Mech Stations

Mech Stations and Mechanoid Spots can be run together without conflict. For smooth interoperation, Mech Stations should be loaded after Spots in the load order.
If a mech is assigned to a Port and a Spot at the same time, it will seek out the Spot rather than the Port between tasks.
This seems plausible for the gameplay, and a change is not planned.
Charging is unaffected by this: a mechanoid with its own Port will always head to that Port. A mechanoid without an assignment chooses the nearest energy source - a free Port or a Vanilla Recharger. Spots exclusively charge their assigned mechanoid and are not available as general charging points.


Mech Stations supports WVC - Work Modes active. Most modes end with a mechanoid without a task seeking out a Shutdown Zone and powering down there. Mech Stations intervenes before that: a mechanoid with an assigned Port goes to its Port instead. A mechanoid without an assignment behaves unchanged.
For this to work, Mech Stations must be loaded after WVC - Work Modes in the load order. This is also reflected in the mod options: the "WVC Work Mode Patch" setting only appears in that case and can also be turned off there.
Flee reactions remain untouched: if a mode sends its mechanoids to the Shutdown Zone because of enemies on the map, Mech Stations does not intervene.
Note: a mechanoid charging at its Port does not react to enemies on its own - just like at a Vanilla Recharger. In Modes like "wait enemy" or "work and wait," it must be woken up or drafted for that.


Mech Stations is in principle compatible with all mods that bring new mechanoid models into the game, as long as those function like the usual mechs from RimWorld Vanilla or Dead Man's Switch. In a few cases, for certain mechs from certain mods, a patch is required due to special behavior built into those mechs, so that they can use the Ports as Charging Stations and be assigned to them. This is rarely the case, but it can happen. For some of these cases, Mech Stations already comes with its own patches. The mods listed below have been tested with Mech Stations, and patched mods are marked with an "*".
As a general rule: in the case of an incompatibility, the worst that can happen is that certain mechs from certain mods don't use (or recognize) Ports as Charging Stations, and/or can't be assigned to Ports, and/or don't return to their Stations when idle.
If such behavior is observed, I would appreciate it if users could report it back to me, along with which mechs from which mods are affected.
If I don't know about something, I can't address it in such special cases either.
It's recommended to load Mech Stations after all mods that introduce new mechs.






🔘 Size Patches:
Some mechs are classified as medium, but their shape is too large for a small Port. Mech Stations therefore treats them as heavy mechs - for Port usage and assignment only; everywhere else in the game they stay medium. This covers vanilla mechs (Pikeman) as well as mechs from other mods. Each patch can be turned on and off individually in the mod options, where only the patches for your installed mods are listed.
⚠️ Emergency Self-Shutdown Case:
When mechs in RimWorld drop to 0% energy, they're designed to switch into an emergency self-shutdown. They only wake up from this again when A) they've recharged to 15% energy through the shutdown itself, B) they're woken by the player (draft command), or C) they're carried by pawns to Rechargers. The latter isn't possible with Mech Ports - pawns can't carry mechs in emergency shutdown to Ports, which is why it can be advisable to keep one or two standard rechargers on hand as a backup in the colony for such a cases.
⚠️ Ports that stop working:
A mech already standing on a port keeps it when the Port loses power or its waste container fills up. It stops charging and simply waits there instead of stepping off, so it is still in place once you fix the cause. A mech that is not on its Port will not walk to one that cannot charge - it looks elsewhere until the Port works again. This applies to assigned mechs and to the docking work mode alike. Full Ports appear in the alert list.
🔘 Weight Classes:
Small Mech Station Ports accept light and medium mechs, and large Ports accept heavy and ultra-heavy mechs. This differs from Vanilla Rechargers, since small Rechargers exclusively serve light mechs, while all other mechs are served by large Rechargers. Mech Stations does not change the behavior of other game systems.

🔘 The mod's performance was intensively stress-tested with Dubs Performance Analyzer.
🔘 A big thank you to all mod testers and for their feedback during the development phase.

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All my content and mods will always carry this notice: