Does slaves count towards your colony limit?

[Troyas]

If you have too many colonists the game will actively try to kill some of them and make it harder to recruit/get more colonists until you loose some. (this is how i think it works)

But is an slave considered an colonist? Does slaves count towards your colony limit?

[glass zebra]

The game will always try to kill your colonists, even if you only have 10 at 300k wealth. Slaves will definitely add to your colony count, though I do not know if to the same extent as your normal colonists. I currently have a nudist colony with about 8 colonists and 8 slaves and the raids seem kinda small and I still get downed raiders. That could also just be due to being a nudist and therefor having very little item wealth.
Hopefully someone has a more qualified and number based answer.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Troyas:

If you have too many colonists the game will actively try to kill some of them and make it harder to recruit/get more colonists until you loose some. (this is how i think it works)

That's not a thing. There is a linear increase in difficulty based on number of colonists and their wealth value, and a population minimum the game tries to maintain by forcing free colonist events on you. There is no cap, and there is no point where the game decides you have too many. Above the minimum you wont get free colonists though, you will just have to recruit them. Nothing special happens at 100 or 200+ colony population.

Slaves do count as colonists in most ways and their wealth is added to your colony.

[Kubis92]

(sorry for bad english)Desired Min population for all storytellers is 4 pawns (so if you have less they will basically throwing drop pods at you etc..), Desired Max population is 13 for all storytellers (this mean that if you get to 13 you start seeing much fewer drop pods, slave caravans, slaves at other colonies to buy...) Desired Critical population for Phoebe and Cassandra is 18 For Randy is 50 (if you reach and past these numbers the game is killing your colonist in raids with lucky shots ->you have full marine armor and your colonist is killed by hit to arm just with a bow etc ..,and is really difficult to take more colonist, pretty much only option is from raiders )
https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/AI_Storytellers

[Jaggid Edje]

I dunno, I was at 18 colonists when Cassandra threw an event at me with something like 21 refugees needing temporary safe-haven. Yes, 21. And during their ~2 week stay, nearly half of them offered to join my colony.

[Kubis92]

Originally posted by Jaggid Edje:

I dunno, I was at 18 colonists when Cassandra threw an event at me with something like 21 refugees needing temporary safe-haven. Yes, 21. And during their ~2 week stay, nearly half of them offered to join my colony.

You can get a new colonist even if you already at/past Desired Cirritcal Population but game tries to reduce your colonist number really hard (shot in the arm causing instant death ...)

[glass zebra]

Originally posted by Kubis92:

You can get a new colonist even if you already at/past Desired Cirritcal Population but game tries to reduce your colonist number really hard (shot in the arm causing instant death ...)

I have to say that I never ever had that even in high population games and I pretty much just play Cassandra. Where did you get that info from?

[Jaggid Edje]

Originally posted by glass zebra:

Originally posted by Kubis92:

You can get a new colonist even if you already at/past Desired Cirritcal Population but game tries to reduce your colonist number really hard (shot in the arm causing instant death ...)

I have to say that I never ever had that even in high population games and I pretty much just play Cassandra. Where did you get that info from?

i was wondering the same thing. I've been at 31 pawns in my colony now for a year or so in game and haven't had anything like that happen (yet). The closest I've seen is a turret did a "headshot" on one of my pawns at the extreme limit of its range, but he was wearing a flak helmet and it didn't even leave a scar.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Kubis92:

(sorry for bad english)Desired Min population for all storytellers is 4 pawns (so if you have less they will basically throwing drop pods at you etc..), Desired Max population is 13 for all storytellers (this mean that if you get to 13 you start seeing much fewer drop pods, slave caravans, slaves at other colonies to buy...) Desired Critical population for Phoebe and Cassandra is 18 For Randy is 50 (if you reach and past these numbers the game is killing your colonist in raids with lucky shots ->you have full marine armor and your colonist is killed by hit to arm just with a bow etc ..,and is really difficult to take more colonist, pretty much only option is from raiders )
https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/AI_Storytellers

That's outdated, those values no longer exist in the game, and that's also not what those values meant when they did exist.

There is currently only one scale and all three storytellers use it:

<populationIntentFactorFromPopCurve>
<points>
<li>0, 8.0</li>
<li>1, 2.0</li>
<li>4, 1.0</li>
<li>7, 0.35</li>
<li>11, 0.0</li>
<li>20,-1.0</li>
</points>
</populationIntentFactorFromPopCurve>

At 11 population there is no effect from population intent factor. At 0 population all population related events are increased by a factor of 8, making you 8 times more likely to see events like wanderers joining. At 20 population certain easy population events are reduced by a factor of 1, meaning -100% chance to happen.

Randy has a special value:
<minIncChancePopulationIntentFactor>0.2</minIncChancePopulationIntentFactor>
Which basically means he will never stop sending wanderers and other free colonist events, they are just going to become very uncommon at higher population.

Population intent has no effect on combat or chance to down enemies.

[glass zebra]

Originally posted by Jaggid Edje:

i was wondering the same thing. I've been at 31 pawns in my colony now for a year or so in game and haven't had anything like that happen (yet). The closest I've seen is a turret did a "headshot" on one of my pawns at the extreme limit of its range, but he was wearing a flak helmet and it didn't even leave a scar.

That can always happen if your armour isn't 100% more over the armour pen value of the attack.
Edit: Oh, you mean the attack didn't do any damage.. Yeah that can happen too.

[glass zebra]

Originally posted by Astasia:

That's outdated, those values no longer exist in the game, and that's also not what those values meant when they did exist.

It's kinda weird that the patch that removed those values is mentioned on that page but the page did not get changed, but big parts of the wiki have been outdated for years.

[ASMR gaming]

try the vanilla expanded perry persistent storyteller, very active and a high pop cap

[Raymond]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Originally posted by Troyas:

If you have too many colonists the game will actively try to kill some of them and make it harder to recruit/get more colonists until you loose some. (this is how i think it works)

That's not a thing. There is a linear increase in difficulty based on number of colonists and their wealth value, and a population minimum the game tries to maintain by forcing free colonist events on you. There is no cap, and there is no point where the game decides you have too many. Above the minimum you wont get free colonists though, you will just have to recruit them. Nothing special happens at 100 or 200+ colony population.

Slaves do count as colonists in most ways and their wealth is added to your colony.

Troyas is right tho. The only story teller without a pop cap is Randy, the other 2 will significantly decrease the rate of new pawns joining. The time modifier on raid scaling will keep ramping up alongside with wealth until one of your pawns die to reset it.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by YariMurai:

Troyas is right tho. The only story teller without a pop cap is Randy, the other 2 will significantly decrease the rate of new pawns joining. The time modifier on raid scaling will keep ramping up alongside with wealth until one of your pawns die to reset it.

Like I said it's not a cap, it's a minimum. It's the point where the game will basically force new colonists on you until you reach a baseline of population, and after that you use the normal intended method of getting new colonists, recruiting them using the social skill.

The time based scaling has also been mostly removed. There's an adaptation mechanic now that mostly exists as a handicap for when your colonists are downed or killed but caps out again fairly quickly. It's entirely possible to keep your wealth in check and maintain very small raids for an entire playthrough if you so choose.

[VoiD]

100% anedoctal evidence here, but in my previous games it felt like there was something else to the pop caps around 20.

Sure the events just disappeared, as expected, but the game was activelly trying to get rid of them, I'd get more diseases, random breakdowns were often saying the pawn just gave up and wanted to left the colony, etc..

These things were never happening at lower pops, could be just bad luck in all of my games

[Doomdrvk]

Since I like to skim the code I found out a long time ago (it may not be relevant anymore) that prisoners count as half a colonist towards the cap, this could be different for slaves though.

Edit: Went looking into it more and slaves do not count as prisoners, they're a different type of guest. The prisoner = half a colonist is still active.