Countermeasures for snowball effect

[harvald]

In the beginning of game (especially if you play first time) one random event could destroy your colony. When you gather resources, have more men even hard event is easer to recover from. There is need for some mechanism to counter that.
More frequent and more dangerous random events are fine, but leave you with feeling of senselessness because dependency is too simple - more colonists = more raiders, better armour and weapons = better armour and weapons, more food = more frequent plagues. So whatever you do is seems somewhat pointless because not feeling as success in that aspect.
I don't have working solution, but rather ideas for debate (so please give your thoughts).

As for raiders maybe concealment of colony could be protection in early stages. Small village might be not known to raiders, missed in searching, but later when you start trips to other places news about your community would spread.
Small raid party could be stupid, but lager ones with good leaders would have better strategy.
As for plants dirt fertility may be key factor, dropping with time, so big plantation would be difficult to maintain without fertilizer (and extra work of course), so development speed curve would be lowered.
More people and more animals are good place for bacteria's so plagues could be dependent on that (and higher hygiene as countermeasure to some degree).

Anyone has other ideas?

[Zalzany]

The big issue is this is just basic learning curve stuff and you can already pick a nicer story teller, and lower the difculty. You not meant to have ever single colony last the ages if you have made 8 colonies before you got good at it, you not playing it right. Early raids are crazy weak as they are based on your wealth so unless you got statues all over the place before you made your first pillbox out of wooden walls and sandbags you can survive quite well. Especially since your first raids are almost always guys with one melee weapon and if you move you first 2 pawns with the pistol and rifle you can take them down quite easily using terrain to slow them down or make it just plain easy to hit them.

Its all learning curve as long as your not on ice shelf you can heal basic diseases in your make shift barrack beds you should make on day one, as yet again unless your on max story teller is not got curve ball you that hard. Every thing else you can get over rather easy minus toxic fallout on week one. That is hard you need to stay in shelter for most the day, but you can build roofed walk ways to move from one building to another and you get a decent amount of time to expose your pawn to it to get food. You gonna end up eating raw meat for a couple days they won't like it but you can do it if you send hunters out fast to kill the animials before they get sick and rot as corpses. Just like you should harvest every berry or agave bush you can find asap when those hit, and have them haul it in, you get minor build up of toxins you can sit in the base for like 12 hours it goes away then go again when they wake up in the morning.

Imedialty when you get fallout pause and make a new area for people and animials call it FALLOUT, make it only allow roofed area access got do this your self clicking and dragging it out. Now flip them all to it, as needed flip on unrestricted to force them to hunt and gather food as fast as you can before its ruined. You may end up with a little malntrition but you can eat raw meat till you get your freezer up if you did the crashed start. A freezer after you make the barracks should be priorty one doens't have to work well use solar and wind with no batteries if you got to having it on most the day alone will double the length of your food till you sort out how to build proper battery storage.

Now if tribal pick everythign you can kill some critters butcher and make permcian that stuff lasts like 2 years with out a fridge they eat fast, but you need one plant food, one meat source for each batch. Think its 10 of each and it makes like 20 I don't recall exacts. But this is your bread and butter till you get electricity, if you choose to do it. Like I said it will last years if its got roof over it that is all it needs to not get ruined.

Blights are easier just hunt eat raw meat, get that freezer going if you not tribal, pick berries and agave to make permciam till you get your first crop then hunt like crazy and have your cooks soul priorty one 1 job be cook. With a little bit of practice you won't over hunt and have meat rotting away and learn to hunt as needed. These are biggest dangers though, blight and toxic fall out as no food will kill you faster then raiders will ever kill your colony.

you need to know how to mange that once you do even in tundra where you got a 15-20 day grow period you can bounce back if blight or cold snap ruins your crops in time to screw you so nothing gets to harvest. In those biomes like Tundrea and Boreal it looks like all is lost but in fall and winter it gets freezing out you can kill as much as you want and don't even need a working freezer. I put a air vent in mine in fact in those biomes so I can shut the power off in snow season, the turn them back on and shut the vent in the spring/summer warm period.

This stuff you learn by watching your colonies die and going "ok what did I do wrong, what can I do next time." But if you follow those learning helpers in the upper right corner they tell you how to make barracks your first freezer, and even how to make your first defensive position.

And learn to draft you pawns into minute man mode as I call it lets you directly order them. In harsh early game situations you may find your self hunting herds, this is crazy stupid dangours early on. Its a dice roll I group them up and make htem fire on them myself, this way if one or whole herd freaks out, they are in combat mode so will not run but fire o nthem then melee them. At this point if its a decent size herd I ignore it unless desprate for meat, I draft every one who can fight entire colony if need be, set the melees up near the ranged, and then click them off using shift click to make or take them out of my custom group.

You get lucky can kill like 3 elk with out pissing off the heard, that is plenty flick them off draft mode, and make them manually haul the dead elk to the animal storage spot you should toggled on near your make shift or permanent kitchen. If they are still alive make them for hunt grab hunter and order them to hunt it, they will finish it off and haul it to a spot if you toggled one for animal corpses. Always have a spot for them even if its not in a fridge that way your butcher isn't walking half way across the map, they auto haul even if they don't like to haul any thing they hunt if you got storage spot marked for dead animals. Do this and lower the number one risk I have of year death, death by stampeding elk/caribou heard when i am in the snow biomes and I need that meat at the risk of death. Other wise hunt down every emu, squirrel, rabbit etc that is not a pack animal for you meat, its less meat then the elk, and caribou but much safer till you start looting or making things like assault riffles or SMGs to hunt with.

[Bolgfred]

This stuff you learn by watching your colonies die and going "ok what did I do wrong, what can I do next time."

I remember these moments very often in a combination with fire. Big fire and colonist on toast.


Anyway, I think the encouter difficulties should be more detailed in many ways.

When I start a colony I often begin with a mining camp, converting all chunks I can find into blocks, which raises my wealth quite quick. By this I stand often against huge raid parties while I have nothing but a pile of stones. This mostly was very annoying for me. Same for mining steel, collecting lumber or mass producing kibble. When a horde of tribals wants my kibble they can come and take it, but stop the shooting!


I'd love to see some break points. Something like, having a item+silver value of 5k+ will attract looting raider parties. Having a high furniture wealth will cause more tribal raiders or a stockpile of AI cores will attract mechanoids more likely.

About the AI I suggested some more differing strategies depending on enemy type >>here<<

All-In-All I actually notice that the difficulty system is quite simple and didn't developed much in time, so I think tynan didn't spend much focus on it, maybe planning to work on these later.

[Zalzany]

Oh and plant rice its horrible mood debuff to eat raw, but grows the fastest do that till you get a stock pile of raw food then swap it out to something nicer like strawberries or corn that grow much slower. As far as fire it sucks build a fire line if your in a more green year round set up, use stone floors sucks you got have stone cutting tech or break walls on the map and hope there is no ancient menace behind it. Needs to be two spaces wide fire can't cross it, and toggle them to number priority mode ASAP make firefighting number one for any one who can do it.

OH and you can change story teller and difficulty in game after you start I never done it but I read it all the time you can do it in options or something to make it easier that first season then up as you feel you are ready.

And all raiding parties are there for loot, if you leave nice things out they will take them and run. I have had my starter 30 pack of components stolen before by a tribal raider I was sitting waiting for him to attack he saw the components took them and ran off the map with them. Their goal is not to kill you, but raid you they want valuables and if you get in the way they attack if you fall down and don't die they will kidnap your pawn to sell to a slaver or whatever they do with them, and flee the map. Its not zombie hoard out for blood they want valuables and your pawns are normally closer to them then the stockpile is. I seen them ignore my defensive spot more then once to break into my barracks with grenade thrower, and starting the place up looking for things to steal using that grenadier to bust open walls for them...

[Bolgfred]

And all raiding parties are there for loot, if you leave nice things out they will take them and run.

If you tell the truth sir, I will stop building walls, but lay out a layout of block stockiles, so everybody can take a part of my wall back home, instead of fighting me.
I only noticed enemies looting when they were about to flee. And most of the time they looted my colonists. Come back, you filthy scumbags! Yarr!

[Zalzany]

And all raiding parties are there for loot, if you leave nice things out they will take them and run.

If you tell the truth sir, I will stop building walls, but lay out a layout of block stockiles, so everybody can take a part of my wall back home, instead of fighting me.
I only noticed enemies looting when they were about to flee. And most of the time they looted my colonists. Come back, you filthy scumbags! Yarr!

Well only seen it  a couple times, and it was high value stuff like a raider stole my starter components before I mad my first freezer that was annoying start, and another time they took a pile of silver I left out from a trader I ran out side the base to meet in a hurry to sell to since I really wanted to buy more meds, and sell him a crap ton of joints for silver for my hospital floor. They still fought me but took damn silver, and the took it ran off, rest followed his heals after I killed a couple... But if you forget things outside of real value they will steal them and run in my experience...

And its always always something that is hard to replace like silver or components.

[Limdood]

I would argue that a hard restart should be the only countermeasure for snowballing disasters.

One disaster SHOULD lead into another...any disaster (defined in this case as a happening which leaves you significantly worse off than you were before) will leave you less and less prepared for future events...This is simply cause and effect and is accurately modeled and simulated in Rimworld.

Packing up and leaving the map (assuming the issue isn't starvation) and resettling elsewhere can often provide a rather effective counter to snowballing problems.  One reason is that the algorithms that determine hostile raid strength are largely determinate upon your wealth...if a well-geared pirate band comes in and kills 3 of your 7 colonists before you drive them off, your wealth may very well have INCREASED!  How?  easy...sure you lost the pawn value of those dead pawns, but you didn't lose their clothing or weaponry, your base didn't shrink, and you just GAINED the colony wealth of all the raiders' weapons and gear.

Leaving the map leaves all the wealth behind EXCEPT what your colonists pack and wear.  Aside from actually leaving the map, it is VERY hard to adequately and significantly reduce wealth, since constructed buildings and forbidden items still count, you'd actually have to deconstruct non-essential infrastructure and burn/destroy unneeded items, all of which takes time in which another event could befall your haggard colony.


Unfortunately, preparing for OTHER types of disaster, such as blights, toxic fallouts, lethal temp cold or heat waves, and even protection from fluke events like hunter herd-revenge or mass animal insanity are generally all countered by either hoarding goods or building comprehensive (and expensive) infrastructure.  Rimworld kind of tries to straddle the line between simultaneously encouraging hoarding and preparation (as you'd expect in a survival game) and punishing it (bigger raids and events that scale with preparation, such as "Zzzzt's" being nastier with more stored power)...it is counterintuitive and frustrating, but also kind of necessary, since without a "cost" for excessively proactive preparation, the game would become INCREDIBLY boring into the mid and late game...intolerably so.  So it kind of comes across as a bugbear that we must tolerate for the sake of gameplay.

[SpaceDorf]

There is no Snow in the Desert or Jungle