Do you save scum?

[MisterVertigo]

Hello all! I have a question for all of you out there in the RimWorld community. When you play a game of RimWorld, do you save scum? For those that don't know, that means you save your game frequently, and when something goes wrong or something happens you don't like, you re-load from a recent save. For example, your favorite colonist dies, or getting a crashed Mechanoid ship outside your front door immediately after a bad raid, or half your colony has malaria.

I have to admit that I'm a save-scummer in most games that I play. For some reason, I always feel bad about it in this game though. I know that these things happen to tell a story, and I should just things happen as they do. I guess I just don't like putting a bunch of time into a colony only to have a stupid mistake of mine or bad luck destroy it all. I guess I don't like to lose, but I kind of feel like I'm cheating sometimes. I watch a lot of YouTubers and they can't save scum, and I wish I was as awesome as them!

Every time I start a new game I tell myself, "This is the one! I'm not gonna save-scum this one! I'm just gonna see what happens!" but it never actually works out that way. I get too attached to a colonist and then I'll screw something up and that'll be it.

So, what about you guys? Do you save scum? Do you use console commands to help you out of certain things? I'd like to know I'm not alone!

[A Friend]

Save-scumming best answer!

I used to do it frequently. Not so much now, getting more and more tolerant with what happens ingame.
Unless it's a cave-in that instantly kills my miners because screw that, that's absolute BS. At least leave a corpse for me to bury.

[TLHeart]

I save scum for BS mechanics, like the magic bullets going through walls.

Utubers can very easy save scum, and edit it out of the video they post. They are not live videos.

[Coenmcj]

Same reason as TLHeart, I'll save scum due to the BS, like;
A raider squad's brawler with 1 in shooting and a pistol, against a power armoured, bionic powerhouse behind a wall and some sandbags, the Raider firing a single shot from halfway across the canyon that headshots and kills the colonist. Seriously?

I'd understand if it was close range, or if it was a more powerful/accurate weapon, but sometimes the combat mechanics can be kinda dodgy and pull off some pretty flukey shots.

[Shurp]

This is not the correct definition of save scumming.  Save scumming is when you repeatedly load the same save file until you get the result you want.  What you describe, loading a save file to avert a disaster and then play the game normally, is just backing up and starting over.

Rimworld doesn't lend itself to save scumming because there aren't set points where specific things will happen.  It's more popular in Gnomoria, where every season a set of immigrants shows up.  Since you know when it is, you can save just before it, then see who you get, and keep reloading until you get a set of great reinforcements.

[dotsnake]

I do save frequently, but I only reload if something unfair happens.

Example:

I sent all my colonist to destroy the ship and a centipede came out. 4/6 of my colony were severely injured and I only had 1 doctor who were up all day and night trying to save my colonist. Then the next day, I had another big event that would have destroyed my colony. I managed to save after the centipede fight, so I reloaded. I wasn't ready, and there should be a wait time between events, but that's not the case.

[Britnoth]

I do save frequently, but I only reload if something unfair happens.

Example:

I sent all my colonist to destroy the ship and a centipede came out. 4/6 of my colony were severely injured and I only had 1 doctor who were up all day and night trying to save my colonist. Then the next day, I had another big event that would have destroyed my colony. I managed to save after the centipede fight, so I reloaded. I wasn't ready, and there should be a wait time between events, but that's not the case.

- a centipede came out = fair. Actually just 1 centipede is a pretty weak ship part.
- 4/6 of my colony were severely injured = entirely your fault. How do you get anyone hurt by one centipede is beyond me.
- and I only had 1 doctor = unlikely. the chance 5 of 6 random colonists are barred from doctoring sounds extreme.
- I wasn't ready, and there should be a wait time between events, but that's not the case. =

There is a minimum wait time between events. If you take too long to deal with a ship part crash, then you can get another bad event happen while you are dealing with it.

Unless of course you are playing on Randy. Which is your choice to play with the storyteller AI that does not obey the rules.

It is more than likely that another raid ends up fighting the centipede than anything else. Do you reload when that happens instead? No? Didn't think so. 

[Veneke]

I save very frequently (a stable alpha game is still alpha after all) but like most other people I'll only reload if a fluke shot kills one of my key colonists. I'm not too keen on characters who are integral to the colony's story dying randomly... that's a bit too fatalistic for my tastes. Sometimes I'll roll with it, and I almost always have a tomb ready for such an event, but more often than not it's a reload situation.

- a centipede came out = fair. Actually just 1 centipede is a pretty weak ship part.
- 4/6 of my colony were severely injured = entirely your fault. How do you get anyone hurt by one centipede is beyond me.
- and I only had 1 doctor = unlikely. the chance 5 of 6 random colonists are barred from doctoring sounds extreme.
- I wasn't ready, and there should be a wait time between events, but that's not the case. = There is a minimum wait time between events.

This is a little harsh.

- Depending on how early it is, taking on one Centipede can actually be a pretty big deal.
- Again, getting hurt by a centipede is significantly more likely the earlier it happens. If your defences are set up, or you have decent gear, then yeah. But if you've got a survival rifle, a few pistols, and a shotgun with no preset defences and no favourable terrain on which you can force the engagement, and the centipede has anything decent taking casualties is far from unreasonable. Plus don't forget the RNG. Sometimes it just wants you to die.
- Fair point about the doctor, in that kind of emergency anyone who has hands should be bandaging, and you can prioritize training at a later date.
- How fair the wait time is depends on the version he was playing. In some previous versions it was possible to get a mechanoid attack very early on (ie with 3-4 guys and starting gear) and by the time you were ready to deal with it the wait timer would have lapsed.

[RickyMartini]

It depends, I decide it on colony start. If i want to purposely play ironman then I do it. But I still always save scum if a glitch happens. Even in ironman.

[Moth]

I do save frequently, but I only reload if something unfair happens.

Example:

I sent all my colonist to destroy the ship and a centipede came out. 4/6 of my colony were severely injured and I only had 1 doctor who were up all day and night trying to save my colonist. Then the next day, I had another big event that would have destroyed my colony. I managed to save after the centipede fight, so I reloaded. I wasn't ready, and there should be a wait time between events, but that's not the case.

- a centipede came out = fair. Actually just 1 centipede is a pretty weak ship part.
- 4/6 of my colony were severely injured = entirely your fault. How do you get anyone hurt by one centipede is beyond me.
- and I only had 1 doctor = unlikely. the chance 5 of 6 random colonists are barred from doctoring sounds extreme.
- I wasn't ready, and there should be a wait time between events, but that's not the case. =

There is a minimum wait time between events. If you take too long to deal with a ship part crash, then you can get another bad event happen while you are dealing with it.

Unless of course you are playing on Randy. Which is your choice to play with the storyteller AI that does not obey the rules.

It is more than likely that another raid ends up fighting the centipede than anything else. Do you reload when that happens instead? No? Didn't think so. 

Actually it really depends on situation, I have lost an entire colony to one centepede with an inferno cannon because it smashed through my wall like kool-aid man and torched my rec-room.

[dotsnake]

I do save frequently, but I only reload if something unfair happens.

Example:

I sent all my colonist to destroy the ship and a centipede came out. 4/6 of my colony were severely injured and I only had 1 doctor who were up all day and night trying to save my colonist. Then the next day, I had another big event that would have destroyed my colony. I managed to save after the centipede fight, so I reloaded. I wasn't ready, and there should be a wait time between events, but that's not the case.

- a centipede came out = fair. Actually just 1 centipede is a pretty weak ship part.
- 4/6 of my colony were severely injured = entirely your fault. How do you get anyone hurt by one centipede is beyond me.
- and I only had 1 doctor = unlikely. the chance 5 of 6 random colonists are barred from doctoring sounds extreme.
- I wasn't ready, and there should be a wait time between events, but that's not the case. =

There is a minimum wait time between events. If you take too long to deal with a ship part crash, then you can get another bad event happen while you are dealing with it.

Unless of course you are playing on Randy. Which is your choice to play with the storyteller AI that does not obey the rules.

It is more than likely that another raid ends up fighting the centipede than anything else. Do you reload when that happens instead? No? Didn't think so. 

wow, you are being extremely rude. It's just a game. I play the way I want to, and if I get some of my colonist injured, who cares? its a game. stop being rude and judgmental.

[MisterVertigo]

I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one. In my current game, I had a raid early on that wanted to tunnel around my defenses. Well, I'm still very early in my temp housing. I don't have a lot of defenses yet. I have maybe two turrets, and 3 colonists that actually have guns.

So, they go around the back side and throw a molotov at all of my wooden walls. I just learned stonecutting and barely even have any blocks in my storage yet to build any walls. Needless to say I wasn't gonna let that happen...

[Garm]

I've savescummed few of my first playthroughs until i've got a knack on the general playstyle. Current game however is ironman stlll: I've lost few pawns, but i've also gained such characters as "Woodman" with more wooden implants than flesh, "McGreg" because i've accidentally amputated his healthy leg instead of fixing the missing one, so he ended up with his own left leg reattached for the missing right. Dont get me started on when i got Bzzt during a raid - game turned into a tactical shooter where i had to use my own base geography to maximize cover!

[Britnoth]

This is a little harsh.

- Depending on how early it is, taking on one Centipede can actually be a pretty big deal.
- Again, getting hurt by a centipede is significantly more likely the earlier it happens. If your defences are set up, or you have decent gear, then yeah. But if you've got a survival rifle, a few pistols, and a shotgun with no preset defences and no favourable terrain on which you can force the engagement, and the centipede has anything decent taking casualties is far from unreasonable. Plus don't forget the RNG. Sometimes it just wants you to die.
- Fair point about the doctor, in that kind of emergency anyone who has hands should be bandaging, and you can prioritize training at a later date.
- How fair the wait time is depends on the version he was playing. In some previous versions it was possible to get a mechanoid attack very early on (ie with 3-4 guys and starting gear) and by the time you were ready to deal with it the wait timer would have lapsed.

Just stating the facts. Harsh but fair. 

- Mechanoids cannot be faced super early in unmodded vanilla Rimworld. Ship parts have a minimum point value limiting them to happen only once you have reached a certain size. This should be day 50+ even on extreme difficulty. By then you likely have at least 5 people and significant defences built.
- Mechanoids from ship parts stay close to the ship part. You have time to deal with 1 centipede. Mechanoid raids that actually attack your base are restricted to happen only after 90 game days.

But if you've got a survival rifle,

This is all you need. Survival rifle max range is 37. Max range of the centipede weapons is 27-32. Their move speed is 1/3 a humans. You can easily shoot at them from a safe distance and slowly kill them - all you need is a guy with no cataracts and a few points in shooting skill to do this. If you step too close and get targetted, you can easily run back out of range and they are much too slow to chase you. Centipedes are so large you get a doubled chance to hit compared to shooting a human raider.

And all that is ignoring the fact that all centipede weapons have a forced miss radius tag, making the inferno cannon the only effective weapon they have. 1 improvised gun turret can easily kill several minigun armed centipedes.

If you get a raid while doing this, nothing stops you heading back to base and helping deal with the raid. Or just rely on turrets to fend off the raid. If you are day 50, 60, or later into the game and need to rely on turrets to defend you but have neglected building any...

Well I don't see how that makes the game quote "unfair"

--------

It's just a game. I play the way I want to

I wasn't commenting on how you play the game.

I was commenting on your accusation/criticism that the game was

unfair

backed by statements that were clearly and provably false; possibly giving other people a bad impression of the game. 

[Binkus]

Save-scumming best answer!

I used to do it frequently. Not so much now, getting more and more tolerant with what happens ingame.

this

and the ridiculous frequency of falling mech spaceships, i like playing on icesheet biomes and when it is winter at -100 outside and the 9 or 10th spaceship falls our of the sky on the planet i save scum like the best of them,

if they drop that often then why isnt the landscape already wall to wall spaceship debris?!

if people get killed by flu or pirates eaten by crazed wargs, i can live with that

but raining spaceships grrrr (oh and the stupid frequency of electrical malfunctions, this game mechanic really should change if they are given a build quality eg my builder with 20 skill or my builder with 1 skill i would expect to see 0% chance of these things going kaboom with my expert builder, on teh bright side it makes the rooms nice and warm when they are a blaze)

oh and if that colonist decides he really must stop to eat his meal while running away from a group of pirates i tend to reload on that