How do you try to make your first 3 colonists?

[SwiftShadow]

what i try to get is

1 Someone with high social and medical, i don't mind if they have the incapeble of violence trait, which could even be a good thing so i wont have the temptation to bring that guy into the fight. This guy would always be perma medic, warden and trader.
Having passion in construction, mining, crafting or growing could be a nice bonus.

2. Someone that is really high up in animals, i like to early game tame animals and then sell them, make haulers and maybe fighters. On him i also want a high shooting skill.
Again construction, mining, crafting or growing could be a nice bonus.
This guy 100% cant have any movement penalties because he will always be running to animals across the map to tame them.

3. Someone who is a good cook, can shoot or melee well and maybe some growing too.

I make sure all of them are healty and traits i will NEVER accept take, lazy, greedy, psychically hypersensitive and abrasive

[skullywag]

As long as they dont have old age hediffs and can do everything im not too bothered. I usually go with the first 3 randoms that meet that criteria.

[Pickle]

I like challenge so I don't even look the profile of my colonists before launching the map. I have begun my last play on a very cold ice sheet with an abrasive noble, an old lady with cataracts and bad back, and a nudist brawler. Since then, I have stolen two eyes for the old lady because her vision fall to 11 % efficiency after some fights, and two people joined us. An empath incapable of caring, and a frail nudist brawler ! XD

For now they are doing quite well, surprisingly, but I don't care if I fail dramatically before the first year. I have so much fun just seeing them trying to go on with their weird particularities.

[humblebundle]

Well, i try to get 3 Psychopaths because they don't care corpses or if i take some of the bodyparts of prisoners.
And it can take very long to get the 3 Psychopaths i want.
Also it is everytime a challenge, because there comming new colonists which are very random.

[Daman453]

First guy: good at research growing and crafting
2nd guy:shooter/melee guy with some passion for mining and animals
3rd guy: cooker hauler and cleaner

[Barley]

I pick the colony's location assuming that the colonists have time to direct their droppods to a hospitable location (typically forest or cold forest biome, mountain or plains I don't mind either).

I choose Randy Random Challange mode.

Relevant to this thread: I do not even look at my colonists until the drop pods hit the ground. I do not pick their traits, I just work around the traits when they hit the ground. Much more fun storytelling when the colonists don't just so happen to have an optimist oaf, a psykopathic shooter, and a psichicly dull doctor brawler.

[JimmyAgnt007]

my 3 need to be young, no restriction in skills, no brawlers, no other negative traits.  the rest will balance out.

[Listen1]

If i'm playing an ice sheet:
1° Research
2° Construction/Social
3° Mining with Iron will or optimist.

Everyone pukes everywhere and get infections.

Any other place:
1° Growing/Construction
2° Research/Doctor
3° Cook/Animal

Main income: Selling meals/Animals.

[cultist]

The only thing I always avoid is really old people. I love the idea of the age system, but it's poorly balanced. The increased skills old people get don't really make up for the massive penalties they receive. Cataracts is the worst sinner here. Old people could easily serve as researchers, but the almost-guarantee of cataracts means they're useless even at that. Cataracts also prevents them from being useful in combat, probably the biggest sin of all in Rimworld. Since all other tasks require some sort of physical interaction, frailness or bad back makes that pointless as well. The only good role I've found for unmodified old people is Social, but dementia obviously ruins that plan (even if it's funny).

Apart from that, I really enjoy the mood system and will often try to get a colony with a weird mix of mental issues, just to increase the fun factor. As opposed to physical defects, mental defects can be worked around with careful planning and micro-management. But nothing is going to get that 90-year old from his bed to the dining room in anything less than half a day, which is just a waste of your time and resources.

[SwiftShadow]

If i'm playing an ice sheet:
1° Research
2° Construction/Social
3° Mining with Iron will or optimist.



Everyone pukes everywhere and get infections.

Any other place:
1° Growing/Construction
2° Research/Doctor
3° Cook/Animal

Main income: Selling meals/Animals.

Have u ever calcualted the price of selling the food raw vs meal? it comes up pretty much the same xD

[Listen1]

Depend on the crop, an when you reach big numbers, this small difference is quite alot.

But it's fun to make alot of people cook and sell human meat and skin. One of my best colonies was named "Hell's Kitchen" and it was really awesome.

[SwiftShadow]

Depend on the crop, an when you reach big numbers, this small difference is quite alot.

But it's fun to make alot of people cook and sell human meat and skin. One of my best colonies was named "Hell's Kitchen" and it was really awesome.

My last playthough i was on arid and found a nice plot of fertile land, planted all corn on it, and sometimes sold like flat out 20k corn to the bulk goods along with around 800 human meat and got more money then i could use.

I feel that if i spent time on cooking it all and got like an extra 1k silver it would be a waste of my colonists time, because they could be using that time to mine/grow/build/gather/haul etc.

Your colonists "work time" is worth a lot of silver.

[Coenmcj]

Personally, I just make sure there's no negative traits between the three, (Or no terrible negative ones, there's a few I'll tolerate if they have good stats) and ensure the three have all the main skills checked between them with atleast 5+ levels

[asanbr]

I always start the game with the first 3 random without checking their stats. To me that's part of the randomness that makes the game interesting and playing around what I get.

Sometimes it fails horribly in the early game, and then that's it, I just start over with a new colony. Sometimes I had to kill someone who wasn't manageable, usually because they get nervous and violent, but most of the time it works out.

[Shurp]

That reminds me, why would your initial colonists have cataracts anyway?  They're easily treatable with modern medicine today.  Anyone who can afford a ticket on Kerbal Interstellar Transport ("We crash for less!") can afford cataract surgery.

For that matter, any surgeon able to do liver transplants can probably do it too.

And while we're on the subject of transplants and advanced technology, how about brain transplants for our headshot traumatized colonists?