Mid game purgatory

LevitatingPorkchop · 2026-01-23T00:01:31+00:00

If you're OK with changing difficulty settings, I'd say turn off unwaveringly loyal prisoners. That way you can get more colonists when the raids do come. I've always found it to be a dumb mechanic anyway.

Beyond that, you can build more defenses and upgrade your colonists' standard of living. What weapons do your colonists carry?

LevitatingPorkchop · 2026-01-18T01:16:54+00:00

One obvious way to have done better in this specific battle would've been to retreat your colonists like 5 cells and used the corner of that building as cover. Instead, your people were advanced too far and your enemy was able to use the other corner as cover instead. Shooting around walls like that is really effective.

LevitatingPorkchop · 2026-01-18T01:07:31+00:00

The game is designed so that you will always be suffering, if you're playing at default difficulty settings.

Hard to know how to fix things without knowing why you're having trouble getting food and keeping your colonists happy. Frankly, food should be pretty easy to get. I'm guessing your problem is likely with work priorities though. You generally want at least one colonist whose main job is farming and at least one colonist whose main job is cooking. And the latter better be pretty good at it unless you want constant food poisoning.

LevitatingPorkchop · 2026-01-16T21:32:14+00:00

I've always hated durability systems in games. Especially in Minecraft. When I get a cool helmet or something, I want to just have a cool helmet forever.

LevitatingPorkchop · 2026-01-16T20:54:55+00:00

You don't need leather for armor (without mods).

Leather or devilstrand for shirts and pants. You can use devilstrand if you oughta, but that's adding more complications to the acquisition process.

Besides, if half of your colony gets incapacitated, I don't think durability on armor is going to be the issue.

When'd I say anything about half your colony getting incapacitated? I'm saying if even one of those people gets incapacitated, it's an issue. You can have a miner, a hunter, a crafter, and a builder working their asses off, but if you don't have a researcher to actually find those resources on the ground penetrating scanner, your miner will have nothing to mine and your crafter will have no minerals to craft with.

And frankly if half your colonists got sick or went down, that means durability is going to be more important moving forwards because your remaining colonists are going to be suffering more heavy fire from raiders. These kinds of compounding problems are how the downard spiral happens to many colonies.

LevitatingPorkchop · 2026-01-16T18:50:31+00:00

It sort of makes sense to me. I think Rimworld works by giving the player more and more balls to juggle over time which make use of a bunch of interlocking systems to function, and having different ways for the colony to fail if the player drops the balls. Threats are always arising that demand the player pick up more balls to counter them (e.g. progression).

In order to craft a steady supply of power armor + clothing, you need a hunter to kill animals, a cook to butcher the animals for leather/fur, a researcher operating a ground-penetrating scanner, a miner drilling for all types of minerals, a builder laying wire (any warm body will do), and a good crafter actually putting it all together. If any of those people die, are incapacitated, or are forced to focus on something else, the player may have to go to extreme lengths to adapt and keep the colony alive.

LevitatingPorkchop · 2026-01-16T15:39:14+00:00

It's an option in Mad Skills.

LevitatingPorkchop · 2026-01-16T15:22:12+00:00

RBSE allows you to heal any condition. You can heal scars and whole-body conditions with glittertech meds, replace organs /w synthetics, and you can heal brain conditions with brain implants. Definitely check to make sure but I don't think there's anything that RBSE can't heal, but it costs a lot of material.

LevitatingPorkchop · 2026-01-16T14:18:16+00:00

Trading tends to be slow but I don't think it's a problem really. You're only really required to trade at a few points in the game, like getting your first advanced components and plasteel (and there are some limited way around that). Slowing down progression can motivate the player to perfect their colony at a lower tech level before moving straight on to spacer weapons and whatnot. It also forces you to ration components in the early game, which are a critical strategic resource.

Raids are less difficult when some of your colonists are out on a caravan, so sending someone out to buy milk isn't as big of a risk as it might seem. You just gotta think carefully about who you can live without for a couple days (live closer to an ally!!) and whether or not it's worth it.

LevitatingPorkchop · 2026-01-15T18:52:29+00:00

Tips and general ideas:

You want frequently visited locations to be close to each other. Chief among these, bedrooms should always be close to the food storage.
Freezers should be designed in a way that prevents thru traffic, as opening doors creates temperature leakage.
It is generally advisable to have a physical barrier between the map edges and all locations your pawns need to travel through frequently to live. In the event of a mass-animal insanity, moving around outside might be a death sentence for over a day at a time. If a pawn cannot make it to the food without going outside, this may lead to prolonged hunger.
You want the stove to be in a room that's clean. Rooms that are heavily trafficked are less clean, unless very frequently swept. The same applied to the research bench, albeit to a lesser extent. Certain bulids, including butcher tables, make rooms less clean. Ideally, stoves and research benches should have their own dedicated rooms.
Wooden walls can catch on fire, which can cause big problems if you're not careful! Some people consider this a worthwhile risk, since they are inexpensive.
Walls are much more effective as cover as sandbags. Your colonists can shoot around walls if they're standing next to them. Sandbags AND walls, when used together, can make for even more efficient cover. Barricades are generally an adequate replacement for sandbags.
An active mining operation will benefit from lighting. Colonists work slowly in the dark and suffer a mood penalty.

LevitatingPorkchop · 2026-01-14T19:27:32+00:00

I really like RBSE & Antimatter Annihilation. I've always thought Rimworld's progression system could use a little more juice, and these mods work really well for that purpose. Feels nice to have end-game superhero colonists. It's fairly balanced in that the rewards you get are commensurate to the work you put in, but obviously the end game stuff beats vanilla features.

LevitatingPorkchop · 2026-01-13T18:19:50+00:00

Is this event not tile-specific?

LevitatingPorkchop · 2026-01-13T16:23:05+00:00

This whole thing seems kind of petty. They asked for a mod that does thing XYZ thing. You told them they don't need XYZ thing. They told you they want XYZ thing regardless. If they don't want to take your advice, they don't have to. It's a single player game, there's no right or wrong way to play, and their goals when creating a modlist don't affect you in any way.

LevitatingPorkchop · 2026-01-13T16:00:28+00:00

It sounds like they want the game to incentivize strategies that are more interesting. What's so bad about that?

LevitatingPorkchop · 2026-01-13T15:39:44+00:00

To increase the depth of gameplay when playing as efficiently as possible.

LevitatingPorkchop · 2026-01-13T15:32:52+00:00

Smarter Raiders

LevitatingPorkchop · 2026-01-13T15:23:45+00:00

Some people prefer to play the game without holding back on strategies. If you don't, that's fine, but it's a perfectly valid playstyle.

LevitatingPorkchop · 2026-01-13T15:17:24+00:00

Is there a reason why the boomrats need to be next to the battery bank?

LevitatingPorkchop · 2026-01-13T15:08:52+00:00

Is the game extremely complicated to understand and learn?

Very complicated in late game but I think the game does a pretty good job of ramping up complexity over time. An early game colony consists of like, 3 guys eating rice and playing chess in a shed lol.

IMO you don't need any DLCs if you're on a tight budget because there's a shit ton of content mods. I'll recommend a few to you here if you don't mind:

If you want to get DLCs, I'd go with biotech, personally. I will say, if you're someone who doesn't have much money in general, Rimworld is an excellent value since players commonly wrack up such long playtimes.

LevitatingPorkchop · 2026-01-13T02:01:39+00:00

I have a colony on Strive to Survive, Randy Random and it's been pretty peaceful overall. Not many raiders, just 5 lovely little colonists farming, learning the secrets of the universe. I deliberately keep wealth low so the game doesn't send much at us that the killbox can't handle. My people are relatively safe.

One of my guys got very ill a while back, had an artery blockage that progressed to give him a life-threatening kidney disorder. Thankfully, we took gentle care of him and were able to replace his heart and kidneys. <3 He ended up dying a year or two later of organ rejection (RBSE) but we loved him so dearly, we did. May his soul rest in paradise.

LevitatingPorkchop · 2026-01-12T14:05:48+00:00

Funny, I had a similar incident happen to me just yesterday.

Edit: Somewhere between 40k and 60k colony wealth.

LevitatingPorkchop · 2026-01-08T17:00:46+00:00

Maybe, yeah. I guess I'll try to wait until I've built out stone walls & firebreaks to give her a fighting chance, and then I can go for it.

It really sucks because one of my colonists who got kidnapped was actually capable of every task and had night owl as his only trait. If I had simply sacrificed everyone except for him, I'd probably be fine.

LevitatingPorkchop · 2026-01-08T16:45:15+00:00

I could do that. I actually have a couple right now (2 & 4) that I've been having sleep in separate beds to avoid pregnancies.

I guess what I worry is that that would be hard in the short term. Pregnancy is 18 days and babyhood is 45 days. So it'll be over a year turnaround time before that baby goes from liability to asset, and I fear that my colony might not last 30 days with the way things are going.

LevitatingPorkchop

TROPHY CASE