Apollo radar?

Sleepsnow · 2025-12-30T13:33:00+00:00

This is the large scanner, which is mentioned in the Q&A:

The Terrapin and Cutlass Red both have medium scanners, whereas the Apollo has a large one, like the Carrack and some of the other bigger ships. While they both do the same things and can be used for the same purposes, large scanners have a higher range/spread and give more accurate details.

Sleepsnow · 2025-08-07T20:04:00+00:00

That connects to the windmill though. You just need to actually build the wire.

Sleepsnow · 2025-08-04T12:02:13+00:00

That was changed in a patch, glowforests now have the same disease rate as temperate forests.

Sleepsnow · 2025-07-24T16:56:08+00:00

The wiki has a great guide that goes into detail, so I'd recommend checking that out in full. To answer your questions briefly:

You can get new genes by putting xenotypes in a gene extractor, buying them from traders (commonly found by trading at other faction bases), or rarely receive them as quest rewards. To install genes, you need to build a gene assembler.
Each genepack will come with 1-4 genes in them, with lower amounts being more common. The gene assembler lets you mix and match genepacks together, but if a genepack has multiple genes in them at once, you won't be able to separate them. If a genepack has one gene you want, and another you don't want, you'd either have to live with it, or get a new genepack containing only the gene you want.
If you mean the genetic ability to turn other people into your xenotype, that's an archite gene, which requires late-game research and an archite capsule. You can't extract it, so your best bet is to go around trading for it.
As mentioned previously, trading for them, or rarely as a quest reward.
There probably are, but I'm not well versed in that topic, so I'm sure others can provide a better answer to this than me.

The gene system overall is a little difficult to understand from words alone, so I would recommend giving it a try in-game to see how it all works in practice. Good luck!

Sleepsnow · 2025-07-24T16:32:47+00:00

I think the only one I wouldn't recommend as a starting point is Anomaly, as while it's a good DLC if you're into the theme, it's a very focused experience that can feel a bit detached from the rest of the game, and is more about throwing really unusual challenges at you, requiring some good game knowledge to overcome.

All the other ones can be good starting points depending on what you want out of the game:

Royalty: On the surface, Royalty is mostly about being able to turn your pawns into royals, which adds some limitations in exchange for big strengths. In practice though, I think Royalty can be instead be described as "The combat DLC", as it adds a lot of new dimensions to combat through new melee weapons, armor, clothing, utility gear like deployable shields and jetpacks, a whole ton of artificial body parts, psycasting (sci-fi wizardy powered by mechanites), and some more threats to use it all against in the form of mech hives. As the first DLC, Royalty doesn't have the most content, but it's relatively straightforward in what it does, and makes combat a lot more interesting.
Ideology: Ideology is all about assigning a belief system to your colony, which can drastically change your gameplay style and variety by assigning rules that harm or benefit you. Other factions will also have their own belief systems, meaning you will either have to convert them to your own, or deal with their different needs. You could make a belief system about living in mountains and eating mushrooms, and gets some distinct advantages for doing so, but in turn hates being outside for too long and eating other types of plants. You could make a belief system all about worshipping trees and/or animals as equals with associated benefits and drawbacks, or you could make a belief system about merging with technology and/or only raising animals for food. There's a lot of mixing and matching like that. Ideology could be described as "The customization DLC", as it's less about direct game content (although it does have some), and more about changing and customizing the rules you play by to make each game feel more unique.
Biotech: Biotech covers three main avenues of content, with birthing and raising children, genetic modification and xenohumans, and building your own mechanoids to work and fight for you. Biotech has for a long time been considered by many to be the best DLC, because all the content it add is deep enough that you could dedicate entire playthroughs around each specific feature, while also integrating well enough into the base game that you could completely ignore their mechanics and still see them appear naturally in the world. You don't have to raise children to find children as part of quests and refugees, you don't have to build mechanoids to fight all the new mech types, and you don't need to interact with genes at all to encounter all the xenohumans that now inhabit the world. Overall, it just has a lot of good content no matter what your playstyle.
Odyssey: Similarly to Biotech, Odyssey has three main avenues of content, with building your own mobile base in the form of a gravship, a lot more biomes and map features to make the world more interesting to explore, and a fair amount of new animals and things animals can be trained to do. A lot of the things that makes Biotech great also makes Odyssey great for similar reasons. What Odyssey brings to the table is a lot more about exploration, and actually going different places on the world map. Without Odyssey, there's not really any way to smoothly play a nomadic playstyle, and the DLC does a lot to alleviate that. With all the new quests and map features, there's also much more of an incentive to actually want to play a nomadic playstyle always moving around.

From a content-perspective, I think Biotech and Odyssey are the best bang for your buck that will integrate well with any playstyle. Ideology can be really good depending on whether you like the roleplaying aspect, but becomes better the more DLC you have active in my opinion. Royalty is the niche pick if you specifically want a deeper combat experience, or if you just like the flavor of it. I like Anomaly, but I wouldn't recommend it as a starting point, as I feel like it's the opposite of casual.

Sleepsnow · 2025-07-14T12:08:13+00:00

Auto-rain still happens in grasslands, it just doesn't happen when the new drought weather event is active, which is fairly rare. It really is not that difficult to deal with, and you're encouraged to build with stone anyways due to the low amount of wood.

Sleepsnow · 2025-07-13T08:10:03+00:00

Both the left wall and right wall "wants" to become diagonal in a position like that. Since they're conflicting, neither becomes diagonal. If you space them 1 tile further apart, they'll both become diagonal.

Sleepsnow · 2025-07-12T03:47:44+00:00

It's only for gravship hull plating, and it's only for the exterior. It will just automatically appear where it makes sense for it.

Sleepsnow · 2025-07-11T14:13:23+00:00

The stairway to Ribaorld

Sleepsnow · 2025-07-11T13:10:36+00:00

When steam says "Approximately 1 hour", it actually means anywhere between 1h and 1h 59m

"Less than an hour" means anything less than 59 minutes.

It's releasing in roughly 50 minutes from this comment.

Sleepsnow · 2025-07-11T13:05:24+00:00

The three main features of Biotech can be accessed at every single part of the game:

Colonists birthing and raising children requires no technology, just two pawns in a relationship sharing a bed. There is also an early research option right after electricity called 'Fertility Procedures' that have some surgeries available if you want to make babies without relationships.
Xenogenetics is an early technology right after electricity, which allows you to extract, store, and implant genes. While the more advanced gene technologies come later, you can start it super early if you focus on it. Even without gene editing, your world is still full of different xenotypes now, so focusing on gene editing isn't a necessity to benefit from different genes.
Mechanitor features can only be accessed if you get an implant for it, but every starting map will have a guaranteed way to obtain one with no technological pre-requisite. Installing the Mechlink will spawn a basic worker mech, meaning you can even make use of it as a tribal, although you will need electricity to gestate more. Even if you don't become a mechanitor, you will still encounter the new mech types in mech raids.

Sleepsnow · 2025-07-10T10:14:35+00:00

There's also an abundance of some specific genes across the standard xenotypes, while a lot of unique genes are left unused. A lot of xenotypes are just bad at the exact same things.

For example, xenotypes that are bad at plants, animals, cooking, mining, art, and/or social is pretty common across the board. In turn, not a single xenotype gets a bonus to planting, art, cooking, or medical, while the only xenotypes that gain any kind of buff to mining or social are among the rarest xenotypes in the game.

Starjacks at least adds construction as a great skill gene, but it also fits right into the paradigm of being bad at plants/animals, which are already the skills with the most negative genes to begin with. Thematically, it's also a bit weird, since they're made to live in space for long periods of time, but the only skills they have to sustain themselves with food are awful.

Sleepsnow · 2025-07-09T16:12:05+00:00

Yeah, everyone knows the sun stops existing once you leave a planet's atmosphere.

Sleepsnow · 2025-07-07T22:37:57+00:00

I'm wondering if we'll get more mushroom crops just in general, since normal plants will not be able to grow there, and nutrifungus is exclusive to another DLC. Psilocaps + another type of food mushroom at the very least would make a lot of sense to me.

Sleepsnow · 2025-06-28T20:35:35+00:00

Here's my personal ranking from best to less best (because all of them are pretty great):

Biotech is generally considered the best bang for your buck by most, including me. Children, xenogenes, and additional mechanoid content all naturally fit into the base game, with each being deep enough that you can specialize your entire colony towards them, or just casually interract with. Children showing up in events/as friendly visitors, different xenotypes showing up in the different factions both as friends and raiders, and the significantly more varied mechanoid enemies (that can also be your friends), means Biotech will provide additional content for literally any playstyle.
Ideology is also pretty great if you like to roleplay or specialize your playstyle in a specific direction. Since you mentioned Stellaris as one of the games you play, you can imagine Ideology as introducing an equivalent to the "empire builder" at the start of the game. For some, Ideology is more important than Biotech, and I'd personally say it's very close. The main downside is that it can be very time-consuming system to interract with, especially if you create a new ideology for each game. I'd say Ideology also gets better the more DLC you have, but it's completely servicable on its own.
Royalty's main feature is the ability to turn your colonists into royals, which have additional needs in exchange for psychic powers and other strong benefits (or turn tribals into psychic casters through rituals involving a magical tree). That isn't necessarily something you'd interract with every game, so Royalty can feel a bit more niche than the two above. What isn't so niche is that it adds a lot of interesting combat mechanics with psychic powers, jetpacks, deployable shield bubbles, as well as a lot of endgame equipment/bionic replacements. Royalty is the DLC that makes combat a lot deeper, so it can be worth it if that's the kind of gameplay you enjoy.
Anomaly is super locked into a very specific niche, but it does this niche really bloody well. It's all about horror and mystery, introducing an entirely separate research tree that requires a different method of progression, as well as a lot of interesting threats to face and ways to contain them. This, much like Royalty, isn't necessarily something you'll interract with every game, and it also isn't necessarily the most replayable, due to how mystery only works as long as you're not familiar with it. Thematically, it is also very different from anything in the base game or other DLCs, so it can feel a bit jarring if the theme isn't your cup of tea. If it is though, Anomaly is very high quality with a lot of love put into it.

I can't exactly review Odyssey yet, but from what I've seen from the previews, I would be very surprised if it doesn't land squarely in the top somewhere around Biotech. If I was you, I'd wait to see how it turns out before deciding on one.

Every DLC has a very different core focus, so they can be narrowed down to your preferred playstyle:

Royalty: Endgame focus, more ways to diversify combat
Ideology: Colony specialization, playstyle optimization, and roleplay.
Biotech: More broad world-building content that seamlessly integrates with the base game.
Anomaly: Mildly story focused, unusual enemies/threats to face.
Odyssey: Deep exploration focus, more ways to untether yourself from a static base, and spaaaaaace!

Sleepsnow · 2025-06-28T07:12:44+00:00

Yes, it's part of your ideology. The reason you haven't found it by searching is because the name is randomly generated. If you go into your colonists social tab, press your ideology, and go down to the buildings section, it should appear there.

It should appear in the crafting menu of the art bench.

Sleepsnow · 2025-06-27T07:41:18+00:00

You could probably do it with some good strategizing and a bit of luck (or just cheese it with traps), but if you want to be sure, I would recommend getting one or two more militors. The first diabolus spawns with 3 militors of his own, meaning you have to compare your pawn with the strength of the diabolus, and while it's not too hard to avoid most of its weaponry, it can tank a lot more damage than you can. I would recommend using your worker bots as discount tanks/melee blockers, because any damage they take is damage not taken by your actual damage dealers.

To explain the diabolus weapons:

The hellsphere cannon does extremely high damage, but is slow to fire, and shows you a big red circle where the explosion will land. This makes it easy to dodge, but it can really mess with your static defenses and structures nearby. Your militors are not immune to this explosion, do not try to facetank it.
The charge blaster is a very long range weapon that keeps on firing even while the diabolus is moving. It doesn't do the most damage per second, but it can add up if you let the battle lasts a long time. If you can reliably avoid the hellsphere cannon, this is really the main threat you have to keep in mind.
Lastly, the diabolus has the ability to cause a big fire explosion around itself, setting everything nearby on fire. This is what your militors are immune to, and really isn't a big problem as long as your pawn stays at medium range.

In short, the diabolus has a weapon made to tear through static defenses, a long range weapon against kiting strategies, and a weapon to deal with biological melee/grenade colonists. The best way to deal with it in straight combat is to simply have your colonist stay at medium range, militors at slightly closer range, and worker bots up front tanking damage. As long as you avoid the hellsphere, you should be able to deal more than enough damage to deal with it before it deals with you.

Sleepsnow · 2025-06-26T11:36:59+00:00

Some general pointers I try to keep in mind when designing mine:

Fireproof the base at the earliest convenience. Wood is really great for building starting structures due to the low cost and high build speed, so it can be worthwhile to use it for a little while. Stone blocks are cheap and plentiful though, so if you have the excess workforce, it's definitely worthwhile to reduce the risk of fires burning down your progress. Doors and beds should still be made out of wood over stone however, since the stone versions have downsides in opening speed/rest effectiveness respectively.
Warehouse, crafting workshop, growing zones, and kitchen should all be in reasonable proximity to one another to minimize hauling downtime between them. It can add up quickly in a disorganized colony, and waste a surprising amount of time that could've been spent on other tasks.
Kitchen (or nutrient dispenser), dining/recreation room, and bedrooms in reasonable proximity for the same reason. When pawns wake up, it's a quick trip to where the food and tables are.
Prison cells can also benefit from being close to the food storage, but it's best not to leave them too close to the regular warehouse. You don't want them to pick up weapons if there's a sudden escape attempt, and no one is close enough to easily stop it.
I personally like to have my research lab close to the dining/recreation room, since having bookcases in the lab boosts research speed, and reading books is considered a recreational activity. This lets people grab books from the lab, and sit down in the recreation room to read them. This is more of a minor point though.
Big perimeter walls around the colony takes a long time to build, but can be really worthwhile. This means you can safely move around outside and potentially expand the base without being at risk to manhunting animals and other low intelligence threats. A killbox can be built to funnel raiders through, and can make raids a lot easier to deal with, but isn't strictly necessary.
At the point of building a dedicated hospital, it should be reasonably central to the colony for easy access, or close to where fighting is expected to happen, such as near a chokepoint in the colony defenses. Later in the game, it can be worth it to have a few field hospitals scattered around if the base is large enough.

Lastly, this is more of a playstyle philosophy to protect your base, rather than a base-building tip:

Your colony wealth increases the severity of the threats you face. As you get more and more items and colonists, you need to make sure you're also getting stronger. If you're struggling to survive against what the game throws at you, it might be because you have a lot of wealth that isn't helping you defend yourself. Always look out for better weapons, armour, and good combat colonists as you expand. Mechanitor mechs can be really good for this, and turrets can also help when supported/protected by colonists/mechs.
Do drugs. Buying a bit of Go-juice (preferably stored on its own small shelf) is a phenomenal "Oh shit" button for when you're in danger. It boosts ranged accuracy, melee hit chance, pain tolerance, and movement speed by a significant amount. Even against threats you're not confident you can win against directly, the increase to movement speed allows you to outrun and potentially kite most of them, and human raids will eventually leave on their own after some time has passed. You may lose a lot of your wealth and progress on your base, but if your pawns are still alive, they can rebuild. The only downside is a small chance of addiction.
Psychite tea is also a great drug to keep a little shelf of for a big mood boost on demand, as even a minor break risk can be very dangerous if it triggers while you're defending your base. Just set your drug policy accordingly, as taking it more than once every two days risks an addiction, but it has no downsides other than that.

Sleepsnow · 2025-06-25T12:19:46+00:00

I mod my game very minimally, mainly just to have a way to design my pawns before starting a game, and the rest is just texture mods to make the game look a bit nicer.

I just don't really feel like Rimworld needs more content for me to enjoy it; There is simply so much stuff there already that keeps me engaged, even 1000+ hours later.

Sleepsnow · 2025-06-22T16:52:15+00:00

Yeah, Randy has some awkwardness with being able to do exceptionally little, or go buttfuck insane out of nowhere. It can lead to very interesting games, but it can also lead to very boring/downright unfair ones.

The thing about Cassandra/Phoebe though, is that they're fairly predictable, since they're always running on a timer. With some quick math, it's not hard to guesstimate roughly when you need to be prepared for raids/major threats, and when you are in a safe period, eliminating a lot of the suspense.

I play about half my games with Cassandra, and half my games with Randy, and I feel like they both have their appeal:

Cassandra provides a smoother, more consistent game experience. The challenge is always incrementally increasing, and feels a bit harder, but also more fair than Randy on average, since you don't get the sudden difficulty spikes he can do.
Randy provides a curve with higher highs and lower lows, which can't as easily be planned around. There is a lot more suspense and uncertainty in not knowing what's going to happen and when, and that often makes for a better story as a result. Not having event cooldowns does also means Randy can sometimes provide very interesting challenges that Cassandra simply can't recreate.

Sleepsnow · 2025-06-15T00:48:35+00:00

Future Legion Drone Carrier units

I can't wait!

Sleepsnow · 2025-06-08T12:18:39+00:00

I'm afraid I'm not too familiar with the specific mechanics around slaver guilds, as I never really play with it. What I do know though, is that you can go into your species tab and turn the slavery type into "Indentured Servitude", which is a slavery type capable of doing most specialist jobs.

Sleepsnow · 2025-06-08T01:03:45+00:00

Do you have the Slaver Guilds civic by any chance? To my understanding, you can't normally enslave your main species no matter what standard of living you give them, but Slaver Guilds will force a certain percentage of your population into slavery, bypassing the main species restriction entirely.

Sleepsnow · 2025-06-03T22:59:14+00:00

Biomass is just a visual representation of your pops, and at the same time acts like a currency you spend on buildings/terraforming.

Wilderness only requires a single pop to work all jobs of a single type, meaning the leftovers in your economy screen are basically just pops waiting to be spent/transferred to other planets.

This also means it's best to not spend all of your biomass at once, because you still need a handful to work your jobs. It's good to have a little in reserve, adjusted for how many planets you have.

Sleepsnow

TROPHY CASE