Pros and cos of Transport pods or travel via muffalo herd?

[Knight.R]

So out of curiosity i've been meaning to ask as the question states. First off i have never used the transport pods or even know what i am suppose to be doing most of the time. And whenever i mine the land dry of all the resources be it hills or by deep drill i usually travel by muffalo. However the recent update has shown that i can't simply rely on Brute force and ignorance to get me by. So i wanted to know how to better myself via traveling in the map or just how to send 2k of some fruit for sniper rifle without needing to breed and sustain 10 muffalo every game. The wool brings some coin though.

[Swirler]

Transport pods seem to have a few uses

1. You can send in emergency reinforcements for an attack on a satellite colony/outpost assault.
2. You can use the pods to speed up the process of trade, if you really need a certain trade item for example, it might be worthwhile just launching the colonists and food supplies instead of taking the longer travel route by land.
3. Maybe you just don't have good pack animals or colonists to train them so pods are the logical choice at times.
4. They can kick start a far off colony. Less time spent in caravan is more time spent building up that extra mining area or farm colony.


Muffalo herd is great for acquiring lots of heavy materials but they do need to eat and if you live in a colder region then automatic grazing on the move isn't an option so they'll eat your food supplies en route. Which makes trade really really expensive trying to use animals.


Although currently transport pods aren't particularly efficient and require a fair amount of chemfuel and steel to make. Perhaps in the future Rimworld will have a different set of vehicles or roads you can use, I would certainly like to see railroads or the like and more uses for rivers.

Another theoretical use for the transport pods which seems quite expensive but could be used in a roundabout way to save a colonist in a caravan is by lauching the production materials to make a pod to rescue said colonist.
Or in other words, sending a pod full of pod materials to save a colonist. I mean you would lose a ton of steel but it might be worth it to save a valuable colonist I suppose.

[Inquisitioner]

I have not used transport pods yet myself. But from reading about it, they clearly seem to have different purposes. A muffalo herd is a caravan, you use it to transport tons of items both ways. You load up on stuff you want to sell and then buy loads of stuff and bring it back.

Whereas the transport pods are first of all one-way and secondly about speed. So the two best usages for it is the above for speeding up trade on specific items, in low quantity due to no muffalos. The second is if you have several settlements or a outpost. You Farm at location A and B and have location C close to a faction base, send pods to C and do muffalo there to save time.
As for saving a colonist, I suppose it could also be extended to send food/supplies to a caravan in trouble.

So in summary the transport pods are more of a safety net rather than a means themselves. A final note worth considering: if a pod containing only cargo is launched at an unoccupied tile, the contents are lost.

[ignis]

You can launch a pod with supplies at your caravan location, and caravan would pick them up. Can save you if you've miscalculated how much supplies you need. If your defenseless caravan is ambushed, you can send an assault squad to save it. Or a doctor if one is needed. It saves a lot of time, so if you want to destroy an outpost or pick up a stash and it would take more than a day to travel, it is oftenly reasonable to use drop pods for both ways. Just take some fuel with you, steel and components are optional (you probably would be able to find them).

Also, this:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=887719112
Saves you some steel and components.

[Varien]

<3 transport pods. Can't carry it all? just build another lol.

Doing a migration?

Take your entire base with you! lol

[Knight.R]

I just feel that i need 10 muffalo to get anywhere and it is always a drain on my food stock since i prefer to play on tundra terrains given that i got sic and tired of dry thunderstorms destroying everything whenever i played on grassy terrain.

[ignis]

Originally posted by Knight.R:

I just feel that i need 10 muffalo to get anywhere and it is always a drain on my food stock since i prefer to play on tundra terrains given that i got sic and tired of dry thunderstorms destroying everything whenever i played on grassy terrain.

Arid shrublands FTW. Not enough grass for a proper wildfire, but enough to graze.