Can't make money reliably.

[Mathenaut]

human meat and human leather/hats made from them.
a single bulk goods trader in a year will grant 6k+ and doesnt take that much effort just the refrigeration.

How do you manage the colony-wide mood debuff? It's absolutely brutal.

Alchohol.

Sorry, calling BS. Maybe in earlier alphas, but in A13, the debuff for selling prisoners and butchering humans stacks, and lasts for most of the season. Heavens forbid you get hit with a psychic drone during any of this. Your colony is gone.

[Negocromn]

unless you're on like, ice sheet, it's not worth the trouble at all, if you have lhamas and you're hunting you should have more textiles than you can transform anyway, just feed the bodies to your animals

[makapse]

i dont sell prisoners and butchering only stacks on the butcherer.The colonywide debuff is only -6 no matter how many we butcher and with the constant raids, they never end if you butcher all the people. And there are ways so that the butcherer does not get any debuff too and thats vital to the economy. And yes, i play on -100C ice sheets

[Rahjital]

How do you manage the colony-wide mood debuff? It's absolutely brutal.

Alchohol.

Sorry, calling BS. Maybe in earlier alphas, but in A13, the debuff for selling prisoners and butchering humans stacks, and lasts for most of the season. Heavens forbid you get hit with a psychic drone during any of this. Your colony is gone.

Beer can prevent pretty much any break if you manage your colonists' drinking yourself. I had my best surgeon lose her bonded cat, husband, father and best friend in the span of a single week, but I managed to keep her sane by making her constantly tipsy. Combine that with a bonus for impressive rooms and you can power through pretty much anything, just make sure your colonists don't get drunk, hangover is a pretty severe penalty.

[Aarkreinsil]

Try to stagger it a little. If you get prisoners, cut off their legs first so they can't escape or have a mental break. That gives you almost unlimited time to deal with them. Then harvest their organs one after another, giving them a little break in between operations in case someone accidentally messes up the surgery.

Meanwhile you put all the corpses of your fallen enemies into a separate walk-in freezer that you only use for human corpses (so no one walks into them and gets the "Seen corpse" mood debuff. Also put a butcher table right into that freezer if you can.

Then, when your colony has forgotten about the harvested organs, butcher up ALL of the human corpses in one day. All of them. Make sure that your butcher is not a teetotaler so you can knock him out with beer afterwards.
Also try to have a separate stockpile for the leather, because it's surprisingly ugly.
Remember that human leather is worth a ton, so making clothing or furniture out of it can severely ramp up your colony value and increase the severity of raids.

[hector212121]

human meat and human leather/hats made from them.
a single bulk goods trader in a year will grant 6k+ and doesnt take that much effort just the refrigeration.

How do you manage the colony-wide mood debuff? It's absolutely brutal.

Alchohol.

Sorry, calling BS. Maybe in earlier alphas, but in A13, the debuff for selling prisoners and butchering humans stacks, and lasts for most of the season. Heavens forbid you get hit with a psychic drone during any of this. Your colony is gone.

Alchohol manages 2 mood buffs. Joy and tipsiness.

Helps if you have the weed mod, which I don't, actually. Then you have 3 buffs to work with.

Also, remember to get your prostophiles bionics, and try to balance males and females. Having even numbers seems to guarantee lovers cropping up. Successful relationships give a constant+10 and consistent +12 to mood. Getting married is a full season of complete unbreakability.

[b0rsuk]

I have a year-round growing period colony in "temperate" zone. Selling herbal medicine is nice, and visiting traders all buy it. Mufallos are easy to tame. Taming + selling is less effort than making them reproduce.

Hauling animals are VERY good on large maps. On default and smaller training takes too much time. In alpha12 they totally saved my butt when my 3 starting colonists were all bad back, frail and age 60+.

In Alpha13, I question the usefulness of Comms Console. I've seen townie traders carrying plasteel. Maybe you need the console for pirate merchants (sell weapons).

[Mihsan]

My fortune was built on art. Traders are rare, but you just have to wait for them.

Right now I have 6 artists, who make only huge stone sculptures. When trader shows up I take all his valuable stuff: silver, gold, bionics, artifacts, launchers... even thrumbo horns to place in colonist's rooms. But even then I have some sculptures left to place all over my base. Even in the fields for farmers to see (which is really nice idea by the way).

[hector212121]

I have a year-round growing period colony in "temperate" zone. Selling herbal medicine is nice, and visiting traders all buy it. Mufallos are easy to tame. Taming + selling is less effort than making them reproduce.

Hauling animals are VERY good on large maps. On default and smaller training takes too much time. In alpha12 they totally saved my butt when my 3 starting colonists were all bad back, frail and age 60+.

In Alpha13, I question the usefulness of Comms Console. I've seen townie traders carrying plasteel. Maybe you need the console for pirate merchants (sell weapons).

Frequency and quantity. Vanilla has even numbers of ships and caravans.

In other words, a good event can be popped without you seeing it if you don't have the console, and you'll miss the ship.

[b0rsuk]

We'll see. I'm on a default size map, flat. There's little steel. No plasteel in sight. I fear I will have to get most of my stuff from traders.

[Shurp]

Yeah, flat doesn't work too well in a13.  I recommend playing on large hills so you can at least get some plasteel.

[b0rsuk]

Well there are always mechanoids :-). Tribals are worth making peace with, but mechanoids juicy and predictable.

[Tynan]

Traders ended up balanced too low in A13, they'll be more prevalent in A14 and later.

[ReZpawner]

Can we assume that we will be ...well, not forced, but pushed towards relying more on land-based traders than ships in A14? I'm quite enjoying them, since it gives me a reason not to kidnap and/or murder any visitors that drops by.

[MajorFordson]

It'd be nice to see trade weighted in a sensible fashion - space traders want stuff they can't easily get in space, ie fresh or exotic crops and meals, pets, local art whereas locals want stuff they can't get hold of, ie advanced material items.

Would be good to see food locally having greater demand in winter. Tough choice, sell food in winter for a premium or keep it all for yourself?