How (if you can) do you reuse a specific spot for a new colony?

[nuschler22]

I like the last spot I used in my last colony.  I have mods that required a new colony, and the game tells me I have a colony in the spot I want to pick.  I've deleted all saves.

Is there any way to use the same spot or create the same world? 

Thanks.

[Sacarathe]

Does that mean you know for sure that the same spot will generate the exact same map layout? Or is it the climate circumstances you wished to recreate? I am interested in this too.

[nuschler22]

I don't know.  I was hoping for the same spot only because I like the way the mountain was for defense. 

The more I'm reading on the forum, the less likely I think it is that the actual spot will be the same regardless of whether I can recreate it.  I think it's randomly generated.

[jubov]

There is a way to remove your old colony from the map, I just did it myself, I'll try to explain how.

You need to edit your "worldname.rww" (make copy first, just in case) file in the worlds folder, if you found your saves, it's in the same path (AppData\LocalLow\Ludeon Studios\RimWorld\Worlds).

Scroll to the end of the file, the last faction in the file should be your colony (assuming you only have one colony on the map). If you have more than one colony, the homesquare (coordinates) should help to figure out what is the correct one. All you need to do is to delete following part and save it. (again, make copy before deleting anything just in case)

<li Class="Faction">
<def>Colony</def>
...
...
...
...
</relation>
</li>

I'm not exactly sure about if the terrain stays identical (I think it does), but steam geysers and initial animal locations seem to switch at least.

[nuschler22]

I actually deleted it through the load menu.

I'm searching for the AppData folder but I can't seem to find it.  I'm guessing it's not in the Rimworld general directory since I can't find it. 

Thanks for the help, by the way.

Edit:  My search was slow, I just found it.  Continuing on....

[nuschler22]

That worked like a charm!  Thanks!

Starting the new colony now.  I'll post when I find out how similar it is (isn't).

[nuschler22]

From what I can tell, it's exactly the same.  The steam geysers are even in the same spot.

Thank you again!

[jubov]

No problem.

I just made few quick test colonys (in the same world, exactly same spot) and at least for me geyser locations were randomized every time. I only have UI mods, so those shouldn't make any difference.

[tommytom]

I would be pretty awesome, especially for story-telling-sake, to be able to claim a dead/abandoned (lost or won) colony. I haven't tried it but I assume since deleting the save does not clear the area, then the world file still holds that colony as in use? Or does dying/escaping release it? Kinda thinking not as that would break loading a previous save file.

[skullywag]

Just to be clear editing the world file is the only sure fire way of doing this, the same seed will be almost the same but things like geyser placement will not be the same.

[lusername]

Why does the game apparently permanently record every colony plopped on the map (yet ignore when you name it, so every colony is just "Colony"), anyway? Is there some kind of planned metagame where you can interact with your own colonies?

[Silvador]

Why does the game apparently permanently record every colony plopped on the map (yet ignore when you name it, so every colony is just "Colony"), anyway? Is there some kind of planned metagame where you can interact with your own colonies?

Why not? In Dwarf Fortress you could send out a new lot of colonists and reclaim an old settlement. I assumed that since your colony was marked on the world map when making a new colony this was already a feature, though I had not tried it yet. I'm also curious as to if you leave a colony running, after losing all your colonists, will there still be a chance a random person will stop by and "join" your colony?

[skullywag]

Yes the random join event will still fire....randomly.

[nuschler22]

Just to be clear editing the world file is the only sure fire way of doing this, the same seed will be almost the same but things like geyser placement will not be the same.

Not always the case for the geyser placement.  In my previous colony, I had three nearby geysers in very specific and obvious places.  They were exactly the same in the new colony.  I don't know why some are experiencing different geyser placements and why some aren't, though. 

Also, I struck the same deposits in the same spot, and also had small walls built into mountains which were exactly the same. 

Edit:
And, just to note, this was all saves deleted (so it wasn't a previous save from a previous colony).

Edit:
I wonder if map size has anything to do with geyser placement.  I imagine it's unlikely considering we all have our favorite map size we use.  But it might be possible that selecting a different map size with the same site could be the cause.

[skullywag]

Hmm admittedly i havent checked this in a9. It could be he fixed it.