, beyond the 5 W of self-discharge that always applies.

It is possible to take charged batteries on caravans as a power source for camps and newly founded colonies.

Batteries that are not installed can be stored in the open, also in rain or snowfall, as they can not short circuit. Like other furniture, they are not subject to ''decay''.

== Hazards ==
'''Batteries are very likely to explode in rain and snowfall'''. This can be completely avoided by keeping installed batteries under a roof; keeping them indoors is not necessary. The resulting explosion will not cause any discharge, but it will heavily damage the battery, and possibly surrounding structures as well, also causing a fire.

'''Batteries make the [[Events#Faulty Conduit Explosion|short circuit]] event ("Zztt...") more dangerous:''' all affected batteries will instantly discharge, causing an explosion in addition to the fire that is normally caused by the event. The more batteries are connected, the larger the explosion. ''Note that the event is unrelated to batteries'' – it can still happen if no batteries are connected, but will then only cause a small fire and no explosion. Empty batteries will not affect the event.

Note that it is not the batteries that explode, but the area around the power-conduit that is affected. This could be right next to a battery, but it is never the battery itself that causes the explosion.

While it is possible to lay the power conduits only under fireproof walls, this will not avoid the explosion damage, and any fires that might start as a result.

To mitigate the hazard from the ''short circuit'' event, batteries can be intermittently disconnected from the grid, and only brought online on demand. Note that for this measure to be effective, ''not a single power conduit must be on the disconnected power grid''. The short circuit event is related to the [[power conduit]]s – '''if no powered conduits are on a network, the event can not occur on this network'''. So in order to effectively protect the batteries, a [[power switch]] must be placed ''directly adjacent'' to the battery array, with no other power conduits directly connecting to the batteries. It is also possible to place the batteries adjacent to a power generator, and then decouple the generator with a switch – again, no power conduits can be behind the switch.

[[File:Zero_conduit_freezer.jpg|300px|thumb|right|The batteries in this setup connect directly to the wind turbine and the attached coolers, without any power conduits. This completely avoids the random short circuit event ("Zztt...") in this power network.]]

It is also possible to completely avoid building any ''power conduits'' at all. This is usually only practical for smaller, self-contained grids. The batteries themselves, as well as other power generating buildings, have built-in power conduits that are not susceptible to short circuits. If you can bridge any distances by these means alone, you can create a power grid that is completely safe.

If the above measures are impractical, [[firefoam popper]]s should be installed where an explosion would cause a lot of damage, such as a hydroponics facility or a storage area.

Battery performance is not affected by temperature, but like many other structures they are highly flammable and may catch fire if the surrounding temperature is very high. Somewhat contrary to the in-game description, the battery is not more susceptible to heat than other, comparable flammable structures. Even the most extreme heat waves will not make a battery explode or catch fire. It is therefore not necessary to keep batteries climatized.

== Strategy ==
Batteries are useful in most colonies, even if the colony does not rely on unstable power sources like [[solar panel]]s and [[wind turbine]]s.

If only renewable energy is used, at least one battery is mandatory, because sufficient power supply can never be guaranteed. Solar panels produce no power during the night and during an eclipse, and wind turbines are completely unreliable. If the colony has no other backup power source, it is highly recommended to keep some additional batteries behind a [[power switch]] on a separate network (see ''Hazards'' above), so they can be brought online in the case of a ''short circuit'' event.

Alternatively, some batteries can also be stored in a warehouse, and then placed down anywhere on the power grid on demand. This makes switches unnecessary.

The energy stored by even a single battery is very high. 600 Wd are enough to power, for example, three [[cooler]]s at full power draw for an entire day, with no other source of power available. Therefore, building a lot of batteries ("just to be safe") is not necessary, or even harmful. Unless you take complex and expensive measures to avoid the ''short circuit'' event, having too many batteries online is a liability. Examine closely how much energy storage you need, and do not build more than that.

When you calculate the battery capacity that is necessary when using renewable energy, keep in mind that charge efficiency is only 50%. That is, only half of any excess energy will be effectively usable. This is particularly relevant when planning a greenhouse setup, of [[hydroponics basin]]s and a [[sun lamp]]. The ''sun lamp'' will draw 2900 W during the day, and 0 W during the night, for an average demand of 1450 W. However, it is not sufficient to generate only 1450 W at all times, hoping that a 3-battery array will even out the difference in power draw. This is because during the night, only half of the extra 1450 W will effectively charge the batteries, storing 8,700 Wh of energy (~360 Wd). This will only be enough to power the sun-lamp for 6 hours during the day. For the remaining 6 hours, the missing 1450 W will have to be provided by other means (usually a solar panel). Simply adding more batteries will not change this. Two batteries will provide enough buffering in this scenario.

The example setup, including 24 hydroponics basins, can be fully powered by one geothermal generator and a solar panel, connected to a single buffer battery.

Even in colonies that do not use wind or solar energy, batteries are useful to cover spikes in power usage, usually caused by turret arrays and devices like crematoriums, smelters and mineral scanners that are only brought online intermittently. A battery can cover arbitrarily high power needs, the size of the array only changes for how long that is possible.

As an example, an array of 20 mini-turrets and 4 autocannon turrets draws 3200 W of power. Instead of building another geothermal generator that would cover this, even a single charged battery can power this entire setup for more than 4 in-game hours. An array of 5 batteries can power the defenses for an entire in-game day. The battery array should be isolated with two power switches from the security grid and main power grid. This makes it then also very easy to power the entire setup with a single switch, as well as keep the batteries safe from the ''short circuit'' event.

</onlyinclude>
{{nav|power|wide}}
[[Category:Buildings]]
[[Category:Power]]

Battery

2019-10-11T00:07:41Z

Siggboy: /* Strategy */

{{infobox main|building|
|name = Battery
|image = Battery.jpg|Battery
|description = Stores electricity when there is excess power and yields it when there is not. Warning - charged batteries tend to explode when heated or wet.
|type = Buildings
|type2 = Power
|placeable = Yes
|size = 1|2
|hp = 100
|efficiency = 50%
|power =
|buy = {{icon|metal|70}} {{icon|component|2}}
|sell = {{icon|metal|52.5}} + {{icon|component|1.5}}
|beauty = -15
|mass base = 20
|cover = 0.4
}}<onlyinclude>
{{Info|The ''battery'' is an electric device that can store energy and provide power. Energy is stored while there is a surplus on the connected electric grid; the charge capacity is 600 Wd (''watt days''). Each battery provides an unlimited amount of power if there is a deficit, until discharged. Charging power is unlimited as well, but happens at only 50% efficiency, ie. half the energy provided is lost. Batteries self-discharge at a rate of 5 W, even while disconnected. Batteries need to be operated under a roof, or they will frequently short circuit in rain or snowfall, causing an explosion.}}

== Usage ==
'''Batteries are built, moved and stored like other kinds of movable furniture.''' They will keep their charge while stored ("minified") or disconnected, only discharging at the normal rate of 5 W (self-discharge).

With regards to power production, they behave like the other electric buildings in the game. All power consumers can connect to batteries in the same way as to other power sources: within a 5-tile radius, all consumers can directly connect to a battery (or array of batteries), without any power conduits in between.

In order to charge a battery, it has to be directly connected to a power grid with excess power. It is not possible to connect to batteries "through" power consumers (this is because consumers can not be connected to more than one power grid at the same time).

Just like the other power producing buildings, a battery '''acts as a power conduit''' on the 2 tiles it covers.

Installed batteries '''can not be switched off manually'''. As long as at least one consumer is connected, the battery will provide power during a deficit, and also be vulnerable to the short-circuit event.

Installed batteries '''need to be kept dry'''. If outdoors, a roof has to be built over the tiles occupied by the battery. If a battery becomes wet (either due to rain or snowfall), there is a very high chance of a short circuit, causing and explosion and fire damage (possibly spreading to adjacent batteries and connected devices).

Damage to a battery does not change it other properties and does not lose charge (eg. a 1 hitpoint battery has the same capacity and wattage as a 100 hitpoint battery).

== Batteries as power supplies ==
As a power supply, the battery behaves just like any other power source in the game (eg. generators or solar panels), but each battery will deliver an unlimited amount of power. This means that any ''wattage'' can be delivered until the battery is completely discharged. It makes the battery not only convenient as buffers for wind turbines and solar panels, but also to cover arbitrary spikes in power usage, usually caused by turret arrays and other heavy power consumers that are only brought on-line sporadically.

The power output of a battery is theoretically unlimited. Even a huge colony that demands, say, 30,000 W of power can be powered by a single battery (but only for about 1 in-game hour if the battery is fully charged). Adding more batteries is only necessary to lengthen the time span.

If more than one battery is on the same power grid, all batteries with remaining charge will share the power load evenly.

The maximum amount of charge provided is 600 Wd (''watt-days''). Discharge time only depends on the power that is drawn. Eg. if exactly 595 W were drawn, a single battery would last exactly 1 in-game day (5 W of self-discharge have to be added). If only 295 W are drawn, it lasts for 2 days, etc. The maximum power draw is unlimited, so it is – theoretically – possible to empty a full battery in 1 tick of game time (instantly).

A disconnected battery will discharge at a rate of 5 W. This means that a fully charged battery can be stored for 120 days (1 in-game year) until depleted.

== Charging ==
A battery will automatically keep charging while it is connected to a power grid with excess power available. Selecting the battery will show the current charge status in the information window.

The power used for charging is unlimited; charging batteries will always draw all available power, but never cause a power deficiency on the grid.

All batteries in a power grid will evenly share the excess power for charging, but can only use half of it (the charge efficiency is 50%). In other words, to fully charge an empty battery, 1200 Wd of energy have to be provided, as well as 5 W extra to cover the self-discharge.

As an example, connecting an empty battery to a power grid with exactly 1205 W of available power will charge it to full in exactly 1 in-game day. If more power was available, charging would complete more quickly. 5 W of charging power would keep the battery at exactly the present charge level, merely nullifying the self-discharge.

In practice, the self-discharge can mostly be disregarded.

== Constructing, moving and storing ==
Batteries behave exactly like other furniture items in the game: they have to be constructed on solid terrain, using the construction skill. It takes 14 work units to build, and can be done even at construction level 0.

After construction, they can be uninstalled like furniture, and then moved to storage, taken to a character's inventory or on a caravan. Uninstalling and reinstalling does not cause additional charge loss, beyond the 5 W of self-discharge that always applies.

It is possible to take charged batteries on caravans as a power source for camps and newly founded colonies.

Batteries that are not installed can be stored in the open, also in rain or snowfall, as they can not short circuit. Like other furniture, they are not subject to ''decay''.

== Hazards ==
'''Batteries are very likely to explode in rain and snowfall'''. This can be completely avoided by keeping installed batteries under a roof; keeping them indoors is not necessary. The resulting explosion will not cause any discharge, but it will heavily damage the battery, and possibly surrounding structures as well, also causing a fire.

'''Batteries make the [[Events#Faulty Conduit Explosion|short circuit]] event ("Zztt...") more dangerous:''' all affected batteries will instantly discharge, causing an explosion in addition to the fire that is normally caused by the event. The more batteries are connected, the larger the explosion. ''Note that the event is unrelated to batteries'' – it can still happen if no batteries are connected, but will then only cause a small fire and no explosion. Empty batteries will not affect the event.

Note that it is not the batteries that explode, but the area around the power-conduit that is affected. This could be right next to a battery, but it is never the battery itself that causes the explosion.

While it is possible to lay the power conduits only under fireproof walls, this will not avoid the explosion damage, and any fires that might start as a result.

To mitigate the hazard from the ''short circuit'' event, batteries can be intermittently disconnected from the grid, and only brought online on demand. Note that for this measure to be effective, ''not a single power conduit must be on the disconnected power grid''. The short circuit event is related to the [[power conduit]]s – '''if no powered conduits are on a network, the event can not occur on this network'''. So in order to effectively protect the batteries, a [[power switch]] must be placed ''directly adjacent'' to the battery array, with no other power conduits directly connecting to the batteries. It is also possible to place the batteries adjacent to a power generator, and then decouple the generator with a switch – again, no power conduits can be behind the switch.

[[File:Zero_conduit_freezer.jpg|300px|thumb|right|The batteries in this setup connect directly to the wind turbine and the attached coolers, without any power conduits. This completely avoids the random short circuit event ("Zztt...") in this power network.]]

It is also possible to completely avoid building any ''power conduits'' at all. This is usually only practical for smaller, self-contained grids. The batteries themselves, as well as other power generating buildings, have built-in power conduits that are not susceptible to short circuits. If you can bridge any distances by these means alone, you can create a power grid that is completely safe.

If the above measures are impractical, [[firefoam popper]]s should be installed where an explosion would cause a lot of damage, such as a hydroponics facility or a storage area.

Battery performance is not affected by temperature, but like many other structures they are highly flammable and may catch fire if the surrounding temperature is very high. Somewhat contrary to the in-game description, the battery is not more susceptible to heat than other, comparable flammable structures. Even the most extreme heat waves will not make a battery explode or catch fire. It is therefore not necessary to keep batteries climatized.

== Strategy ==
Batteries are useful in most colonies, even if the colony does not rely on unstable power sources like [[solar panel]]s and [[wind turbine]]s.

If only renewable energy is used, at least one battery is mandatory, because sufficient power supply can never be guaranteed. Solar panels produce no power during the night and during an eclipse, and wind turbines are completely unreliable. If the colony has no other backup power source, it is highly recommended to keep some additional batteries behind a [[power switch]] on a separate network (see ''Hazards'' above), so they can be brought online in the case of a ''short circuit'' event.

Alternatively, some batteries can also be stored in a warehouse, and then placed down anywhere on the power grid on demand. This makes switches unnecessary.

The energy stored by even a single battery is very high. 600 Wd are enough to power, for example, three [[cooler]]s at full power draw for an entire day, with no other source of power available. Therefore, building too many batteries ("just to be safe") is not necessary, even harmful. Unless you take complex and expensive measures to avoid the ''short circuit'' event, having too many batteries online is a liability. Examine closely how much energy storage you need, and do not build more than that.

When you calculate the battery capacity that is necessary when using renewable energy, keep in mind that charge efficiency is only 50%. That is, only half of any excess energy will be effectively usable. This is particularly relevant when planning a greenhouse setup, of [[hydroponics basin]]s and a [[sun lamp]]. The ''sun lamp'' will draw 2900 W during the day, and 0 W during the night, for an average demand of 1450 W. However, it is not sufficient to generate only 1450 W at all times, hoping that a 3-battery array will even out the difference in power draw. This is because during the night, only half of the extra 1450 W will effectively charge the batteries, storing 8,700 Wh of energy (~360 Wd). This will only be enough to power the sun-lamp for 6 hours during the day. For the remaining 6 hours, the missing 1450 W will have to be provided by other means (usually a solar panel). Simply adding more batteries will not change this. Two batteries will provide enough buffering in this scenario.

The example setup, including 24 hydroponics basins, can be fully powered by one geothermal generator and a solar panel, connected to a single buffer battery.

Even in colonies that do not use wind or solar energy, batteries are useful to cover spikes in power usage, usually caused by turret arrays and devices like crematoriums, smelters and mineral scanners that are only brought online intermittently. A battery can cover arbitrarily high power needs, the size of the array only changes for how long that is possible.

As an example, an array of 20 mini-turrets and 4 autocannon turrets draws 3200 W of power. Instead of building another geothermal generator that would cover this, even a single charged battery can power this entire setup for more than 4 in-game hours. An array of 5 batteries can power the defenses for an entire in-game day. The battery array should be isolated with two power switches from the security grid and main power grid. This makes it then also very easy to power the entire setup with a single switch, as well as keep the batteries safe from the ''short circuit'' event.

</onlyinclude>
{{nav|power|wide}}
[[Category:Buildings]]
[[Category:Power]]

Battery

2019-10-11T00:06:06Z

Siggboy: /* Strategy */

{{infobox main|building|
|name = Battery
|image = Battery.jpg|Battery
|description = Stores electricity when there is excess power and yields it when there is not. Warning - charged batteries tend to explode when heated or wet.
|type = Buildings
|type2 = Power
|placeable = Yes
|size = 1|2
|hp = 100
|efficiency = 50%
|power =
|buy = {{icon|metal|70}} {{icon|component|2}}
|sell = {{icon|metal|52.5}} + {{icon|component|1.5}}
|beauty = -15
|mass base = 20
|cover = 0.4
}}<onlyinclude>
{{Info|The ''battery'' is an electric device that can store energy and provide power. Energy is stored while there is a surplus on the connected electric grid; the charge capacity is 600 Wd (''watt days''). Each battery provides an unlimited amount of power if there is a deficit, until discharged. Charging power is unlimited as well, but happens at only 50% efficiency, ie. half the energy provided is lost. Batteries self-discharge at a rate of 5 W, even while disconnected. Batteries need to be operated under a roof, or they will frequently short circuit in rain or snowfall, causing an explosion.}}

== Usage ==
'''Batteries are built, moved and stored like other kinds of movable furniture.''' They will keep their charge while stored ("minified") or disconnected, only discharging at the normal rate of 5 W (self-discharge).

With regards to power production, they behave like the other electric buildings in the game. All power consumers can connect to batteries in the same way as to other power sources: within a 5-tile radius, all consumers can directly connect to a battery (or array of batteries), without any power conduits in between.

In order to charge a battery, it has to be directly connected to a power grid with excess power. It is not possible to connect to batteries "through" power consumers (this is because consumers can not be connected to more than one power grid at the same time).

Just like the other power producing buildings, a battery '''acts as a power conduit''' on the 2 tiles it covers.

Installed batteries '''can not be switched off manually'''. As long as at least one consumer is connected, the battery will provide power during a deficit, and also be vulnerable to the short-circuit event.

Installed batteries '''need to be kept dry'''. If outdoors, a roof has to be built over the tiles occupied by the battery. If a battery becomes wet (either due to rain or snowfall), there is a very high chance of a short circuit, causing and explosion and fire damage (possibly spreading to adjacent batteries and connected devices).

Damage to a battery does not change it other properties and does not lose charge (eg. a 1 hitpoint battery has the same capacity and wattage as a 100 hitpoint battery).

== Batteries as power supplies ==
As a power supply, the battery behaves just like any other power source in the game (eg. generators or solar panels), but each battery will deliver an unlimited amount of power. This means that any ''wattage'' can be delivered until the battery is completely discharged. It makes the battery not only convenient as buffers for wind turbines and solar panels, but also to cover arbitrary spikes in power usage, usually caused by turret arrays and other heavy power consumers that are only brought on-line sporadically.

The power output of a battery is theoretically unlimited. Even a huge colony that demands, say, 30,000 W of power can be powered by a single battery (but only for about 1 in-game hour if the battery is fully charged). Adding more batteries is only necessary to lengthen the time span.

If more than one battery is on the same power grid, all batteries with remaining charge will share the power load evenly.

The maximum amount of charge provided is 600 Wd (''watt-days''). Discharge time only depends on the power that is drawn. Eg. if exactly 595 W were drawn, a single battery would last exactly 1 in-game day (5 W of self-discharge have to be added). If only 295 W are drawn, it lasts for 2 days, etc. The maximum power draw is unlimited, so it is – theoretically – possible to empty a full battery in 1 tick of game time (instantly).

A disconnected battery will discharge at a rate of 5 W. This means that a fully charged battery can be stored for 120 days (1 in-game year) until depleted.

== Charging ==
A battery will automatically keep charging while it is connected to a power grid with excess power available. Selecting the battery will show the current charge status in the information window.

The power used for charging is unlimited; charging batteries will always draw all available power, but never cause a power deficiency on the grid.

All batteries in a power grid will evenly share the excess power for charging, but can only use half of it (the charge efficiency is 50%). In other words, to fully charge an empty battery, 1200 Wd of energy have to be provided, as well as 5 W extra to cover the self-discharge.

As an example, connecting an empty battery to a power grid with exactly 1205 W of available power will charge it to full in exactly 1 in-game day. If more power was available, charging would complete more quickly. 5 W of charging power would keep the battery at exactly the present charge level, merely nullifying the self-discharge.

In practice, the self-discharge can mostly be disregarded.

== Constructing, moving and storing ==
Batteries behave exactly like other furniture items in the game: they have to be constructed on solid terrain, using the construction skill. It takes 14 work units to build, and can be done even at construction level 0.

After construction, they can be uninstalled like furniture, and then moved to storage, taken to a character's inventory or on a caravan. Uninstalling and reinstalling does not cause additional charge loss, beyond the 5 W of self-discharge that always applies.

It is possible to take charged batteries on caravans as a power source for camps and newly founded colonies.

Batteries that are not installed can be stored in the open, also in rain or snowfall, as they can not short circuit. Like other furniture, they are not subject to ''decay''.

== Hazards ==
'''Batteries are very likely to explode in rain and snowfall'''. This can be completely avoided by keeping installed batteries under a roof; keeping them indoors is not necessary. The resulting explosion will not cause any discharge, but it will heavily damage the battery, and possibly surrounding structures as well, also causing a fire.

'''Batteries make the [[Events#Faulty Conduit Explosion|short circuit]] event ("Zztt...") more dangerous:''' all affected batteries will instantly discharge, causing an explosion in addition to the fire that is normally caused by the event. The more batteries are connected, the larger the explosion. ''Note that the event is unrelated to batteries'' – it can still happen if no batteries are connected, but will then only cause a small fire and no explosion. Empty batteries will not affect the event.

Note that it is not the batteries that explode, but the area around the power-conduit that is affected. This could be right next to a battery, but it is never the battery itself that causes the explosion.

While it is possible to lay the power conduits only under fireproof walls, this will not avoid the explosion damage, and any fires that might start as a result.

To mitigate the hazard from the ''short circuit'' event, batteries can be intermittently disconnected from the grid, and only brought online on demand. Note that for this measure to be effective, ''not a single power conduit must be on the disconnected power grid''. The short circuit event is related to the [[power conduit]]s – '''if no powered conduits are on a network, the event can not occur on this network'''. So in order to effectively protect the batteries, a [[power switch]] must be placed ''directly adjacent'' to the battery array, with no other power conduits directly connecting to the batteries. It is also possible to place the batteries adjacent to a power generator, and then decouple the generator with a switch – again, no power conduits can be behind the switch.

[[File:Zero_conduit_freezer.jpg|300px|thumb|right|The batteries in this setup connect directly to the wind turbine and the attached coolers, without any power conduits. This completely avoids the random short circuit event ("Zztt...") in this power network.]]

It is also possible to completely avoid building any ''power conduits'' at all. This is usually only practical for smaller, self-contained grids. The batteries themselves, as well as other power generating buildings, have built-in power conduits that are not susceptible to short circuits. If you can bridge any distances by these means alone, you can create a power grid that is completely safe.

If the above measures are impractical, [[firefoam popper]]s should be installed where an explosion would cause a lot of damage, such as a hydroponics facility or a storage area.

Battery performance is not affected by temperature, but like many other structures they are highly flammable and may catch fire if the surrounding temperature is very high. Somewhat contrary to the in-game description, the battery is not more susceptible to heat than other, comparable flammable structures. Even the most extreme heat waves will not make a battery explode or catch fire. It is therefore not necessary to keep batteries climatized.

== Strategy ==
Batteries are useful in most colonies, even if the colony does not rely on unstable power sources like [[solar panel]]s and [[wind turbine]]s.

If only renewable energy is used, at least one battery is mandatory, because sufficient power supply can never be guaranteed. Solar panels produce no power during the night and during an eclipse, and wind turbines are completely unreliable. If the colony has no other backup power source, it is highly recommended to keep some additional batteries behind a [[power switch]] on a separate network (see ''Hazards'' above), so they can be brought online in the case of a ''short circuit'' event.

Alternatively, some batteries can also be stored in a warehouse, and then placed down anywhere on the power grid on demand. This makes switches unnecessary.

The energy stored by even a single battery is very high. 600 Wd are enough to power, for example, three [[cooler]]s at full power draw for an entire day, with no other source of power available. Therefore, building too many batteries ("just to be safe") is not necessary, and even harmful. Unless you take complex and expensive measures to avoid the ''short circuit'' event, having too many batteries online is a huge liability. Examine closely how much energy storage you really need in your colony, and do not build more than that.

When you calculate the battery capacity that is necessary when using renewable energy, keep in mind that charge efficiency is only 50%. That is, only half of any excess energy will be effectively usable. This is particularly relevant when planning a greenhouse setup, of [[hydroponics basin]]s and a [[sun lamp]]. The ''sun lamp'' will draw 2900 W during the day, and 0 W during the night, for an average demand of 1450 W. However, it is not sufficient to generate only 1450 W at all times, hoping that a 3-battery array will even out the difference in power draw. This is because during the night, only half of the extra 1450 W will effectively charge the batteries, storing 8,700 Wh of energy (~360 Wd). This will only be enough to power the sun-lamp for 6 hours during the day. For the remaining 6 hours, the missing 1450 W will have to be provided by other means (usually a solar panel). Simply adding more batteries will not change this. Two batteries will provide enough buffering in this scenario.

The example setup, including 24 hydroponics basins, can be fully powered by one geothermal generator and a solar panel, connected to a single buffer battery.

Even in colonies that do not use wind or solar energy, batteries are useful to cover spikes in power usage, usually caused by turret arrays and devices like crematoriums, smelters and mineral scanners that are only brought online intermittently. A battery can cover arbitrarily high power needs, the size of the array only changes for how long that is possible.

As an example, an array of 20 mini-turrets and 4 autocannon turrets draws 3200 W of power. Instead of building another geothermal generator that would cover this, even a single charged battery can power this entire setup for more than 4 in-game hours. An array of 5 batteries can power the defenses for an entire in-game day. The battery array should be isolated with two power switches from the security grid and main power grid. This makes it then also very easy to power the entire setup with a single switch, as well as keep the batteries safe from the ''short circuit'' event.

</onlyinclude>
{{nav|power|wide}}
[[Category:Buildings]]
[[Category:Power]]

Battery

2019-10-11T00:01:29Z

Siggboy: /* Hazards */

{{infobox main|building|
|name = Battery
|image = Battery.jpg|Battery
|description = Stores electricity when there is excess power and yields it when there is not. Warning - charged batteries tend to explode when heated or wet.
|type = Buildings
|type2 = Power
|placeable = Yes
|size = 1|2
|hp = 100
|efficiency = 50%
|power =
|buy = {{icon|metal|70}} {{icon|component|2}}
|sell = {{icon|metal|52.5}} + {{icon|component|1.5}}
|beauty = -15
|mass base = 20
|cover = 0.4
}}<onlyinclude>
{{Info|The ''battery'' is an electric device that can store energy and provide power. Energy is stored while there is a surplus on the connected electric grid; the charge capacity is 600 Wd (''watt days''). Each battery provides an unlimited amount of power if there is a deficit, until discharged. Charging power is unlimited as well, but happens at only 50% efficiency, ie. half the energy provided is lost. Batteries self-discharge at a rate of 5 W, even while disconnected. Batteries need to be operated under a roof, or they will frequently short circuit in rain or snowfall, causing an explosion.}}

== Usage ==
'''Batteries are built, moved and stored like other kinds of movable furniture.''' They will keep their charge while stored ("minified") or disconnected, only discharging at the normal rate of 5 W (self-discharge).

With regards to power production, they behave like the other electric buildings in the game. All power consumers can connect to batteries in the same way as to other power sources: within a 5-tile radius, all consumers can directly connect to a battery (or array of batteries), without any power conduits in between.

In order to charge a battery, it has to be directly connected to a power grid with excess power. It is not possible to connect to batteries "through" power consumers (this is because consumers can not be connected to more than one power grid at the same time).

Just like the other power producing buildings, a battery '''acts as a power conduit''' on the 2 tiles it covers.

Installed batteries '''can not be switched off manually'''. As long as at least one consumer is connected, the battery will provide power during a deficit, and also be vulnerable to the short-circuit event.

Installed batteries '''need to be kept dry'''. If outdoors, a roof has to be built over the tiles occupied by the battery. If a battery becomes wet (either due to rain or snowfall), there is a very high chance of a short circuit, causing and explosion and fire damage (possibly spreading to adjacent batteries and connected devices).

Damage to a battery does not change it other properties and does not lose charge (eg. a 1 hitpoint battery has the same capacity and wattage as a 100 hitpoint battery).

== Batteries as power supplies ==
As a power supply, the battery behaves just like any other power source in the game (eg. generators or solar panels), but each battery will deliver an unlimited amount of power. This means that any ''wattage'' can be delivered until the battery is completely discharged. It makes the battery not only convenient as buffers for wind turbines and solar panels, but also to cover arbitrary spikes in power usage, usually caused by turret arrays and other heavy power consumers that are only brought on-line sporadically.

The power output of a battery is theoretically unlimited. Even a huge colony that demands, say, 30,000 W of power can be powered by a single battery (but only for about 1 in-game hour if the battery is fully charged). Adding more batteries is only necessary to lengthen the time span.

If more than one battery is on the same power grid, all batteries with remaining charge will share the power load evenly.

The maximum amount of charge provided is 600 Wd (''watt-days''). Discharge time only depends on the power that is drawn. Eg. if exactly 595 W were drawn, a single battery would last exactly 1 in-game day (5 W of self-discharge have to be added). If only 295 W are drawn, it lasts for 2 days, etc. The maximum power draw is unlimited, so it is – theoretically – possible to empty a full battery in 1 tick of game time (instantly).

A disconnected battery will discharge at a rate of 5 W. This means that a fully charged battery can be stored for 120 days (1 in-game year) until depleted.

== Charging ==
A battery will automatically keep charging while it is connected to a power grid with excess power available. Selecting the battery will show the current charge status in the information window.

The power used for charging is unlimited; charging batteries will always draw all available power, but never cause a power deficiency on the grid.

All batteries in a power grid will evenly share the excess power for charging, but can only use half of it (the charge efficiency is 50%). In other words, to fully charge an empty battery, 1200 Wd of energy have to be provided, as well as 5 W extra to cover the self-discharge.

As an example, connecting an empty battery to a power grid with exactly 1205 W of available power will charge it to full in exactly 1 in-game day. If more power was available, charging would complete more quickly. 5 W of charging power would keep the battery at exactly the present charge level, merely nullifying the self-discharge.

In practice, the self-discharge can mostly be disregarded.

== Constructing, moving and storing ==
Batteries behave exactly like other furniture items in the game: they have to be constructed on solid terrain, using the construction skill. It takes 14 work units to build, and can be done even at construction level 0.

After construction, they can be uninstalled like furniture, and then moved to storage, taken to a character's inventory or on a caravan. Uninstalling and reinstalling does not cause additional charge loss, beyond the 5 W of self-discharge that always applies.

It is possible to take charged batteries on caravans as a power source for camps and newly founded colonies.

Batteries that are not installed can be stored in the open, also in rain or snowfall, as they can not short circuit. Like other furniture, they are not subject to ''decay''.

== Hazards ==
'''Batteries are very likely to explode in rain and snowfall'''. This can be completely avoided by keeping installed batteries under a roof; keeping them indoors is not necessary. The resulting explosion will not cause any discharge, but it will heavily damage the battery, and possibly surrounding structures as well, also causing a fire.

'''Batteries make the [[Events#Faulty Conduit Explosion|short circuit]] event ("Zztt...") more dangerous:''' all affected batteries will instantly discharge, causing an explosion in addition to the fire that is normally caused by the event. The more batteries are connected, the larger the explosion. ''Note that the event is unrelated to batteries'' – it can still happen if no batteries are connected, but will then only cause a small fire and no explosion. Empty batteries will not affect the event.

Note that it is not the batteries that explode, but the area around the power-conduit that is affected. This could be right next to a battery, but it is never the battery itself that causes the explosion.

While it is possible to lay the power conduits only under fireproof walls, this will not avoid the explosion damage, and any fires that might start as a result.

To mitigate the hazard from the ''short circuit'' event, batteries can be intermittently disconnected from the grid, and only brought online on demand. Note that for this measure to be effective, ''not a single power conduit must be on the disconnected power grid''. The short circuit event is related to the [[power conduit]]s – '''if no powered conduits are on a network, the event can not occur on this network'''. So in order to effectively protect the batteries, a [[power switch]] must be placed ''directly adjacent'' to the battery array, with no other power conduits directly connecting to the batteries. It is also possible to place the batteries adjacent to a power generator, and then decouple the generator with a switch – again, no power conduits can be behind the switch.

[[File:Zero_conduit_freezer.jpg|300px|thumb|right|The batteries in this setup connect directly to the wind turbine and the attached coolers, without any power conduits. This completely avoids the random short circuit event ("Zztt...") in this power network.]]

It is also possible to completely avoid building any ''power conduits'' at all. This is usually only practical for smaller, self-contained grids. The batteries themselves, as well as other power generating buildings, have built-in power conduits that are not susceptible to short circuits. If you can bridge any distances by these means alone, you can create a power grid that is completely safe.

If the above measures are impractical, [[firefoam popper]]s should be installed where an explosion would cause a lot of damage, such as a hydroponics facility or a storage area.

Battery performance is not affected by temperature, but like many other structures they are highly flammable and may catch fire if the surrounding temperature is very high. Somewhat contrary to the in-game description, the battery is not more susceptible to heat than other, comparable flammable structures. Even the most extreme heat waves will not make a battery explode or catch fire. It is therefore not necessary to keep batteries climatized.

== Strategy ==
Batteries are useful in most colonies, even if the colony does not rely on unstable power sources like [[solar panel]]s and [[wind turbine]]s.

If only renewable energy is used, at least one battery is mandatory, because sufficient power supply can never be guaranteed. Solar panels produce no power during the night and during an eclipse, and wind turbines are completely unreliable. If the colony has no other backup power source, it is highly recommended to keep some additional batteries behind a [[power switch]] on a separate network (see ''Hazards'' above), so they can be brought online in the case of a ''short circuit'' event.

Alternatively, some batteries can also be stored in a warehouse, and then placed down anywhere on the power grid on demand. This makes switches unnecessary.

The energy stored by even a single battery is very high. 600 Wd are enough to power, for example, three [[cooler]]s at full power draw for an entire day, with no other source of power available. Therefore, building too many batteries ("just to be safe") is not necessary, and even harmful. Unless you take complex and expensive measures to avoid the ''short circuit'' event, having too many batteries online is a huge liability. Examine closely how much energy storage you really need in your colony, and do not build more than that.

When you calculate the battery capacity that is necessary when using renewable energy, keep in mind that charge efficiency is only 50%. That is, only half of any excess energy will be effectively usable. This is particularly relevant when planning a greenhouse setup, of [[hydroponics basin]]s and a [[sun lamp]]. The ''sun lamp'' will draw 2900 W during the day, and 0 W during the night, for an average demand of 1450 W. However, it is not sufficient to generate only 1450 W at all times, hoping that a 3-battery array will even out the difference in power draw. This is because during the night, only half of the extra 1450 W will effectively charge the batteries, storing 8,700 Wh of energy (~360 Wd). This will only be enough to power the sun-lamp for 6 hours during the day. For the remaining 6 hours, the missing 1450 W will have to be provided by other means (usually a solar panel). Simply adding more batteries will not change this. Two batteries will provide enough buffering in this scenario.

The example setup, including 24 hydroponics basins, can be fully powered by a single geothermal generator plus a single solar panel, connected to a single battery to buffer the solar energy. This will not take into account [[heater]]s and a possible disruption from an ''eclipse'' event.

Even in colonies that do not use wind or solar energy, batteries are useful to cover spikes in power usage, usually caused by turret arrays and devices like crematoriums, smelters and mineral scanners that are only brought online intermittently. A battery can cover arbitrarily high power needs, the size of the array only changes for how long that is possible.

As an example, an array of 20 mini-turrets and 4 autocannon turrets draws 3200 W of power. Instead of building another geothermal generator that would cover this, even a single charged battery can power this entire setup for more than 4 in-game hours. An array of 5 batteries can power the defenses for an entire in-game day. The battery array should be isolated with two power switches from the security grid and main power grid. This makes it then also very easy to power the entire setup with a single switch, as well as keep the batteries safe from the ''short circuit'' event.

</onlyinclude>
{{nav|power|wide}}
[[Category:Buildings]]
[[Category:Power]]

Battery

2019-10-10T23:59:49Z

Siggboy: /* Hazards */

{{infobox main|building|
|name = Battery
|image = Battery.jpg|Battery
|description = Stores electricity when there is excess power and yields it when there is not. Warning - charged batteries tend to explode when heated or wet.
|type = Buildings
|type2 = Power
|placeable = Yes
|size = 1|2
|hp = 100
|efficiency = 50%
|power =
|buy = {{icon|metal|70}} {{icon|component|2}}
|sell = {{icon|metal|52.5}} + {{icon|component|1.5}}
|beauty = -15
|mass base = 20
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{{Info|The ''battery'' is an electric device that can store energy and provide power. Energy is stored while there is a surplus on the connected electric grid; the charge capacity is 600 Wd (''watt days''). Each battery provides an unlimited amount of power if there is a deficit, until discharged. Charging power is unlimited as well, but happens at only 50% efficiency, ie. half the energy provided is lost. Batteries self-discharge at a rate of 5 W, even while disconnected. Batteries need to be operated under a roof, or they will frequently short circuit in rain or snowfall, causing an explosion.}}

== Usage ==
'''Batteries are built, moved and stored like other kinds of movable furniture.''' They will keep their charge while stored ("minified") or disconnected, only discharging at the normal rate of 5 W (self-discharge).

With regards to power production, they behave like the other electric buildings in the game. All power consumers can connect to batteries in the same way as to other power sources: within a 5-tile radius, all consumers can directly connect to a battery (or array of batteries), without any power conduits in between.

In order to charge a battery, it has to be directly connected to a power grid with excess power. It is not possible to connect to batteries "through" power consumers (this is because consumers can not be connected to more than one power grid at the same time).

Just like the other power producing buildings, a battery '''acts as a power conduit''' on the 2 tiles it covers.

Installed batteries '''can not be switched off manually'''. As long as at least one consumer is connected, the battery will provide power during a deficit, and also be vulnerable to the short-circuit event.

Installed batteries '''need to be kept dry'''. If outdoors, a roof has to be built over the tiles occupied by the battery. If a battery becomes wet (either due to rain or snowfall), there is a very high chance of a short circuit, causing and explosion and fire damage (possibly spreading to adjacent batteries and connected devices).

Damage to a battery does not change it other properties and does not lose charge (eg. a 1 hitpoint battery has the same capacity and wattage as a 100 hitpoint battery).

== Batteries as power supplies ==
As a power supply, the battery behaves just like any other power source in the game (eg. generators or solar panels), but each battery will deliver an unlimited amount of power. This means that any ''wattage'' can be delivered until the battery is completely discharged. It makes the battery not only convenient as buffers for wind turbines and solar panels, but also to cover arbitrary spikes in power usage, usually caused by turret arrays and other heavy power consumers that are only brought on-line sporadically.

The power output of a battery is theoretically unlimited. Even a huge colony that demands, say, 30,000 W of power can be powered by a single battery (but only for about 1 in-game hour if the battery is fully charged). Adding more batteries is only necessary to lengthen the time span.

If more than one battery is on the same power grid, all batteries with remaining charge will share the power load evenly.

The maximum amount of charge provided is 600 Wd (''watt-days''). Discharge time only depends on the power that is drawn. Eg. if exactly 595 W were drawn, a single battery would last exactly 1 in-game day (5 W of self-discharge have to be added). If only 295 W are drawn, it lasts for 2 days, etc. The maximum power draw is unlimited, so it is – theoretically – possible to empty a full battery in 1 tick of game time (instantly).

A disconnected battery will discharge at a rate of 5 W. This means that a fully charged battery can be stored for 120 days (1 in-game year) until depleted.

== Charging ==
A battery will automatically keep charging while it is connected to a power grid with excess power available. Selecting the battery will show the current charge status in the information window.

The power used for charging is unlimited; charging batteries will always draw all available power, but never cause a power deficiency on the grid.

All batteries in a power grid will evenly share the excess power for charging, but can only use half of it (the charge efficiency is 50%). In other words, to fully charge an empty battery, 1200 Wd of energy have to be provided, as well as 5 W extra to cover the self-discharge.

As an example, connecting an empty battery to a power grid with exactly 1205 W of available power will charge it to full in exactly 1 in-game day. If more power was available, charging would complete more quickly. 5 W of charging power would keep the battery at exactly the present charge level, merely nullifying the self-discharge.

In practice, the self-discharge can mostly be disregarded.

== Constructing, moving and storing ==
Batteries behave exactly like other furniture items in the game: they have to be constructed on solid terrain, using the construction skill. It takes 14 work units to build, and can be done even at construction level 0.

After construction, they can be uninstalled like furniture, and then moved to storage, taken to a character's inventory or on a caravan. Uninstalling and reinstalling does not cause additional charge loss, beyond the 5 W of self-discharge that always applies.

It is possible to take charged batteries on caravans as a power source for camps and newly founded colonies.

Batteries that are not installed can be stored in the open, also in rain or snowfall, as they can not short circuit. Like other furniture, they are not subject to ''decay''.

== Hazards ==
'''Batteries are very likely to explode in rain and snowfall'''. This can be completely avoided by keeping installed batteries under a roof; keeping them indoors is not necessary. The resulting explosion will not cause any discharge, but it will heavily damage the battery, and possibly surrounding structures as well, also causing a fire.

'''Batteries make the [[Events#Faulty Conduit Explosion|short circuit]] event ("Zztt...") more dangerous:''' all affected batteries will instantly discharge, causing an explosion in addition to the fire that is normally caused by the event. The more batteries are connected, the larger the explosion. ''Note that the event is unrelated to batteries'' – it can still happen if no batteries are connected, but will then only cause a small fire and no explosion. Empty batteries will not affect the event.

Note that it is not the batteries that explode, but the area around the power-conduit that is affected. This could be right next to a battery, but it is never the battery itself that causes the explosion.

While it is possible to lay the power conduits only under fireproof walls, this will not avoid the explosion damage, and any fires that might start as a result.

To mitigate the hazard from the ''short circuit'' event, batteries can be intermittently disconnected from the grid, and only brought online on demand. Note that for this measure to be effective, ''not a single power conduit must be on the disconnected power grid''. The short circuit event is related to the [[power conduits]] – '''if no powered conduits are on a network, the event can not occur on this network'''. So in order to effectively protect the batteries, a [[power switch]] must be placed ''directly adjacent'' to the battery array, with no other power conduits directly connecting to the batteries. It is also possible to place the batteries adjacent to a power generator, and then decouple the generator with a switch – again, no power conduits can be behind the switch.

[[File:Zero_conduit_freezer.jpg|300px|thumb|right|The batteries in this setup connect directly to the wind turbine and the attached coolers, without any power conduits. This completely avoids the random short circuit event ("Zztt...") in this power network.]]

It is also possible to completely avoid building any ''power conduits'' at all. This is usually only practical for smaller, self-contained grids. The batteries themselves, as well as other power generating buildings, have built-in power conduits that are not susceptible to short circuits. If you can bridge any distances by these means alone, you can create a power grid that is completely safe.

If the above measures are impractical, [[firefoam popper]]s should be installed where an explosion would cause a lot of damage, such as a hydroponics facility or a storage area.

Battery performance is not affected by temperature, but like many other structures they are highly flammable and may catch fire if the surrounding temperature is very high. Somewhat contrary to the in-game description, the battery is not more susceptible to heat than other, comparable flammable structures. Even the most extreme heat waves will not make a battery explode or catch fire. It is therefore not necessary to keep batteries climatized.

== Strategy ==
Batteries are useful in most colonies, even if the colony does not rely on unstable power sources like [[solar panel]]s and [[wind turbine]]s.

If only renewable energy is used, at least one battery is mandatory, because sufficient power supply can never be guaranteed. Solar panels produce no power during the night and during an eclipse, and wind turbines are completely unreliable. If the colony has no other backup power source, it is highly recommended to keep some additional batteries behind a [[power switch]] on a separate network (see ''Hazards'' above), so they can be brought online in the case of a ''short circuit'' event.

Alternatively, some batteries can also be stored in a warehouse, and then placed down anywhere on the power grid on demand. This makes switches unnecessary.

The energy stored by even a single battery is very high. 600 Wd are enough to power, for example, three [[cooler]]s at full power draw for an entire day, with no other source of power available. Therefore, building too many batteries ("just to be safe") is not necessary, and even harmful. Unless you take complex and expensive measures to avoid the ''short circuit'' event, having too many batteries online is a huge liability. Examine closely how much energy storage you really need in your colony, and do not build more than that.

When you calculate the battery capacity that is necessary when using renewable energy, keep in mind that charge efficiency is only 50%. That is, only half of any excess energy will be effectively usable. This is particularly relevant when planning a greenhouse setup, of [[hydroponics basin]]s and a [[sun lamp]]. The ''sun lamp'' will draw 2900 W during the day, and 0 W during the night, for an average demand of 1450 W. However, it is not sufficient to generate only 1450 W at all times, hoping that a 3-battery array will even out the difference in power draw. This is because during the night, only half of the extra 1450 W will effectively charge the batteries, storing 8,700 Wh of energy (~360 Wd). This will only be enough to power the sun-lamp for 6 hours during the day. For the remaining 6 hours, the missing 1450 W will have to be provided by other means (usually a solar panel). Simply adding more batteries will not change this. Two batteries will provide enough buffering in this scenario.

The example setup, including 24 hydroponics basins, can be fully powered by a single geothermal generator plus a single solar panel, connected to a single battery to buffer the solar energy. This will not take into account [[heater]]s and a possible disruption from an ''eclipse'' event.

Even in colonies that do not use wind or solar energy, batteries are useful to cover spikes in power usage, usually caused by turret arrays and devices like crematoriums, smelters and mineral scanners that are only brought online intermittently. A battery can cover arbitrarily high power needs, the size of the array only changes for how long that is possible.

As an example, an array of 20 mini-turrets and 4 autocannon turrets draws 3200 W of power. Instead of building another geothermal generator that would cover this, even a single charged battery can power this entire setup for more than 4 in-game hours. An array of 5 batteries can power the defenses for an entire in-game day. The battery array should be isolated with two power switches from the security grid and main power grid. This makes it then also very easy to power the entire setup with a single switch, as well as keep the batteries safe from the ''short circuit'' event.

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[[Category:Buildings]]
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