The concrete not-a-jungle

[UrbanBourbon]

It was a colony of 16 men and women. Raiders weren't much of an issue. Local wildlife, however was a much bigger nuisance. Finally I had had enough. I decided that not a single squirrel or a boomrat was to touch my precious strawberry fields ever again. A normal person would just wall off the colony but the bit gods had deemed it fit not to allow that in RimWorld, lest ye want to attract the curse of stuttery framerate upon your machine. At the time I had theories that being walled off relates to the animals not being able to feed off on your land. Perhaps their AI demands that your food storage is also THEIR food storage. I wouldn't know. I didn't care. I had harnessed my full intellect and wrath to get rid of the animals once and for all. I was then struck by inspiration.


"Let the animals starve." I said to myself, with a malevolent grin and burning hatred in my eyes.


Through the magic of technology, I ordered my colonists to convert metal into concrete, and pour it upon the sand, to smother the grass that sustains the animals. Let no animal thrive upon the vast concrete hell I was about to create. Spare no tile of soil or sand from my concrete revenge. The concrete would sleep where the grass would grow. It took months. The entire area didn't seem so big at first. The work itself was trivial and progressed steadily. Getting the metal was problematic. I already had thousands of metal in store, but that only lasted so far. I was barely halfway done. Behold, a rain of pods from the sky! Blessed be the gods of space. As animals started to struggle for grass, and as my colonists utilized the metal, these pods would be quickly consumed, since animals were perfectly content eating the skyfood instead of grass. It was as if the gods demanded that a certain amount of pods should reside in the world at any given time, yet the gods didn't mind if the pods were consumed rapidly. How odd.


It was also then that I decided to let go of my sense of aesthetics completely. I had become truly depraved at that point. I used to like the natural walls in my caves, even if there was mineable metal there. I didn't want to touch it. Usually I would trade excess weapons for metal but since raider attacks were few and far between, weapons trade was not an option. I was too blinded by my disdain to see that I could've built a dozen new hydroponics tables and trade the surplus potatoes. However, potatoes are food for animals, and that is not what I wished to cultivate. When I gave the order to my colonists to mine the walls, to mutilate the beautiful symmetrical pattern of the corridors, it was as if they all stopped and turned at the screen, to stare at me in disbelief, to question my orders.


"DO IT!" I raged.


The colonists gave each other looks and scurried to do my bidding. I'm now dismayed at what I had become. I was, in fact, glad to see that corridor wall come down piece by piece. I felt devious joy. It sickens me now. The memory of that transformation will haunt me forever. How can a man let go of his sense of aesthetics and succumb into decoration that's proper for barbarians and other uncivilized savages? And for what? A few miserable animals?


Little did I know. As the concrete was filling up the landscape, and as the green would fade from the view, the animals started to get increasingly desperate. I had not succeeded in thwarting the animals, but quite the opposite. They became even more interested in my strawberry plots, as it was starting to be the only source of food in the whole area. How could they know about it? Do animals smell strawberries from miles and miles away like I do? Do they leave post-it notes to each other saying "Humans have food"? No matter how many squirrels I slaughtered, even more would come to defile my beautiful strawberries. My babies... ravaged by these vile, flamboyant rats. And my turrets did nothing. Not a single bastard in my colony was able to reprogram the turrets to fire at animals. Their strong encryption systems turned out to be a double-edged sword... and I was feeling it cutting my soul.


Why can't they just die? Why can't they just accept that there is no food around for them and that their fate is to starve in the grey flat nightmare I had created for them until their bodies would become sustenance for my colonists? Can't they just appreciate the cruel beauty of it?


I had set out to create a void hell for the animals to starve in. Instead of creating a hell for them, I had created one for myself, and I had sacrificed everything in doing so. I am a fool. I am a damned failure, elaborate in my stupidity, so eloquently self-destructive in my quest for never-ending self-improvement, clouded by fascination and unhinged by a few rodents that do not even exist outside the screen. Somewhere there is a god of misery... and I believe that same god is also the god of laughter.



( inspired by the thread 'Animal overpopulation' http://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=2473.0 and yes, I was that stupid )

[Serrate Bloodrage]

Very entertaining
The self reflections were completely amusing

[UrbanBourbon]

This image is two screenshots of the area stitched together in Frankenstein fashion. The game actually turned out better than what it initially seemed. After I had killed the flood of nearby squirrels, the place calmed down a lot, but not completely. Indeed the animals started to starve enmasse outside the walls. Muffalos take a loooong time to starve due to their high hit points. I may have colored the story a little bit, because I suck at decoration and general visual design. I am the caveman, the savage whom I hate. Also, I never actually used any turrets.

1. The shooting gallery set up for raiders. There aren't many due to me playing on Phoebe. I thought I'd look into changing the storyteller at some point by editing the save file. I should probably move the entrance closer to a corner, or maybe build a third setup of sandbags so that any invaders would get fired upon from three directions. The rows of lights make the spot ideal to defend at night, although only the 4 center lights see some action. The vertical sandbag rows remain in darkness, barely outside the illumination range of any nearby lights, providing even more cover at night.

2. Hiding spots for 2-6 colonists, for plugging the raiders' escape. Welcome to Hotel California. No one leaves.

3. These rubble formations were part of an experiment. There is no concrete underneath them because apparently grass doesn't grow where there's rubble. Makes sense, sort of.

4. Most of these little dots are not blood, but, in fact, starved squirrels and boomrats. Die, you little bastards.

[Monkfish]

That's some impressive work. How long did it take to create and how much resource went into it?

[deadbeat88]

Impressive. Now someone has to make a mod to re-dig those tile to make them dirt again. Ive put concrete tiles in my area to act as "expressway" but now I want to remove them because the raiders are using them to escape quickly D:

[UrbanBourbon]

That's some impressive work. How long did it take to create and how much resource went into it?

A quick estimate is that's about 10,000 tiles of concrete, minus the debris strips. It took more or less forever. I don't remember. It progressed one small patch at a time, during daytime, and when there was nothing critical to do.

[Benny the Icepick]

It's the way the game allows for these kinds of crazy experiments that make Rimworld so much fun.  Fantastic work.  I admire your dedication to such wanton simulated animal cruelty.

(Oh, and in case I run for office in the distant future and my opponents attempt to use the above quote to smear me as a hater of animals, let me just add "Adopt a pet from your local pound, and don't forget to spay and neuter them!"  I'm a vegetarian, for chrissake)

[keylocke]

+1 to UrbanBourbon for the story. that totally cracked me up. lol.

[Splinterbee]

Eat them... Eat them aaaall!!

[UrbanBourbon]

Eat them... Eat them aaaall!!

I did. I believe my junior chef gained three whole points in Cooking skill from butchering 200+ squirrels, boomrats and a couple dozen muffalos. And that was like from 5 to 8. Pathetic. But butchering does raise Cooking at least! Unlike... actual cooking. Meanwhile my senior chef was screaming in her ear how an armless person would butcher carcasses faster than her. For a moment my meat freezer (purple stockpile) was overflowing so much that I decided to feed the excess squirrel and boomrat meat to their offspring and friends outside. That was beyond satisfying. Somehow it doesn't surprise me that those vermin are omnivores.

"Eat. Eat it all. Doesn't it taste good?"

I have to mention that I learned that different corpses yield different amounts of XP to Cooking. I didn't memorize the amounts but they went something like this:
Squirrels: 10-50 XP
Boomrats : 50-100 XP
Human corpses: 150XP
Muffalos: 300 XP

Again, those are estimates (from my memory), but muffalos definitely gave a huge chunk of XP compared to others.

[Benny the Icepick]

Human corpses: 150XP

Ok. that's it.  My next campaign is going to be an awful one based on fear, cannibalism, and general unpleasantness.  I suddenly feel that rush of power that comes with a shift to the Dark Side.  ::tents fingers:: Mwahahaha.

[keylocke]

I have to mention that I learned that different corpses yield different amounts of XP to Cooking. I didn't memorize the amounts but they went something like this:
Squirrels: 10-50 XP
Boomrats : 50-100 XP
Human corpses: 150XP
Muffalos: 300 XP

hmm.. are there other ways to get rid of human meat other than eating them?
'coz destroying the corpses rather than butchering them seems to be a waste of XP, but i don't want to feed them to my colonists 'coz loyalty through fear is too easy at the moment (i think it's a bit OP)

[Monkfish]

Just create a dumping stockpile outside of the range of your cooker's Bill and set it to only allow human meat. Once butchered, the meat would be hauled to the stockpile and you could probably destroy it with grenades/molotov/T-9 Incendiary afterwards.