How can you play Rimworld over and over again?

[TomTaylor99]

First of all, I really like Rimworld, especially with mods. I have over 1000 hours in Rimworld, but now, after I saved my last colony with the space ship, I'm done with it. I mean, don't you look at your late game colony and think: My colony survived a real long time, but it's getting bored. Because you have no goal to achieve.

My question is, what goals do you have in Rimworld? After you built a stable base, tons of food and ressources and colonists with bionic arms and legs? I know, mods keep the game more interesting, but for me, when I reach late game, I always get to this f****** point, where I have no goals to achieve.

What goals do you have in the late game? After you have literally everything?

[B@R5uk]

I don't like late game and even middle game. So I just start anew over and over again. My goal is to have fun with optimizing and micro in early game provides with this fun. Well, maybe if I have access to AI of my pawns to reprogram them I would have been lost in game much more...

And yeah, I don't use mods. Game have a lot of fun for me even without them.

[Canute]

Like B@R5uk i don't like late game, it's boring (beside the last ship reactor event).

Starting new colonies at different biomes, with different set of mods.
Try out some tribe at the desert. Or Werwolfes without range weapons.
Play the different Androids races.
Play against zombies,bugs.
Have Minion's as animals or robot hauler/cleaner.
But don't do it all together not to speak about the incredible hard time to get a working 300+ modlist.
And if you realy like a challenge try out the Hardcore SK modpack.

[Limdood]

I build up a base, get it strong, then continue adding pawns and wealth until I either get bored, or am eventually overwhelmed.

By then I usually have a new idea for how to start a game, and do it over again with that idea (33% modifier on research speed for a scavenge focused game? 10,000% modifier on rest effectiveness for a 95% productivity uptime game? 5% modifier on object mass for a travel and caravan focused game?)

[Pangaea]

I understand where you are coming from as the game can get a bit stale in the end-game when you feel secure and even solid mech raids can't really touch you too much. But how I prefer to play is to take most everything that happens on the chin and try to adapt. It gets me more attached to the pawns (does rimmers sound too sexual?) and that's when I enjoy games the most. It can still get stale in the end-game because the base is basically "done" and I'm often just waiting for the next raid for some excitement, but it matters more what happens to pawns when I am genuinely attached to them. Maybe a couple suddenly breaks up. Maybe a social fight erupts and somebody loses an eye. A named pet ends up fighting off a cougar and loses a limb and very nearly dies (this recently happened to my panther). Small events in the big scheme of things, but it makes the game more fun for me, and keeps me going, and trying to get my guys and girls into space rather than just restarting.

Suppose you can try seriously wacky stuff though. Put wooden legs (and arms?) on everybody and see how you do.

[Daimonin]

Yeah... There's a reason I don't play on Randy anymore. With Cassandra, you pretty much know that you will be overrun eventually. And until you do, things are happening. Or more recently I play on Hildegard Epic, since I find the random annoyances like crop blight just that, annoying. Massive raids are more fun. (Recent game I ended up having two raids from different factions at the same time. They killed each other. )
The problem with Randy is that he doesn't push you. Sure, you have the random "6 raids in a row, all of them massive, half being dropped dirrectly into base", but then you also have the long BORING "Nothing of note happened for 4 years." Usually followed by "Oh look, a raid that kicked my ass because be defenses fell behind due to lack of need".

Losing one of your initial colonists, and the last one, always threatens to cause a restart. Because I can't get away from the feeling that it's THEIR story. Other people that join up are just... NPC's. Doesn't help I use prepare carefully though...

[Kirby23590]

There are Scenarios and like the Lost Tribe and the Rich Explorer, and then Naked Brutality.

Or Psychopath only colonies and Cannibal colonies with Human Leather armchair and clothing.

Then you got some self imposing challenges like solo colonies or no-killbox colonies, and becoming a public enemy ( All factions are hostile to you. ) or Keeping that one animal or colonist alive through the end or that means game-over.

And then you can get things like, Pawns Explode when they die and everyone learns very quickly or things that modify the stats of pawns or allowing you to build geothermal generators at the start, but you can't build or research ship-building.

Late-Game is meh to what everyone said. It ain't fun and is very boring, it just becomes a Mechanoid Onslaught 9000 and it all becomes a How long can you survive this? Or escape this planet alive?

Maybe you can impose your self a challenge? Like starting with 9 people and disabling wanderer joins and refugee chased and other stuff that allows people to join and your forced to have 9 starting pawns instead,
There are other ones like melee only colonies or playing a game of Oregon Trail (Nomad Caravan) without a colony. I don't know if others got better challenges that they made or imposed to themselves, and made one?

Also i mostly play modded and have modified the raid values with Combat Readiness Check making it the ones that's how many people i have with value being decreased but how many people i have that's heavily increased and have decreased the Mechanoids at late-game being the ones mostly raiding you and making human raids rare, and made the killer mechanoids being the ones the rare ones at raiding you. And at least hacking them with What the Hack, Maybe you can have a self-imposed modded challenge where no one in your colony fights except turrets and hacked mechanoids, with a lot of AI Persona cores at the start allowing you at least have control over them?

But mods however don't stop being meh at late-game mostly. I had more fun killing humanoids rather than machines that give me an headache and give a total boredom when no humans factions raid me.
Wave Survival makes the game into a full blown, how long can you survive before your colony falls with raids becoming harder each time you survived one?

[LWM]

I also tend to start over and over and over because I enjoy setting up the first base.  Now I'm trying for a very low population, crashed in the middle of nowhere so no ships game, and I'm having a lot of fun with it (even tho I keep ending up with too many colonists!)

I really like the mod-ability of the game - even tho some of the mods are ...not 100% perfect, they do let you change the flavour of your game somewhat.  Like "start with nothing except parts of your crashing ship landing around you" - so what you have to start off with depends on luck, and makes each game different.  This time I got a lot of colonists.  But no food.  Last time, I got a lot of food and medicine, but almost no one survived.  Etc.

Play with it ^.^

[Limdood]

I really like the mod-ability of the game - even tho some of the mods are ...not 100% perfect, they do let you change the flavour of your game somewhat.  Like "start with nothing except parts of your crashing ship landing around you" - so what you have to start off with depends on luck, and makes each game different.  This time I got a lot of colonists.  But no food.  Last time, I got a lot of food and medicine, but almost no one survived.  Etc.

Play with it ^.^

Is this a specific mod which randomizes starts?  If so, can you link it? 

[LWM]

I am currently playing with Crash Landing: https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=8967.0

It's random in that you don't know what parts of the ship will crash near you, what will survive the resulting infernos, etc.

Play with it ^.^

I meant by that, play with the mods, play with the game options, etc, btw.  But Crash Landing has also been a fun way to play recently!

--LWM

[RicRider]

Apart from adding mods that add a ton of content like Glitterworld or Sparkling Words, here's some things I really like to do to keep my colonies going:

- Colonists having social fights? Send some of the problematic ones off with basic supplies into another biome to start a smaller colony you can use to gather resources. The most I've had is 3 colonies at the same time like this and let me tell you when you get raids at all three at the same time it really gets your heart pounding.
- Have you tried wiping out some of the pirate factions? What about adding more factions that you can fight with or trade with?
- You can completely overhaul the game with some mods like Medieval Times, Lord of the Rims or Ancient Rims. You can also add werewolves, vampires, Call of Cthulu stuff or even magic users with Rim of Magic. You can have a high tech Star Wars play through with Starship Troopers, Warhammer 40k, World of Warcraft and basically have a fantasy/sci-fi game all at the same time. I really think the content mod combinations are endless.
- Mods like Let's Trade and Sparkling Worlds add a bunch of quests and events that are absolutely amazing to play like crashed ships, herds of thrumbos, psychic emitters and more. There's other mods like this I forget about now but I'm sure others will chime in.
- Add a bunch of mods that add more realism, like Realistic Darkness, Seeds Please, Dead's Dense Biomes and really make that naked brutality start harder than you could ever have imagined.
- Add mods that add new biomes like Terragen/Biomes or Nature's Pretty Sweet.

So basically mod it up. Whenever I'm playing a game of RimWorld (which can take months, I only play it in bits and pieces when I get a chance) I'm reviewing new mods that come out on the forums and keeping a list for myself that I'd like to try out in my next playthrough.

[Pangaea]

Late-Game is meh to what everyone said. It ain't fun and is very boring, it just becomes a Mechanoid Onslaught 9000 and it all becomes a How long can you survive this? Or escape this planet alive?

But mods however don't stop being meh at late-game mostly. I had more fun killing humanoids rather than machines that give me an headache and give a total boredom when no humans factions raid me.
Wave Survival makes the game into a full blown, how long can you survive before your colony falls with raids becoming harder each time you survived one?

Haven't delved into gameplay changing mods, but like you write above, it probably doesn't make the end game much more interesting. I like the early to mid game because then you are trying to get set up, recruit some people, and are raided by humans. On a manageable scale without killboxes and suchlike.

What I dislike about the late game is that humans basically don't raid us any more. Yeah, mechs are certainly harder, especially centipedes, but it's not very fun. Early on I can set up my guys behind sandbags or trees outside the base and it feels like a real fight.

If (when?) there are more updates to this game, I hope something is done with the late game to make it more interesting. Not necessarily more challenging, because it's plenty challenging with (almost) indestructible centipedes.

Really wanted to take my current crew into space, but blergh. The end game is days of watching nothing happen, then total catastrophe of one type or another, then hoping you don't lose too many people and can heal up until the next wave Cassandra sends you. For the most part this is, dare I say it, kinda boring. No prisoners to try to recruit either, because humans basically don't attack any more.

In the mid-game the mech attacks aren't so absurdly numerous either. Popping open a crashed ship part and 20 mechs pop out -- that's going to be a brutal and bloody affair no matter which way you slice it.


So at the end of the day I tend to start over due to boredom instead of defeat. Starting out with (practically) nothing and trying to make a safe haven for your people is fun.

[Nafensoriel]

If you play rimworld as a city builder or top down RTS/adventure game you will get bored and quit. Rimworld mechanically can be boiled down to tiny rooms and extreme efficiency. If you like that go for it.. its challenging in its own right.

The fun of rimworld is in the absurd. Tell a story... and then let it play out roguelike.

An example I can give is my last mountain base. I had a map which had the entire middle N>S entirely open as a valley with darn near solid mountains E/W. I setup on the east mountain and let the insects in the west do whatever they wanted. Eventually, I walled in the insects and made the area almost shrinelike. Then I made a self-rule that any new recruit had to immediately run naked through the insects to collect 3 stacks of insect jelly or else they would be locked in with the insects until they starved, died, or completed the task.

Made the game fun, absurd, and interesting. Plan to be absurd and tell a story.

[Schwartz]

I do play most of my bases all the way into deep endgame. I play Randy almost always, which lends itself to long-term games since it's the only one that you can survive past day X. When I choose mods, I choose them for fun, balance or endgame content. But nothing too crazy or too far from vanilla.

I agree that the early and mid game are the most fun. But late game doesn't have to be boring. When you sit on a big cache of money, raids become absolutely ridiculous. There is a certain appeal in the question "How can I use my 40 power armored, cybernetically enhanced, legendary weapon wielding badasses to defend against this two-group pirate raid of 30 doomsdays, 30 triple rockets and a few dozen grenades and molotovs?" The answer to that question, if you're curious, is guerilla tactics and a whole lot of luck.

The game changes when you have legendary gear and full-on bionics. It's fun to watch small caliber guns plink off the armor. Advancing on an entrenched position may no longer be a terrible idea. Drawing Heavy Blaster centipedes into a mass brawl may no longer be a terrible idea. They're still tough opponents - as long as you don't use cheese tactics like killboxes. Getting bionic colonists to stay alive past the age of 120 is also not a given. Projecting your force outward and dealing with dangerous modded world map events levels the playing field, since you can't bring your whole population to bear.

[Scorpinax]

When in doubt, pump up the difficulty. I often disable infestations and hide behind a killbox, so the way to make it more 'fun' for me is to rely less on turrets and let the bugs flow forth. I also love giving colonists customized rooms with decor and flooring that I think suits each of them. Running multiple bases is also fun late game because its like starting all over again to a degree, and you get a 'failsafe' in case one of your bases gets overran by enemies