Talk:Ruins

Prospective outlines for pages in the ruins project

Firstly, notes on target references. Sites, landmarks, quests and particularly notable structures all have associated pages and should be particularly referenced as part of this project, with links between the most important of these in pages maintained by this project.

Since most of these are good articles already, I don't have a format outline for them. Smaller ruin placements as a general rule don't need separate pages (except possibly this one).

So anyway, what are ruins? Ruins are features, and structures.

The orbital mechhive is a ruin. The hive queen cavern is sorta like a ruin. Alpha thrumbo sightings are obviously not ruins.

Ruins are distinct map generation placements, appearing as certain sites, local structures and features (depending on the map generators placing or patterning them). The unifying theme is that they're mostly ancient, and inhabitants and owners of these places no longer wholly control, maintain, or claim them.

These placements range from massive and multi-staged like ancient complexes, all the way down to just the scattering of junk and skeletons. The most notable ruins include ancient shrines, ancient highways, (ancient) monuments, mechanitor complexes, relic complexes, and most of the sites associated with each dlc. The rim is a pretty ruinous place.

The main type of object found in these features is Junk (Ancient buildings) and the biggest part of this page currently.

You can find where ancient junk buildings spawn in the map generator defs. I recommend a workspace and searching for whatever map generators reference the defname(s) you're writing up.

A lot of these were first introduced in the ideology dlc, but have been moved to core for probably ludeon's purposes cross-dlc's, even if they are still only referenced by dlc map generators. I did make and post a .txt of all the ancient buildings located in core but there are other thingdefs in ruin generators that exist outside of this group so it's only partially complete.

If they don't have new locations in other dlc sites, recategorizing them is probably of low importance and tedious. Leave it for Smurph

Most of the proposed format for Junk Buildings is from pages in this group already that are pretty good articles or based on the short outline in the projects page. It is pretty optional for the majority of junk items that don't actually do anything, but the rest could be useful. Bracketed headings optionally optional.

Infobox Main Image Summary - (Yield, if any) Occurrence - (Relevant DLC, Acquisition) - Locations (Landmarks, sites, patterns) (Additional Effects/Utility) - Interactions with other ruins project items, Importance (mech transponder, for instance), Non-interactivity (isJunk) (Variants) (Gallery) - Contextual or just more views or variations (Nav Category) - Mostly blank for ruins project but worth keeping in mind if other groups are inclusive

Analysis is one notable omission. I think it works best for crunching statistics into useful advice, where most of the information in junk is just about junk. I like Variants. Variants is a good inclusion from the project documenter, because there are useable items that a lot of the ruined stuff is based on. And also junk based on other junk, which is fun.

That was pretty much all I can think about for structuring this whole thing. Looking forward to seeing it finished and thanks for all the work you're putting into all of the wiki.

I wonder if it would be worth adding a technical property called isJunk or similar, that we could add to pages of ruins with no use for the player.

It would allow splitting the very long list on this page into two separate tables. As a reader I want to see a list of the useful ruins, I don’t care about the junk, except maybe to check that it’s indeed junk and I haven’t missed something.

The nav would also benefit from not showing the junk, it’s way too busy. Maybe a single link either to this page or to a category for junk would be enough.

It would require agreeing on what makes a ruin not junk. I think it’s not junk if colonists can use it (light, bed), open it (loot box), interact with it (terminal), deconstruct it for resources. Anything else?

Depending on the numbers, it might be less work to approach it from the opposite angle with a NotJunk property if the number of useful things is dwarfed by the number of junk things.

But I like your proposal.

Absolutely agree. I think this exact issue is in a recode for the Ruins nav already.

We need some way to separate put things that have functions (e.g. ancient terminals) and things that are just decorative (and maybe a third category for things that can be destroyed/deconstructed for resources?)

Thank you both for your input. I think we need more information before moving forward. Since that information is not readily available by querying the wiki, I've started to compile data manually on all the ruins buildings on a spreadsheet, from the xml.

It's starting to take shape, at least for which ones are active. I'm still exploring how the game decides to give resources on destruction and deconstruction.

Useful ruins:

• Ancient lamp: Light

• Explosive: Ancient explosives crate, Ancient mining charge

• Special: Ancient cryptosleep pod (Also yield o destruction), Ancient uplink, Ancient mechanoid shell [may not belong here], Ancient toxic vent (Event related), Ancient comms console/Ancient terminal [quest related]

• Has a Destroy yield:

 	Ancient car,
 	Ancient car frame,
	Ancient concrete barrier (ALSO DECONSTRUCT),
	Ancient dropship,
	Ancient dropship engine,
	Ancient exostrider (cannon, head, leg, midsection),
	Ancient jet engine,
	Ancient lamppost (ALSO DECONSTRUCT),
	Ancient pipeline section,
	Ancient pod car,
	Ancient ruined APC,
	Ancient ruined tank,
	Ancient troop carrier,
	Ancient truck,
	Ancient warspider remains,
	Ancient warsprinter remains,
	Ancient warwalker (claw, foot, leg, shell, torso)

• Ruin related, yet not in Project Ruins: Advanced component box, Ancient bed, Chemfuel canister, Component box, Crashed shuttle, Hermetic crate, Life support unit, Malfunctioning transport pod, Mechanoid ship chunk, Medicine pallet, Rusted bed, Rusted double bed, Rusted safe, Sealed container, Sealed crate, Security crate, Ship chunk, Ship part (psychic droner), Steel scrap box, Steel scrap pallet, Survival meal pallet.

Guys I think ruins actually are generated on Ice Sheet also

Some of the objects here serve no purpose other than to be mediocre cover and a minor obstacle, but others can be attacked for steel slag chunks, and a few have a potential unique use (e.g. using the lamp as a (very) weak light supply).

I would suggest that we add two extra columns - one to indicate how much scrap it gives when broken, and one to indicate any useful properties of the object (if it gives light, if it contains anything useful, if it's exceptionally good cover, etc.)

I'd do it myself but I'm nowhere near familiar enough with wiki formatting to trust myself to not completely bork the table by adding new columns.

Currently its an automated table. What about instead making a separate paragraph of items with specific uses? It'd be a lot cleaner/more flexible.

That would also work, yeah. I'll see what I can do, but I'm not really certain I can format it sensibly enough