Hej,

I've altered some of the config settings of the game to my taste. Wouldn't call this a mod as the game has quite a bit of externalised control over a lot of aspects of the game. It's just config file editing. I am fairly happy with these settings - played the story mode with them, as well as a number of random missions and it at least seems to balance quite well. Happy for comments/ feedback, though.

Download
Available here:
http://confession-box.org/download/Mnemon.txt

Right-click and save as .txt. As it is a .txt file leftclick just shows the content.

How to install:
Go into the settings menu, then modding, click install and point it to the .txt file

Manual install in windows means to simply copy the txt.file into
\Users\%Username%\AppData\Roaming\com.sarahnorthway.rebuild3\Local Store\mods

%Username% is your Windows Account name. You might have to create the mods folder. Am afraid I don't know where it ought to go on a mac - as the Rebuild 3 website doesn't say, either.

What it does, and why I changed things:

* There's fewer survivors on the map - but the same chance for them on all difficulty levels. This makes this a bit closer to Rebuild 1 / 2.
* There's fewer people coming by and joining on the lower difficulties, then standard. With above this makes survivors more important / valuable.
* Children grow up slightly quicker. That compensates for above change a little.
* Chance for same-sex marriage slightly increased. I know this might be controversial, but this is mainly gameplay related. With fewer total survivors I'd increased the chance as there are far fewer marriages otherwise. It's still not a 50 percent chance. If you absolutely need a flavour / setting related aspect - as in prison, often, even nominally heterosexual folk tend to couple up with the same sex if there's few avilable potential partners.
* Survivors are much, much more likely to come with a random starting perk. Sometimes two. Makes for more flavoured survivors - they aren't a blank sheet anymore. And yes, that means some of them just are stinky :).
* The chance that a survivor is devout when joining is significantly reduced.
* Preaching spreads devout slower than per default. These changes so that churches are less of a nuisance - I tended to replace them all with bars otherwise.
* Cultists, on the other hand, spread just as fast as ever. That way the Chosen Ones are a bit less of a thread, as you have fewer devout people, but they do remain one. If Cultists take hold, beware.
* A survivor joins with full happiness on all difficulty levels now.
* Lowered the speed with which unhappiness grows in the late game. It still grows with time, but gentler.
* You DO NOT lose happiness when losing a building anymore on any difficulty setting. Deaths / Injuries / Loneliness / Boredom, etc. cause unhappiness as standard. Again all this as a consequence of having fewer survivors - happiness fluctuates too much otherwise.
* Survivors carried over to a new level are NOT nerfed on any difficulty setting.
* Reduced the meeting with / trade with delay to one day. I thought the standard of having to wait three days / turns before speaking with someone again was just far too tedious.
* Apartments / Suburbs now each house 3 instead of 2 people. You can house a larger population, but farms become more important. It's easier to run low on food, especially on higher difficulties.
* Injury chance levelled across all difficulties. Higher than standard on lower, slightly lower than standard on higher difficulties.
* Days between deaths levelled across all difficulties. After someone dies all survivors are save for five days - except on the highest difficulty level, where there's no holding back. As survivors are rarer now I gave this a bit of a stop.
* Survivors learn skills slightly slower on the lowest difficulty setting. Default for all others.

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I am experimenting with making injury / death a 100% chance, at the moment. That is, that if an injury or death might happen they absolutely do happen - if that works out OK I'll upload a relevant file. Thinking with that is that again survivors ought to be valuable - but also to force you to use different people on dangerous missions, and to make helmets really, really useful, too. Have some ideas for other changes, too, but that might be for a second version.

Some interesting stuff, i will have to give it a try. I am confused by some of the changes though. I get the reduction of survivors, I dont get all the changes to go along with it. Like the reduction in Devout. I follow the same path you do in eradicating churches etc and trying to drive the devout to drop the perk. But why bother changing that? I am sure some people use devout extensively. Point being, that mechanic seems to have nothing to do with the amount of survivors as opposed to a preferred method of keeping them happy.

Also curious if same-sex marriages have the possibility to generate children. If not, then I imagine it end up being moot with making kids grow faster as a balance. Of course I dont know the actual percentages to begin with.

Regarding happiness, I have never found that to be particularly impact-full in the game as a whole. Never once had a problem with someone not doing something or what not unless they also had the rebel perk. I recall when they were still coding on this game the dev was unhappy with how it was working and was looking into it. Dont think anything came of it though.

Completely agree on trade. I am guessing they put in some kind of timer to prevent spending an hour just buying/selling to get exactly what you wanted from various vendors. So for the sake of balance I lived with it. be interesting to see if I fall to simply becoming a merchant myself with your change :)

Part personal preferences, partially because there's more people with perks. I got so many people with the devout perk that I reduced it here. I felt it was far too easy for devout to then spread. Occasionally same-sex couples do get children. Up to you to explain how that happens :). I mainly changed that because lonely people become unhappy, however - so there are more chances for them to couple up to compensate for fewer people around. Ye. It doesn't do much any way whatsoever. So the changes here don't do much, either. I thought the unhappiness curve was just off - you are actively rebuilding things. The situation improves while people get increasingly unhappy ever quicker - which didn't chime with me. That there's no jubilation is clear - but the situation isn't all that bad, eventually. I'd want to make deaths much more likely and that being the major driver of unhappiness, eventually. But alas experimenting o that end, still. With more perks more rebels. But it's all pretty minor and gentle changes. :). It makes it easier to complete the story missions part, too - but I tend to find the game most fun in short bursts. It's too repetitive for really long games, and it just seems a bit of an unnecessary drag.

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Would be lovely to get feedback. I am not sold on all the changes I made - the extra perks / fewer survivors is the core part of this that I am happiest with. More death, more severe injuries, is something that I want in, but proves a bit difficult getting right.

You mentioned survivors being nerfed when they move to the next level. Whats that about? I had never seen or noticed that one.

It's this setting:

; Colins carried over to the next city will be nerfed to this level
DREAM_TEAM_MAX_LEVEL = 10, 10, 10, 10, 10

In the list of all the externalised options the developers released that was set to 5 as the default. I am no longer sure if that nerve happens in vanilla - been too long - but Ive upped it. Might be it's something they only do in the highest difficulty settings in 'vanilla'.

I am taking a look at your mod and I think it is improving the game.

Taking a closer look I am wondering about the

PERK_DEVOUT_CHANCE = 0.00

Would it be possible to mod the chance that colins start with the skeptic perk, too? Are they mutually exclusive?