Mod «Neanderthal Vanilla race reworked» for Rimworld (v1.6)

Overview

Neanderthal xenotype is very different to any other rimworld race because of one important, unique to them thing. They were real

Therefore I wanted to recreate them as accurate, to history and science, as possible.

I used chat gpt to do my research. But nothing here is written by AI.

I will write what I’ve found about every gene type, not only added or removed ones. Also ones I considered, and why they haven’t been touched in the end. (Later)

Metabolism is +25% for a reason. Normally they ate +75% of what modern people eat, but if we were thrown into their environment and their way of life, the difference would be around 15-30%.

Let's start with what I’ve

removed from the original

Cold tolerance –Changed to super tolerance. Neanderthals lived in the ice age. And the comfortable temperature for them was around -5 celsius. That’s a temperature in which they wouldn’t get any problems with manipulation like numb fingers. For us this temperature is around + 15 celsius which is exactly 20 degrees higher. So this change is perfect.

Heat tolerance – They’ve never had problems with the heat because it just didn’t occur to them. Therefore their body didn’t have any efficient way to cool themselves. They had less sweat glands, and their body was much bulkier.
Changed to Heat weakness

Reduced pain – Science shows that neanderthals could have felt even more pain than us, baseliners. They probably were more resilient to it because of their body, but ‘Robust’ and ‘Unstoppable’ compensate for it.

Slow study – If neanderthals were born in our world, they wouldn’t struggle with learning, in most cases. They were predisposed less to some skills, and more to other skills.
We have skill offsets exactly for this reason. (Also from a players point of view, slow study really pushes them into unplayable category of xenotypes)

Poor shooting – They didn’t have any problems with sight. Therefore nothing stops them from learning how to shoot even guns. (Also strange to see them struggle with pilas or bows in early game)


Now we are moving on to

my additions

Heat and cold – explained earlier

Unattractive – If thrown into the world with modern people. They would definitely be considered unattractive by everyone else. You might argue that they shouldn’t consider their kind as ugly. But I say that if they saw our kind, they would definitely consider us prettier. Even their women, likely would consider us more handsome because of our height.

Unstoppable – this is a hard one to prove right or wrong. But it’s a game, and we need to balance staff. This gene now compensates for ‘reduced pain’. Also neanderthals now are a perfect ghoul material.)

Strong mining – They are genetically stronger. Therefore would outperform baseliners in this task.

Poor plants – Neanderthals never grew anything. Even if they could start, they would struggle with delayed gratification. They are not used to planning, therefore they would struggle to rationalize waiting.

Strong animals – are all they knew. Many things related to animals would even be instinctive.

Strong crafting – Neanderthals brain was predisposed to understanding mechanics. Most of Rimworld crafts are either easy to understand, or too complicated for anybody to replicate but are still somehow possible to humans. If humans can figure out how to make a ‘stone skin gland’ using just a circuit board, then neanderthals too.

Poor artistic – When I started to research I kinda hoped to give them ‘strong artistic’ because of stereotypes. But it turns out their brain wouldn’t work well with symbolic thinking. They wouldn’t understand abstract art (just like me:)

Compatible with everything except anything that touches Neanderthal def.