Late game is unbearably stagnant.

[b0rsuk]

My current colony is sitting on 6000 steel, 1000 plasteel, over 80 components. They have two grand statues, a legendary alpacawool parka (and a dozen of others) and several thousands worth of goods.

Raids are easy, boring and a bother to clear after. Randy Random 100%.

No crashed ship part to recover the AI core. No exotic trader to potentially buy the AI core. It's 5503.

Out of curiousity, I generated a trade ship with development tools. The first ship was an exotic trader. It didn't sell the AI core - it's not guaranteed.

At this point I don't feel like playing (the colony) anymore. All that is left is to manage mundane actions, growing zones, stockpiling of food, medicine, hops. And wait.

In Dwarf Fortress there's always something to do. You get many Z levels to dig through. You can dig deeper and deeper and uncover valuable and terrible things. In Rimworld, you're stuck on a basically empty map. Completely at mercy of the storyteller. There are no late game events I would consider challenging, for example toxic fallout is a matter of using a sunlamp and locking everyone inside.

Building up a colony and making it work is what I enjoy the most. Rimworld reaches a point where there's nothing to do. And the ship relies on a random event.

[Elixiar]

I do have to agree. Threat level should jump up a level at end game definitely. (For those who don't want that - that's why there is multiple difficulty settings)

Though I have felt this way recently on randy random at all stages of the game. It can be a good 40 minutes before a real event happens (e.g raid or space trader) and it can be kind of dull to sit there watching research bars come up and waiting for something exciting to happen.

On a side note, what is the reason space traders are like, super, super rare now?

[quxzcover]

im sitting on probably 4 times that much resources at least. my goal now is to see how many colonists i can get before i lose to a massive raid. currently i have 70k raw food and 21 colonists. my goal is over 80 colonists

[Shurp]

You could turn that pile of steel into dozens of masterful statues, thereby cranking up the value of your colony and attracting better raids?

But yes, the ship event is there to end the game because by the time you can build the ship there is not much else to do.  Beyond the initial challenge of keeping your colony alive there is a shortage of "game" to Rimworld.  Which is why the usual thing to do after 2 or 3 years is to start a new game.

[keylocke]

you can always change population settings.. (try to change the max values to around 50)

more people forces you to keep expanding and taxes your food and clothing production. the larger you expand your base, the more vulnerabilities gets exposed.

you should also probably switch to cassandra. randy is usually a goofball at late games.

next would be trying to remain hostile with at least 2-3 factions. one of those factions should be a tribal.

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i agree with you about the z-levels (also water/hygiene/kids), i feel like those are missing for the simulation to have more meat.

powerful boss-like creatures (like forgotten beasts/titans) would be nice. i wish void gods are actual powerful creatures that occasionally drop from space or hiding inside mountains. which would be great for population culling..

etc..

of course there would be people who would argue why we don't need those things and why those things are highly unnecessary. but that is solely their preference. i wouldn't bother wasting time writing this if i didn't disagree with that viewpoint.

right now i'm just writing my "wishlist" of features that if i see a game with these features and rimworld gameplay + better graphics.. <---- i'm totally gonna buy and play that game to bits.

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edit : i would probably play more of DF, but i really don't like the battle mechanics of DF or gnomoria or towns. though the part i like about towns was the adventurers and dungeon diving (i think that was the game's only redeeming feature)

rimworld RTS battle is still the best.

[Crowbar Felt]

I usually go to mods, and relatively low turret strats. Makes me play constantly tactical and moving my best colonists around. Mods also give you some weird raids too. Imagine a 20+ Pirate raid (Or similar) with really good personal shields and high crafted weaponry to swarm you. Other than that, it really slows down in late game if you get everything well planted in the colony.

[Rim soldier]

Swap the storyteller to randy random and set the dificulty to extreme.

[b0rsuk]

more people forces you to keep expanding and taxes your food and clothing production. the larger you expand your base, the more vulnerabilities gets exposed.

Randy has a higher population cap already. I got to 13 people just by random events.

you should also probably switch to cassandra. randy is usually a goofball at late games.

I was thinking the same.

next would be trying to remain hostile with at least 2-3 factions. one of those factions should be a tribal.

I made no peace in this game, so I'm enemy to 2 pirates and 1 tribe. And the tribe only sent a few raids. One raid cost me over 50 herbal medicine to heal all the bears, but no casualties.

i agree with you about the z-levels (also water/hygiene/kids), i feel like those are missing for the simulation to have more meat.

I don't understand players who want multi-year colonies and raising kids. To make multi-year games interesting, rimworld needs either

A) close to infinite space to explore, like Z-levels. In DF there are 99 levels, but those levels are progressively harder and you're gambling. Players can keep exploring, but typically want to stop at some point.
B) four megatons of unique events, like in King of Dragon Pass. Watching n-th cargo drop, visitors or raid is really not the same.
C) a mechanism that applies real and growing pressure

Or a combination of the above.

powerful boss-like creatures (like forgotten beasts/titans) would be nice. i wish void gods are actual powerful creatures that occasionally drop from space or hiding inside mountains. which would be great for population culling..

That could be copied from DF, but does it really fit a science fiction setting ?? We have thrumbos and centipedes, neither of which is especially interesting or hard to fight.

[ChimpX]

"Void Gods" could fit with RimWorld'S sci-fi setting. Tynan hasn't written much lore or background on his universe, but beings called Void Gods have been mentioned. Tynan's also written that Warhammer 40K is one of the setting's inspirations.

So Void Gods could either be WH40K-style extradimensional beings, or simply remnants of civilizations so advanced that your colonists might as well think of them as gods.

Either way, such events would surely test any late-game colony.

Personally, I wouldn't be surprised to see a Void Gods DLC sometime after 1.0

[hwfanatic]

I think you just need a rest from Rimworld. No better timing than just a week prior to the A14 release.

Don't get me wrong, I agree wholeheartedly that the late game can be improved, but I also acknowledge the fact that after so many hours of Rimworld, there are not many things that can surprise or excite me.

[b0rsuk]

I think you just need a rest from Rimworld. No better timing than just a week prior to the A14 release.

Probably. I started 47 or so threads in the Testers subforum between alpha13 and alpha14.

Don't get me wrong, I agree wholeheartedly that the late game can be improved, but I also acknowledge the fact that after so many hours of Rimworld, there are not many things that can surprise or excite me.

It would need to be a fundamental change, like Z-levels to explore or 10 times as many events. And events you can't just wave away with a well known counter and building in a certain way in advance. Or sabertooth badgers. (European ones, not American ones because those are butt-ugly)

[Shurp]

One significant problem is map size.  If you play on a standard size map it is easy to build a large colony that consumes a large chunk of it, limiting your room to grow further.  But on a larger size map travel time becomes a real hassle.  Your colonists can starve or freeze or go insane by the time they walk over to those sieging pirates or ship part.

Z-levels solve the travel time issue but are a programming headache.  Maybe what Rimworld needs is trucks or motorcycles to get around faster.  A simple pickup truck would really change game dynamics.  Especially if it had a mounted heavy machinegun.

[b0rsuk]

What's a large colony to you ? If anything bigger than 10-13, I'm not going to wait until it happens. The only way to get it is to wait through an already stagnant game.

Why would you get outside ? Drop pods are mostly meat and leather, generally low value stuff. If you build a bunker inside a mountain, you don't need to get out. Or you build 4-5 mortars and shell the pirates before they can get their mortars up.

Rimworld has no interesting plants to gather. Mountains hold more resources and surprises.

[Shurp]

Well, you'd have to mod the storyteller to provide more colonists.  But I can't imagine doing that on a standard size map.  You'd run out of space for bedrooms, and a medium map doesn't have enough steel.  So you need a larger map, but then ship parts and siegers are *so* far away.  And caravans will die of hypothermia on an ice sheet map before they get anywhere.

I'm considering writing a motorcycle mod to get colonists around.  It might make Ludeonicrous maps viable.

[falcongrey]

Why vehicles? I always play large or ludeonicrous maps and never found a need for them. Under the conditions, I feel it would also defeat the reason for those size of maps; to make it more challenging.

It doesn't really take that long for a pawn to go from 'point A to point B' then back again. Granted, I usually found a starting colony some place near center. If on one side or corner, then it would take all 'game day' to go to the opposite corner for something. Still, it fits in with the game and story/lore of the game in my opinion.

And yes, as mentioned earlier it also comes down to personal preferences. I prefer the challenge and also prefer the ability to grow into the map.

Now, if say we were to add 'wagons' pulled by muffalo or perhaps a charged battery being removed from it's charge place and placed into a 'motorized' wagon which would run dry on a ludeonicrous if it ran from 1 side to the other then back again. (There needs to be a 'balance' to keep it within context of the lore in my opinion and also not to break the game's challenge.)