RimWorld beta 19 out now, adding bridges and new turrets

ABANDON THE LAND

News by Alice O'Connor Former Associate Editor

Published on Aug. 28, 2018

The "Ah c'mon don't pretend the possibility of cannibalism isn't part of why you were interested in spacelife in the first place" colony simulator RimWorld has launched a big early access update focused on expanding the most important thing in life: being near water. Beta update 19 lets players build bridges and build light buildings atop them, and baselords can also build power-generating watermills and run power cables under rivers. Let us abandon this terrible landlife. The update also adds new turrets, lets you rename animals, and lets your beloved Cow spot get diseases. Happy days.

Beta 19 is the first big update since November 2017. For those of you wondering what happened to January's message that the next update would be version 1.0, well!

"I had hoped to get 1.0 out by now but it turns out that the 90/90 principle--which says that the first 90% of the work takes 90% of the time, then the last 10% takes another 90% of the time--is quite true," creator Tynan Sylvester said in the video accompanying update 19, "so getting everything really right is a lot harder than just getting it working pretty well."

See the beta 19 patch notes for more details on everything. Here are a few notable features I've picked out and some that just made me smile:

Added bridges. You can build bridges over rivers and non-deep lake/ocean water. Bridges support all but the heaviest structures, can burn, and collapse under damage.

Added new "Messages" section of the History tab. This section shows the last 200 messages and letters you've received.

Faction relations are now categorized as hostile/neutral/ally instead of just hostile/neutral. Allies will randomly send military aid and will respond to certain special requests.

New buildings:

-Watermill generator: Generate power from moving water.
-Autocannon turret: Heavy medium-range turret.
-Uranium slug turret: Armor-penetrating long-range turret.
-Fabrication bench: Craft advanced components and some advanced tech items.
-Waterproof conduit: Transmit power under water for bases on both sides of a river.
-Butcher spot: Butcher without building a bench, at an efficiency penalty.
-Double sleeping spot: Sleep with your partner, even in crushing poverty.

New items:

-Flak pants
-Prosthetic heart
-Bionic spine/heart/stomach
-Archotech eye/arm/leg
-Tornado generator
-Patchleather: Poor-quality leather made from any combination of other leather

Condensed leathers together into fewer types. Instead of a separate type for each animal, there are categories.

Animals can now be renamed.

Animals can now get diseases.

Added an automatic destroyed building replacement toggle. When active, a destroyed building will leave behind a blueprint and be automatically rebuilt.

It's now possible to craft prosthetic and bionic body parts, grenades, and molotovs.

In some very bad situations, a mysterious Man in Black may arrive. Can he set things right in these parts?

Turrets are cheaper and more powerful, but now consume steel/uranium for maintenance after firing a lot.

Combined rib body parts into rib cage.

Food poisoning now has three stages it moves through over the course of a day.

Improved animal fleeing behavior.