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Alright, so if the game devs are ok with calling such a shoddy system "complete" is there anyone out there able to create a mod that would make things easier?

I've noticed through my searches that caravanning is one of the least modded parts of the game, i've only been able to find the giddy-up mod that effect that part of the game, does anyone have any suggestions?

I feel there are at least 4 points that need to be improved to fix caravanning, although others might be able to make some more suggestions.


1) I'd love to be able to see more information regarding the state of the people and animals from the create caravan screen in the world.
This information would include a full readout of their health and status (both for colonist and animals); EG: food, rest, recreation, movement speed and more.
Additionally i'd love to be able to tell which masters each animal is assigned to, not just the bonded master.

2) Animals should not be allowed to consume food outside the zone they are assigned to.

3) Animals should be restricted to the zone that they are assigned to once they have been added to a caravan, they should not be allowed to leave that zone until they have been "touched" by a colonist forming the caravan, ignoring sleep, food, and medical treatment.

4) Animals should be able to be "touched" by colonists forming a caravan, even when wandering, eating and sleeping.
Alternatively
Animals added to a caravan should ignore everything until they have been "touched" by a colonist forming the caravan, including food, sleep and medical treatment.

Does anyone else have anything else they'd like to see with the caravan system fixed up?

Hi all,

I've been engrossed in a single rimworld map for a long time, my colony is 46 years old.
I have a couple of dozen colonists in a base that spans the entire map.
I hollowed out a mountain completely and built under it.
I strip mined 4 other maps and hauled the resources back to maintain my dwindling stock piles.
I've slaughtered some cities, and defended others.
Faced down raids of hundreds and recovered.

https://i.imgur.com/8TFSaQX.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/htt7ARv.jpg

As you can see i have devoted a lot of time and effort to this game over the last few months.

I feel it's fair to say i've had a long and varied game play and one thing i've noticed throughout the three weeks of play time i've dedicated to this map is that the caravan system is shocking, it's horrible, i audibly groan when i realise i have to set another caravan up, and i've finally gotten to the point where i got upset enough to mention it.

I am currently trying to move 14x Thrumbos from my mining colony to my main colony as they need their training kept up, and at the same time i am bringing back a load of resources on my 10x Muffalos and Elephants.

I did the standard load up from the world screen, that's not too bad.
I have to have to flick between several screen shots taken by a third party program so that i know which animals i want to include in the caravan; dependent on which master they are assigned to, their health and food status, and their training statuses. I'd also LOVE to be able to see which zones each animal was assigned to on the map from this caravan forming screen.

So finally i get my one colonist assignedto his Thrumbo mount, i added the other Thrumbos, Muffalos, and Elephants in, and loaded the caravan up with goodies, making sure to leave at least 1 kg for the forage that will be picked up in the first tile.
(BTW a caravan should not be able to add uneaten forage if it will make it immobile due to weight.)
I then finalise the route and left the caravan to pack.

After a day i got a warning message that a colonist was heading towards a break, this isn't unusual for a colonist packing a caravan, so i ignored it; the colonist usually perks up when on the road.

Three days later i checked up on the caravan because it hadn't left yet, to find the colonist about to snap due to hunger and recreation needs not being met.

The colonist had been wandering back and forth for three days, not able to do anything. Not able to load anything, not even being able to finalize forming the caravan to begin loading.
This was because there was at least one animal either asleep, wandering around, or eating at all times and the horrendous caravan system in this game SUSPENDS ALL CARAVAN ACTIVITY unless all animals assigned to the caravan are available.

I managed to force the caravan to form by removing all eating, wandering, and sleeping animals, immediately my colonist sprung into action, tagging the remaining animals and beginning the loading.
I then had to manually add each animal i had removed back into the caravan.

Before you all ask, i have many mods loaded, but almost 90% were added around year 5 after i strip mined and hauled my first satellite colony.
This issue persisted back then, even before the mods were loaded.
I believe this is an issue with the vanilla caravan system and im surprised no-one has raised this problem to be fixed already.

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Another issue is that when animals are added to a caravan, they immediately ignore all zone restrictions.

I have lost uncountable volumes of devil strand because my animals got hunry while the caravan was forming and so wandered into the walled off devilstrand patch and started merily munching away.
At the same time the caravan would of course stop packing and wait.

Are there any plans to fix the caravan system?
Has anyone come up with a mod that makes it more user friendly?

I'd like to mention also at this point just how cancerous having to do this when you have 52x muffalos in a caravan.
It's even more cancerous than having to manually unload each animal individually because if you waited for the colonists to do it, they end up having to chase the animals around the entire map as they wander, picking up one item at a time to unload.
The alternative is to restrict the animals to a single area, at which point they begin starving because it takes so long to unload them.

Eventually i ended up just selecting each animal individually, and getting it to drop each stack individually, now that's cancerous!