New Game Start - Prison Escapees?

[kilgoar]

I really enjoy the challenge RimWorld has to offer in traditional play styles & I've played through some ice sheets with pretty tough settings. I think this way I'm playing now is potentially even a bit tougher, & it's why I love it.

A16's caravans posed me the obvious challenge - is it possible to sustain a game entirely from the caravan? And even farther: no farming, no buildings, no hunting, no cooking, no base at all. After a little trial and error I've found it's quite possible to do this, and it should be easy enough to get the new victory condition this way too. I've really enjoyed the challenge so I don't have any elaborate ideas about how the gameplay ought to be changed, but it's been so much fun it ought to be encouraged. I want to share it with everyone. So I suggest an alternative to crashlanded / rich explorer / and tribal starts. What the group would look like is not all that important, although maybe a group of two or four, something in-between, is obvious. Some name like traveler, vagabond, or pirate crew would be appropriate. Perhaps they could be prison escapees who will face impossible galactic police raids if they stay put in any one place for too long, or so much as light a campfire.

If anyone else has been trying this same type of challenge, I'd love to hear what solutions you've come up with for life on the run.

For me, it's all raid and trade. Your starting location is pretty crucial to getting the group going, and it helps to have several hostile pirate factions within two or three days of the starting point. Flat planets with lots of desert are much easier. Also when selecting colonists, almost nothing matters other than melee and medicine. You will want someone who can construct though.

Even before I worry about a huge supply of food, it's best to equip the anti-colonists. Because tribes have shit eq, forget about them for now and attack some pirates. Happily, melee units can be lured out of the base one at a time and it's best to draw them to the very corner of the map, where the rest of your crew is waiting in ambush at the furthest possible distance from the rest. This is crucially important because the entire enemy base is very likely to rush you once their guy is killed or downed. And you need those few seconds that are afforded you for looting, so do all your killing on the edge of the map for easy escape. Ultimately, it's best to attempt to lure the pirates with nice blunt plasteel weapons, nice shields, and drugs. They must be baited out, which is not as dangerous as it seems. They'll somewhat randomly charge at your bait pawn once it's ~10 blocks away and within line of sight and sometimes more than one might charge. Sometimes they just don't care. It's much easier to heal up after confrontations with blunt weapons as opposed to spears and edged weapons & maces and clubs seem better to use anyway. Now that deadman's clothes are a debuff you actually don't want to kill your targets and clubs and maces seem better in that regard. You can minimize your damage taken in the obvious ways, like timing your attackers to all hit at once. I found this is not only the best way to get eq, but it's also a great way to get stuff to trade and a decent way to score drugs. Once you get that first shield on your fastest pawn and some good weapons, it becomes very easy. If you're ever in doubt or draw off too many enemies at once just run off and reload the attack. My favorite trick of all is to uninstall and carry a horseshoes pin. That way while you're trying to bait the melee units your ambush units are getting their joy refilled. All this just to say that perhaps prison escapees could come with some stolen guard batons or prison shanks - just the type of thing you'd expect, eh?

As for other critical supplies such as drugs and food, these can be obtained through trading, but only for so long. The absolute best feeling in all of RimWorld, for me, has been ganking pirate bases. Both the pirates & tribes have supplies that are not always very well guarded. I won't spoil much more on how it's done but there are a few great tactics and it's very, very satisfying once you get to doing it. Of course pirates will load all the good drugs, meals, and medicines. Some will be way easier to get at than others, some will load better supplies, different drugs, and so on. But the drugs are important to defuse critical break risks and to keep the caravan going. I expect prison escapees would be addicted to drugs to begin with & I've found one of the fun things about playing this style of a game is fulfilling those various addictions that build up. Also I'd expect they'd have perks like bloodlust and so on that also insulate them from the joyless, comfortless life on the road. All in all I'm pretty amazed with the wanderlust update & I understand this is a major departure from most everyone's play style, but it's one I can't get enough of.

[dv]

You can create your own starting conditions in the new game screen...

[kilgoar]

You can create your own starting conditions in the new game screen...

Well obviously. You can also read the entirety of the text above before replying, too.

[schizmo]

I like this idea, they could all start with Shivs and could occasionally be raided by prison guards.

Plus it would be nice to have some more variety with campaigns. Sure you can make your own, but they all play out with the same story teller mechanics as any other campaign so it doesn't do much to change anything. It would be neat if different campaigns had some different events that were unique to the campaign, and this type of starting campaign would definitely open the door for that.

[kilgoar]

I like this idea, they could all start with Shivs and could occasionally be raided by prison guards.

Plus it would be nice to have some more variety with campaigns. Sure you can make your own, but they all play out with the same story teller mechanics as any other campaign so it doesn't do much to change anything. It would be neat if different campaigns had some different events that were unique to the campaign, and this type of starting campaign would definitely open the door for that.

Thanks. It might be perverse, but I do sometimes wonder about these people who are forced to raid my bases to survive. What are they risking their lives for? What is the rest of their existence like? What brought them here, to die in front of my base? I've always wanted to play their side of the story. And now that I've worked out the raiding a bit I can't get enough of it. It's a ton of fun playing the bad guys, getting around all that base building and micromanaging and just playing RimWorld as a bit of a pure RTS.

[kilgoar]

You can create your own starting conditions in the new game screen...

I mean sorry for being abrasive since this a fine way to get the idea roughed out if not exact. I can't have it all, can I? Anyway here's a rough crack at one that's not bad. I did actually beat it, so whoop-dee for me.

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