Gameplay
Question: Roughly how long a typical game is going to be? With the different storytellers and everything, replayability seems to be a selling point for this game and for the game to be highly replayable it shouldn't be too long, I think. But it also musn't be too short since both the story and the colony building needs time to develop. Pirates I think waa a game that was extraordinaly replayable, I believe in part because of a perfect length. Civilization is another good example (probably not a coincidence that both are Sid Meier games).
Answer: Game length currently tends between two and five hours, but it could potentially be much longer. If we put the endgame in (where you build a ship and escape the planet), players who choose to do so can pursue a specific goal. I'll probably work towards a 4-10 hour playtime to get to that goal. I think that's enough time for a story to develop and resolve itself. But we'll have to see - game design is uncertain.
Regarding play time - my basic estimate was for how long it would take to reach the "escape the planet" endgame if you were pushing for it. If you just want to build a bigger and bigger colony, I suspect you could do that for quite a while

And we'll be supporting this playstyle fully. Also bear in mind that this is all speculation. The details of the endgame need to get hashed out in proper development and playtesting, so depending on how it goes and what people want, it could be longer or the concept could change entirely.
Question: How important combat is going to be in the game. The effort put into the tactics engine suggests that combat is going to be c-entral, but I am wondering whether you are planning on making it possible to deal with for example scavenges in a different way than fighting, for those who prefer a more peaceful but still challenging game? Or perhaps there will be a storyteller designed to provide a peaceful but otherwise challenging game?
Answer: As for combat, it's not the only focus of the game, but it is reasonably important. I'm not against the idea of creating a non-combat-but-still challenging AI Storyteller; that's something I hadn't thought of. Most of the challenging things that can happen to a colony right now are about fighting, but there are lots of ideas to be explored with weather, plague, theft, insanity, fire, and so on. We could do it.
Question: Will there be factions?¿
Answer: I'd love to do factions. Seems like an obvious choice in this universe. Especially when one can be preindustrial tribes, another can be midworld (e.g. near present-day Earth) refugees, a third can be spacers, and the last can be mysterious transcendent humanoids from an advanced race of posthuman machine gods.
Question: Will there be more storytellers?¿
Answer: Once we've got a solid core set of Storytellers it seems like it would be reasonably easy to make more. And I think a hardcore experience is valuable to a lot of people
Question: Will the game have achievements?.
There are many games that even use the achievements to unlock game modes and other features (for example, in Reus).
Answer: Very unlikely.
Here's the design rationale: The experience of RimWorld isn't really supposed to be about fighting and winning against the game. It's not a competition or skill-test, primarily. It's about story experience. Achievements get in the way of that by focusing people's attention on some arbitrary task. I'd rather people set their own goals and experience the story as it emerges.
That and they're not essential and I'm far overloaded as is.
Question: I've got a good question. How will game-saving be handled?
Answer: Right now there 5 rotating autosaves that get updated every night in the game.
Question: Will there be different localization's of the game (spanish, french, german etc etc.)
Answer: Localization won't be till after the Alpha, most likely.
It's difficult in a game with as much generated text as RimWorld (where we assemble together numbers and words to make sentences). I haven't researched deeply enough to know more than that.
Question: Will there be z-levels (vertical mapping)?
Answer: All the coordinates are tracked in 3-vectors already (though only the two horizontal axes are used), so the potential for 3D is in the game.
I am afraid that there is basically no way a modder would ever be able to mod Z-axis into the game. It is a beast of a feature. Here's some basic issues you'd have to handle:
-Pathfinding
-Lighting spilling over Z-levels
-Save/load of a geometrically larger amount of stuff (e.g. 200x200 map = 40k squares, 200x200x10 = 400k squares!)
-Line of sight for shooting
-AI tactical analysis of shooting lines of sight etc
-Cover usefullness varying at vertical angles
-Interface for moving through Z-levels
-Rendering visible lower Z-levels while being on higher ones
I could go on and on... Anyway, there is tons to do in RimWorld, my general thought is that the best cost/benefit move is to leave Z-levels to Towns, DF, Gnomoria, Stonehearth, and all those other games and focus on what RimWorld is really uniquely about: AI Storyteller, tactical AI, and so on.
Question: Will we be able to mod the game?¿
Answer: Check my post on Ludeon.com. It's a feature module that people would have to ask for, but I want to do it and the game is set up for it pretty cleanly.
http://ludeon.com/blog/2013/07/moddability/ Question: Will i be able to control time within the game? There seem to be alot of menu's to go through.
Answer: Time is fully controllable. Spacebar pauses and unpauses, and there is 1x, 3x, and 6x time. You can give orders and configure everything in pause mode.
Question: Will there be multiplayer?
Answer:It's an interesting idea, but at least six months away. Probably never, but as I say, still an interesting idea. It is technically possible.
If I did multiplayer I think it would be in a co-op context.
Making the game into a competitive RTS would really break a lot of the core concepts driving the design. Namely: it's not about winning, it's about the story.
A competitive context would break because the game isn't close to being balanced (what with all the random events and degenerate strategies). In this context competition becomes meaningless.
If we had several players working together, however (say, on the same colony, or in allied colonies close together), they could experience the AI Storyteller's stories together, maybe help each other in times of need, stuff like that. And we wouldn't have to balance the game for PvP.
Question: How big are the maps?
Answer: Currently it's 200x200 (40000 squares). I've tested 250x250 (~60000 squares) and it's okay. Beyond that some performance issues start to become really problematic.
Question: Can i rename my colonists?
Answer: Yes, you can always rename your starting colonists

. Maybe others - that'd be a new feature.
Question: Where can i find my savegames?
Answer: - Windows C:\Users\Marc\AppData\LocalLow\Ludeon Studios