Performance - Slower Pawn Tick Rate

🕒 Pawn Tick Rate Adjustment Improve performance in colonies with many pawns

RimWorld 1.6 introduced variable tick rates, which improve performance by updating pawns less frequently based on camera distance. This way, pawns out of view update less frequently. These updates only apply to non-time-sensitive systems like needs, health, mental states, etc. It doesn't affect drafting commands, psycasts, etc.

This mod further reduces how often pawns are updated (even for pawns in view). For example, slowing those tasks from 60 updates per second down to only 6. The result is improved performance, especially in larger colonies, at the cost of in-game delay on those updates.

⚠️ Important: Slower updates only affect how often things are processed. It doesn't change how much progress they make.

For example:

• In the base game: if an infection increases by 0.01% per tick, it will calculate gradual changes like 0.01%, 0.02%, 0.03%, .... 0.1%, updating every tick.

• With this mod: if updates happen only once every 10 ticks, the game still adds the same total progress — it just jumps directly from 0% to 0.1% after the 10 ticks happen, skipping calculating the intermediate values.

A similar thing already happens in vanilla 1.6 if your pawn is out of view. I just made it more agressive to save more TPS.

I usually enable this after reaching 15-20+ pawns. On my 10-year-old laptop, late-game TPS improved from ~370 to ~550.

However, it may not work for some people's colonies. Variable tick rates only affects part of the pawns calculations. And even that may be too small to be noticeable depending on your colony setup and your computer.

⚙️ Features & Settings

• Optionally apply only to slaves or animals (default applies to all pawns).

• Restart required for changes in these settings to take effect.

• Adjustable slider controls the slowdown level.

• Changing the slider does not require a restart.

Note: I haven’t encountered bugs myself, but I played with no other mods and only for a limited time. If you notice odd behavior (e.g., delayed responses), try reducing the slowdown or disabling it for colonists. If the mod actually ends up being a problem please remove it (won't break your save) and comment below. If it performs poorly I will unlist this mod.

🔄 Compatibility

• ✅ Safe to add/remove mid-playthrough — does not overwrites or saves anything.

• ⚠️ Important: If you suspect my mod is causing a bug with another mod during some task or bar taking longer, test the following: Remove Slower Pawn Tick Rate. Test whatever you need while looking at the pawn. Test with the pawn out of screen view. The problem will probably happen with whatever mod is causing the incompatibility and 1.6 Vanilla Rimworld.

• A lot of mods are bugged in 1.6 and still marked 1.6. Some examples are Combat Extended, Recycle this and Dead Man's Switch. However, the bugs happen offscreen and you only notice when you install my mod. It is not a problem with my mod. I can't fix problems in their code. You have to go submit a report to them.

• Some vanilla jobs are not correctly implemented to handle this variable tick rate. That means they happen slower to pawns offscreen both in vanilla and with my mod. Those jobs are the snow and sand clearing, repairing mechs, and beating out fires. I reported it in the ludeon discord and I am waiting for their answer. The mining job is also broken in vanilla rimworld but I fixed it with a patch in this mod.

📋 Systems Affected This if the full list of things affected by variable tick rate (even in vanilla). If you find delays in something unrelated, then it probably doesn't have anything to do with this mod.

• Jobs tracker

• Injuries and infections

• Mental state, social interactions, and relationships (e.g., opinion, bonding)

• Needs and comfort (food, rest, recreation, furniture)

• Surroundings & aesthetic preferences

• Apparel deterioration

• Skills (XP decay/gain tracking)

• Auto-undraft interval

• Royalty titles, ceremonies and psychic entropy (if Royalty is active)

• Prison break, slave rebellion, and hemogen extraction

• Looks change desire and guilt (if Ideology is active)

• Gene tracking (Biotech)

• Mutations and anomalies (if Anomaly is active)

• Pollution / Toxicity / Vacuum effects

• Age tracking

• Record keeping (stats like distance walked, enemies killed, etc.)