Diplomacy, other fortresses, and you.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Soooo, the ground caravans thread got me thinking...

We need more caravans from the Mountainhomes. Well, from other outposts, anyway. RimWorld isn't supposed to be just you alone on this planet, there's supposed to be other settlements, just... Far away. Hard to get to. No paved roads, no flying cars, and a shitload of bandits.

But remember rule of Acquisition #62: The riskier the road, the greater the profit.

So, I'd suggest that those other remote outposts are willing to do business, and could be a fertile grounds for events. You'd need to randomly generate some other settlements and their details when the game is generated.

To start with, of course, there's trade. Outposts like to trade, especially when they have something to trade and have shortages in another area. One outpost might be short on armaments and have a lot of metal, so they'd be willing to buy guns expensively, sell metal cheap, and would deal in food fairly. Another might be an exceptionally well-armed agricolony under constant siege by suicidal raiders, with food coming out of their ears and a drastic shortage of metal, willing to trade food-for-metal at extortionate 5:1 rates and offering lots of cheap guns. (Gee, that sounds familiar.) Yet another might have prisoners they're willing to give you money to take off their hands, because they're not quite bloodthirsty enough to just execute them.

And so forth and so on. You build your relations with them by being nice - selling them stuff at good prices, buying what they have surplus, offering them gifts, etcetera. You wreck your relations by being an arsehole, charging them extortionate prices for the things they need desperately, looting their caravans, etcetera, and they should have radios, so just making sure there's no survivors won't mean they don't know what you did.

Later on, you could send caravans to these remote colonies. A caravan should need some way of carrying things, whether it be a hover-truck, a rickshaw, or muffalo-drawn wagons. You can set the prices you'll charge for your goods (which they will be free to refuse or only purchase a little of, based on how much you want for them and how desperate they are to get it; after all, you can't eat credits, metal or guns,) what you're willing to buy/take in trade, and if you'll trade, how much you'll take in kind, etcetera. The better the Social of the guy you appoint as the caravan master, the better deals he can negotiate... And of course, you need to send well-armed guards who know what the hell they're doing with a gun, or your caravan will just get picked off and your people will be lucky to crawl home alive.

Or you could send your folks to go a-raidin', either disguised as a caravan or not. Obviously, not all of these outposts will get along with one another, so if you send raiders to hit the slaver compound and liberate their people, a lot of folks might cheer you on for it. Sending slavers to hit the nearly-defenseless mine whose schtick is that everybody loves them because they'll deal with anyone, not so much.

They could ask you to get involved in conflicts and the like, may send requests for material aid in the form of whatever resources are around, and so forth and so on. They could ask to borrow specialists, folks with a rating over 15 for some project, etcetera. They could also offer the same; offer aid if you've been good to them and you need it (or grant a request for it,) send a specialist to help out for a week or so, etcetera.

Of course, there's always a risk, though if you've been diplomatic and made friends, the risk should be miniscule. And your colonists should almost never die on a remote assignment, that just wouldn't be cricket. You might need to mount a rescue mission, though.