New Start

[Goldenpotatoes]

You finally manage to build a ship and escape. Great, right? Don't you wish you could just do it all again?

This idea would let you. After the ending message comes up with the ship departure, you're given the option to use the escaped set of colonists for another run. Choose another world and the game will select a random drop spot.

The flavor message should be something along the lines of your colonists waking in their cyrochambers to the sound of an AI blaring an alert into the pods before crashing. Colonists wake up with the sickness, but instead of the 'new colony optimism' buff, they get a -10 effect with the description along the lines of 'oh god not again'.

You'd essentially be left with whatever was left of the crashed shuttle and at the mercy of where the game decided for you to land. Now you can blame your level 3 constructor for building shotty engines and causing the crash, or maybe a faulty AI core?

Or maybe you just find the concept of putting them back through hell a second time funny.

[asanbr]

I probably wouldn't do this often. I tend to quit early and start a new colony since I enjoy the first year or so the most.

But I do like the idea and it seems like it should be very easy to implement. So I +1 this.

[FyrnSkulblaka]

I'd use this. Although, would you be able to use every colonist that was on the ship? Or, at the very least be able to choose which colonists you get to keep?

[RemingtonRyder]

It could be that you still only get three colonists at the start, but the others are out there somewhere waiting to be rescued or have joined up with one of the other factions.

This could be implemented by adding the remaining colonists to a refugee pool. So whenever you get an escape pod crash or a chased refugee, it may be one of your former colonists.

[Vagabond]

Hello,

I'm sorry, but this is just -mean-. Laughing out loud.

Now, our current start has us crashing landing and trying to escape a planet to spend an exuberant amount of time traveling to some place that may not even exist any longer when they get there - at least not in the form it was in when they departed.

Why not a start that has us as real colonists? We are where we aimed our ship. We have to set up base. This doesn't require a huge amount of people when you look at space as "the frontier" like the western parts of America was. They let loose people to settle it.

They don't have to be frontiersmen. They could very well be similar to the Brotherhood of Steel, setting up a compound to tame the savages and search for artifacts. Or even a "vault dweller" situation where we emerge from a mountain compound after having been hiding in there for several generations due to something that happened on the planet

Perhaps a start that has us being the crew of a ship that is passing over a planet. A colony under siege requests our aid against aggressors.

It'd be very to see new starts. If you're looking for a new game plus, why not have your colonists branch out to another location instead of take off in a ship. For example: ship is finished, you get a pop up saying something along the lines of "some of your colonists choose to remain, but some wish to remain at the current colony while others wish to move on. Would you like to lead this?". Just because we have Murphy's Law it doesn't mean we have to subject our colonist to the worse possible situation: them finally making it off the planet just to crash on it or another a second time.

Cheers,
Michael

[Selonianth]

Honestly both ideas are not terrible. An option at the start to go between "Colony Expedition" "Crash Survivors" and then a way to continue/bring back previous/experienced colonists from previous playthroughs.