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This Debug log continually pops up.
Screenshot:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2555932901
I'm guessing it has something to do with the current quest chain for the Moral Ideology keepsake relic. I have successfully completed three of these, but have yet to obtain the relic.
This is a strictly vanilla game and I can provide a save file upon request.
Please help.

This is more or less the same 'Spider' layout I have successfully used in many colonies. The only variation I've added since Royalty are the extra turrets in the corners of the killbox to provide more of a crossfire. Cassandra savage.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2067591308
and current wealth is 381,380, but by the time I'm done, I should expect to see it at around 600k
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2067592840

[Please implement rotation of monument plans.]

://steamcommunity.com/games/294100/announcements/detail/4137062119827807825
All very nice, thank you.

One thing still remains outstanding...
Please implement rotation of monument plans.

Thanks in advance

This 'because it was dark' is a new trigger for a major break and my point is that the break behaviour (destructive tantrum) does not match the the trigger. Nobody ever starts trashing the place because it's dark. That's absurd and incongruous.
It should be a minor break in my opinion, and in that case it is a far more reasonable consequence if they were to 'sad wander' or preferably 'hide in room'.
https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Mental_break

[Argh!!! It's a heatwave!]

Argh!!! It's a heatwave!

After all these many hours of play and 165 colonies, sometimes Cassandra will get you good and there is nothing to be done but take your lumps, take a break and start over another day.
Today, colony FFS165 got off to a great start in a flat temperate forest with a huge river. This is unstable build 0.19.2006. Cassandra savage.

Early days of the first year...
And then... my cook has a catatonic fit due to psychite withdrawal... no problem, the other two can pick up the slack and there are plenty of meals prepared.

And then... my hunter/grower starts wandering in a sad daze due to nothing in particular... no problem, there's one left to carry on and he's an industrious builder/miner.

And then... he starts a furious tantrum because... it's dark. OMG, dark... seriously Cassandra? Sigh, ok so these tantrums don't last long. Wait, stop you stupid idiot... don't go bashing the chemfuel! BOOM! He's down and on fire...

But, wait, what's this? A Man in Black arrives to save the day! Whoohoo! Now go get busy! What the hell? He's unable to do any doctoring, he can't cook and he cannot construct. Sigh... just get everyone to bed and hope that one of them recovers to treat and feed the rest.

And then... A Heatwave!
Nobody recovers and the Man in Black succumbs to heat exhaustion and that was the end of the short lived colony FFS165

I dedicate this song to their memory ;(
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5k0GDQrK2jo

Oh I wouldn't call it conspiracy theory, but it certainly falls into pattern recognition.
Development of human psychology owes a great deal to it and so for that, we as a people, can all be grateful for it

The idea that's been buzzing around the back of my head was what if these haven't been just random number allocations that resemble years.
In fact, what if they haven't been just random years either... what if these are milestone years in the exploration of space?
For example,
Sputnik 1 first satellite in 1957
Yuri Gagarin first man in orbit in 1961
Mariner 2 flyby of Venus in 1962
Valentina Tereshkova first woman in space in 1963
Apollo 11 mission first moon landing in 1969
The Mariner mission to Mars in 1971
Mars 3 First signals from Mars surface in 1971
Mariner 10 flyby of Mercury in 1974
Voyager 1 and 2 launched into deep space in 1977
Voyager 1 flyby of Jupiter in 1979
Pioneer 11 flyby of Saturn in 1979
STS1 first reusable manned spacecraft in 1981
Venera13 first Venus soil samples in 1983
Voyager 2 flyby of Uranus in 1986
... we are currently on build 1987 (nothing of note happened in this year) and the next historical landmark is 1989 with the Voyager 2 flyby of Neptune.
Of course my imagination may well be jumping to conclusions, but man, it would be very cool indeed if Tynan was indeed using historical landmark years for his build numbering convention

The Tornado Generator doesn't work.
My pawn went out to meet a siege event and despite targeting a hostile unit and waiting, nothing at all happened.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1468069293

I have been playtesting the v1.0 experimental builds.
I started with my colony FFS136 and everytime there was another build update, I started over with a new colony.
I have been playing on Cassandra Rough (one down from highest difficulty) in a variety of biomes. Since the updates have come so frequently, I rarely got the chance to make it into the mid game and usually had to start over before year 3. That has meant 20 colony interrupted playthroughs so far!
Until now... for the last few days there hasn't been another build update and so, today I finally managed to get colony FFS156 through to the end game in the 7th year! (v1.0.1982)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1468013827
Whoohoo! Thanks Tynan for giving me a break and allowing me to complete a playthrough... you may continue with the build updates now. I need a good rest lol

Feedback request details:

A lot has changed, so it would be really good to get feedback game-wide. But especially on these topics:
General raid difficulty progression, noting that the system probably deploys its points more efficiently now and some high-cost pawn kinds were costed down.
How much wealth various colonies actually have. I'd love to see screenshots of wealth graphs of long games to help balance the "Expectations" thought thresholds.
Profitability of various crafting paths. Art should probably be better.
Ally assistance frequency and usefulness.
The difficulty and interest of the ship ending sequence.
The difficulty of training, maintaining, and using a large amount of animals both for economic and warfighting purposes.
The difficulty/balance of maintaining recreation and the clarity of the system.

General raid difficulty progression was on par with what I would expect from Cassandra at this level. I am more used to playing Cass extreme with regular playthrough and so stepping down a level meant I found it quite easy to keep up.
I did notice that I seemed to be slightly better equipped and technologically more advanced than the pirates, throughout the playthrough. This seemed a little odd, especially in the early game where it's usually a case of catch up on my part and gaining tech items/weapons from the pirate raiders was usually the case, but not in this playthrough. In this one, I was always ahead of the game and the pirates used junk for the most part. Only in the end game did they up their game a bit but still, I was always expecting more from them.
So, too with the mechanoids. There were hordes upon hordes of scythers, but comparatively few centipedes. I expected more.
As for the critters, the infestation event location was very predictable, and fortunately for me they spawned 9/10 times in the 10x10 medical bay which meant it was no problem at all to deal with. After the first 2 spawns, I evacuated the bay, built another bay elsewhere in the base and placed 4 incendiary IEDS in the room. This was enough to eliminate the threat for almost every further event as soon as it appeared.

I kept my colony wealth to a minimum, as always, and the wealth was mostly due to the buildings and essential infrastructure. I didn't have masses of stockpiled items other than the raw resources I required and food.
In fact I rejected tons of item stash quests for valuables. If they had no functional value to me, there was no point wasting time and resources going for them if it was just going to make my wealth grow.
The history tab of FFS156 can be seen here,
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1468068348

Crafting profitability was only beneficial in the early to mid game, and yes I used artwork initially. From the midgame onwards, I was regularly trading textiles in bulk and making occasional faction trade quests, bandit outpost quests and item stash quests, all of which netted plenty of silver and valuables for trade.
By the end game, I'm crafting components and advanced components in any case, and profitability simply isn't an issue at that stage as I am swimming in silver from the moment I can deep drill.

Ally assistance frequency and assistance? Hmm... well the early game gifting by visitors was a welcome bonus, but other than that I didn't really experience any other type of assistance.

I loved the ending 15 day shenanigans! That was a lot of fun and the pacing of the events were more like what I'm used to from Cassandra extreme in the end game. While I could cope without breaking a sweat, I did start checking how many days left were on the timer in the last few days because my base was a little worse for wear, given there wasn't enough time to fix her up completely before the next inbound raid appeared. So I focused on the essentials to keep it all secure and my pawns healthy. Not difficult at all really, could be more

I never raise a large amount of animals and since just one pack animal was all I needed to go caravan questing, I saw no need to keep many of those and a handful of wargs (in this playthrough, but I've used bears, rhinos and wolves in others) was all I needed to get by in terms of 4 legged defenders.

Recreation scheduling isn't difficult as long as you have a decent work schedule. In my case this amounted to:
2 hours anything + 1 hour rec, 11 hours work, 1 hour anything + 1 hour rec, 8 hours sleep
Those pawns that spent extensive time out working in the field sometimes didn't have enough time for rec and so I shortened their work period to allow them that. It worked fine.

Hope that helps

Doh! Thanks for the heads up... I thought there was no more Rimworlding to be done today

As per post title.
I started a play through on today's build and after suffering the first injury, I set my only pawn with medical skill to self treat. He did so 3 times and on the third treatment I noticed that he wasn't gaining any immunity despite using medicine, treating promptly and resting in bed. He died not long after, naturally

Screenshot:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1438901957

"All raids including manhunter packs, with the exception of sappers, will seek the easiest route to their objective."

But... what ensures the objective will be inside the killbox?  All those windmills and solar cells look like good objectives for pirates to attack, no?
Manhunter packs and scythers will of course hunt pawns instead.  Hmmm.  Maybe pawns outside with guns always take precedence over other goodies they could attack?

During most raid events, I send my pawns to the 'body' of the spider, from where they will defend. It's also where the orbital beacon is located and therefore most of my valuable stockpiles will be found there. Therefore, since most raids will be seeking out my pawns and failing that will seek to steal valuables, they will invariably attempt to get to the spider.
Of course, there are the occasional couple of hostiles that might fancy a bit of sabotage and they might busy themselves with dismantling a solar panel or a wind turbine, however, the bulk of the raid party will focus on the priorities. In any case, the loss of a solar panel or a wind turbine is inconsequential and easily remedied once the raiders are dead and looted.

Where did the name FFS 129 come from?

Please Google 'FFS meaning'
It's the name I gave to every one off my colonies due to the learning curve and experiences I had when starting out
I did play a few series of colonies with the prefix THC when the drugs crafting was implemented. It of course, stood for 'Timeless Herbal Corp' in honour of Timeless Herbal Care Ltd, which is the Jamaican company that gained a marijuana cultivation license and won a huge trade deal to ship their produce to Colorado.
You may Google 'THC meaning' too for the more commonly known usage of the acronym

All raids including manhunter packs, with the exception of sappers, will seek the easiest route to their objective.
So, by leaving three open corridors lined with plasteel deadfall traps, I give them three options to do so. The traps will always thin out a large portion of the hostile force. For example, Mechanoid scythers will die trying to pass those and the centipedes will have to come into turret firing range of the spider. Humanoid raiders will die in droves on the traps and the remainder will be taken out by the turrets and my defenders.
Depending on the type of raid, I will usually restrict all of my pawns to the spider body. My shooters will be positioned at the doors. This means that I always support my killbox with pawn defenders. Although it has to be said that the spider is an awesome tried and trusted killbox design that I have successfully used in many of my 100+ colonies Most manhunter packs don't need much defender support at all as the 24 plasteel turrets will take down 40+ creatures with ease.
The only exception to this would be sieges, which I handle a little differently. I will always go out to skirmish those during their setting up phase. The aim is to either preoccupy them for long enough or trigger an assault on the colony. The objective being if I cannot reduce their numbers to a flee point, then at least I can prevent them using their mortar and force them to assault. Once they assault, they can be treated as a regular raid, meaning I will simply fall back to the spider and let them come.

Sappers. I like these. They can be annoying, but they're really no threat and easy to deal with. While they are outside and trying to bomb their way in, you may have time to mortar them. If they do break into a bedroom or two, sometimes I'll send in a strike force to draw them out, sometimes I won't. Quite often, they'll run out of vandalism things to do and then they'll enter the killbox area and that will be that. Sometimes though they'll be smart enough to try to steal valuables. I lost 2 sets of good hospital beds that way when they went for the hospital. I took that as a forewarning and in future if they appeared to be targeting that, I sent the troops in. Everything else that's of high value is in the spider body for the trading beacon. Let them come and steal that
One particularly fun tactic I like to save for sappers is activating the insanity lance on their grenadier. Usually, there is just the one and once they're gone, the whole force gets a little confused when they find they can't bomb their way in and resort to a regular assault... and then they die just like all regular assaults
I did occasionally lose a solar panel or two, but that's only cause for concern when setting up in the early game. By the time I have a fully powered spider built and activated, I have many more power sources scattered around the map. I don't use switches, so everything is always powered and always on. That requires a great deal of power and so I had 5 geothermal power plants ringed with walls. The solar panels and wind turbines become supplementary sources by that point and are very quick and easy to replace if necessary.

20 years of colony FFS 129

FFS 129 was started as Tribal/Cassandra extreme (no mods) in the frozen tundra in mountainous terrain with caves, because somebody in the Steam forum told me to try it as they believed it was impossible due to the infestations. I accepted the challenge.
I not only handled the critters successfully, I prospered.
It was during the construction of the spaceship that I discovered B18 brought a few changes to the game I hadn't expected. The spaceship now requires 3 engines and so I foolishly scrapped my work in order to redesign. This meant I lost the AI Persona core I had used in the construction. Doh! I was not perturbed, as previously, they were easy to come by.
Ah but B18 changed all that! I waited for a retrieval quest for another AI persona core. I waited for, as well as summoned, trader after trader, but nobody had one for trade.
I waited 12 long years!
Refusing to be beaten, I packed up and sent the colony on the long trek towards the landed spaceship on the other side of the world. We had many adventures along the way and eventually, while we were stopping over at a temporary camp, we received news of a retrievable AI persona core nearby!

We're still in tundra, but it's flat, and with just one small hill, it was an ideal location to settle.
And so, the long and arduous construction of the spaceship is now complete!
I started in early December and had promised myself to finish this before the end of the year.
I played for at least 140 hours on this and I gotta say, FFS 129 was a blast.
I discovered that the AI persona core is obtainable through trade too via the Exotic space trader if you're lucky and through sheer rare RNG luck for the retrieval quest. This scarcity plus the huge amount of investment required in manufacturing the components (read advanced components!) has certainly made what was once an easy task (spaceship victory) a real challenge.

Farewell FFS 129... 12th of Septober 5520


Happy New Year everyone!