RimWorld the sci-fi colony sim Catch-All

Oh, one thing I just thought of from your turret killzone - If a turret gets destroyed it causes an explosion 3 squares out from the turret in each direction, which can cause chain-explosions if your turrets are within range. You may want to space out your turrets on the left side a bit, or alternatively, put a wall around them like:

WWS
WT S
WWS
WT S
WWS

W = Wall (brick if you can)
T = Turret
S = Sandbag

The game is too awesome for me. I had to uninstall - it's one of those games where I won't stop playing otherwise, to the detriment of other activities (like talking to people, or eating).

What are those other things? O.o

omni wrote:

Oh, one thing I just thought of from your turret killzone - If a turret gets destroyed it causes an explosion 3 squares out from the turret in each direction, which can cause chain-explosions if your turrets are within range. You may want to space out your turrets on the left side a bit, or alternatively, put a wall around them like:

WWS
WT S
WWS
WT S
WWS

W = Wall (brick if you can)
T = Turret
S = Sandbag

Ah, good to know, thanks! The wall will protect the adjacent turrets then?

Is it three squares out not counting the turret square? And does it go diagonally?

NothingWitty wrote:

The game is too awesome for me. I had to uninstall - it's one of those games where I won't stop playing otherwise, to the detriment of other activities (like talking to people, or eating).

I hear ya. I've got to stop for three days now so I can finish a programming course by August 4. If I even start playing, it's a good three hours.

Godzilla Blitz wrote:
omni wrote:

Good going! I've been trying to aim towards a split in the power distribution, with a switch or two so that if needed, I can divert all power functionality to only defence and cut off all lights/workstations when required, that way you only need someone to interact with a single point, rather than each individual electrical item.

Not so much of an issue now that I have two Steam generators and a lot of batteries though, but just trying to get myself into the habit.

D'oh! A switch! I didn't even realize those existed. Thanks for the idea. That's probably smarter than what I've been doing, which is to build a whole boatload of power sources so I can keep everything powered at once.

I'll post an update later, but I'm about halfway to geothermal power now, so I imagine that will help some too.

Yup, putting a switch on your defense grid is a must. Those turrets consume way too much power to be on all the time.

Another pro power management strat is to use a switch to isolate a bank of batteries. Put a switch on the power conduit connecting a bank of batteries that are otherwise off the grid, let it charge, and then turn it off. Now you have some emergency reserve power for when you're main bank of batteries short circuits right before a raid or you run into power generation woes.

Geothermal power is great, mainly because it delivers consistent power generation.

From the wiki, the turret explosion range looks like:

IMAGE(http://rimworldwiki.com/images/c/ce/Turret_explosion_radius.jpg)

You can rotate the turret when constructing it to change the 'centre' point, shown by the purple square. As far as I know, the walls will block the explosion completely (but take damage) and the sandbags reduce the explosion in that direction. I still have quite a bit of work to do on my turret entrances, but I haven't managed to get any Rimworld time since last Thursday. That will change tonight, however!

omni wrote:

From the wiki, the turret explosion range looks like:

IMAGE(http://rimworldwiki.com/images/c/ce/Turret_explosion_radius.jpg)

You can rotate the turret when constructing it to change the 'centre' point, shown by the purple square. As far as I know, the walls will block the explosion completely (but take damage) and the sandbags reduce the explosion in that direction. I still have quite a bit of work to do on my turret entrances, but I haven't managed to get any Rimworld time since last Thursday. That will change tonight, however!

Awesome, thanks! I'm looking forward to getting back to my game too. For me, it'll be Friday.

UMOarsman wrote:

Just wanted to give a shout out to two mods I've enjoyed. One is called Colony Manager, which adds a "Manager" job similar to what's in Dwarf Fortress and allows you to set thresholds for certain gathering and crafting jobs. The "Manager" pawn will then assign tasks needed to build the items.

The other one (made by the same author) is Work Tab, which overhauls the Work tab to allow for sorting, bulk priority changes, and some other nice additions.

Quoting UMOarsman's post again because I wanted to draw attention to the author, Fluffy. This person is absolutely on fire with QoL mods in the Steam Workshop.

Two of my favorite quick & easy scripts include Follow Me and Zoom to Mouse. Both work as you would expect.

Remember though, you have to first Subscribe to the Community Core Library mod (also on Fluffy's page) to get any of these to work. Also, this mod's placement order is vital in order to avoid compatibility error messages. I guess your mod list in the game actually reads them in literal order. So after you load up your mods you'll want to use the arrow keys to bump CCL up to the top, just below the default Core Library (folder icon) that ships with the game. After that, mod order doesn't matter.

Godzilla Blitz wrote:

Awesome, thanks! I'm looking forward to getting back to my game too. For me, it'll be Friday.

I'm kind of in the same boat. I got sidetracked and am knee deep in Alien: Isolation. I'm in love all over again and determined to see it through to completion. About half-way through at this point, so I figure my schedule will free back up sometime this weekend.

"Move along. Move along."

Aaron D. wrote:
UMOarsman wrote:

Just wanted to give a shout out to two mods I've enjoyed. One is called Colony Manager, which adds a "Manager" job similar to what's in Dwarf Fortress and allows you to set thresholds for certain gathering and crafting jobs. The "Manager" pawn will then assign tasks needed to build the items.

The other one (made by the same author) is Work Tab, which overhauls the Work tab to allow for sorting, bulk priority changes, and some other nice additions.

Quoting UMOarsman's post again because I wanted to draw attention to the author, Fluffy. This person is absolutely on fire with QoL mods in the Steam Workshop.

Two of my favorite quick & easy scripts include Follow Me and Zoom to Mouse. Both work as you would expect.

Remember though, you have to first Subscribe to the Community Core Library mod (also on Fluffy's page) to get any of these to work. Also, this mod's placement order is vital in order to avoid compatibility error messages. I guess your mod list in the game actually reads them in literal order. So after you load up your mods you'll want to use the arrow keys to bump CCL up to the top, just below the default Core Library (folder icon) that ships with the game. After that, mod order doesn't matter.

Thanks for posting. I think I'm going to check out some mods for my next game. Those look subtle but helpful.

It'd be nice if he'd write one so that the screen scrolls diagonally when you drag the cursor to a corner of the screen. I can get my view to scroll vertically when I drag the cursor to the top or bottom of the screen, and horizontally when I go left or right with the cursor, but when I drag the cursor to a corner, screen scrolling stops.

I wasn't really going to touch any mods yet, but that train of thought was really to do with content/gameplay changes. I hadn't really considered QoL mods.... I'll check them out, thanks.

Mouse-pointer scrolling?!

Well, I guess your icon is apt as you truly are a monster!

One of Fluffy's mods was crashing my game when i right clicked on the Work panel priorities unfortunately!
Also, relying on management and then forgetting to prioritise management for something is...dangerous. ^^

I picked up this game and it is fantastic, perhaps one of the best games I have played in years. I generally try to min/max games and initially the concept of the AI storytellers and all the psychological drama turned me off. However, I've discovered these features far from ruin the strategy of the game and becoming invested in your characters high and lows and faults and foibles really enhances the game and adds some strategic elements too it.

Question: Do raids slow down or cease complete during winter (i.e. really cold spells)?

I'm playing in the arboreal forest biome and got a cold snap in the fall followed brutally by a volcanic winter. This resulted in nearly half a year of bitterly cold weather. It wiped out my crops, sent a couple of guys to the hospital with frostbite and generally kept me indoors for a few days until I could knit up some parkas. Then all the animals slowly wandered away or died from starvation and the wolves and bears started attacking my clan out of desperation. I was literally shooting rats and squirrels to stay alive. Winter broke as I ate my last meals and then a pack of elk show up as starvation set in. I've never been so relieved to see a herd of animals in my life. In any case, I would have certainly perished if the raids hadn't completely stopped during this bitter cold stretch.

Wow, your first run was in a northern climate? You're a brave soul.

I'm such as wuss that I stick to year-round crop growth regions.

Your story sounds more exciting though!

I've stuck with year-round as well so far, but I think I may branch out and widen my options next colony. Fact is that, if you hit some farming right away and get a couple of harvests in, you can fairly rack up a large number of simple meals in a freezer - to the point that I have about 1000 unused potatoes, and the same for rice, with over 200 simple meals stored, and only 5 people.

Now I doubt I will jump straight to one of the much colder places, but the year-round farming may not be as big a deal as I originally thought, apart from the initial push to get a freezer going. Glad I went with the year-round to start with as it removes that as an issue, but I may be ready to step it up (a teeny tiny bit).

Generally, how big are your various vegetable fields, in grid terms (x by x)?

I never seem to have a large enough yield in terms of rainy-day storage quantities.

I think part of it might have to do with picking a mountainous region and having less fertile flat land to work with.

Aaron D. wrote:

Wow, your first run was in a northern climate? You're a brave soul.

I'm such as wuss that I stick to year-round crop growth regions.

Your story sounds more exciting though!

I am playing on classic/rough mode so I'm not sure if that is considered easier or not as it seems to be a "middle" difficulty. I may bump it up to Challenging for my next game. Winter isn't that difficult so long as your prepared. Having reliable power, heaters, parkas and a huge pantry of food is really all you need to prepare. Even without this I just barely managed to make it through without losing anybody. Normally there are enough elk/turkey/caribou to hunt but I guess in the dead of winter they go elsewhere. I've now constructed an indoor hydroponic farm so hopefully this winter won't have

Aaron D. wrote:

Generally, how big are your various vegetable fields, in grid terms (x by x)?

I never seem to have a large enough yield in terms of rainy-day storage quantities.

I think part of it might have to do with picking a mountainous region and having less fertile flat land to work with.

I think the fertility rating of the soil only effects growth speed, but I could be wrong. I usually sit in mountainous regions and have at least part of each field on rich soil, if I can. I think my fields are generally about 10 x 5 or so. One potato, one rice and one healroot to start, then I add a Strawberry one and a corn one later if colonist time/numbers allow. But again, I've only played with year-round farming so far, which probably has a large impact.

Woops.

Had an unfortunate even happen.

I had a group of visitors from a friendly faction, willing to trade. Carried out some business and all was well, they decided to hang about for a while. A short distance away, my main Animal Tamer was attempting, and failing to tame an Elephant - had been at it a while, but no success or hostility... until it happened. Taming failed, the Elephant raged (along with it's two buddies). My tamer bolted for her life back inside the colony, sprinting past the visitors. The Elephants gave chase, into my killing zone. The turrets opened fire! But then so did the traders who decided to try and defend me. A stray turret bullet plunged into one of the trading party. They all instantly turned hostile, along with their pack of animals, but the turrets just kept firing.... kept firing...

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/AoJD5L6.png)

So... no more traders, and now their whole tribe has (unsurprisingly) turned hostil towards my Colony, leaving me with only one friendly faction in this harsh world. I'm sure they will be back to seek revenge.. On the plus side, I will get all their stuff... Mmm loot...

Picked this game up last night, and it's pretty neat so far. But it's going to take me quite a while to get used to this interface. I'm particularly puzzled when it comes to figuring out how to give my people orders. An alpaca nearly bit one of my settlers to death when she apparently decided to ignore the order I had given her to go to the medical bed to rest after the first bite, choosing to instead flee in the opposite direction of safety. I couldn't figure out a way to get my one armed settler to shoot at the alpaca until he finally wandered into view. The little missions or notifications popping up in the bottom right corner of the screen have been helpful, but I wish there were more of them, at least early on in the game, telling me what I should be doing, but I suppose this is early access after all, maybe later. Definitely excited to spend some more time with this one.

Your person has a little running man icon in the top right corner of their card when selected. click it to stop them fleeing (to attack or i think do nothing). that one infuriated me for a few hours!

If you want your person to attack something, then select them and draft them by hitting the crossed weapons icon in the bottom left. they can then be directly controlled, but only for fighting or moving purposes.

To get a specific single job done, select your person and right click on the thing you want done. note, some jobs you click on the production facility, like butchering.

To get your priorities more finely tuned, open the work panel and activate complicated mode, the name of which i can't remember right now. You can set priorities 1-4 there, very hand.

Don't die!

You don't directly control your colonists as much as you prioritize their focus. They then work autonomously based on mood, needs, etc.

Have you explored the Work tab much? There's a check-box in the top-left of the menu that toggles between simple (check mark) an advanced (1-4 numerical) systems. It defaults on simple, and that might be okay to start with, but in practice the numerical system is the most feasible option.

Fiddle with that a bit, playing to each colonist's natural talents (and flame-icon passions), and you should find yourself having better control over their moment to moment activities.

There's also a menu option to toggle Fight or Flight with each character, though I don't recall which menu it's on!

Good luck!

Finally back from traveling and fired this up last night.

I'm starting to understand enough to get a good food economy up and running, and to be able to make progress on the research path (though I'm still not clear about what some things do, or what they unlock).

Brigadoomed was happily humming along, and with stonecutting (and a stonecutting bench) I'd started to stockpile some granite, with an eye towards upgrading the wooden structures our colony was founded with.

We'd repelled previous raiding parties without incident, so when someone fleeing raiders asked to join the colony, I accepted without hesitation.

These raiders were equipped with molotov cocktails, and torched our fields and livestock before I could kill them off.

At which point I finally looked at the character traits for our new member.

Pyromaniac. And won't fight fires.

I tried to 'accidentally' kill him off, but the resilient bastard fought off a timber wolf barehanded (I can only assume that it was already injured).

Then he burned down the hospital / prison barracks, and while I dispatched the other colonists to try to put that fire out, he turned the regular barracks and stockroom into kindling.

Three colonists died from their burns. The pyromaniac and the lone other survivor huddled in the ashes, before she suffered a psychotic break and attacked him.

The pyromaniac knocked her out, but succumbed to his wounds as he staggered towards the remaining pile of food.

Love this game.

I've even watched vastly experienced players have their successful colonies turn to ashes in an instant. It's all about trying to pro-actively defend against the things you know may come at you. Then the game will throw something completely different at you and it'll still all end in ruin

The random wanderer joining, and the fleeing ones are the most annoying as you have no prior knowledge about their character before they join. Morality aside, you could just allocate the troublemaker a bedroom, and then forbid the door to be used by colonists, or, if you're quick, replace the door with a wall.

"What's in that room?" another newcomer asked. "Oh, we never talk about what's in that room....."

omni wrote:

I've even watched vastly experienced players have their successful colonies turn to ashes in an instant. It's all about trying to pro-actively defend against the things you know may come at you. Then the game will throw something completely different at you and it'll still all end in ruin :)

I'd seen someone refer to Rimworld and Dwarf Fortress as being, at their core, story engines - which seems apt.

The fact that the story is almost-inevitably some variation on how a settlement fell into ruin takes nothing away from my enjoyment of the game.

It doesn't have to be about ruin though.

Billy was a wanderer who came across a colony of survivors of a spaceship disaster. Billy was young, thought he knew it all. He was brash and, if we are being honest, kind of a dick. He thought nothing of telling the other survivors how to do things and frequently insulted them. He would hit on the each of the two women colonists quite a bit and become angry when they rebuffed him. He was becoming more stressed and hence harder to live with. His only saving grace was he knew how to cook a great meal and grow plants.

The raid came in the middle of summer, while the colonists were planting some crops. Two members of the Scorpio gang decided they wanted what the colonists had and decided that force was the best way to take it. After planning an attack for the better part of a day, they moved in for what they hoped was an easy fight.

The colonists formed a rough line at the entrance to their compound. There were a few sandbags to get behind but they only had themselves to defend against the raid. Billy, with his awful shiv, was at the far right of the line. The two colonists with firearms were in the middle. The two bandits approached quickly, the colonists that could, firing at them. They were not good shots.

When the bandits got close, Billy waded in. He stabbed one of the bandits to death then turned to fight the other one. As he did so, he took a blow to his head that knocked him down. The other colonists were able to finish off the other bandit with only a few cuts and bruises.

Billy was taken to the colony "hospital". Dustin, the medic, could fix Billy's wounds. Except his brain. The blow to the head had moderately damaged his brain, leaving him partially paralyzed. He could move, but his movement was slow. He could do work, but he worked a lot slower than he used to. Thankfully, he could still cook and grow, albeit at a much reduced pace.

The biggest change, though, was in Billy's demeanor. To put it succinctly, Billy was now nice. He never insulted the other colonists, he never hit on the women. Maybe he had to concentrate too much just to walk to be mean. Maybe the blow on the head changed his outlook on life. Regardless, it was Dustin who approached Billy. They became friends then lovers. The colonists had to build a double bed for them. Billy is now almost always happy. He works hard, he plays hard, he spends time with Dustin, he positively interacts with the others. It is sad that there is currently no technology in the colony to fix his brain, there may never be. Yet, it is heartwarming that he could overcome his injury and find some peace and joy living in the colony.

omni wrote:

Woops.

Had an unfortunate even happen.

I had a group of visitors from a friendly faction, willing to trade. Carried out some business and all was well, they decided to hang about for a while. A short distance away, my main Animal Tamer was attempting, and failing to tame an Elephant - had been at it a while, but no success or hostility... until it happened. Taming failed, the Elephant raged (along with it's two buddies). My tamer bolted for her life back inside the colony, sprinting past the visitors. The Elephants gave chase, into my killing zone. The turrets opened fire! But then so did the traders who decided to try and defend me. A stray turret bullet plunged into one of the trading party. They all instantly turned hostile, along with their pack of animals, but the turrets just kept firing.... kept firing...

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/AoJD5L6.png)

So... no more traders, and now their whole tribe has (unsurprisingly) turned hostil towards my Colony, leaving me with only one friendly faction in this harsh world. I'm sure they will be back to seek revenge.. On the plus side, I will get all their stuff... Mmm loot...

I love that so much. I had the opposite happen to one of my colonies. My colonists were in rough shape - hungry, cranky, injured, basically in no shape for a raid. Naturally, there was a raid, and a big one. I expected a death blow, but a group of traders showed up at the same time and got to my base first. The raiders attacked my turrets and managed to shoot one of the traders. It was one of those caravans with lots and lots of animals. Between my two turrets and the angry traders, the raiders didn't stand a chance.

Copingsaw wrote:

Question: Do raids slow down or cease complete during winter (i.e. really cold spells)?

I'm playing in the arboreal forest biome and got a cold snap in the fall followed brutally by a volcanic winter. This resulted in nearly half a year of bitterly cold weather. It wiped out my crops, sent a couple of guys to the hospital with frostbite and generally kept me indoors for a few days until I could knit up some parkas. Then all the animals slowly wandered away or died from starvation and the wolves and bears started attacking my clan out of desperation. I was literally shooting rats and squirrels to stay alive. Winter broke as I ate my last meals and then a pack of elk show up as starvation set in. I've never been so relieved to see a herd of animals in my life. In any case, I would have certainly perished if the raids hadn't completely stopped during this bitter cold stretch.

The frequency and size of raids is linked to the wealth of your colony. You'll still have raids during the winter months, but if your colony is struggling then those raids will be small and infrequent regardless of the season.

If you're playing on an extreme cold map--the kind where you've got to build a room over a thermal vent otherwise everyone's dead the first night--then you'll want as many raids as possible (and escape pods). That's because the raiders will freeze to death before they reach your settlement and all that long pork will keep your settlers alive until you get hydroponics up and running.

mrlogical wrote:

I'm particularly puzzled when it comes to figuring out how to give my people orders.

As Aaron mentioned you need to enable and then mess around with the manual priority settings under the Work tab.

There's a couple of things you have to keep in mind with manual priorities. The first is plan for disaster. That means everyone who can gets a 1 priority for Firefighting. Next, find the settlers who have medical skills (and hope there's more than one). They get a high number with your best doctor getting a 1. After that, make sure that everyone gets a 2 for Patient or Bed Rest. That ensures that when they get injured or sick that they focus on getting treated and healthy and not working while injured.

Outside of that, make sure someone (with the right skills) has Warden, Cooking, and Growing with a high priority. You can get by with a single Warden, but I've lost colonies because my only Cook or Grower died or was incapacitated.

After you can play around with priorities based on what you're trying to accomplish at the moment. Sometimes you need a lot of mining and construction, sometimes you need crafters.

Another thing to watch out for is the little flames that appear in some of the task boxes of your colonists. Those stand for how interested and enthused your colonist is about a particular task. If at all possible make the task a colonist likes their priority. It will keep them happier in the long run and, more importantly, they'll become better at that task much faster than someone without the flame.

This also means that you shouldn't always assign the person with the highest skill level to a task. Sometimes you should assign a task to the colonist that is more interested/enthused about the task. They'll quickly become more skilled.

Finally, play around with the Restrict tab. You can get crazy with Zones later, but the first thing you need to do is assign your colonists set hours for work, joy, unrestricted, and sleep. You want to make sure that you make those lazy bastards work, but you also want to make sure they don't go all Shining on you. As you get more colonists, you can also institute shift work instead of building more production workbenches.

OG_slinger wrote:

The frequency and size of raids is linked to the wealth of your colony. You'll still have raids during the winter months, but if your colony is struggling then those raids will be small and infrequent regardless of the season.

Thanks for the detailed answer. Follow-up question: Is your wealth strictly about how much silver (or gold I guess?) you have or is more complicated than that?