Immigration system and handling unwanted colonists

[Nightraven]

Hi everyone!
I've got quite a few hours invested in playing Rimworld, and I realized that there's somenthing about the way storytellers gives you new colonist (specially in the early game), that, for me, doesn't make much sense.

The fact is that many times, colonist spawned via "wanderer joins" event aren't desirable, and there's no way from preventing them to join the colony. Usually, I find myself playing in ways that don't make sense from a narrative perspective (and therefore aren't fun for me) like locking this colonist up in hope of them getting mad, hurting someone and having them considered guilty for execution. Some other times, I simply back up a saved game or disable the event in the scenario editor. It's not that I think that players should be able to refuse this unwanted colonist without consequences, but the way this event works right now creates weird situations (from the story's perspective) like a a group of starving colonists accepting in the colony people unable to grow food.

So I think that the "wanderer joins" event should work in a different way where players get to choose how to deal with the wanderer. Something like having to send one colonist to speak with with them to actually join the colony while getting mood debbufs for rejecting or ingoring them would work (being able to refuse them shotgun in hand could be really fun).

Also, as I already mention above, I think there's a lack of ways of dealing with unwanted colonist. Locking them up is too easy, there's no even need of a valid reason to do that, while actually getting rid of really nasty people (without a huge mood debuff) is much more hard. What I'm trying to say is that there should be more ways to do this besides the "considered guilty" execution. Being able to banish colonists under certain conditions (having hurted someone, having started a fire, etc, etc...) should be an option but, again, not necessarily without consequences. Seeing them again as raiders could also be very fun!

I think those were all my sugestion, I hope they help. I would like to seize this opportunity to say that I already love this game and that the developing team is doing a really amazing job!

[DNK]

I agree. The wanderer join events are annoying since I usually ignore about 60-70% of refugee pods and release a similar number of prisoners. But I get a wanderer who not only is crap but also is a lover of another colonist or something... it gets very anti-RP to kill them off, plus the mood penalty to the lover.

Thankfully, you can easily mod this out of the game. Defs\Incidents\Incidents_Various_Good.xml
Just give "wanderer join" a 0 <basechance>, then increase "refugee pod crash" to compensate. Now they're all pod crashes.

[SpaceDorf]

Well, every day I learn something new about rimworld

Thanks DNK.

[DNK]

You're welcome.

While I'm at it, if you want just MORE colonists in general, you can edit the Defs\StorytellerDefs\Storytellers.xml

    <desiredPopulationMin>4</desiredPopulationMin>
    <desiredPopulationMax>13</desiredPopulationMax>
    <desiredPopulationCritical>18</desiredPopulationCritical>

Change to whatever you want. If your pop is below the min, the storyteller will give you a lot more newcomers, up to max. Not sure about critical, but I'm guessing you get a lot more threats once it hits that.

I'm slowly building up (ie ignoring crappy rescue pods) with:
    <desiredPopulationMin>15</desiredPopulationMin>
    <desiredPopulationMax>45</desiredPopulationMax>
    <desiredPopulationCritical>75</desiredPopulationCritical>

I'll see where performance gets bad, but I've been around 20-25 before without issues.

[Nightraven]

But I get a wanderer who not only is crap but also is a lover of another colonist or something...

That's quite annoying, right, but I have to admit that it's also fun... I wish the ages and traits of wanderers and refugees with relationships with the colonists would make more sense. I've seem more than a few characters less than ten years old than their sons, I think that sometimes even younger than them.

[SpaceDorf]

@ DNK

I play Randy, have a quite nice Prison and fluid ethics when it comes to prisoners ..
So the Number of Pawns has never been a problem


@Nightraven
You are still right, that in the Beginning you get quite some crappy colonists .. if you are unlucky.
And some random relations that make absolutely no sense ..

[killermen962]

There should be a mod that instead of wanderer joins pulls up a menu showing their stats or they walk onto the map and you can send someone to talk to them, they propose they want to join and you can then choose to send them away or keep them.

Was thinking about an idea taht their skills could be hidden but if you send a good socialist, you can learn some of their traits/skills.

Yep, I want a mod that hides all strangers skills now until you "Interrogate" them in jail or passively talk to them during visits and learn about some of their skills. Everytime I see a group of raiders I'm always going like "And you sir will fit in just fine... GET THE CLUBBING DEVICE and that's that.

[alexdgreat]

Have you noticed that caravan system allow you to "left behind" any unwanted pawns? If you do so in a neutral village, a negative mood impact will be much less and much shorter then if pawn was killed, or freezed/starved to death.