Post a cool tip you know about!

[Hans Lemurson]

When uploading a Rimworld savegame, compress it. For such files, common zip reduces file size almost 20x.

I've looked at the save files, and I'm not surprised at all.  Any human-readable file is going to compress pretty well!  So much repetition and redundant details for the weak fleshlings...

[b0rsuk]

Smash and grab

When opening ancient danger rooms, if you have a personal shield you can execute a smash&grab action. Instead of destroying mechanoids first, make a small opening, and throw an explosive at a cryosleep casket. It will cause all caskets to eject, and any hostiles inside will likely be murdered by mechanoids. Meanwhile you can order a person with a personal shield to run in and carry away the incapacitated ones.

This works best against largest ancient danger rooms, and takes care of swarms of megascarabs that might be in a casket. Naturally mechanoids may kill some very good recruits, but who says they would let you take them alive anyway ? You can do this quite well in early game, when ancient danger rooms will have juiciest rewards (people in power armor, with bionics etc).

[Hans Lemurson]

How do you throw an explosive while wearing a personal shield?

[Shurp]

the other guy throws the grenade then runs

[AngleWyrm]

Have you ever had a problem with colonists completing the corners of a room? Happens to me a bunch; they build until the corner is inaccessible, and then leave that one annoying little unfinished tile.

The trick I use to resolve this issue is to mark off the area to be built and then cancel one construction order on a tile adjacent to the corner. It stops them from building a wall there, but they still dig it out and have access to the corner. Then later on I come back and have them complete the wall.

[SpaceDorf]

You can just order them to complete the corners.

To prevent Pawns from walling themselves in by ordering a second wall in the direction of the dangerous area and forbidding it.

[b0rsuk]

Or you can mark one wall blueprint tile as forbidden, then unforbid it when the rest is ready.

[AngleWyrm]

Or you can mark one wall blueprint tile as forbidden, then unforbid it when the rest is ready.

Like this one

[Greep]

Not quite a tip, but a fun fact.  Animals don't haul, and just wander around instead, if they're about to haul something that doesn't have an open stockpile for it.  So once you have enough haulers to haul everything you can just set a low priority/accept all stockpile off to the side so they can haul rocks or whatever garbage they're trying to move but can't. When they're finished, suddenly you've got 20 boars actually doing things!

[Mehni]

Or get Zhentar's vanilla fixes to fix that.

Regarding hauling animals, use them for long-distance hauling while your own people stay restricted in the homezone. Slag chunks, non-deteriorating cargo drops and steel left by sieges all gets hauled by fast moving dogs.

No need to risk people getting caught outside facing predators.

[Travinsky]

This is probably a really inefficient way of dealing with the poison/AI ships but if you have an abundance of steel and a lack of manpower to directly face the mechanoids head on, you can build steel traps all around said ship then a wall around those traps but leave one space free so you a colonist can shoot at the ship. By the time the mechanoids have traveled around, sycthers will have been killed by the traps and centipedes will be heavily damaged/dead.

This works best early on in the game when you might be lacking decent fighters but have mined all that easily accessed steel.

[b0rsuk]

To designate wild plants for harvesting only when they're fully mature, mark them with a growing zone (any) and disallow sowing.

This works especially well as a 'lumberjack zone'.

[rooneymagoo]

you can select multiple items/containers when holding shift and left clicking, pretty usefull for making neat storage rooms if you have any container mods

[AngleWyrm]

Fun with Colony Manager

• Set up a deforestation zone in front of your main fortifications to remove enemy cover
• Create a manager bill for forestry that uses that zone
• Create a second forestry bill for the whole map and place it lower on the chores list

End result? They prioritize clearing out the area in front of your turret installation, and then go on to harvest the rest where available.

[GiantSpaceHamster]

Fun with Colony Manager

• Set up a deforestation zone in front of your main fortifications to remove enemy cover
• Create a manager bill for forestry that uses that zone
• Create a second forestry bill for the whole map and place it lower on the chores list

End result? They prioritize clearing out the area in front of your turret installation, and then go on to harvest the rest where available.

I recommend against the last step in the above. You risk having colonists unnecessarily chopping down trees instead of doing other tasks. Why would you need to chop the whole map? You're not going to want to store all that wood anyhow and it will degrade if left out in the open.

So I guess my tip is not to set up more jobs than you can handle/monitor or tasks that are so large they may get in the way of other priorities.