I’ve tried some mod manager but, having played since before Royalty, it appears that I’m too used to the vanilla way ( plus Better ModMismatch ) to see any benefit.
My favorite playable androids are back for 1.6: Android Tiers. They don’t need much so a colony devoted to them can be a good way to learn the game, until pawns with digestive systems are in your colony.
I posted an image of such a colony up in #69. Storage is rather haphazard there since I had hadn’t really learned about shelves, pallets, etc., yet.
So my first run ended due to heat. For the first few days, exertion would make my dudes overheat, but then they would go swimming on their own and cool back down. But for some reason, one of my guys refused to do this after a few weeks. I eventually in desperation tried to send him into shallow water while drafted, but this didn’t help. He eventually died of heatstroke.
The reason I couldn’t cool my base was that the AC unit requires Construction 5 and the guy dying of heatstroke was by best builder, with only 3 Construction. I was trying to train him up by building a bunch of things but he heated up before he got to level 5.
In my new run, I made sure to have a bit better of a skill spread. I also decided to turn on Ideology, with the flexible option that lets me slowly develop my ideology over time. I went with the modded Jewish Origin and the Collectivist Meme for a Space Kibbutz run, which should be fun.
Prompted by this thread, and wanting an alternative to Oxygen Not Included, I picked up Rimworld the other day and gave it a shot. It’s not quite grabbing me, though. I’ll keep playing a bit longer and maybe it’ll grow on me, but I think what I want is “physics sim with characters that add to the challenge of building things” instead of “The Sims but with random dangers thrown in”.
The dangers seem only “fair” in the sense of them being mostly surmountable… though I just had a pawn die from sleeping sickness, despite having a medical bed and being tended to properly the whole time. There just wasn’t enough medical skill available or whatever. In ONI, (almost) every danger is deterministic and totally predicable far in advance. That doesn’t necessarily make them easy to overcome, but you can see them coming and always have time to come up with a solution.
Maybe some other aspect of it will grab me, but the lack of sophisticated physics seems to limit the scope of the obstacles.
Pete Complete’s Ice Sheet Tribal challenge run on YouTube is one of the things that convinced me this game is worth a shot.
There’s a passive cooler that doesn’t require electricity or high construction. It can’t preserve food but it’s enough to keep your colonists safe in the heat.
I put on a few episodes in the background. That’s a whole lotta cannibalism.
It’s pretty micromanagey for my tastes… but maybe that’s better if the number of colonists is kept to a minimum (like 1). I’ve been expanding my count as much as possible, which makes things go faster but has the downside of not being able to keep track as much of each one.
There seems to be quite a bit of luck involved in the series. Is he save-scumming to get favorable events?
The traps are cute. I haven’t tried those yet.
That would have been good to know before we all died of heatstroke 
oh well, learn by dying.
I think it only has to be that micromanage-y if you’re doing a weirdo challenge run like that. Some of the mechanics seem really interesting, like summoning mechas and (with a mod) insect swarms to fight to get better tech related to those critters.
So, my new embark spot (on a jungle lake) is full of some small ancient ruins (basically they’re the size of a building or two, scattered across the map) with lots of ruined cars and tanks scattered around. And as I drew near to what I thought was a mountain made of slate, I was warned about an ‘ancient danger’.
Something is telling me NOT to dig there.
Immediately after this, a Dimetrodon started hunting the pet my colonists started with (this time it happened to be a small dino). Luckily, my combat capable colonist was right there with a rifle, and she was able to put down the charging Dimetrodon just in time.
A mad Juvenator scratched up my hunter pretty bad. Luckily, another character grabbed the Hellcat that a trader had brought us for 600 silver, and was able to put the critter down.
Another fun mod is Factional War – enable that and you could be invaded by two groups hostile to each other, so they’ll start fighting each other and leave you alone. This works well with Sometimes Raids Go Wrong and More Faction Interaction.
Just make sure you’re prepared first. That could be anything from a lone pet belonging to the Ancients faction to a group of Centipedes.
Alright, I just got a notification that one of my colonists was incapacitated. I check, and it’s a lady who is in her 3rd trimester (I just got notified that she is about to have a baby and that I need to prep a baby room a little bit ago). Oh no! Is her birth going wrong? Answer: nope! She’s just completely drunk on wine.
Drinking until you pass out is very much not recommended when you’re pregnant. I really hope this game doesn’t model the consequences…
I did just appoint someone else Leader, maybe that’s why…
Let me tell you, having 3 colonists, a baby, and a prisoner is rough when two of those colonists are sick with Malaria.
After giving birth, my Chem Fascinated colonist (that’s why she was getting blackout drunk while pregnant) was immediately struck with malaria. She got good treatment, and some rest, but eventually I figured I could have her get up and cook a few meals (because the other two are really shitty cooks who keep giving everyone food poisoning). Between that, and having her rest interrupted to breastfeed, she ended up just barely beating the malaria, with her infection hitting 99%.
So when the other two colonists got malaria right after, I wanted to have them spend a lot more time resting. Which means the poor recently recovered colonist (she’s actually still feeling some malaria symptoms) has to deal with feeding five mouths, all by herself.
Luckily, I managed to kill a small sauropod earlier, and I finally got batteries up and running, so I have plenty of meat. She just has to cook as fast as she can, tend the injuries every so often, and feed the baby and prisoner (I’m making the malaria patients get up and feed themselves because otherwise it’s just way too much for her to do).
This really is the authentic Kibbutz experience… Malaria was a real problem back in the day.
My prisoner is a cannibal who I captured after she tried to raid us. She’s broken out twice so far (including while everyone was sick) but I’ve been able to stop her right outside the prison door each time.
What’s interesting is that by game mechanics I don’t think she’s “breaking out” so much as she is going berserk over being unhappy. Maybe I can build a better way to contain prisoners in the future to avoid this. But in the meantime, I’ll just have to deal with it a few more times until she’s ready to join the colony.
Something funny about my colonists: there are two women, both 33 biological years old. But one is the other’s mom. The chemical fascination lady who just gave birth is over a hundred in chronological age, and the mother of the second lady who is only 40-something.
So she must have given birth and then soon after gone on ice while her daughter kept aging, but then they ended up reunited when they crash landed here.
That’s also a risk you take when in a jungle: increased chance to contract diseases. Like with all the deaths due to disease while building the Panama Canal.
I did an Impid Tribal start once. Who is the Savage Tribe now? kind of run. Weak immunity’s 90% immunity gain speed doesn’t sound like it’s that bad, but my god.
That’s why they start you with extra tribe members, I guess.
So, I get a mission to save a neighboring* village from an enemy raid. I decide to send three of my best dudes with a bunch of potatoes and prepared meals. They also take an elephant who self-tamed, which was very fortunate.
Bad idea, of course: as I know understand, traveling counts as being not under a roof, so all my food spoiled in like 2 days. Desperate for food, and happening to be immediately next to a randomly spawned food gathering camp, I decide to check it out and see if I can’t trade with the locals for food.
Immediately on entering the area, I find myself adjacent to a Spinosaurus. Everyone fired at once, and we brought him down, but not before he took two nasty bites out of my most recent recruit.
This attracted the attention of the camp’s residents, a pair of the pig guys armed with a shotgun and an irrelevant melee weapon. We managed to take them out, but by this point our group was moments from going berserk, so we loaded up all the food we could on the elephant and left.
Once everyone had healed up, and after dealing with a mad Meganura swarm, I sent just one sniper to deal with the quest. When I arrived, three enemies and one ally spawned on opposite sides of the map. I sniped one of the bad guys on approach, then the other two were on my ally. They beat her up with clubs and even knocked her out, but I was putting bullets into them as they did and eventually after some kiting I had won. I patched up my ally, completed the quest, and went home.
*What’s odd is the settlement named as the quest giver is clear on the other side of the map.
You might have figured this out already but next time, take packaged survival meals or pemmican.
Have you guys used Vanilla Vehicles Expanded? It seems really cool but also potentially overpowered. I feel like you could make a cool Mad Max game with them.
Well, I can’t really play yet. Now I need to track down why I keep getting barren biomes, even in forests.