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Just a quick bump because now that we have the rich explorer scenario I think this really does need to be in the core game ASAP. In the beginning I'm only looking after one person so most of the time I want to be watching what they are doing.

Awesome . . . it is great that this game can get so dark and that's an extra I don't expect from a colony sim game. But what if you wanted to play a kind hermit? Or if you wanted to limit the growth of your colony to a set number of people without being a cannibal?

A colony simulation is a village/city simulation with survival elements . . . you can't have a colony with just one person.

When you call something a colony simulator then people expect a set of options to be available related to planning out, governing, and otherwise managing a growing permanent settlement. Sure you can choose to disable those options for specific scenarios, or not use them if it doesn't fit your play style . . . but they need to be there.

Roads and paths, for example, aren't just floor tiles . . . they are priority pathing that help determine how pawns move through an area, and perhaps are designed to have more than 100% movement speed. This is important if you want to have large farming areas and quickly transport the produce to separate living spaces along well defended routes.

Do you HAVE to plan separate zones with different functions? Of course not. You don't even have to have roads in your settlement . . . but if I'm running a colony the option is expected . . . For that matter if I did want a "colony" of one wouldn't I require some government options to let me control immigration?

This sounds really good. I'd also like to be able to set priority zones for construction. It's a real pain to plan out an entire village and then manually forbid every block one by one while the game is paused. It would be so much easier to plan a bunch of stuff out and give them some sort of rough order as to when I need each thing finished.

In a word, no . . . I'm not content with the lost tribe scenario.

I understand why veteran players would be. They bought Robinson Crusoe in space and got all of this instead. But that isn't what someone who just bought Rimworld on Friday was promised. They bought a colony simulation game. It's still very bare bones but it's got a solid foundation

New people don't want to escape the planet. This isn't some sort of temporary situation. We are playing a colony simulator, we expect to be here as long as we can survive. Our goal is to grow and develop our colony.  Eventually we should wind up with a thriving village or even a city. On that level this is definitely an alpha build.

We can't lay out roads. We can't plan structures and queue them up to be constructed in any set order. Trade is rudementary. Government doesn't exist. We can't even actively recruit guests, or advertise for colonists from nearby settlements or off world. I expect more of everything and a lot more tech levels.

To be fair Tynan had a nearly complete Robinson Crusoe simulation game . . . then he changed all the rules in alpha 14 and introduced THAT vision to a ton of new players. The expectations are going to be completely different from here on out. I'm not sure I agree with this particular suggestion but I definitely can't say I'd be content with just the lost tribes scenario.

I think, and I could be wrong, that the tribal game play is something that is going to be expanded on over time with new techs and different ways to play the game. Tribal types probably will also have different backgrounds compared to people who crash land from a ship, or who come purposefully to settle the new world and find a challenge. This could be a totally different type of game but it just showed up in Alpha 14 and doesn't appear to have much flesh on it's bones yet.

About the trading post, I feel like they should supply their own food if they actually are traded with. Maybe a relationship level thing,and trading with them boosts it, as does supplying them with free food, while not trading for months at a time drops it? High relationship would mean discounts, low relation would mean they either leave or drop in a big crate 'o mechs, then leave?

That might be a good idea. I tried to keep each example simple and easy to implement (hopefully) but that one might be better of with a more complex system.

Simple Items:

• A Tent of cloth/hide that lets you sleep outside without the penalty
• A 1X1 Table for the rich explorer to eat from
• A drying rack and meat Jerky to go with our pemmican
• A fishing spear to use on water tiles
• A blow gun and poisoned darts

Construction

• Flimsy woven reed walls/doors
• Sand bags that require cloth and dirt rather than iron . . .
• "Tribal" planting areas for berry bushes, agave, etc  . . .
• Flower bed and hedge planting areas to improve the beauty of our settlement

One of the exciting things about alpha 14 is the focus it suddenly places on primitive tribes and the isolated, wild, worlds on which they live. One way to really make this exciting would be to add story tellers who focus on the sort of world where those tribes dominate. We might see the same sort of event distribution but the things that happen and the type of story being told would be completely different. Here are some examples:

Colonist X has been having an affair with person Y from the (name) tribe. Their elders insist the two get married and you can accept a new colonist, send your colonist to the tribe, or offend them greatly. How do you respond?

A tribe of nomadic hunters enters the area. They are friendly but will attack and kill game animals for meat all season before moving on. Do you ask them to leave? Ask them stay away from your base? Attack them? Make a treaty with them setting a certain area as their hunting grounds?

You have discovered a sacred shrine of the X tribe. Their elders and tribal guardians are friendly but ask that you leave now and stay away from the site forever . . . Do you agree and leave knowing that if you ever come back you will be attacked? Do you ask to convert to their religion? Do you attack? How you respond changes the story.

Merchants from off world want to establish a trading post in your colony . . . if you accept you'll get a new colonist to feed/house who won't do any work but you can trade with him for raw resources at any time. Different traders want different goods from you and sell different items in return. Of course if you send these foreigners away they may set up shop with one of your rivals!

I could go on with a lot more examples but the point is that you are dealing with a different type of rimworld. The standard game focuses on a semi colonized world with towns, tribes, and everything is right on a space lane. This story would focus on a more isolated and savage world with less contact happening with spacers, and the space based events that do happen would have a different flavor.

I'm loving this game and the rich explorer scenario is probably my favorite addition so far . . . but this one event always seems to happen and it annoys me to no end . . .

I'm sitting there alone in my tiny settlement planning everything out and things are going great . . .  Then suddenly I get a pop up saying "New Colonist Joins" often simultaneously with some stranger suggesting "we" name my settlement. This last happens so often that I often see the naming event pop up before I see the "join" or even notice the new colonist on my top bar.

Obviously in the original scenario this would make more sense. Previously you always had three strangers and any one of them could have met this new person and invited them to stay. The new guy could be another survivor from the same ship. He might even be somebodies relative, friend, or lover.

But that reasoning doesn't work as well if I'm the lone explorer running my expedition with an iron fist and deciding unilaterally when to add people to my colony, and who I want to accept. So please give me the option of looking at an applicant and either approving them or sending them on their way to a different settlement. The change shouldn't be hard to implement.

Or if you really want to let the story teller simply grow my colony you could add in "relationship" based join events. Something like:

"Vladimir's Son joined his father in the colony today."
"Sarah's Husband wandered into camp this morning."
"George's Lover moved in with him today."

To me these sorts of event would make a lot more sense than somebody just randomly joining my expedition/colony/tribe. As it is my first reaction to the "join" event is often to look for a button that would let me kick this new guy out.