institution/Wiki/core/Home.md

Institution: Core — Wiki

The shared foundation of the Institution suite: a set of RimWorld 1.6 mods about what an institution does to the people inside it, and the crime, policing, and justice that put them there.

Core is the engine every other Institution mod runs on. On its own it changes nothing you can see — no items, no jobs, no UI, no XML. It ships one small assembly and is completely inert until another Institution mod is installed on top of it. You install Core only because something else asks for it.

This wiki documents what that engine actually computes, down to the exact numbers.

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The one idea

Every pawn has a criminal propensity on a spectrum — nature (traits) × nurture (circumstance, mood, treatment) — and the colony can police it.

That single sentence is the whole suite. Colonists, prisoners, and slaves drift toward crime on a continuous spectrum; a policing and justice layer discovers, catches, punishes, reforms, or paroles them. Core is where the spectrum lives as code — before anyone is caught, before there is a record to read, before there is a warden to search them.

Why a shared engine

The propensity idea did not start abstract. It was written twice, concretely, in two different mods: the piss spree's WouldFoulPeople (which drunk, miserable pawn starts a mess) and the breakout's WouldArmSelf (which prisoner whittles a shiv when the door opens). Both asked the same real question — would this pawn do it? — and both answered it their own way.

Core exists so they stop disagreeing. When the contraband system, the justice system, and the gang system all read one disposition engine, they agree about who is dangerous instead of each computing it from scratch and drifting apart. One pawn who is "the scary one" is the scary one to every module at once. That coherence — not any single number — is the point of a shared substrate.

Core carries exactly the three things every Institution mod reads and none should own alone, and nothing else:

Pillar	Class	Answers	Page
Propensity	Propensity	Would this pawn do it? (nature × nurture, seeded)	Propensity
Criminal record	CriminalRecord	What has this pawn actually done? (one per-pawn history)	Criminal Record
Secured context	SecuredContexts	What kind of hold is this pawn under, and who may search them?	Secured Context

The distinction between the first two is the spine of the whole design: propensity is suspicion, a record is fact. Propensity says "this pawn seems dangerous"; a record says "this pawn has escaped twice and shanked a guard." Keeping them separate is what lets the colony act on evidence instead of on vibes.

The pages of this wiki

• Propensity — nature × nurture in full: the trait-weight table, the nurture multiplier ladder, the Would() formula with worked examples, and why the roll is seeded per pawn.
• Criminal Record — every field, who writes and reads each, the For vs PeekFor distinction, how it persists, and why reform is the pivot of the suite.
• Secured Context — the Free / Prisoner / Slave kinds, Of() and OnMap(), IsHeld vs CanConceal, and why the suite keys off this instead of "prisoner."
• Treatment Engine — the shared rehabilitation maths: mark a condition treatable, reduce it by skill × facility quality per session, and build a recovery track toward discharge. Ward's psychiatric care and Justice's reform share this one engine.
• Modder API — the public surface any mod can call, and the one seam (Propensity.DeterrenceFactor) that lets a justice layer feed back into disposition without Core ever depending on it.

The suite

Each mod stands alone as an install; together they form one system. Core is the leaf everything else depends on.

Mod	What it adds	Needs
Institution: Core (this)	the propensity / record / context engine	base game only
Institution: Contraband	concealment, improvised shivs, tunnels, warden search, warden corruption	Core
Institution: Justice	classification, deterrence, discipline, parole, regime, and policing (colony crime → weighed arrest)	Core, Harmony
Institution: Gangs	gangs as contraband economies: joining, smuggling, rivalry, fights-as-crime	Core, Contraband, Justice
Institution: Ward	psychiatric care — a prisoner treated, not punished, on Core's treatment engine	Core, Harmony
Foul Play	the vessel + substance + throw framework, home of the "Piss Nuke"	standalone; bridges to Core + Contraband

Requirements & load order

• RimWorld 1.6. Core references only the base game — no Harmony, no DLC, no other mod.
• Load Core before any other Institution mod (loadAfter Ludeon.RimWorld only).
• packageId: flan.institution.core.

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Part of the Institution suite. AI disclosure: developed with substantial assistance from Claude (Anthropic).