Getting more colonists?

[TimeRupture]

Im new to the game and one thing that the helper dosent explain is how to get more people to join your colony. I know you can capture enemies and basically convert them but im playing in the peaceful mode where they dont spawn. Is there any other way to get more colonists?

[Vintorez]

Various random events, sometimes a personal will just straight up join you, sometimes someone will crash in a pod and you can rescue them and they might join you once they heal, you can purchase people from slave traders as well.

[RamboRusina]

Buy slaves. Quests can have them joining or as rewards. hospitality guests may decide to stay.

[ichifish]

Storytellers have a population cap, after which the number of join events decreases drastically. I forget the exact numbers, but maybe it’s 18 for Cassandra and 50 for Randy? So if you’re at the limit, you won’t get any more of the crash survivors and other type of “free colonist” join events. As you said, the basic gameplay forces you to capture and brainwash, I mean recruit raiders and that’s not really an option for you. Here are some:

Adam vs. Everything has a YT tutorial with tips for getting new colonists. I don’t remember all (most) of them but one that might work in your situation is changing the quest reward options to disallow goodwill. That will give you a third option in rewards, so you’re more likely to get a [name] joins reward. If you’re using the Royalty DLC you can also turn off receiving honor from the empire.

Another option is to start a second colony (increase the number of colonies in the options menu, then send some folks out to start a new one). If you keep the second colony very small (2-3 colonists), the storyteller will send you a lot of join events (colonies have their own events determined by wealth and population) because it wants you to reach an optimal number.

I tend to think it’s better to play a few vanilla games before using mods, but there’s one that’s tailor made for your situation called Hospitality. You make guest rooms, people come and stay, and you can recruit people who visit your colony if they have enough friends among your folks. You get a goodwill penalty with their faction but you can give them gifts to win them over.

[olstar18]

I'm pretty sure its the hospitallity mod that allows it but you can have guest spaces setup and if a visiting guest is friends with enough colonists you can recruit them. Its also a good source for a trickle of extra silver and improved relations from any injured guests that you nurse back to health.

[Astasia]

You are going to have a tough time getting many colonists on peaceful. If you only want around 10 or so, then it should be fine, you will get escape pods, slave traders, and wanderers joining occasionally, it's entirely RNG but the lower your population the more likely those events are to happen, becoming increasingly rare as you go above the normal minimum population threshold of 11. After that point the game is normally very much about capturing and recruiting raiders.

After hitting that 10-12 population point your main source of recruits on peaceful is going to be ancient dangers and will involve fighting the occupants. Initially when you open one of these and let the people out of the caskets they should be all neutral on peaceful (I think, some could be hostile anyway I haven't tested it that much), you can try just rescuing the ones that are downed and hope they join you when they heal, I don't think the chance of this is very high. You can instead arrest or capture one of them, this will make the faction hostile, future dangers you open will have hostile people inside them for you to fight and capture giving you more recruits. Settling new maps by increasing your max colonies in the game settings will allow you to open many dangers on many world tiles then abandon the tiles after, they contain good loot and a near endless supply of recruits for you.

If you want to avoid combat entirely, rescuing them instead of capturing them may work like I said, but you might be better off installing a mod like Hospitality as mentioned which allows you to peacefully recruit visitors from other factions that visit you by using your social skills and entertaining them enough.

[ichifish]

Originally posted by Astasia:

After hitting that 10-12 population point your main source of recruits on peaceful is going to be ancient dangers and will involve fighting the occupants. Initially when you open one of these and let the people out of the caskets they should be all neutral on peaceful (I think, some could be hostile anyway I haven't tested it that much), you can try just rescuing the ones that are downed and hope they join you when they heal, I don't think the chance of this is very high. You can instead arrest or capture one of them, this will make the faction hostile, future dangers you open will have hostile people inside them for you to fight and capture giving you more recruits. Settling new maps by increasing your max colonies in the game settings will allow you to open many dangers on many world tiles then abandon the tiles after, they contain good loot and a near endless supply of recruits for you.

Totally forgot about this and I pop dangers all the time. Good point.

As for the split between neutral and hostile ancients, I don't know the code but I've done three runs with at least 20 tombs raided in each, without attacking or capturing neutral ancients, and anecdotally it seems like it's about 1/3 all neutral, 1/3 all hostile, and 1/3 mix of both. Rescued downed neutral ancients join at a higher rate than escape pod victims from other factions, but at a lower rate than unaffiliated faction victims.

Use caution, though! Dangers can be... dangerous if you don't have a strategy and the firepower to deal with surprises.

[Astasia]

Peaceful mode prevents hostiles from spawning in the dangers, I know this includes mechanoids and insects, meaning they are completely safe to explore and loot on that difficulty. I'm just not certain if it also includes ancients inside the caskets, but I'd be willing to bet it does, at least until you anger the originally non-hostile faction.

[Caz]

You can edit a Scenario to have a repeatable incident of Wanderer Join. It's a guaranteed way to get new colonists. Just keep in mind it will continue to fire that incident at the interval you set as long as you play that save. So if you set it to happen every day, you're gonna have more colonists than you can deal with very quickly.

[War Pig Wizard]

I recommend modding the game to add the hospitality mod.

It allows you to have guests visit your colony, your pawns can make friends with them and recruit them after they have enough friends, costs you some goodwill with that faction, but nothing crazy. This is great as you can choose who you want to recruit and having a pool of recruits to choose from helps in making sure you get pawns who can actually be of use in your colony.
In addition you can set beds as guests beds and charge for them. I charge 10 silver for my barrack style guest beds, and 40 silver for my VIP private rooms with double beds. They can sleep on the floor for free.
Lastly you can zone an area for 'shopping.' Guests will purchase items in this area such as clothes, weapons, drugs and food. I sell clothes and smokeleaf joints. I make over 200 silver per group easily, quite often a bit more since my clothes usually sell for 100-200 silver a pop. Devilstrand shirts, pants and dusters and muffalo wool parkas are only some of my items I sell.
Overall this is one of my favorite mods, being able to recruit is a huge plus and I make good silver off this mod. Once my shop is set up I never touch it again and it is always making me money. Sometimes I check my silver and am shocked to see how much I've gained. Plus I think having guests in my town is just kinda cool and it fits the theme of my town.

[Kittenpox]

Note: I would generally advise against modding the game for new players - at least until they're more familiar with how the game is meant to be played etc.

While the Hospitality mod is one way to recruit additional pawns, it's a lot of effort for the one specific thing you're after. (Recruiting additional pawns, without having to fight anyone.)

So as an alternative, this mod exists, and I suspect it may be useful once your colony has researched Microelectronics:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2411722784&searchtext=Rimdeed
But even without mods, the game *will* give you pawns over time, so you don't require mods to get more than the starting 3.

In the Royalty expansion, there is a way for your psycasters to call in workers from the Empire to help out for a few days (I think that requires them to reach Acolyte rank, above Freeholder+Yeoman). Additionally, sometimes there will be quests to provide refuge to travellers, where you'll have a bunch of pawns temporarily joining your colony.