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It's perfectly reasonable for colonists to be hunted by the savage native wildlife of a faraway planet. Baseline humans probably aren't the top of the food chain on every world.

That said, I feel like if there's a problem, it's that almost all of the native animals are uniformly presented with an appearance similar to their terrestrial counterparts. It sets an expectation for the player that a xeno-deer will behave in a similar way to a terrestrial deer when threatened, which is not the case.

I would favor making the fictional animals like wargs and megatherisloths more aggressive and prone to hunt colonists, and making other animals like ibex passive and predictable when attacked.

For the most part I have a separate dump just for bodies in a room with a two tile border for fire containment. When it starts getting full I burn them. I only ever use graves when I lose a colonist.

I usually have an out-of-the-way dump outside of the compound walls for raider bodies. For some reason it never occurred to me to burn them. Good idea!

In previous versions, I've put the corpses into a freezer near the animals' beds, but in A17 they seem to prefer to eat from the main stockpile even if its farther away.

Well,

Hmmm. Sounds boring. But then v17 was pretty radical. Or was it v16? I forget.

Well, notably v17 brought us the bowler hat. What could possibly top that?

as possible with at least one wall or something else constructed. You can make it overwhelmingly likely for bugs to prefer spawning there - then you can kill them with fire or something along those lines (wooden floors and some sturdy doors work great...)

I haven't done this in a while, but the wood floors are a great idea. I used to pre-place incendiary IEDs by a few tiles of wooden wall to burn, then seal the whole thing up with stone wall. The bugs don't always trip the IEDs when they walk over them, but enough times and they'll go.

When you learn to stop being afraid, and instead embrace death and drama in Rimworld, you will be set free. And vastly entertained.

For early food security, I suggest growing rice in the closest rich soil that you can find on the map. IIRC even deserts have rich soil scattered around.

I like dogs since they reproduce fast enough to keep up with raid mortality once you reach a breeding critical mass. They have advanced trainable intelligence and train very fast, they eat almost anything, and they don't go after your growing crops. In numbers they're a great counter for melee situations like bug infestations. Just don't bring a dog to a gunfight.

Makes sense to me. It's like sending out a hunting party. Probably not very labor-efficient compared to farming, but I don't imagine that hunter-gatherer societies typically were.

IIRC, the basic formula for the intensity of events such as raids is something like (total_time_elapsed + wealth_modifier). Given developments in A16 and A17 pertaining to founding/abandoning new colonies, this formula should be updated to (age_of_oldest_active_colony + wealth_modifier).

This alteration of the formula would enable flight from an existential threat as a viable option for an aged colony. The player would be able restart a-la Lost Tribe scenario rather than fight to the death. In the current formula, abandoning an aged colony and subsequently founding a new colony will result in the player being swiftly overtaken by raids that are inappropriately strong.

Pack up a caravan and just leave. Let this be someone else's problem. Don't get your colonists killed over your pride.

I really think this should be a viable last resort for any ailing colony, but with Cassandra, the time-based difficulty scale keeps marching forwards even if you abandon ship, which makes it very difficult to fully recover.

I hope this doesn't get me put on a list somewhere, but I love IEDs. If your mature colony isn't using a whole pile of them in the high traffic approaches to your base, you're missing out! Sometimes you can turn away entire raids before a single shot is fired and feelings start to get hurt.

If you have turret research, you could construct 3-4 turrets in your base and then pack them up. Run a power line around north of the swamp and drop the turrets in so that they can catch some wandering bugs at the edge of their range. The jungle grass will slow the bugs' charge a bit.

Yeah, I'm not sure that the other contributor saw the screenshot you posted. You won't be able to wall/ceiling that nest in very easily. If you happen to have mortar tech, you could try to rain down firey incendiary death on them. Otherwise, I still think lighting the hives on fire and running for your life is your best bet.

Make sure your base is defensible. At night, when they sleep, send a brave colonist out with an incendiary launcher and set the hives on fire. Maybe try to snatch the psychic animal pulser first.

If you happen to have a doomsday rocket launcher in reserve, this could also be a good opportunity to deploy it.

If you've been hoarding psychic shock/insanity lances, consider packing them along in case things get ugly. Bring a psychic animal pulser and a stack of wood to wall your crew up if you need a backup nuclear option, but only use it if you're willing to sacrifice the loot.