Ideal number of colonists?

[Horus]

Say on chillax and classic (I forget the names of the storytellers themselves, sorry :-P).

I am coming to think that something above 20 might be best? As in, one for each of the daily and important activities, and two for the truly critical ones, making a total of something about 23-25?

I'm fairly new though, so I might be committing a mistake by thinking there is such a thing as an "ideal" number?

Oh yeah: so far I have only played the shipwrecked spacers scenario, in temperate forest. Would the ideal number change in other scenarios or biomes?

Thanks =D

[KalkiKrosah]

Depends on the size of your base. More colonists gets work done quicker and more efficiently but it's also more mouths to feed. Too many colonists and you starve out. Too few and you lack the manpower to defend yourself.

I usually aim for 10-12 colonists. When I have more than that I find a lot of my colonists are just sitting around not doing much. When I have 6 or less I find that some of my work bills go unattended if someone is in the med bay for any reason.

[Stormsong]

Yep. About a dozen is a nice happy band of misfits.

[GrimEnigma]

Depending on what story teller, once it you hit a certain number of pawns they try their best to kill some off. Think it was 20 for Randy Random and 13 for the other two.

Source: Rimworld Reddit

[Nightmyre]

I usually aim for 16-20. Less than 16 is tough for late-game, since you usually want at least 2 pawns on each of your main work areas: construction, research, tailoring/smithing, art, cooking, and planting. That's 12, and often you'll have some overlap, so 16 is a good target to aim for.

[ambi]

More is better. My biggest colony had around 120 people, IIRC. Could've been more. Food is very easy to grow and store.

[Elementium]

Relaxed gameplay: 5-10 people
Huge base: require huge number of people in order to run, starting at 30-40


THIS NUMBER ARE SUBJECTIVES

[Horus]

Originally posted by Captain Kaivarian:

More is better. My biggest colony had around 120 people, IIRC. Could've been more. Food is very easy to grow and store.

WHOA now that puts another perspective on things!

[M.K.]

Eight is my sweetspot, if all of them are **very** productive, well-trained and often bionicised.

*everyone* hunts, to keep up their shooting skill
*everyone* harvests food and wood, in their spare time.
*everyone* hauls, in their spare-spare time. Assuming the passel of Huskies are not keeping up with hauling.

One Animal handler/tamer, who is nominally designated primary hunter too.
One primary constructor, with a side of Mining
One Primary Cook.
One Farmer, with a side of cooking for when primary is offline
One Researcher, also Primary medical officer. Also Social talker.
One Moneyprinter, erm, wood statue maker. Secondary skill of construction, **only** for rebuilding simple walls and traps after raids.
One crafter. Makes weapons, clothes, stone blocks, etc.
One Janitor. He also skills in Construction, mining, crafting.. really, in everything he is the #3 guy.


If your pawns are more "normal", not the industrous, quick-sleeping transhumanists my usual crowd are, then you may need to spread out those secondary jobs to separate people. In which case, 12 or so.

[MisterSpock]

I have 24. If you have larger colonies with large wealth. Than raids become stronger. But the game doesnt let raids grow linear. So having more is always good.

More than 24 are too much micromanagement for me. Also its a Performance thing:

2 Builder
4 Miner
4 Farmer

2 Crafter/Artists/Cooks each

8 Hauler (2 of them are Medics, 1 research and 2 focus cleaning first)

PS: I let only colonist hunt which are less worth. Because i usually hunt dangerous animals.
Shooting skills automaticly goes up with the fights on the highest difficulty.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1566408411

[SuburbanHermit]

I find that between 10 and 15 decent colonists work nicely for me. I rely pretty heavily on turrets, autocannons and slug turrets in a killbox for defending against raids. If you don't want to use a killbox, maybe 20+ would be better so you could have more melee/meat shields.

[Battleseed]

Originally posted by Captain Kaivarian:

More is better. My biggest colony had around 120 people, IIRC. Could've been more. Food is very easy to grow and store.

So were about 100 of them idle most of the time? Out caravaning? Can't imagine having enough work for that many pawns on one map.

[ambi]

Originally posted by Battleseed:

Originally posted by Captain Kaivarian:

More is better. My biggest colony had around 120 people, IIRC. Could've been more. Food is very easy to grow and store.

So were about 100 of them idle most of the time? Out caravaning? Can't imagine having enough work for that many pawns on one map.

Quite a few would be idling, maybe 20 on average. However, I designed the colony to be aesthetic instead of efficient, so there was always plenty of hauling and cleaning to do. This is a screenshot of the colony's center. The colony was so big I couldn't fit it into a single screenshot.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1517269402

[M.K.]

Emergency, you are down to only 2810 meals!! ;-)

[kevinshow]

Originally posted by -SGA- Horus:

Say on chillax and classic (I forget the names of the storytellers themselves, sorry :-P).

I am coming to think that something above 20 might be best? As in, one for each of the daily and important activities, and two for the truly critical ones, making a total of something about 23-25?

I'm fairly new though, so I might be committing a mistake by thinking there is such a thing as an "ideal" number?

Oh yeah: so far I have only played the shipwrecked spacers scenario, in temperate forest. Would the ideal number change in other scenarios or biomes?

Thanks =D

I used to do 15-20 colonists, but that was when I did not fully understand about minor and major passions. Now that I know about it and try to put the right people in the right jobs, I can get by with 10 colonists and feel like the colony is running nicely and smoothly.

But IMO the actual number depends on a few things, including how far apart everything is. A bigger/wider base area probably will need more people doing stuff all over the base, because it really is amazing how little actually gets done when colonists are travelling all over the map doing stuff, and that includes if they base lay out is large from logistical ideas such as the storage area is far from the crafting area.

[KalkiKrosah]

Martiny with the clutch Necro!

While its still relevant even today, this could have been said in a more recent post. Pheanox would you do the honors?