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you are naked and alone but have 100k Gold in storage
tons of raiders comes to take ur gold
is that balanced? LOL
stop crying dude
its realistic anyway
more wealth = more jealous enemy

Such a constructive response if I ever saw one. You literally provide no arguments and tell me to stop crying so I assume you have none, well that just so convincing. For the record - my entire criticism is reasoning for writing here is to have discussion and think about ways to make a game better, it's not even remotely personal.

If you want to have a discussion, respond to my arguments, if not, then don't.

[Of course it's very overblown and unrealistic example, but it's just to explain what I mean. It happens just on much smaller and less noticeable scale but the further you go into the late game the easier it is to spot because there is much more of everything and the raids keep scaling up.]

I mean if you're talking about minmaxing, it's actually inefficient to overmine materials unless you have miners with lots of downtime.

The problem with your suggestion, IMO, is twofold.

1) It's not logical. Mineral wealth is still wealth. If you were told that there was an outpost with a quest reward of 2000 plasteel and it only had a defense of like 4 guys and a turret, you would obviously go after it. This is the same for raiders - they are hearing about this small lightly defended base stocked with tons and tons of valuable materials, and are looking to exploit that.

2) It encourages weird heuristics for optimal play. Most optimal play in this game is about minimizing colony wealth at all times. With your proposed change (assuming silver would still be accounted for in colony wealth), the meta would probably turn into essentially buying up everything the player can in "non-taxed" assets where they wouldn't affect colony wealth, keeping only the bare minimum at any time in terms of food, medicine, etc., and then selling off anything else and converting that to steel too.

Plus, in general it'd be too hard to really make a clear distinction between what is and isn't a contributor to combat strength or whatever metric you wanna use for when something's wealth would be counted.

I also said in my post that stockpiling materials actually works against you in terms of raid size, but you gotta do it because of natural randomness of the game. And by minmaxing I meant that I am not the guy that will simply accept bad rng screwing me over, so I like to be prepared for every, even the worst possible event. That's true especially when you play on permadeath, you just gotta be prepared.

Raids size are determined by useless wealth not because it's "logical" or realistic in a way that you put it, but because game needed a way to scale raids and this was the simplest and most raw implementation of it because there is not that many factors to it, and those that exist are not balanced very well imho. You don't see it as much in early to mid game, but in late game it can be way easier to spot. Also I believe game was not designed to punish you for having "useless wealth" but instead this is just a design flaw. I think it was meant to simply scale raids to player overall "strength" so you won't face raids way stronger than you are. In reality it works properly only if you play a smaller colony. Generally in my opinion every wealth should be somewhat connected to number of pawns, because every action and resource goes through them.
And trying to bring any sort of logic and realism to it makes no sense in the first place because how raiders would know about our plasteel stockpile or the other way around, how would we know about their stockpiles and defences? This is not about logic but simply game balance and design.

Regarding to your 2) point. That's exactly right and I believe that's really bad game design. And what you said would be imo a perfect way. Keeping tons of raw, unprocessed materials doesn't matter as long as those materials are unprocessed. It's not like it takes an hour to create entire stockpile of food or medicine, those are usually things you need to have stockpiled in case something really bad happens, so you cannot just be like "hey imma keep raw materials to avoid wealth and just create it when I need it!", no it wouldn't work like that, because there would not be time for that once bad event happens and 10 of your colonists need good medicine RIGHT NOW. So as I said earlier raw materials have to go through pawns first to become useful.

And what would be a contributor to overall colony strength and what wouldn't is obviously a matter for discussion. To me it should be whatever is affecting your pawns mood like placed decor (not stockpiled decor), defensive structures, number of colonists and their quality and health (something that, I believe is not taken into account at all right now), comfort & beauty furniture, stockpiled meals (including food in the hoppers), drugs and medicine, weapons and armor, animals and their skills and health. Definitely not stockpiled pasteel, steel, plant matter, silver, raw food, uninstalled furniture, placed workbenches, uranium, wood, because none of those things contribute in any way to ongoing raid or your colonists mood.

Right now if you happen to have tons of plasteel in the storage because randy keeps throwing mechs at you, your colonists will think they live a very rich colony and will get very high expectations modifier, even if they still live in the wooden barn with shitty defences. Therefore randy will keep throwing even more useless wealth at you in form of mechs or raiders, increasing further raids even more and so on. If you cannot process that wealth fast enough (by either exchanging it for useful wealth or creating stuff) because you have 3 colonists, you are screwed and you have to, I don't know, destroy that wealth? This is the game design right now.
Of course it's very overblown and unrealistic example, but it's just to explain what I mean. It happens just on much smaller and less noticeable scale but the further you go into the late game the easier it is to spot because there is much more of everything and the raids keep scaling up.

Firstly let me apologise for my shitty english but I will try to explain my thoughts the best I can.

The idea is that unprocessed materials should not count towards wealth that contributes to the raids size. My reasoning is that, no matter how much plasteel or steel you have laying around in your stockpile, it will NOT help against raid attacks in any way, shape or form. It will only help once it's already made into something useful, like a wall or a turret. Then why does it count towards size of raids? Is having 10000 plasteel in my warehouse or 500 survival meals means I can defend any better than when I have 1000/100 ? Of course not. But it does lead to MUCH larger and stronger attacks. Raids are - mostly - instant or nearly instant, so there would be no way to instantly reduce your wealth by for example dismantling turrets to avoid attacks. Once raid starts, it's already too late for that.

It leads to the situation in which many players - unaware of how wealth system works - just stockpile insane amount of materials, because frankly, why wouldn't they? The randomness of this game (even with other storytellers than randy) means you always need some materials stockpiled in case you randomly get screwed up, for example by droppods or infestation spawning at the worst possible place in your base. As someone who loves to be in control as much as possible and say f*ck you to rngesus, I usually keep supplies for every possible scenario, even the unlikely ones. The randomness and inability to mitigate some of the bad events before they happen is why you must stockpile stuff. For example there is no way to redirect dropping mechs into different parts of your base. You know what would solve this? Some kind of expensive (counting towards wealth) kind of roof that you would only build on the most crucial parts of your base and which could not be broken through by mechs. Same goes for infestations but with some special kind of floor perhaps. Right now people are freezing their bases or in my case, build empty rooms deep into the mountain and heat them up to "redirect" infestations away from important rooms and frankly, both solutions are so incredibly cheesy and gamey but there is really no other way.

I played rimworld a lot myself and I watched others play it and the end result is always the same - people who decide to go big or set any other goal than rushing the ship and leaving the planet - will inevitable get bombarded by enormous raids and either get frustrated by tediousness of having to deal with that every few days and abandon the colony and start all over, or die. Ironically if you play "to win", the game is actually easier. Just go for the bare minimum of everything you need, "trick" the game into thinking you are poorer than you actually are and leave asap. Perfect example of that playstyle would be Pete Complete Ice sheet challenge on youtube.

Raids size should be based on wealth of built defences, number of pawns - which should be way more relevant in counting raid size than any other factor, wealth of stored weaponry and armors (that includes psychic weapons). Things like walls, raw materials (steel, plasteel), bricks, food - but not meals, uninstalled furniture, perhaps even hydroponics (hydroponics by themselves are useless, they are only useful when being used) and some installed furniture should not count towards wealth.

I just really hope wealth system will be looked into at some point because it works alright in early to mid game, but in late game and high wealth the game just throws so much shit at you it stops being fun or even possible to survive. Strategies to handle small raids are completely different than large raids, and personally I find it much less fun with the latter. And just let me clarify by large raids I mean 100+ mechs (including at least 30 centipedes), 60+ bug hives etc. I feel like late game gets less attention because only small percentage of players reaches it. Most people either stay in early to mid game or if they reach late game, they make it easy with mods.

I kinda feel bad for writing this post because I feel like I am a peasant telling a rocket scientist how to build rockets, but this is merely my opinion as someone who loves to minmax, someone who loves to take his time playing a game and someone who goes for quantity over quality when playing games. Rimworld is one of the few games that punishes you for loving it so much you would never want to leave it like it tells you to (via spaceship).

Same here. In my previous playthrough I obtained 5 of them. In current one I am 11 years into the game and I only had opportunity to get one.

You don't have to, and in fact shouldn't "maintain" sacrificial animal swarm "ablative shields".  Instead, simply zone them in a large area *around but not in* your base most of the time (so they can feed themselves) but in a box in the enemy's path when needed.  You will be amazed how fast 50 upset squirrels will erode anything .  And since they're not around/trained by colonists, you get no mood penalties for the deaths of bonded animals.

Note:  Don't sneer at small animals used this way; they're hard as heck to hit and attack fast, as well.  There's a reason squirrels are notorious in this game.

I thought in 1.0 animals that were not trained on regular basis would eventually become wild again?

A few ideas of things to try:

1) Charge lances probably make sense for small things you can maim with them (raiders, scythers), but centipedes, especially in that big of group, call for more DPS and AOE. You might try swapping to miniguns for the centipedes.

2) You mention mortars. Does that include continuing to pound them with EMP rounds while in the killbox? You want to buy as much time as possible.

3) Meatshields. Use small or easy to train animals as bait to take attention off your colonists and turrets. Also, calling in allies is only 25 favor and if you manage to rescue one or more of them at the end, you can get some or all of that favor back afterward.

4) Think outside the box. Centipedes excel at shooting large things (a killbox, a nice juicy group of colonists). Maybe don't use the killbox on them. They're slow and have only modest range. Out in the open, against long ranged weapons, they actually aren't that scary if they don't have their lighter support mechs.

Thanks for suggestions.

1. That's good advice, however my current killbox is designed in a way that you need something with charge lance range or better to reach whatever enters the killbox. I think I would have to make it shorter if I am to swap for something with burst fire, and that would suck for uranium turrets.. :/

2. Yes that's exactly what I did. Fired everything at them.

3. No animals and no allies right not unfortunately. But it's good advice for the future. I had a huge food issues after I barely survived one of the attacks so I had to slaughter animals that somehow survived. Still, I think you need at least 2-3 people good with animals and lots of work/food to maintain them, not sure if it's viable longterm. Especially if it's just to use them as meatshield, kinda a waste in my opinion.

4. I would love to fight just centipedes, however there is perfect mixture of pikemans, lancers, scythers and centipedes right outside my base on the mountain map with no space to kite. Centipedes usually have support. Kiting is even less useful now (perhaps even impossible) after they added bulkier/slower unit with extreme range in form of pikeman.

I think it's testament to how much more difficult 1.1 is now. In 1.0 I had very similar killbox (but shorter and burst weapons instead) and I could take on 20~ centipedes without that much bloodshed. Oh and I did not use uranium turrets back then so I never got to experience their power, but in 1.1 they feel like they are not worth it at all. I never wanted to rely on finite material in the first place.

Set up a kill box sort of like when u turtle and u make a maze that leads out into an open airfield that has 4-6 turrents and all of ur colonists with m16s. Also give everyone m16s and try not to get anyone that cant shoot unless they are a god at something useful for your economy. My favorite thing to do is make 15-20 dusters and buy 10 statues and have everyone in a good mood. Good moods are nice too lol

I got 18 turrets including some uranium turrets and such and 4 colonists really skilled with firearms welding charged lances in 24x27 killbox. Mixture of mechs including 12 centipedes destroy entire killbox within minute or so and they are nowhere close to actually dying. I also got few melee figters with around 140% sharp resistance, blunt weapons and shield belts but they are completely useless when there is that many mechs. Uranium turrets now run out of ammo while centipedes are still barely damaged.

I have my game paused until I find a solution because I really don't wanna waste time to start over or rebuild entire base.

edit: Just tried using two triple rocket launchers that I had on group of centipedes. It tickled them a bit but that's about it.

Another attempt failed

12 centipedes took 2x rocket launchers, mortar shells, 4x charged lances shots and fire from this entire killbox for over a minute and only two of them died. They are so incredibly tanky and they dish out incredible amounts of damage all over the place.

Start sending caravans to nearby towns. The industrial tech towns usually have at least 1 rocket launchers and they restock every 24 hours. You should be able to buy plenty if you're pulling in that much plasteel.

I tried that but the only options I had was to offer gifts or attack?

I usually don't even build a ship, I like to play colonys as long as I can, and it does become pretty obvious that beyond a certain wealth, beyond a certain age, beyond a certain population, the game has no idea what to do. it just continues scaling the only way it knows how which eventually results in the entire world landing in your base to wipe you out. There are mods you can use to help mitigate that, but that's the foundation of the game right there.

That's exactly what I am thinking, I couldn't describe it better myself. I am playing in the similar fashion. I DO eventually leave, but before I do I really want to enjoy my colony and beat every possible challenge and maybe later on, eventually leave. I hate rushing my games and I feel like unfortunately rimworld puts you on the timer to leave the planet or bad late game scaling will ruin you.

I wish there would be some endless mode or pseudo-endless mode in which main goal isn't to leave but to conquer the planet or something.

I only encountered handful of those in my play-through while mech raids happen all the time. I got over 1200 plasteel just from killed mechs.

I never understood what's so bad in killboxes. To me they are necessary evil (though can you really call it evil if players like them?), especially for late game which doesn't scale very well with your wealth.

I mean, in late game an usual pawn will face impossible odds, so the only way is to use some form of prepared defenses.

On top of all that building and maintaining killbox takes resources, time and serious planning. Even in 1.0 my killboxes were often overwhelmed by enemies (perhaps I suck at building them) and all those nerfs just feel really unnecessary.

Unless tynan wants rimworld to be project zomboid type of game, in which you only play to eventually die and you only play to discover how will it happen.

My name is EbolaKush and ive been playing rimworld since 2013-2014 and im pretty much sure that i have around 1200-1500 hours on the game itself. Currently always play all my saves on merciless right now im doing the new expansion on merciless and its some of the most hardest yet beautiful thing ive ever played

Ask me anything 

How do you deal with huge centipedes groups mixed with lancers, pikemans and scythers on rimworld 1.1 (not royalty)? And I mean 15+ centipedes that just overwhelm even a decent killbox.

Just a thought on mech raids: scythers/lancers move faster than centipedes.  So you shouldn't have to face both at once unless there is a ship part or drop pods involved.  Just make sure to finish off the scythers before the centipedes get there.

But yeah, if there are more centipedes than colonists you're probably in trouble.  Maybe hit them with mortars?  They're slow enough that they should be easy to target, and if there's that many your mortars should hit something.

What if game is like "nope" ?

To this I would like to point out, that single centipede is able to survive 40+ direct mortar hits with HE. Tell me how viable this strategy is, when you account for forced miss radius on mortars and raid of 20+ mechanoids.

I mean not even orbial bombardment will kill all of those things (usually few of them die, but the others are not that much damaged).

The bottomline is, I'm not looking into ways how to destroy them, I am *able* to destroy them, I just don't enjoy the game anymore because every huge mechanoid raid takes ridiculously long time of extremely boring microing. And they also destroy around 20 autocannons and uranium slug cannons in the process if I have them up at the time.

Yeah I tried spaming them with mortals but it's really not worth it. Mortal shells barerly hurt them, and that's only if you don't miss which is very likely. I think even EMP shells are better option since this way you can cause them to "stretch" a bit until they reach your killbox, so they won't enter it all at once, which helps a bit.

And yes I can definately (still) handle mech raids that appear in my game. It's just that it takes so much stress and time to fight them, and then you gotta repair seriously damaged killbox or rearm (now rebuild) traps which I use to clean up scythers and lancers before centipedes reach the killbox. Dissassembling mechs doesn't even cover up the steel I have to use to kill them and I am trying to find better methods but I scum-loaded many times just to try different strategies (for the sake of learning) and nothing reliably works so far. Cleaning scythers and lancers with traps, stretching centipedes with EMP barrage and then giving all my colonists snipers+rocket launchers in the killbox seems to work best, but in exchage of a lot resources (mainly steel).

I also tried orbital beam against one of psychic ships and most centipedes survived even that. I had to finish them off one by one with sniper rifles.

I am still trying to come with better ways to kill them that do not require shitload of resources. I have to admit I didn't use uranium turrets yet, mainly because location in my current game doesn't really allow that unless I wanna replace my entire killbox. But I suspect they would also eat a lot of sacred uranium.

The biggest problem with mechanoids I see now is that they are completely not fun to deal with. Sure, first raids with few of each are fine, but as the game progresses it becomes huge nuisance. I don't enjoy purposeful wealth reduction, so I don't do it, and when I get yet another mechanoid raid with 30 or now even more centipedes, which are incredibly hard to kill and I would have to micro for like an hour just to deal with this, I'm just like... oh, okay... f.. this game then.

Exactly that. I get difficulty aspect and all that, and it's all fine as long as those raids aren't to big, but eventually you just spend 90% of your time playing trying to micromanage and fight mechanoids & clean up and then repeat. I thought this game was mainly suppoused to be drama and social interactions between colonists and not endless mechanoid fights.

As I said until you reach the point of huge mechanoid raids, it's all played very, very differently. You can kite or build structures around them, you can micromanage your colonists and make some neat strategical plays. But all of it is out of window when there is like 30+ mechs coming at you.

Wealth management is bs. and I refuse to do it. It's so goddamn "gamey". Even Tynan said to just play the game and not worry about the wealth. Even if you have really nice killbox, (which I also consider "gamey", this game is more fun when you try to adapt and do not rely on huge killboxes and dumb AI pathing) you will only lose resources because of new turret mechanic requiring you to resupply, 10+ centipedes eat a lot of bullets.

Like.. what am I suppoused to do when there is raid of 10+ scythers, 10+ lancers and 10+ centipedes? There is no way you can fight them w/o really solid defenses like killbox full of turrets and traps. I was thinking of having team of 10+ melee fighters, but I have 15 colonists total so do I really have to make almost of them melee fighters to be able to repel single type of enemy in the game? If you want melee approach you really need at least one fighter per centipede or they just gonna shred you with bullets and fire at point-blank distance, and shield belts won't save you. And you also need to take care of scythers/lancers first before you can even think of melee approach against centipedes which further complicates things.

RimWorld is at it best early to mid game when raids are still small and your colonists matter. Once mechanoid raids appear and ratio of enemies to your colonists is becoming bigger and bigger, and you have to rely on killboxes, game can be really frustrating.

Pirate gunfights outside of killbox are still my favourite (as long as they don't carry rocket launchers). You gotta take favourable position, choose your targets carefully and so on. Too bad those are entirely replaced by bloodthirsty mechs in late game.

Alright I didn't know the periods of peace or constant raids can last that long.

Any idea why it doesn't show on history log tho.?