The Epic Caravan -- Routing Difficulties

[Anan]

I'm finding Rimworld immersive and challenging as a beginner, but I'm having some difficulty that may be related to my inexperience or to a design flaw. Perhaps you can tell me which.

At the beginning of our third spring in-game, we wish to make a try for the AI Spaceship that is apparently waiting for us about 20 days travel from our base. We are a small, cohesive band that has worked hard to build our assets for this journey. We don't see surviving the growing bands of raiders long enough to build a spaceship, so we want to try a mad dash for safety. We think we have ample supplies and a nice stash of silver plus some trade goods. We don't expect to ever see our base again. We know we'll likely face raids along the way and at our destination. We hope to be fast learners in this challenging environment.

Problem: only 25 way-points are allowed. This makes it difficult to choose our preferred route, avoiding enemy bases, impassable tiles, and hostile climates. When our way-points are very far apart, the route wants to go to the nearest highway, often leading us too close to enemy bases for our comfort, given our minimal numbers. Too many way-points and it's all to do over :-(

We tried mapping a partial route, but found our caravan halted indefinitely at the end and we couldn't find a way to quickly gather up our stuff and reform it. We are now demoralized and wish there were a helpful deity available... a god of travel, as it were.

Is anybody out there?

[Anan]

OK, we made it!

None of what follows is intended to detract from the awesome achievement of the dev(s). Getting to the top of Metacritic's list of current PC games is an epic deed!

Where I might have hoped for some more help from the game was in navigating my caravan across the continent while avoiding high-risk tiles. It seems there are two distinct methods, one that's used initially and one that must be used to restart the parade after any sort of adventure. My suggestion would be to either find a way to integrate methods so the same system can be used throughout, or at least provide a tutorial so the user doesn't have to struggle with the transition.

From what I've read about this game in other forums, there's a hard-core fandom who've been following its development over months and years. For them, pushing buttons to find out what happens is part of the fun. But if the dev(s) want to maximize their economic potential, they need to pay attention to the mass of potential players who need a little more hand-holding. This game is so deep, there are a lot of ways to drown. Perhaps one could specify whether one wants a lot of hand-holding or a little, thereby satisfying the broadest possible market.

I certainly wish you the brightest possible future and will be very interested to see what you do next!