Large population Colonies

[bechtoldn]

I have a play style of Rimworld that may differ from many other people. I enjoy making huge colonies ! Currently I have a population of about 34 and many more prisoners. I am curious to know how other Rimworld players view large colonies? And what is the largest colony you have personally had? My largest was in alpha 14 I had 100+ colonists!

[Headshotkill]

Lag?

[Sinosauropteryx]

Current run is my biggest so far, 73 plus 10 prisoners.

Yes, lag.

[OFWG]

Never been above I think 10 in mine, as hard as I try

... Currently I have a population of about 34 and many more prisoners. ... My largest was in alpha 14 I had 100+ colonists!

Wow! Are you running mods to get that high? I thought there was a soft cap that made it very difficult to get above 12 or so.

[cracksys]

The more pawn I have, the more I incline to see each of the pawn as pawn instead of bunch of friend trying to survive.

So, the most I have is 9 pawns.

[Hieronymous Alloy]

I like to go up to around fifty in a single colony max, mostly because the standard fort design I'm using these days has room for 56 bed spaces and I like a little leeway.

I haven't been able to get multiple colonies to work right or I'd have gone bigger by now.

[KingKnee]

About 30 is a normal size for me but there is a lot of lag. I don't think he meant it to go above 10-15. At least the engine didn't.

[Grishnerf]

i usually stop Recruiting now at around 30 colonists +- ~100 animals.
still fluent and no lag, but i know from older games that it will begin to stutter if i go over 35-40 colonists (biggest was with 80 pawns)
and thus making the game not playbale/fun anymore, i quit many colonies cause of this.
with just 30 pawns there is enough room for shit that can happen.

[SurvivoroftheNoobs]

Managed 87 pawns 600+ Chickens between 2 colonies. Lag was managable but finding stuff for huge population colonies to do can be tricky. Strip mining caravans seems to be the way to go atleast for my people. Raids on the other hand can be 99% impossible to survive either my colony almost dies or my computer does.

[Shurp]

Wow! Are you running mods to get that high? I thought there was a soft cap that made it very difficult to get above 12 or so.

Cassandra's cap is harder than Randy's.  And Randy isn't as determined to destroy your colony.

[bechtoldn]

In that game I had 100+ I had some mods installed but none that effected the ability to get more people or anything like that.

[SurvivoroftheNoobs]

Randy is nice since he has no pop limit just wish his raids were as strong as Cassandra. I don't think I have ever seen randy go over 30 in a raid Cassandra goes atleast 100+ espically those goddam tribals.....

[Mekhet]

dont know if you all play without mods, but as to my experience, having like 20 ppl with a colony lasting for like 5 years the raids become so ridiculously huge and the lag is so massive i have like 5 mins completely frozen game, then like 1 fp/5s. To this point lag has been the #1 reason to abandon older colonies

[codyo]

The only beef I have against large colonies is food management. You will need mods in order to stack higher amounts of food, and bulk cooking to handle a lot of people (you dont just cook ONE serving in a town like this).  I don't want 25% of my colonists to be in the kitchen handling feeding.

[Limdood]

To the people asking about lag:

clear out the world pawns from the save files (do a search on the forums for how)

and set jobs VERY specific.  Have a pawn who is great at construction and growing?  turn on those, firefighting, and bed rest, and turn OFF everything else.  Do the same for each pawn (even having a dedicated cleaner or hauler is useful).  The more jobs that have to be checked for each pawn, the more resources the game uses.

For the OCD among us, large colonies have a giant problem....the "idle colonist" problem.  colonies above about 12 pawns have to stop seeing idle colonists as a bad thing, which is tough for the "efficiency" people.