The Save Our Ship 2 Mod serves as a comprehensive overhaul of spaceflight. Build an orbital fortress, explore the wreckage of ancient ships, battle pirates – or become one – and travel back and forth between distant rim worlds! Discover the secrets of evolving your ship’s AI into a true archotech, and rule the Rim!
Save Our Ship 2 Mod features
In vanilla RimWorld, the ship’s only purpose is to serve as an expensive win condition. SoS2 aims to make it a relevant gameplay element from mid-late game onwards. Once you’ve built a basic ship and launched it into orbit, it plays a number of roles: as a (relatively) safe place to store a small amount of loot/colonists, a resource sink as you expand it into a full-fledged space station, and – most importantly – a launch point for orbital quests and ship battles, and a quick way to reach any spot on the planet.
For more details, especially regarding the mechanics of ship combat, check out our wiki.
How does it work?
The requirements for launch are much simpler in SoS2 than in vanilla. A basic ship needs only a bridge, sensors, a shuttle bay, and chemfuel engines to be launched into orbit. Once there, you can expand it to your heart’s content.
SoS2 handles planet-hopping differently than its predecessor. Rather than needing to start a new game, once you’ve built a Johnson-Tanaka drive you’ll be able to jump between worlds at the touch of a button. The entire previous world is compressed and stored, allowing you to revisit planets at your leisure. When departing a world, you can transfer ownership of your colony to an allied faction, and if you decide to return it may have become a thriving settlement of that faction. Perhaps their descendants will even feel grateful enough to give you gifts.
It is possible to change scenario parts when traveling to a new world, although some may be irrelevant. Scenarios are saved alongside worlds, so when you grow tired of living on a planet where every corpse explodes, you can pack up and leave, secure in the knowledge that it will be just as explodey when you decide to return.
Once in orbit, you will encounter other ships – some may want to trade, some will refuse to communicate, and some will attack outright. Will you use your torpedoes and railguns only in self-defense, or will you mercilessly crack trade ships’ hulls for the valuables they contain?
Perhaps you feel bold enough to track down the source of those psychic signals that have afflicted your colonists since their arrival. With the help of your ship’s AI core, you can locate and hack into an archotech’s orbital amplifier and steal the secrets of evolving an AI into an archotech…
RimWorld’s engine was not set up to handle multiple planets, and I’ve had to dig deep into the game’s guts to make this mod work. Getting even simple aspects – for example, the vanilla faction manager – to operate across worlds was a headache and a half, and ship combat requires even more changes to the fundamental game. As a result, some hiccups are to be expected. I’d advise you to make a hard save before each spaceflight, and please send me your error logs if something does go wrong.
Every effort has been made to ensure compatibility with other mods. All commonly-used data structures, be they UtilityWorldObjects or WorldComponents, are transferred between worlds. Nevertheless, I can’t plan for every contingency. Please let me know if something fails to transfer.
The fanmade wiki also tracks compatibility issues users have encountered with other mods here.
Code and concept by Kentington.
Artwork by Thain. You can find his portfolio at artstation.com/thain. Archolife plants and animals are by Oskar Potocki – the man, the myth, the legend.
This mod is dedicated to the memory of pipakin, who maintained Save Our Ship during my absence.
Special thanks to SonicTHI for code additions and rebalances, to K’, who helped thread our space renderer, Karrim for work on the vacuum pathfinding code, Saakra for helping fix issues with world switching, and to Revolus, who wrote a faster version of RimWorld’s code for detecting attached ship parts.
Thanks also to Sarg, who created new sprites for the space insects.
Shipwrights: (Insert Boi here), AlfadorZero, choppytehbear, Dammerung, DianaWinters, Foxtrot, Inert, Jameson, Moonshine Dusk
Testing squad: Phsarjk, i am has yes, Fuji, Reviire, Ian, choppytehbear, Jameson, Generic Scout, Waipa, Xanthos, BUTTERSKY, Karim, firethestars, Haldicar, jamhax, Jenden, maraworf, Red_Bunny, rostock, sprocket, El Jojo, Zahc, Dutchman, Zero Jackal, Tiberiumkyle, swordspell, SonicTHI, Shabm, Reviire, Kasodus, Red_Bunny, melandor, Madman, K’, Jenden, Insert Witty Joke, Ifailatgaming, choppytehbear, Capitão Escarlate, Bunkier, Bumblybear, Bubbadoge, Abraxas, (Insert Boi here)
If you’re having difficulties getting SoS2 to work, please make sure Harmony is first in your load order, followed by Core, HugsLib, and then Save Our Ship 2. Linux users may need this Harmony fix if the game crashes on startup. If you are using third-party mods which explicitly reference SoS2, please try disabling them before you submit a bug report.
This mod *is* compatible with existing saved games, although vanilla ships will need to be rebuilt.
If you’d like your mod’s armor to count as EVA gear, simply add “EVA” to its apparel tags, and make sure it occupies the “Overhead” or “Shell” armor layers (for helmets and suits, respectively).
Please report issues on our tracker here.
If you’re a modder who wants to create your own enemy ships, check out the SoSCK:
You may join our discord here: Official Discord for SOS2. Keep in mind, our Discord contains multiple projects. Please keep RimWorld & SOS talk in the #Save-Our-Ship channel.
