Vanilla Aspirations Expanded - Colonist Goals, Rewards and Character Growth for RimWorld

Vanilla Aspirations Expanded is a RimWorld mod that introduces personal aspirations, ambitions, and character development goals for your colonists. Inspired by the aspirations system from The Sims, it gives pawns individual objectives to pursue throughout their lives, making colony management more rewarding and providing additional activities during the late game.

Each colonist can have several aspirations of varying difficulty. Completing these objectives grants permanent benefits, while fulfilling every aspiration triggers a special growth moment where players can select new traits and passions for their character.

Personal Aspirations and Colonist Goals

Vanilla Aspirations Expanded introduces a new progression system focused on the personal ambitions of your colonists.

Main features include:

• Individual aspirations: Colonists receive personal objectives that players can choose to pursue.
• Different difficulty levels: Some aspirations are relatively easy to complete, while others require considerably more effort.
• Permanent rewards: Successfully completing aspirations provides lasting benefits.
• Character growth: Completing all aspirations triggers a growth moment, allowing players to choose additional traits and passions.
• No negative consequences: Unfinished aspirations do not cause penalties or other negative effects.

The system provides additional long-term objectives beyond building, researching, and defending your settlement.

Character Development and Growth Moments

One of the main features of Vanilla Aspirations Expanded is its character progression system.

When a colonist completes all their aspirations, they experience a growth moment. During this event, players can choose passions and traits, allowing the pawn to develop further.

Aspirations are also influenced by existing character traits. Certain goals cannot appear on pawns whose personalities conflict with them. For example, a technophobic colonist will not aspire to acquire an android companion or a mechanical body.

This system helps connect personal goals with each colonist's existing characteristics.

How to View and Manage Aspirations

Aspirations function as a type of need and can be found in the colonist's Needs tab.

The mod also includes developer commands for manually managing aspirations. These commands allow players to:

• Add specific aspirations to a colonist.
• Remove existing aspirations from a colonist.

These options are available through developer tools rather than the standard aspiration progression system.

Compatibility and Important Limitations

Vanilla Aspirations Expanded can be added to an existing RimWorld save, allowing players to introduce personal ambitions without starting a new colony.

Compatibility information:

• Combat Extended: Compatible.
• Existing saves: Supported.
• Androids: Aspirations are disabled for android characters.
• Non-player characters: Aspirations appear only on player-controlled pawns to avoid unnecessary performance overhead.

There are also reported issues involving other character-related mods.

Character Editor has been associated with aspirations resetting after a pawn dies. Corpse Info has also been reported to reset aspirations when a colonist dies and is resurrected. These issues can interfere with aspirations such as "Get resurrected."

Authors

• Oskar Potocki - Mod design and icons.
• Legodude17 - Programming.
• Sarg Bjornson - Additional programming.