So many questions, so many game

[Mokaran90]

Hello everyone,

I'm new to Rimworld, been playing for 15 days more or less, had fired up 3 or 4 colonies until nailing the basics and sticking to the one now on the space drop pod scenario with cassandra on normal.

Things have been good by now but I have a few questions regarding mechanics, animals, world, etc. So here I go:

I think I got lucky with animals so far, I started with a rat (bruh) then a squirrel self tamed, then a rhino (!) and then two stray huskies joined. I got them restricted areas to my food because they got it all messy when it rained and also ate my good quality food y'know. I see my rhino and the small animals survive foraging the grass and that's cool, but my huskies, I don't know, should I make them food? Cause I got a bit of a problem with that too, I mean I have plenty of foods but not so much cooks. Also, ¿How many animals is too many?

On another topic, and regarding what I said before about my cook, I got a problem and I think that's why I've been so slow developing. I think I'm +8 hours on my actual main colony and it has been so slow because the guy with the highest cooking skill is also my main builder, I got a guy dedicated to research, another to mine an craft and two more on hauling, hunting and planting plants. The thing is the main cook is also the main builder, I have now 6 ppl in my colony and we can cook fine meal, but then there is no time to build, and there are tasks that take a lot of time like smoothing surfaces or laying bricks on the floor, and if he cooks he can't do this. Should I replace my cook and try to train another pawn? I normally play on normal speed because I like to control but It''s been a bit of a drag? maybe that's the pace the game is supposed to be? I dunno, there is so much work to be done in my colony still, gotta rearrange my main stockpile when winter passes to make room for productions and also more dorms but good lord the task is humongous for just one builder!

Moving on, world map: I got familiarized with forming caravans, my first one was a rescue mission that went pretty well, the second one was a trade agreement that also had gone well, but I realized that sooner or later I will deplete the resources in my current map (iron, machinery and minreal related). This means I can exploit other spots in the map to bring resources to my main colony right?

Raids, so far raids have been pretty sparing, the first three where lone guys naked, the poor fellas, I armed my paws with recurve bows and have a sweet spot into a clare, surrounded by rocks, you can only enter by two spots on top and left and it's been a breeze defending, but recently they got a bit more serious, last one was three guys with SMGs and such, not much problem but they are mounting up. Also my rhino defends my paws, rams into people, his name is clarence, I love him, good chap, absolute unit.

Drugs, should I get my colony indulge in smokeleaf and beer? So far they are pretty clean and most of them are content, but I think it wouldn't hurt to let them a bit of this kind of fun, I guess I'll find out in time cause the other more pontent drugs will also come in time.

Infestations, I have a mountain base, not very deep cause it's in a clare and the mountain has limits on top and bottom, but I am dreadely afraid of infestations, I paved my interiors with sandston bricks cause I saw on a video you can set up explosives in rooms to let the furniture burn a roast those pests, but I still have no technology, I saw also a video of how they worked and the spawn algorythm and I can say that I'm pretty safe still but ho well, tips agains infestations?

Also, I have a special animal around my base, Thrumbo, I shit you not he roams at the front door of my base, the game let me know that it's really prized to sell to merchants, but I'm afraid I can take a beating from this beast, with 6 pawns.

For now, that's it, but there will be more I'm sure.

Thanks for your comments!

[Shurp]

Here's my take:

1) You normally want to let all your colonists get experience hauling bricks and building walls.  Bricks can be easily replaced if they screw up.  But don't let unskilled pawns touch solar cells or batteries or anything else with substantial component inputs.  You can't afford to waste those.

2) Higher up on the research tree you'll see an option for "deep drilling" which will allow you to pull up resources from underground.  This will probably be far less hassle than trying to set up mining colonies and ferrying supplies to your main base.  Don't forget that your mining colony will be subject to raids and other trouble... often simultaneously with attacks on your main base.  Running a battle on two maps at once is a huge headache.

3) I find it very helpful to have a smokeleaf stockpile nearby if my pawns are having a bad day.  But I don't let them use it regularly, it slows them down too much.

Hope that helps!

[Canute]

Animals:
About ¿How many animals is too many? there is just a topic here at the general with excatly the same name
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=45927.0
Food for animals, kibble is only worth it, when you can made it out of hay. It is a waste if you take your vegetables for them, then you better use pemmican or simple meals.
Restricted area's are fine for the animal, a little tip to do it faster, just set a zone around the spot your fire get stored, then go into zone managment, and invert that zone.
And you should think why do you want animals.
A rat don't have a big use for your, except as target dummy on raids.
Animal's they are fast, can haul and don't have a high wilderness are perfect as hauler.
Other animals you can use as pack animal's for caravan, give mosttimes wool and milk too.
Boomalope give neutroglycerin you can use to made chemfuel, and chemfuel generator are very efficient.

It is a bad idea to mix 2 high time intensive skill's into one pawn.
Better train up an unskilled one into construction or cooking. Or you never will have some good quality bed's.
Basicly you got 5 time intensive jobs.
Building/construction.
Crafting
Cooking
Researching.
Animal handling (Depend how many animal's you got).
Ofcouse not to forget Cleaning and hauling( can be done by animals).


Yes, you can create more settlement's, or you can made tradeable item's, like armor, drugs or art and sell these to other outposts for Resources.
Btw. if you can't create a second colony, check the option "Max. number of colonies" is just 1 on default.
And on temp. map, you should deconstruct ruin's for steel and maybe stoneblocks if you got the transport capacity.


Raids,
the first few raids are allways pretty weak, i think after 1 or 2 years, you should await raid's depend on your colony wealth.
So after a year you should have build some defence structures like trap and narrow passages, single wall or sandbags for cover.


Drug,
you need them, so many different one you can grow up.
The mood of your pawn's is very important, and you don't want to have mental break.
So a joint,tea,beer a day are your friend.


Infestation,
ohh yeah they can ruin your day. They like to spawn at warm,dark area's under a mountain. But there are many topic's about how to handle them, just search the general forum about Infestation.


Thrumbo,
each one drop a horn when you butcher it, market price ~1500 silver and it is a good piercing weapon (10 DPS).
The leather/fur is high prices and the best leather, around the same stats like hyperweave.
But yes they are a tough beast, and you need all your pawn's to hunt them.
My tactic, the fastest pawn try to run away from the thrumbo, while all other shoot at it.
Normaly the thrumbo is faster then your pawn's, so you should attack at max. distance, so your kiting pawn got a bit distance/time until your other pawn's maybe could slow down the thrumbo.

[BLACK_FR]

I don't know what difficulty you are playing, my advice is coming from viewpoint of higher difficulties. There are many advices here: https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=45664.0

1) Regarding animals. You have to decide what animals are actually useful. If animal is not actually useful - get rid of it, because it's bad idea to waste time on maintaining it. If you decide that animal is useful (I would definitely keep Rhino for fighting) - plan it food just like you would do for the pawn. And keep in mind that every new animal requires some time to maintain.

2) Regarding cooking/building. First of all you have to figure out desired configuration of who makes what work. Than you have to set priorities for that. In that process interest is much more important than actual skill. Does any other of your pawns has interes in cooking? Than let him do it and free your builder for building. No one with interest in cooking but other pawn with interest in building? Give him building duty and let your cook do the cooking.

3) Regarding global map. Deep drilling will give so much more resources. But yes, you can do mining caravans if you would like (you can mine machinery and other high-valuables ores). But in my practice deep drilling is better.

4) Smokeleaf is trash, don't make it ever. Make Psychoid pekoe. It also lifts mood, but it also replenishes rest and has no side-effects. Beer is too much hassle in my opinion, not worth it.
Also you should make the most important drug in the game - penoxycyline. All your pawns should always be under it's effect.

5) Don't touch Thrumbo, it's deadly.

[Shurp]

If you have a stock of medicine and good doctors you can manage without penoxycline.  I don't know which is easier to get.

[Bobisme]

a solid supply of penoxi is hard to get considering it takes 2 nutroamine to make 1 each time, i'd hold of until you have a sustainable income, penoxi will reduce the chance of disease though you will still get the odd one, i love the stuff.

Get a noob builder to make walls, walls are dime a dozen and no great impact on lost resources when the noob fails, great for slowly building the skill

Place a stock pile of 'rice' next to the 'stove' to reduce the time your cook wastes

Dogs are a great way to reduce wasted haul time and good for attacking,
a large stock pile of veggies never hurts you could leave meat to animals and cook simple meals just from veggies to save  meat for animals that need it

Play with zones, create a zone where you don't want the dogs to go, and the click manage zone and invert, it's golden

I use beer on a schedule of every second day if they have low mood and any joy level, i generally avoid other drugs, my pawns get hooked to quick and smoke leaf slows them down, though luciferium is a whole different story heh

with bugs, i have a mountain base, you can do a few things, if they infest your base lure them out to open terrain/turrets or seal em in n burn em out, molotov n some furniture ftw, they don't like a high light level and the roof has to be overhead mountain, though, if that style of roof exists they can spawn away from it, insect meat n hay is great for kibble

[BLACK_FR]

@Shurp
You can manage without stock of food too, but it's really better to have one, same with penoxycyline. But having no food is less dangerous than having no penoxy. Getting hit by plague or sleeping sickness puts you in danger. Any additional threat can end your colony.

@Bobisme
On hardest difficulty you can get 1 neirotamine for 10 silver. So for one pawn it cost you 60 silver per season and 240 silver per year to always be under the effect of penoxy. It's not nothing but it's not that great.
Compare it with risk of getting plague or sleeping sickness. Even without other threats it creates an emergency that cost more than price of penoxy. Then add the fact that another threat in that time (raid, for exapmle) becomes so much more dangerous and can end the colony.
I don't know how you can conclude that penoxy is not a number 1 priority.
Also why don't you use psychoid pekoe? In my view it's strictly better than beer or joints.

[Bobisme]

If you got the cash i'd go for penoxy, it is great stuff and underrated as long as you can buy it and as long as you can still have some neutroamine left over to make medicine. or cash to buy medicine
Penoxy's good n all but it wont stop you bleeding to death, with limited funds i'd rather have someone sick in bed then dead in bed lol
I don't buy penoxy i only make it.

[Mokaran90]

Many thanks guys, that insight on the drugs was helpful, I've been peeking on the research chart for every drug and wentr like "ok, I can see this is important". So far I only had plague on my animals and treated them with herbal medicine.

When can I be able to lay stone/brick walls? The only structure I can buy right now is made out of wood, and I can only place sandstone bricks for now. I noticed you can build stone or marble walls, what technology is required?

How do I make cocktail molotov? Need to harvest chemfuel first maybe? I say so because I have a little morge I want to burn up so I don't have to hold all thos corpses and get a x8 debuff anytime any pawn with no psychopath trait goes to dump one.

Oh, and, If I want to recruit pawns that come on raids, I have to struck them with melee for a better chance of incapacitation? I say so because lately all the raids are being mowed down by ranged weapons and not a single one survives for enprisonment. I figured if I bash them with clubs maybe the chance is better.

Thanks!

[Canute]

When can I be able to lay stone/brick walls? The only structure I can buy right now is made out of wood, and I can only place sandstone bricks for now. I noticed you can build stone or marble walls, what technology is required?

Basicly you can build wall's from the beginning no special research is needed.
But you need to have the material.
You can deconstruct stone wall from ruin's to gain stone blocks.
With this blocks in your stockpile you can build wall's out of these blocks.
Left click at the wall will open the material selection, but it only show the material you got in your stockpiles/map.
Same to floor.

Oh, and, If I want to recruit pawns that come on raids, I have to struck them with melee for a better chance of incapacitation? I say so because lately all the raids are being mowed down by ranged weapons and not a single one survives for enprisonment. I figured if I bash them with clubs maybe the chance is better.

Yep, your idea is right. Attacking with blunt weapons the chance is higher that they can survive.
But the game don't like that your can recuit easiely raiders, and it add a high chance that raiders will die. But the raids will be larger, and mosttimes you will get a few prisoner.
You can get Psychic shock lance from mission or trader you can instantly down someone for a short period of time.
Good for raider with good stats you might like to recruit.

[Scavenger]

The rimworld wiki also has answers to the majority of this, and most of it seems to be updated to the full release. It is very helpful and easy to use!

[Mokaran90]

The rimworld wiki also has answers to the majority of this, and most of it seems to be updated to the full release. It is very helpful and easy to use!

You're right, but some mechanics are not entirely explained, see the walls thing, I didn't know you could left click to select the materials if you have them in stock.

[Serenity]

When can I be able to lay stone/brick walls? The only structure I can buy right now is made out of wood, and I can only place sandstone bricks for now. I noticed you can build stone or marble walls, what technology is required?

You no longer need to research stone cutting unlike in old versions. Just build a stone cutters table and you can turn chunks into blocks there. Either set up Do X times bill and order some bricks now and then, or use Do Until X with a hysteresis to always have some in stock