How do Raids work?

[WereCat88]

So my question is how do Raids work? Is it predetermined or do they just happen randomly?
And if they are predetermined from when are they predetermined?

Also i noticed when my colony got destroyed by a Pirate Raid event i reloaded a save from a couple of minutes before the Raid happened and (roughly) at the same time when the Raid happened another event happened (like an Infestation or Mech Raid), so that makes me believe that they are kind of predetermined.

[Serenity]

Random numbers on computers are usually only pseudorandom. That means that a given seed value will always generate the same sequence of numbers. So the timing is random, but if you save scum you still get the event (some games reseed the RNG on loading a game, or like XCOM offer it as an option).

However in Rimworld it's only fixed that some event will happen at that time. With save scumming you can change the type of event. Like changing an infestation to a normal raid.

[greggbert]

Random events on a computer are random for all practical purposes, since our brains are incapable of perceiving their non-randomness.  The time intervals used are too small for non-true randomness to have an impact on any game's play that a human player could possibly notice.  No human being can tell the difference  between pseudo-random and true random.  In fact human brains are so bad at knowing when things are random that we often perceive patterns where there is in fact randomness.

If you are a game player, the idea of pseudo-randomness vs real randomness irrelevant to your play experience and always will be.

As far as rimworld and raids, the way it works in my experience is that the "storyteller" (AI that controls events) makes its decisions on what to throw at you in real time.  Therefore if you save the game 5 minutes before a raid occurs, there is no guarantee that a raid will occur within 5 or 10 or 3 minutes afterward.

I have saved my game and then 10 second later gotten a raid.  Then restored the same game and no raid for at least 20 minutes.  On all versions up until the current one.

tldr:  Raids are determined by the storyteller in real time and pseudorandomness has nothing to do with it in this or any other game.

[Jibbles]

I plan to build a base that spreads throughout the map.  Do raiders go after anything in specific, other than my colonist and animals?

[JuicyPVP]

They attack and destroy random crap

[WereCat88]

Thank for the answers and sorry for the save scumming.

[Goo Poni]

Nothing to be sorry for, you're under no obligation to play by anyone's rules but your own. If you feel savescumming ruins the experience, try to resist the urge to do it, or enable permadeath.

Raids occur randomly and a few things go into consideration for when they might appear. Have you had other bad events recently? Those would delay it, give you time to recuperate. Lots of good or neutral events? Probably getting ripe for an attack. Playing on Randy Random greatly reduces these soft buffers and events, good or bad, will become arbitrary.

The size of raids is determined by a number of things. For example, "babby's first raid" is pretty much guaranteed to be just one guy. After that, it looks at how many raids you've survived, how much the colony is worth, how many colonists you have (doesn't matter if they're all 90, senile and barely know muzzle from trigger) and how many turrets you have to determine how big a raid should be. This provides points that are spent outfitting a band of raiders and when out of points, the raid appears. After a certain threshold, which I believe is based on wealth, sappers, siegers and the all-melee-all-shield styles of raid start to crop up.

[mrm]

From my point of view, yes, those events are somehow scheduled. One time i had a dry thunderstorm and made a save there, and like 10 mins later i got a raid and an plague on 8/12 of my colonists... everything basically at the same time. I found it was too much and tried to load the save. Multiple times. Well, sometimes i got an additional rain to put out the fire, but raid and plague always was there. Raid event was pretty random (raid/infestation/mech), but the plague was always the same, the same colonists in pretty the same order. Then i tried to load an autosave long before the thunderstorm, so the thunderstorm was optional, but raid + plague was always waiting for me for the exact moment. So yep the storyteller can make all those things up, but it puts them on sort of a list and puts them into a savegame maybe?

[Serenity]

It seems like there are event types that are grouped together. For example the different raids (tribals/pirates/mechs/infestation) belong together and if the game decides that you are going to get a raid, one of those will happen. You can reload to get a different type of raid (I've used that to avoid dealing with infestations), but it won't replace a raid with a thunderstorm for example.

Also not all types of events work the same way. Especially diseases. In another thread someone said that in A16 Malaria (no idea about the other diseases) starts hidden and is only revealed later on.

[WereCat88]

It seems like there are event types that are grouped together. For example the different raids (tribals/pirates/mechs/infestation) belong together and if the game decides that you are going to get a raid, one of those will happen. You can reload to get a different type of raid (I've used that to avoid dealing with infestations), but it won't replace a raid with a thunderstorm for example.

Also not all types of events work the same way. Especially diseases. In another thread someone said that in A16 Malaria (no idea about the other diseases) starts hidden and is only revealed later on.

That might make sense because all my colonists start with the diseases at 60% (that may actually be the way it works, idk)
It is how it works sorry.