Moments that make you start over.

[Sola]

First year, nothing was going right.  My constructor has a burning passion, but only a 3 to start.  This is a lot of poor/shoddy/awful furniture that isn't helping my volatile miner much.

First raid, 99% difficulty to recruit.  Fine, I'll execute him.
"A refugee asks for help!", incapable of violence.
Escape pod, chemical fascination and incapable of violence.
Second raid, 93% difficulty to recruit, incapable of violence.
Third raid, bullet to the brain.  Sometimes, you just get the feeling you're not going to have a good time.

[A Friend]

I tend to give up a colony and start over before they even get to the point of being overrun. Sometimes it's frustrating to know that your game is screwed anyways but it's still gonna be awhile before it happens. But seeing your colony recover from a devastating attack is very satisfying to experience.

[Shurp]

Devmode
Replace head

It's not cheating if it's fun.

[Sola]

Devmode
Replace head

It's not cheating if it's fun.

I'm a masochist or something.  I only play permadeath, because when I reload saves, I lose interest in the game.  I assume devmode would have the same effect.  "If I can't lose, what's the point of playing?"

[Canute]

Puhhh, permadeath.
You have to be extrem careful and overthing your descisions twice.
And you have to play a bit different then when you could load a safe.

On permadeath i even would recruite the violent ones, you just could use them as meatshield to safe your valueable pawns. Or with the Cult mode you could change their backstory when you sacrifice a prisoner.

Btw. did you ever made it off the planet with permadeath on ?

[Shurp]

If you find that giving up on a colony and starting over is more fun than replacing a body part or loading a save file, by all means, go for it.  I suppose this especially makes sense early in the game when you aren't abandoning that much to begin with.

The nice thing about Rimworld is that it supports multiple play styles, rather than forcing you into one or the other.  Play whichever way you enjoy most

[Erlembald]

(...) But seeing your colony recover from a devastating attack is very satisfying to experience.

Those are the moments I mostly wait for. Had some awesome comeback moves, which are a big part of making the game interesting I think. Although, I sometimes do reloads, when the situation was just stupid or I did some very stupid things.

[Trylobyte]

I just had a poison ship land two tiles from my front door in the middle of all my fields, in an area with no cover for my colonists to engage it.  We killed the eight (!) mechanoids that spawned (they split up) but had a colonist go down (but not killed) and most of the others had gunshot injuries.  Then a manhunter pack of about 30 caribou arrived.  No worries, my base has a wall, I'll bunker up and- HOW ARE THEY GETTING IN HERE?  Apparently one of the scythers had wandered off and knocked a hole in the outer wall on the far side of my base when I wasn't looking and now I had caribou swarming all over my already-wounded colonists.

Somehow, despite 11 of the 12 colonists being hospitalized, nobody died and nobody lost any major body parts.  I was in awe of my good fortune at NOT having to restart or reload, because I was seriously considering it.

[DariusWolfe]

I usually give up when it becomes complacent; Successful, but not massively so, but where I feel like I can handle any reasonable threat (as opposed to unreasonable threats, like bajillion-man raids) Where I don't see anything obvious that needs to be improved.

[Sola]

Btw. did you ever made it off the planet with permadeath on ?

Twice.  Once on the sea ice extreme challenge, and another run where I had four pawns incapable of hauling in a colony of ten.  Those non-haulers mined out thousands of blocks looking for uranium and gold.

[Dashthechinchilla]

I usually keep pushing forward until I actually do get over run. If a raid ends with 3 or 4 downed some kidnapped and the rest incapable of violence, I consider the colony a wipe. I  play permadeath too. Makes caravans pretty nail biting.