How to bring the colonies out into the open again?

[b0rsuk]

You no longer need to get outside to produce electricity! A fuel generator yields 1000W and heat. In non-desert biomes you can run fine on 1-2 fueled generators, and just BUY wood from traders. On desert you may need to do something with excess heat.

[RazTheGnome]

I'm new to the game, and already I'm wondering what incentive there is to build outdoors.  I understand that I can simply "just say no" to making a mountain vault.  But ideally a game should present one with tradeoffs that make the outdoor/indoor decision an interesting one.  I do think I'll try making my next colony outdoors just because I want to.  But I'm curious -- are there any advantages to a non-mountain colony?

[SpaceDorf]

easier and faster to built, you could plan broader
also more space to farm, depending on where you are
less digging.

The funny thing though, my colonies really look any different if built inside or outside .. somewhat between an anthill, fortress and burrow

[erdrik]

There is only two reasons I build in a mountain.

1. Natural and invincible protection from mortars.

2. Its way easier to force raids into choke points.


Even against sappers, deep mountain bases allow you to control the engagement. The sappers generally just dig into my kill box from a different angle. In the rare occasions when they try to dig directly into my base, I have more than enough time to set up behind them and kill them with comparatively little injury to my colonists.

The infestation is harsh and is providing a negative incentive against building deep mountain bases, but they happen infrequently enough that such bases are still preferable.

Building out in the open against sappers is doable, with the right planning.
But protecting an open base from mortars requires an early attack. There are basically no other options there, and this why mountain bases are preferable. If your caught by a siege ill prepared or soon after some other catastrophic event, you may as well kiss your base goodbye.

My problem with this is the lack of options that don't involve "attack immediately". With a mountain base I can wait and prepare. And frankly that will always be preferable. I hated blitz strats in RTS games, and Im not a fan of them here.

To bring me out into the open there is going to need to be some benefit or means of allowing a well designed colony to protect itself from that threat.
Now that manual roofing is in, I would love to see the option of building reinforced roofing. Such that it can take X number of hits from a mortar before the roof collapses and lets the mortars in. It should also cost resources to build the reinforced roofing.

[DariusWolfe]

I think my biggest bar to building outside is the early dearth of acceptable building materials. I have zero desire to build any sort of structure with wood, and I don't like to use up my steel for walls or doors (especially since it burns). That leaves mountain dwellings as my only default, with a single wooden door that I'll later augment with a granite door.

If stone cutting was an option as soon as I landed, I'd be more likely to build away from mountains (though still not too likely; raw stone is still a better defense than stone walls)

[Varnhagen]

I do think I'll try making my next colony outdoors just because I want to.  But I'm curious -- are there any advantages to a non-mountain colony?

It's been two years since my last post in this thread and I had to learn during the last weeks that some things change, some stay the same.
There are some benefits to being outside.

• Your doods don't feel cramped and you can easily socially control your colonists.
  Most of your people will spend most of the time outdoors so you don't have to fixate on room wealth or beauty to keep them productive. Pawns that tend to fight get relocated to different corners of the base.
  On the other hand, it is economical to build an antfarm (rooms next to rooms, with only a minimum of hallways). Your pawns will travel shorter distances, thus maximize their output. In the end an open colony might develop into a mountain fortress without the overhead mountain.
  
• You can farm all year round on a much larger scale.
  You can still use hydroponics for its fast growing nutrient output while at the same time farming cash crops or sustaining a large animal population. Omnivorous animals like dogs can be fed on an agrarian diet, and be used as zerglings during a fight or haul stuff from left to right thus freeing your colonists from this mundane task. You can support a large animal population below ground too, but it needs more resources (steel and components for the hydroponics, power to not have your plants die).
  Due to the higher food output of outdoor colonies you can effectively increase the amount of work done per capita.
• You can have horticulture.
  With horticulture you can support fuel generators which in turn replace batteries, thus not having your base go boom in a giant 40-battery-zzt. You need less components to build and maintain your power network. You are more flexible in your power network design. Instead of having one large grid you can power every house individually since fuel generators have a smaller footprint per wattage than any other generator, except for wind turbines. But those need batteries, which increases their effective cost and footprint. On the same footprint of a solar generator you can generate 2.5 times the energy with fuel genis.
• Fights are way more fun. In a mountain base you get the raid notification, check the enemy's strength and power up your turrets. You'll notice that the fight is over, because you can resume your speed-3 snoozefest.
  Outdoors, and specifically in an open (i.e. non-perimeter walled) colony you'll check the enemy strength, devise a battleplan, sally forth and fight the enemy tooth and nail for every inch, so that he doesn't set your fields on fire. Oh, and you watch your pack of hauling animals tear them a new one. You decide which sounds more fun.
  

There are problems with this approach. But they can be solved by a good base layout. Sieges do the most damage if everything in your colony is packed tight. Empty spaces safeguard against overhead drops as well as you can use the structures of your base for cover. A good designed house offers cover and vantage points in all direction, so that you can make a stand there. Always build multiple doors into rooms to allow for fast position changes and evacuation in case a position gets overrun.
Most mountain bases fall quickly after the killbox is breached. Outdoor colonies can be somewhat more resilient in that regard since, ideally every house should be a 360° killbox.

I usually build 2-bedroom houses. One for a grower to tend to the immediate surrounding fields and a craftsman to ply his trade. Food is produced centrally and distributed to a refrigerated room in every second or third house. (Houses where the craftsman doesn't need a lot of space like artisans, tailors, researchers or construction workers.)

As an outdoor colony you can't just subsist and live from what you produce. Since your colonists will get into fights regularly and they will get hurt you'll need a steady supply of body parts. Most of your production should be geared towards buying every piece of prosthetic limb a traders hauls your way.

A lot has changed in the past 2 years. But the joy of repelling an overwhelming force with clever tactics instead of building Raider Auschwitz has, at least for me, remained the same.

Best regards

[winddbourne]

Good discussion to have. Thanks for bringing this up.

It is a tough balance problem to solve. I think the best, most obvious solution is to put players on the offensive more often. I tried to do that with sieges and the ship part, but I think it's not quite panning out that way with sieges. So maybe I could rework sieges and make them a bit more common, and perhaps add another kind of threat or opportunity that draws people out of their base. Anyone have any thoughts about what this could be?

For me space ship parts won't draw me. I'm a "lone explorer" or "Lost tribe" type and fleeing the planet in a space ship feels like LOSING to me. I didn't crash land. I'm here to get conquer the worlds challenges, or perhaps to build up a colony strong enough to repel the demon machines from the sky when they show up again.  Leaving isn't an option.

So what would make me feel that building out in the open was a great idea?

• Mood benefits for being able to walk safely out in the open air
• Better defenses . . . upgraded turrets, fences to slow down enemies without using steel, etc . . . 
• Some idea of which direction enemies are coming from based on the location of their bases so I can set my base in a spot where distance and terrain give me advantages outside.
• Mood benefits and friendship building for allowing visitors peacefully into my base and letting them hang around with my people in a "village" perhaps even becoming friendly with the surrounding factions over time and even getting treaties with them.
• The ability to set up trading post zones and get repeated traders but they need an open path to the trade area.
• Story Tellers who I know aren't purposefully trying to push me off the planet . . . I don't want to leave. As I said leaving is LOSING.

Over all setting up a successful colony shouldn't be easy . . . but I don't want to tell the same crash landed story over and over again. The standard Rimworld game plays out like the classic book "Swiss Family Robinson".  It's great for the crash landed scenario . . . but for anything else you are hitting your head against a wall.

I'd like to tell stories about internal factions within the colony. Politics. Trade. Exploration. Building. Eventually I'd like to transition from building an initial base for "defense" over to building parks, gardens, fountains, huge plantations . . . Trade agreements with other colonies and with the stars. It might be fun to set up an Inn or Hotel and to see my colony grow a bit larger than ten or twelve people.

I'm not saying I should get there right away . . . but that's what a "win" looks like to me, and the more secure and well defended I get the more likely I'm going to say "Staying in this cave/fortress" is boring . . . lets try something else.

Hope that makes sense. I do build outside fairly often but even then my colony feels like a fortress more than anything else and I tend to rush towards getting stone working early on if I'm going to be building outside.

[keylocke]

well for people who don't want to preemptively attack sieges using their pawns, the other option is to use a combination of incendiary and explosive mortars.

aim the incendiary mortar around their ammo stockpiles and aim the explosive mortars at the enemy mortars. even with just two mortars, countering a siege is possible if you manage to burn their ammunition early.

[Serenity]

Mood benefits and friendship building for allowing visitors peacefully into my base and letting them hang around with my people in a "village" perhaps even becoming friendly with the surrounding factions over time and even getting treaties with them.

The hospitality mod does some of that. You can build guest rooms with special guest beds and some joy items. If they liked their stay you will get a relationship bonus and they will drop some stuff (usually food). They can also buy stuff you leave in the guest room.

[hwfanatic]

countering a siege is possible if you manage to burn their ammunition early.

Unfortunately, they seem to have an endless supply from space. I once stole their whole batch while they were sleeping and apart from acquiring free ammo, it didn't do much to stop the bombardment.

[Kagemusha12]

countering a siege is possible if you manage to burn their ammunition early.

Unfortunately, they seem to have an endless supply from space. I once stole their whole batch while they were sleeping and apart from acquiring free ammo, it didn't do much to stop the bombardment.

Perhaps you should also have used the chance and planted an IED-Trap next to their mortars

[Blastoderm]

Why eveyone assumes people should be driven from their covers and all solutions is how to penalize turtlers so much that they will venture outside.
It is virtually impossible to defend without walls in RimWorld against numberless vast hordes.
Maybe add some benefits to more offensive builds? Because now I can't see a situation where I will not wall my entire colony because benefits of turtling outweight negative sides, if there's any. Even if there will be maluses to mood and other things game must do something hugely horrible to make people go aways from sure and safe way to protect their colony.

[Reviire]

Nerfing mountain bases wasn't the way to go, there's a reason people hole up in mountains constantly. One of the big reasons (At least for me) is that I don't like dealing with huge sieges that have 5x the people i have, so instead of having my entire base decimated by mortars, I make sure those stupid weapons can't hit me.

I'd like to see LoS artillery, replace the mortar with a 155cm cannon or something. Outside just needs to be better.

[Blastoderm]

It's about nature of the game, where vast majority of colony deaths comes from not walling fast enough. Why bother with open colony when only chance to survival is AI behaviour exploits?

[Kagemusha12]

It's about nature of the game, where vast majority of colony deaths comes from not walling fast enough. Why bother with open colony when only chance to survival is AI behaviour exploits?

It also comes down to the AI storyteller and difficulty level one chooses.
If one chooses the highest difficulty, one shouldn't wonder that things only can be solved via exploiting the AI
(the reason why I  prefer to stay at medium difficulty ... nice balance of building and events (although, I dislike the scarcity of trading ships and caravans that came with the last update))