The pro's and con's of this game

[bobucles]

As long as there is soil, players will have an easy source of food. Gathering off the land simply can't compare to farming, mostly because the former can't be automated.

Currently farming is only affected by one real factor- an eclipse. There need to be other growth concerns (perhaps rain or soil quality) before players can expect desert agriculture to be different from a temperate one.

[EscapeZeppelin]

Maybe adding a separate "blight" event that affects berries would solve this to some extent?

Or some kind of crazy locust style event. If you don't keep the number of berry bushes under control the number of squirrels/scarabs/iguanas keeps growing until suddenly they've eaten all the bushes and there's no more food left. Now they're hungry and your colonists are the only food left...

[( Tchey )]

Well, food in quite easy to obtain as long as we have a colonist to take care of it. We already have very little colonists to play with, so it's enough balanced i think, when starting a game.

Later, tech is more advanced, and we have lot more important to deal with (raiders, aliens, base planning...) so i find it very fine to get food more easily. we get it quite easily, as long as we think about it.

I've played several times UnReal World during the past few years, and i enjoyed. However i certainly don't want RimWorld to be so punitive about basic survival (food, cold, rain...).

I would hate to focus my game on getting food, instead of running a complete small colony.

[BetaSpectre]

Blights only kill player plants, and not all of them. Also it doesn't take long to grow food.

Food in Rimworld isn't an issue though it sure will be with newer players when the raiders start dropping.

Although I think that there should be surface sprinkler systems hooked up to either wells or a water source for most farms. With rain reducing the amount of water you need to bring.

Famines could simply be contamination or lack of water. During this time we should have some way to call traders to send food over or everyone will start starving. Ship pods could be used to prevent food from killing the colony.

With Stacked Raider supplies Sieges may also become useful sources of feed/rations.

[milon]

I agree that water should start playing a role in the game. I don't think the game is anywhere near ready for having water as a crucial resource, but irrigation and fishing would already make good addition to the game.

+1

IMO, the biomes should represent availability of different resources.  Water should be a factor, and it should be easy to get lots of food & water in the temperate forest.  Metal should be much harder to come by, however, since topsoil tends to mean rock and mineral and buried much deeper.  The desert, by contrast, has little water/food availability, but plentiful sand, stone, and even metal.  Metal should be the easiest to get in the Mountains, but everything else is fairly rare.  Etc.

[ShadowTani]

It is "easy" enough to get food as long as the colony is running smoothly, but if you get hit hard or repeatedly pressured by unfortunate events and hostilities you can likewise easily fall into a period of food shortages and starvation. So in this sense, I personally think the game is balanced when it comes to current food resources. If we get more food resources, then I agree current ones might need a nerf, but not in its current state imo.

[Niknud]

I really think if seasons were added it would solve a lot of these issues.  Make stockpiling food more important.  Maybe put trapping into the game for small game or for predators if those are in the works to give players other options to find food during the lean months.

[Quasarrgames]

While we're on the topic of rebalancing plants, i'd like to point out that all plants take ridiculously small amounts of time to grow. potatoes normally take 70-120 days to grow (i think) and they grow in only 2. Same thing with strawberries and agave (what ARE agaves anyway? i know they're real fruit, but i thought they grew on trees).

Speaking of trees, growing them (and cacti) in a couple weeks instead of 30+ years is quite a feat. I know, they have to grow like this for balance reasons, but then maybe they should be known as genetically engineered "accele-trees" or something.

[Bodog999]

Yep, it's pretty easy to get food in the desert. There are too many areas you can grow food, I didn't even research the hydroponics a whole year.
But I don't think that this is a huge problem, that crashed ship event with the mechanoids is my biggest problem with the game. I really enjoy killing dozens of raiders, but that event is absolutly overpowered. There are way too many mechanoids and the psychic drone thing makes it even worse. One of these events can kill my whole colony because my colonists suffer from permanent mental breaks, mortars never hit and centipedes are way too bulky to kill them fast enough before reaching the extreme stage of the psychic drone thing.
But besides that I really enjoy the game. I've spent so many hours in building the perfect colony and it's still not boring. I really like the new injury-system, now I actually care about my colonists. Alpha 6 is the best update yet imo.

I know your feeling about the mechs eve with modded turrets and an army of miniguns I can barely kill them before they kill me. Thank god that they focus on the turrets first

[ShadowTani]

While we're on the topic of rebalancing plants, i'd like to point out that all plants take ridiculously small amounts of time to grow. potatoes normally take 70-120 days to grow (i think) and they grow in only 2. Same thing with strawberries and agave (what ARE agaves anyway? i know they're real fruit, but i thought they grew on trees).

Speaking of trees, growing them (and cacti) in a couple weeks instead of 30+ years is quite a feat. I know, they have to grow like this for balance reasons, but then maybe they should be known as genetically engineered "accele-trees" or something.

Then think of them as GMO plants/trees; I mean, GMO products is still called by their organic name in real life too so there shouldn't be any need to give them unique names - just imagine it if it's important for your immersion.

Still, even if I personally think too much realism can ruin a game (if reality was fun I wouldn't need games ;P) I can imagine seasonal growing could be fun if we had enough alternative food sources to rotate between among the various seasons - like Muffalo husbandry, fishing etc. x3 I know Tynan mentioned looking into temperatures further down the line on Reddit, so seasons might get considered then. :3

[Ykara]

While we're on the topic of rebalancing plants, i'd like to point out that all plants take ridiculously small amounts of time to grow. potatoes normally take 70-120 days to grow (i think) and they grow in only 2. Same thing with strawberries and agave (what ARE agaves anyway? i know they're real fruit, but i thought they grew on trees).

Speaking of trees, growing them (and cacti) in a couple weeks instead of 30+ years is quite a feat. I know, they have to grow like this for balance reasons, but then maybe they should be known as genetically engineered "accele-trees" or something.

Rimworld takes place on a strange planet, maybe the ground there is more fertile than the ground on the Earth.

[Raufgar]

(what ARE agaves anyway? i know they're real fruit, but i thought they grew on trees).

Well, this should give you some idea, but for the most part people know them best for the fact that you make tequila out of one variety