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My current colony has three cooks and every one of them is skill 10 or above. Yet I still get messages of food poisoning and the cause is always "incompetent cook" when it's clearly the vast amount of filth in the kitchen causing the food poisoning. Perhaps it's the mods I'm rolling with, but the game seems incapable of distinguishing inherent skill from environmental factors, and I think the cooks deserve better.

So my last game went 7 years and in that time I managed to deal with a great deal of threats, mostly Mechanoids, without having to build a super cheesy killbox, just something basic that allowed me to take a few centipedes at a time instead of getting completely overwhelmed. In the 7th year I got a pirate raid and over 100 guys showed up. I only had 18 colonists so my non-cheesing killbox was rapidly overwhelmed and there was no chance of us ever fending off a group that size.

After playing this game for so long this has honestly killed my interest in the game, because there is no way to ultimately avoid this scenario. I play with a lot of mods that add wealth and over time it all begins to add up. What really bothers me about these raids is if you play long enough your wealth guarantees a raid of overwhelming size, and the only way to realistically combat a raid this size is to have a stupid tunnel lined with traps for these guys to march through. These trap tunnels are extremely cheap, but that's the meta because raids grow to ridiculous sizes. I really cannot emphasize enough how much I detest this meta. It is stupid and not at all interesting, either from a gameplay standpoint or a "story" standpoint.

What the game needs is a simple option in the scenario settings that allows you to limit raids to either a flat number, or better, some multiple of the current colonists. So for example, if I set it to "x3", I never get more than 3 times the number of my colonists in any raid. All the extra wealth that would have gone to more raiders instead gives raiders better gear so their threat level grows over time. I've never seen raiders arrive in cataphract and 30-50 guys in power armor would be a serious threat, but perhaps manageable. Over 100 raiders some of who are not wearing armor but carrying Doomsdays are not manageable without cheesing.

If there's a mod that does this, that's great, but putting it into the scenario settings would be much better, that way there's no mod to break, or cause conflicts, and it shouldn't be that difficult to add to the raid logic. I'm not a programmer but this seems like a simple task, it's just limiting the number of pawns a raid can spawn. I think there are much more interesting things that could be done with raids (being able to pay raiders off, some way to raise relationship with them so they don't always raid you) that would make the game more interesting from a story standpoint, and if Tynan ever makes a DLC that adds that kind of dynamic I would be very interested. But in the meantime I cannot justify playing the game anymore since every colony is ultimately doomed to failure. I've never been a member of the "losing is fun" tribe. Losing is for losers.

Thanks.

So I am curious how this works and I just want to confirm if I am correct in my reasoning. It's set to 100% for all the difficulties so I assume what this means is, if a hit were to kill instantly (headshots for example), there is 100% chance it will. If I change it to 50% there is only a 50% chance the pawn will actually get killed instantly and will instead survive the hit with major damage. Is that correct? And if not what does this setting do? Thanks.

I'm fairly certain it's just the room cleanliness. A smaller space that is diligently cleaned is the easiest solution. The danger is your cook gets food poisoning and then floods the room with puke while you're not looking, which can cause a wave of illness.

My set-up is basically Canutes; kitchen is it's own room and every effort is taken to drive the room cleanliness as high as possible. The fridge mod(s) are indispensable to cut down on your cook walking, which afaik produces filth. I usually have no food illness.

I know people are going to tell me I'm wrong but I find caravans all round to be pretty tedious. I basically avoid them and use drop pods if I have to.

You are not wrong. Rimworld's default UI for caravan management is sub-par to say the least. A simple list with no search function, not even a categorical breakdown of items? Everything is arranged categorically but it's still a bitch to sort through. And that's before we get to the travel-time / food calculus, with the trip planner being oblivious to weather. Or sending a pawn with no medical who gets scratched by a manhunting rabbit on the way.

Drop-pods are so convenient, once you get them there is no reason to caravan. But I wish Tynan had done more work on the caravan/drop-pod interface. As it was added so late it never got the love it needed. I suspect they didn't get used much in playtesting either.

Devastating if you are low on food and/or have animals that graze outside. Otherwise it's not even a challenge.

It is good there are fewer leathers and they are loosely categorized. What isn't good is that most of the leathers are really samey (with the exception of thrumbo) and they are all strictly inferior to devilstrand (thrumbofur wealth is extreme making it inferior for protection). If you can grow devilstrand there is no real reason to make leather clothing except as a trade good.

Personally, I'd prefer even fewer types of leather, but I guess I'll have to mod that in myself:
- patch (large penalty to hot, cold, armor)
- light (small penalty to hot, cold, armor)
- plain
- armor (large bonus)
- hot-weather (large bonus)
- cold-weather (large bonus)
- heavy (small bonus to hot, cold, armor)
- thrumbo (large bonus to hot, cold, armor)
- luxury (bonus to sell-price, beauty)
- human

Counting in the XML, I guess that means I think there's 9 redundant leathers.

This is a good change. Every leather will have a role and some could potentially be superior to devilstrand. I would also reduce the amount dropped because I always wind up with tons.

It just occurred to me that there's something seriously wrong with this.

"We don't bury the people who attack us.  We pile their bodies up and let the rotting stench attract scavengers from miles around, which we then shoot and eat."

Sounds like a feature, not a bug.

I also just pile them up, in a spot that is less likely to be walked by to avoid the mood debuff.

I think the mod system of Rimworld is far superior to say, Skyrim, which requires 2-3 third-party applications to even work properly. Skyrim's is, in a word, a clusterfuck. Rimworld's just werks.

I've never understood playing with 150 mods though. IMO that many mods is guaranteed to break something. There's probably no balance left there. I think 50 was the most I ever loaded and it felt hugely bloated. I'm down to 20 which feels reasonable. I never had a problem with mod conflicts at 50, either.

My number-one is Chemical Fascination. I hate these goddamn pawns so much. You just can't have drugs around without them blowing through limited stocks and getting fucked up. I guess they are supposed to chill out once they have a habit, but my whole strategy is to avoid addiction so they're basically immediately disqualified unless they are HIGHLY desirable in some other way (unlikely).

Sickly is shitty. They burn through medicine stocks and since they're almost always ill they are not efficient pawns.

Gourmand is brutal in the early game. A break in the first year can be devastating. It's not even worth trying to Naked Brutality with a Gourmand. Once you're established it doesn't really matter as much, but they have an annoying habit of breaking work to go stuff more food down their pie-hole.

I don't like Body Purist because I will augment everyone if I have the resources. If they get a leg or arm blown off they just aren't worth it, and it is only a matter of time.

I try to avoid lazy/slothful pawns as they are just not efficient.

Everything else is fairly manageable; I don't try to micro pawns too much so I get social fights on occasion but it's nothing my doctors can't handle. Pyromaniac is a minor one, though if the pawn breaks frequently it can be annoying.

I'm not sure if animals are worth it, as a food source. They should be but at present I just don't see it. Chickens once produced quite a lot of eggs but the rate at which they lay eggs was nerfed and now I really don't think they're worth the trouble.

The main advantage of livestock is a reliable protein source. I played Boreal Forest where I thought I might need some but there is so much Elk, Caribou and occasional Muffalos that it's arguably the most meat-rich biome type available. Rearing animals might be useful in desert, where there's practically nothing of substance except occasional camels (elephants? I never saw any in desert). The main problem with rearing animals is everything worth slaughtering takes too long to grow, and requires enormous quantities of hay to reach adulthood. In desert arable land is at a premium so it might not even be possible to grow enough hay, and the biomes where arable land is abdundant have plenty of hunting.

That said dogs are still useful for hauling, and having alpacas/muffalos give you a reliable source of wool that can be sold, and they are useful pack animals.  But I feel like the ranching-for-food aspect of animals got nerfed into oblivion.

I too would like a water system. But it's just one more need that makes the early game needlessly challenging and complicated. Like b0rsuk said it would make the drier biomes less of a default for e-z mode. It would also make things like rivers highly desirable (I avoid them because they interfere with my commieblocks.)

Synthread is total garbage considering it's space-age material. I wonder why all leather is better than a spacer fabric. At the very least it should offer superior sharp protection. And by the same token, I think devilstrand is way too strong. Why does it outclass everything except thrumbo fur? I really wish there was more utility to leather and less dependence on devilstrand-everything.

Curious - what are those two angled sets of lines for?  They are grey and it looks like 3 tiles wide.

They look like paths to the road.

Does anyone know how much a tamed-for-release thrumbo contributes to raid strength? I got a freebie and I'm wondering if he's worth keeping around as a tanky monster or if I should just sell him.