Tips for wealth management?

[cyberian]

Hello everyone,

I am into my second game ever with RimWorld.
I am using Medieval Times and Hospitality mods plus a few lesser impact QoL ones and I play on Randy Rough only because I am quite new to the game. One rule I made is no killboxes and my peoples are armed with Longbows and plate armor (MT items). I think I have 10 or 12 pawns now and the fort has been going well but that seems to have lead to much bigger raid sizes. Lately I get 25-30 peoples for the medieval factions the pirates with guns are thankfully lower size. I guess I am pumping out too many good high wealth items. I have lately started breeding Muffalos to help with my defense so I don't get completely overwhelmed and I started disassembling all the armor and weapons that I don't need on my pawns into steel again. I also found a Plasteel reserve that I don't mine out because I can't use it for anything good anyway.

So that what are the worst offenders for wealth in your experience?
Do walls and floors actually increase wealth? I have an all Slate castle with mostly marble floors and a few silver and sterile floors.
I have many stone deadfall traps scattered at all attack directions do they increase wealth much?
Would it help to go with lower quality furniture and maybe give some happiness with drugs to compensate?
Related to that does anyone know if tolerance reduction http://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Drugs#Addiction_and_Tolerance applies for each drug seperately?
Because then I would go with Psychoid Peko every second day, one beer every four days and one wakeup every four days that should work for one dose of happy every day. So does it clean the tolerance from pekoe on the same day as it reduces the beer or does only one drug get out of the system each day?
Does my Muffalo Herd actually also hurt my wealth substantially?

Also would be glad for all other tips you have for wealth management or dealing with attackers using no killboxes and only legendary longbows at best.

[lancar]

One thing I've noticed is that everyday objects you make provide a lot more wealth than you think.
I often enjoy doing the "Starting with Nothing" type colonies with only 1 or 2 people and no resources or weapons whatsoever.
With this playstyle you can easily experience the wealth aspect in action, as the first few raids frequently only consist of 1 or 2 half-naked dudes with clubs.
However, in one instance i zoned a sizable area to grow potatoes, not thinking much about it until the day after harvest and my stores were filled to the brim with food. I suddenly got a raid of 5 well armed pirates that swiftly proceeded to crush my 3 guys with shortbows into oblivion.

So, I guess the moral of this story is that potatoes are evil.
Either that, or go small on the growing in the beginning. A large excess of food is not very useful when pirates come to murder you.

[cyberian]

Hmmh, I have about 5000 of each Pemmican, Kibble and Hay in Store I guess I should reduce that.

[TheMeInTeam]

Even legendary longbows are pretty junky compared to decent quality guns.

Aside from that, you can defend w/o killbox just using perimeter wall, doors, and micromanagement.  It's less resource efficient, but more IRL time-efficient to just make the killbox, but lots of things work.

Basically, if you want nice things you should use nice weapons.  You could probably last in near perpetuity by staying super poor and just clubbing stuff/using trained animals in a pinch, especially below extreme difficulty, but after < 1 year you're basically going to stop progressing if playing that way.

[JimmyAgnt007]

So my solid gold vault filled with jade and silver, movie theater with excellent or better devilstrand chairs in front of the megascreen TV, 60+ rooms with excellent or better furniture, medical complex, full armory, prison bunks with hospital, and hundreds of hydroponics might be whats making my raids so big?  But my fancy killbox and artillery park dont seem to have issues with them.

[cyberian]

I think I am already three years in or so don't know exactly so I would have to look.
But yes I progress slowly as I also don't do super efficient hauling setups.

I guess if there is no way around it I will supply a few better weapons to my good guys and give the meatshields medieval stuff. So my original starting crew and the better pawns will get Power Amor with Sniper Rifles and Charge Rifles and the expendable crew will get medieval stuff fullplates+longbows+warhammers and sit more at the front with the Muffalos. I just want to keep some of that awesome medieval flair of the mod.

[Canute]

You don't need that many brawler 10-20% of your total with mellee weapons are enough.
But they should have shieldbelts, so they can stay at  front and draw enemy fight.
Sandbags helps to slow down enemy movement, that give your range fighter time to kill incoming mellee.
Sniper rifles are good when you need to fight at max. range, like when you take out siege camps or mechanoids.
Otherwhile assault or charge rifle are better.

[Dargaron]

One thing I've noticed is that everyday objects you make provide a lot more wealth than you think.
I often enjoy doing the "Starting with Nothing" type colonies with only 1 or 2 people and no resources or weapons whatsoever.
With this playstyle you can easily experience the wealth aspect in action, as the first few raids frequently only consist of 1 or 2 half-naked dudes with clubs.
However, in one instance i zoned a sizable area to grow potatoes, not thinking much about it until the day after harvest and my stores were filled to the brim with food. I suddenly got a raid of 5 well armed pirates that swiftly proceeded to crush my 3 guys with shortbows into oblivion.

So, I guess the moral of this story is that potatoes are evil.
Either that, or go small on the growing in the beginning. A large excess of food is not very useful when pirates come to murder you.

To build on this point: I find that growing is pretty much the wealth-production skill in Rimworld at the moment. Nothing else (except maybe collecting scyther blades/Thrumbo horns) adds to your wealth as much as harvesting a large field of potatoes, and don't even get me started on cotton: legions will park themselves at your gate to acquire that soft, plush fabric.

I finally tried starting on a tile with a 10 day growing season, and three years in, I think my biggest raid was, like, six people. On a 20 day tile, that'd easily be 10+, and likely none of them would be armed with a shoddy shiv. (I'm on Rough, with very few colonists).

It'd be nice if manufacturing was more profitable: the game is very physiocratic at the moment. But medicine is actually less valuable than its components, for example.

[Limdood]

yes, construction counts towards wealth.

silver floors are wealth for nothing, basically. 

to have low construction wealth:
build out of cheap materials
be utilitarian...wood or stone flower pots with planted daylily plants for beauty over sculptures
use smooth stone floor over flooring whenever possible
use low quality items when it won't make a difference (animal beds come to mind)

you will NEED to build wealth though...random events can kill your food supply.  If you don't stock up, your wealth will be low, but those events will screw you over.  If you do stock up, you can ride out the events, but get bigger raids.  I imagine having a good stockpile of food is fairly unavoidable, but you CAN avoid stocking up on piles of silver, extra weapons, extra clothes, drugs, cloth/leather, etc....though it will likely take effort, such as making specific open air stockpiles to let your items deteriorate and using a molotov to periodically burn some of the stuff.

It WORKS...but it seems a bit...contrived, as a method to keep wealth low.

[cyberian]

So I went through my stocks and made a few observations.

I had giant leather and Muffalo wool stocks. What I did is to blueprint a few animal beds and set them to legendary quality minimum with he quality mod. That should hopefully burn through all the stocks and train my pawns. For Leather I am dismantling all apparel up to superior and crafting again. Of course that causes high quality stuff to be produced but at least my pawns are wearing those then so it has an effect and the rest will be dismantled. I also reduced the number of pawns collecting wool to 1.

THX for all the feedback btw. this is a huge help
@Limdood
But doesn't it also reduce the silver in your stockpile by the same amount?
Unfortunately rimworldwiki does not have item wealth on most items. Does anyone know a list of item values or can I somehow look in a game file or with some dev command?
Instead of burning or deteriorating the stuff directly I am currently burning excess stocks with construct/deconstruct jobs and smelt/dismantle but I guess I might go molotov with some of the stocks where that does not help.
@Dargaron
Agree in my first game I had a way too big corn field with all year growing it was insane the stocks that produced thankfully I am 20/60 Boreal Forest now there its not that bad. Only thing I always need is a giant hay field but the animals eat most of that so the wealth does not stick.
@Canute
Yes in my unmodded game I had only 2 melees too but currently with Medieval Times mod the big medieval faction raids have more melees in them so I have more as well also because there were quite a few prisoners with melee skills I got. But its not that bad as I can use them to man ballista/catapult so they become shooters as well until the enemy has closed. I guess in vanilla you can use excess melees to man mortars.

Even though I have taken some measures my wealth is still rapidly increasing. But I guess its not that bad as I am to 14 pawns now and 20 Muffalos and could handle everything. Also bought first bionic leg and some other expensive things. So I am not really doing a "poor colony" now but I am more thoughtful that I don't have dead stocks but the wealth I own actually goes into my pawns and rooms instead of sitting unused in a stockpile for years. So no excessive hording except for food.

[Hans Lemurson]

Leaving animals un-butchered in your freezer is a good way to store a lot of food without driving up your wealth level.

[cyberian]

Leaving animals un-butchered in your freezer is a good way to store a lot of food without driving up your wealth level.

Can confirm also extends storage hugely. In my first game I had 10 Elephants in my freezer. Probably also works good with Megasloths if you don't get Elephant herd migration and easier to hunt solo.

[blightmoon]

I've read somewhere that anything above exceptional weapons/armor increases wealth and raid size more than the increase in the capability/survivability of your pawns. I suggest you get a mod to fix that bad curve on weapon/armor valuation to make legendary items worth using.

[cyberian]

So I found this old thread:
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=5327.msg50924#msg50924

where someone suggests you can actually build a walled off vault where you put your expensive items in and these then won't count towards colony wealth anymore. And his screenshot seems to proof that. Anyone knows if that still works in the current version?

Had a x19 Megasloth manhunter pack yesterday that I had to wait out and I am scared now

[RemingtonRyder]

Walling off items doesn't stop them contributing to wealth. It might have at one point, but not any more.