Messages

I'd rather watch paint dry.

I would still go with mortars, especially on a map as big as that. Note you can have more than 1 mortar per colonist. It takes a few seconds to fire, but the bulk of the delay is in the reloading. More mortars will give you a better initial salvo. Centipedes are so slow they're begging for it. They're so slow you don't even have to lead the target.

When fighting, I would try to make them come from a narrow path to take advantage of excessive friendly fire.

It's a small comfort, but devilstrand has recently been buffed and it now offers around 100% fire resistance.

If you like tame thrumbos, play extreme desert. Thrumbos come as usual, and apparently chance of "animal self-tamed" event is not related to number of wildlife on map.

On the other hand, you won't be able to make the thrumbo do anything other than sell or butcher it.

Mechanoids are meant to challenge end-game colonies. And they do. What's the problem?

Speaking of Centipedes, they could take the Hell Knight treatment. Doom 1 used to have a monster called Baron of Hell. They initially appeared as a pair of minibosses. Everyone soon found out that Baron of Hell, taking 5 rockets/ssg blasts to die, was boring to fight, and not that dangerous. In DooM 2 a very similar monster was introduced - Baron of Hell, nearly identical in appearance but dying in 3 rockets. Overall DooM 2 has many Hell Knights but few Barons. Level designers could now place more "goat men" on map for increased monster firepower but without straining player ammo too much.

-18*C is very comfortable for colonists in decent apparel (cotton is enough). You might only suffer a work speed penalty. It's doable to keep most of your base permafrosted, and the few critical areas like hospital can be under thin roof.

Since when can animals use Nutrient Paste Dispenser in an unmodded game?

Animals have a thing going for them: monstrous storage efficiency. Eggs can have 75 units per square, each worth 5 meat. That's 375 food per square, 5x improvement. Corpses of big animals - same thing. Also, animals are meat that doesn't spoil in warm biomes.

Would it be more fun if it was 400 pirates instead?

[Then I discovered a self-tamed thrumbo is very disappointing. Without further training, which can be very hard to provide if you live in extreme desert (with nothing to tame and train your skill), not only it will become wild again but it won't fight back when shot. Normally a thrumbo is very eager to fight back, a tamed thrumbo not so.Having colony animals fight back when shot would be perhaps too generous to the player and defeat the purpose of high Animals skill. But I have an idea for a fun compromise:]

Apparently chance of "animal self-tamed" event is not related to the number of animals on the map, or animal's wildness. Half of animals which self-tamed for my desert tribe are thrumbos. (Technically, the same thumbo self-tamed, then became wild again, then stopped migrating and stayed on the map, then self-tamed again).

Then I discovered a self-tamed thrumbo is very disappointing. Without further training, which can be very hard to provide if you live in extreme desert (with nothing to tame and train your skill), not only it will become wild again but it won't fight back when shot. Normally a thrumbo is very eager to fight back, a tamed thrumbo not so.

Having colony animals fight back when shot would be perhaps too generous to the player and defeat the purpose of high Animals skill. But I have an idea for a fun compromise:

Colony animals, lacking at the very least "Obedience"and potentially "Release" training, should panic and go into manhunter mode when shot, attacking friend and foe alike. This will make them double-edged sword, and an amusing end to a careless colony.

Hey, I'm bad at telling stories. I don't have a knack for words, but this story is interesting.

Blue Shark Minoca is my tribe living in extreme desert, which I guess you could call a year-round growing zone. Four colonists are spending most of their time just trying to just get enough potatoes from stony soil, and using the leftover time mostly for planting saguaro cacti. Without them, they can't cook, and can't build coolers.

Unce upon a time a thrumbo passed by. The magnificient creature was kind enough to dine on the cacti, forcing them to harvest some of them prematurely just to get by. Two camels and 4 chickens are hard enough to feed.

Then, out of the blue, the thrumbo self-tamed. The joy of the tribals was premature. The trumbo, together with some others, proceeded to munch on devilstrand fields scattered around the location, not to mention cotton, healroot, and potatoes. It was of no help in battle - no one has passion to animals and no one could even attempt to make it a battle beast. Worse, once it started trusting humans, it stopped fighting back! It would just ran away and serve as a decoy. Somehow, despite its immense size, one of first volleys got it a scar on its massive 80HP eye.

Eventually, with no one to train it, the thrumbo became wild again. But it caused the tribals much sweat, as they were too gentle to sell it to the passing Bulk Goods caravan or butcher for meat.

But the Thrumbo came to like the area and its diligently worked fields. It lots its migratory habits.

Then a psychic ship dropped by. At first it didn't look dangerous, but - guided by their ancestral spirits - the tribals engaged with a skirmish with it, destroying the 2 scythers and 1 lancer without much fuss other than Sparkles losing pinky and nearly losing an arm*, and only because he didn't pay attention and wandered into the crossfire. The tribals used looted bolt-action and assault rifles, as well as an excellent charge rifle from a desert cache, making short work of them.

Had they acted slower, the evil spirit from the metal hut would possess the thrumbo, and being bad shooters and poorly equipped overall they would face mortal danger.

Now, however, the thrumbo changed its mind. It became tame again. Remembering the ways of the ungrateful creature, they're going to butcher and/or sell it.

Disclaimer: I play Randy Rough (2nd hardest difficulty level). I usually don't play very old colonies, just build a ship or travel to destination.

It seems to me you're complaining about the core mechanic of the game, which is constant buildup of raids. Mechanoids merely make it the most apparent. Number of colonists you have is more or less fixed, but raids keep growing. There's no cure to that.

That said, I picked up a few tricks.

Unless something has changed, centipedes arrive much later because they're slower. You have time to prepare.

EMP mortar is useful once they're in attack mode, because it lets you use divide&conquer. The downside is they disable your personal shields.

Plasteel turrets are nearly immune to inferno centipedes, because they're only 10% flammable and plasteel is common at this point. Personal shield wearing colonists are partially resistant.

When you have this many enemies, explosives scale very well because they don't have a limit on how many enemies they hit. First, try to bunch up mechanoids, for example by placing doors at your entrance.

Purchase all rocket launchers you can get.

IED traps can be remotely detonated by a skilled marksman. You can surround them with mortar shells for a nice chain reaction. You can make them put only 1 mortar shell per tile by ordering construction of IED traps but forbidding components.

It takes some guts to perform and inferno centipedes complicate this, but you can use the fact grenades are unaffected by smokepop belts. Dress your people in power armors, smokepop belts and give them grenades. Only a few EMP, the rest should be explosive ones. Combined with cover, you should be very hard to defeat.

I haven't tested it, but aren't the new uranium-powered turrets designed to deal with this?

Psychic ships are potentially ignorable if you equip everyone with a tinfoil hat helmet.

I can see Rimworld working with Z levels! After a serious rewrite, and running on the 32 core, 64 thread AMD Threadripper.
(For lulz, read this post in 2023)

Either way I imagine Tynan would want to have a break from Rimworld. Most game studios don't keep churning out the same game over and over, they need variety and to unwind a bit. And keep in mind working on something else can be a source of inspiration. Moral of the story: it's probably going to be a while before Ludeon releases new content for Rimworld.

See also:
Physical fitness, meta-skills, (cleaning, wood cutting, stonecutting...)
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=20381.0

I had a zzzt on a wood-powered generator. It simply started a fire.

People you rescued (healed, left the map etc...) may show up when a faction sends help to you. They would be bonus warriors, not counting towards the normal limit.