Different paths to winning/survival and map interaction

[Stone Cold Jane Austen]

1. In civ 5, there are different paths you can take to victory, like diplomacy, culture, war and research. To win the game while playing one of the alternative paths, the player needs to think about how they climb the research tree, if he/she is going to win with culture it's good to get techs that boost cultural output and defensive structures, if he/she wants to win by warfare it's good to get the production upgrade buildings early etc etc. An idea for RimWorld would be to have similarly different paths to long term survival, or winning, if conditions for a win would be implemented. The player could for example focus on being a welcoming colony with nice quarters where visitors could marvel at the artistic and luxurious sophistication of the place (thus becoming less prone to attacking), earning money from their excellent goods to bribe enemies in order to encourage them to be more friendly or go down the path of turning into a warrior tribe with lots of brutal weapons and savage ways, or perhaps be very research driven and become one with the machines and so forth. If a system like this was implemented, it would also be important for the player to carefully select which kinds of people he/she recruits, having too many warrior types in a colony that aims to become an arty place would probably not be very effective, niether would it be adviceable to have Andy Warhol types trying to defend an outpost with cumbersome melee weapons. If you want to be doing a lot of fighting it might be good to have a bunch of really skilled doctors at hand and focus on increasing food resources since you'd have to feed a lot of fighters, while a research, machine sort of colony would benefit more from improving the androids and perhaps have much fever living colonists, thus not needing much food. Different ways of efficiently playing a game is always interesting.

2. One thing that i think could improve this game is to encourage a lot more interactions with the map. It's fairly small, to start with, so making it bigger would enable more room for cool stuff to be found, but perhaps there are performance limitations to something like this.
Either way, one idea would be to have different kinds of precious metals/elements scattered in the rock (later needed for new avenues of research, the creation of expensive luxury items that can either be sold or significantly improve the morale of the colonists, the possibility of creating better armor etc etc), sites of crashed space ships where the player must set up and defend provisoric research stations,  enemy colonies that can be attacked etc. It would be nice if the player had to think of what kind of colonists and research they'd need to make the most of the resources they're currently surrounded with, if there's a lot of game it would be smart to get some hunting upgrades, if there's a lot of rock the mining research is more important, if there's a lack of vents one would like to put more effort into improving solar power and batteries.

[Darkfirephoenix]

You have nice ideas! I have some ideas of my own too: http://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=3199.0

About the ways of "winning":
You are chrash-landed on the planet, so your colonists will most likely aim for this goals:
-Terraforming to make the planet better suitable for them
-Dominance over the planet: Either military, cultural or political (Military is self explaining, Cultural: Everyone loves to art/works you do so they won't think about attacking and will help/join you, Political: You pacify the whole planet, meaning you get all othe factions on friendly terms with you and between them too [maybe even an "underhanded" way: Mindcontroll/Thought-manipulation])
-"Back to Space": Maybe your ppl just wan't to get of this piece of Rock, so you research and build an Spaceship

But good ideas, give us more!

[StorymasterQ]

Like this so much. +1

[Stone Cold Jane Austen]

You have nice ideas! I have some ideas of my own too: http://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=3199.0

About the ways of "winning":
You are chrash-landed on the planet, so your colonists will most likely aim for this goals:
-Terraforming to make the planet better suitable for them
-Dominance over the planet: Either military, cultural or political (Military is self explaining, Cultural: Everyone loves to art/works you do so they won't think about attacking and will help/join you, Political: You pacify the whole planet, meaning you get all othe factions on friendly terms with you and between them too [maybe even an "underhanded" way: Mindcontroll/Thought-manipulation])
-"Back to Space": Maybe your ppl just wan't to get of this piece of Rock, so you research and build an Spaceship

But good ideas, give us more!

Hey, cool thread, it looks like we have a lot of similar thoughts on stuff we'd like to see in the game. It would definately be nice to have victory conditions and  i also think it would be kind of interesting to have opposing colonies that are aiming to grab victory for themselves (these would not have to be visible on the map, the player could be clued in on how well they're doing through espionage or interrogation of prisoners). Having these enemies would put preassure on the player to be smart in their playing style.

[Darkfirephoenix]

Hey, cool thread, it looks like we have a lot of similar thoughts on stuff we'd like to see in the game. It would definately be nice to have victory conditions and  i also think it would be kind of interesting to have opposing colonies that are aiming to grab victory for themselves (these would not have to be visible on the map, the player could be clued in on how well they're doing through espionage or interrogation of prisoners). Having these enemies would put preassure on the player to be smart in their playing style.

Hmm I think other Factions reaching the smae goal as you would only be possible if they aim for Terraforming or dominance over the planet... I would rather go with goals for other factions: Tribals would go for improving and keeping their way of live, other crashlanded / their children (outlandertowns) would go for Space, dominance or Terraforming (like you) and the pirates would aim for total dominance (excluding the cultural stuff), so they get you to work for THEM (kinda like slaves) while they go raiding/plundering somewhere else.

But I think you should get the possibility to decide if your game ends after you have achieved one of the goals, or if you can keep playing.

Maybe even an "staged" goal: Terraforming and dominating planet, building Spaceship to get of the planet and maybe (crash-)land on another, different planet and so beginning the cycle from the beginning. Maybe you could keep some techs, or you have other "problems" on the planet: Hostile/Bad environment (not enough/ no O2 [leading to your colonist wearing spacesuits outside and being slowe due to that]), until your terraform the planet, Aliens wich live on this planet and don't react kindly to terraforming, no other Humans etc.