Is the progress always gated by invasions?

[Rin D. Pryde]

I've been eyeing this game for a long time, seems like something you could play forever. The one thing that worries me the most is that most of the time one and only "colony killer" seems to be constant invasions. From time to time it's ok, but when the game regularly forces you to fight - it's really limiting your gameplay style.

I realize there are many failures that can happen, but constant invasions mean you *always* got to produce/loot/upgrade your weapons and armor, meaning you can't have any other type of gameplay. No matter how good/bad your colony is - it will always have a chance to just be destroyed by a random space swat team. And that I really don't like.

Was this somehow addressed in updates or is Rimworld still just a really complex tower defence game?

[HMS ADHD]

You can always play on peaceful or lower threat levels, but even on a medium setting you can go without a true "Colony Killer" event for decades - by which time you're powerful enough to withstand a poison mech ship landing in your freezer anyway. The average raid is much less of a threat. Storytellers base raids on wealth by the way, so don't build too many plasteel sculptures if you don't have the assault rifles to protect them.

More/as important than the colony's strength is the player experience, you can always watch some videos about killboxes and raider AI if you find it hard to begin with.

[Daffy]

On lower difficulty in a ok biome ( aka not extreme dessert or tundra ) there is 0 risk of a raid wiping your colony unless you do things to make yourself do it aka playing with no ranged weapons and turrents.

picking the storyteller that gives you time between events on a lower difficulty will let you live forever or till your pc can not handle it anymore due to population / mods / animals but this will only be a issue if you push the game over what it is ment to do aka modding population limits.

there is really no need to ever upgrade the basic weapons .. you can go on forever with the starting weapons as the bolt action rifle got the range to deal with most things ...


it is smart tho to research mortars over time tho to handle crashed mechs.

[ministrog]

The only "colony killer" I know about is complacency. Part of the game is recognising what's going on and working your pawns to fix critical things as they come. Another part is base design. Seeing what works and what doesn't is part of the fun (or nightmare for others). In which case, they come on the official Ludeon forums or steam forums to cryask for help.

[Daffy]

if the game teach you one thing tho .... if there is a problem then do not ignore it.

[Rin D. Pryde]

Originally posted by HMS ADHD:

You can always play on peaceful or lower threat levels, but even on a medium setting you can go without a true "Colony Killer" event for decades

Originally posted by Daffy:

picking the storyteller that gives you time between events on a lower difficulty will let you live forever

Well, you guys are convincing =)

But what about higher difficulties? It's not that I want a colony to live forever without a challenge, I just feel like there is only one type of challenge. Like a Civ or other 4X with every win condition wiped out except for "Military domination". Some games like Stardrive tried that and, well, that was really boring.

Is there some way to tweak invasions without using lower difficulties maybe? There is so much your colony can die from (famine, cold in the winter, disease, natural disasters, conflicts between colonists and such). It would be cool if all the bad stuff was equally feasible, not just combat.

[Radiosity]

Originally posted by Rin D. Pryde:

Originally posted by HMS ADHD:

You can always play on peaceful or lower threat levels, but even on a medium setting you can go without a true "Colony Killer" event for decades

Originally posted by Daffy:

picking the storyteller that gives you time between events on a lower difficulty will let you live forever

Well, you guys are convincing =)

But what about higher difficulties? It's not that I want a colony to live forever without a challenge, I just feel like there is only one type of challenge. Like a Civ or other 4X with every win condition wiped out except for "Military domination". Some games like Stardrive tried that and, well, that was really boring.

Is there some way to tweak invasions without using lower difficulties maybe? There is so much your colony can die from (famine, cold in the winter, disease, natural disasters, conflicts between colonists and such). It would be cool if all the bad stuff was equally feasible, not just combat.

Play on Randy Random. He doesn't care about building up slowly or sending regular raids, he just sends random events. You could have four raids in a row or you might go two years without one but instead have fallout to deal with, or manhunter animal packs, or any number of other things.

The other storytellers build up in more of a gradual manner, sending regular raids (which is useful early on as it gives you new/better equipment), but you can switch difficulty and storyteller at any time, so if the raids are bothering you, just switch over to Randy for a while and you'll likely have a much different experience.

[KrysisMode]

http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/browse/?appid=294100&searchtext=combat+readiness+check&childpublishedfileid=0&browsesort=textsearch&section=home

Assuming I pasted that right it'll be exactly what you're looking for. I use it myself to tweak the AI's "raid points" which is based off wealth, number of colonists, and a few other basic things. Works off some math in the mod options but you can set it insanely low or insanely high and just find whatever you like. I like some bigger fights so I upped the values a little but you could set them lower to enjoy a more peaceful time. Without lowering the difficulty level so the interesting things like toxic fallout happen.

Best damn thing about rimworld you can find a mod for nearly anything these days. And even then popping open the .xml files yourself with notepad++ lets you change things even more.

[NegativeX]

Originally posted by Rin D. Pryde:

Originally posted by HMS ADHD:

You can always play on peaceful or lower threat levels, but even on a medium setting you can go without a true "Colony Killer" event for decades

Originally posted by Daffy:

picking the storyteller that gives you time between events on a lower difficulty will let you live forever

Well, you guys are convincing =)

But what about higher difficulties? It's not that I want a colony to live forever without a challenge, I just feel like there is only one type of challenge. Like a Civ or other 4X with every win condition wiped out except for "Military domination". Some games like Stardrive tried that and, well, that was really boring.

Is there some way to tweak invasions without using lower difficulties maybe? There is so much your colony can die from (famine, cold in the winter, disease, natural disasters, conflicts between colonists and such). It would be cool if all the bad stuff was equally feasible, not just combat.

You could go here:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\RimWorld\Mods\Core\Defs\Storyteller

If you open: Incidents_Map_Threats.xml

<IncidentDef>
<defName>RaidEnemy</defName>
<label>enemy raid</label>
<targetTypes>
<li>MapPlayerHome</li>
</targetTypes>
<workerClass>IncidentWorker_RaidEnemy</workerClass>
<baseChance>7.4</baseChance>
<category>ThreatBig</category>
<pointsScaleable>true</pointsScaleable>
<tale>Raid</tale>
</IncidentDef>

Specifically: <baseChance>7.4</baseChance>

Could edit this to reduce the chance way down... or to 0.

There's a few other .xml files under the same directory that you can also tinker around a bit with as well, to change raid behavior.


And as others have already said, this game is insanely moddable. If there's something you don't like or want to change, 99% of the time, there's already a MOD for it.Just have to search the workshop.

[Mallradical]

Originally posted by NegativeX:

Could edit this to reduce the chance way down... or to 0.

Well, if he would want to disable raids, he could've used the in-game scenario editor.
(No offense, your reply is quite helpful)

[NegativeX]

Originally posted by MALLARD-3150:

Originally posted by NegativeX:

Could edit this to reduce the chance way down... or to 0.

Well, if he would want to disable raids, he could've used the in-game scenario editor.
(No offense, your reply is quite helpful)

Ya know, two years later and I still have never touched the scenario editor... did not know that! Haha... thank you. :)

[Saxon]

You can edit the starting scenarios. I'm almost certain that 'raid' is in the list and can be disabled without diminishing the other dangers in the game. You would have to think about maybe also including sieges and mad animal attacks.

[Immortalits]

I've never experienced any 'colony killer' event not even in my super maxxed out value base with still only 10 people in it, but golden/jade legendary grand statues and things like those (people, who play the game kows, that raids will come if you have those things).
I've always managed to kill off the raid easily without messing around with killboxes or anything like that.
And if you controll the value, your colony has, you can easily manage enemy attacks even on higher difficulties than me(I've played on rough).
Also, you can force game setups to disable certain events, even raids too.

I don't get this turret thingy from other players, I always disliked them for blowing up, when destroyed and ended up not using them at all.
Tamed animals as meatshields are much better and only neded against swarm of enemies, not 'elite' ones with small numbers.
Humans with good equipments were never a challange after I equipped my 3 mele cyborg guys with best armors to massacre enemies, while the 7 ranged ones were supporting them from behind. When I've got outnumbered, my muffalo herd managed to take care of it easily. and against mechanoids, they kill themself by separating the scyters from centipedes just because of their walk speed. I've just killed all sciter before centipedes got even close to my base, then rushed them down easily.

[Rin D. Pryde]

Thanks, guys. I'm sold =)

[melia_romulans]

Another thing about the difficulty level - it's completely adaptable and can be changed at any point in a normal game. I often start my maps on one storyteller, then switch to a different storyteller and difficulty level partway through. This game can be configured and modded to suit just about any play style you want!

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Rin D. Pryde:

It's not that I want a colony to live forever without a challenge, I just feel like there is only one type of challenge.

...

There is so much your colony can die from (famine, cold in the winter, disease, natural disasters, conflicts between colonists and such). It would be cool if all the bad stuff was equally feasible, not just combat.

"Major threats" like raids, infestations and mechanoids are the only real challenges in the game. Things like keeping food and medicine at a proper level might throw people off in their first game or two, but once you figure them out they become a trivial concern on any map, at any temperatures. Without raids you can create a permanently self sustaining base on any map within a day or two.