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I'd say between 30 and 60 days.

I've been monitoring the rampup factor on my last run because i noticed even in ultra-end game, it never reached the heights it should have, based on what i read, notably that it took a hit when your pawns were killed during raids.

So here a graph of the rampup / 10 years (i monitored it more closely at the end):


yellow: short term, orange: long term, red: total

Over the 10 years period of this colony, there has been no death or kidnapping. The last 10 drops are due to surgeries (7), social fights (2) and 1 colonist down during an animal psychic wave.

So i don't really know if it's working as intended but practically, surgeries are soft capping the rampup factor if your colony is doing ok.

On the other hand if you remove the drops due to surgeries, the difficulty curve is much steeper.

What about:
1/ making a difference between killed colonist (big dip) and incapped colonist (small dip)

2/ do not count anesthesized colonists as "incapped" for the rampup factor

Edit:

3/ adding a world component to the rampup factor, like correlated to the number of outposts around your colony or why not enemy colonies

Instead of comms there should be like a pigeon letter deliver. Letter will be delivered in 2 days. Caravan will arive in 3 days. But of course, there's no pigeons in rimworld.

Or at least when we visit their faction base, we should be able to give gifts and ask for a caravan or even friendlies if you've got hives or an ancient danger to deal with

Travel times on a road in desert/ arid shrublands are already ridiculously short, you can go half way around the globe in two quadrums.

I support the first one (moving simple helmet to smithy), and whatabout a medieval helmet protecting eyes/ nose/ ears

Otherwise traps are still OP, so you can survive end game even with tribal tech.

And you can play melee too, with trained animals it's one of the best way to attack sieges or get out of an ambush as tribespeople

Decision seems to be how long to stay here before moving on.

I'm seven years in , still on the starting map.

Going to the ship is relatively easy, i've not really a good location for the AI ship, but within two seasons you can go around the Rim, set an outpost, then within two seasons you can cross boral forest/ tundra/ icesheet to reach the ship.
The hard part of the challenge is setting a base able to withstand end game raids.

run-and-gun and other interesting tactics are impossible

I guess "interesting" is relative

It depends on what the storyteller told you when you abandoned him.

If it said that he was likely to die and you've had the mood debuff, he is considered dead.

If you you didn't get the warning he was likely to die, even without food, he is not considered dead and may come back.

I had a pawn come back after being abandoned, he was not good at all though...

I'm saying the wood-fueled stove doesn't look primitive, and dusters/ cowboy hats don't look neolithic.

Sappers are the worst in this challenge.

Another thing this challenge puts light on is the very short tech tree of tribespeople. As soon as my guys have modern cloths i no longer feel like tribal and on the other hand there is no basic armor or helmet for tribespeople to research, or heat insulating cloths.

Like the fueled cooking stove, it doesn't feel primitive enough.

I wish there were devices used specifically for dealing with infestations.

Molotov cocktails, incendiary traps

It would be nice if we could set a condition to reveal the hiden ship, like 100k wealth or a time condition in the scenario editor, otherwise nice challenge to deal with ships and sappers

It's Fall of the first year right now and I have a grand total of 5 colonists

I've been browsing through screenshots of A16, and man it was hardcore. Here on a poor sea ice colony: http://imgur.com/qN2JOq4, with one guy unable of violence, there was also a 10 vs 3 end of year one, had to save scum to get over the bump of end of year one. Will try a perma sea ice game in A17 but i think it's easier.

There is maybe something with the first raids, but then i don't think it's harder, maybe to help us for quests.

I don't nkow either how your mod messes things up, but in vanilla you can bait them with a decoy

Yes, without a mod this strategy seems tedious. In any biome you can get enough food with a bit of planning, and if something catastrophic happens and you're out of food, it makes sense to form a caravan to go get some food, that's why we have a world now