RimWorld - Damned Colonists in Space

[Nutria]

I think raids have little or anything to do with your neighbors on the world map. My understanding is that one of the main factors in the strength and type of raids is the net worth of your town, which depends a lot on how much you've built.

 

[thesecret1]

Yeah, I think so too. I've had a colony on the north pole, far from anyone else, yet still got raided on a regular basis. Well, "raided" – with naked brutality start, I was just a lone survivalist looking for something to eat, so at most, I got some lone loser with a knife come and try to... I don't even know what the fuck he'd want from me, I had nothing. Maybe he just thought my cave looked cool. Anyway, these lone raiders are an excellent source of protein.

 

[Johannes]

There is not really a late, is mostly about how "rich" and how many people you have, the more value/people the strongest the raids.

"pro" gameplay is all about optimization of $$$. (like, paved stone floor/walls are the best, pretty but 0 value)

What did something change in a patch lately, stone floors and walls aren't zero value. That's one reason why there is (or used to be if it changed) a strong case to use plain dirt floors as much as possible.

 

[TheEntitledOne]

I think raids have little or anything to do with your neighbors on the world map. My understanding is that one of the main factors in the strength and type of raids is the net worth of your town, which depends a lot on how much you've built.

The loot enemies drop also counts to your net worth iirc. So you are better selling of/destroying all that shit.

 

[Nutria]

Yeah I think that the weapons you get off of dead enemies seem worthless because in trade everyone offers you something like 10% of the value of it, but they're probably counted full price when it comes to net worth? So I guess it's a good idea to disassemble and smelt that stuff if you're not gonna use it.

 

[Lady_Error]

Did anyone ever get a toxic fallout for a week? Not sure if it's from a mod or not. I've had it twice now and it's brutal in colder temperatures. All animals and most trees die.

Also, what's the point of hydroponics? You still need the sun lamps, so I guess it is only for the insane who play on maps without soil?

 

[Jonathan "Zee Nekomimi]

Did anyone ever get a toxic fallout for a week? Not sure if it's from a mod or not. I've had it twice now and it's brutal in colder temperatures. All animals and most trees die.

Also, what's the point of hydroponics? You still need the sun lamps, so I guess it is only for the insane who play on maps without soil?

medicine grow mid to late game. Also good to grow certain "mod" crops depending on the region you at.

 

[Risewild]

Also, what's the point of hydroponics? You still need the sun lamps, so I guess it is only for the insane who play on maps without soil?

Hydroponics also have a huge fertility rate (280%), which means that your crops will grow much faster, specially if you don't have rich soil around (the most fertile soil available). Hydroponics have a fertility of twice as much as rich soil (140%).

So you can grow stuff 2, 3 or even 4 times faster with hydroponic basins than just using soil.

 

[Nutria]

I haven't done the math to see if it can compete economically with just having a lot of land planted, but you should probably have at least some hydroponics just in case you run into a disaster. If it's indoors and heated, it will be immune to toxic fallout and cold snaps. And being able to get out a new crop quickly really helps if you somehow fucked up and ran out of food.

 

[Jonathan "Zee Nekomimi]

Main issue is energy consumption, those things eat alot of energy. Also solar flares fucking the stuff planted from time to time.

 

[Risewild]

Main issue is energy consumption, those things eat alot of energy. Also solar flares fucking the stuff planted from time to time.

This is true, but the main power consumption comes from the Sun Lamps (needs 2900 power). Each Hydroponic Basin only needs 70 power, you can have 40 basins and still consume less than 1 Sun Lamp (2800 vs 2900).

You can build Hydroponic Basins outside, if you lack fertile terrain and save the power needed for Sun Lamps. This decreases the benefits of the Hydroponics (being able to grow things safely indoors), but this can be somehow minimized if you build the Basins outside, then build a wall around them, put one or more heaters, a door and a Sun Lamp, but build no roof. You keep the heaters and Sun Lamp switched off (as not to waste power) and only turn them on when the conditions are bad and you need heat and light. Then you tell your pawns to quickly build a roof and you turned your outside growing area that doesn't consume that much power into an inside growing area that is consuming quite some power. After the conditions get favorable again (toxic fallout, volcanic winter, cold snap, etc ended) switch the heaters and Sun Lamp off and remove the roof again.

When a solar flare is going for too long and your crops are starting to get too damaged to survive it, then you should force your pawns to harvest the plants if they've grown a bit (they will wield something, if when you select the plant you get the option to harvest it), this will wield much less food if the crops have only grown a bit past 60% or so, compared to fully grown, but wield only a bit less if the crops are already at +80% or so. It minimizes the loss of food a bit. Of course, if your crops have only grown 50% or less, you get nothing.

 

[Fedora Master]

Food management pisses me off. I have no idea how to do a tribal start in a cold environment because you can't grow shit and you can't hunt because apparently during winter all animals just disappear.

 

[Seigneur Locklear]

Food management pisses me off. I have no idea how to do a tribal start in a cold environment because you can't grow shit and you can't hunt because apparently during winter all animals just disappear.

Yeah, I have also been trying ice sheet tribal runs, though a bigger issue is the lack of wood if you ask me, because you'll start freezing to death far sooner than dying of hunger. Sure, you can mitigate this by building around a steam geyser, but one unlucky cold snap and you're still gone. I imagine the key to succeed is to somehow rush electricity asap while getting lucky with animal migrations for food and such. And even then, I've had packs of 5-6 badgers turn on my hunter and bite the everloving shit out of him when he attempted to hunt them.

 

[Rafidur]

I'm guessing you need to rush something like a wind turbine, battery, and electric heater.

 

[thesecret1]

I played and survived with naked brutality on ice sheet. The key is to exploit the steam geyser for heat (just keep the door open so that you don't cook yourself to death, and you can survive there for an indefinite amount of time). Having no wood sucks a lot, but it's not actually strictly necessary for survival. What is a lot worse is the absolute lack of food – you'll pray for next raid to happen already so that you can eat the raiders, because there's just no way to get any kind of food sustainability going until you research and build everything you need to set up an in-door field with a sun lamp, after which you're pretty much golden. With a tribal start, you'll probably need to slaughter all but one tribal for food, because you just won't be able to feed them.

 

[Nutria]

Unpopular opinion: I don't want to eat people.

 

[Lady_Error]

The mechanoids and infestations really bore me for some reason. Is there a mod that removes them?

It seems that both start around the 100k wealth mark, so I guess destroying some stuff and dismissing some colonists can get me back to the good old raids as well?

 

[Fedora Master]

I played and survived with naked brutality on ice sheet. The key is to exploit the steam geyser for heat (just keep the door open so that you don't cook yourself to death, and you can survive there for an indefinite amount of time). Having no wood sucks a lot, but it's not actually strictly necessary for survival. What is a lot worse is the absolute lack of food – you'll pray for next raid to happen already so that you can eat the raiders, because there's just no way to get any kind of food sustainability going until you research and build everything you need to set up an in-door field with a sun lamp, after which you're pretty much golden. With a tribal start, you'll probably need to slaughter all but one tribal for food, because you just won't be able to feed them.

Perhaps I should just make an all-Psychopath all-Cannibal tribe.

 

[Risewild]

The mechanoids and infestations really bore me for some reason. Is there a mod that removes them?

It seems that both start around the 100k wealth mark, so I guess destroying some stuff and dismissing some colonists can get me back to the good old raids as well?

You can disable Infestations in the game's Scenario Editor. When starting a new game, tick the "Edit Mode" and then click on the "Add Part" button, pick the "Disable Incident" from the list, then on the right, scroll down to the bottom of the window and click on the button after the "Disable Incident" and choose "Infestation".

You can also disable the Mech Clustsers and the hazardous space ship parts (psychic and defoliator) that spawn with Mechanoids that way too.

 

[thesecret1]

Unpopular opinion: I don't want to eat people.

Don't play on ice sheet then. No food grows there whatsoever, and you just can't rely on animals to replenish – you'll hunt them all down very soon, and after that, it's nothing unusual to go half a year with only a single snowhare spawning. Unless you're incredibly lucky, or heavily exploit the game, you cannot survive ice sheet without cannibalism until you get agriculture going.

 

[Rafidur]

infestations really bore

Yes, they do tend to do that a lot.

 

[Jonathan "Zee Nekomimi]

The mechanoids and infestations really bore me for some reason. Is there a mod that removes them?

It seems that both start around the 100k wealth mark, so I guess destroying some stuff and dismissing some colonists can get me back to the good old raids as well?

Yes there's mods to remove then outright or to limite/slow their actions to outside base perimeter.

On how to play Icesheet tribal start survival is simple, move down south as soon was possible

 

[Konjad]

I promised myself I'm not gonna play DF until the "AWESOME NEW" edition comes out, which might still take another year, so I just bought Rimworld on GOG and started playing, any suggestions for a newbie? I'm gonna play vanilla only, no mods (at least for the time being).

 

[DDZ]

Start using the nutrient paste dispenser, cheap and disgusting, but it's definitely worth the small mood penalty. Having a pawn spend most of it's day on food prep is a huge waste.

If you get the chance to recruit/buy/save a shitty pawn that can almost do nothing but can haul/clean, keep him around. Especially in the beginning.

My other suggestion is retuning it and buying the Steam version, because mods are such a huge fucking deal with this game and I can't imagine installing and managing 100+ mods without the Steam Workshop. Or is there a tool for non Steam Rimworld?

 

[whydoibother]

The obvious newbie tips are:

• Build a dining room, with a table and a few chairs. Colonists HATE eating without a table, they feel about it like their sister died.
• Enemy raids get stronger depending on how much wealth you have (total cost of your colonists if they were sold as slaves, and of your furniture, and your money), so don't get too rich before you get strong enough to protect it.
• It is common practice to build a big room to be a refrigerator, with 1 or 2 air conditioners set to keep the temperature bellow zero at a great cost of power. Do that, its worthwhile to be able to store large amounts of food.
• Build related things close to each other. Farm close to fridge, fridge close to kitchen, kitchen close to dining room. Travel time when carrying things can kill your efficiency.
• Looting armor from corpses gives them the "tainted" debuff, making colonists feel bad. But if you wound the person, and strip them naked, and kill them, its not a corpse's armor, and not tainted...
• Give prisoners the basics - bed, table, chair, light, heat, or they will certainly try to break out of jail and will be harder to recruit.
• Growing drug plants and manufacturing synthetic drugs to sell them to vendors is the easiest way to get rich. Just don't get too rich, too fast.
• Don't feel obligated to do every quest/task, a lot of the time its not worth the opportunity cost to travel there and back, and if you get attacked with half your colony being away, its bad times.
• If you build some sort of bunker where you will meet incoming enemies, clear the trees and stone chunks from in front of it, they give cover to enemies.

That's about it for the lessons you'd rather know than have to learn the hard way. Everything else, its better to learn from trying and failing, and watching the story play out. The game is honestly only fun if you are invested in your pawns and their personalities and how their private adventures work out, the developer specifically says its a "story generator" and I do feel it really is.
You should switch to mods after a few runs, there are some very fun ones. One that lets you host a hotel and a restaurant, for example, it fits into the vanilla game very well.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Apparently there's a third party mod manager usable with GOG(you can download mods for games without owning it now it seems, thanks gabe)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1847679158

scroll down for download links

 

[Konjad]

The game is honestly only fun if you are invested in your pawns and their personalities and how their private adventures work out, the developer specifically says its a "story generator" and I do feel it really is.

So it's not really a Dwarf Fortress Light as I imagined? It's more limited than that?