I am not complaining. Is it impossible to survive on highest difficulty level?

[Mutineer]

In my experience my colony could randomly die even on one level down, if true no reload rule apply.

[Alenerel]

ofc, you just have to know how the game works. i only exclusively play on merciless and have more than 10 successful runs. Here you can see how I tend to design my base (except the first one, which is a beta save, all of them are 1.2): https://imgur.com/gallery/p3Rj8iP (lowkey flex)

I was testing the amount of turrets, with autocanons and stuff, but decided that the best is just 2 rows of plasteel mini turrets, and thats it. I have a killbox with one choke point where i put 3 melee dudes, and all the ranged dudes behind. The skip psycast is very important for me, since I use it to skip centipedes to the melee guys, so they cant shoot, and also troublesome raiders like doomsday launchers and shield packs.

There are other strategies too, but I feel comfortable with this one. You can check Francis John channel, he did a merciless run with 500% threat (300% in merciless) with 300 pawns, to see how he defends, altho thats a strategy only valid with many pawns.

[Mutineer]

If you reach that technological level.
I usually start with tribe, or even my personal favorite - naked brutality 1 man tribe.

Yes, you if can survive to tech level when you have all your colonists in Flax armor and good guns, after that you will survive.
But before that your colony has a good chance of dying.

[Alenerel]

All those colonies were tribal starts, never played crashlanded. I dont play naked brutality because it becomes boring, and no matter how good you are you can always lose at the start for random reasons.

Since you didnt say where specifically you are having problems, I cant help much. The problem of starting with 1 pawns is that he has to have the right skills, like good shooting, some construction, cooking, medicine and research passion.

[Mutineer]

I give you an example.

I like to tame animals in order for them to fight in front line. Megasloth, bears. They attack often, so I get all my colonists put them in line in order to kill bear if it attack on fall.
So, I am taming in a corner and game drop on me mad (I do not remember what). Basically next to me, no chance to run They all were heroically torn apart.

Or game drop way to big group of raiders, cut of 2 of my colonists, I probably had 10. I hide 2, mobilize everyone and meat them, 2 attacking from back. Everyone die.
In hind side, if I let them to go to my chicken pen, they would probably spend a lot of shots killing chickens and I would have won, but hard to predict.
Or game drop 2 quick raids on me, after I deal with a ship. After first raid many were still damaged, so when I try to fight second, they all die.

[SpaceCows]

I can't do it, but there are people who are capable of playing on higher than the highest. For example, check out this playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpsqk21TRVg&list=PLS-hAL3jgjOu365OXZi5Dr48cHAfJVKp8

This guy is playing on max difficulty, with raids bumped up 500% in size

[Ukas]

Also Crusha played 500% on an ice sheet and made a hell of a series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiZIE6Am89U

[Mutineer]

Usually streamers reload in one time or an other

[Alenerel]

Maybe post your base to see how can it be improved

[Yoshida Keiji]

I used to play in the highest difficulty before ver 1.0 came out, but after the 1 shot lose limbs, I stopped.

[RedPine]

Those who play on the hardest difficulties, minimally modded or unmodded, all do the following:


Manage wealth.  This means getting rid of unnecessary items, either by destroying (using moltovs) or selling (using caravans).  Some people claim that wealth management is not a problem.  These people are either lying, using mods that change the game balance, or have accidentally stumbled upon wealth management techniques through natural gameplay experience.  If you don't like the wealth mechanic, I recommend "wealth independent" mode, though that comes with it's own challenges as well.


Manage trade.  This means getting good weapons, insanity lances, and shock lances ASAP.  The wealth from a single insanity lance won't add an entire centipede to a raid, but can take two or more centipedes out of a fight, so it is almost always worth it to have as many insanity lances as possible.


Focus on recruitment.  There are a lot of different strategies here.  Some people spam random wanderer joins from ideology rituals, others focus on recruiting only a handful of extremely capable pawns, others use slavery, some focus on specific traits, some like all colonists to be married for the lovin buffs, others prefer single-gender colonies to avoid breakups/spouse died debuffs...

The important thing here is to have a plan, and be willing to change that plan as your situation changes.  You need to balance quantity, quality, and taking what you can get.


Pre-emptively prepare for events.  This means preparing buildings that COULD be used as indoor greenhouses just in case of a toxic fallout, but not wasting resources or power on growlamps until you actually need them.  It means having fallback points throughout your base in case of breachers and drop raids.  It means keeping your killbox prepared to handle the raids you can expect next year, not the raids you are expecting this year.


Killboxes.  Have them.  Some people claim you don't need them, but they are either lying, heavily modded, playing at low difficulties, and/or have accidentally stumbled on a strategy that is a killbox in all but name (such as defending alleys), or abusing the AI in some other way (such as invisible doomsday drops, peekaboo, go juice sniper tag, excessive mortars, calling in aid, psycasts in general, etc). 

Killboxes won't defend ALL threats, but they will let you recover from SOME threats fast enough that you will be well rested and equipped to handle the threats that counter killboxes.

Heatboxes/autobong boxes are optional and expensive, but nice to have in the late game when raids become more of a chore than a proper threat.


Mood management.  This ties into wealth management, since mood and recreation requirements go up as your colony wealth reaches certain values.


Base layout management.  High tier players tend to combine rooms with similar functions to share on floorspace and to get the most use out of room bonuses and art.  Hospitals and research both benefit from clean floors, almost all production buildings benefit from toolboxes, kitchens stay separate to avoid dirt penalties from excessive foot traffic, etc.  Some prefer individual beds, others prefer barracks, though this somewhat depends on what kinds of traits and needs your pawns have.

The important thing is to expand your base gradually.  No point in individual beds if you don't even have enough space for your stockpiles and fridge, an extra room you aren't using is just wasted labor and extra wealth for no benefit, etc.  It's fine to plan ahead a little bit, but try not to cripple yourself by getting too ambitious.