How do you play? (reloading, taking the losses, etc)

[Walkaboutout]

So, in an effort to shift the discussion in the "1.0 unstable now available" thread, before it gets out of hand and earns Tynan's ire for being in said thread, I thought I would post a topic related to this. More than that though, I think the subject perhaps deserves a thread, and some discussion of its own.

To be clear, this subject came up only because it was a side comment, not intended to be anything major. But, it prompted some debate afterwards, and so here I am making a thread.

The subject being debated is whether or not playing the game and re-loading when things go bad, or simply taking that shot on the chin, and moving forward with the story of tragedy as part of your history, is somehow "okay", "not okay", "wrong", or "right".

I feel the need to say to anyone who might think otherwise, that there is no right or wrong. Everyone makes their own enjoyment, in their own fashion, be it through reloading, or through accepting tragedy and moving on. I believe in this position, and will argue passionately against anyone who tries to tell me otherwise. I accept other peoples' routes to fun, challenging, and compelling gameplay, and I expect that people should, at the very least, respect my own path to such as well. There are many such paths.

Is my way for everyone else? Absolutely not. But who is anyone else to judge, how I or anyone else should receive my fulfilling gameplay?

Now, for those who are curious or care to know, I will tell you that I am a re-loader. I don't usually escape the planet in Rimworld, I build as sustainable a colony as I can possibly make. This is, in small part (and grossly over-simplified) because I play games to escape from the (often) disaster that is the real world, with lack of respect, empathy, caring, justice, etc.

I love a challenge. And there are times in Rimworld where I lose. People die. I pay my personal game play price not in loss of in game assets, but in personal time. By that, I mean that by re-loading and replaying portions of things I've already played and lost at, I pay not in moving on with losses, but in real life time. I am okay with this. Because to me, that is fun time, well spent. And through my mistakes, I learn new methods, and apply those methods to scenarios where I previously failed. And yeah, sometimes I just get lucky the second time around.

To me though, such second and third attempts are time spent on the real challenge, that exists in my own head. To enter in to a game space as a quasi-force-of-nature; my characters don't know I exist, but nevertheless I'm there, guiding certain actions. It's my challenge to see them through it. And when things go wrong, it's my job to rectify it.

This doesn't mean I don't take things on the chin, in terms of Rimworld. Sometimes someone has to lose a leg, or a hand, or something.  And yes, often enough someone dies, and I move forward. But my ultimate goal, in the end, is to see that things work out for these people. The way I wish they would for my self, and for everyone, in the real world.

Gaming is my escape. Let me find fulfillment where I can, with the systems available to me to do so, in various games. Don't judge me for my brand of play, or my play-style as it were, for I will not judge you for yours. I will advocate all day long that you be able to have your style of play and fun, even when it's not for me, because why shouldn't we all have a multitude of options in our gaming?

I would much appreciate it if others would do the same for me too. To each their own.

How do you like to play Rimworld? Build the ship? Make the colony last? Reload? Permadeath? Build a colony until you can't resist the tide of raiders?

[kenmtraveller]

I mostly play the hardcore SK modpack these days, with the rey storyteller on rough.  Haven't played 1.0 yet.

My rule is that I can reload mostly only due to UI issues.  I allow myself to reload if I don't notice a manhunting animal, but if I do notice him and my pawn still can't escape I don't reload.  or, for example, if I accidentally misclick and my guys died to friendly fire, I typically reload.

I don't reload because of raids or bad events or poor decisions on my part, if they happen and I can't survive I consider the game to have been lost and start another one, and make a better plan next time.
 
Generally I try to play at a difficulty setting where launching the spaceship is possible for me but not guaranteed.  I've also abandoned colonies and resettled in a neighboring hex before rather than losing a game or reloading.

[I Am Testing This Game]

I play iron man in tactical combat games a lot of the time, if the units are disposable enough it adds to the fun. See Battle Brothers.

I use saves in Rimworld.

I play more video games than I should, but I'm not close to having enough time to keep making colonies over and over again in Rimworld. Every colony takes many hours to get to the mid game. I should measure it some time.

There is extensive time consuming micromanagement involved in playing even a little bit efficiently. And setting up the base layout in the early game for efficiency is a somewhat tedious task that's going to be similar in every base.

I nurse one colony along, without using kill boxes or overly cheesy tactics, until I either meet a scenario that I really can't handle, or just get bored of the colony.

Usually that colony will wipe a couple times due to some stupid mistake on my end, like a mechanoid raid I didn't micromanage properly, a failed caravan attempt. At that point I do reload, if it was a "stupid death".

I am more willing to accept losses in tactical combat with human raiders, where I feel like I understood what was going on, but legitimately lost a fair fight. I did enjoy a few attempts where half my wooden base got burned down and I recovered, stuff like that.

But if one of my specialist characters dies early on, in a fair way, I'd probably just restart or play another game, rather than continuing.

[Walkaboutout]

Very interesting to me, the above posts.

In particular, Testing, I would agree with you on the motivations in Rimworld for re-loading and using saves. Too much is involved (in my simple opinion) in accepting death and restarting unless it is very early on.

Some game models provide you some carrots to do so, but not really in Rimworld. By that I mean I could possibly be persuaded to extend my "no return" point where I would start anew due to disaster, if there was something significant to provide for that in game.

I know the engine and the game model aren't really designed that way, and that's okay. But I will say, if I were able to start up a new colony in the same chronological world game-space as my failed one, well maybe I would be more inclined to do so.

I'm not saying that should be the case. That's just not the way Rimworld has been built. I'm completely fine with that, especially given how awesome Rimworld is. It just dictates certain facts about my own play, as well as others' clearly.

The varying degrees of tolerance, and fun, and breakpoints we all have is definitely interesting to hear about. We certainly make our own fun, with our own rules, don't we?

[Zombull]

Never permadeath.

That said, if I consider a pawn death legit I let it stand. It's part of the game. But a death from a bug or a game mechanic that I consider to be poorly thought out? Yeah I'll save scum or dev mode to get back on track.

I'll also occasionally save scum if a raid that should have been manageable goes completely sideways to the point of a colony wipe.

I feel no shame in doing so. I've never enjoyed games in which failure means losing everything and starting from scratch. So I just don't play that way. I just keep a "colony death counter" in my head the same way I might mentally keep track of how many times I die or lose in any other game.

[fritzgryphon]

To me it's a spreadsheet strategy game, and a ludicrously complicated one.

I play on increasing difficulty levels and harder scenarios, beating the game as quick as possible (build ship, find ship, whatever).  Pretty new to the game, and at first, it was hard just to get by on easy without conking something up (oops, forgot to have a doctor on my colony, now they're all dead).  If I get owned by a challenge, I try a new strategy, and I beat it the next time.  Losses are relevant in how they slow progression through the game, but as long as you have 1 or 2 pawns with decent skills you can always move forward. 

Only reload saves if there's an obvious glitch, or if I made some small oversight that caused a big problem (like, not noticing that a caravan had reached it's destination, and find out when I'm notified they are starving).  Other than that I like to recover from losses, or just start a new game.  I feel the early game has a nice sense of progress, with lots of building and recruiting and researching and training up.  It's fun to make an efficient and productive colony too, because it makes you more powerful and speeds your progression.  Don't get attached to a colony; once it's 'done' I get bored after a while (and maybe blow it up myself!)

The pawns are interesting in that they have diverse abilities and needs; way more engaging than your average strategy game.  But they're just obedient, replaceable AI thingies, and I don't care if they come or go.  I change their names to match their jobs and order them on the colonist bar by their combat power.

Working toward winning a NB, extra hard, Randy, random start location scenario.  Got a way to go.

[Greep]

Always permadeath since about a10 or so, but initially I did not as many scenarios didn't seem to have any reasonable counter on any difficulty.  That said, I get why people don't:  permadeath generally is best on games that are either of <4 hour duration, or are extremely generous about recovering from full catastrophes (original xcom).  Usually if you wipe in rimworld it's all over, so you really need to understand the mechanics to enjoy it.

[Grimelord82]

I appreciate you starting a new thread for this, Walkabout.

I haven't managed to launch a ship yet in 1.0. I play mostly on 2x speed and have gotten a couple years in. One of my boreal colonies got close in .1954, but I decided on restarting with temperate Tribals because I hadn't in a long time. Tribals are having a Randy Rough go, for sure.
I also enjoy playing around with mods. 800+ hours, mostly with as many mods as I can tolerate due to startup time.

As I said in the unstable build thread: Failure takes 30 seconds, sometimes. But long term failures also start deathspirals. Deathspirals can be fun to watch happen, or they can be two hour panicked slogs where nothing goes right and you rage-quit. That's a neat story on reflection, but not fun for me in the execution. And I would rather lose 2 hours of playtime than start a new colony.
Success takes hours, minimum. So I play to succeed, despite the setbacks I have. There are lots of fail states to consider, depending on scenario.

Here's a host of reasons I save-scum/dev-mode:

1) You need a +8 grower to make medicine, and even a 8x8 constantly growing field of herbal may not be enough. Maybe I want to see what happens if I give my plagued doctor immunity.
2) You need a +10 doctor, a clean room, a normal+ bed, and generally standard medicine to have a pawn survive Plague. Flu is a lot less punishing than it used to be, thankfully.
3) New-ish failure mode: send folks caravaning, lose them to sickness, starvation from injury carrying, random dangerous manhunter. Lose colony to a raid because you sent your best shooter to guard your best trade bargainer to buy enough medicine to keep you going for another half year. Use up all your stored pemmican getting that medicine. Then get hit with blight. Then get hit with toxic fallout. This literally happened to me in my current tribal game and we just about starved.
4) Refugee raids are still about 2x as hard as any other type. They tend to kill or incap one of your colonists that you PICKED while giving you one of dubious value. If I was playing perma-death, I would literally never take refugees given the current balance.
5) Losing limbs to Lancers is not generally a game ender in 1.0 Crashlanded for me. It was in previous versions because prosthetics kinda blew. A pawn that is up, and moving around, with 10+ shooting but 50% manipulation and 25% sight isn't the same as one with both arms attached and unscarred eyes, but I've felt the game treats them as such for a long time. I'd love to have a few weapons for pawns like this. Like a re-tooled shotgun that sprayed multiple projectiles.
6) There are 12 skills, and every pawn is critical up to a larger than expected number. I stated a few above, but there are other examples. 10+ Social for recruiting is required or it takes years sometimes. 3+ construction is required, or you can't build traps and will get overwhelmed. Tough/Nimble/Brawler is required on at least one pawn, because melee folks will stab your gunners to death. Handling 5+ is now required if you want to keep any trained animals. A pack of dogs is GREAT for hauling, but takes upkeep.
6a) Skill level doesn't reflect ability. My starting doctor with 10+ medical lost a thumb and got an eye almost gouged out despite being back line defense. She's now worth only 70% of what she could do. Long term death spiral, no fix aside from recruiting a new pawn.
6b) Spreading pawn jobs out over more than 3-4 primaries becomes incredibly inefficient. This is why I say that 6+ pawns are critical, because you are likely to have someone to fill the gap if you have good pawns. If you don't, prepare for a death spiral.
7) Animals now get sick. If I'm using my single arctic wolf or elephant as a meatshield during raids, and they're down/dying, then I'm effectively down a pawn or two. Anything bear+ sized is somewhat amazing vs human raids, btw. It's great because I want to take care of them with medicine. But they'll go lay down in a dirty cave corner despite having a nice fluffy bed in my hospital.

[NiftyAxolotl]

The game is a puzzle to me. Because it has randomness in it, I have to make decisions under uncertainty. Personally, I feel that reloading would negate all my fun thinky-crafty-puzzly time. So I play on permadeath. I am sometimes tempted to use devmode to fix the result of a misclick or glitch, but I almost always play it where it lies just out of a sense of purity.

As soon as I feel comfortable with a difficulty level, I ratchet it up, maybe through the biome, mods, or storyteller. I doubt that I'll get to the "Extreme NB Randy Ice Sheet" level that other forum goers play on, but it could happen.

[Syrchalis]

I always save, but I sometimes load. That's basically my philosophy. I'm a game designer myself, so I'll play games differently than others. I surely spend half my "playing" time not actually playing rimworld but writing patches to modify values I think are too high or low, or I open photoshop and create better assets, however mainly for mods that have crappy ones *cough* mending *cough*.

If some BS happens, like just now I got an elephant manhunter pack and one colonist got hit once and that's it, otherwise I played it perfectly. But that one hit was a tusk through her brain, so she's a vegetable - despite having an excellent advanced helmet. That's BS. Sometimes I would devmode it, sometimes I would reload, this time I just keep her in bed and will fix her later without using saves/devmode, the "legit" way - because I feel up to the task and am sure it's going to be interesting and not tedious.

If you can edit nearly all values anytime it's pretty hard not to "cheat".

[Lancefighter]

For the most part, id agree that losing a couple critical roles can be close to a death sentence. I dont feel like the storytellers try to make sure you hvae a grower, doctor, etc, but losing your cook that youve been relying on is a big deal.

In a similar game (something something dwarf fortress), high skilled people are nice but not going to make or break a colony, because there are somewhat few gates to things. Any dwarf can plant, harvest, and doctor within a year ... But more importantly, you end up with a number of unemployed and/or dedicated militiamen, so your core farmer/grower/doctor/mayor whatever dont need to go fight every time anything happens.

[zizard]

Reload to try different things = learn game much faster. Reload to RNG a different result = might as well use dev mode. I wouldn't call the former save scumming.

[Syrchalis]

I really think save scumming is one of the things that should really be used where it originated - in roguelikes. Rimworld is somewhat random and has some traits from roguelikes but it's not one. It's a space colony simulator (quote).

If you try the same thing over and over via saving and you wait for RNG to be on your side - that's save scumming. But retrying with different approaches and overcoming the difficulties with skill, that's just normal gameplay. Some enjoy the drama that defeat brings with it and feel like reloading is cheating, while others feel the same defeat not when their last pawn falls, but when they are forced to reload and try again.

The only difference really is the iteration time. The ones that do not use saves may enjoy playing from start again more, enjoy the early game more or simply are, like I said above, enjoying the drama. The save users rather enjoy overcoming the challenge, the same challenge.

In fact one could even turn it around and say people who don't use saves to retry avoid the challenge by just starting over. (Note this is a BS argument and I don't mean it, I just wanted to show that the opposite is equally stupid).

[ChJees]

I only really reload if I felt the way I took the loss was bullshit. E.g forget a colonist on a mortar shooting anti-grain shells at enemies only for them shooting in the middle of your colonists killing a majority of them.

Otherwise I will take colonists and animals dying and keep playing.

[Sirsir]

I savescum, but only to replay scenarios. I don't run from the challenges (on purpose, I forget to save more often than I'd like to admit) but I like to play them out in different ways. Learning from losses is a lot less effective when it takes several hours of playtime to get to the point where you can use that knowledge again.

And theres the occasional total irrational BS. Then I say to the game, 'hey I can do that too ' and turn back time