Caravan and transport

[Nieve]

I know this is new feature in rimworld, but it's seen like not viable to use yet. I just done some short run caravan and i have some suggestion for the caravan feature.

- Transport spot: Like party and wedding spot, spot where caravans stand to form instead of a random spot which often mils away from stockpile. This also can apply for visitor caravan when they arrive and caravan when they come back home.

- Pre-load: Instead of doing everything, just let the player select the goods for pawns to load first. That won't stress pawns out when they try to load everything in 1 shot which take about days without resting and eating, and it's easier to edit/manage the goods later.

- Room saving: Pawn back from caravan won't forgot their room, this help very much with pawn have room required trait.

- Animal: Animal doesn't need to follow arena restricted when leaving the colony and will stand at transport spot to wait for load-unloading. And may be they deserve a feed from colonist before/after a long drive.

- Price: selling price increase by the distance, idk if this have already in-game because i only doing trade with only 1 town nearest to my colony cause the preparing phase is too salty to make a long run. Reward give for the player who dare to explore the world, not punish them by just have the same price with comms console when they have more risk and cost.

- Stay form: Caravan will stay form until dismiss, if you're doing more run but just coming back to gather supply, this will be a pain when you have to form it again and have no idea what goods they have if you don't check every single one of them. Or the problem about pawn do unnecessary-unloading i was post in bug district.

[SpaceDorf]

I have only used the caravans once or twice yet,
but everything you wrote sounds sensible

[Miridor]

Transport spot: There is a mod for that.

Pre-loading work around:
-Let all (non-critical) colonists join the caravan.
-Cancel caravan when loaded, before moving off (is a bit tricky).
-Re-form the caravan with caravaneer and all pack animals (and not the other colonists of course).
-See caravan move to requested exit
...
-Profit.

Room saving: For me personally, please, no. Caravaneer doesn't have much other jobs anyway that they require a specific room. I just let them take one of the free ones. My caravaneers tend to be nobles or sheriffs who can do not much else than fight a little (I even had a pacifist noble once. Only had animal handling, social and art oO). When caravans are not moving, they enjoy their idle time

Animals that wait for unloading and need to be fed tend to be a nuicance for me. I rather have them eat the grass around my base as the other animals I have do. I only feed them in winter.

Price difference on distance: No, please. If there is going to be price difference, then an actual market of demand and supply should be created where regularly sold items drop in price and rare items soar. That is a much 'fairer' system. Why would an other camp/village want to buy your rice for $$$$ only because you hauled it half way across the globe? It should have means to grow that stuff themselves... and if they haven't, they rather buy it from the colony next door. Not yours.

Stay formed: That one makes sense. Also, I'd like that.

As you may have noticed, I send caravans between my colonies almost constantly. Muffalo fleet of 8 metric tonnes of 'moving' power, and counting. Only nuisance I have is that a single mental break of a pawn can interrupt the entire caravan loading/movement process I'd like an option to dismiss the pawn from the caravan and carry on.

[GZstar]

Wandering in my opinion is a great new feature. I try to walk over half of the map to reach my escape ship. I´m about year 7 at the moment in the third base I created for my people. It totally different than just surviving in one in the end exteme luxurious base and building the escape ship. You are just not done after around 5 years in-game time and have to face new challenges even in mid-game.

My suggestions for wandering:
I like vanilla game a lot and until yesterday I never used any mod. Now I prefer having a caravan spot because it´s nearly not doable to load up my 20 muffaloes and I think this really should be improved because "wandering" nearly is impossible like it is at the moment. Beside the caravan spot I would like to be able to let my people eat, sleep or do other thing they really need to do during packing the caravan.

And after I settle down all stuff just was laying around in the middle of the map. Why do I not have to unload my muffaloes like it is after I come back from trading or from an excursion? 5000 pemmican and 200 meals carrying in a freezer or a storage room to prevent it from deteration as soon as possible alone took me three days and most of the pemmican was nearly deteriorated anyway.

Besides this sure the raiding pirate bases should be improved. Mine just vanished after I beated the pirates. I thought at least I can use their base after beating them.

Besides I do not know if the enemy KI is great longterm for raiding or being attacked during the journey. No time for preperation, no possibility to play tactics. Both in my games have been just open battles. I tend to use lots of animals to protect my people in them and this works but I think there could be improvments also.

I also did see a mod with camping iteams like tents, little stoves etc. I really would like to have better equipment while wanderung or to settle down again. Building ressources are too expensive to take them with you and having no wood (desert) it´s hard to keep up the mood for the people alone for one day without any rooms, eating on the floor, sleeping on the ground etc. after a raid and pausing without building up a complete new base seems not possible at all. Camping equipment I really would like to see in the original game also.

You can´t leave a base unprotected. Sure game is not made to play with multiple bases but maybe it would be possible to have several bases if there would be no incidents just when noone lived there? My second base was destroyed after I left by bugs. No reason to come back ever.

[Nuss]

There are 2 or 3 mods out there that do an excellent job at improving the caravan experience with equipment and the ability to set up camp anywhere on the map.

Multiple bases would be very useful in multiplayer/coop, if this is ever going to happen. Right now, you need a lot of pawns to maintain more than one base, but I figure that resting stops on a trade route can be quite nice... not that this sort of thing is very useful once you get com link and a functional economy.

[GZstar]

Caravaning and leaving an established base does not really make sense for the colonists because building a ship in the base is much easier and trading via coms console or visitors is the same. But wandering is fun and challenging. I like it, that finishing a short game only with one base still is possible, but I think for me wandering to the flagged escape ship is my new challenge in Rimwold. I really like playing this a lot. Like I said, you just are not more or less done after only some in-game-years any more but can play a Mission for really a Long time this way. In real life, not in Rimwold life this Feature makes lots of sense for me.

[Nieve]

The idea of caravan is for whom enjoying the exploring of the rng world. If you played starbound before it's a bit like that, there are people like to move world to world and build small house for seltter(or for destruction) but not actualy stay, and other like to build a big base for a popular conlony.