A different win condition - permanent settlement

[Limdood]

Took someone else's idea of joining an outlander town to win the game and changed it around.

What if you could win by BECOMING an outlander town?

Some sample requirements:
- must have 100 faction relationship with at least 2 factions
- must have at least 20 colony members
- wealth, technology, accomodation requirements (x number of beds or other features a TOWN might require over a temporary colony)
- X number of raids fought off
- X years since planetfall
- some other requirements, like some behavior tracking over the course of the game (less than 40% of game time with any colonist having a "butchered humanlike" or "cannibalism" mood?)
- upon reaching however many requirements were implemented, perhaps a prompt or option on the communications device could come up.  Either triggering a win screen or starting something like a 1-year grace period where raids were significantly more common from hostile factions trying to keep you from becoming a power, now they know you're bent on permanent settlement.

Would be extra cool if upon "winning" like this, your faction could become an outlander town (the map save file gets modified to simply add a new outlander town or a new type of colony, maybe "spacer refuge" at the location of your old colony)....to be simple, your faction becoming a new faction on the map wouldn't retain any character names or anything (keep it simple) but the town would be named whatever the save file was named.  Lastly...limit it to maybe 8 total factions on a world...after you reach 8, any new "win" colonies would either not be added or would replace a faction of your choice (so long as at least 1 of each type is represented?  no removing pirates completely!)  Exceedingly simple to add, all that needs to be tracked is map location (would shut off that location for future colonies!), colony name, and current allies/enemies at the time of winning...copy that into the map file with a new faction, edit in the relationships with the existing factions (randomize relationship if a new faction got formed since starting your "won" game...eg. started colony1, started colony2, won colony1, added it to the map, as i play and perhaps win colony2, it won't have any relationship with colony1, since colony1 wasn't on the map when colony2 was formed)...boom, done.

Thoughts?

[Goldenglade]

You kidding me; no one said you had to leave? I play this game how I feel very often I find myself just playing what I call "Space outpost" I keep capturing people training them up and sending them off into space in different ships. I find it fun.... I also play prison colony.... it's where you see how many prisoners you can manage with few people

[ChimpX]

This is an excellent suggestion!

[Limdood]

You kidding me; no one said you had to leave? I play this game how I feel very often I find myself just playing what I call "Space outpost" I keep capturing people training them up and sending them off into space in different ships. I find it fun.... I also play prison colony.... it's where you see how many prisoners you can manage with few people

I agree.  I've only "won" rimworld maybe 2 or 3 times?  in over 50 playthroughs...not that i couldn't win others, i just never bothered to try.

The problem with winning is...its over.  Maybe if steam comes out and tries to do something competitive or use achievements, i or some other people might bother winning more, but there is currently no benefit to winning except...knowing that you did.

My suggestion adds a rather minor, but interesting and immersive long term benefit, which also makes the WORLDS feel like they have some history, and allows for a story spanning more than one playthrough.

I feel the worst thing about my suggestion is how to implement the checklist of "requirements" to become a permanent town....how to make it feel like an accomplishment without feeling way too "gamey"

[Goldenglade]

Doesn't this feed right back into your whole argument of once you win you're done?   Why can't your own goals be your victory screen?

[Limdood]

Intrinsic to this genre is the fact that once you win, you're done with the "simulation"

All i'm suggesting is another option for a way to "win" with the added benefit of being able to affect the world and future games in a small but interesting way.

Having read many reviews of this GENRE of game, one often-heard complaint is 1) the lack of a long term goal, 2) a lack of reason to play lategame, or 3) the cheesiness or "tacked-on" feel of the "you win."

Adding more win conditions and having them affect future plays helps to address 1 & 3 by expanding them, and gives another pseudo-fix to #2 by giving a small impact on future games by "finishing off" your late-game colony.

[Mikhail Reign]

I really think this is one of the core problems with this game. If you read the game description, and some of the sorted text available, it tells you that your 'colonists' are ship wreaked survivors, right? Then why are they 'colonist' and not 'survivors'? Hell, you can even get in-game descriptions that describe them as 'villager' which definitely implies that they are their to stay.

Half of the game is saying that it is a life and death survival situation - ship wreaked survivors. The other half is telling you that they are colonists making a go of it.

I'm not opposed to either way - but the game should be clarify what it wants to be. The survival situation intrinsically implies that the end goal is, and always should be to escape - so why waste time having a dedicated artist for example? The colonist situation implies that they are there for the long haul, and would be interested in creating some lasting works of art, beautify their surroundings and forge alliances with neighboring tribes/villages.

[JonoRig]

Why not add the variance as a game play element have some pawns as survivors and the longer they stay, the bigger debuff they get, whereas others may join you, want to help you build a way off this rock, and others want to stay and make it a bigger settlement, and so are happier the more people join. The two don't need to be mutually exclusive, and would very likely cooperate as the survivors want to live somewhere comfortable whilst doing all that work to escape, and the settlers have friends, families, safety in numbers etc etc. Would be an interesting system with the new relationships (what if you get newly weds, or siblings that have different goals?)

[Mikhail Reign]

Poll on the subject I raised

https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=18847.0

[Didact04]

They're colonists because they can't leave. Eventually you can, but it's a long and drawn-out process in which you basically need to be a thriving settlement before you can ever hope to get off the rock you're stranded on.

Nobody said you had to be a WILLING colonist; it's just that having a colony is the one and only option available to everyone other than dying. A colony of necessity.

Furthermore, I don't know about anyone else, but even if I could fight back, I would not want to live on that planet. The land is rough, there's no law or order not personally enforced by you, the place is infested with generations of pirates, the locals hate you for all kinds of reasons, the wildlife is hostile and predatory, and the entire system is haunted by the remnants of some ancient automated war machine that have decided you are whatever they're designed to fight. The entire planet and everything on it is dangerous and wants to kill you. People get in fights all the time and people are killed and die regularly. With some advanced shit, too. These aren't pea-shooters we're talking about here; we're talking military-grade weapons and powered armor and explosives.

Anyway, the point is that you DON'T want to live there. It's a bad place to live and it's dangerous as hell, and swarming with pirates and slavers. You HAVE to leave. The world is just not safe for inhabiting.

[keylocke]

i like the idea of building a permanent colony.. but i think i want the inclusion of children getting born.

the kids can be used like a "timer" and signifies them as the "next generation". ie : if you manage to survive long enough to raise kids into adulthood, then you achieved creating a "permanent" colony.

[Limdood]

i like the idea of building a permanent colony.. but i think i want the inclusion of children getting born.

the kids can be used like a "timer" and signifies them as the "next generation". ie : if you manage to survive long enough to raise kids into adulthood, then you achieved creating a "permanent" colony.

of course as new features get added the list of possible permanent settlement "win conditions" would be able to be expanded.  That list also wasn't required or comprehensive...mostly just an example of the KINDS of things one might require for a colonial win.

Honestly, more than anything else in this thread, i want a win condition with some small impact on future games. 

When i've played a colony for 4 years and am starting to realize i'd have to dev mode or face stupid bad RNG in order to die, and start thinking about the next colony i want, i'd like the chance to FUNCTIONALLY (not just story-wise in my head) have that colony make some sort of impact in my future colonies.

[Boston]

They're colonists because they can't leave. Eventually you can, but it's a long and drawn-out process in which you basically need to be a thriving settlement before you can ever hope to get off the rock you're stranded on.

Nobody said you had to be a WILLING colonist; it's just that having a colony is the one and only option available to everyone other than dying. A colony of necessity.

Furthermore, I don't know about anyone else, but even if I could fight back, I would not want to live on that planet. The land is rough, there's no law or order not personally enforced by you, the place is infested with generations of pirates, the locals hate you for all kinds of reasons, the wildlife is hostile and predatory, and the entire system is haunted by the remnants of some ancient automated war machine that have decided you are whatever they're designed to fight. The entire planet and everything on it is dangerous and wants to kill you. People get in fights all the time and people are killed and die regularly. With some advanced shit, too. These aren't pea-shooters we're talking about here; we're talking military-grade weapons and powered armor and explosives.

Anyway, the point is that you DON'T want to live there. It's a bad place to live and it's dangerous as hell, and swarming with pirates and slavers. You HAVE to leave. The world is just not safe for inhabiting.

Says you. Your story says you have to leave, mine states the colonists can (and are) quite happy where they are. Especially when compared to the hell that would be an Indworld or an Urbworld. For reference, look up Warhammer 40k "Forge worlds" and "Hive worlds" for a reference point. Fucking awful.

The American West was much the same way, yet hundreds of thousands of people sold almost everything they owned to buy a wagon and settlement supplies. The tracks left by wagon trains are still visible today, 200 years later

[Aarkreinsil]

There's no law or order not personally enforced by you, the place is infested with generations of pirates, the locals hate you for all kinds of reasons, the wildlife is hostile and predatory, and the entire system is haunted by the remnants of some ancient automated war machine that have decided you are whatever they're designed to fight.

I think that's the point here. Establishing law and order, working out something with the pirates, subduing the locals and maybe constructing some kind of EMP array against the mechanites. Having the possibility of stabilizing the planet somehow.

There's even a song about it  :

This is the world we live in
And these are the hands we're given
Use them and let's start tryin'
To make it a place worth livin' in

[Limdood]

my current idea, as stated in the original post basically ignored the pirates and mechanoids, since there is no CURRENT, vanilla, in-game way to deal with them other than fighting.  Each world seems guaranteed to have at least 3 total of outlander/tribes currently (i may be wrong, i think i may have seen a 3-pirate world before) so requiring positive relations with 3 factions is quite achievable.

Eventually, diplomacy with the pirates or protection from the mechanoids doesn't exist, so i didn't bother to add that to my suggestion.

In other words, i tried to make my suggestion as easy and unobtrusive as possible within the current structure and functions of the game.

I anticipate the biggest issues would be tracking and communicating the requirements for permanency, dealing with HOW to handle what happens when the requirements are met (wait period? does the game tell you, or do you have to hit a button?), and the fact that from a chronological accuracy perspective, if the win "effect" were to happen, the starting date for future colonies on that world would have to change from 5500 to 5500+the sum of all years played on the world...in other words, the WORLD would become dynamic.