Your Starting Colonists and Priorities

[FridayBiology]

At the start everyone gets repair and haul set to #1 with everyelse below that in priority

1) Cook (until 10 meals) then Construct
2) Grow (small 2x5 plots xeri berry rice)
3) Mine then Construct then Cut

after abit I add handling and hunting to all colonists at #2
with each colonist gaining grow #3 to help build additional plots

after abit more i allow tailor, craft, art to be added to separate colonists as needed for cloth production.

[keylocke]

my 3 starters are usually like these :

-all of them are incapable of none
-none of them have negative mood attributes
-all of them have firefighting, doctoring, flicker, and repair set to 1
-all of them are below 40yrs old

-one is a careful shooter : he will cut/grow/hunt/ in that order (weapons : survival rifle/sniper rifle) gonna be all bionic, left hand is powerclaw

-one is trigger happy : he will craft/construct/mine in that order(weapons : any rapid fire weapon, usually miniguns or charge rifles) gonna be all bionic, left hand is powerclaw

-one is a brawler : he will cook/warden/handle in that order(weapons : melee, usually longsword and personal shields) gonna be all bionic.

note : any careful shooter newly recruited are automatically assigned to the hunting squad.
the rest i just let them do tasks that they are passionate about. i will also adjust these guy's workloads once i have enough people to cover all tasks.

note : my sniper squad has top priority for the best gear and bionics.

note : i use the careful shooter, trigger happy, brawler templates. so i rarely recruit people that don't have any of those 3 traits.

-grenadier : is basically just any new recruit that doesn't have any of the 3 combat traits. i only recruit these people if they are incapable of nothing and if they don't have any negative traits and they are below 40yrs. (weapon : frag grenades + personal shield + power claw) shields allow them to get close enough to throw grenades and melee the enemy.

[Patrykbono20]

1 Growing
2. Crafting
3 Social/building

[Jamini]

all bionic

Be careful with bionics, they are a double-edged sword. Bionic limbs remove all the preexisting limb parts (fingers and toes) and cannot take damage themselves. This reduces the non-critical locations that body part can be hit in. This can drastically increase the chance that a bionic guy will get hit in a vital area (brain, heart, liver) and die instantly from a strong hit.

I really do not advise replacing limbs unless they are shot off or significantly impaired (Missing multiple fingers/toes/hands/feet)for that reason. Bionic-enhanced colonists are glass cannons in combat, and are far more likely to end up dead if anyone can close on them.

Keeping your morale high and focusing on getting skill high is more important than bionics. Morale has a far greater impact on global work speed than anything else!

Bionic eyes rock and every colony should stockpile them. btw. Painstoppers are pretty damn good too! Joywires are only so-so due to the consciousness loss, but can be useful if you get a Voilatile+Depressive asshole.

[keylocke]

all bionic

Be careful with bionics, they are a double-edged sword.

in a long enough timeline, everyone is either dead/gone or full bionic.

sure, you can wait until a body part gets badly damaged or impaired. but if you're running your colony correctly, you'll probably have enough stockpile of spare parts just sitting there and plenty of silver to boot.

and aye, painstoppers are great. it makes my sniper squad all badasses.

[GenuineEntropy]

Pretty typical stuff for me, decent starting points and passions for the following:

Glorious Leader - Shooting, Constructing, Mining
Cookey - Shooting, Growing, Cooking, Social
Scientist(ish) - Shooting, Crafting, Research

I ditch the default animals and plasteel knife, and give everyone pistols (and maybe a single survival rifle for the leader and/or extra rations (for ice-sheet) or medicine (for tropics)).

Preferably 'incapable' of none, other than when it doesn't affect primary roles.
I too never accept abrasive (pain in the ass mood modifier that can drag an entire colony down), nor lazy or depressive colonists.
Sanguine, industrious and jogger are the preferred traits.

And yes, those are the nicknames I set for them above.

[Draxis]

I can't help but find it funny that your "Glorious Leader" isn't the social one! Now as a follow up, what do you guys tend to do for early defenses? I have been trying to move away from the kill box, but at the same time, I find that I lose a lot of colonists to what appear to be really lucky shots and it's frustrating at times.

I would like to play a game straight through without reloading saves, but I feel that I lose a ton of colonists for reasons which are beyond my control at times.

[Mmgfrcs]

My preferences for start colonist:
1. One with high Social. Absolute #1. Goes a long way when buying/selling. Don't care if that person is a Medieval Lord (which can only fight, art, research and medic) as long as the capable stats are high (usually it is, because I never get any whose stats is less than 4)
2. One who is capable of all rough work came second: construct, grow, mine, etc.
3. One who is the same as #2, but is also capable of doctoring and particularly constructing and mining to cover up the Medieval Lord
I won't accept anyone too old or too young

For new colonist
1. One with lots of Research so the Lord can focus on art
2. One with Careful shooter or High combat stats
3. One that can do everything, particularly dirty jobs
Defense is with turrets and sandbags

[ssdg]

Good health
-Colonists with bad backs and cataracts are generally pretty worthless at almost anything they do, even with good skills. I avoid them if at all possible. The only exception is if I know I have enough cash to buy them two bionic eyes and at least one bionic leg... AND they have valuable skills AND they have valuable traits.

Im surprised no one else mentioned this in the post. This is possibly the most important stat in the game. Someone with poor eyesight and 20 shoot will be a worse shooter vs someone with good eye sight and 7,8ish shooting. The same applies to every tasks.

[FridayBiology]

Im surprised no one else mentioned this in the post. This is possibly the most important stat in the game. Someone with poor eyesight and 20 shoot will be a worse shooter vs someone with good eye sight and 7,8ish shooting. The same applies to every tasks.

same with if the colonist is missing toes or fingers and they can't haul/shoot straight or actually complete a meal within a few hours in game...