Please allow us to re-settle abandoned settlements.

[Drakortha]

I think this would add great longevity to existing saves. Imagine you lose your main settlement in a raid. You must abandon your settlement with the survivors you have and start over at a new location. After some time once your colony becomes strong again, you could return to your old abandoned settlement and do a fixing up job on it. Restablishing the power, fixing the walls, building the defences back up, etc.

This would be far better I think than how it is currently, where once we abandoned a settlement, we can never return. Why lock us out of that gameplay option?

[Limdood]

Why lock us out of that gameplay option?

for the same reason that running multiple colonies is disabled by default.  There is no "simulate in the background" in rimworld.  If you could return to abandoned colonies, those maps would have to be real-time simulated full time to model what you're returning to.

Or, if you're wanting the game to make a new map each time, it opens the game up to massive exploiting through mining, say, some exposed jade/gold/plasteel, abandoning, then immediately resettling a map to repeat on the same vein endlessly.

[tommiethegun]

I think the performance problems of needing to simulate the abandoned colony could be solved by only tracking how long ago the colony was abandoned. Then, when reopening the map, age the map with water and tear for however long it's been abandoned.

This way, it wouldn't need to be simulated in real-time, but walls/machines/etc could still be destroyed or damaged in that one-time re-age process.

[Third_Of_Five]

+1

Either this or allow us to tear down abandoned settlements

[patoka]

but why

the globe is so ridiculously large
i have a save with 4 bases currently (only one main base) do a whole lot of caravans and have abandoned one base before, but going back there would never cross my mind.
first of all because you could mine gold, plasteel, uranium or components forever, but you can do that already by starting new bases every two tiles
second, the world is just so damn big and ready to be explored, like come on guys

[Limdood]

keep in mind the easiest, most obvious way to implement "abandoned bases" would have been to simply delete the base off the world map when you abandon it.

The fact that it leaves an "abandoned base" icon that blocks settlement on that hex was a conscious and intentional decision which took MORE work than continuing to allow you to settle there. 

Considering they made an intentional design decision in order to get a specific result, I highly doubt they'll change things to allow the situation they specifically worked to avoid.