The Operations panel pane by pane, and what each control refuses and why.
The interface
Everything the company does lives in one tab: Operations, first on the bottom bar.
The panes
| Pane | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Overview | The branch at a glance; register headquarters; pay obligations |
| Personnel | Hire, pay, assign roles, train certificates |
| Contracts | Requests first, then priced jobs |
| Ledger | Account movements, with a reason for each |
| Atlas | Coordinates, bands, surveyed rooms |
| Activity | What has been happening |
| Investigation | Records, analysis, disputes, sign-off |
| Machine | The gate, numbered step by step |
| Expedition | Crew planning and dispatch |
| Facilities | Rooms, equipment links |
| Procurement | The corporate catalogue |
| Sites | Places on the books beyond headquarters |
| Places | Every place held open, the count against your allowance, and Release |
| Help | Glossary, your current keybind, readability |
Help works with no game loaded. A glossary you need a running company to open is not help.
The Machine pane is numbered
Every step is numbered, with a tick when it is done and a line saying how to do it if it is not. If a connection will not open, this pane says which step you are on.
Colony controls
Below the panes, Colony controls opens the game's own tabs: Architect, Work, Assign, Research, the world map.
These are the game's own buttons, pressed on your behalf.
Keyboard
The Operations tab is bound to \ (backslash).
The binding is made with RimWorld's own key-binding machinery, so it appears in your Key Bindings dialog with everything else. Rebind it freely — Help reads your current binding, not the shipped one.
Why not a function key. Across the base game and a large mod list, F1 to F12 are all taken by something. Backslash is not.
Colour, size and accessibility
These screens set no colour and no text size of their own. Your Options — interface scale, font, colourblind mode — apply here exactly as they apply to the base game.
Nothing required is carried by colour, sound or animation alone. Gate readiness, the return reserve, route tags, distance, recall warnings and record status each have a written label, and the Machine pane's indicator lights are paired with the game's own tick glyph.
The switches, and what each one leaves behind
Everything the mod draws or plays can be turned off, and nothing turns off a word of text. These are in the mod's own settings.
| Setting | Off means |
|---|---|
| Use the Backrooms background slideshow | The main menu keeps the game's own background |
| Reduced motion (show one still image) | The menu shows one picture instead of cycling |
| Show native gate aura | A designated gate has its blue tint and no light of its own |
| Show company gate frames | A designated gate is the bare door, with no frame and no animation on it |
| Reduce gate motion (hide aura; keep status text) | No gate light and no gate animation. The panes and messages are untouched, which is what the label promises |
| Mute gate cues | The gate is silent |
| Mute field and radio cues | Reporting sounds are silent — a tag set, a journal filed, an analysis finished, a payment |
| Cue volume | Scales every company sound, underneath the game's own volume |
A muted or hidden thing is never the only way to know something. That is the rule the gate's own light is held to: every state it shows already has a message, a pane indicator or both.
Automation file (optional)
The mod can take orders from a file, for an external assistant that plays alongside you without a mouse on your screen. Nothing uses it unless something writes to it.
- Commands:
RimroomsAutomation/inbox.jsonlin RimWorld's configuration folder, one JSON object per line. Results:outbox.jsonlbeside it, one line per command, with the command'sidechoed back. - Each command is something that otherwise needs a click: a zone's crop, a bed's owner, a bill, work priorities, an allowed area; and the setup steps of a colony -- the camp anchor (where the supplies fell, saved with the map) and a storage room around them, rooms, exploring, mining, stockpiles, shelves, stove, butcher table, freezer, crops, hunting; defence (arming, drafting, holding at cover, corner towers); building (walls, halls, roofs, conduit); power (a generator with a battery); research order; prisoners; trading by comms console; guest bed fees. Every reply says what was done or exactly why it was refused.
- It never spawns or destroys anything, never edits a definition, never touches the world map, and refuses a name it cannot find rather than guessing. Anything with a real cost in the game -- a trade, a request to a faction -- still pays that cost, and a colonist still has to walk there.
Examples, one per line:
{"cmd":"add_bill","x":155,"z":141,"recipe":"CookMealSimple","count":30}
{"cmd":"freezer"}
{"cmd":"arm"}
{"cmd":"trade","with":"caravan","sell":"Cloth:200","buy":"Steel:300"}Delete the file to stop everything queued in it. The game's own controls always win.
Two things this deliberately does not do
It does not remap RimWorld's menus. Nothing on the base game's tab bar is replaced, reordered or patched. Remapping the interface would fight every interface mod you have installed, and reachability was the actual requirement — the company tab is first, and everything it names is reachable from inside it.
It does not promise multiplayer. See Multiplayer.