Late Game Economy

[Rim soldier]

Instead of mindless mines, I would suggest give ability to controlled collapse of mountains. Right now Some mountain roofs are irremovable.
If we could collapse mountain into tunnel, lowering it height a bit and creating layer of what ever for as to mine again that will be mach more interesting and still finite amount of resources. That mach more interesting then plain invisible mines and probably easy to do in existent system.

I like the idea that mountains could be collapsed from thick roof -> thin roof -> no roof and the fallen chunks chunks be mined for metal.

However that would only prolong the inevitable running out of rescorces and wouldn't help players who started on flatland and had very little mineable areas or mountains and there does need to be a way to get metal (asside from traders) during the late game phase.

Also while I am posting I may as well say a late game money making scheme.

Today when I was playing I got raided by some pirates whilst some tribals were visiting. The tribals were caught in the crossfire and became hostile. About half an hour later (irl) i got a massive raid of tribals ( about 60). A bunch of dead tribals later and I make about 800 - 900 silver selling the skin. Then I use the meat to feed the dogs and when the dogs have pups then that's another 120 silver. Still this tactic only really works if you get regular traders so still not perfect.

[JimmyAgnt007]

Collapsing the roof would be silly, why go upwards when going down is a much more realistic option.  Also like was said, not all maps have a lot of that.

Refining metal from rocks only works as long as you have rocks.  So its still a limited source.

Yes real world resources are finite but given how billions of us have still yet to extract everything im betting a small portion of a fresh planet cant be stripped by a few dozen in a few years.

Making money from all other sources is fine but if all you get are small visiting traders then you dont get the quantities you need if they carry what you want at all.  So having mines to extract from the ground gives you what you need.  It would be a lot less complicated than calculating the mountain roof, not depend on having rocks to work with, and not so limited that it would run out.

[brcruchairman]

Just going to add my two cents here; either option (collapse mining or ground mining) would please me; the former would significantly expand available assets, which while not a total fix would at least be a step in the right direction. The latter would thoroughly solve the issues presented in this thread, though doubtless would add its own issues in time. (New things tend to do that; it's more or less inevitable.)

JimmyAgent007 also refloats the point that often the problem is less about objective profit and more about how often you get the opportunity to buy and sell what you need. Aside from maybe establishing a partnership and thus regular schedule with traders, I'm not sure what could be done about this one, though it would be very good if there were something.

Also, Makapse about labor, specifically that we don't yet have any metrics for labor cost. I've been doing my analyses with labor cost assumed to be zero, but that's clearly not the case when colonists have to eat. I'll have to look into this more once my current project is done and see if we can't develop some good metrics to determine how costly colonist labor is.

[Rim soldier]

The equations for calculating labor costs would probably be really complex. In the real world calculating labor costs is much less complex than calculating labor costs in rimworlds.

I have been working on this meteric and athough its not perfect it does give some sort of cule as to how productive a colonist is.

Labor cost per day = (Value of Cloths ÷ no days worn) + value of meals eaten that day + (value of room ÷ number of days spent in room) + ((value of colony ÷ number of colonists) ÷ number of days spent in colony).

Thats the best I can come up with at the moment and ik that this dosnt take into account recruiting costs however i have spent too long htinling about this already. Hope you find this usefull and hopefully i dont look like a complete idiot in wrighting this.

[Shurp]

Hmmm, I just had a thought.  How about oil rigs?  Fracking?  Metal isn't the only thing underground worth something.

And then there's the fact that the game still has no *water*.  We need irrigation and water pumps.  Space traders could be very interested in water stockpiles.

It just occurred to me that this would be easy to implement.  We already have the power grid mechanic.  All it would take would be a secondary "power" grid for water.  Crops would have to be within a certain distance of a water pipe to qualify as irrigated.  They would use a certain quantity of water same as the current power mechanic tracks for devices.  And we'd have various water generators -- pumps, windcatchers, rain basins, etc.  Tanks would equate to batteries.

Living out on the tundra could get a lot harder.

[Mihsan]

Hmmm, I just had a thought.  How about oil rigs?  Fracking?  Metal isn't the only thing underground worth something.

RimWorlds are terramorfed planets that did not had millions of years of living stuff to die and deposit itself as oil reserves. But we have rocket fuel trees as a canon...

[pete]

We should be able to attack other colonies and factions, we would take a few armed guys and try to rob/kill/kidnap them. That would help on maintaining a good economy. You don't really have to be friends with all the factions.

[Shurp]

Rimworld now has underground bugs.  There's clearly an underground ecology that can be liquefied and mined.  Of course, the bugs might not like your use of industrial machinery to turn their hives into coal/oil/gas...

[Mikhail Reign]

Rimworld now has underground bugs.  There's clearly an underground ecology that can be liquefied and mined.  Of course, the bugs might not like your use of industrial machinery to turn their hives into coal/oil/gas...

......so Factorio?

[Xeferah]

I don't like the idea of static mining nodes either. What I would like is making a "harvester robot". The robot costs X metal and X components to make. This robot surveys the land, and "filters" the sand. Out of this sand he takes traces of metal. Perhaps every tile can deliver 0.25 metal? As a standard map is wide enough, this can potentially deliver tens of thousands of metal.
I particularly like the part that only sand/dirt tiles can give metal. In a desert it is a lot harder to get metal then it is in a mountain.

Of course this harvester can be attacked by pirates, wildlife, etc, so you need to protect it. This add more to the endgame too.

[1FSTCAT]

You could create a mechanic that allows toons to have offmap hunts or exploration. Or you could create a mechanic similar to the end-game where you could build a wagon, fill it with your stuff and move to a new map..

[JimmyAgnt007]

I don't like the idea of static mining nodes either. What I would like is making a "harvester robot". The robot costs X metal and X components to make. This robot surveys the land, and "filters" the sand. Out of this sand he takes traces of metal. Perhaps every tile can deliver 0.25 metal? As a standard map is wide enough, this can potentially deliver tens of thousands of metal.
I particularly like the part that only sand/dirt tiles can give metal. In a desert it is a lot harder to get metal then it is in a mountain.

Of course this harvester can be attacked by pirates, wildlife, etc, so you need to protect it. This add more to the endgame too.

While I like the static mine method I really think you are on to something.  A collector that sifts the soil and sand for particulate matter valuable to the colony.  Perhaps something that does the same with the shallow water.  ie. panning for gold

[ChimpX]

Perhaps something that does the same with the shallow water.  ie. panning for gold

Both of these ideas are excellent. I especially like the notion of getting some kind of use out of water tiles.

[Shurp]

I was thinking in terms of ease of coding.  Creating a stationary "building" that pumps out metal will be far easier.  But sure, if someone wants to create a giant sand harvester out of "Gold Rush" that chews through miles of dirt to pull out gold, silver, steel, whatever, that would be even more interesting.

Factorio doesn't have charge rifles or centipedes.

[Dimbledorf]

I've been thinking of a way to mine minerals from the ground. Because mineral exhaustion in long games is a real problem.

Well to solve that situation you might want to look into the mechanical defence 2 mod