Why do your colonists build a space ship?

[East]

It is like a religion.
The belief that you can go to heaven through a spaceship.
In some ways it may be more realistic than religion.
At rimworld, glitterworld(=heaven) exists.
And no matter how you develop base, rimworld(world) is at risk of ruin.

In a game sense, not a story, it means ending. We just run there because there is an end. That's it.

[Emulsion]

There is no music and no instrument of any kind. How are you going to enjoy all the beer and drugs this way ;-)

"I haven't heard a single beat for the last 6 years, let's escape this hell!"


Seriously, I have a hard time to find a reason for leaving every time I played a colony that long, because of all the reasons you mentioned, absolute freedom being the first on my list.
And living for 9 years on this world changes the view on life and even let you forget some old friends I guess so I don't see the point really..
I usually build the ship if I run out of meaningful things to do with a colony and skip the RP-thinking for that part..

But maybe being always at the risk of losing another finger/toe/ear/eye/arm... is more threatening IRL than it looks from behind the desktop and is worth getting away asap

[Klomster]

Good point there.

Why isn't there like.
Crappy radio.
Stereo.
Super disco DJ station. One can place in a room, giving a joy boost to colonists in the room?
It shouldn't be much, but these parties without music and the fact TV's have stations running but no radio?

It shouldn't be much, just something that helps keep the joy up.
They shouldn't stack, give just a bit and be tricky but not impossible to get.
Like tv's, crappy tv one can build, the better ones are buy only.

[eugeneb]

Sorry for necro-posting (truth is I had a mental brake and decided to dig up this thread and display it on the front page)! It has been a while and I've just had my first run where I built a space ship and escaped (and that's after 1k hours on the Rim ). I think in this play-through I settled on the role play reasons to build the space ship.

To make the long story short, even though your colony is extremely nice and cozy after several years, random pieces of information you gather are pointing towards the high likelihood that the planet is heading towards doom. The planet was definitely highly developed at some point: it has planet-wide road system, decaying infrastructure (toxic fallout), advanced sattelite network (tv, tornado generator, orbital targeters) and glitterworld-level people all over the place in ancient shrines. Additionally, whatever happened here, happened recently: many people in the ancient shrines have been there for a few decades only.

And then come the dangers. Pirates and tribes are ok and expected: they don't notice you in the beginning and only some random drunk would occasionally try to raid you. They notice you eventually and try to crash you but typically fail. It is fairly safe to assume that at this point they are trying their best and you can typically control this threat. However mechs and infestations are different. You keep getting them in increasing numbers and this threat is a big unknown. Perhaps those increasing infestations and mech raids are just the small frontline force with the main bulk of it catching up to completely erase you from the planet. Perhaps they are even the source of the downfall of this planet. All these mech ships that rain from the sky are highly suspicious too. Was there some massive orbital warfare with mechs programmed to erase all human life here for one reason or another? Add here that the ship magically experiencing failure in this planet's orbit. And not just yours, there are other people who keep falling from orbit too.

IMO with all this info, even if you are not a big fun of civilized planets with their governments and all that comes with this, it's fairly safe to assume that for better or worse, it's reasonable to start working on a space ship to GTFO from this planet ASAP before one day you get raided by an endless wave of bugs or mechs.