Have you ever looked at all that magnificent mud, that spectacular swamp, those promising ponds, and wondered - my, what fine soil must lie beneath that water! I should research... the mOiStUrE pUmP!!
You were disappointed, weren't you?
I was too. :( :( :(
No more! Introducing... Moisture Pump: GET RICH!!
- In short: moisture pumps produce rich soil when they drain most kinds of wet and watery terrain.
- Goals: make moisture pumps actually worth the research, the wattage, the expense, and above all... the agonizingly slow pumping rate. Strike a balance between utility and versimilitude. Pumps should not be a universal solution to wet problems, nor should they be useless.
- Compatibility: Very! Safe to add/remove mid-playthrough. I suggest some complementary mods below.
- Details, questions, and quibbles: Read on.
Here's the complete technical rundown. Format: "- [existing terrain] -> [new terrain with mod], not [vanilla terrain result]."
- Mud -> rich soil, not normal soil.
- Marshy soil -> rich soil, not normal soil.
- Marsh -> rich soil, not normal soil.
- Shallow water -> rich soil, not stony soil.
- Deep water -> rich soil, not unaffected.
- Shallow ocean -> unaffected, not stony soil.
- Soft sand -> normal sand (as vanilla).
- Power required: 300W, not 150W. (Still little.)
- Tooltip updated to reflect the above.
PLEASE NOTE "shallow water" and "deep water" are distinct from either shallow/deep "moving water" or shallow/deep "ocean." Plain old water tends to generate in small ponds with a rim of mud and rich soil. Rivers and oceans cannot be drained by the moisture pump.
Question time!
"Is this a buff?"
Yes, definitely. But, a needed one: pumps require research, resources, electricity, and a WHOLE YEAR to drain their full ~6 tile radius - only to leave you with normal soil at best, or stony soil at worst.
It seems ponds surrounded by rich soil should probably have quite rich beds, since there is no current to interfere with sedimentation and no salinity to poison terrestrial plants.
"Whyyy do you make deep water drainable? It's DEEP!"
...Not really. When we talk about plain old "deep water," we're not referring to rivers or oceans. Just those small, isolated ponds that you see scattered around. It's very reasonable to be able to pump the water out since they don't have a visible inflow. Deep OCEAN and deep MOVING water remain impossible to drain.
"Whyyy can't I drain shallow ocean anymore?!?"
It's an ocean. It's too big. Build bridges in the shallows if you need the space.
Now, if Rimworld had robust systems for placing dams, dikes, levees, or land infills, we could talk. But I'm not the modder to attempt that kind of thing. Terraforming is rather out of the scope of Rimworld. Try Dwarf Fortress?
Besides, land reclaimed from an ocean shore would be terrible for growing standard crops, due to the high salinity.
"Make it FAAASTER!! It's SOO SLOOOWW!!!"
There are a slew of mods that make moisture pumps faster. I didn't feel the need to throw my hat into that ring, especially since 1) it would bring another balance factor into the equation and 2) those mods should all be compatible with mine. Load MP:GR after such mods, if you want to be safe. I used safe modding functionality (xpath patching), to the best of my knowledge.
"Any other moist pumpin' mods you can suggest? ;) ;)"
Ew. But, yes: I personally use [1.0+] Movable Pumps by red4standingby, and it works great. It and this mod play nice with each other. Link:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1629805891
A reminder that - just like vanilla - the moisture pump's effects are permanent. If, say, you uninstall this mod and want to change the terrain back, or to what vanilla would dictate the draining would produce, you could enable development mode and use debug actions (at the top) -> set terrain.
Happy pumping! DrAiN tHaT sWaMp!
Licensed under Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.
https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
For whatever that's worth.
