Population cap question

[tsmt1001]

Is there such thing as a population cap or it's just limited by the hardware?

I have a fairly powerful desktop. And I am more of a relaxed player, so I start out with easy difficulty and then maybe hike it a bit later in the game. So what I observed is that the only limitation is the number of moving pawns on the map. I can have lots of colonists and fewer animals or fewer colonists and lots of animals, and I need to save room for raiders so to speak, because when I had 90 colonists, 25 animals and 100 raiders, the software took a really long time to think (and I usually use this point as an indication that it is time to start a new colony). So is there a limit on how many colonists you can have? Apparently there is a mod which doubles population cap, but I don't have it active and I am still able to have this many colonists.

[Limdood]

There is a "soft cap"

Basically, when below a very low amount (usually below 2), the AI is programmed to weigh events that provide new colonists much more heavily.

Below 4, they will still weigh new colonist events heavily, but it won't be quite as obvious or frequent as having 1 pawn.

From 4 to a different amount (dependent on storyteller, usually 8-12), there won't be any special adjustments...you'll get new pawn events at a "normal" rate, and enemies downed will sometimes die, sometimes just go incapacitated.

After 12, it's really really based on storyteller, but in general, there is a weighting AGAINST new colonist events (wanderer joins, etc.) or they'll be disabled altogether.  Traders will stop having slaves to purchase.  Enemies that are downed will gain a vastly increased chance to die (if they drop from pain or too-low consciousness or movement, the game adds on an extra (quite large) chance to die).  The only "new colonist" events that seem to continue appearing after this "soft cap" are refugee events, forcing you to fight a raid for one pawn.

The exact numbers are based on storyteller, and I don't know them offhand, but I do remember point that cassandra and phoebe go all out to remove new colonist situations is MUCH lower than Randy (i want to say ~20 vs. ~50)

Basically, the game tries to keep you in a "sweet spot" for number of colonists.  You CAN climb over the soft cap....enough raiders will eventually start producing prisoners, which can be recruited normally (or certain mods have pawn-generating events, or allow pawn generating situations to continue after the soft cap - for example I use a mod that keeps slaves showing up from traders), but the game weights events to make it hard, while simultaneously weighing events to help a colony that suffered catastrophic losses recover back up to the "sweet spot"

[Canute]

I think he talk about the Rimworld engine itself not the storyteller/gameplay.
I never hear about a hard cap for how many pawn's you can control or can have on the map.
It is indeed the limit of your mashine.
With the older 32 bit only version, the limit was the memory. But with the 64 bit version this limit got broken.
At some point you just need to turn of the colonist bar, but i think with 90 you allready got that point.

And Rimworld isn't very optimized, for very large colonies the game will run slower and slower special on raids.

[tsmt1001]

Thanks, that covers it. I've noticed that the game gets excruciatingly slow when you have 200+ pawns on the map. But soft cap info is really useful.