Replacing space trade with old fashioned wagon traders.

[NephilimNexus]

This seems like the next logical step, considering that the latest release added visiting villagers from non-hostile powers as part of the game mechanics.

It is somewhat immersion breaking that you're supposedly playing survivors from a destroyed ship who are stranded against their will who just happen to be able to easily make contact with dozens of passing spaceships on a regular basis.  Spaceships which, if you look at how slavers work, are perfectly capable of loading people off the planet with ease.

So my suggestion is this: Replace the current space trader mechanic with a good old fashioned "Dwarf Fortress" style of wagon traders who roll into town, courtesy of those same non-hostile powers already mentioned.

This would make things interesting in many ways:

1) Traders would no longer be by item category.  Instead, they would be trading whatever wares are appropriate to the tech level of their village.  So tribal traders would be your best source for cheap food, but would lack advanced technology of any kind.  Other lost colonies would have tech on par with your own.  Raiders, if you could ever someone negotiate trade with them, would be an ideal source for weaponry.

2) Having physical trade caravans mean that unscrupulous players - and rival NPCs - could attempt to raid them.  Do you intervene, or join in? 

3) This opens the door for the procedural general of these other villages, so that later down the development road they could be places that you could actually go to yourself (thus sending your own raiding parties or trade wagons, as the case may be).

By getting rid of "magical" space trade you not only make the game more interesting but also helps along the immersion level.  The only group that should have access to space trade should be the very pirates that shot down your ship in the first place, so that gives you another good reason to try to raid their main base at some point - thus creating actual endgame content with the goal of capturing the pirate base and their ship so that you can finally leave the planet once & for all.

[DarkNarwhel]

soooo..... are we like changing the entire game, because RimWorld is sci-fi based

[a89a89]

soooo..... are we like changing the entire game, because RimWorld is sci-fi based

sci-fi and western

[Damien Hart]

I'm curious as to what part of space trade you consider 'magical' in a game whose entire pretense is themed around space-faring civilizations?

Jokes aside, while I don't disagree with the idea of land trade in itself, I disagree with getting rid of space traders.

As for the argument of "Why don't the ships rescue the colonists?" first, if you're in the crew of that ship, with all of the pirates various other scum on the planet, would you really invite a bunch of random strangers aboard? And if you were a survivor, with all of the pirates and slavers about, would you really be that eager to jump aboard some random 'trader'? You're just as likely to end up unwittingly in the clutches of some crafty slavers.

[johntiger]

I suggest that when implementing this feature, reduce the chance of interstellar trader to rare thing or rare reward if you successfully accomplish quite a difficult quest and get one-time interstellar communication device (burn out after use).

[FowlJ]

Rimworld being a science fiction game doesn't have anything to do with the validity of this suggestion, because the setting isn't one where space travel is easy, just one where it exists. There is no FTL travel, which means interstellar journeys take years to decades to complete, and 'rimworlds' (which as you might guess the game takes place on one) are worlds at the edge of colonized space which even if it was simple to just send a ship there, few if any would actually bother. The only sort of reasonable explanation for trading ships coming along so frequently is that they are just orbiting the rimworld, not coming from somewhere else, but that runs into a couple problems itself. Primarily, of course, being that launching a rocket into orbit to trade with other parts of the planet is about as cost efficient as it is logical, particularly when you are primarily trading potatoes. There is also the fact that not many people on the planet seem to possess the sort of technology required for that. Some groups drop from orbit, but even now they are the exception rather than the rule, and there is nothing prevented them from being made rarer in the future.

Regardless, like the OP stated, trading with factions planetside is a pretty logical extension of being able to interact with them in the first place, particularly since Tynan specifically made it so that they would appear from the edges of the map (presumably having travelled overland from other parts of the planet) as opposed to always dropping from orbit like raiders used to.

I think that intersteallar trade ships, were they to continue to exist, should be a much rarer event, and carry much rarer and more valuable goods, likely things you might not be able to easily obtain elsewhere.

[Austupaio]

You guys are approaching this from a, seemingly, wrong perspective. Almost like the game is feature complete.

Constant, low value space trade and the complete lack of ground trade is a symptom of the game being in Alpha. The space trade is a stop-gap measure until more trade options and mechanics are developed.

[Pulaskimask]

Yes, I would like it if you could trade with visitors who came to your colony. I agree that the current trade system seems like a stopgap measure.