Managing multiple colonies.

Started by Demoulius, December 27, 2018, 12:18:32 AM

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Demoulius

Hi all,

Ive got some questions regarding colony management. In particular in how the game handles several colonies at once. My main colony is rapidly running out of hills/mountains to mine for steel and other minerals. It is located quite close to some mountain ranges though and I want to setup another colony to act as a mine.

1: How does the story teller AI handle events. Do they happen on all colonies, or just at one?
2: If I get attacked, do I get attacked everywhere or just in 1 spot?
3: On that point, if I get attacked in a newer settlement will the attack be as heavy as the one I would receive in my main settlement?
4: Are temperatures the same in every colony or are they seperate from eachother?
5: How does the AI storyteller decide what happens where? If we get attacked, does it prioritize any colonies?
6: If all your colonists get killed in 1 location, can you still send colonists from another location to that colony afterwards to recover the colony or is it lost forever?
7: I take supplies are tied to the colony in that they are in. Is there a way to share resources or are we basicly stuck with constant caravaning back and forth if we want to take supplies from point A and use them in point B?

Cheers for any help with this  ;D

Shurp

I don't have much experience with this, but I can share some basic info.  Each settlement is treated as an independent colony.   So they have their own events, their own raids, their own wealth factor, their own temperature etc.  And you can have simultaneous raids on separate colonies from separate factions, which can be a real micromanagement nightmare to handle.

I don't know what happens if all your colonists at a settlement are killed while another is running.  My guess is that the raiders will burn it down, but you can send in reinforcements to rescue it if they can get there before everything burns.
If you give an annoying colonist a parka before banishing him to the ice sheet you'll only get a -3 penalty instead of -5.

And don't forget that the pirates chasing a refugee are often better recruits than the refugee is.

Yoshida Keiji

I have been playing games with up to three simultaneous colonies. Mind you, version 1.0 is very fucked up, particularly in this aspect since Tynan completely removed rare minerals from temporal maps, making resource gathering a total pain.

The where you settle "mining" colonies is important:

A) You must leave 1 world tile between colonies. If you keep them close, moving pawns from one colony to another is pretty fast. If the distance is greater, you should build Pod Launchers for emergency back-up in other colonies.

1) The story teller will reset to zero in any new colony you build. This can easily be checked by tracking how much Crashed Ship Part events delay to trigger in new colonies. All colonies will have their own time-lined story teller. Even empty colonies will still have events. You can get caravan visits when nobody is around too. So if you have three colonies...your trade chances triple.

Bonus: https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=33597.0

2) Raids are particular to each colony. But you still can get raided in every each one of your colonies. Though the relationship points will all be the same.

3) New colonies will have smaller attacks as mentioned in 1.

4) Temperatures are different, out of fun, you can settle each new colony in a different biome, but that would probably not cover your "mining" goal. Though...as mentioned in the introduction, version 1.0 still needs a LOT of fixing as you can get Polar Bears appearing in a Tropical Forest map...and we are not talking about rare species illegal smuggling ...

5) is same answer as 1.

6) You can get wiped in one out of five colonies but still not lose the game. Raiders will NOT necessarily raze your whole base. But that differs a lot in how you build your bases. If your standard game is aimed towards the "super-structure" which is a large rectangle with all rooms inside... it can all burn together, unless proper incendiary prevention measures were taken. If you build rooms like a small village town, then fire may not turn everything into ashes, flooring stone corridors three tiles wide can isolate fire very well to a certain degree.

7) Is like answer A) if your new colonies are just 1 tile away from each other, moving efforts are minimal. So a lot depends on how you settle, if 5 colonies in a straight line. Or 5 colonies with your original in the middle and the other 4 surrounding it is safer.

Bonus: https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Offense_tactics#Teleporting

Bonus: Since as said in the intro, v1.0 is seriously messed up, playing in flat maps is sadistic already so settling in hilly maps is more sane...BUT...if you running out of rare materials too soon, maybe the problem is in how you are consuming resources.


antibodee

I find the game utterly unplayable without vegetable garden, tbh.  I can't deal with a limit to available resources.  If you grow them, it's still working hard for them so it doesn't feel like cheating.

Demoulius

Thanks for the replies so far  ;D

I play on a fairly flat map. I think I had like 3 or 4 somewhat decent hills on the map. Ive dug up half of them so far. Thing is you need steel for alot of things and certainly for most defensive and electronic items. Ive found a few good veins of steel but its basicly limiting how quikly I can grow at this point. I think ive seen 2 veins still on the map and 1 is part of an ancient horror so id prefer to not touch that one at all...

Ive got a (almost completly) walled settlement with individual shacks and comunal buildings setup currently. Getting there was a real headache but now thats its almost done it should ease the game abit by adding safety to the colonists. Like I said though resources are starting to be an issue  :-[

Luckily ive got a few mountain tiles a few tiles away from my main settlement so when I get a few more colonists im going to see if I cant setup my mine :)

Thanks for clearing up my questions guys!  ;D

Canute

Demoulius,
you can either advance to deep mining, to mine minerals underground.
Or trade then with other factions.
Drugs are a good lightweight tradegood. You can either call caravan's or visit outpost by yourself, but don't forget to get packanimals, steel is heavy.

And you can goto the Ancient danger, so long you don't break the wall's nothing happen.

Shurp

And even if you break the walls not much happens.  Sure, the poor pawn who breaks the wall will probably get chopped up by scythers before he can run, but your other pawns will be able to gun them down with ease.  Ditto for the pawn who goes to open the cryptocaskets, he'll get gunned down but there won't be that many spacers inside to deal with.

I don't think Ancient Dangers have been very dangerous since, what, a17?
If you give an annoying colonist a parka before banishing him to the ice sheet you'll only get a -3 penalty instead of -5.

And don't forget that the pirates chasing a refugee are often better recruits than the refugee is.

Demoulius

Ive seen deep mining listed in the research tab but im not sure how it works?  ???

Ive been trading for steel whenever I see it and im not actively trading for anything else. The weight has been a thorn in my side allright  :-[ considering i got like... 8 Muffalo though youd think id be using them more actively as pack animals  ;D something to keep in mind in the future!

Maybe ancient dangers are not very dangerous as far as you are concerned but id like to keep my colonists alive if at all possible. Spacers and scythers are about the most dangerous things that I can inmagine so id prefer to see them gone from my sight....

Shurp

Downing colonists doesn't kill them.  They might lose a few body bits but after you kill the scythers you can pick up the injured and take them home to patch them up.

I've never been able to make pack animals work.  But that's because there's no wagons in Rimworld so there's no way to get a muffalo to pull three times his body weight.  So they don't increase carrying capacity enough to be worth the bother.
If you give an annoying colonist a parka before banishing him to the ice sheet you'll only get a -3 penalty instead of -5.

And don't forget that the pirates chasing a refugee are often better recruits than the refugee is.

Canute

Shurp,
since animal can grass at caravan's they are definitiv worth it. At the most biome's you don't need to carry extra animal food with you.
And how do you get stuff to other locations, when your pawn's mosttimes out of weight with their weapons and armors ? Do you let them run at tribal clothes on caravan's so they can carry some stuff ?

Shurp

I usually play cold biomes so there's not much opportunity for pack animals to forage.  That's probably what's causing the trouble for me.

As for colonist weight, they just carry flak vests and charge rifles, nothing too heavy.  And I only send them out to buy components, medkits, plasteel, and other light high value goods.  When I need regular steel I just intensify my mining operations and switch to deep mining when the surface map is tapped out.
If you give an annoying colonist a parka before banishing him to the ice sheet you'll only get a -3 penalty instead of -5.

And don't forget that the pirates chasing a refugee are often better recruits than the refugee is.

The Man with No Name

Correct me if I'm wrong, but population cap is calculated per colony rather than overall, so founding a small resource-gathering outpost in another planet tile could lead to a doubling of one's overall population.

Are there any mods that change this so that the population cap does not increase with founding new colonies?

Demoulius

Quote from: Shurp on December 31, 2018, 03:52:35 AM
Downing colonists doesn't kill them.  They might lose a few body bits but after you kill the scythers you can pick up the injured and take them home to patch them up.
Maybe im looking at this differently, but it only takes 'a few body parts' to be missing to completly make a colonist deadweight to the colony. If someone is very good with their hands and one of their arms gets chopped off (and they survive) they will lose alot of effeciency. And im not wealthy enough that I can start replacing body parts willy nilly yet...

Best I could afford is a prostethic at the moment. So id rather not lose any body parts at all :P

I am almost at the point where ive researched bionics myself though, perhaps at that stage they become more of an option? Buying them with silver just isent an option  :-[

Shurp

They're pretty expensive to manufacture too.  4 advanced components and 15 plasteel.
If you give an annoying colonist a parka before banishing him to the ice sheet you'll only get a -3 penalty instead of -5.

And don't forget that the pirates chasing a refugee are often better recruits than the refugee is.

Demoulius

Oh wow, those are the mats for bionics?  :o

Guess getting the mine up and running is abit higher priority then I thought  :-[