Messages

You nailed some points. 

• Playing on "Some challenge" with "Phoebe".  I begrudgingly had to back down to her from Cassandra as I just could not keep up with the pace of disasters.
• I have no tactics or ideas for defending against raids.  They've been a nightmare.  In the lower left was my attempt to have a place to run when the next raid hits to defend and shoot.  But it's probably too far away?
• I had never considered separate stockpiles for stuff.  But it has been very frustrating as it takes my colonists forever to grab what they need to bring it back to make stuff. In fact I have a mod that allows from more items to be stacks.  I chose to double stack numbers instead of going 10x like most of the stacking mods.  It just felt like the right balance.
• I have had a terrible time procuring enough medicine. In fact I just got these meds before I took this screenshot (Summer Year 2)
• In all my other games I've had like 10 people by this point.  I'm worried I will not fill things out very well but maybe I don't have to be as concerned playing with Phoebe.  I'd like to switch back to Cassandra though.
• The freezer is actually pavement.  So I did save my sterile tiles for kitchen and hospital.  Is my kitchen way bigger than needed?  Do I need to have separate hospital rooms or can I cram even more beds in there?
• I'm way behind in research because I've been so worried about getting a surplus of food.  Like I mentioned, I really hate watching my people die of starvation and even more-so my pets.  Which leads me to a question of, how are people surviving with like 1/10 the amount of farmed space that I'm using?

Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to help me.  I really appreciate it

Answers point by point:

• Cassandra can be a bit overwhelming, especially when you are just getting started in Rimworld. Don't worry about it, you'll know when you are ready for some challenges
• Against normal raids it helps to create a choke point (e.g. by building a wall around your base and leaving 1 opening) and trying to kill them there with the assistance of traps and turrets (kinda cheesy for some, but effective!). Strategies for other kinds of attack are a bit dependent on your map/personal preference. I suggest you look a bit around in the forum as these have been discussed multiple times before. (Your attempt is probably better than nothing, but not really that effective  )
• Well, I personally really like to have many specialized stockpiles. This helps keeping materials close to where they are needed and boosts productivity - at the cost of a bit more micro-managing on setup and sometimes hauler work time (though you can get animals to do that for you).
• Currently, the medical system is a bit of a pain point. Penoxycycline basically eliminates some diseases for you, but without it your chances aren't very good. I try to get 2-3 penoxycycline per colonist early, and expand that stock later. Medicine (any of herbal, normal or glitterworld) amounts depend on your general plan for your colony: If you wanna play a lot of doctoring or direct combat you'll need more than if you're going to sit safely behind a killbox. You could add some more growing space for healroot and try to buy every neutroamine you can afford from traders.
• The number of colonists you have (along with your general wealth) corresponds directly to the strength of raids you'll have to face (it actually goes as far as some players rejecting any pawn that doesn't have good traits/stats on higher difficulties because of this mechanic). Sometimes less is more Other than that, first make sure you can afford that many colonists, otherwise you will get problems.
• Okay, I wasn't 100% sure which floors you used in the freezers (since they look kinda similar when below stockpile zones).
  That said, your kitchen size is only slightly larger than required for a "spacious interior" moodlet (with the current furniture in there, you'd need ~53 tiles of space and you have 60). OTOH, if your colony grows much bigger (so you'd need 2 cooks, although unlikely for the time being), your kitchen would be prepared for a second stove.
  You can cram more beds into your hospital, but I'd suggest investing into hospital beds for that (when you can afford them, as they require 10 normal meds each). It's also a bit of a trade-off: While colonists are in the hospital, they might get negative moodlets when they are disturbed during sleep or for not having their own room, but generally your pawns won't be using your hospital for long (if one colonist has to use it for a longer duration, it could be beneficial to give him/her an own "hospital room").
• Don't worry too much about your technological progress: Once you have the essentials (e.g. penoxycycline, geothermal generators, turrets) you can take your time with the rest.
  A surplus of food isn't a bad thing (unless it rots during heat waves!), especially if you unexpectedly get 2+ new colonists to feed just after the growing season ended. This also depends a lot on the map you're playing on (places with year-round growing periods need to store much less food and thus can save on growing spots) and how much you're hunting (you can survive without growing anything at all if you can get enough meat from hunting/breeding). Also, they might feed their pets (and sometimes their colonists!) with human flesh (which gives every non-cannibal colonist a mood debuff, so it isn't recommended) on the more extreme maps, as raider corpses are rather easy to come by with a solid defensive setup.
  Also, people tend to use the type of crops that's most efficient on the terrain: rice for hydroponics, potatoes for gravel, corn for rich and mostly for normal soil (with maybe some rice or strawberries in year 1 to get the food supply started).

Also, if you are much into pre-planning bases (for some advanced bases), you might want to take a look on "supply chains" (which jobs require which resources, and what jobs are dependent on their results). If you can plan your workshop and stockpiles around that, you can really improve efficiency due to less walking distances for each task. One of these supply chains might look like this:

animal corpses (freezer) -> butcher room -> meat (freezer) -> kitchen -> food stockpile (freezer) -> dining room

These might be different areas in the same freezer, or different freezers altogether (as needed/player preference). Of course, while butchering you also get leather, which is required for tailoring and constructing, and you'd need some vegetable raw food "input" to make fine meals in the kitchen, ... (you get the idea)

Some random points:

• You only need sterile floor tiles in hospital and kitchen. No need to use them in the freezer (unless you really don't care about the resources).
• I don't know which difficulty you play on, but compared to your abundance of food, your amount of medicine (esp. penoxycycline) seems rather low
• Also, how do you defend against raids? Some walls around your generators/solar panels would already help quite a lot. Do you have any strategies for drop pod raids or sieges?
• While wooden floors are fine, I'd recommend you'd gradually replace wooden walls with stone walls (as those cannot burn)
• Once in a while, cleaning could help (especially in the kitchen, but also rooms with mood buffs)
• Since nearly all your batteries are close to fully charged, maybe uninstall some so you can reinstall them in case a "Zzzrrt!" event happens at an unfortune moment?
• If I were really crazy about colonist performance, I would've placed the stonecutter's table, tailoring bench, sculptor's table and electric smelter closer to the bedrooms/dining room/recreation room and rearranged some of the stockpiles... But I guess your setup works, too

@PiggyBacon: While I don't disagree that some of that space could be used better, you'd lose some mood buffs for spacious interior, and he (?) doesn't seem to be that low on resources that he couldn't afford some artistic freedom when designing his base

EDIT:
Since OP asked some more specific questions:

• Hallways do work when only 1 space wide, but 2 or 3 spaces prevents slowdown due to colonist collisions and helps defending if something made it in there.
• I guess your production room is mostly fine when considering for future expansion. As mentioned before, you could've grown a bit more vertically instead of horizontally, but that is kind of moot now that it's done (but still might be a consideration for future bases!)
• Not really. Their size counts towards their impressiveness, so it doesn't hurt to go big. Then again, you could tear down the wall in between and get 2x the buff for an even more impressive dining/recreation room (might be considered an exploit by some, though)

From my experience as programmer (and modder/player), a fast iteration cycle is usually beneficial for both player and developer.

Players get to play less buggy versions of your game faster and have more time to learn new mechanics without being overwhelmed by other new stuff.

Developers get faster bug reports (which can usually be fixed faster, since the relevant code is still fresh in memory) and continuous feedback that gives early warnings when steering into a wrong direction.

However, it puts more work onto modders as the game (and very likely modding interfaces) also change more often. One can try to give some basic consistency guarantees (like semantic versioning tries to), but even then mods will have to be re-tested and sometimes bug-fixed even for small additions.

There is no "best of all worlds" solution to this problem (sadly!). I really don't envy Tynan for having to choose this :/

Well, given that you would need to feed children for 10+ years before they become useful as colonists (not to mention uncountable sleepless nights for their parents in the time after birth), they would be a really time consuming investment. I guess that time frame (and the amount of resources required) is beyond most colonies (basically, in that time frame most colonies either went to space or the player lost interest and started a new one).

Actually, you can use coolers to get down to -270 °C (that's 3 K!). Basically everything but hydrogen and maybe helium should be solid at those temperatures unless it has so low pressure to be nearly a vacuum (funnily enough, a scyther spawned in there didn't seem to care much about it).

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First off, I'm one of the more hardcore gamers (just to give a bit of a reference frame).

I personally think mods that directly affect in-game elements (other than pure cosmetics) can really screw with the (intended) balance curve. And while some diversity in play based on the available gimmicks might be momentarily interesting, in the long run you start to rely too much on them (and the imbalance they produce).

To be clear: I don't condemn the usage of mods, sometimes the best gaming experience comes from mods! On one hand, if you really don't like components breaking down on you or managing power usage to keep all your base running, sometimes you might be better off with mods that do that for you or trivialize it down to an acceptable level. On the other hand, there are reasons why some mechanics are implemented that way (e.g. components breaking down = no infinite expansion/upkeep costs), so manipulating them affects the balance and difficulty of the whole game, which will influence how you perceive it. The choice is yours!

For me, I generally like mods that give you more control, better information displays or friendlier UI. I also like to try mods that introduce new gameplay elements for one or two games (for diversity and thinking about things from a different perspective), but I mostly try to only use mods that keep a healthy amount of difficulty (I do like challenges!).

@b0rsuk: I made some slight modifications to enable permanent heat wave/permanent cold snap. Does that count?

TL;DR: Play what you think is fun, but reevaluate your choice if you think the game gets boring 

put sterile tiles in the kitchen for extra cleanliness (it helps!). cook skill and cleanliness (when cooking) are AFAIK the biggest influences on food poisoning chance.

Some people in here seem to miss that you can replant charged batteries to power a trade beacon "in the wild". Since the more "exploity" usages don't need the trade beacon powered for too long, that fixes this.

OTOH, I honestly don't see why plopping trade beacons on drop pods/freshly mined resources/... would be that different compared to just placing a stockpile zone there when a trader comes for a visit...

Randy: Hello my friend, welcome to another game of "Rich Explorer". Here, have a look at the map!
Me: Oh, nice! Hmm... There's a really good spot for founding a colony, enclosed by mountains with only 2 entrances, 2 geothermal vents inside and a large plot of rich soil. Too bad it's nearly halfway across the map from my landing point. Oh well, let's start hauling!
Randy: Good choice! However, since we'll probably spend some years of in-game time with each other, let's see what type of relationship you want (also, your pawn seems a bit lonely). Here, have a thrumbo and a raider with an incendiary launcher. Let's see if you're more of the cuddly or violent type!
Me: Dang, can't have that raider reach my stockpile. I'll have to stop him!

[Seconds of fierce fiery shootout later, during which the raider managed to die on self-inflicted burns]

Randy: Seeing your bravado, the thrumbo spontaneously self-tames. Damn, this isn't working out as planned :/
Me: Well, I'll need my pawn to rest up. Better make her build a bed beforehand!


Randy (after the pawn has finished building the bed): You know, she looks kind of adorable in that bed...
Me: So?
Randy: It would be a shame if she'd never be able to leave if again. (Your pawn has gotten a disease: plague)
Me: Love you too, Randy

[Side note: Colony death on day 3 due to new disease mechanics in A16. Heck, even my less fortunate Sea Ice Challenge tries took longer than that!]

+1, would read more Cassandra bedtime stories 

-exp(i*pi())

o.O why is i a constant, but pi isn't? (sry for offtopic)

I'm curious, the game seems to use about the same cpu usage playing as it does while paused. What is it doing when it's paused? No ticks should be happening. Also, why does the cpu use go up when I minimize the game?

Well, the game still needs to render the graphics, react to user input, stuff like that. Yes, it doesn't process ticks, so you might get minimally better FPS/lower CPU usage while paused, but not much (since tick processing isn't the bulk of the CPU usage).

To be sure, I opened a game with no mods. While playing normal speed the cpu averaged about 20%. When I paused it it still used about 20%. Then I minimized it, while it was paused, and it used about 45%.

Note: I have "Run in background" enabled. With it disabled it still uses cpu while paused but uses 0% when minimized.

That's weird. How do you measure your CPU usage? Even with "Run in background", the CPU usage shouldn't increase when minimized.