Are map missions ever worthwhile?

[Topper]

I'm at the start of winter  in a new game on rough with cassandra. The first mission I get is to storm a bandit hideout for a legendary gun. I say ok..send 3 of 5 pawns with starting pistols and all of my food out on the 4 day trek. Pawns will starve on the last day back. When I get to the bandit hideout its defended by 12 well armed badits and I have no chance of completing the mission.

I have found that the missions are never worth doing because the easiest goals are never worth the time spent away/labor lost going on the mission. And the harder goals are never worth the risk.time not working to the important pawns you need to send to accomplish them.   

[Razzoriel]

Yes, they are worth it, if the travelling time is not too long. But not because of the reward of the map mission, instead, because of the sheer value of the bandits' equipment/buildings protecting it. Three pawns with pistols will get hammered hard, though. Those missions need at least seven good fighting pawns with some tamed animals as meatwalls/additional combat value.

[Nameless]

Bring one person, a few stone blocks and a psychic animal pulser. seal that person in a tiny room, activate pulser, watch and laugh.

Real answer: Not really. Only if the reward is something like a legendary grand sculpture or something along the line. The trouble setting caravan up is usually not worth the reward.

[Canute]

You need to differ between the missions.
The bandit kill mission don't got a timer, you can do it (much) later.
It is special a bad idea to start these at a winter when you got high movement costs.

The other missions with timer, you need to look what you can pickup (mosttimes crap) or what you need to deliver (mosttimes stuff you don't got anyways) and need to decide to spend your time on the mission or to improve your base.

[Vlad0mi3r]

They are worthwhile mid to late game and onwards. You will need, as suggested previously a solid strike team. I would recommend a balance of weapons my team has 3 snipers 3 assault rifles 3 charge rifles and two melee guys with plasteel long swords and shield belts. they can take care of anything I have come across to date. All have powered armour with devilstrand Tshirts and pants.

All male muffalo's for transport (pregnant muffalos will slow down your movement) and away you go. It has certainly improved the ongoing playability for me its always a challenge to take out a full pirate base but very satisfying when you do.

[Dashthechinchilla]

I usually guage if I need or want the reward. I sent a three man squad to get a trove of neurotrainers that I used on my backups. It had a few combat and crafting ones. Turns out it was only guarded by manhunter elk.

On the other hand, I lost a colony striking a pirate hideout that had the faction leader and started me in a small valley with no cover. I lost too many valuable pawns. At least I iced the leader with a head shot.

[Panzer]

Item stashes in the early game (4-5 ppl) are really good, the most memorable games are those where I managed to take one of those stashes early. The fights can be tough, if you dont know whats guarding it bring at least one survival rifle/great bow in case you get turrets.

[khun_poo]

Yes, they are worth it, if the travelling time is not too long. But not because of the reward of the map mission, instead, because of the sheer value of the bandits' equipment/buildings protecting it. Three pawns with pistols will get hammered hard, though. Those missions need at least seven good fighting pawns with some tamed animals as meatwalls/additional combat value.

Seven is overkill. Just 3 is fine
.... with doomsday rocket launcher.

[corestandeven]

In my opinion, under A17 i generally don't think missions are worth it at the moment (only late game perhaps when you have too many pawns and can afford to lose some):

- The food consumption to make even small trips is mad. To make a 15 day round trip journey, with a moderate force, would mean all my food supply (300 meals). And that is travel during the summer.

- Your pawns often have a mental breakdown during the journey because joy is not satisfied. Worse, pawns often break during the mission or even afterwards when you are trying to collect or mine your hard earned reward, which is just frustrating after traveling so long.

- Limbs blow off at alarming regularity when assaulting a raider outpost/base, and if a pawn loses a leg then you are screwed for the trip back.

- Disease quickly sets in even for minor scratches and scrapes. My fully competent assault force turned up to mine resources, faced 20 manhunter foxes, managed to kill all the foxes with only minor scratches and all my assault force got infections before I had a chance to start mining.

- Then to top it off you often haven't got the weight capability to haul the goods back. For resource missions i often mine it all, but even with a convoy system of going back and forth with the mined resources I have to leave most behind because of the time limits of staying at the location. Why is there even a time limit for resource missions?

- Attacking a enemy base (not an outpost) yields no reward in money, resource or gameplay terms. Destroying a base seems to have no tactical or strategic advantage, but for a small outpost you get about 2000 silver?

So in summary I feel there is little incentive to risk pawns on traveling, and it is safer (but more boring) to buy the resources you need when it comes to late game. Travelling should be fun, but more often than not it is punishing because of some questionable gameplay mechanics.

If version A18 at least reduced the amount of food needed to travel, stopped (or even just reduced) the need for joy on missions, increased the time you could stay at locations, and provided some meaningful benefit to destroying pirate bases (as is the case with outposts), then that at least would make journeys worth the risk - mid-to-late game anyway. There is no benefit in early game as there is no way to gauge the threat of what awaits you.

In the absence of the devs sorting out travel (if they do) then i'd recommend the MRE mod. That way you can travel longer distances without using up your entire colony's normal food supplies to attempt it. The camping mod is a good idea for at least being able to stop to refresh pawns with joy, but i dont think it works for A17 (well that mod doesnt for me anyway!).

[Vlad0mi3r]

If you are planning a 15 day round trip that's covering a lot of ground. You must be passing by a lot of friendly townships. For that length of journey I usually pack around 150 packaged survival meals and then lots of Smokeleaf joints and Yayo. Then at each town I pickup pemmican, simple meals and sometime fine meals to top the food side of things up. at least 100 medicine to stop those infections fast.

Yes rainforests and other biomes will slow you down and you will need to plan accordingly.

6 to 8 pack animals (Muffalo or Dromedaries) will be required for an 8-10 person strike team.

Even then this is Rimworld and things do generally go bad at the worst time. Keep trying though and you will find it can be fun and opens a new layer to the game.

[tonsrd]

i saw a guy stream use 6 full bionic men ( arms legs eyes spine ) and he ran round the outpost with assault rifle killing everything with little resistance.

un-modded ofc, he was using pemmican ( lasts longer ), and he raided 5 outposts before returning to hes base with components mined from every outpost

hes rewards for 5 outposts was 10k silver, 100 components, + drugs + guns... and he could do it all again after a manhunter raid

[Nameless]

I don't think bionic spine is in vanilla.

[klun222]

No, map missions arent worth. Right now I feel like a lot in the game is broken, like loading cargo pods which takes forever and your pawn wont eat, sleep and joy meanwhile. Also they have some weird habbit of hauling 35 and then 5 or 6 units of cargo repeatedly.

Well also prizes with outposts are way too smal for what you have to deal with.

AND THE MOST IMPORTANT THING: I WOULD APPRICHIATE IF OTHER FRACTION BASES AND OUTPOSTS WOULD AT LEAST LOOOOK LIKE THEY CAN SUSTAIN THEMSELVES. God Im too sick of this bullshit. Somehow 20 enemy pirates (or tribalists or any fraction) live with only 200 pemicam stored and 3 by 3 growing zone, whit no joy objects, NO FUCKING KITCHEN TO COOK THEIR MEALS and they all live in the same room?
How about I attack the fraction base like that:
I attack during winter and wall off myself and wait for every enemy to freeze or I get a shitton of food and wall myself off and wait till they starve to death. Is this possible?

[Vlad0mi3r]

No need to shout. I am not sure why you have an issue loading your pods. Maybe let us know what your trying to load or how many people you have set to haul. Also how far are your pawns travelling to get what you want to launch?

Yes the Bases that we get to attack are not setup for realistic functionality but I am sure that this is something that will be improved over time. However the resources that you get, components is the major one for me, certainly make it worth your while. Every now and then you get uranium too.

No you can not just wait them out you will be attacked within around 48 hours if you don't start the fight yourself. Better to prepare defences and then attack when you are ready.

[freemapa]

Do map missions scale with the difficulty level?