In search of fun ways to play Rimworld

[maniwa]

I've played Rimworld for a little while and I'm getting the thought I've played the wrong way. People in forums always refer to Rimworld as a storytelling game but I can't imagine a single time anything memorable happend in my plays, guess I have just always seen this as a Management-Sim.

Enough of motives, does any one know of any ways of playing to make Rimworld seem more like a storytelling game that don't involve blasting the difficulty to the moon?

[Raymond]

Sadly, if you want true Rimworld experience, playing on lower difficulty is not how you get it, as the core fun of the game is also include suffer and lost. The higher the difficulty, the more money the AI received to attack you and more resources bringing to your colony. More resources means you can build bigger and more impressive colony for your amusement. On lower difficulty your main source of resources is through mining, farming and trading, make the game long and boring while the game doesn't throw much action in the mix. Good news is, you don't have to blast the difficulty through the moons, I find Rough difficulty quite balance, manageable yet consistent challenge, while Savage and Merciless mode will kill you in all the most underhanded way the game can do.

If you can't play with higher difficulty. I recommend downloading mods. Change the theme of the game to the ones you wanted, perhaps with some op mods to balance out your odds against the game.

[maniwa]

Thanks for the reply. Maybe I should really just accept losing pawns, I always just save scummed raids until I got the best possible outcome; perhaps I should let the AI storyteller work a little since I always grabbed control of the story away from him

[Chaoslink]

Yeah, loss is part of the experience. If you want to save scum, that's your choice, nothing wrong with that. But the real experience is letting things play out how they will.

[burningmime]

Different people play it different ways. I have a lot of fun doing challenge runs of various sorts. My favorite set up right now is...

- Randy Savage (see also: Cassie Merciless)
- No save scumming/commitment mode (*)
- Tundra (see also: Ice Sheet, Desert, Cold Bog, Tropical Swamp)
- No automated defenses -- no traps or turrets allowed
- Quality of life. graphics/sound, and AI mods only
- Go to space

The "no automated defenses" part makes it quite challenging, since you actually need to actively fight every battle. You may need to restart 2 or 3 times since you're vulnerable for the first year. You're going to need to do a lot of drugs, especially for the final gauntlet on the way to space. But it's a quite rewarding run.

My QoL-only mods (none of these alter gameplay very much):
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1750179796
(*) You might want to do "reload anytime" instead of commitment mode because your same game could be corrupted, especially if you use mods. Just pretend it's commitment mode. You need a little self-dicipline for this, because your favorite pawns *will* die to random predators while wandering around. C'est la vie.

[Bullwinkle]

I like to use the scenario editor to turn down (way down) the chance of npcs having the worst traits, like staggeringly ugly), turn off resource pod drops, turn off random pawns joining, use Prepare Carefully and Prepare Landing to setup a good start, then play on higher difficulty. Also, try different biomes.

[Preechr]

Use your imagination. When the colonists talk to one another, read what is said. Some colonists will just naturally like or dislike others... There's reasons for that you can see in their social tabs and logs. Pay attention to the raiders. You'll see them again if they make it off the map. There's a lot of little things the game gives you to help spark your imagination, but the story is up to you.

When you start a colony, do you think about how and why your colonists ended up together? Do you look at the relationships tab? Do you set goals or think about your pawn's motivations? You don't have to do the spaceship ending... You can set any goals or conditions you want.

The story teller in game is the one giving you components to a story, but they aren't writing the story for you. You have to string all the stuff together in a way that makes sense. How do your colonists feel about the things that have been happening? What does that make them want to do? How would you feel about the pirates that constantly attack you and your friends as you were only trying to build up some shelter and scrape together enough food to get by? Would you look at each raid as just another challenge to overcome, or would you eventually start taking it personally?

Try to stop playing the game and start digging a little deeper and you'll find the stories.

[Iskander]

I've had a similar problem: I don't consider it fun to start out with a bunch of addicted, psychotic, pyromaniacs, so I could spend over an hour re-rolling pawns for the perfect start-up. Later, I found the "prepare carefully" mod. And I kept editing up, until I eventually started with 8 amazing colonists, thousands of wood and granite, hundreds of packaged meals, everyone in marine armor with charge rifles, edited global work speed to 200%, etc, etc.

And I kept wondering why I was so bored all the time...

I still don't like losing my pawns to random stuff, though. But I did try a new approach and finding myself enjoying the game a lot more: I just started with one guy and only a bare minimum of starting resources. Albeit a sort of superman with killer stats. But because he is just one pawn, I do need to make priorities. Right now, another 3 pawns have joined his farmstead, one is an addict and another a pyromaniac. But I'm more fine with it now, as I can "identify" with the original pawn and if the "sub-par" pawns start to become more trouble then they are worth, I won't mind letting them die, or kicking them out. I do realize that my "main man" might die eventually, but I hope to have built a legacy by that time, so that I'll continue playing and see how the "sub-optimals" manage. See if they can make something of the legacy left behind, or maybe they'll mess things up.

[PSY]

forced pyromaniac trait on all pawns and everything explodes on death.

[Iskander]

Originally posted by PSY:

forced pyromaniac trait on all pawns and everything explodes on death.

The pyro was my second pawn, so when she went on a pyro spree, I had only the one pawn to put out all the fires... Lucky me, she started the fires outdoors in my agricultural fields, and not in the middle of my base...

[Morkonan]

Just my two coppers:

I wouldn't recommend "increase the difficulty level and choose a crazier narrator" to someone who was trying to find new ways to play the game or to make it more funnerer...

The key is just to play the game differently than you've played it before. Increasing the difficulty while playing the same way you've played in the past doesn't have as much of a chance to make the game more enjoyable as just "doing something different."

Some choices that might help:

A different biome than one normally plays. It doesn't have to be more difficult, it just has to be different than what you normally choose. For those who like a certain sort of biome and find themselves playing in that one more often, this is probably the "#1 Choice." Guess what? You'll see stuff you've never seen, before. You'll deal with animals you haven't had to deal with, have entirely different options to choose from for food, materials, base-building, etc... Muffalos and forests filled with wood aren't everywhere. :)

"Do more" - Choose to go on those caravan quests you might not have, otherwise. Yes, making swords and platemail might be fun instead of fast-tracking to assault rifles.

If you're looking for more challenges with combat, maybe making one giant killbox isn't the way to go? Leave some vulnerabilities in your base - The attackers may not always choose to use them, but when they do it's going to be more "fun."

When trying to figure out how to concoct one's own "gameplay rules" don't just think about things that might help to make the game more difficult, but think of things that might bring something "new" to your experience. How about only recruiting Paws that are Night Owls? Maybe set age requirements you don't normally prefer? Elderly pawns don't last long, but they have tons of skills.

Mods - Rimworld is wonderful unmodded, but can be even more betterer when it's modded. Choose some QoL mods that aren't overpowered and then find a mod that actually adds something to the game. (I'm building a "Hotel Apache" in the wasteland inspired by Orion's "Hospitality Mod" and it's a ton of fun. That's not just because of the mod, but because it's brought with it "different" and "more funnerer" gameplay as a result. :)

TLDR: Play differently, not necessarily harder.

[MrValfaris]

I may sound silly, but what helped me get into the storytelling thing is a little bit of role playing, as in not playing the most efficient way. Try to think of your colonists as real people with their own ethics and morals and allow yourself to get attached to them. Keep track of what your colonists are doing and with whom, how they behave in combat, etc. And if you have too much pawns, just pick a few "favorites", like the one pawn not getting lucky with the other gender or your kind of sketchy doc with cannibalistic tendencies.

And the most important part: don't save scum. You won't get any interesting stories by doing that. Even if your base gets destroyed and 90 % of your colonists killed. That's your story and rebuilding is part of that. (I know it can be frustrating. I sometimes need to take a break from the game, because randy decides to throw ♥♥♥♥ in my face for multiple hours straight. :D)

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by MrValfaris:

...And the most important part: don't save scum. ..

I strongly agree with all the other stuff you wrote. But, here, I have to disagree.

Save-Scum when it's best for what you want to do.

The Anti-Save-Scumming establishment has run rampant over the Steam forums and gaming in general. :) It's just a tool, like any other tool. The choice to use it is yours. It's fine if you don't want to use it, too. But, some players might really want to use it and shouldn't feel bad about doing it. Moving the mouse is part of the game, so why not reloading saves? :)

That being said, playing an iron-man game can be fun, too, in-and-of-itself. But, always playing Iron Man (ie: Committment mode/whatever the Anti-Save-Scumming "politically correct" movement is calling it these days), goes against the "Do something different" rule and, IMO, the DSD Rule is paramount for good gameplay discoveries in frequently played games. :)

[maniwa]

Thanks A LOT for the ideas, really appreciate you people for taking the time to lend me a hand. I'll put these tips to practice and see how much I'll like them

[Preechr]

When you are just learning a game, or learning a new part of a game or mod, saving the game just as a raid pops can be a very valuable learning tool. Win or lose, it allows you to see the possible outcomes of different strategies. Reloading just to assure the best outcome for every encounter can reduce the challenge of the game just as much as using the dev tool to explode raiding parties, but I would think most people would just choose a lower difficulty setting. Some people burn ants... what do I know?

However you choose to play the game makes no difference to anyone else. There's nothing scummy about reloading and there's nothing valiant about commitment mode for me, but if there is for you, good for you.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Preechr:

...However you choose to play the game makes no difference to anyone else. There's nothing scummy about reloading and there's nothing valiant about commitment mode for me, but if there is for you, good for you.

^-- This.

I'm in favor of whatever brings the gamer enjoyment, just so long as it doesn't hurt anyone else's.