So I started a second colony next to my primary as a mining camp. My main map was running low on components so I thought I'd give this a try to dig up some more while I wait for traders to bring me some.
Of course the moment I arrive a merchant carrying a pile of them arrives at the new settlement which didn't bring any money to buy them with. Typical Rimworld inanity :)
But putting that aside, I'm suddenly stumped -- how am I supposed to run two colonies simultaneously? It seems like when I hit 1x speed both colonies run, but of course I can only see one at a time. How am I supposed to keep track of everything? Keep flipping back and forth between them?
And how do events work? Especially raids? Is a raid going to show up on whichever map I have active? And is it going to base its strength on the combined value of *all* my colonies? If I happen to be looking at my mining camp and a swarm of pirates show up it's going to get wiped out...
Any advice on how this all works?
Multiple colonies is you running multiple maps at once, with timescale changes being global, k'now, considering they're on the same planet at the same time. You probably shouldn't be bothering with multiple colonies unless your main one is capable of being mostly self-sufficient without you hovering around to give orders.
I'm pretty positive events can occur on non-tabbed maps as they never stop running in the background. How the storyteller handles event scaling for the newer colony is a mystery however, considering Tynan is pretty stubborn when it comes to revealing how the storyteller factors these things in.
Pretty sure they scale as separate colonies. My main colony can get 150+ raiders while my farm/mine camp only gets 5-10. If they scaled together more than 1 would be impossible.
With the right worker settings/priorities, restricted areas, design, etc., a colony with 10+ pawns can be set up to be pretty much ignorable. You will want at least one person as a dedicated cleaner.
In my experience with raids they seem to scale with each map (colony) independently and not as a whole.
Basically lets say, the main colony will get like 30 raiders in a raid but the new one will only 7
(but then again I might not be correct)
(but I never thought of creating another colony as a mining outpost and not a colony, so great idea! I'll have to try that sometime
I've four colonies now. It helps if your colonies are mature enough before settling a new one. They are all running simultaneously. There are two things i used to do in A15 i no longer do:
a. forget about switching sunlamps daily, you've to rely on a continuous power supply
b. i used to check the map every day to kill top tier predators, forget about it. have your pawns ready with good melee weapons/restrict them inside walls/have a herd of foxes/wolves to clear the map for you
Considering the scale of the threat: it seems to be scaled on the wealth of each colony. Still, playing cassandra extreme, there is no longer the honeymoon for new colonies, meaning the timeline is critical too regarding the threat. In my last outpost, 30k wealth, 4 guys, i got a 15 or 20+ tribal raid at day 5.
Another point considering logistics: it helps a lot if your colonies are connected within pods' range, to send a doctor, a death squad rapidly from a colony to another one.
I'm 8 years in, and end game seems more exciting than in A15.
My main colony had 7 people; I sent two to build an outpost on the hex next door. I get the feeling this isn't large enough to sustain itself from what you're describing, hmmm.
Trouble is, I'm playing Cassandra, so getting more pawns is hard. Especially pawns that are worth anything.
I guess I'll send them home and focus on researching power armor instead. I was just trying to think of something to do while waiting for traders to show up...
To get more pawns easily you could build an outpost with a single guy, Cassandra will help you reach the desired population in this outpost.
Quote from: Shurp on January 10, 2017, 06:38:02 AM
My main colony had 7 people; I sent two to build an outpost on the hex next door. I get the feeling this isn't large enough to sustain itself from what you're describing, hmmm.
Trouble is, I'm playing Cassandra, so getting more pawns is hard. Especially pawns that are worth anything.
I guess I'll send them home and focus on researching power armor instead. I was just trying to think of something to do while waiting for traders to show up...
Ha you think Cassandra is hard? try Randy Random at Extreme difficulty
most people consider cassandra harder than Randy.
Randy has more random events, which makes it more likely to back to back or even simultaneous raids or other events
BUT
Cassandra has a much stricter population control (cassandra's "make it nearly impossible to recruit" cutoff is like 12-14, Randy's is 50 i think).
Cassandra scales raids consistently, even into long games, whereas Randy generally tops out at a certain raid size/difficulty and only ever makes them "harder" by randomly hitting you with more than 1 at a time, which is really rare.
I thought randy was going to be harder too, but most of my colonies that made it beyond a couple years for randy went until i got bored and stopped. Most of my colonies that made it beyond a couple years for cassandra got obliterated by 120 tribals or 14 centipedes.
Quote from: Limdood on January 10, 2017, 10:18:19 AM
most people consider cassandra harder than Randy.
Randy has more random events, which makes it more likely to back to back or even simultaneous raids or other events
BUT
Cassandra has a much stricter population control (cassandra's "make it nearly impossible to recruit" cutoff is like 12-14, Randy's is 50 i think).
Cassandra scales raids consistently, even into long games, whereas Randy generally tops out at a certain raid size/difficulty and only ever makes them "harder" by randomly hitting you with more than 1 at a time, which is really rare.
I thought randy was going to be harder too, but most of my colonies that made it beyond a couple years for randy went until i got bored and stopped. Most of my colonies that made it beyond a couple years for cassandra got obliterated by 120 tribals or 14 centipedes.
I've gotten 75 manhunter muffalos during a mechanoid drop in and then 4 back to back raids once (less than 24 hours ago)
Quote from: matthewgareth on January 10, 2017, 06:46:44 AM
Ha you think Cassandra is hard? try Randy Random at Extreme difficulty
Randy will always be easier than Cassandra. Cassandra is the toughest storyteller hands-down. But that's not the discussion.
I also tried running multiple colonys, since my first colony used the killbox setting there were only a few things that made me switch to the main colony, these were:
Sappers
Sieges
Toxic and Psychic ships
Radioactive cloud thing and Vulcanic winter (to change clothes/build roof)
Everything else would easily be handled by my own colonists, mad animals and normal raids would fall in face of my killbox, and everything else runs smoothly. Base is well powered, no batteries. The second colony is for mining stone chunks and other resources. And this is a blast. I'm loving these multiple colonies settings, and I just got it started.
I want to make my hell's kitchen map, where I grow a crapton of crops and send it via cargo pods to my other colonies. They'll never know what's inside that lavish meal.
I handle my multiple colonies a little different. I built a mountain stronghold with my 8 colonists and once I got it all self sufficient and ready, I sent 5 of my colonists out to raid the nearby pirate encampments, (there was 15 of them close by), everytime I took an encampment I would then uses the base to mine out the map and/or grow extra crops if possible. Then once everything was mined out, I would demolish the entire encampment and send everything back to my main base, wait until the end of winter again and repeat. The few colonists left at my main scaled down the raids and my other 5 would bring gear to build drop pods for a quick return if needed. I broke a few sieges by sending two men back being the enemy's line with rocket launchers.
After reading this thread, I decided to start a new game and try to have two colonies soon after starting. My main colony is in an extreme desert and the second colony is in the nearby hills less than a day's travel away. My main colony is focusing on farming and building defenses while my second colony is focused on mining and shipping goods home. It's been pretty fun so far.
I've been sending all my neurotic/pessimist/brawler/chemical interest/incapable of hauling pawns off to the mining colony where they can have all the mental breakdowns they want while my main colony is filled with steadfast optimists or otherwise acceptable pawns.
A second colony filled with rejects is a somewhat more humane way of dealing with rejects than my previous method.
(http://i.imgur.com/XnyD8pf.jpg)
Quote from: Wanderer_joins on January 10, 2017, 03:09:11 AM
a. forget about switching sunlamps daily
Why not just direct-connect solar? Plants rest when the sun goes down. No need for batteries, thus greatly reduced zzzt threats. What am I missing?
Quote from: DeathWeasel on January 10, 2017, 01:49:36 PM
After reading this thread, I decided to start a new game and try to have two colonies soon after starting. My main colony is in an extreme desert and the second colony is in the nearby hills less than a day's travel away. My main colony is focusing on farming and building defenses while my second colony is focused on mining and shipping goods home. It's been pretty fun so far.
I've been sending all my neurotic/pessimist/brawler/chemical interest/incapable of hauling pawns off to the mining colony where they can have all the mental breakdowns they want while my main colony is filled with steadfast optimists or otherwise acceptable pawns.
A second colony filled with rejects is a somewhat more humane way of dealing with rejects than my previous method.
(http://i.imgur.com/XnyD8pf.jpg)
Hahaha, that's a great idea.
Right now I'm experimenting with an insect jelly farm in a second colony, just so any outbreaks will be limited.
Automatic sunlamps - power them with solar panels.
Quote from: b0rsuk on January 10, 2017, 04:27:45 PM
Automatic sunlamps - power them with solar panels.
I don't mean to derail this thread but...
So I can connect a single solar panel to a single sun lamp, and my lamp will remain operational during sunlight hours? I'm assuming during an eclipse they would power off too. What about volcanic winter and/or nuclear fallout? Will they operate at full power during the daytime during those conditions?
It would be awesome to be able to operate my sun lamps in my greenhouse off the main power grid.
I got a mod that will let me make camps, so I don't have to make another colony, so its not that difficult to manage.
I actually wondered about this... does colony placement effect much? I have two at the moment, one of them on the coast behind a "impassable" mountain range, only two gaps for travel that, if a colony was placed, would act as a sort of gatehouse.
Is this the case? As my second colony is already placed like this and the second is only waiting for a population boost to try.
I dont think events/storytellers take this into consideration but my gatehouse colony does see more raids/ caravans then my 'capitol' colony.
Quote from: DeathWeasel on January 10, 2017, 01:49:36 PM
I've been sending all my neurotic/pessimist/brawler/chemical interest/incapable of hauling pawns off to the mining colony where they can have all the mental breakdowns they want while my main colony is filled with steadfast optimists or otherwise acceptable pawns.
But how do you keep that mining colony alive/running? If everyone's wandering around in sad depression and manhunting muffalo show up how do they survive?
Quote from: Shurp on January 10, 2017, 07:03:50 PM
Quote from: DeathWeasel on January 10, 2017, 01:49:36 PM
I've been sending all my neurotic/pessimist/brawler/chemical interest/incapable of hauling pawns off to the mining colony where they can have all the mental breakdowns they want while my main colony is filled with steadfast optimists or otherwise acceptable pawns.
But how do you keep that mining colony alive/running? If everyone's wandering around in sad depression and manhunting muffalo show up how do they survive?
They don't.
Ok, yeah, setting up a jelly farm on a second colony seems entirely doable. After a few nights of playing around, added this to my guide:
Quote
[h1]Jelly Farming [/h1]
A secondary fort can be a great place to set up a jelly farm. Jelly is a great food and gives a mood boost that stacks with all other bonuses, so this is worth doing. The problem with bug farms is you have to leave the bugs alive to keep the hives maintained, and bugs are dangerous..
The secret is that bugs have a max comfortable temperature of 122 F, so they'll start getting heatstroke around 145F; if your colonists have on good wool cowboy hats and dusters, they should be comfy up to around 170F, so we can exploit that differential. (Very cold temperatures can do the same thing, but they damage the hives and prevent new spawns, plus it's harder to set up large-scale cooling).
- Dig out a big area underground, but don't build there, and make sure there's only one entrance and there's a LOT of rock between your living quarters and the dug-out area.
- Don't dig out under any other "thick rock" anywhere else on the map. (If you do, *sunlamps* and/or temperatures below 0 degrees Fahrenheit will stop bugs from spawning, as will filling every square inch with rubble or other furniture (https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/529ocf/posting_these_is_all_that_keeps_me_going_anymore/d7os5ns/), but they actually stop the spawn, which means it will take that much longer to get bugs to spawn elsewhere on the map).
- Set up a lot of space heaters and put them on the inside of the hollowed out area. Set the heaters to 170F and seal them off from your main base with a door. Keep them turned off for now with a switch.
- Eventually, insects will spawn in the dug-out area (this may take a long time, though you can insta-spawn an infestation with dev mode tools).
- Let them grow and reproduce until there are 30 hives in place (the max number of hives on a map).
- Once there's plenty of jelly spawned, turn on the heaters crank up the heat. If you buit enough heaters, you'll cook all the bugs, and can swoop in and gather up a bunch of jelly while they're all knocked out from heatstroke. Animal haulers are a good choice for this work as the hives will still keep spawning bugs so there's some ongoing danger.
- Once you've gathered enough jelly, turn the heaters off again and let the bugs recover.
http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/106232555621521770/CD98696A88C0E18E4FED2A37F59B98FDD529CEC8/
Quote from: Hieronymous Alloy on January 10, 2017, 10:48:46 PM
Ok, yeah, setting up a jelly farm on a second colony seems entirely doable. After a few nights of playing around, added this to my guide:
Quote
[h1]Jelly Farming [/h1]
A secondary fort can be a great place to set up a jelly farm. Jelly is a great food and gives a mood boost that stacks with all other bonuses, so this is worth doing. The problem with bug farms is you have to leave the bugs alive to keep the hives maintained, and bugs are dangerous..
The secret is that bugs have a max comfortable temperature of 122 F, so they'll start getting heatstroke around 145F; if your colonists have on good wool cowboy hats and dusters, they should be comfy up to around 170F, so we can exploit that differential. (Very cold temperatures can do the same thing, but they damage the hives and prevent new spawns, plus it's harder to set up large-scale cooling).
- Dig out a big area underground, but don't build there, and make sure there's only one entrance and there's a LOT of rock between your living quarters and the dug-out area.
- Don't dig out under any other "thick rock" anywhere else on the map. (If you do, *sunlamps* and/or temperatures below 0 degrees Fahrenheit will stop bugs from spawning, as will filling every square inch with rubble or other furniture (https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/529ocf/posting_these_is_all_that_keeps_me_going_anymore/d7os5ns/), but they actually stop the spawn, which means it will take that much longer to get bugs to spawn elsewhere on the map).
- Set up a lot of space heaters and put them on the inside of the hollowed out area. Set the heaters to 170F and seal them off from your main base with a door. Keep them turned off for now with a switch.
- Eventually, insects will spawn in the dug-out area (this may take a long time, though you can insta-spawn an infestation with dev mode tools).
- Let them grow and reproduce until there are 30 hives in place (the max number of hives on a map).
- Once there's plenty of jelly spawned, turn on the heaters crank up the heat. If you buit enough heaters, you'll cook all the bugs, and can swoop in and gather up a bunch of jelly while they're all knocked out from heatstroke. Animal haulers are a good choice for this work as the hives will still keep spawning bugs so there's some ongoing danger.
- Once you've gathered enough jelly, turn the heaters off again and let the bugs recover.
http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/106232555621521770/CD98696A88C0E18E4FED2A37F59B98FDD529CEC8/
Where do I find and make that map?
Quote from: Seeker89 on January 11, 2017, 12:07:49 AM
Where do I find and make that map?
All my A16 screenshots are using seed "Baby", with camps as illustrated here (the light blue):
http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/106232555621862407/87C824FF078E9CED3977B862F3E30542383A8A0D/
Bottom colony is my main fort and an open plan setup, top colony is where I set this up. They're just about exactly one full pod jump apart.
Map size is 400x400 and I should probably mention I've been having some out of memory crashes possibly as a result. You shouldn't need that precise map though, this would work with any mountainous colony that had a nice expanse of rock.
Quote from: Hieronymous Alloy on January 10, 2017, 10:48:46 PM
make sure there's only one entrance and there's a LOT of rock between your living quarters and the dug-out area.
Yeah, i can see there is a lot of rock. But do you know only the first one slows you down?
Quote from: Wanderer_joins on January 11, 2017, 03:25:56 AM
Quote from: Hieronymous Alloy on January 10, 2017, 10:48:46 PM
make sure there's only one entrance and there's a LOT of rock between your living quarters and the dug-out area.
Yeah, i can see there is a lot of rock. But do you know only the first one slows you down?
I meant rock wall to mine, not rubble. And yeah that's precisely why it's there. A hive can't spawn on a tile with rubble on it, and if there's rubble on *every* tile, it won't slow you down, either. It's all there to make sure the hives spawn way in the back.
Ok, then there is only one rock wall to mine for your farm to be outdoors.
Quote from: Wanderer_joins on January 11, 2017, 07:58:12 AM
Ok, then there is only one rock wall to mine for your farm to be outdoors.
Right, that's actually an underground bubble that got revealed by bug activity while I was testing the heat mechanics -- I used dev tools to fill the single square of rock back in so that all the heat wouldn't escape during my test! If I were going to keep that colony going I'd put in some constructed walls there to keep it sealed off, but this was just a proof of concept.
edit: if I'd been smart I'd have dug a hallway-and-room setup and just heated the hallways directly, letting the rooms heat passively. Then if any one room got breached it wouldn't compromise the whole hive farm. Hrm. I may roll back a save and test that method for the guide.
Quote from: MisterVertigo on January 10, 2017, 05:42:40 PM
I don't mean to derail this thread but...
So I can connect a single solar panel to a single sun lamp, and my lamp will remain operational during sunlight hours? I'm assuming during an eclipse they would power off too. What about volcanic winter and/or nuclear fallout? Will they operate at full power during the daytime during those conditions?
It would be awesome to be able to operate my sun lamps in my greenhouse off the main power grid.
I usually do two solar panels per lamp, just for redundancies sake. This actually provides slightly more light than the sun itself. I like to do two in case a panel breaks down, and two panels provide enough power during a volcanic winter.
Here's a screenshot of a couple of greenhouses from a recent colony. The heat is on the main power, lights on the unique networks.
(http://i.imgur.com/sX8NF6C.jpg)
Thank you pdxsean, I am going to try this out!
Quote from: pdxsean on January 11, 2017, 10:00:31 PM
Quote from: MisterVertigo on January 10, 2017, 05:42:40 PM
I don't mean to derail this thread but...
So I can connect a single solar panel to a single sun lamp, and my lamp will remain operational during sunlight hours? I'm assuming during an eclipse they would power off too. What about volcanic winter and/or nuclear fallout? Will they operate at full power during the daytime during those conditions?
It would be awesome to be able to operate my sun lamps in my greenhouse off the main power grid.
I usually do two solar panels per lamp, just for redundancies sake. This actually provides slightly more light than the sun itself. I like to do two in case a panel breaks down, and two panels provide enough power during a volcanic winter.
Here's a screenshot of a couple of greenhouses from a recent colony. The heat is on the main power, lights on the unique networks.
(http://i.imgur.com/sX8NF6C.jpg)
That's a sexy base you got there