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[Broseph Stalin]

I regret some of the things I did for money. The beer industry and the slave trade took more than they were worth, for entirely different reasons. I regret some of the things I did for fun. Too much silver has gone towards fantastic statues and tableaus that only gave cursory amusement, that is to say nothing of the fires. I do not regret the things I've done to survive. Eating uncooked rice during that brutal winter's eclipse when there was no wood to make a fire and the batteries couldn't bear the heater and the stove. The amputations I ordered when I knew the patient was losing the fight against an infection. The friends I sent to die when our counterattack demanded a suicidal feint. I remember, and it hurts, but I do not regret it.

I would have been a good neighbor to these people, these pirates and savages. They could have found me amenable to trade and cooperation, and though I would have bristled at the idea of  paying tribute to these two legged beasts I could have borne it in the name of a peaceful life.  They declined to afford me this option. Their attacks are unceasing and pointless. We took prisoners, treated their wounds, and sent them home thinking quite highly of us. It has had no effect. They have sent so many to die against the defenses I have wrought and though it has taken the lives of people I respect it has won them nothing. We will suffer no more. And so I made a plan. If there must be suffering, and there must, it will not be ours.

The hard part was assembling the harmonizers. Little favors for the royal familes of the empire claiming the doo-dads whenever it was an option. We dealt with their eccentricities and difficulties until we had ten psychic harmonizers. We do not need more. Collecting five prisoners from the savages and five from the pirates was quite easy. The next bit required very little in terms of resources and for a man of my skills it was quite simple but I found the experience... draining.

Spoiler: Painful, but I do not regret it (click to show/hide)

Their suffering is infinite and constant and the harmonizers broadcast it to those they were close with. The raiders still come but instead of sallying forth to face them we seal the entrance to our mountain stronghold quite thoroughly and wait. As they chip away at layer after layer of natural stone and plasteel barrier they draw ever nearer to the source of the ghastly psychic droning. It gets louder and louder until it is all they are aware of, until it seems alien that something other than the pain could have existed. The psychic screaming of things that were once men deafens them.

Soon it is too much to bear. They flee or go mad but either way, all we have to do is sit behind our walls. I imagine some of them no longer seek to our riches, they only seek to end the suffering of those things that were once their friends. It matters very little. They come to us with hostile intent and our weapon against them is quite potent. You may find it upsetting, I do as well. But I do not regret the things I've done to survive.

I saw a post on reddit about creative uses of psychic harmonizers just as I was thinking I had no practical use for the warcrimes mod since it was just reducing the efficiency of my prison labor. In all actuality this sucks because harmonizers are hard to come by and have pretty short range, that's not even starting on the fact raiders have low expectations to overcome and generally have to be at their breaking point for a very long time before they crack, I actually had some start starving before they started getting mental breaks.

[Akura]

...That is equal parts awesome and goddamn terrifying.

[Sirus]

Reminds me of some of the more horrific things DF players have done.

[Greiger]

So now we know where those random low psychic drones come from.  Its just one of those.  It just happens that whenever they are fed the get the ate without table debuff and it becomes so terrible the psychic harmonizer is able to break the barriers of time and space and fires the horribleness off in some random direction in the universe.

Be glad you are not closer to the source when that happens.

[Yoink]

...Amazing.   

Wait, there's a war crimes mod? As opposed to all the other mods allowing for enslavement and mass graves etcetera?   
Is that what added all the general mutilation going on in that screenshot? Fantastic, I might have to try it.   

[Broseph Stalin]

Yep, the War Crimes Expanded mod creates all sorts of nasty tortures you can inflict. Before creating my misery engines I was using Prisoner Arena mod to make them fight and subjecting the loser to penalty selected by a d20 roll.

[Mephansteras]

Got back into this after putting it down for a while.

What does the expansion do for you that mods don't already add in?

[Dostoevsky]

Got back into this after putting it down for a while.

What does the expansion do for you that mods don't already add in?

Hmm...

Royal Titles, which are kind of like a lite version of dorf nobles, are not replicated by any mod that I'm aware of. Patches after the initial release watered down the impacts a lot, though, unless you actively want to deal with them or have bad luck. (Only certain types of colonists will become nobly snooty now.) I'd say they're kind of 'eh' - some interesting perks and challenges to titles, but nothing huge to an average game of Rimworld.

Psychic Powers is another version of Rimworld of Magic, and I think I prefer RoM if only for having the option to autocast certain spells. (Thankfully you can have both running simultaneously.) Though supposedly the upcoming next version of Rimworld does an overhaul of sorts to the psychic system. There's another psychic system mod that was released after Royalty (and doesn't require it), though I haven't tried it yet.

Quests... well, there are plenty of other quest mods out there, though this one does have a better UI system for it. Not sure if the quest UI upgrade was folded into the base game, though. I do like the quest types added, though they can be a little hit or miss in terms of risk v. reward. (That said, just about every patch since release has been tweaking those values, and it is getting better over time.)

Mech Clusters are a different enough raid/threat type that I'm not sure if there is an equivalent mod. One could argue that boiled down they're just extreme variants of sieging raiders, I guess? I like them, personally.

Imperial Tech is probably another version of Glittertech, though I never used that mod. Bladelinks (i.e. DNA-coded weapons) are unique, and I think the techprint system is also unique. It's fine, but there are plenty of other high-tech mods out there already.

New Music - well, there are lot of music mods out there, but none by the original composer.

Not a feature, but one that is still kind of significant - having a high-tech faction part of the base game. Some are fine with it, some think it ruins the original theme. Matter of personal taste, but (at least without modding) one can't selectively add the other features and not the new faction.

I'd say it's worth it on the whole, but I'm lucky enough to not have to worry about affording $20. I think most of the major mods out there don't require Royalty, though, so I wouldn't call it critical.

[Mephansteras]

Thanks! I appreciate the review.

[Dostoevsky]

Oh-- it also adds a new win condition based around relation-building (with the new faction) and base building (to host snooty nobles) instead of teching up and building a ship. My understanding is that the 'final trial' is still holding position against waves of attacks before tootling off the planet, though.

There's at least one mod out there already adding an Imperial-like faction (i.e. with title-equivalents and relation-building).

[Greiger]

I actually kinda liked their first implementation of nobles.  The psionics can be really powerful when you have the right ones, and if you don't get lucky with the rng you can always trade for the psionics you want, so it makes sense for you have to work hard at keeping them treated special with bigger rooms and thrones and such. 

I can see that being a problem when you only have 1 colonist and suddenly they don't feel like doing any basic tasks just because they get to put Sir in front of their name.  But when you have half a dozen people running around, one of them deciding plunging the toilet is beneath them because they can blind an army and keep the rest stunlocked with a thought isn't a big deal.

Now it's like theres hardly any downsides, there already weren't any downsides up to yeoman, which is enough to give access to stun, which in my opinion is one of the best and most useful psionics available because it costs almost nothing to cast, interrupts aiming of dangerous stuff like rocket launchers, stops melee rushes in their tracks and lets your squishies peel away from a melee fight.  But now you can get stuff like beckon which is literally a MMO Taunt ability, blinding pulse which can turn half a raid into the blind crossbowdwarf, and vertigo pulse which makes an entire aoe of targets wander randomly and vomit, with just a throne in the dining room and a half decent room.  Hell you hardly even have to do that, they get a mood malus but by the time you have someone of that rank everyone is in constant euphoria anyway.

[Dostoevsky]

Yeah, I agree with you.

From what I've read the rework of psycasts in the upcoming update turns the 'reign' activity into a meditation required to be able to use psycasts. It also unlocks psycasts for all (assuming they have an amplifier), making non-noble psycasts just require different forms of meditation.

That's fine and all (and a bit more balanced), effectively turning psycasts into specialized non/less-workers, but I still miss having dorfy nobles. Thankfully you can still give the title to a greedy or jealous person to still experience something close to the original version.

[pisskop]

dorfy nobles just didnt mix well with my idea of rimworld.

[Funk]

The save our ship mod is better then the DLC.

[Nighthawk]

I didn't even know that mod existed until today, but holy nutrient dispensers, Batman, it looks amazing. I didn't realize there were such ambitious Rimworld modders out there.