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Hey, just as a follow up: I did cold bog on naked brutality and it was glorious! Died in the first year from an unfortunate outlander raid. I really love 1.0 so far and noticing a lot of various subtle tweaks that really improve the experience (like not being able to permanently friend hostile tribe by releasing prisoners, doors closing with delay, etc, etc).

Slightly off topic but thought it might be entertaining: I feel like I relived a real-life Rimworld event recently. So my wife and I live in a 2-bedroom colony apartment with 2 cats. Two out of town guests are visiting us so we let them stay in one of the bedrooms for the duration of stay. Then my wife and I leave for an errand.

Meanwhile while we are gone, they settle in and decide to clean apartment since they generated some mess while moving in. While vacuuming our bedroom, they slightly punch wall which caves in and tons and tons of pissed off wasps pour into the room. Guests sustain a lot of bites but manage to capture cats, evacuate, and seal the room.

My wife and I return and are horrified by all this: our bedroom is full of pissed off wasps, guests are covered in bites, cats are safe for now and locked in restroom. Exterminator arrives and assures us that we don't have to burn down the building. She applies poison tells us to wait several days and leaves. But we still want to use the room. So we wait until it gets dark so that bugs become calmer, I dress up in all my winter mountain gear and go in with duct tape and start quickly sealing the hole while second person behind me is vacuuming any bugs that attempt to jump on me. Eventually mission is accomplished, everyone has pretty big mood penalty, somewhat improved by our beer stockpile (although with our luck one of the guests has a Teetotaler trait).

After this story, Rimworld infestation events have never been more relatable. I hope we are not going to have manhunting turtles next (although with all the food we have stashed at home, we are much more equipped to handle that).

Hey there, I've been hanging around for a while and now that I have 600+ hours in Rimworld and it has surpassed Kerbal Space Program in my Steam library becoming my most played game ever, it's probably time to introduce myself. 

I grew up in a major city in Eastern Europe on the ruins of once powerful country which went down in flames when I was two years old. As a kid I liked sciences and adventures - I was spending time with math and physics books, as well as books about explorations and adventures, both fictional and real. Once Internet happened, I started messing with it generating huge phone bills. Eventually the combination of all these things logically led to me receiving and accepting an offer to move to the US as a software engineer. I started in rural New England, explored its mountains and beautiful nature and met my wife who also travelled to the US from completely opposite part of the world. Then I received an offer in NYC at one of those big corps you heard about and together we moved there to experience life in this mega city with its extremes, both good and bad. Eventually we got to our 30s and decided to settle down and the place that had everything we loved happened to be here in Pacific North West. We packed stuff in container, took our cats and moved to Seattle. I also left big corp and joined an awesome startup where I am making history today.

-What introduced you to RimWorld? Or to this style of game in general?
I loved simulation and "building" games since I first started playing games all the way back. I stumbled on Rimworld on Steam: I think my wife and I got bored of whatever we were playing at that time and went to Steam's "simulation" genre to look around and see what was there. Rimworld quickly caught my eye with its overwhelmingly positive reviews and funny stories and I gave it a try. It ended up being pretty addictive...

-What's your favorite other game?
We've been spending a lot of time with Long Dark these last couple years. I also recently discovered Dragon Age Origins and really loved world and story. Love games with good story and characters - either "pre-made" or the where you make story and characters as you play. Feels a bit like reading a good book, just experiencing it as a video game instead of reading.

-Most embarrassing gaming-related story?
When I have troubles falling asleep, while lying in bed, I open up Reddit's ShitRimworldSays and keep re-reading it laughing hysterically. Other than that, my most embarrassing story will probably happen once I meet myself in Rimworld: I got my real name in there but not the custom story so I am looking forward to meeting myself from the timeline where I am a 70 year old pyromaniac abrasive alcoholic or something like that.

-What kind of breakfast cereal is the best?
I usually feel lost in cereal isle due to too much choice so I had to narrow down my criteria and choose the one with snowy mountains on the box (because snow and mountains are cool!). I don't remember the name, it has something about Skagit Valley. My wife has been objecting that box design is not the best criteria but since I am the one eating cereal mostly, we are stuck with the cereal with mountains (it actually happened to be pretty good too).

Hey y'all,

Life got in the way and I couldn't play for a while, since v18 I think so I am two versions behind. I am planning to turn on my gaming computer this weekend finally, update to 1.0 and do some serious Rimworlding. I am super pumped and can't decide which biome to start on! What are your recommendations?

I am fairly experienced but usually don't do hardcore digging into mechanics. In the past I've enjoyed cold maps since I like winter and snow but it was getting boring eventually after a couple in game years once things settle in. I also almost never travelled because it was super slow. I've also somewhat enjoyed desert map - it looked cool, like something from a wild west movie and I could finally use caravans and stuff  I am torn, can't decide: should I do winter map with epic fortress with greenhouses, or open desert map with river, or may be temperate map to see pretty fall colors but worried it will be too easy, or may be mountain map with a dramatic infestation ending, or may be try something radically new like jungle...I don't know what to do! 

Thanks a lot for this game, it's one of the two early access games in my life that I didn't regret buying. I've spent hundreds of hours already and keep returning to it, and I've been gaming for almost two decades now so usually it's pretty hard for me to find exciting, truly "new", games (I suspect I am starting to understand what being old feels like lol).

One particular thing I find cool is that a handful of devs managed to make a much more enjoyable game than big corps with all their money, talent, etc.. Things like this inspired me in the past to abandon career at one of those large well known corps everybody wants to work and move to startups.

Awesome. IEDs were buffed somewhat too since nobody used them, give those a try, I'd love to hear how it works out.

Oh sweet, will give them a try. I am really surprised people haven't been using them. I've used them heavily: usually I'd create the field of chunks/slugs and leave natural pathways there that enemies would follow. At that end of pathway, where 100% chunk/slug field starts, there would be a mine. This would ensures that they trigger them and also since chunk/slugs will slow them down, they usually wouldn't escape explosion (which will either down them or cripple them enough to be a non-threat).
Although I am not a power player and I didn't run a detailed cost–benefit analysis on them, so may be people didn't use them due to component cost or something like that.

Oh cool, I am super excited to try the new version now. Haven't used traps before (other than explosives) because they used to be weak and also have really been looking towards some combat improvements for a long while now because it has been very predictable and unchallenging in previous versions. It did become more interesting in the past once I started consciously avoiding killboxes. My bases became more intricate with multiple layers and ways to get entire complex into lockdown to fall back to next layer. Sieges and sappers were boring and very easy in the past. I did enjoy droppods though. Still remember the dam mechanoids drop that instead of chasing my colonists who rushed to get armor, started ruining my fancy statues, legendary thumbo chairs, etc. That was a pretty memorable nooooooo moment.

You still need to defeat sappers, sieges, and drop pod raids without it.

If you can, then you probably don't need it vs normal raids which are easier.  It can save time though.

My experience is based on v18 and happy if it has been improved but in v18 drop pod raids were very rare and both sappers and sieges were easily reduced to a regular raid by a few snipers in armor. Siege has always been more of a free goodies delivery than a threat to me: they are just chilling out why you snipe them, once weakened they rush to collectively commit suicide in killbox and then you are left with all the free stuff.

I haven't played 1.0 yet so don't know how useful my feedback is going to be. I like the general direction of the game and all the new raid variations I've read about. AI and cheese (killboxes, etc) has been the least enjoyable part of the game to date. To me it has been a catch 22 kind of situation: playing with killboxes (and other cheese) is dead boring, while playing without cheese is impossible because game seems to scale difficulty with the assumption that you will use cheese (so huge raids that are impossible to deal with unless you funnel them into a killbox where they will die like lemmings...again and again, I might add).

I am not sure what a good solution would be. Making AI more human like, even if it's scripted, is definitely something that comes to mind. What would you do if you had to raid a base with a massive killbox? Probably use droppods, punch through the walls (intelligently, accounting for enemy snipers), level killbox with rockets or mortars, etc..

I'll also second another person's thought about combat skill not making that much of a difference right now. You can be a vatgrown terminator but you will be easily downed by zerg rush, e.g. by a bunch of tribals. And unless you cheese them, there is really not much you can do. And since difficulty scales by throwing more people at you, you have to cheese. I think the solution here would be to make quality matter more. Tactical games that come to mind are XCOM and such where you work hard on improving the quality of your people to counter the threats. You also choose particular set ups for particular threats (e.g. not bring a bunch of sniper rifles to combat zombie crowd).

Other than that, I find another person's suggestion to let AI play out the combat to be a bit extreme... but also interesting. I cannot tell whether this is something I'd enjoy and it sounds controversial but I would definitely be very curious to try it out and see how it plays.

In my last colony at the very beginning one raider showed up. The colonists were hiding inside the building and waiting for him. But the guy comes straight to their temp stockpile, grabs 500 silver, and immediately runs away. The colonists were in shock from such impudence. And there was no chance to catch up anyway. That was fun!

Since then they always keep their gold indoors 

(Oh and that happened in beta 18 btw...)

OMFG I though I was the only one this happened to. Easily one of my most memorable RW moments. 3 people crashland and work on setting up initial colony. First raid arrives which consists of one old crippled dude with a shoddy club. Colonists overcomplicate it and set up a clever ambush or something. Dude is heading to them, colonists grab their weapons harder, get a rush of adrenaline and brace for battle. Meanwhile the dude just grabs a big chunk of silver, turns 180 degrees around and starts running to the map edge. A couple missed shots and failed attempt to catch the guy and the colony ends up without big chunk of money. You can picture the looks on colonists faces.
I also had variations of this when I had stockpiles of plasteel closer to the outer perimeter and pirates would just grab it and run away which was pretty sad too.

Oh cool, that's good to know! I am glad I've been practicing playing without heavy reliance on a massive killbox (which I used to build in my early RW times). Super excited to try out 1.0.

Just think at the main scenario.
3 pawn's, crashed in cyrosleep pod's on the planet.
They wanted to reach a different destination then Rimworld.
Ofcouse they want to try to get to these destination.

Ok, this just count for the main scenario, not for the tribal one.

I don't know, I was thinking about that and in my opinion this would pass as motivation if we had FTL. The way it is now, everyone you know at either end of the trip has been long dead. And you are either flying to establish a colony somewhere, in which case, you might as well just do it here; or you are a lucky lottery winner who is heading towards a glitterworld, in which case it's understandable that you are upset with all the pirates, toxic fallout, murderous mechanoids, etc happening around you. And even then, these are just three starting colonists who are not necessarily going to be alive after the first couple years and who definitely going to be a minority by late game. I don't see how they get random crowd of people to spend tons of resources  on spaceship for them (unless everyone gets sold on the glitter world idea).

Because no matter what you do, there's only one brand of beer on the planet.

... and it's an IPA...

*shudder*

Hahaha now that's one reason I can relate to! I can picture the noooooo moment and how they immediately start working on a multi year plan to build spaceship and escape.

I didn't get a chance to try out 1.0 yet but read about AI improvements and curious whether killbox is still a major tactic in the latest version. In the previous versions it used to make things way too easy to the point that I've been avoiding killboxes to make the game more interesting. Is 1.0 still the same? Just curious so that I know how to go when I start a new game.

Just curious, from the role playing point of view, what is the motivation of your colonists to build a space ship? In all my play throughs I've struggled with the following dilemma. My colonists start on a planet and life is harsh the first few years: you live every day like it's your last day...like, literally, because it might really be your last day, there is definitely no shortage of sudden ways to die. Meanwhile for entertainment you throw horseshoes at a stick and dream about the day when you can escape this hell.

But slowly things get better and eventually you have a well established colony. Sure, it's still "wild west" and everything is trying to kill you still but you now more or less have means of dealing with it. You have a stash of glitterworld medicine if somebody gets gravely ill, fancy armor and weapons for those pesky pirates, organs and bionic body parts if someone needs to be patched up, etc. Meanwhile you have golden beds, poker nights, own cinema, own art museum and more importantly absolute freedom: you can get drunk with your friends and go squirrel hunting with mini-guns and nobody is going to call cops or report you to local ranger that you don't have hunting permit. Neighbors are playing loud music until late and tell you to screw off? Time to grab power armor, charge / sniper rifles, battle bears and pay them a visit.

At this point I usually start struggling to come up with explanation why I'd want to leave this place and undertake a dangerous journey to a place where I'd likely have to get a job and lead a much less luxurious and more limited lifestyle.

What motivations do your colonists usually find? Are they trying to get to a glitterworld where you live in heaven without aging or death? Are they just sick of being surrounded by barbarians and want to be surrounded by civilization? Is the world heading towards impending doom (may be mechanoids we see are just the first warning signs)?

Thanks guys, good to know I am not the only one with tree fetish

I think decorative items are overall a bit of a missed opportunity right now. When I am all set and have a well-oiled and equipped colony, I usually wouldn't risk it all to go for a quest to retrieve a masterwork doomsday launcher or something like that. But promise me some fancy one of a kind decorative item with some story attached to it and you can sign me up!

Probably similar ideas could be used for rescue missions. A random dude is stuck somewhere and I need to do tons of work and risk everything to get them (and find out they are an abrasive 80 year old with dementia, bad back and addictions)? Sure... But make that random dude someone's long lost father contacting you from pirate captivity and it's much harder to say no to that.

This is really a cosmetic suggestion rather that an actual functional feature but it's something I've been doing in almost every colony I've built so far. May be I read too much LoTR when I was a kid or may be it's because the city where I was born had something like this also but I always plant a tree in the middle of my colony and treat it as a symbol of the colony, an old tree planted when the colony was founded. Particularly on desert maps I love to plant something like a willow tree in the city center, surround it by flowers and imagine that colonists come there to relax from all this desolate cactus filled landscape around them (I also do weddings there, etc).

Having to replant the tree harmed the immersion a bit. And also now it's going to be impossible in 1.0, so I am wondering whether this can be a feature. Like building a very large equivalent of flower pot but for tree. Or may be even have an item "seed of {exotic_and_super_pretty_tree_name}" that you can obtain through quests, traders, etc. The tree would have special art and would grow forever with all the added drama if it burns down and all that.

And expanding on that, wondering if adding things like ambrosia seeds/saplings you can obtain, would be viable. May be make them super picky to temperature (need to keep very narrow temp range or it dies quickly). This could add reasons to have growing rooms on non-freezing maps. And also adds to the drama if your hard obtained ambrosia garden dies from electricity outage, breached wall or something like that (although don't know how to cool the room down on a hot map during a blackout).